Rebirth

one of the most popular items being traded lately was RID shampoo. There had also been a couple of HIV-positive people in the box-once-hardy people who, deprived of their medication, were now getting sicker and sicker. Safe sex, once as easy as a trip to the drugstore, was a lost luxury-though most people were willing to take the chance, given the life expectancy Aftertime. Smoke had told Cass one day, shaking his head in amazement, that in the comfort tents sex with a condom brought the seller almost no premium over sex without-no one believed they’d live long enough to suffer the consequences. As one old-timer put it, a phrase he repeated every time he scraped up enough to afford a night’s entertainment, “I’d rather die with a smile on my face and a withered dick than with all my parts working and nowhere to use them.”

“Oh,” Cass said in a small voice. She focused on Ruthie, who had slipped over to Dor’s side and was looking longingly at the neat row of objects. Cass knew Ruthie had her eye on the pen and paper, her favorite entertainment in all the world.

“And you? You…and Smoke-everything…healthy?”

Anger rose like sap in Cass’s veins. None of your business, she wanted to say. The last time she and Smoke had made love, the morning before he betrayed her, she lay in his arms afterward- foolishly, obliviously-thinking that they would never be separated in this lifetime. That he was the last lover she would ever have.

But she’d been wrong, and now it was Dor’s business. Because she had made it his business.

This is wrong, he’d said.

I don’t want you.

But she had forced him.

And then last night he had punished her, and she’d fought him for it, demanding more.

She hung her head. “Yes. I, uh…before Smoke, before everything, I had a checkup, must have been a year and a half ago. Clean bill of health.”

“You haven’t-?” Dor said in surprise, then stopped abruptly, holding up a conciliatory hand. “I’m sorry. Not my business.”

Cass knew the source of his surprise-that she hadn’t been with anyone besides Smoke. She supposed she’d earned it. You didn’t sleep with two-hundred-plus men between the age of sixteen and twenty-eight-stopping only because you had a baby, because you believed God had given you one last chance by entrusting you with another life-without earning some sort of taint, some sort of permanent patina of promiscuity. When Cass had returned to A.A. for the second time, after her disastrous relapse, she took to dressing like a matron for a while, desperate to obliterate her past. She had been convinced that there had to be something she could put on-the rosewater cologne that reminded her of her grandmother, an unflattering skirt that hit her midcalf, a hair band that made her look like a soccer mom-that would disguise her. But no. The men still looked at her the way they looked at her. And Smoke had told her a hundred times that she was sexy, that she was hot, even now when she dressed only for survival. He whispered it when he came up on her watering her seedlings or rubbing dust off her ankles with the towel they kept by the front of the tent. But Cass knew what he was really saying: that she was marked, that she could never shake it, never make it go away. She could never know if he really saw her, the real her, past this other, the mark.

But this was Aftertime. She couldn’t let her lifelong shame, her old scars, stop her from doing what needed to be done. So she faced Dor squarely, forced herself to look into his flinty eyes. “I haven’t been with anyone besides Smoke for almost two years,” she said. In fact, it would have been since the moment she discovered she was pregnant, the moment everything changed, except for her one relapse, when she’d traded thirty-one months of sobriety for the bender that got Ruthie taken away from her by the people from Children and Family Services.

“All right then.” Dor gave the cup a final nudge and then, without comment, picked Ruthie up and settled her into the desk chair, smoothing down one of her shirtsleeves that had gotten twisted around her arm. He slid the pen and notebook into her reach. “We’ve got an hour before someone’s coming by. I’m going to lie down. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

He stretched his long, lanky form out on the bed closest to the windows, crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. Cass watched him with envy. He seemed to be able to turn off all the thoughts churning in his head, to make himself oblivious to everything around him. Obviously he preferred solitude-his self-imposed exile in his trailer was evidence of that-but he fell asleep almost immediately, as though he was alone in comfortable and familiar surroundings.

“Are you doing okay, sweetie?” she whispered to Ruthie, crouching down to look at the picture she was making. Like all her drawings, it was a series of scribbles, roughly round bubbles crosshatched with bold swipes of the pen. The day would probably come when Ruthie could draw a recognizable figure, but it was far-off. Still, she concentrated with the focus of a draftsman doing painstaking precise work and her every mark was deliberate.

Deliberate-it was the perfect word to describe Ruthie, or more precisely, to describe the little girl she had become since her time in the Convent. Cautious, careful, painstaking. Cass missed the old carefree Ruthie so much it hurt-missed her laughter, missed the way she ran shrieking when they played tag, missed the way she collapsed into giggles during tickle fights.

Ruthie looked up from her drawing and smiled. That would have to be enough.

“Okay, then Mommy’s going to try to take a little nap, too. All right? I’m going to close the door, and I don’t want you to open it. Not for anyone. If someone comes, if someone knocks, I want you to wake me right up. Understand? Me or Dor.”

Despite her doubts about her ability to sleep, when Cass lay down she felt anxiety lessen a little. She was exhausted, and the mattress was soft and surprisingly comfortable, and the sun through the windows warmed the room. She began to drift, and the feeling was unexpectedly pleasant. Soon visions of her garden back in the Box swirled through her mind, the gaillardia plants sprouting buds and the ivy sending out pretty twining trailers. She dreamed of her garden until a sound interrupted her dream and she sat bolt up and discovered that she and Dor were alone, that the sun had crept higher in the sky and Ruthie had disappeared.

Cass rolled off the bed and hit the floor unsteadily, her legs heavy with sleep, her breath caught in her lungs. She steadied herself by clutching the bed frame and propelled herself toward the door with a surge of energy fueled by terror. Not again.

Not again.

Her panic lessened only slightly when she ran into the hall and saw a doughy woman with unusually careful posture walking slowly down the corridor toward the stairs, carrying Ruthie. When Ruthie saw Cass, she began to struggle.

“Mama!”

It was the loudest sound Ruthie had ever made. Cass ran down the hallway as the woman rocked Ruthie in a lazy slow dance as though she wasn’t screaming, wasn’t struggling. By the time Cass reached the pair, the woman clutched Ruthie more tightly in her arms, locking them around her small back so she was trapped. Ruthie pushed against the woman’s body as hard as she could, her pale skin damp and red with exertion.

“It’s all right, baby,” Cass said shakily, stopping short in case the woman had anything even crazier planned. “It’s all right. Listen, she’s frightened. If you could just set her down-”

“She’s fine,” the woman retorted, a little testily. “I have nieces, two of them. I know my way around kids.”

Was the woman as deranged as Malena? Cass turned over options wildly in her mind: make a grab for Ruthie, wrestle her away, run. But she saw that the woman had a blade at her belt, and Cass was unarmed. She would have to reason with her.

“Such a nice little girl,” the woman crooned, swaying back and forth. She was a dark-haired woman of medium height, slightly overweight, with her hair cut short and large eyeglasses with frames that overpowered her face. She was wearing a plaid skirt and plain, black high-heeled pumps, an unusual outfit in these times when everyone dressed for practicality. “Such a good girl. Being so good for Auntie Mary.”

Mary-Mary Vane? Could it be? Cass edged slowly closer.

“She’s heavy,” she said, willing her voice to be calm. “Ever since she turned three, I can barely lift her myself. Here, let me help you.”

“Well…all right. We can have another playdate later, can’t we, little Ruthie?” the woman said, setting Ruthie down on the floor and wincing when she straightened again, rubbing the small of her back. Ruthie rushed into Cass’s arms and Cass lifted her and felt the tension leave her small body, absorbed her relief as she went