“How much is the world?” said the woman who made her bed inthe third gable, frowning. She studied Marigold. “I’m not sure you’re ready tobear and bring up the sort of child I would make, dear.”
“When will I be ready?”
“There is one other woman in this household you have notasked for a child.”
“I had not thought she would say yes to me,” said Marigold.“I rather thought she disapproved of the whole thing.”
“She said no to you when you were young and childless. Shedid not want you to be happy. Now you have lost two children, and you ask heronly for the chance to lose another.”
“So I will lose her child too?”
The woman who made her bed in the third gable would not say.
◊
In the cellar, the air smelled like rust and formaldehyde andold gardenia petals. The temperature was many degrees lower than it was in therest of the four-gabled house, and Marigold wrapped her coat tightly aroundherself as she descended the stairs. She had no tart or cake for the woman whomade her bed in the first gable, for she suspected that nothing baked orroasted would satisfy such a woman, and she was right. The woman who made herbed in the first gable liked pickled things, things crunchy with salt andlong-preserved, and she hated how fresh dough collapsed on her tongue. When shesaw Marigold, she always thought of that fresh-dough feeling.
“I know already what you are coming to ask me,” said thewoman who made her bed in the first gable.
Marigold stepped down off the last step, making it squeak.“What will you say?”
“I don’t know yet,” said the woman who made her bed in thefirst gable. “You’re not much of a mother so far, with your hat on straight andonly two children in the ground. You don’t deserve my child.”
“And how many children do you have in the ground?” saidMarigold.
“Two thousand, four hundred, and eighty-one,” said the womanwho made her bed in the first gable. “Some were twins,” she added.
“None lived?” Marigold said.
“None,” said the woman who made her bed in the first gable,with a touch of pride.
“Then I don’t think I want one of your children,” saidMarigold.
“I don’t think you do,” said the woman who made her bed inthe first gable. “I shall give you one.”
◊
The woman who made her bed in the first gable no longer madeher bed there. She holed up in the cellar with a block of brie and afeather-stuffed duvet, and she emerged only to wash her wine glass or collectthe lukewarm cup of Earl Grey that the woman who made her bed in the thirdgable left out for her each afternoon.
The women did not like to interfere in each other’s creativeprocesses, so none of them peeked down into the cellar. The woman who made herbed in the cellar did not care to discuss the child she was fermenting, thoughif she had, she would have told them that he was fashioned from the heart of awhite rabbit, four dollars at the pet shop around the corner, and twiceembalmed in myrrh and soda ash.
He had to grow in his mother’s womb, so she washed out thepie pan that Marigold had brought and sealed it with a glass cover.
Inside his tin womb, the child soaked and swelled and slowlybecame animate.
Inside her duvet, the woman who made her bed in the cellardreamt of all the children she had lost inside her wombs.
The child reached such a size that he no longer fit insidethe pie pan, then such a size that he no longer fit in a three-gallon picklejar. The woman who made her bed in the cellar was stubborn, she wanted to seeMarigold mourn, so she dug a hole, four feet deep, in the cellar’s dirt floor.When she was finished, she padded the floor with rock salt and lowered thechild into the hole. February was halfway over, the temperatures were stilllow, and the cold and the salt would preserve the child for a few daysmore—long enough to make the girl believe, long enough to make her miserablewhen he rotted.
The woman who made her bed in the cellar did not alwaysproduce beautiful children, but this one was exquisite, a wet blood-coloredsalamander-like creature whose arteries worked like legs and whose eyes couldsee even in the depths of the cellar. In the womb of the earth he grew to threefeet in length before he cried for release.
The woman who made her bed in the cellar telephoned Marigoldto announce the child’s birth, knowing at half-past five her husband would behome, knowing that Marigold herself would be away at one of a dozen equallyuseless ladies’ society meetings and thus unable to intercept the call.
“Your son is crying for you,” said the woman who made herbed in the cellar, when a man answered.
She laid the phone down, waiting to feel satisfied, insteadfeeling hungry.
◊
Before they had been women who lived in the four-gabledhouse, they had been:
A maiden aunt.
A minister’s wife.
A washed-up stage actress.
A nurse.
They did not resemble themselves anymore.
◊
When Marigold came to the cellar, the woman who made her bedthere had already left. The feather-stuffed duvet and frozen block of brie weregone; fourteen cups with shallow pools of Earl Gray in their bottoms remained.Marigold looked at each of the teacups, listened for her child’s cries, andfelt reluctant to walk any closer to the dark end of the cellar.
Upstairs, the women who made their beds in the four-gabledhouse were making dinner.
Damp, rich sounds came from the dark end of the cellar andechoed off the brick walls until Marigold could not hear the banging of potsand pans upstairs, nor the record spinning on the player, nor even the soundsof the women’s voices.
She was afraid, but she would not leave the cellar without ason. She took up the iron bar propped up against the wall—she did not think,someone might have put this bar there; she thought very little—and walkedforward until her child leapt up from the grave where he was born, four feettall, hungry, hissing wetly at his mother.
Marigold swung the iron bar and struck the child
