The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (23 page)

“Oh that’s fine, we don’t want to bother you.” He tugged at Randolph’s sleeve. If you see anyone out in the snow, I’m sure you’ll render aid. We’ll come back and check with you in a week or so.” He almost tripped in his eagerness to get away.

She waved to them from the doorway and closed up slowly. Then she threw the bolt and put her back up against the door. She heard the snowmobile start up.

“Jodi?”

The broom closet in the kitchen swung open and Jodi spilled out, trembling all over. “Thank god, oh thank god.”

“They’re gone. I don’t know if they tracked you here or what, but they’re definitely looking for you. How did you know they were coming?”

“I heard it! Didn’t you hear it? That thing is super loud.”

“Did you leave a note? Tell anyone where you were going?”

She shrugged. “No. People disappear sometimes. They just leave. I thought they’d like… just forget about it. You know?”

“You mean guys disappear sometimes. Have you ever lost a woman that way?”

She goggled at Dusty. “No… I didn’t think of it that way.”

Dusty sat down on the sofa. “Yeah, well. There’s no mystery to those disappearances, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re just suicides. Comstock didn’t want to admit it, but it was pretty clear.”

“There’s no way that’s true.” Jodi’s face set along angry lines. “Why would anybody do that?”

Dusty snorted. “Yeah, you’re right. Why would they? Everything is wonderful.” It came out meaner than she had meant it. She saw Jodi flinch.

Jodi got up and went to the kitchen. “I’m gonna-“

“Stay away from the windows for a while. They said they were going to search the neighborhood. I don’t know if they will, but just in case.”

Jodi came back into the doorway. “You’re not really sick, are you?”

Dusty snorted. “No. I just told them that so they’d be too scared to come in.”

Jodi stared at her, her brows coming together.

“You want to feel my head?”

Dusty expected Jodi to laugh it off, but she came straight toward her with her hand out. She laid the back of her left hand against Dusty’s cheek and waited. Looking away, she cupped her palm against Dusty’s forehead.

“Normal, right?”

Jodi dropped her hand. “Yeah. Yeah, just checking.”

Keep checking. Please.

It was casual contact, almost clinical. But her hand was soft and small, with slender fingers. It awakened something in Dusty that she had been ignoring while it slept. Something stirred and wanted and ached. She did everything she could to coax it back to bed.

Winter

If that missionary brought back a live plague victim from Nevada = fever is still active in some places. Maybe she got it from a corpse?

People who never got sick, like Roxanne and most of the people in Huntsville. Immune or never exposed = the second exposure to Huntsville broke their quarantine and killed the ones who were not immune. There are those of us who got sick but fought it off, like me. Maybe no one is naturally immune and the degree of exposure determines infection. But then no one in Huntsville would have made it. Vector was cooking in the communal kitchen and they all ate together. Some people must be immune.

Those of us who got it might be able to get it again. Drilled Jodi about it a hundred times. She never had it, and she doesn’t remember if anyone who died recently had previously recovered. No good with details that aren’t relevant to her own interests.

Jodi has been here with me for a week. She really wants to be helpful. Very industrious, very clean. Won’t waste a single bite of food and she makes her bed every morning. However, useless to talk to. Simple+childlike=dull. Has almost no imagination and anything outside of her experience she just won’t believe.

Talks about television almost constantly. Wish she had watched different shows. It might be interesting to listen if she had been addicted to fiction, even if it was silly, but all she watched was reality. She repeats the plots to me, but she always leaves things out so that they don’t make sense, so then I ask questions and she remembers. An incredibly tiresome pastime. Wanted company, but shit. Miss the nurses I used to work with. Mean and hard and sometimes crass, but at least they weren’t dumb. Even Roxanne. Wasn’t book smart, but she was cunning. Roxanne = GOT IT. Understood me without my having to explain constantly. Jodi doesn’t even get jokes. Realized a few days ago I’m nice to her because we’re alone here, but also because she’s pretty. Just like to look at her. She’s probably been treated like that her whole life. Don’t like myself much when I think of that.

She finally let me examine the baby. Palpated the fundus, was able to discern length of femur.

Not receptive at all to talking about what’s going to happen when the baby is born. Not interested in my experience with the plague, or in the story I got from Roxanne. Not going to scare her or torture her with the possibility, but I wish she’d at least think about it. She’s going to fall apart if she doesn’t prepare.

* * * * *

The snow quit one day and Dusty got bundled up to go out.

“Hey, I’m gonna skip breakfast. I’m going to walk two miles or so to the nearest neighbor that I haven’t robbed yet. It will take me a couple of hours, then I’ll be back. Is there anything you’d like me to look for? For you?”

She stood in the doorway tying up her scarf. Jodi came out of the kitchen looking frightened.

“You’re leaving me?”

“What? No. I’m just going to walk to another house and look for supplies. I’d like some new books. Maybe find a house that has some board games? And you need some bigger clothes…”

Jodi’s face was crumpling. It was all Dusty could do to hold back a sigh of exasperation and contempt.

“I’m fine. I don’t need anything new.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Well I do,” Dusty said simply. “And I’m going. I’ll lock you in, and I doubt anyone will come looking for you today-“

“No!” She said it like she was a moment away from a tantrum; Dusty expected her to stamp her foot. “If you’re leaving, then I’m going with you.”

This time Dusty did sigh. She wanted some time off. Not to live alone forever, but just a short break from Jodi, filling the silence with her meaningless chatter.

Find some people, wish you were alone. Live alone, wish for people.

“You’re very pregnant. You want to walk four miles in the snow?”

“You’re supposed to walk when you’re pregnant, right? Like for exercise? So I’ll walk with you.”

Dusty rolled her eyes. “In small doses, not in an endurance march. You’re going to get very tired. You don’t have the stamina you had before you got pregnant. This will be hard and cold and your ankles will get swollen.”

Jodi shrugged. “If I’m too tired to come back, we can sleep in some other house.”

“What if there’s no firewood?”

She shrugged again. “Whatever. I’m bored and I don’t want to stay here alone. I’m going with you.”

“Fine. I can’t stop you from coming with me. But I expect you to keep up. And I do not want to stay somewhere else for the night. We’re taking the sled, and you do what I tell you to. Alright?”

She smiled as suddenly as she had pouted, as suddenly as she could burst into tears when she wanted. “Yay! I’ll get dressed!”

“Put on a pair of sweat pants under your skirt,” Dusty said, miserable by the door.

To Jodi’s credit, it didn’t take her long. In a scant few minutes she was back out of her bedroom, wearing sweatpants as she was told. A long skirt and a down-filled jacket went over, with a scarf and hat and a small wicker basket draped over one arm.

Dusty considered her. Jodi was a brat, but she’d been brought up in a rigid structure that only got more rigid after the plague. She would do what Dusty told her to because it was how she had always lived. At the very least, she was biddable. Dusty was grateful for that as she locked the door behind them.

They walked to the end of the yard in silence. The snow was drifted up so high that the sled skidded along on the surface at almost hip height. Dusty knew they had come to the street by the mailbox.

“So, where are we headed?”

Dusty pointed to the right. “There are two houses a couple of miles that way that I’ve just about cleaned out. I’d like to go the other way, I think there are more down the road a bit. The map looks like a cul-de-sac about three miles down.”

“Ok.”

They trudged into the street and dragged the sled slowly down the road.

“So I’ve been thinking about names for the baby.”

Dusty looked up at the black tree branches with little white tents of snow piled on top. “Only natural. So what are your thoughts?”

“Well, if it’s a boy, his middle name has to be Honus, after his father. That’s an Obermeyer tradition. But I was thinking about first names. Like what about Brad? Or Ashton? Or what about Jaden? Isn’t that super pretty?”

“It was really popular last year at the hospital. About every other boy was named Aiden Braden Jaden or Kaden.”

Jodi was silent. Dusty didn’t look, because she knew that she would be stormy.

“Then again, most of those kids are dead. So I guess it hardly matters.”

Didn’t mean that to sound callous. Just practical. She’s pissed again. Like it’s my fault.

Jodi waited a few minutes before speaking. “It might be a girl, I guess. I really feel like it’s a boy, but better safe than sorry or whatever. So I was thinking about Chloe and Zoe. Or like a really super old name, like Abigail. What do you think?”

“Those are lovely,” Dusty said absently.

Name plates in the neonate ward, the ones nurses slipped into the fronts of cradles. Boy Jones. Girl Rodriguez. Sometimes the parents had whole name ready to go. Dusty remembered kids named Angel and Treasure, kids named Jesus and Elvis and Belle and Martin Luther and Kal-El. Those that weren’t named after someone famous were named after someone in the family. Always some idea of who the kid should be.

“Honus and I talked about names. He really wanted to name his son George. He said that was Baby Ruth’s real name.”

“Babe Ruth? The baseball player?”

“Yeah. Honus and his dad are like really into sports. It’s all they talk about.” Jodi was grinning.