Sundry Days (18 page)

Chapter 34

David

A Mother’s Tale

Rebekah is having none of this. She’s in shock, I think. She’s breathing hard, through her nose.  Her eyes are wide and unblinking. Like she’s in a panic.

“Let’s go, David. Let’s go now,” she finally blurts out.

She won’t look at Miss D. who is really Dora, her mother. She shudders when the woman reaches out to her.  She shakes off her touch, stands up, and faces the wall. She shakes off my touch, too.

“Tell her to go,” she says in a raspy voice. “We’re leaving now. We have to get out of this place. Let’s go, David. Please. Tell her to leave. Then we’ll go. We’ve got to go.”

Go where? I don’t ask her. It doesn’t matter. She wouldn’t answer. There is no answer. She just needs to be somewhere else. Anywhere else, right now.

Poor Rebekah.  My poor Rebekah. How am I going to help her? I remember once, not long after she started getting short haircuts and dressing like a boy, she told me she hated her mother. But she’s never really talked about her since. What would there be to say?

My mother once told me that Rebekah has a wound that will probably never heal, but has scabbed closed. That wound has been ripped open now, and Rebekah is raw with pain.

I think she has every right to hate her mother, to hate this woman, who looks so dumbstruck and pathetic now. What did she think?  That Rebekah would run into her arms and they’d have a heartwarming reunion? This Miss D., this Dora, deserted Rebekah when she was just 3-years-old. How does she expect a person to get over that?

“Please, Rebekah,” she pleads now. “Please don’t go. Please let me at least tell you why I left. Please let me help you.”

“Help me? Help me? You want to help me now?” Rebekah, furious, shouts over at her, still facing the wall. “You want to tell me why you left me?  Why you left me when I was so young I couldn’t even remember your face afterward? Why should I care why you left? You’re not my mother. Maybe you gave birth to me, but you’re not my mother. You’re no one to me.”

She’s seething, spitting out the words.

This woman, this Dora, puts her hands over her face and slumps down in the chair. Maybe she’s crying.  What do I care?

I go over to Rebekah, and this time she lets me hold her.  She buries herself in my chest and I wrap my arms around her, stroking her head, her back.

And no one budges.

Rebekah and I remain standing in the corner of the room, me shielding her from the sight of her mother.

The woman stays huddled into herself on the chair, until she finally stands up.

“I know you hate me, Rebekah. I know you do. And I can’t blame you,” she says.

“I knew you were mine. I knew when I laid eyes on you. I knew before then. I knew when the captain told me about a beautiful red-haired girl, posing as a boy, who was brave and stubborn enough to cross two Great Lakes for the chance to make a life with the one boy she loves. How could you be anyone but my baby?”

“Your baby?” shouts back Rebekah, the words reverberating against my chest. “You mean the baby you abandoned? The lonely little girl who thought that it was somehow her own fault that she no longer had a mama?  You didn’t care about me then. Why would you care about me now?”

“But I do, Rebekah. I do. Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The most terrible thing. But I didn’t think I had a choice. Your adorable little face, your piping childish voice, your baby smell, have haunted me ever since. I’ve remembered you as you were then and imagined you as you might be every day. I thought of you every day.”

“And yet you left me. As if I was nothing to you. I don’t want to see you now. I don’t want to hear you now. I just want to go. Please, David. Please let’s just go.”

I tell her yes, we’ll go.  I glare at the woman. But none of us moves for a long while.  It’s as if we’re all three made of stone. Then, finally, Rebekah leaves my arms and throws herself on the bed as if she’s too depleted to stand up any longer. I go over and sit next to her. I stroke her back as she cries.

The woman is crying, too.

After a while, Rebekah sits up and glares at her, dares her, I think, to beg for forgiveness.

Instead, Dora calmly tells us her story.

“Everyone thought it was an amazing blessing when I gave birth to you.  A girl.  A girl born first.  To a very young woman with just two husbands so far.  Our families all celebrated.  Other women were envious of my good fortune.  I should have been the happiest person in Seneca Falls,” she begins. “But I wasn’t. I wanted to die.”

Rebekah sits up in the bed, her knees to her chin, and stares at Dora. At some level, I think, she wants to hear this story. Needs to hear it, despite the pain she’s feeling.

“It wasn’t because I’m a lesbian, though that’s what everyone probably assumed. The fact that I’m a lesbian had nothing to do with why I felt compelled to leave—why I didn’t have any choice. Your fathers, John and Danny, were good to me.  Poor men. They thought they were lucky when they married me. I gave them each the bare minimum. Begrudgingly. But they didn’t complain.  And they were both so thrilled when you were born.  I left because there was something very wrong with me.  Sometimes I wanted to kill myself. Sometimes I was afraid that I would hurt you.

“Your mother, Susannah, was my friend back then, David. She told me I was just depressed.  Just depressed. She said some women get depressed after giving birth—even to a girl. It happens.  No one knows why.  She didn’t get depressed after having you, of course.  Something like that would never happen to Susannah.  She told me it would pass.  That it wouldn’t last.  There are pills for depression here in Winnipeg, you know. I take them every day. But back then, back in Seneca Falls, I was just supposed to get over it.

“I tried. Really I did.  Then, I heard from some acquaintances who were like me in their sexual preferences—I wasn’t the only one, you know, who preferred women to men—that there was a small lesbian colony somewhere on the coast of Tennessee.  Just a few women, archaeologists claiming to do important research, so the Coalition left them alone. I studied archaeology in school. I wasn’t a scientist, certainly. But I got it in my head that Tennessee was where I should be.

“My depression kept getting worse. I couldn’t eat. I wouldn’t get out of bed. And sometimes, when you demanded my attention, like any small child would, I felt like strangling you.  It wasn’t your fault in any way, Rebekah. You were an extremely bright, active child. It was me. My sickness, if you can call it that. 

“Once, when I just wanted to be left alone, and you wouldn’t leave me alone, I put my hands around your little neck. I didn’t do anything to you. I never hurt you physically. But I knew it was time for me to go. I knew John and Danny would take good care of you, and that you’d be better off without me.”

Dora tells us that there wasn’t much in Tennessee.  There were bad storms, and the coast was becoming uninhabitable.  Over time, all the women had to find other places to go. Dora and her lover—the woman she grew to love—stayed together and travelled across the country, exploring. Eventually, they made their way to Winnipeg. It was a place where they could settle down, open a business, make a life.

“It’s much more liberal here than in the Coalition, as you know,” says Dora. “My partner, Tina, comes from a family with money. Lots of it.  We never lacked for money, even when we were wandering.  When we settled here, we bought the Birch and Bay.  And we’ve been running it ever since.”

Rebekah looks up at her with swollen eyes.

“That’s a sad story,” she says sarcastically. “I’m so glad it had such a happy ending for you.”

“Rebekah, I know I have no right to ask for your forgiveness. I don’t expect to be forgiven, or even understood. I only hope that you’ll let me help you now.  And David, too.

“I was furious when I learned that I had missed you when you were here last.  I knew it must have been you. And then I was sick with worry and regret when I figured you’d been lured away to stinking Eden Falls.  I was beside myself. Tina and I were trying to figure out some rescue mission. We’ve been trying to recruit men, promising to pay them well, if they’d go to Eden Falls and try to get you back. But it’s easier said then done. I was so relieved that you managed to escape on your own.”

Winter is coming, and Dora says it will be nearly impossible for us to find another monogamist settlement on our own.  She begs us to stay here, to let her help us, until we can be sure of where it is we want to be, and how to get there safely.

“I have lots of contacts here in Winnipeg,” she says. “I know who trades for what and when. I know people who have direct dealings with the monogamists.  There are some monogamists who are good people. They only come to Winnipeg a few times a year to trade for what they need. It’s no secret that men from Eden Falls come for other reasons. They come for the pleasure women and sometimes they try to lure women into going back with them to that Designer-forsaken place. My women here are all warned against them.  I don’t know how that Eden Falls miscreant managed to weasel his way in here.”

She begs us to stay. She promises that she won’t bother Rebekah. She only wants to help.

Rebekah doesn’t say anything for a long while, but I can see that her mind is turning over everything Dora has said.

I think we’re going to stay here for a while.

Chapter 35

Rebekah

Winter in Winnipeg

I don’t speak to Dora, and she doesn’t try to talk to me—which makes ignoring her less difficult.  The others think I’m unreasonable and hard-hearted. They all think Dora is wonderful.  They love her. They’re her family. But not me.

Only David stands stalwartly by me in my aversion to this woman who was once my mother.  But he has little opportunity to show his disdain. He’s not allowed in the house where I’ve been told to make myself at home. No men are.

She’s given David his own room in the Birch and Bay and I sleep there with him. I also eat with him, and roam around Winnipeg with him sometimes. But it’s winter now. And when David is doing other things, I have no place else to be but the bustling house behind the Birch and Bay where my mother lives with the women and children who’ve become her family.

David is good at finding things to keep him occupied.

He’s tinkered with, fixed, and improved upon every mechanical thing in the Birch and Bay, from the power generator and heating system to the water pressure in the bathrooms. His favorite haunts in the town include a hardware shop where he’s befriended the owner, and a garage where he works part-time repairing sun-cycles and rovers.

But I’m just waiting for spring.

It’s an odd existence. For me, anyway. David has pretty well adjusted.

I feel as if I don’t belong anywhere. More than once, when I’ve been on my own in the Birch and Bay lobby, strange men have approached me, thinking I must be one of the women who work there. My hair is not so boyishly short anymore, and I wear the clothes I’ve been given—comfortable, well-made pants and shirts that are not particularly provocative, but clearly feminine nonetheless. So I spend most of my time, when David’s busy doing something, moping around Dora’s big house, being disagreeable.

“You’re a nurse, right?” asks Tina, my mother’s partner, lover, wife, whatever. She and I are in the kitchen making lunch for three little boys and one girl whose mothers work in shifts at the Birch and Bay pleasuring men in various ways.  The older children, four or five of them, are in school.

I have nothing against Tina. She’s nice enough. Everyone here is nice to me.

It’s me who’s not very nice. I can’t help it.  Well, I probably can help it. I just don’t. Encountering Dora here in Winnipeg, has turned me into a bratty, disagreeable child.

“Yeah, I trained as a nurse in Kitchener,” I tell Tina, “and earned a degree, but I haven’t done any actual nursing since then.”

“Would you like to?” she asks.

By the time I realize that yes, I would, she’s enlisted me to become a volunteer at the free clinic she and Dora and some other business owners support.

It’s within walking distance, even in the winter. Tina practically shoves me out the door that afternoon, all bundled up in a borrowed parka, and before I know it, I’m working several hours every day.

Which is good for everyone at the house. And also for me, I suppose.

The clinic is staffed by one overworked doctor—just one. Her name is Marjorie and she doesn’t like anyone.  So we get along fine.  I’m the only nurse. And she says she really doesn’t need me. But she does.

At night I tell David about who walked into the clinic and what was wrong with them: A pleasure house worker from a very poorly run pleasure house with a venereal infection.  An old man with frostbitten toes. A boy who nearly severed a finger chopping wood.  A toddler with severe diarrhea.

“Eww,” he says, as he lies on his back and watches me strip off my clothes. “I’m not sure I want you in bed with me tonight.”

I smack him on top of his head with the long sleeve shirt I’ve just removed, and he laughs.

“At least you’re not scowling any more. I should be deeply grateful to the putrid and suffering masses of Winnipeg for improving your mood.”

I get ready to smack him again. But he quickly pulls me on top of him.

“I’ll give you putrid and suffering,” I say, tickling his underarm before we settle down to the serious business of ravishing one another.

It’s true, though. Having something useful to do is keeping me from concentrating all my efforts on hating Dora and remaining so bitter.

Tina tells me that Dora has always loved me, has always regretted leaving me.  But what else is she going to say? It doesn’t really matter now, anyway.  I’m a grown woman.

The other women in the house consider her a mother figure. She’s very good to them and their children. Most have intentionally gotten pregnant at least once.  When their boys get too old to remain in the house, they’re sent to board at a school in town. Tina and Dora seem to have worked everything out.

Sometimes I see Dora staring at me longingly.  I’m the only child she’s ever birthed. But I don’t think I can ever forgive her.

Maybe forgiveness is a quality that’s been inadvertently bred out of me.

But others have too much of it, in my opinion. And some people really need to pay for their sins.

One person in particular.

This becomes abundantly clear when I’m called to the lobby of the Birch and Bay early one morning, and find Willa and Caleb warming themselves in front of the fireplace.

I can hardly believe what I’m seeing.

Willa runs into my arms, frail and shivering in her scratchy brown dress, covered only with a shawl.  Caleb looks older than I remembered, and has a fierce expression on his wind-burned face.

“I’m going to kill him,” he says.

It takes some time to get the full story, to understand what’s happened—how they’ve managed to come here. But by the time David joins us in the lobby and we’ve heard everything there is to hear, I find myself agreeing with Caleb.

“I’m going to kill him,” I say.

Willa—trusting, gentle Willa, who’s still more child than woman—has a broken wrist, a black eye, and two of her bottom teeth have been knocked out of her head.

Jacob, it seems, discovered a month or so after their wedding, what she was doing with the sea sponges I gave her. And thereafter, he’s felt compelled to beat the wickedness out of her on a regular basis.

Each Sabbath, she’d been coming to the meeting house more battered than the week before.

“Me and Mama couldn’t let it go on,” says Caleb. “We had to get her out.”

“Trula told us where you’d be,” says Willa. “She and some of the other women helped us to plot a way to escape.”

It involved a communal case of mild food poisoning which impacted only the intestinal tracts of the most powerful males. Caleb hid a sun-cycle, like he did when David and I escaped, and sabotaged most of the others.

“But I’m sure they’re going to come after us,” he says. “Jacob will, anyway. And probably some of the others.”

David has fire in his eyes.

I take Willa to the house and tell the others what happened. We get Marjorie to tend to her injuries.

David looks after Caleb, who’s not exactly sure how to feel.  He’s the hero of the day, being congratulated by everyone, including the pleasure women of the Birch and Bay.

“I can’t wait until Jacob shows up,” says David later, when we’re alone. “I’m going to kill him. Somehow, I’m going to kill him.”

We’re both feeling pretty murderous.  Which maybe isn’t such a healthy way to feel.

But the juices are flowing in both of us. And when we come together later, it’s with a wild, satisfying fierceness that’s different somehow from our usual lovemaking, and may be a taste of what’s to come.