“Was it all right?” he asks, anxious.
“Yes,” I say. By now I’m wrung out, exhausted. My breasts are painful, they’re leaking a little. Fake milk, it happens this way with some of us. We sit on our benches, facing one another, as we are transported; we’re without emotion now, almost without feeling, we might be bundles of red cloth. We ache. Each of us holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby. What confronts us, now the excitement’s over, is our own failure. Mother, I think. Wherever you may be. Can you hear me? You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one. It isn’t what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
By the time the Birthmobile arrives in front of the house it’s late afternoon. The sun is coming weakly through the clouds, the smell of wet grass warming up is in the air. I’ve been at the Birth all day; you lose track of time. Cora will have done the shopping today, I’m excused from all duties. I go up the stairs, lifting my feet heavily from one step to the next, holding onto the banister. I feel as if I’ve been awake for days and running hard, my chest hurts; my muscles cramp as if they’re out of sugar. For once I welcome solitude.
I lie on the bed. I would like to rest, go to sleep, but I’m too tired, at the same time too excited, my eyes won’t close. I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous haloes, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.
In a minute the wreath will start to colour and I will begin seeing things. That’s how tired I am: as when you’d driven all night, into the dawn, for some reason, I won’t think about that now, keeping each other awake with stories and taking turns at the wheel, and as the sun would begin to come up you’d see things at the sides of your eyes: purple animals, in the bushes beside the road, the vague outlines of men, which would disappear when you looked at them straight.
I’m too tired to go on with this story. I’m too tired to think about where I am. Here is a different story, a better one. This is the story of what happened to Moira.
Part of it I can fill in myself, part of it I heard from Alma, who heard it from Dolores, who heard it from Janine. Janine heard it from Aunt Lydia. There can be alliances even in such places, even under such circumstances. This is something you can depend upon: there will always be alliances, of one kind or another.
Aunt Lydia called Janine into her office.
Blessed be the fruit, Janine, Aunt Lydia would have said, without looking up from her desk, where she was writing something. For every rule there is always an exception: this too can be depended upon. The Aunts are allowed to read and write.
May the Lord open, Janine would have replied, tonelessly, in her transparent voice, her voice of raw egg white.
I feel I can rely on you, Janine, Aunt Lydia would have said, raising her eyes from the page at last and fixing Janine with that look of hers, through the spectacles, a look that managed to be both menacing and beseeching, all at once. Help me, that look said, we are all in this together. You are a reliable girl, she went on, not like some of the others.
She thought all Janine’s snivelling and repentance meant something, she thought Janine had been broken, she thought Janine was a true believer. But by that time Janine was like a puppy that’s been kicked too often, by too many people, at random: she’d roll over for anyone, she’d tell anything, just for a moment of approbation.
So Janine would have said: I hope so, Aunt Lydia. I hope I have become worthy of your trust. Or some such thing.
Janine, said Aunt Lydia, something terrible has happened.
Janine looked down at the floor. Whatever it was, she knew she would not be blamed for it, she was blameless. But what use had that been to her in the past, to be blameless? So at the same time she felt guilty, and as if she was about to be punished.
Do you know about it, Janine? said Aunt Lydia softly.
No, Aunt Lydia, said Janine. She knew at this moment it was necessary to look up, to look Aunt Lydia straight in the eyes. After a moment she managed it.
Because if you do I will be very disappointed in you, said Aunt Lydia.
As the Lord is my witness, said Janine with a show of fervour.
Aunt Lydia allowed herself one of her pauses. She fiddled with her pen. Moira is no longer with us, she said at last.
Oh, said Janine. She was neutral about this. Moira wasn’t a friend of hers. Is she dead? she asked after a moment.
Then Aunt Lydia told her the story. Moira had raised her hand to go to the washroom, during Exercises. She had gone. Aunt Elizabeth was on washroom duty. Aunt Elizabeth stayed outside the washroom door, as usual; Moira went in. After a moment Moira called to Aunt Elizabeth: the toilet was overflowing, could Aunt Elizabeth come and fix it? It was true that the toilets sometimes overflowed. Unknown persons stuffed wads of toilet paper down them to make them do this very thing. The Aunts had been working on some foolproof way of preventing this, but funds were short and right now they had to make do with what was at hand, and they hadn’t figured out a way of locking up the toilet paper. Possibly they should keep it outside the door on a table and hand each person a sheet or several sheets as she went in. But that was for the future. It takes a while to get the wrinkles out, of anything new.