Califia's Daughters (12 page)

“Jeez, that hurts.”

“Sorry. Laine, honest, what's going on with you two?”

“What do you think?”

“Are you in love with her?”

“She's been here for five minutes, Dian.”

“Yeah. So, are you in love with her?”

“In lust, sure. And I like her.”

“She's dangerous.”

“Not to me. Not to anyone else in the Valley.”

“Just to me, you mean?” Dian's voice was sarcastic.

“Well, probably, yes.”

Dian narrowed her eyes. “Does she know about us?”

“I told her, sure.”

Dian's gaze went far away, as if she was trying to fit together the pieces of a mental puzzle. Laine gently massaged her temples, trying to shift the ache, until Dian stirred. “You're saying this whole thing is jealousy?”

“Dian, let's say things just got a little out of hand. I mean, put yourself in her shoes—she's scared to death what might be happening to her people without her; she hates that she's left behind. She was important there and is less than nothing here, and you've made sure she knows it. And she's never been surrounded by strangers before, never. She overreacted. And, maybe she's showing off, just a little.”

“To you?”

“Why not?”

“I can think of a lot of reasons why not.”

“She got drunk, she blew off steam, end of story. Just because you never let off any steam . . .”

“Not like that I don't.”

“Not like anything. Hell, even in bed you're always thinking about where your damned dogs are.”

“Yeah, and the one time I don't think about where they are, my partner finds a cold nose up her ass.”

Laine's eyes snapped open in surprise and she erupted in laughter, then clutched her head, moaning. “God, don't make me do that. Christ, I'd forgotten—what a shock that was. Oh, that hurts.”

“I had to scrape you off the ceiling.” Dian grinned at the memory.

“You nearly had to scrape Culum off the floor. Talk about rude awakenings.”

“Laine, look, I have to tell you something, but you can't pass it on to Sonja, not yet.”

“Trust being your strong point. If this is going to take much longer, can we sit down?”

They climbed gingerly onto the low split-rail fence surrounding the cornfield, well experienced with splinters.

“Laine, I mean it, you can't tell her. This is about security, not about you and me.”

“What is it?”

“This trip I'm taking as soon as Judith's given birth? It's not just to Meijing for supplies. I'm headed to Oregon. I didn't think it was a good idea to wait until spring.”

Dian explained: her reasoning, the arguments put by Judith and Kirsten, the decision. Laine listened without comment until Dian had finished, then asked, “Jude and Kirsten are the only ones who know?”

“And Ling. And now you.”

“Not Isaac?”

“So far, Isaac thinks I'll be back in a week with Ling's medicines. I'll tell him just before I go.”

Laine raised her eyes to Dian's without hesitation. “Okay, I won't tell Sonja until you leave. But I swear to God, you can trust her.”

“I'm going to hold you to that, Laine. But you've got to watch her. She could do a lot of harm here.”

“Does Judith feel that way too?”

“Jude's undecided. She's more willing to wait and see.”

“Well, since you're going to ask me, then no, Sonja hasn't said anything about any secret they're hiding.”

“Would she have?”

Laine had to think about that for a minute. “That I honestly don't know. If it was something she'd sworn to keep silent about, then probably not.”

“Still loyal to Miriam.”

“Wouldn't you be?”

Dian didn't answer. She didn't really have to. “You'll consult with Judith, all the time?”

“Dian . . . Ah, hell. I've been a bitch. I'm sorry. It's just, you just have a way of getting under my skin. But you have to believe, I would never do anything that put anyone here in danger. And all right, that includes taking my eyes off Sonja. You can go off to Oregon without worrying. I give you my word.”

And it seemed that Dian was satisfied. When she left a short time later, Laine pondered the meaning of that: Dian trusted her. Who'd have thought it? Maybe they'd just been too young. Or she had been—Dian was six years older, she should have known to keep an infatuated kid at arm's length.

But that was years ago, and Dian wasn't as exciting as she'd thought. Sonja, on the other hand . . .

         

Judith and Kirsten were strolling arm in arm back from the high orchard when they saw two women meet in the middle of the millpond bridge: Dian, heading downhill with three young dogs bouncing merrily in front and Culum fixed to his mistress's side, and Sonja, coming the other way. Sonja hesitated for an instant when she noticed Dian, then squared her shoulders and came on. When their paths intersected, Dian nodded briefly, Sonja responded with an equally curt phrase, and they continued on their ways, Dian's left hand coming out to soothe the fur on Culum's ruff. Kirsten shook her head and started walking again.

“Too many alpha females around this place,” she said as if to herself.

“Dian came to see me early this morning,” Judith told her. “To say she thought she shouldn't go north, that we needed her here.”

“And you said?”

“To tell you the truth, I was torn. Watching her with Isaac yesterday, I couldn't stand the thought of breaking them up so soon. Did you see the way she was laughing? God, I haven't seen that since—”

“You didn't tell her that?” Kirsten said sharply.

“Almost, but in the end, no, I didn't. You sound like you think I shouldn't have.”

“It would have been a great mistake. The only reason Dian is allowing herself to be with Isaac is because she's convinced it's temporary. And she's right—when she comes back, even if they stay together, it will not be at all the same.”

“Why not? There are others coming, and if one of the women wants a baby by Isaac, artificial insemination is easy enough.”

“Which is what they may decide to do, but it will still be different, for Dian. So what did you tell her?”

“I told her not to be a fool, that the best thing for everyone was for her to get out of the way for a little while. To let Laine try out her leadership wings on her own, without Dian to second-guess her.”

“Hard words,” said Kirsten calmly.

“I tried to soften it. I'm worried about Dian. She takes too much on herself, tries to do everything on her own, and then blows up when she finds someone slacking off. She doesn't lose her temper often, but when she does—God, last night I thought . . . She could have hurt Sonja badly.”

“She intended to: Sonja was a catalyst, although it remains to be seen what the results of that reaction might be. I wish we knew something about your sister's biological parents,” the old woman said, not for the first time. “There's a vein almost of madness running through the girl. But even without the genetics, you can see where her pressures come from. She started life knowing that her mother considered her unfit to live, but she was raised here, lavished with love and respect, by people who saw her quirk as a gift and not a sign of being nonhuman—trust and betrayal, love and abandonment. Everything to Dian is Us-and-Them, and when she sees a threat to her people, she goes wild.”

“She was telling me a while back about raising dogs, how if you beat a dog, it learns not to trust. But if you take a beaten dog young enough, and offer it affection and protection, it's your slave for life, blind to your faults. When I thought about it later, it seemed to me she wasn't really talking about the dogs.”

“I think you're right.”

“But, Grans, I don't think Dian's happy here anymore. I think . . . Sometimes I get the feeling that what she really wants is to pull up roots and become a Traveler.” It clearly hurt Judith to say this, but she pressed on. “That if it wasn't for thinking that she'd be abandoning us, she'd take off in a flash.”

“Her compulsion to loyalty is indeed excessive. It blinds her. I fear someday it may get her into real trouble.”

“As far as the rest of us are concerned, it's been a blessing.”

“I hope the poor child realizes that, while she's beating herself up.”

“I made a point of telling her.”

“Wouldn't hurt to tell her again,” the old woman said.

Later that afternoon Dian came looking for Judith and found her on the veranda piecing a quilt. She sat down, shaking her head at Judith's offer of a drink, and watched her sister's hands at work. One of the snippets of fabric she recognized from a length of cotton their mother had bought from a trader just inside the gates of Meijing, fourteen years before.

“How are you feeling, Jude?”

“Bloated. Stretched. Tired. And yourself?”

“Like a damned fool.”

“And hung over.”

“Is that what it is? I suppose so. I had a talk with Laine,” she said abruptly, and got up to peer out the screen at nothing in particular.

“And?”

“I apologized.”

“To Laine? Why to her?”

“For riding her. I come down on her too hard, too often. It's no wonder she gets so wild. I told her that. And, it seems that she and Sonja are together.”

“I know.”

“Did you? I didn't. It's too bad, in a way.”

“What way?”

“She should get pregnant—Laine, I mean. It might slow her down a bit. Teach her caution.”

Judith dropped her work into her lap and laughed. “That one, cautious? She'd be climbing a rock face during the contractions, don't kid yourself. She's just like you.”

Dian turned around, surprised. “Like me? Old stick-in-the-mud? Old—what was it—keep-things-tidy?”

“It's been forced on you.”

“Well, maybe a bit of responsibility will force it on that girl too,” Dian grumbled, overlooking the fact that Laine was only half a dozen years younger. She ran her fingers through her hair, and for once neither twigs nor hay fell out. “I told her that if she's going to be in a position where the Valley depends on her, she's going to have to watch what she's doing, not to be so utterly careless of herself. I told her that she wasn't immortal. You know, I don't think she had the faintest idea what I was talking about. I swear,” she said with a sigh, “she makes me feel positively circumspect.”

“She makes me feel old,” said Judith.

IF THEY BORE A FEMALE, THEY KEPT
HER, BUT IF THEY BORE A MALE . . .

T
EN

J
UDITH
'
S LABOR BEGAN A WEEK AFTER
H
ARVEST
D
AY,
on what proved to be the last day of the year's Indian summer. She came awake long before the dawn, restless despite the cool night, to lie staring up into the silent house, feeling the carefully constructed walls of her own defenses beginning to crumble, to bulge and crack with the force of the horrors the next months could hold. Again. Dear God, she prayed without hope, let this baby be a girl, a safe, dull, uneventful girl baby, so my biggest worries will be diaper rash and colic and teething pains. Even now her mind's barriers would not let Judith squarely confront the terrors a boy baby could bring, the fear at every cry and the gut ache of tension over the months and years of greatest vulnerability, when every runny nose could be followed by death, when every quiet night might be the last. The fear which could not be faced battered and pried at her until, in a spasm of claustrophobia, she flung aside her blankets, threw on some clothes, and scurried barefoot down the stairs toward the back door and air.

In the kitchen she paused just long enough to scribble some explanatory words on the message slate, grabbed some fruit and bread to drop into her pockets, then lunged for the door.

Judith stood on the top step and gulped in the clean predawn air like a surfacing diver. The baby responded, moved heavily within her with a surge of tiny heels that kicked against her heart and lungs and robbed her momentarily of breath. Soon now, it would be very soon, but the urge to be out of the house was powerful and immediate. She stepped into her shoes, turned toward the upper fields, and quickly left the village behind.

All morning she worked her slow way up the path alongside the stream, the faithful, clear water whose presence made the village possible. With each step in the quiet woods her mind calmed, her panic retreated. By the time the sun had cleared the eastern hills, she was on the knoll that overlooked the Valley, where she sat on a long-downed redwood to eat her pears and the brown roll. From her isolated perch she could see all the Valley from the water tanks down to the Gates; impassive as a god, she watched her people go about the day's work, saw the children spilling into the yard of the schoolhouse, the brilliant glare of reflected sunlight from panes of the distant glass houses, the proud gleam of new wood that was the growing Great Hall. The only sound that reached her was the faint rumble of the mill wheel, grinding grain or running one of the tools. She could pick out figures, though, and as she watched from her high seat Dian appeared with a swirl of tiny dogs, a miniature doll with a cluster of pale ants. The woodpecker that drummed on the dead tree a hundred yards away seemed considerably more real than her sister below.

Motionless, with the rough, soft bark beneath her thighs, she could feel the energy rise in her belly, the still-sporadic hardening of the powerful uterine muscles as they flexed, and let her go, and flexed again. In part of her mind she knew that she was foolish to spend her energies on a strenuous climb, and she had not intended to go farther than this knoll. However, another part of her was badly in need of the strength only this walk could give. Her body and spirit felt the pull of the spring on the hill behind her. She rose and stood for a moment, undecided, kneading at her lower back with both hands and surveying the miniature world far below. She took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, and set her face again to the source of the waters.

It was nearly noon when she finally entered the ancient circle of trees from whose base rose the spring. She paused on the thick black duff, the decayed needles of millennia, and listened to: silence, broken only by the scold of a squirrel, the creak of a branch high overhead, and the gentle mutterings of water moving down the hill. She stood, scarcely breathing, for a long time, so long that she began to think it was no longer there, that the remembered sound was a construct of her imagination, and then suddenly she heard it. It lay below the silence, not a sound, but the impression of a sound, a rhythm, a hum too low to register on the ears, like the working of a distant hive of bees only far, far greater, infinitely more powerful, eternal, untouchable. This was the voice of the redwood cathedral.

Judith sank awkwardly to her knees, plunged her hot face into the small, deep pond that was the spring's open mouth, and drank deeply from the earth's icy water. She rose with an effort and brushed the strands of wet hair back from her face, and then she turned to seek out the fallen tree among whose roots she had sat both times she had come here before. Her first visit had been when she was thirteen and the blood of new womanhood had come upon her. The other time she had come followed the death of her tiny son. She had spent a week here then, and even now, eighteen years later, she remembered clearly how her breasts had ached, had swollen and hardened and ached and leaked and finally begun to dry up, and she had gone back to her life. And now, this late, unlooked-for pregnancy, another cycle of flinging herself into the jaws of the Fates, offering up her body and her mind in exchange for the chance of a new life. She sat, quietly watching the clear water well up into the pool and slip over the moss-covered rocks, and soon, with neither surprise nor consternation, she felt her own waters break and drip into the ground, to be absorbed by the earth below. Cradled by the soft ground and the mass of roots, Judith slept.

Some time later, probably no more than an hour, Judith woke to the gradual realization that there was another person in the grove. She opened her eyes and saw first the horse, nibbling on the bush to which it was tied, and beside it the dog lying patiently with its chin on its paws. Judith turned her head and looked up into Dian's face, which was without expression but for the faint smile lurking behind her blue eyes.

“Have I given you enough time?”

“Oh, yes, I suppose.” Judith looked wistfully over at the bubbling black pool and felt the first true stirrings of her labor. She smiled back up at Dian. “This baby's not going to wait forever,” she said, and started laboriously to rise.

“No, just sit there a minute. I'll bring the horse up here.” Dian walked swiftly through the trees to unloop the reins from the branch and led the barebacked old mare to the fallen tree, pausing at the spring to fill a jug with water from the deepest part of the pool. She pushed the cork in firmly and handed the jug to Judith.

“You might want this in a while.”

She helped her sister climb onto the mare's broad back and sit sideways, then she, too, mounted, her arms draped loosely around Judith's swollen torso. With her sister's head resting on her shoulder, Dian turned the mare down the hill by the pressure of knees and feet. Culum led the way.

By the time they passed the lookout knoll, Judith's contractions were strongly established. When they reached the first fields Dian was having to help her control her breathing, and when the mare's even steps stopped outside the back door, Judith had begun to sweat. Her breaths came fast and sharp, alternating with periods of rest. Ling was sent for. Peter and Lenore helped ease Judith down from the horse. Clutching the water bottle and stopping once on the stairs to breathe through contractions, Judith reached her room.

Darkness came early that night, brought on by the gathering clouds. While the rest of the house met over a dinner that was both subdued and excited, while the first drops of rain in six months pattered onto the dust, Dian and Ling lit the lamps upstairs and helped Judith in her work.

It was a steady labor, now that Judith's mind was not fighting the birth, for her body was healthy and her muscles strong. Susanna came up after dinner to walk with her mother and wipe her sweating face with cloths dampened in the spring water. Dian and Ling breathed with her, talked to her, encouraged her, and rubbed her back. After the downstairs dinner, David, the child's father, stopped in and exchanged a few optimistic words with Judith, then left, saying that he would be back after the little kids were in bed. He and Judith had an affectionate relationship, but their love had no great depth to it. She found some of his mannerisms vaguely irritating, and he knew it and was sensitive enough not to stay with her during the whole labor. After he left, Judith sat down on the bed.

“He's a good man,” she said absently. “I think I'll lie down for a while.”

Judith's labor went on, grew, built, expanded, took her over. By ten o'clock she was engulfed by it, aware of nothing but the endless waves of almighty contractions, one on top of another with barely time between them for her breath to return to normal. Dian was behind her on the bed, her arms and back burning with fatigue from the effort of supporting Judith's half-upright weight, her throat hoarse from the hours of murmured words. Susanna came and went with containers of water, her hands raw from wringing out hot towels for her mother's lower back. Ling checked her instruments for the seventh time, particularly the frightening ones in the sterile package sitting outside the door. She'd used those only five times over the years and was greatly relieved that Judith's progress, though slow, was normal, that surgery did not seem to loom large tonight. She went to scrub her hands yet again in the basin, Susanna pouring the water, when her ears picked up an odd but expected sound: after hours of even rhythm, Judith's great breaths had caught, faltered, and then resumed.

Ling finished washing her hands and went to examine the birth's progress. In a minute she stood up with satisfaction.

“You can push when you want to.”

And push she did. David arrived again to take Dian's place at Judith's back, and the two women, the man, and the young girl all poured their energy into Judith. In half an hour the black wet hair was crowning. Three more pushes and Ling was saying, “Hold it, hold it, don't push, let it come gently,” and a squashed, straining red face emerged, followed by the shoulders, and then in a rush the slippery purple body of a perfectly formed new boy baby came into the world.

Ling ran her professional eyes and hands over the soft, hot little person before placing him on his mother's chest for warmth. His bright dark eyes seemed myopically to study his surroundings. He blinked once at the lamplight, and then he and Judith were looking into each other's eyes.

“Your son, Jude,” said Dian. “He's beautiful, he's strong, he's your boy baby, and he needs you.”

“I know,” whispered Judith. She closed her eyes and began to shiver despite the warmed blankets they were wrapping around her, then, as Ling cut the cord, placed her hands on her son's body and touched his wet hair. “I know. God give me strength.”

         

Dian and Ling left an hour later, after Judith had curled up into an exhausted sleep. The house was asleep as well, even Susanna in her room with Teddy, but as Dian looked back into the room before closing the door it was not Judith she saw, but David. The young man was sitting in the rocking chair, the chair in which Kirsten had nursed Judith's mother, holding the old woman's new great-grandson in his arms. Dian could not read the expression on his face as he studied the sleeping features of his son and delicately stroked the thick, soft hair with his thumb, but she thought he was not far from tears. David had three daughters, but none of his sons had lived to walk.

         

The following morning Judith woke slowly, aware immediately of the gurgle of rain in the spouts and falling onto the veranda roof below. Then she felt the baby nestled to her side and came fully awake. When she opened her eyes she found Kirsten seated in the comfortable chair near the window, knitting some dark red wool by the thin light.

“Good morning,” said the old woman. “I came to see my newest baby. Let me get you some tea first, though. Someone has been crashing about in the kitchen for an hour; she ought to have a kettle hot by now.”

She returned in a few minutes with the hot, sweet tea and set it within reach of Judith's hand, then closed the door firmly and settled into the chair with her own cup to study Judith's expressionless face. The rain continued to drip outside. Soon the baby stirred, seeking touch and nourishment and comfort. Judith put her cup on the table and brought him to her breast, still impassive, not looking at the baby her arms held.

“You don't have to keep him, you know.”

Judith looked up, startled.

“You've been through this once before, and lost. You don't have to do it again. He would be welcomed, cherished, by several good women I could think of.”

Judith looked down in silence at the fuzzy head. A minute passed.

“If you would rather, I could even place him outside the Valley. I know women outside, including a few in Meijing, who would care for him well, and you would not have to see him and have him near you.”

Judith still did not answer. She drank her tea, and after a few minutes shifted him to the other breast, without raising her eyes to Kirsten's. The old voice went gently, affectionately, inexorably on.

“If you cannot give yourself to him, then you cannot. It does not reflect badly on you. It is not your fault, it is not a weakness or failure, it is simply the way things are. But you must not keep him with you if you are unable to give him your love. That would be unfair to him. It would be like a mother without milk in her breasts insisting on nursing her child—no fault of her own, but another source must be found or the child will die.” Kirsten moved over to sit on the bed next to mother and son and caressed the tiny ear with her gnarled finger.

“A boy baby has a hard enough time, in this day and age. We cannot allow him to have anything but the best possible beginning. It is true: this one may die,” she said, with love and brutality. “You know it. I know it. He may even know it. And we owe it to him, as a small human being, to make what days he has as full and as comfortable and as filled with love as we possibly can. If he lives, that love will make him a better person. If he dies, it will come near to killing us too. I know. I lost four sons, remember. But we can't do it any other way. Not for his sake, we cannot. Or for ours.”