Then, at Saturday’s door, Jep tried the kiss again, just to see if whatever had happened would happen again. Whatever it had been was still there and kept being there, each time they did it, and they did it quite a lot, hugging one another in pleased wonder and undisguised anticipation.
When Saturday came into the sisterhouse, Africa saw the slightly swollen lips and glowing eyes and turned away to hide a mixture of peevishness and chagrin, self-awareness and parental anxiety. She herself had been kissed—really kissed—first when she was what? Thirteen? About Saturday’s age. It had happened in one corner of the equipment yard, behind a big loader. Africa could still remember the smell of the lubricating grease, the hard bite of the steel edge as she had been pressed against it. Who had it been? Not anyone currently in the settlement. His name trembled in her mind, ready to announce itself. Someone who had gone away.
“How’d the creely fishing go?” she demanded. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Saturday dumped the sack on the kitchen table, laughing at the pile of wriggling legs, joyous about life in general.
Africa watched her daughter as she might watch a sprouting field, half apprehensive, half gloating. Things lay in wait for the ripening grain, danger was in store, but there was also the hope of harvest. A name swam into memory. Osmer. Gard Osmer. He had tasted of salt and apple-eating boy and smelled like the grass. He had kissed her and said sweet, fumbling things, his eyes alight. They had gone for walks together, holding hands. His family hadn’t really been happy on Hobbs Land. No, she dug into memory. It had been Gard’s father that hadn’t been happy. He had insisted upon their giving up their accumulated land credits and moving to Pedaria. Africa had been fourteen. She had cried on and off for months. It was Spiggy who had rousted her out of her pain, Spiggy who was at the holiday camp the same time Africa was. He told her to have a baby and study leadership. He started her on her career. He was only a few years older than she, but he knew things she didn’t. “Apple-sweet,” Spiggy had called her childhood romance. “Apple days,” he had said. Apple days with Gard. And apple days with Spiggy, too. Five children since, three boys, two girls, but this, her eldest, summoned up so many memories.
“You had a good day,” she said gently to her own child, in memory of Gard, in memory of Spiggy, in memory of apple days.
“Oh, yes,” Saturday cried. “Oh, yes, it was a good, weird, wonderful day, and listen to my surprise! I have to tell you what we found!”
• China was amazed when Jep told her about the grove of giant trees. A complete catalog of native flora had been made during the decade after Settlement. She requested a copy, and the inventory swam upon the stage, from mold to tree, with nothing in it at all resembling giant trees with upcurving support branches. She would go up there the next day, she resolved.
When Jep asked her later that evening—apropos of nothing much so far as China could tell—how old she had been when she had had her first love affair, one part of her mind was grateful that he had waited until his little sister was in bed and had couched his question in terms of love rather than sex, but another part wished fervently he had been satisfied with what they learned at school—which was quite complete enough—and hadn’t asked her a personal question. She did not speak of Sam, of what had happened between them when she was twelve. That had been only confusing and wild, like being at the center of a storm. She had never thought of herself as a participant in that, or as a victim, but rather as a kind of observer.
Instead, she said, “I had what I’d call my first love affair when I was fourteen,” she said. “I was terribly fond of this wonderful boy. It went on almost two years, and then his mother was offered a position at CM, and they moved. We never became sexual lovers, though I think we would have in time, but being together was very sweet, nonetheless.”
China was pleased with her reasonable tone, until she saw the pallor on her son’s face, the darkness of the skin around his eyes, like a member of the chorus in an ancient tragedy, ready to cry woe. “Jep, what’s wrong?”
“You never saw him again? He just went away, and you never saw him again?” he cried dolefully.
“Of course I saw him again,” she said, wondering what was going on. “Of course I did. I rode in to CM on off-days, and he came here. And we sent one another messages. But, after a while he found someone else and sort of … stopped keeping in touch.”
“That’s rotten!” he proclaimed. “You must have just hated that.”
It would have been easiest to agree with him. “No,” she said honestly. “By that time, I had found someone else, too.” She had found Samasnier, or found him again, or he had found her. Samasnier, through whose enjoyments Jep had been conceived. Sam, who at that time hadn’t yet achieved Topman status, but who was on his way. Sam, whom she loved then, and probably now, still, despite everything.
“This isn’t like that,” he cried in protest, as he carried the bowl of creely shells into the kitchen. “This isn’t like that at all.”
China, wondering what this was, decided not to badger him. Since Jep had spent the day with Saturday, she could extrapolate the probable cause of his anxiety. It would probably be a good idea to talk with Africa early tomorrow. With their children
