My girl, Li thought, dumbly. And there was nothing she wanted more than to hold the body of her child.
When the Essos came to take Susanna out of Charlie, every woman there fought back. They held onto Susanna and each other. They punched and kicked, shouted. Even the ones who had turned their backs in the showers. Even the ones who said Susanna should never have been let into Charlie – must have given some Esso what he wanted at procesing so he’d look the other way. Even Li. She fought to keep Susanna but she didn’t understand why Susanna, or any of them, mattered enough to warrant this. The blind heat of it didn’t feel like Essos against labour, it felt like a mob struggling over some resource that had already run out. More Essos came running in from Delta, men she didn’t know. They had batons and spray. One of them shoved her against the container wall, bashing her head back on the metal. For a stunned second their eyes met and she saw his uncertainty, that he didn’t know why either.
There were women in the sleepbox that night, women with red eyes and bruises, who talked like they hated Susanna more than ever. At the next shift search, Megan told Li she felt sorry for Susanna but it was an oversight that was always going to be picked up.
There’s fertile women in Charlie, she said. Management couldn’t take the risk.
After that, Li mostly saw Susanna through the fence, looking into their compound from Delta. Same clothes, same hair, just the other side. It had never occurred to her that being a woman was something you might long for.
Trish asked them to count their blessings. Some of the women had men in Delta, partners or sons or brothers. They spent the time between shifts and meals and sleep pressed up against the fence.
But you’re lucky too, Camila said, Jun said, Lumena said. You never had a baby.
Yes, Li said. That was lucky. I never wanted to take the risk.
Sometimes she prayed to Frank. Was it praying? She told him she was sorry. And she grieved for him. While Matti had been alive, while she’d hoped for that, there hadn’t been room, but now there was so much time.
There were things Li was forgetting – she reached for them and they receded. But she remembered Frank. The way he slept after a twelve-hour shift in Valiant, on his back, palms open. Those strange chess pieces he carved for her their first cold season together in Nerredin, to replace the lost rook and knight in Val’s old chess set – the one with stubby little wings and the one with the long tongue. His eyes on her and his hands. He couldn’t sing, not at all, but when he was concentrating on something he would whistle in perfect tune.
Trish said they should think of someone they’d wronged and ask to be forgiven.
You were the one who was right, she told him. We just should have stayed.
She saw him the first time at a Weather meeting in the Nerredin school hall. She’d only been in town a couple of days, had picked up some patching at an equipment-hire business and they’d recommended her to the printing press. She was only there to hand out some flyers. Weather meetings were good for trade.
Frank got up and spoke. He wanted the local growers’ association to approach the government again about turning up the water supply. It hadn’t rained in four years by then and groundwater salinity was off the charts. She liked his voice but she was thinking about how towns like this were a joke. The people who lived in them just couldn’t see the punchline yet.
The first time they went to the pub, people kept coming past to say hello. Women. But he had a way of keeping his eyes on her while they talked, laughing silently at the things she said.
You move around, he said, you see a lot of places. You look at a town like this and you reckon it’s dying. But there’s all kinds of stuff going on here. Stuff you miss if you’re just passing through.
Li told him how every year now on her circuit she arrived in dead towns that had been up and running the year before, never saw it coming. She didn’t normally talk this much. He listened but she couldn’t puncture his optimism. It pissed her off, but something in it pulled at her too. Not blind hope but not blind hopelessness either. And the whole time, she could feel another conversation running underneath, too fluid for her to catch. His hands were long and lean-fingered, capable.
Nerredin’s not going anywhere, he said. He nudged the leg of her barstool gently with his boot. You should stick around.
They faced each other in the doorway of his shed, not quite touching. I’m glad you’re here, he said. I’ve got things to show you.
She moved around the space, looking at what he’d made out of lightning-strike wood, out of drought wood. Strange hybrid creatures, work in progress, sweet dust rising from the wood shavings curled across the floor. There was a loft with a mattress and a window that opened out to the olive grove. She kept paying for the room at the pub, though.
He said, I knew her since school. We were gunna get married. Lived in town for a while. But she didn’t want to stay here.
Li told him she wasn’t interested in marriage. Or a kid. He needed to be clear about that. He nodded, his eyes on her.
The trees were pruned hollow in the centre and the branches hung down in a flickering grey curtain all the way around the trunk. It was like being underwater in there. He pressed her
