Mahrree hesitated, but he did seem open to the idea, even if only a little. “Well, there is something else. I guess this is the part that makes it seem truly unbelievable.” She paused then rushed on. “I was sitting in a garden, a big one, and I was weeding it and I was happy!”
Perrin burst out laughing, startling his daughter who was drifting off to sleep on the blanket. “Well there you have it! Ridiculous! What kind of garden was it?”
Mahrree sighed miserably as she confessed, “Vegetables.”
He grinned as if he’d just easily won a complicated game. “Ah, well, then. You know what I think it is? It’s ‘your condition’ playing tricks on you.”
His smugness insulted her.
“I was not in ‘my condition’ when we became engaged!”
“Ah, but you were dreaming of the time you would be, right?” He smiled virtuously. “You went to bed that night dreaming of the day you could hold your own little baby. Come now, I know the minds of women well enough now.”
Two years of marriage had made him an expert.
Mahrree felt as if a crushing boulder had just rolled on top of her hope, and it made her chest tight and achy.
“I hate to admit it, but that’s a bit true,” she murmured. “That night we decided to marry, I was thinking of you. Of a family.”
But the dreams had seemed so real, so vivid that she could even make out from which direction the sun hit the house. She couldn’t let it go so easily. Maybe it could work, if only he’d think about it—
“Do you really think it was only my imagination and coincidence?”
“Definitely,” he said in a tone that suggested she never speak of it again.
“Now,” he continued, suddenly cheerful, “I suggest we get these sleepy children in the house and catch a nap ourselves before Peto’s next feeding which should happen, by my estimation, in seventeen minutes.”
And just like that, it was over.
Her dream house, her garden, her hopes for more children—all of it wiped away as if it were merely a drawing in the dirt.
Perrin the deluge destroyed it all.
Well, not so much him, she admitted grudgingly as the ache in her chest sharpened into genuine pain. It was the Administrators, it was their world—it was everyone. He was merely reminding her of all the obstacles that stood in her way. He didn’t create them, just pointed them out.
Still, couldn’t he have looked a bit harder for a way around them?
She watched Perrin as he gently scooped up his little girl, wrapped her in the blanket, and kissed her sleeping form. Mahrree loved him, she was sure of that. But he seemed further away tonight. Not so much the most perfect man in the world.
She almost forgave him as he tenderly carried Jaytsy into the house. But she couldn’t let this go.
Women have a list in their brain that keeps a tally of everything. The title of a list which she’d made some time ago materialized again in Mahrree’s mind: “Ways in which Perrin’s mind is not like mine.” Underneath Dogs are better than cats, and Boots do belong on the eating table, Mahrree recorded, Dreams are nonsense.
They didn’t talk much that evening after Perrin put Jaytsy to bed. Just brief, civil exchanges before he went to his study. And during Peto’s last feeding Mahrree fell into a deep sleep, fed by exhaustion mixed with absolute despair.
She despaired that there was nothing she could do about the date, already set for next week. The midwives had made the appointment when they reported to Idumea the names of all the women who had recently birthed a second time.
Then next week a coach carrying an assistant from Family Life and several vials of the drink would stop at a small, windowless building right outside the market, as it did every two weeks.
Mahrree had seen the assistant’s arrival a couple of times before. She was a brutish woman, nearly as large as Perrin, likely chosen because she was both female—allegedly—and powerful enough to strong-arm any woman who had a sudden last minute change of heart.
Mahrree had also seen the mothers waiting for their turn, usually a handful each time. Some were there voluntarily after their first babies, not wanting to endure the experience of birthing again. But none of them ever looked up, as if some oppressive and invisible hand from the building forced their heads down to inspect the gravel at their feet. Then they were ushered, one at a time, into the wooden building accompanied by their own mothers, grandmothers, or the occasional brave husband.
The mothers didn’t look any different coming out again after swallowing down a concoction of bitter herbs and a burning liquid—the brutal recipe created by Dr. Brisack. No, the effects didn’t occur for about another hour, Mahrree had been told. That’s why the women went straight home, because the brew soon made its way into the womb and cramped into a useless nothingness.