Daughters of the Wild

by Natalka Burian

  “Tell me more about why you’re so good at this. How’d you learn so much about planting?” Ben asked.

  “Why don’t you tell me more about how you started doing this,” Cello said. “Lot of work you did up here. How long did it take you to make those screens? Somebody had to help you.”

  “I told you, man. This is a solo project. Or it was.” Ben smiled—it was uncomplicated, good-natured. The antithesis of the smiles Cello was used to seeing at the garden. There, a smile—if it wasn’t cruel or mocking—was always restrained, always a lesser thing. To feel joy or pleasure was not the point, nor was it the product, of living at the garden.

  “What made you pick this spot near us?” Cello asked. “Is it the only place you’re working off of?”

  “It’s weird, but no. I tried a few different places at first. It’s my third year senging. The other places did okay, but nothing like up here. I don’t know what it is, if it’s the shade or the moisture, or what—”

  “It’s the soil,” Cello said, interrupting. “It’s...” He paused, not sure what or how to explain their work with the Vine to Ben. “It’s special.”

  “What makes it special?” Ben asked, eyebrows raised.

  Cello was silent, just watching Ben, distracted suddenly by the glimmer of sweat at his throat.

  “Let me guess, it’s none of my business?” Ben said, smiling.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Cello answered, returning Ben’s smile, looking half at the other boy, and half over his shoulder and away.

  “You won’t tell me about the special magic soil, you won’t tell me about your girlfriend—what’re we supposed to talk about, man?” Ben gave a little laugh, and Cello was surprised by how his mood had lifted over the course of the morning.

  “Why don’t you tell me about your girlfriend, then.” Cello was stunned by how light and teasing his voice was.

  Ben stopped walking and shook his head, his mouth still fixed in its full smile. “Don’t have one. Back to you, I guess. Joanie, right? How long have you been together?”

  “It’s not like that. Joanie is...” Cello paused, panicked by the involuntary and unfamiliar unsettling wave of emotion her name stirred within him.

  “She’s what?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t think it’s right to talk about.” Cello stooped down to a patch of moss, pretending to look for more plants. He didn’t even know what Joanie was anymore, and it hurt like a blistering sunburn to admit it.

  “Why?”

  “It’s just not.” Cello turned away as the tears began to melt out of his eyes.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Ben said. He put out his hand, reaching toward Cello’s forearm.

  Cello stepped back a little, but it didn’t stop Ben from holding on to his arm and swiping at a smudge of dirt with his thumb. Cello watched the other boy’s hand on his body, and the way Ben’s thumb smoothed away every trace of dirt until he was only smoothing Cello’s blond arm hair. Cello couldn’t look away—he couldn’t move at all.

  Cello watched Ben slide a hand up the rest of his arm, over his shoulder and catch on to the side of his neck. Cello liked it—the warmth, the deliberate gentleness. People didn’t touch him that way, affectionately. No one recognized him outside of the tasks he performed. It was strange, the look and the contact. It was intimate and visceral, like Ben had summoned Cello’s heart to climb out of his mouth.

  Cello pulled away and turned around, his hand plastered across his forehead, like he was pressing back a headache. He didn’t understand why he was sharing so much, so bluntly, with this stranger. “Are you okay?” Ben asked.

  “I’m fine. What I was saying before—it’s just that I love Joanie and want to help her get her kid back,” Cello said, more to himself than anyone.

  “God, yes, everyone knows you love Joanie, Cello. Jesus!” Marcela stomped toward them through a swath of overhanging branches. “Uh, what’s going on? Are y’all even working or what?” She shot Cello an accusing look.

  “Of course we are.” Ben waved an easy hand toward her. “Everything’s fine.”

  Cello felt his face flush, and turned it away from Marcela, trying to collect himself. He didn’t want her to see him so unsettled. Cello cleared his throat and wiped his forearm across his face to erase any sign he’d been about to cry, hoping it looked like he was just wiping away sweat.

  “Let’s go unload this batch. I got to get back.” Marcela crossed her arms over her chest and looked from Cello to Ben and back again. “Seriously, what’s the holdup?”

  Marcela’s raised voice shook Ben and Cello out of whatever moment they had, and they all went to pack up the morning’s harvest.

  * * *

  Cello knew he had to stop at the Stuckey’s, to check under the Crown Light sign, but he felt a growing urgency to get back to Joanie. He’d go to Stuckey’s first. Maybe there would be some new message at the convenience store—anything that could point them toward the baby. He could pick up food there, too. They’d brought nothing with them and he could imagine Joanie’s growing hunger.

  Cello was chilled to find another gruesome delivery behind the hedge-obscured Crown Light sign. In a crumpled, cloudy, reused Ziploc bag, there lay a tiny sock, drenched in red liquid. Cello could feel the wetness through the plastic, and ran both thumbs over the macabre lump. Cello couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was one of the socks Junior had been wearing the last night he was put to bed in his crate. It was too terrible to really look at, so Cello unfocused his eyes, allowing his vision to blur.

  Cello didn’t want to hold the bag anymore, but knew he couldn’t leave it there. Maybe it wasn’t blood, he thought. Or, if it was, maybe it wasn’t the baby’s. He held the plastic square lightly, at one of the top corners, and took another payment out of his pocket. He eased around to the back of the hedge and dropped the money down, kicking the mulched earth over it. He tried to hold the bag as far away from himself as possible without leaving it unattended, like an ersatz guardian for an ersatz baby.

  On the long walk back to the motel, Cello considered disposing of the bag somewhere, throwing it into the woods so Joanie would never see it, so he would forget about it. But he couldn’t go through with it. The way his face twisted and his breath staggered, it felt like he was crying, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Getting to Joanie would normally have settled him. Thinking of her alone somewhere, waiting for him—that would, only days ago, have filled him with happy purpose. But as Cello paced the parking lot, he felt the inverse of happiness. What would he tell Joanie? How would he explain this new sign of her son—could he tell her anything?

  He knocked on the door to their room, but there was no answer. He tried the knob, and it turned easily under his hand. The door didn’t open all the way. The path of its swing was blocked by some mysterious bulk. The room was dark, but he knew Joanie had to be in it because he could smell her everywhere. Cello knew all of Joanie’s scents—he knew the way her sweat smelled, he knew the way her skin smelled, he knew the way her hair smelled when it was dirty and when it was clean.

  He flicked on the overhead light, and was shocked by the room’s transformation. He squinted around, expecting to find Joanie’s shape fitted into some corner, but the room was empty. She was gone. He checked the bathroom, the closets and even under the bed. Cello held the bag out in the buttery light of the chipped glass sconce, his face smeared with crying, broken open under the heavy strangeness of the room.

  He still felt responsible for Joanie, for the baby. He opened the Ziploc seal, forcing himself to closely inspect the contents. He saw rather than felt that he was shaking. He inhaled a burst of chemical odor—paint—and then pulled the sopping, scarlet baby sock out of the bag. He wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved that the red fluid wasn’t organic, or if it was a sign of certainty that it was some bitter practical joke. It didn’t seem like the work of Mother Joseph;
Mother Joseph had no time for practical jokes.

  With a twist in his gut, Cello realized that if it was all some strange con, it had been planned by someone who lived at the garden. By someone who knew that the baby had gone missing. By someone who knew the baby existed at all.

  Cello sealed the bag closed and set it on the bathroom sink. He washed his hands and face, scrubbing at the dirt and sunburn there. He wanted to ring out the last few weeks from his body, to sleep and then wake up cleaned of them. He turned off the lights and locked the door. He settled himself on the bed closest to the entrance and fell asleep as sounds of night insects echoed through the walls.

  * * *

  Cello sat up, his sleep disturbed by the sound of a thunderstorm beating out from a distance. A figure sat at the foot of the bed, but Cello wasn’t afraid or even startled. He knew Joanie would come back. Cello looked into her face, trying to find the Joanie he loved and understood. He got up to sit beside her.

  “What’s happening, Joanie?” he asked.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m going to fix everything. You don’t have to worry anymore, Cello.” Joanie moved toward him, a sudden viciousness all over her. Cello hopped back a little, preparing for a physical attack. It wouldn’t be the first time Joanie had come at him with violence. Even before her time at the Josephs’, Joanie had occasionally reacted toward him with anger. Almost always, Cello was the wall she railed against until whatever seethed inside her could subside. Cello never really minded. Only when she was pregnant—because then, he had to make sure the baby was safe, too. She never actually hurt him during these episodes, her heightened energy being its own release.

  When she came at him now, Cello put his arms out to catch her. He was stunned when she slid through the gap between his hands, and pushed her body against his. He felt her mouth, her tongue, something, on his throat. He banged his elbow against the doorjamb and winced. The small pinch of pain was all he could feel, so foreign was this affection from Joanie.

  Cello wasn’t sure what he’d expected finally arriving at this longed-for convergence with her. Cello let himself feel everything that was happening—Joanie’s shirt sliding over her head, the waistband of her denim shorts pulled down over her hips and off.

  This is a dream, he thought. How else was it happening? But, unlike the other dreams he’d had, waking or sleeping, Joanie was not sweet with him, or loving. He had the feeling that she was excavating something, pillaging his body for a purpose unknown to him. The viciousness she wielded many times before at the garden was flooding them both.

  Joanie slipped her leg between his thighs. Her skin was as silky as a fish in the water. Cello imagined it that way, the dart of her thigh between his like a sleek glimmering fish sliding through the waves. She turned him and pushed him forward onto his stomach so that he fell onto the musty, bare mattress of the stripped bed. Joanie had taken her shirt off. Her skin was there, against his clothes. The softness of her chest, the jut of her hips, the shallow curve of her waist; he recognized each of these parts of Joanie.

  Cello turned into it, into her. Joanie didn’t look happy or angry, just focused, like she couldn’t break her concentration. He stilled his body, suddenly feeling the enormity of what they were doing, feeling his own reluctance.

  “Wait,” he said, half sitting up. Joanie did not wait. Cello put his arms out, trying to hold her back. “Joanie, please stop.” She moved away slowly, her eyes still viciously alight. Joanie was making him nervous in a new way, and Cello didn’t understand how or why. He only knew that he had to resist her. Cello tried to catch his breath. Something had changed. What had always been between them—Joanie leading the way, and Cello, helpless, running after her—was over.

  The storm dashed down over the mostly empty motel and Cello woke up in earnest, shocked to find relief instead of disappointment that being with Joanie had only been a dream.

  23

  Joanie squinted into the full sun of the day. It was a long way to Antietam, especially if she intended to walk. At almost forty miles, it would take days. She started down the road, the pockets of her cut-off shorts jammed with the small items she required to carry out her plan. She held the sack filled with ashes and Vine cuttings looped over her elbow. It was hot, and she hadn’t brought anything else, not water or food. She pulled the pamphlet out of her pocket and flipped it over and searched for the winding blue line of the Potomac. If she followed its edge, she’d be led to the place where a filament-thin stream of the Antietam Creek split off, guiding her into the heart of the battle.

  Down by the water, she crossed over mosaics of moss and removed her shoes. She thought about leaving them there on the riverbank, but plucked them up off the ground in a sudden panic. Joanie discovered, terrified, that she couldn’t abandon anything else, least of all the shoes that had never done her any harm, only protected her. She thought about her baby, alone, withdrawn from her care. She couldn’t help but imagine his little face, twisted in fear and hunger, and her legs burned with the urgency to go to him.

  The trees were so healthy there by the water. They curled ardently over the river, shading Joanie with their overhanging branches. She walked all day, crouching by the river to drink from it when she grew thirsty, and soaking her feet in the rushing water when they started to ache. She walked through the long, stretched-out day, strengthening her purpose with every step. When it got too dark for her to see, even squinting her hardest through the dark, Joanie had to stop. She flattened a stand of reeds into a little palette and settled the pillowcase of ashes under her neck. As the stars swam out at her from the darkening sky, she spat in the palm of her hand and marked her body with protection symbols. The practice was comforting and familiar. She drew one of the symbols into the grass, willing it to pass through the miles of soil and roots, up through ground to wherever her son lay. Joanie reached out for the Vine, for reassurance that she was going the right way, but it felt faint and distant in the dark. As she twisted to sleep in the reeds, she begged Helen for more help—a way to strengthen her power for the Work she was about to do.

  Joanie dreamed deep, her sore body following her into sleep. She dreamed of a collection, of plucking minerals from the earth, of pulling beans from their shells, of yanking a strand of thread from its spool and walking and walking away. She dreamed of the motel room, and the worship within it, and she dreamed of Cello.

  She woke up under a slap of rain, and felt the thunder from the storm resonate all around her like some mountainous embrace. She stood up and huddled against a tree trunk until it was almost light and the storm had tapered off. That morning she moved along the Potomac slowly, too slowly. She couldn’t be sure how long she’d been walking, only that her clothes had dried and then had been soaked through again with sweat. She felt her body fading, and began to panic. She couldn’t do her Work in a weakened state.

  Joanie opened the pillowcase she carried and considered the two remaining cuttings that twined among the ashes. She knew the Vine would help her, but she was afraid to use it too soon. She knelt by the riverbank and rinsed the cutting in the active water. She looked at the loop of green in her hands, like an absurd, neon doughnut, and bit into it.

  As she crunched the bitter stalk between her teeth and drank the silky sweet liquid, she felt the Vine jolt awake inside of her. I need help, she asked. I need to be stronger.

  An understanding careened up from the back of her throat and through the top of her head. Joanie felt like a toddler wobbling up and figuring out how to walk. She was acutely aware of the blood in her veins, of the water in the river, of the sap coiled inside of the Vine in her pillowcase. All of the fluids were connected, part of the same mystic pattern, and Joanie could use them all. She could draw power from these charged, living liquids everywhere, just as the Vine had drawn them from her, and others like her. You can take what you need and release what you don’t, it tapped out in her mind, a lime-bright staccato. The
Vine guided her to the road, pushing her ahead, feeling out a faster way forward.

  Joanie knew, at least, that the sun was still out, and that people would be driving. She only needed to find one—one willing person. There was no way of knowing how far she had already traveled—ten miles, fifteen? At the edge of the asphalt, Joanie slid her shoes back on, leaving the gravel where it stuck to the bottom of her feet. When she walked, she felt the bite of the journey in each step.

  She saw a cool rush of blue winding down the narrow road in the distance. Something about the car’s pace and swerve recalled the movement of the river. She waved, and the sun winked back off the hood of the car, cheerfully. The car, a well-kept, old periwinkle-blue Volvo, slowed, stopping just beyond her. Joanie jogged to the passenger side and knocked on the window. The driver, a middle-aged, sunburned man with a prominent pair of bleached-blond eyebrows motioned for her to open the door.

  “How can I help you, young lady?” the man said, pushing the edge of his knit cap higher up his forehead.

  Joanie held the pamphlet up near her collarbone, underlining her face.

  The man leaned over and squinted. “Ah, Antietam, yes. Not too far.”

  Joanie nodded.

  “Well? Hop in.” He gestured to the passenger side door, waving her forward.

  Joanie smiled to herself—surprised by the perfect ease of the errand, at how neatly it had fallen together. “Thank you,” she said—to the driver and to the Vine—and slammed the door, sealing them both inside.

  “So,” the man said, “what brings you to one of our most notorious battlegrounds?”

  Joanie buckled the seat belt across her lap. “Thought I’d check it out.”