Turnabout

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  Apparently little Ruveka had inherited that spooky talent from her mother, along with her flawless skin.

  Esi read on. Like most of the city, Folame Kondo had been horrified when Bejida Urbi Siti had refused to assign the strange man to a household, even one in her own clan. A few months later Bejida married the stranger—all by herself, no other brides—and Folame had felt the shock as strongly as if she had been struck a physical blow.

  Esi’s forehead wrinkled in concern as she read Folame’s words. “‘Of course I was amazed, but still I clung to my perception of Bejida as a woman of character, a leader among women. I waited anxiously for her to announce who else would join her in this new household. She had two unmarried younger sisters whom everyone expected would be the first, but in fact Bejida later arranged a marriage for them in a different household. As the months passed, the Urbi grew more and more puzzled as no clanswomen were invited by Bejida to share her husband.

  “‘And then the news broke that Bejida Urbi Siti was pregnant.’”

  Esi let out a small sigh of regret, as if she had read something horrifying. “‘She had the child, a girl whom she named Ruveka, and still she refused to take another woman into her household. She allowed her husband to care for the child, and even hired an unrelated woman to help him.’”

  Folame’s narrative veered off into her own life and problems, as her mother became ill, and Folame and her sisters quarreled about who should have what responsibility.

  I fidgeted in my bonds, totally uninterested in Folame’s problems. “Do you think you could untie me for a bit? I need to stretch.”

  Esi put the book down. “I’m sorry, no. I promised Marjani I wouldn’t.”

  “What happens when I have to pee again?”

  She grinned at me. “That depends on whether I can get your trousers open or not.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hear a woman talk about unzipping my pants, but on the other hand I didn’t want to be tied up while she did it. “What about food? Don’t I get any breakfast?”

  Esi pursed her lips. “I suppose I could feed you.” She glanced over at the shelf. “We saved your bread and meat.”

  I was hungry enough not to care how long my sandwich had been without refrigeration. “That would be good.”

  She put the book down and retrieved my only provisions from the shelf, then came over to sit down beside me. She tore the sandwich in half and held a piece just above my mouth.

  I stretched enough to snatch a bite of it and chewed carefully, not wanting to choke from eating while lying down.

  “Is it true your world has more men in it?” Esi asked.

  I swallowed. “Yes. Lots more. In fact slightly more boy babies are born than girl babies.”

  She shook her head, and I couldn’t tell if she didn’t believe me or just found it amazing. “I can’t imagine such a thing. Does that mean every woman has a husband to herself?”

  “No.” She had moved the sandwich, and I couldn’t stretch enough to reach it. “Some people never get married. And some get married and then get—” I paused when I couldn’t think of a word for divorced— “get the marriage dissolved.”

  “Dissolved?” She crinkled her nose. “But a marriage isn’t a physical thing that can dissolve, like a lump of sugar left in the rain.”

  “Well, they ask a judge to make them not married anymore, and then they aren’t.” I stretched my neck but still couldn’t reach. “Can you move that back, please?”

  She looked at her hand in surprise, then moved it closer to my face. “Oh, sorry.”

  I took more bites and ate as fast as I dared. I had just choked down the last bite when something abruptly blocked the light from the cracks in the door.

  Esi looked up, her eyes wide. “Who’s there?”

  She jumped for the doorway just as the makeshift door moved.

  Eleven

  I felt like the goat staked out for the T-rex in Jurassic Park—terrified and with no good options. I didn’t even know if I should shout for help. For all I knew an axe murderer had come to call.

  Esi was obviously in no doubt. She held the door with both hands and leaned all her weight against it.

  A woman’s voice spoke from the other side of the door. “It’s Dorscha. Is anyone home?”

  “I’m here, Dorscha,” Esi said.

  “Esi? Is that you?”

  “Yes.” Esi managed to sound only slightly agitated. She shifted her body so it almost touched the door, both hands still pressing it firmly in place. “I can’t ask you in. I’ve come down with a fever.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” The unseen visitor sounded concerned. “I saw Marjani leaving a while ago.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Esi twisted her head to glance at me over her shoulder and gave me a look that was half pleading and half grimacing. Probably she was afraid I would call for help. If I had thought I’d get help, I would have called for it, but Makoro had taught me otherwise.

  “Marjani went to get me some soup,” Esi said. “She’ll be back soon.”

  Dorscha made a disapproving noise. “Why don’t you leave that Rufaro trash? If you joined our household, you wouldn’t have to pay for your dinner.”

  Esi frowned. “Don’t speak that way about Marjani—not to me.”

  An audible sigh sounded through the door. “Are you sure you’re all right, Esi?”

  “I’ll be fine.” Esi pressed her body against the door like she was willing the other woman to leave—or perhaps she meant to keep her out bodily. “Really.”

  “Very well, then. I’ll see you when you’re feeling better.”

  Footsteps sounded and then faded away.

  Esi’s shoulders drooped with relief for a few seconds, and then she ran over to the concrete block and shoved it until it moved a few inches. She stopped to rest, panting, and then she pushed again. It took her a while, but she finally got the block wedged in front of the door.

  “Who was that?” I asked, when Esi had dropped down onto one of the stools.

  She poured herself a cup of water and drank it before she answered. “Dorscha—one of the women from the camp.”

  “Why did she call Marjani ‘Rufaro trash’?”

  Esi shrugged and looked away. “All the women at the camp are Kabaregas, like me. That’s why they call themselves a household, even though they live in tents instead of a house.” She paused, and then seemed to think that wasn’t enough explanation. “They don’t like that I use Marjani’s last name. She’s Marjani Rufaro Medwar, and I’m Esi Kabarega Medwar.”

  “Oh.” It sounded more like a regular marriage than anything I’d seen on Makoro, and yet Esi seemed not to want to talk about it. “Are you going to read some more?”

  “Not that book.” She reached for the shelf. “I need something lighter.”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, if you’re not going to finish the other book for a while, can you tell me what happened to Bejida Urbi Siti?”

  Esi glanced up from the new book. “She died.”

  So Mr. Walters was a widower for real. “How?”

  Esi pursed her lips like she was summing things up in her head. “When her child was six, Bejida Urbi Siti announced she was pregnant again. She still refused to share her husband or her child, so the women of Dodomah rose up and attacked her palace. After the palace guards joined the revolution, Bejida Urbi Siti was dragged from her apartment and killed by a mob.” Esi blinked, like she was fighting tears. “They never found her husband or her child. No one knows what happened to them.”

  Of course they couldn’t find them when Walters was standing in the middle of a highway in upstate New York clutching his six-year-old daughter.

  “Why were they so angry at Bejida?” I asked.

  Esi frowned as if the question surprised her. “She refused to share. There aren’t enough men. No one gets one to herself, not even an Ocan Garun. It was not only selfish, it was an abuse of her power.” She put her head down. “This book is ca
lled Conquered by Love. Do you want me to read it aloud?”

  “No, thank you.” I tried to stretch again and failed. It was going to be a long day.

  IT was a horrible day—long bouts of boredom and pain, punctuated by periodic spurts of noise and vibration when a train passed overhead. The cold dampness of the cavern floor made the ache in my muscles even worse, but after a few hours, all I could think about was how badly I needed to take a leak.

  Finally, I couldn’t hold it any longer. “I have to pee.”

  Esi looked up from her book. “I’ll get the can.”

  She brought it over and bent down to peer at the zipper on my pants. “How does this work?”

  “Don’t touch me.” I tried to pull away from her but couldn’t move. “Just untie one hand, and I’ll take care of it.”

  She shook her head. “I promised Marjani I wouldn’t undo even one knot.”

  “Never mind then.”

  “Foo!” She made a disapproving noise with her tongue. “Are you going to wet yourself and then spend the rest of today in damp, smelly trousers?”

  She had a point. Cringing, I told her to hold the waistband of my jeans with one hand, grasp the zipper pull with the other, and tug it straight down.

  It took Esi a couple of tugs to get the zipper pull to move, and I flinched both times. Finally, she got my pants unzipped. I shut my eyes when she took my penis out, but I could still hear her commenting on the things it reminded her of—a sausage, and some vegetables I didn’t recognize—which embarrassed the heck out of me.

  In spite of the relief it brought, taking a leak while Esi held the metal can under my dick were some of the worst minutes of my life.

  “How do you clean it off?” Esi asked when I had finished.

  “Just give it a shake.”

  She made a disapproving noise. “That’s not very sanitary.”

  I gritted my teeth. Making someone mad right before she zipped up my package didn’t seem like a good idea, so I didn’t swear, but I wanted to. “Just do it, please.”

  She did, but then she got interested in the texture of my foreskin. I had always been a little embarrassed about not being circumcised—Mom didn’t believe in it—but I had never been so completely mortified as when Esi decided to see how much the foreskin on my penis could stretch.

  “Amazing!” she said. She looked like a kid playing with a Slinky for the first time.

  I could feel right away that mortification wasn’t enough to prevent a hard-on. “Will you stop that!”

  Her face went suddenly red. “Oh, I am sorry!”

  She put everything back and zipped me up, then went to empty the can. After she came back and got the concrete block in place again, she washed her hands and then came over and crouched down beside me. Her face still looked flushed. “I’m sorry. It’s just I never got a chance to see a man’s—I mean, I know I shouldn’t have touched you like that.”

  I was surprised enough to get over being mad. “You mean you never—uh—you’ve never had sex with a man—ever?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t even seen a man up close since I left home.” She chortled. “And I certainly never saw that part of my father.”

  “Why did you leave home?”

  Her face got a desolate look, like she was remembering something sad. “I didn’t want to be a burden on anyone.” She looked down at the dirt floor. “I was twenty-two and I wanted desperately to marry into a household, but I had no prospects—no brother and no dowry. I couldn’t find work—I grew up in a small village fifty darupau away from the city—so I thought I’d go out into the world and earn my own bread.”

  Her story reminded me of a guy I had known who had graduated from Clara Barton and hit the road looking for something better. Last I had heard, he was working in a Wal-Mart in Kansas. Except he hadn’t turned gay. “How did you meet Marjani?”

  A warm smile lit her face. “I hired onto a construction job where she was the job boss. Some of the other women got me drunk after my first day of work, and Marjani took me home and let me sleep it off safely.”

  She said it very casually, but I had a feeling getting her drunk hadn’t been a gesture of good will. “You mean Marjani brought you here?”

  The smile slid from her face. “No, not here. Marjani—Marjani lived in a Rufaro household at the time.”

  The clan thing confused me. It seemed to matter a lot what clan someone was in. “So you two hit it off right away?”

  Esi frowned. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  A sharp ache shot up my arms, and I got mad. “You’ve got me staked down so I can’t even pee on my own. I’m bored to tears, and every muscle in my body hurts like hell. If you don’t want to answer questions, I could scream my head off for a while instead.”

  She got up and paced a few steps, then sat down at the table. “All right. If you don’t want to listen to that other love story, I’ll tell you mine.”

  I felt bad for making her talk about personal stuff, but I was bored, and I needed information. “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

  Esi knit her brow, not in a frown but more of a pensive expression. “I had never thought I could love another woman; I had never tried. When I met Marjani, I was oopcha. Marjani guessed that. She didn’t press me to have sex right away.” Esi smiled reflectively. “Instead she became my best friend—someone I could talk to about anything and everything.”

  I decided oopcha must mean virgin. I wondered whether Esi was gay or bi or just willing to settle. Maybe in this world it didn’t matter, at least not for women.

  “For a few months we worked together, ate and drank together, went on picnics and walks together. And just when I realized that Marjani had become the most important person in my life, she asked me if I would be willing to live with just her.”

  I waited, but Esi said nothing more. She just sat there with an intent look on her face.

  “What did you answer?” I prompted.

  She smiled, a bright, animated smile. “I said yes, and I’ve never been sorry.” The smile faded a bit. “It was rough at first, not being able to find a place we could live together.”

  “What about Marjani’s place?”

  She shook her head despairingly, like Hobart used to do when I got an easy question wrong. “That was a Rufaro household, so I couldn’t live there. And the Kabaregas wouldn’t let a Rufaro—wouldn’t let a woman who wasn’t a Kabarega—live in one of their households, either.”

  I had the feeling Esi was leaving something out, but I had no clue what it could be. “So that’s why you live here?”

  She chuckled. “Yes, although this is much nicer than the first place we found. That was a cave with no door.”

  It was hard to imagine the crude space around me as nicer than somewhere else.

  All at once the door shook. “Esi!”

  Esi jumped up. “Marjani?”

  The door shook again. “It’s me,” Marjani’s voice said. “What’s wrong with the door?”

  “Wait, I’ve got it blocked.” Esi darted to the doorway and shoved the concrete block a few inches, then lifted the door.

  Light flooded the room, and outlined Marjani’s silhouette in the doorway. I blinked as the bright light hit my eyes.

  Marjani climbed over the block and stepped into the room. She had a bundle under one arm and a canvas bag in the other hand. She set them both down on the table and gave Esi a quick hug. “Why did you do that to the doorway?”

  Esi hugged her back and then let go. “Dorscha came around, and it scared me. I didn’t want anyone to open the door with him—” she stopped and looked at me in surprise. “What’s your name?”

  “Jason.”

  “Jayzoon what?” Esi asked.

  “Jason Trouble,” Marjani answered before I could say anything. She actually said my name correctly, which amazed me. “That was an Omdur household he climbed out of, and he’s underage.”

  “Really?” Esi looked at me critically. “But he has a bear
d.”

  Marjani waved a hand in an impatient gesture. “Maybe he does, but he’s still only sixteen. Everyone is talking about his escape. The Ocan Garun has offered a reward for his safe return.”

  Esi’s eyes brightened, and she smiled a tentative smile. “How much?”

  “Five thousand corts.”

  The smile vanished. “That’s not very much—not near enough for a house.” Esi sounded amazingly outraged considering she and Marjani had kidnapped me.

  “I know.” Marjani gave me a calculating look. “His age makes it harder, but we can still do a lot better than five thousand. We’ll just have to use a cortunna.”

  “What’s a cortunna?” I asked, alarmed. My arms ached, and I somehow felt even more helpless with Marjani in the room.

  “A middlewoman,” Esi said. “Someone who acts between two parties who don’t know each other.”

  “And we need to move him.” Marjani glanced around at the shelves like she was already mentally packing. “We can’t stay here. I saw some Kabaregas from the camp roaming about on my way here. They might come snooping around.” She opened the canvas bag and began to pull things out of it. “If I can get his disguise ready in time, we’ll leave right before twilight tonight.”

  Esi put her hand on Marjani’s shoulder. “Where can we go? Where is it safe to hide him?”

  “The cave where we used to live,” Marjani said.

  Oh great, somewhere worse than a dump where the ceiling shook every hour.

  Marjani patted Esi’s hand. “None of the Kabaregas knows about it, do they?”

  Esi shook her head. “I never mentioned it to them.”

  Marjani nodded. “Good.” She glanced around again. “We’ll take the blankets, the stew pot, and the water jug. I brought some food, but just in case, we’ll take the snares and the bow and arrows.” She grinned and pointed with her chin at the battered metal can I had been using to pee in. “And of course, we need the toilet.”