The Mothers of Voorhisville (8 page)

T
AMARA

June in Voorhisville. The sun rises over the houses, the library, Lucy's Diner, the yoga studio, the drugstore, the fields of future corn and wheat, the tiny buds of roses, the silent streets. Pink crab apple petals part for honeybees; tulips gasp their last, red throats to the sun; butterflies flit over dandelions; and the grass is lit upon by tiny white moths, destined to burn their wings against streetlamps.

The mothers greet the day with tired eyes. So soon? It isn't possible. The babies are crying. Again. The mothers are filled with great love, and also something else. Who knew someone so small could eat so much!

Cathy Vecker complains to her mother and grandmother, who encourage her to consider bottle feeding. “Then we can hire a summer girl,” her mother says.

Jan Morris calls the real estate office where she works and breaks down in tears to the young receptionist there, who calls her own mother, who shows up at Jan's an hour later with two Styrofoam cups of bitter tea, bagels from Lucy's, and a pamphlet entitled “Birthing Darkness: What Every Woman Should Know about Post-Partum Depression” as well as—inexplicably—Dr. Phil's weight loss book.

Sylvia takes her son into the garden, where she sits in the twig chair and thinks how tired her husband was before he died, and how she feels tired like that now, except alive. She cries onto her son's shoulders.

Lara dresses her baby in a yellow onesie, checking his back several times, convincing herself that the strange thing she saw had been an hallucination. She is very tired. She can't believe how much she has to arrange just to walk down the street to her studio. She feels like she's packing for a week: diapers, socks, change of clothes, nursing blankets, an extra bra, a clean shirt. All while the baby lies there, watching.

The mothers of Voorhisville are being watched. Rumors have begun to circulate about strange births and malformed babies, though the gossip seems unfounded. Sure, the mothers look exhausted, but there's nothing unusual about that. Yes, they describe the pains of birth as severe, but women have always said so. The only strange thing about the babies, despite what Brian and Francis think they saw, despite the rumors that nurse spreads all the way in Becksworth, is that they are all boys, and they are all beautiful.

Far from the rumors of town, out past the canning factory, over the hill behind the site of the old paper mill, Theresa Ratcher stands in her pantry, staring at glass jars filled with jelly. She means to be assessing what remains from the winter; instead, she is mesmerized by the colors. She stands, resting her hands on her great belly, as though beholding something sacred; certainly something more spectacular than strawberry, jalapeno, or yellow-tomato jelly. Her husband is in the field. She has no idea where Elli is. Theresa doesn't like to think about Elli, and she doesn't like to think about why she doesn't like to think about her. For a moment, Elli, with her long limbs and protruding belly, stands in Theresa's mind. She shakes her head and concentrates on the jars before her.

Elli is in the barn. She has no idea why. They don't have any animals except for cats and mice. But Elli likes it in the barn. She finds it a peaceful place, her dad out in the fields, her mom somewhere else. These days, Elli likes to be far from her mother, because even when they are in different rooms, she can feel the hate. Elli stands in the middle of the barn, beneath the beams, which her father still obsesses about. She is biting her fingernail when the sharp pain drives her to the ground. She lets out a scream, which rises past the spiderwebs and silent, hanging blobs of sleeping bats, out the cracks and holes in the roof, where it mingles with Theresa's scream as she falls to the ground in the pantry, knocking over several jars that shatter on the floor—an explosion of red goo, which her husband, when he returns for supper, assumes is blood. He runs to get the phone, but she screams at him to help, so he kneels before her in the glass and fruit, and she screams the head and shoulders out. Later, she tells him it's jelly. He licks a finger but it tastes like blood. He helps her upstairs and tucks her into bed, the baby in the crib.

He looks everywhere for Elli, finally going to the barn where he barely sees her in the evening light. She is lying on the ground, surrounded by pools of jelly (he thinks, before he realizes, no, that can't be right). She looks at him with wild eyes, like his 4-H horse all those years ago when she broke her leg, and she cries. “Daddy? It's dead.”

That's when he notices the small shape beside her. As he leans closer, she says, “Careful. They hurt.” He doesn't know what she means until he sees the tiny bat wings spread across the small back. But that can't be right. He looks down at his daughter, horrified. “It's some kind of freak,” she weeps. “Just get rid of it.”

He picks the creature up, and only then notices its barely perceptible breathing. “Don't touch the wings,” she says. He looks at her, his little girl who gave birth to such a thing.
Now she can get on with her life.

“Get it out of here,” she says.

He takes the shovel and walks out of the barn, bats flying overhead. Curiosity gets the best of him, and he touches the wings. The next thing he knows, he is standing in the cornfield, beneath the cold light of the moon, staring at his dark house, listening to screams. He looks around in confusion but he can't find the creature, or the shovel, or any sign that the ground has been turned. He runs to the barn.

He finds Elli lying on the ground, surrounded by wild cats, and screaming. He hears a noise behind him, the snapping of gravel, and turns to see Theresa slowly making her way towards them. “Go back. Just go back in the house,” he shouts. She stops, washed with white moonglow like a ghost. “You'll be in the way. Call 911.”

Slowly, Theresa turns and walks towards the house.

He reaches between Elli's legs, relieved to feel a crown of head there. “It's all right. You're just having another one.”

“I'm dying!” she screams.

“Push,” he says, with no real idea if this is the right thing to do or not; he just wants it out. “Push, Elli.”

She screams and bears down. He feels the head and shoulders. Squinting in the dark, he barely sees the cord. He's already forming a plan for suffocation, if it's like the other, but what comes out is a perfect baby boy that he tries to hand to Elli. She says she doesn't want it. He is pleading with her when the EMTs arrive. They help all three of them into the house, where Theresa sits in the dark living room, cradling her baby.

“Everything all right?” she asks.

Elli opens her mouth, but Pete speaks first. “Everything's fine,” he says. “A boy.”

“And a freak,” Elli says.

“What?” Theresa speaks to Elli's back as she walks up the stairs, leaving the baby with the EMT who carried him inside. He hands the baby to Pete Ratcher, who thanks him for coming all that way “for nothing.” He says it's his job, and not to worry, but Pete Ratcher watches the man walk down the driveway to the ambulance, shaking his head like a man who just received terrible news. Pete searches the sky for a long time before he realizes what he's looking for. “I have to take care of something,” he says, and steps forward as though to hand the baby to Theresa.

She looks at him like he's nuts. “Give him to Elli. She's his mother.”

He walks up the dark stairs and enters his daughter's room. “Elli? Honey?”

“Go away.”

“I have to check on something. You know, the other one.”

“Freak.”

“Elli, these things happen. It's not your fault. And look, you have this one.”

“I don't want him.”

“God damn it, Elli.”

He thinks that, all in all, he's handled everything well. It's been a hell of a night. He tries once more for a calm tone. “I have to go check on something. I'm going to put your baby right here, in the crib, but if he cries, you have to take care of him. You have to. Your mother is tired. Do you hear me, Elli?”

Elli mumbles something, which he takes for assent. He places the baby in the crib. It squirms, and he rubs its back. Only then does it occur to him that the baby is not diapered or clothed, not even
washed
, but still coated in the bloody slime of birth. He picks it up, and by the moonlight finds what he needs on the shelves of the changing table (a gift from Elli's high school teachers). He cleans the baby with several hand wipes, tossing them towards the plastic trash can, not troubling to make sure any of them actually land inside. Finally, he diapers the baby, wrapping him tightly in a clean blanket and setting him in the crib. “Elli.” She doesn't respond. “If he cries you have to take care of him. You have to feed him.”

“I want Mom.”

He realizes Elli doesn't understand that Theresa has given birth today too. He tells her this, saying, “You have a brother, a little baby brother. Your mom is too tired to help you right now.”

When he closes the door, Elli gets up and walks across the room to stand at the window. After a minute, she sees him walking towards the cornfield.
What could he be doing out there?
she wonders. She turns away, shuffling like an old woman. She stands over the crib and touches the flat of the baby's back, places her hand on his soft cap of hair, then reaches in and picks him up. He cries softly. She says, “There, there.” She jiggles him gently on her shoulder, but the soft cry turns into a wail.
Why are you crying?
she thinks.
I'm not going to hurt you.

What is she supposed to do? She takes it back to bed with her, where she sits against the wall, jiggling it, saying, “There, there,” over and over again, until she finally gets the idea of feeding it. She unbuttons her shirt and smashes its face against her breast. It cries and wiggles in her arms before latching on to her nipple and sucking until he finally falls asleep.

She would like to sleep with him, but she remembers hearing how mothers sometimes squash their babies by mistake. She thinks this is probably an exaggeration, but she isn't sure.

Eyes half-closed, she walks across the room, lays the baby in the crib, and shuffles back to bed. The next thing she knows, her mother is in the room in her nightgown, standing over the crib, and the baby is crying.

“Mom?”

“You have to feed him,” Theresa says. “You can't just let him cry.”

“I didn't hear it,” Elli says.

“Him.”

“What?”

“You didn't hear him, not it. You have to take care of this, Elli. I'm busy with your brother.” Theresa picks the baby up and brings him to her. “Do you know where your father is?”

“He said he had to go take care of something.”

“You have to feed him, Elli.”

“In the cornfield. I
know
. Could I have some privacy, here?”

“I don't want to have to keep getting up for your baby, too.”

“I didn't hear him. I'm
sorry
.”

“You're going to
have
to hear him,” Theresa says. “What's he doing in the cornfield?”

But Elli doesn't answer. She's turned her back and is unbuttoning her shirt.

“Can you hear
me
?” Theresa asks.

“I don't know what he's doing in the cornfield. It's
Dad
, all right?” She pokes her nipple into the baby's mouth.

Theresa walks out of her daughter's room, trying to stay calm, though she feels like screaming. She hears the baby crying and turns back, but Elli, who gives her a look as though she knew her mother had plotted this surprise return just to look at Elli's bare breasts, is nursing him. It takes a few seconds before Theresa realizes the crying is coming from her own baby. Suddenly life has gotten so strange: her daughter nursing a baby whose father she won't name; her husband out in the cornfield in the middle of the night; her own baby, whose lineage is uncertain, crying again, though it seems like only minutes since she fed him.

*   *   *

Voorhisville in June: those long hot nights of weeping and wailing, diaper changing and feeding, those long days of exhaustion and weeping, wailing, diapering, and feeding.

Sylvia's roses grow limp from lack of care and—just as some dying people glow near the end—emit the
sweetest
odor. The scent is
too
sweet, and it's too
strong.
Everywhere the mothers go, it's like following in the footsteps of a woman with too much perfume on.

Emily continues baking, though she burns things now, the scorched scent mingling with the heavy perfume of roses and jasmine incense, which Shreve sets on a windowsill of the yoga studio.

“I have to do
something
,” she says, when the mailman comments on it. “Have you noticed how smelly it is in Voorhisville lately?”

The mailman has noticed that all the mothers, women who had seemed perfectly reasonable just last year, are suddenly strange. He's just a mailman; it isn't really for him to say. But if he were to say, he'd say,
Something strange is happening to the mothers of Voorhisville.