by David Neal
As soon as Evelyn reaches the top of the ladder the next day, she feels the cotton balls stuffed in her ears swell and expand. What was soft silence a moment ago is suddenly agony, her ear canals stretched like overflowing grocery bags, about to tear.
Her heart squirms in her chest and her lungs deflate. Tears spring to her eyes. She’s frantic as she claws at her ears, desperate to relieve the pressure. The cotton is growing, it’s moving, the pain is unimaginable and she can feel it reaching tendrils into her brain, and she pulls, pulls, pulls, knowing that the cotton is alive and conscious, that it will tear her flesh and spill her blood before it will let go, but she doesn’t care, no agony is too great if only she can get it out, and she pulls with all the strength she has.
Evelyn expects a fountain of blood as the cotton comes out, but all she finds in her hands is two spirals of wispy fluff, like clouds in a blue sky. The pain is gone and her head feels very clear. She doesn’t put the cotton balls back into her ears, then or ever.
* * *
Every few minutes Ada sighs in her sleep. Evelyn watches her chest rise and fall with her slow, shallow breathing, and her own breasts ache. She can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to nurse a child, to sleep with a small warm body curled between hers and Ada’s.
When Ada rises in the morning, she finds Evelyn already sitting at the kitchen table, immersed in a pencil drawing in the margins of yesterday’s newspaper. She’s half-asleep and doodling more and more leaves on an enormous, overgrown tree, a child’s tire swing hanging empty from its lowest branch.
* * *
Conversation helps the days go faster. Evelyn gets caught up in talking and the hours fly by, her arms barely tired from pulling and cutting and lifting. She doesn’t know why she ever thought this was something to protect herself from. The trees are good listeners.
She tells them about the moment she first knew she was in love with Ada, how her heart simultaneously flourished and withered, knowing that opening her arms to this love would mean never being a mother. Until now, she had not admitted this even to herself, too ashamed to acknowledge that a fragment of her regrets loving Ada. Saying it out loud loosens a knot in her chest.
The trees tell her that it’s all right. They comfort her. Leaves caress her tense neck and shoulders, whispering soothing things that aren’t quite words. They tell her that she isn’t wrong to mourn the children she will never have. That her sorrow does not betray her love.
You would have been a good mother, the fruit murmurs as she cuts it down. The words are soft vibrations through her palms.
You can still be a mother, the branches answer, rasping and dry.
Evelyn’s hands keep moving, she keeps reaching for the heavy, slightly soft globes of fruit and piling them into her basket, but on a deeper level she has gone perfectly still. She waits, harvesting, yet not moving, for the trees to tell her more.
And they do. They tell her everything.
* * *
Evelyn waits until the trees say it’s the right moment. The leaves arrange themselves around her, blocking Ada’s view from the ground, shielding her from the gaze of harvesters elsewhere in the orchard. No one can see or hear her. It is a moment of pure, exhilarating freedom, but she knows it won’t last, so she acts quickly.
She splits a fruit down the middle with her knife. It falls open in her palm, forming two perfect hemispheres. In the center of the one on the left is a knuckle-sized cluster of shiny green seeds.
Evelyn only needs one, but she takes two, just in case. Dark juice gleams on their hulls. Ceremonially, she places the seeds on her tongue and sucks the juice off. The roof of her mouth burns, then goes numb. She presses the two halves of the fruit back together, and they meld seamlessly, one drop of nectar on the tight skin the only sign that they were ever separated. Evelyn drops the reunited fruit into her basket, then spits the two seeds into her palm. They look up at her like bright green eyes, like a child’s eyes. Like hope.
Sitting on the edge of the tub with her legs spread, part of Evelyn hopes Ada will walk in. Maybe this should be a moment they share. It should be Ada’s fingers, not her own, gently easing the seed inside of her.
But Ada doesn’t come in, and in a moment it’s done. Evelyn expected the same tingling numbness she felt when she held the seeds in her mouth, but it feels like almost nothing. Perhaps a twinge, like some infinitesimal tendril taking root in the dark and warm of her, but maybe it’s her imagination. She wonders how she will know if it has worked.
Her mouth suddenly feels very wet. She leans over and spits into the bathtub and juice comes out.
* * *
In the morning, Evelyn hasn’t slept but doesn’t feel tired. She watches Ada sleeping lightly in the early dark. Ada is so beautiful, so perfect, so ripe that Evelyn can’t breathe. Impulsively, she leans over and kisses Ada hard on the lips.
Ada’s eyes pop open. She doesn’t kiss back or even move, aside from her eyelashes fluttering against Evelyn’s. After a moment, Evelyn pulls away.
“You startled me,” says Ada, rubbing the inside of her wrist against her mouth as though trying to wipe away a residue.
“I love you,” says Evelyn. She can’t think of anything else to say.
Ada is distant all day. Literally: the trees are taller than they’ve ever been, and the ladder reaches all the way to the top, hundreds of feet off the ground. It seems to have no more rungs than usual, but when Evelyn looks down she can’t even see the top of Ada’s head.
She has taken her gloves off and stuck them in her pockets. She likes the way the fruit feels against the skin of her hands, hot and velvety and so alive it’s almost breathing. Lifting one perfectly round fruit to her nose, she breathes in the smell of copper and earth.
Congratulations, whispers the fruit.
* * *
The harvest will end when the first snow falls. Evelyn doesn’t need to look at the clouds to know it will be soon. She feels the blood slowing in her body as winter approaches.
Evelyn isn’t showing yet, but she no longer has any doubt. She can feel the swelling of life inside her, a body that both is and is not her own. Her insides are moving, rearranging themselves to make room. Her stomach looks like it always has, but when she presses against it with her hand, she feels something rounded and harder than her flesh.
She wonders what her baby will look like. Perhaps it will have her brown eyes, or Ada’s square jaw. There’s no reason it should look like Ada, of course, but there’s also no real reason it shouldn’t. Perhaps the baby will be covered in leaves and bright spring flowers. Evelyn is excited to find out.
Harvest season, when the whole town works from daybreak to exhaustion and doesn’t see a dollar, is always lean. Ada and Evelyn are used to stretching a pot of lentils to its breaking point, using their fingers to scoop the last broth from the bowl. It’s a long, hungry few weeks, and they’re always scrupulous about splitting meals exactly down the middle because neither can stand for the other to go hungrier than she must. But three mornings in a row, now, Evelyn leaves half her toast uneaten on the table.
It isn’t because she’s nauseated; there’s no sign of morning sickness yet. She just doesn’t seem to need it, like she doesn’t seem to need sleep anymore, content to lie awake listening to Ada breathe. Sometimes she leans over Ada’s mouth while she sleeps, not quite kissing her, just inhaling the air that escapes her slightly parted lips.
The only thing Evelyn craves besides the scent of Ada’s breath is sunlight. The trees are happy to accommodate, rustling branches out of the way so she can stand at the top of her ladder drinking in the October warmth through her skin.
* * *
Every day that the harvest drags on, Ada seems more and more exhausted. Her skin is dry, her fingernails ragged, though Evelyn never sees her bite them. She falls asleep earlier, exchanging fewer words with Evelyn during their sparse free time.
She does not notice that Evelyn is blooming. There is still no visible c
hange in the shape of her belly, but everything about her radiates fecundity. Evelyn’s skin is dewy, her eyes bright. Her hair is thick and glossy. She is a burst of springtime in the cool of autumn. As Ada withdraws, Evelyn’s heart reaches for her more and more, wanting to share the swoon of joy that carries her through her days. She wishes she could soothe the worried lines on Ada’s brow.
If only Evelyn could tell Ada about the life growing inside her, she knows she would see Ada’s beautiful face brighten again. But the words stick on her tongue, like fruit not yet ripe, not yet ready to fall.
A layer of yellow-gold dried leaves spreads itself like a blanket outside Ada and Evelyn’s front door. There are no trees anywhere on their property. Ada clenches her jaw and walks through the yard as though every leaf crunching under her foot is a snapping spine.
* * *
Evelyn has started making a list of baby names. Last week, she took the antique brass letter opener from the drawer full of assorted junk in the kitchen and tucked it under her side of the mattress. At night, when she hears Ada’s eyes flickering with sleep under her heavy lids, she pulls it out, enjoying the weight in her hand. Slowly and carefully, in almost perfect silence, she digs the pointed tip into her thigh.
It takes a long time to scratch perfectly formed letters into her flesh without making a sound, but Evelyn has all night. From the bloodless cuts, she scrapes away damp shavings of wood that collect in a pile on the mattress beside her. Each morning she brushes them into her palm and drops them in the trash without Ada noticing.
In the bath, she runs her fingers over the carved lettering, occasionally finding splinters. The list unfurls downward from her hip: Aspen, Chrysanthemum, Leaf. She does not worry about the distinction between boys’ names and girls’ names. Those categories do not apply. Her baby will be all-encompassing, resplendent.
* * *
Evelyn hears the first snowflake hit the ground, and for the first time in weeks, she suddenly feels hunger. It’s enormous, more than just an emptiness or a desire—it has sound and color; it tastes like metal. Forgetting to be quiet, she jumps out of bed and runs outside.
Ada finds her in the yard, on her hands and knees, digging with her bare hands in the hard earth. Wrapped in a sweater, Ada is still shivering, but Evelyn in her boxers and undershirt doesn’t seem to feel the cold.
“What are you doing?” Ada means to shout it, but it emerges as a whisper. Nevertheless, Evelyn’s head snaps up, her eyes huge and white. Soil outlines her mouth and tumbles down her chin.
“Oh, God, you startled me,” she says. “Sorry, did I wake you?”
“What are you doing?” asks Ada again. She can’t find any other words.
Evelyn cups her right hand and digs it down into the hole before her, brings it out heaped with dark, gleaming earth. She holds it out to Ada as if in explanation. “See, if you dig deep enough it’s still warm.”
Ada sees something many-legged scuttle across the dome of dirt in Evelyn’s palm. She sees Evelyn lift her hand to her mouth. Unable to move, she closes her eyes, but the sound of gritty chewing and Evelyn’s satisfied sigh is as clear as vision.
“Why?” Ada is going to cry, and perhaps also vomit, but all of that is still a long way in the future.
Impossibly, Evelyn laughs. “Pregnancy craving, I guess. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get those.”
Ada wonders how she is still standing upright when all the strength is gone from her body. “Pregnancy? You were…” She can’t finish the sentence. Of course she suspected that there was someone else, as strange as Evelyn’s been lately, discordantly happy and bubbling over with energy during the most arduous, miserable month of the year. Some part of her knew, but she hadn’t let herself acknowledge that she knew, and now the only thing she can think of to do is crawl into the hole Evelyn is still digging and stay there forever.
“No!” Evelyn laughs again. Ada has always loved the sound of Evelyn’s laugh, but tonight it is awful, like branches creaking under an ugly weight. “Jesus, no, Ada. Not ever.” She licks earth from the forks between her fingers. “This is our baby. Yours and mine. With a little help from the trees.”
And Ada discovers that there are worse things than unfaithfulness. There’s the frantic joy in Evelyn’s voice, her dirt-caked fingernails, and the sudden realization that what she thought was sweaty locks of hair stuck together is actually vines, vines tangled in Evelyn’s hair, glossy and leafy and alive, vines growing from Evelyn’s beautiful head, pushing through her skin, a Medusa parody in shades of green. There are worse things than losing her love, because now Evelyn is standing up, reaching toward her.
Ada knows from Evelyn’s smile that it’s no use, but she tries anyway. “Evelyn, whatever it is, it’s not a baby,” she says, her legs finally strong enough to take a step back so her wife’s soiled fingers don’t touch her. “You know that. You know what happens when people get pregnant during the harvest. We have to do something about this.”
Evelyn sighs. “I know people won’t understand, but I’m not showing much yet. We can keep hiding it a while longer and figure out what to say so no one will be scared.”
“Hide it? No.” Ada shakes her head so hard she’s dizzy. “We have to get rid of it, Evie. There are doctors—”
The breeze rustles the vines framing Evelyn’s face, but otherwise she is perfectly still. Ada takes another step back as Evelyn’s smile slowly wilts.
“This is our baby, Ada,” she says. “We’re not getting rid of it. We need this.”
“I don’t,” Ada says, and now she knows that she was wrong, she’s not going to cry, this is so far beyond tears that she might never cry again. “All I needed was you.”
Understanding blooms in Evelyn’s eyes, and she reaches for Ada again, but she’s too slow. Ada is already spinning on her toes, pivoting into a desperate leap through the still-open door and into the house. She slams the door shut behind her and hears Evelyn scrabbling at the knob.
All Ada needs is a few seconds. The house is small. Evelyn’s knife, twelve inches long and gleaming in the near-darkness, sits naked on the kitchen counter. Ada grabs it just as Evelyn shoves the door open.
“Why are you being like this, Ada?” says Evelyn, but she hardly sounds like herself anymore. Her voice is the sound of things crawling under bark. “I love you. I want to be a mother with you.” A green bud has sprouted from the center of her tongue.
“Sweetheart, please,” Ada whispers. Her grasp on the knife is weak.
Evelyn smiles and takes a step forward. “Our baby, Ada. Just imagine. We’ll knit little hats and sing it lullabies.” She sways from side to side, crooning tunelessly, “Rockabye baby, in the treetop….”
Ada swings the knife.
Evelyn’s hand comes up to block it before it can strike her chest. The blade sinks into her palm with the heavy thunk of an axe chopping wood. There is no blood. Ada tries to pull the knife back, but it won’t come.
“Our baby,” Evelyn snarls, and with her hand still impaled on her own knife, she embraces Ada. She seems to have too many arms, all thick and supple as stems, twisting around Ada’s waist, her arms, her shoulders, caressing her hair. Evelyn pulls Ada into a kiss. Writhing, Ada bites down on Evelyn’s lower lip, hard.
Something spills out of the cut into Ada’s mouth, salty and hot as blood but sweeter, sharper, stinging like good whiskey. She only tastes the juice for a moment before her tongue goes warm, then numb. The feeling spreads down her throat and into her chest, and she grows still as Evelyn lets her go.
The world blurs in front of Ada’s eyes. When she focuses again, she sees Evelyn holding out her hand, the one without the knife in it. A single seed rests in Evelyn’s palm.
“Ours,” says Evelyn, and Ada finally understands. She parts her lips like a flower opening to the sun.
*
Broken feathers slid out of pinioned songbirds in the hawthorn hedge above me, falling as rotted grey rain. The ditch was not the dirtiest place I’d h
idden myself in my life, but it was by far the most unpleasant. I knelt on sun-faded crisp packets, crushing down festering fur and hollow bones that snapped as I shuffled around and tried to get comfortable.
Pasha rested forward on the ditch edge, staring through a set of night vision goggles into the field beyond. Grains of silt and clay clods smeared across his cheeks as they forced their way past, dragged upward and out of sight. Out of habit, I reached down and checked the drab-colored climbing rope around my waist, fingers tracing the knots like a rosary.
“Four other teams around the edge, and one in the fox covert on the far side of the stone circle,” he said, not bothering to quieten his voice. Over the sound of sandstone grinding against sandstone we barely heard each other speak.
“Are you going for all of them?” I asked, leaning close.
He grinned, rubbing his face to smudge more dirt across his skin, and pulled out the machete from inside his jacket.
“Every single one.”
He pushed himself out of the back of the hedge, using his rope to help him gain a solid footing on the convulsing soil.
The standing stones had always been teeth. We did not see the jaws until they started chewing the earth from under our feet and tires. From underneath our town. All across the country, the landscape was eating itself, the topsoil itself digested. If you stilled yourself and watched the fields for long enough it seemed the plough furrows themselves had been torn from the land. Branches, hay bales, empty fertilizer sacks, old farm machinery and dead sheep. Anything too immobile to resist the gnawing of the stone circles was ground to paste and swallowed down hollow, echoing throats. Some of the masticated substance leaked out, pressed between millstone grit incisors to dry on the exposed, sun-beaten rock. “White ambergris” was the popular name. For those brave enough to risk their lives collecting it from between the crushing orthostats, it was worth a lot of money. Feed a family for months. Much more than whale vomit. Our client’s taste, however, was a little bit richer.
