Mockingbird

One of them, a short, dumpy woman with white hair, turned and looked at me, but said nothing.

“I wonder if I could have something to eat.”

She looked at me a moment, then turned and reached up and got a yellow box from a shelf over the sink and handed it to me. There was writing on the box that said: SURVIVAL COFFEE, INSTANT TYPE. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: MAUGRE. IRRADIATED TO PREVENT SPOILAGE.

While I was reading that she had gotten me a large rough ceramic mug and a spoon from the dish drainer beside the sink. “Use the samovar,”, she said, and nodded toward the stove across the room.

I went over and made myself a mug of strong black coffee, seated myself at the table, and began to sip it.

The other woman opened a refrigerator and got something out and then turned and walked across the room to the stove. I saw that she was the woman whom I had stared at, and who had exhorted me to read, the night before. She did not look at me. She seemed shy.

She opened one of the ovens on the stove, took something from it, put it on a platter and brought it over to the table. Avoiding my eyes, she put it in front of me along with a dish of butter and a knife. The dishes were heavy and dark brown.

I looked up at her. “What is it?” I said.

She looked at me, surprised at my ignorance, I suppose. “It’s a coffee cake,” she said.

I had never seen such a thing and did not know how to deal with it. She took the knife and cut a piece from the cake. She spread butter on it and handed it to me.

I tasted it. It was sweet and hot and had nuts on it. It was completely delicious. When I finished it she handed me another piece, smiling shyly. She seemed flustered, and that was odd, since she had appeared quite bold the night before.

The cake and the coffee were so good, and her shyness was so much like what I had been trained to expect from people, that I felt emboldened and spoke to her in a friendly way. “Did you make this cake?” I said.

She nodded and said, “Would you like an omelette?”

“An omelette?” I said. I had heard the word, but had never seen one. It had something to do with eggs.

When I didn’t reply she went over to the refrigerator and came back with three large, real eggs. I had eaten real eggs only on rare occasions, such as my graduation from the dormitory. She took them to the stove and cracked them into a brown ceramic bowl, and then placed a small and shallow black pan on the stove, put butter in it and let it heat. She stirred up the eggs vigorously, poured them into the pan, and with a great deal of agility slid the pan rapidly back and forth on the stove while looping the eggs around with a fork. She was very beautiful, doing this. Then she took the pan by its handle, brought it over to the table, upended the handle, and neatly slid a yellow crescent of eggs onto my plate. “Eat it with a fork,” she said.

I took a bite. It was wonderful. I finished it silently. I believe, even now, that omelette and coffee cake were the best meal I had ever eaten in my life.

I felt even bolder after eating and I looked at her, still standing by me, and said, “Would you show me how to make an omelette?”

She looked shocked, and said nothing.

Then from the sink the other woman’s voice said, “Men don’t cook.”

The woman beside me hesitated a moment, and then said softly, “This man is different, Mary. He’s a Reader.”

Mary did not turn around. “The men are in the fields,” she said, “doing the Lord’s work.”

The woman by me was shy, but she knew her own mind. She ignored Mary and said to me, “Did you read the writing on the coffee box when she gave it to you?”

“Yes,” I said.

She went to the stove and got it from where I had left it. “Read it to me,” she said. And I did. She was very attentive to the words and when I was finished she said, “What’s ‘Maugre’?”

“The name of this town,” I said. “Or I think it is.”

She looked open-mouthed. “The town has a name?” she said.

“I think so.”

“The house has a name,” she said. “Baleena.” That is how I have chosen to spell it: It was not written anywhere until I wrote it, much later, for old Edgar.

“Well, Baleena is in the town of Maugre,” I said.

She nodded thoughtfully, and then went to the refrigerator and got a bowl of eggs. Then she began to show me how to make an omelette.

That is how I got to know Annabel Baleen.

Annabel taught me how to make an omelette that morning, and a souffle. She made a coffee cake with me, showing me how to make dough from flour and how to use yeast. The flour came from a large bin under the counter that we worked on; she said it was grown “out in the field.” That was where all the other members of the family were. Annabel was always in charge of the kitchen; she had been given that job, she said, because she was a “loner.” The other woman was assigned to help her with the cleaning up after meals. At other times she worked in the flower garden outside the house. Annabel had worked for a few years in the fields, but she hated the work and hated the way no one ever talked while working. When an older woman who had been in charge of the kitchen died Annabel asked for the job and got it. She had been cooking for thirteen years, she said. First as a married woman and now as a widow. Counting time in years and being “married” were no longer new concepts to me and although it was strange to hear them from her I understood what she was talking about.

Aside from the flour and eggs, all the other cooking ingredients came from the shelters in the mall. She had me read the labels for her, on yeast packets, on a can of pepper, on a box of irradiated pecans. All of the boxes read: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: MAUGRE.

While showing me how to cook, Annabel was quiet and pleasant and asked no questions except for her requests to read box labels. There were several times I wanted to ask her about herself and her family and how they seemed to avoid having anything to do with the modern way of life, but when I would start to ask a question I would think: Don’t ask; relax, and it seemed, for once, to be good advice. She was very beautiful, and her movements in the kitchen were deft and graceful; it was a pleasure just to watch her at work.

But as noon approached she seemed to become more harried, and somehow a bit sad. Finally she reached under a counter into a cabinet and took out a large blue box and gave it to me to read.

It said VALIUM, in big letters, and under this in small ones: Fertility-inhibiting. And under that: U.S. Population Control. To be taken only under the advice of a physician.

When I had read it she said, “What’s a ‘physician’?”

“Some kind of ancient healer,” I said, not really sure of myself. And I was thinking: Is that why there are no children anywhere? Could all the downers and sopors be like that? Fertility-inhibiting?

She took two of the pills and chased them with coffee. When she offered the box to me I shook my head and she looked at me quizzically but said nothing. She merely put a small handful of Valium in her apron pocket, and replaced the box under the counter. Then she said, “I must prepare lunch.”

For the next hour she worked at high speed, heating two kettles of soup and making cheese sandwiches on big slabs of dark bread that she cut with a knife. I asked if I could help, but she appeared not even to have heard the question. She set the table with the big brown plates and soup bowls. Trying to be helpful, I carried a stack of plates to the table from one of the cabinets and said, “These are unusual plates.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I made them.” That was a surprise; I had never heard of anyone making things like plates. And there had been a whole department at the Sears store with plates and dishes. I had no idea of how anybody would personally make a dish.

When she saw me looking surprised she picked up one of the dishes and turned it over. On its bottom was a mark that looked somehow familiar to me. “What is it?” I said.

“It’s my pottery mark. A cat’s paw.” She smiled at me faintly. “You have a cat.”

She was right. It was the same mark that Biff left when she walked on sand—but smaller.