Sundry Days (3 page)

Chapter 4

David

Politics as Usual

None of us wants to go to the rally.  The adults, of course, don’t come right out and say they don’t want to go.  Mama just acts real bitchy to everyone, and the dads fake headaches, hide out in the garage, pretend they can’t find their dress shirts—stuff like that—while Simon whines.  But when it’s time to go, we all go.

We have to.  We’re Gardeners. Grandma is running for Parliament, and we have to be there as living proof that she’s got a loving, do-gooding family.

Shit.

I hate this sort of thing.  I don’t know why Grandma believes she’s The Designer’s gift to the people of Ontario Region. I take that back. She doesn’t believe it. She just wants to make everyone else believes it, so they’ll vote for her.  The way I see it, if Grandma is the best The Designer can do, we’re all in trouble.

“You can’t wear that skirt,” Mama tells Rebekah, who just turned 14. “It’s too short.  Too much of your legs are showing.”

“My legs are almost completely covered,” Rebekah insists. “See. My boots go almost to the hem of the skirt.”

“Not good enough. We’re going to be up on stage with Grandma Gardener.  Please change.”

“She’s not my grandma,” Rebekah grumbles under her breath.  But she’s gives in, and goes back to her room to change.

Girls Rebekah’s age are required to be covered from the neck down when they go out now.  It’s a new ordinance.  For their own good, we’re told. As if no one will notice that they’re girls if there’s no detectible skin between their chins and their shoes.

At home she wears whatever she wants. Which can be a problem, too.

The other day Uncle John caught Papa Andy staring at her while she was all curled up on some cushions, wearing a loose, sleeveless nightgown, reading a book.  It’s been really hot and humid lately.  After dinner we usually all strip down to our shorts, except for Mama and Rebekah, of course.  I’m sure Rebekah thought she was sufficiently covered up in that nightgown. And it did cover her up from collarbone to toes. But the material was light, and all the windows were open letting in a breeze.  And you could tell she didn’t have anything on underneath.

Uncle John didn’t have a fight with Papa Andy or anything. He just said, “Hey, Andy, she’s your daughter now. Remember?”

Then, later on, I noticed Papa Tom, Uncle John, and Papa Andy having a quiet, private conversation in the den that I’m pretty sure was about Rebekah.  Uncle John is actually my father now, since he married Mama when they came to live with us.  But I still think of him as an uncle.  He’s too new to the family to be considered a father, in my opinion.  And no one minds that I still call him Uncle John.  Simon, though, calls him Papa John.  Simon never thinks for himself.  He’s only six now, but I’ve got the feeling he’s always going to let people tell him what to do.  He’ll make a wonderful seventh husband for some bossy woman when he grows up.

Rebekah and I almost never spend any time alone together.  No one spends time alone around here.  It’s too crowded. And I’m careful not to stare at her the way Papa Andy did. It’s strange, though, living in the same house with her.  I think about her when I shouldn’t.  I think about her in ways I probably shouldn’t. Sometimes I don’t think about anything but Rebekah.

Mama has found her two other girls to be her friends.  They’re about her age, and they do things together sometimes.  I don’t know what they do.  Girl stuff, I guess. But Rebekah says she doesn’t really feel comfortable with them.  The other two have been friends since they were little, and she feels like an outsider. I think the only person Rebekah is going to need, or feel comfortable with when we’re older, is me.

At the rally, Grandma looks us all over before we go on stage with her, and gives us some last minute instructions. She wants to make sure we won’t embarrass her. Then she stands behind a podium on the right side of the stage, while we fan out behind her, along with my three old grandfathers, and my three new grandfathers, who are younger than my dads.

On the left side of the stage are Grandma’s opponent and his family. He seems nice enough. If I were old enough to vote, I think I’d vote for him.

If you’re male, you have to be at least 25 to vote, and part of a family.  Women can vote at 18 if they’re married.  I guess that’s because 18 is the age girls are supposed to start families, but you never hear of a man becoming a husband unless he’s at least 25.

Single men don’t get to vote.  There are some protest signs about that at the rally. They say “Equal Rights for Males” and “End Gender Bias.”   I have to agree. But mostly I zone out during the speeches.

The one good thing that would happen if Grandma won, is that she would have to move to Toronto, since that’s the capital of Ontario Region.  She’d be in her glory there thinking up new ordinances.  Who knows, someday she might even wind up in Chicago, which is the capital of the entire Great Lakes Coalition.  Each region’s parliament sends a representative to Chicago, and it might as well be Grandma.

Don’t get me wrong.  I know I’m supposed to love her since she’s my grandmother.  It’s just that she thinks she knows what’s best for everyone, including me.

“David,” she says, “it’s very important for you to think about the future.  You’re 12 now, aren’t you? Well, it’s never too early to start thinking about a career.  There’s nothing wrong with being a teacher or a dentist or a carpenter like your fathers.  But these days, young women want husbands who have something special to offer.   Like a massage therapist,” she says. “Yes. That would be good. And you should definitely join a male chorus as soon as you can.  You can keep a tune, can’t you?  Nothing soothes the soul like songs sung in harmony by an all-male chorus.  You should join your school’s chorus as soon as possible.  Boys who are in the chorus are much less likely to join men’s clubs when they grow up. That’s what studies have shown. And being in a men’s sports club will reduce your chances of being selected as a husband when the time comes.  You know that, don’t you David?”

She goes on and on like that.  I’m not going to join a chorus or become a massage therapist.  And I probably will join a men’s sports club after I graduate. People like Grandma think sports clubs make men more aggressive.  The only sports allowed for boys in school are track and swimming. But plenty of unmarried men play basketball and stick ball in their free time. They have teams that compete. I’ve seen them, and it looks like fun.

The rally is in the Town Hall, and it’s pretty crowded. Maybe two-or three-hundred people.  But I don’t know what they think Grandma or her opponent are going to be able to do for them.  We learn about civics in school.  I know basically how the government is supposed to work—pass ordinances, collect taxes, provide services like schools and hospitals, keep things going.  But the problem everyone talks about is too few girls being born. And I don’t see how the government is going to fix that.

Grandma keeps saying in her speech that the only thing that will save our civilization is “civic responsibility.”  Women’s civic responsibility, according to Grandma, is to marry more and more men, and keep having babies until they get girls. Men’s civic responsibility is to not complain or cause trouble.

Men do complain, though.  Even boys at my school complain. There are too many of us. No one gives a shit about boys. It’s girls who are a “blessing,” who grow up to get all the power, who control the future. It’s not fair.

Papa Andy, who teaches science and history to the upper grades, told me that men are actually the ones who determine the sex of babies, although they don’t do it on purpose.  In ancient times, before The Great Flood, scientists could figure out how to get one sex or another.  People could do all kinds of things they can’t do now.

Mama is pregnant again.  It doesn’t show yet, but she told us all a week of two ago. No one seemed too overjoyed.  It’ll probably be another boy.

Chapter 5

Susannah

Design Flaws

I’m planning to work right up until I go into labor.  What else am I supposed to do?  Hang around the house with Seth while the boys are in school?  He wouldn’t be glad for the company. Not during the day, when he needs to carve out some quiet time to write.

Seth does more than his share, taking care of the kids and running the house. Of course, we all do our bit cleaning and cooking and so forth.  We could hire people to help with that.  Some families do. But the last thing I need are a couple more men in the house poking around, lusting after Rebekah.

We’ve recently enrolled her in a small study group at the home an elderly lady, attended by a handful of other girls around Rebekah’s age, just to get her out of the house. But she doesn’t like it very much.  It’s boring, she says.  The old lady mostly dozes off while the girls gossip.  She’s very, very old.  And Rebekah says she’s not really learning much.

In a year or so she’ll be ready to undergo career evaluation—lots of testing to help her figure out what kind of work she’s best suited to do. After that, her education will become very intense.  She’ll get direct instruction from women in her chosen field, and on-the-job training.  If she chooses a particularly challenging career, like medicine, she’ll probably have to be sent to a bigger town to complete her education. It’s not unusual for girls to continue training even after they’re 18 and married.

In the meantime, we all help as much as we can with the basics, focusing on subjects in which we’ve had the most training and experience.  The quality of at-home instruction a girl gets depends almost entirely on the level of education her mother and fathers have. Which isn’t fair.  But what can you do?

Andy tutors her in the evening in history and science, under the watchful eye of John, who hasn’t trusted Andy since he caught him staring at the girl in an unfatherly-like manner.  Not that he would ever act upon it.  I’m sure of that.  But still.  It makes things uncomfortable. Rebekah is not allowed now to wear anything the least bit revealing at home, no matter how hot it is.

I talked about that with Seth the other night in bed.

“Don’t worry, Susannah,” he said as we cuddled after sex. “You worry too much. Before you know it, Rebekah will be all grown up in a home of her own.  We’re all good, reasonable people in our family.  Everything will be fine.”

That’s Seth, the soother. He’s my oldest husband, though not the first, and almost 50 now. Very undemanding. Very easy to satisfy.  Has been all the time we’ve been married. So it’s not just because he’s getting older.

He’s quite a large man, with deep brown skin, great strength, and the most nurturing personality of any of us. I love him very much. It’s hard to believe that the stories he produces come from such a gentle soul.

Seth’s novels aren’t to my taste. Not at all.  But the three that have been published so far have been good sellers.  They’re adventure stories set before The Great Flood, and based solely on his imagination. Single men really eat up what he writes. It does no harm.  Just some escapism.  And The Designer knows we all need to escape sometimes, if only in our minds.

I would have liked to escape today. Work is rarely stressful, but today I had a referral from the court system, and it was a doozy.

A young woman finally managed to contact the authorities after her four husbands collaborated to keep her prisoner and rape her at will. 

Yikes.

That’s what can happen when women forgo premarital counseling, or don’t pay attention to warning signs.

Gwyneth, the victim, was referred in the hope that she can recover enough to eventually accept new husbands.  To be honest, I doubt it.  She and her three little boys are now living with her maternal grandmother and grandfathers. And that’s where she should probably stay.

Gwyneth’s husbands have all been sentenced to the maximum security facility in Buffalo.  Seems that one of the husbands is an alpha male in the extreme. He convinced, or maybe coerced, the other three into going along with him.  But they’re all to blame, of course.

Gwyneth, meanwhile, has shouldered all the shame.

“I know I never should have agreed to marry Graham,” she says between sobs. “I know I should have insisted on pre-marital counseling. But he comes from a very good family, him and Kyle.  Their mother approached me and my family directly.  She wanted me to take both of them.  She told me what an easy life I’d have. She offered a bride price.”

The last two words are said in a whisper.

“Did you know that’s illegal?”  Of course, she knew it was illegal.  Everyone knows it’s illegal.  But she was only 18 at the time, and where was her mother?

“Your mother went along with it?” I ask as gently as I can.

“My mother’s dead,” she says, and starts crying again. “She died when I was a kid.  My fathers were having a hard time.  They thought the double wedding would be okay.  They were really struggling financially.”

So Gwyneth married Graham—whose personality was obviously unsuited to marriage, or why would his family insist on forgoing premarital counseling—along with his brother Kyle.  Then Graham’s mother brokered two additional matches for the poor girl.

“Graham and Kyle did whatever their mother said.  And Kyle and the other two did whatever Graham said,” sniffles Gwyneth. “They decided when I would have sex, and with who.  Mostly it was with Graham, but he let the others have turns, too.”

What a mess.  Unbelievable.  But that’s the kind of thing that can happen when people have the freedom to arrange marriages without going through suitability testing.  I’m all for freedom, just not the freedom to put oneself and others in danger. I’m hoping that Parliament will soon pass an ordinance requiring, instead of just recommending, that marriage licenses be contingent upon standardized pre-marital evaluations.

It’s a sad fact that some men are simply not husband material. And some women, like poor Gwyneth’s mother-in-law, should never have children—although things are so bad now, every woman has to have children, no matter what.

“My mother-in-law was determined to get a granddaughter, and she got madder and madder at me, every time I had a boy,” Gwyneth confides. “So she didn’t care how they treated me.  I took it as long as I could, and then I finally went for help.”

I schedule counseling sessions with Gwyneth right up until the date the baby is due.

I’m going to take a year off then.  The baby will need me, and I can also devote myself to Rebekah.  Listening to Gwyneth reminded me how much girls need mothers. Rebekah was without one for most of her life before she came to live with us.

There are things only a mother—or a dedicated mother-substitute—can pass on to a young girl.  There are things men just don’t know about, and probably shouldn’t know about.

Tom knows more than most.  But even he doesn’t know everything.  Men are better off not knowing.  And women are in serious jeopardy if they don’t learn how to control their lives as women.  It’s just the way it is.