Woman on the Edge of Time

“I’m Arthur of Ribble, a Lancashire village in Fall River.” A heavy‑set person of forty or so with cropped light hair rose. “Jackrabbit was my child. Gave me joy and hard worry. Person was running in seven ways at once from five on. Such beauty. Such a pile of beginnings! Jackrabbit wanted to do everything. Person could not, would not choose. Instead Jackrabbit would begin to weave a rug, would launch a complicated genetic experiment, would begin studying spiders, would start glazing a namelon, would demand to be taught how holies function, would begin cartography lessons, all in one week. A month later the rug would be a beautiful fragment, the namelon would be half painted and abandoned, person would know a bit about spiders, something of how holies function, would have had three cartography lessons and would have abandoned the genetics experiment in the third generation of fruit flies. Person drove me wild! I would yell and bluster and my child would sulk and withdraw. But person would forgive me–yes, that’s the way to body it. In sunny excitement my child would forgive me and come tell me how person–then named Peony–wanted to learn theory of wind power, construct a mill, learn lithography, study Japanese and vertebrate anatomy. I comped Peony to choose something. Much pressure. I wore out just listening. I could not grasp such trying on of subjects and roles was learning also. When Peony began to think seriously of shelf diving, I bound per into making a commit. I obsessed Peony into being ashamed of flightiness–which was excessive curiosity. I didn’t do this alone. Others reacted same way. Including the head of the children’s house.” Arthur sat down.

The old person rose, still strongly made, with a squat pyramidal body ending in a head whose iron gray hair was worn in a knot. “I became Peony’s mother when that child was eight. Peony bumped on per original mother, Elima. Elima felt overwhelmed by Peony’s energy and truly began to dislike per child. So Peony and Elima brought the sticky up in council. I’m an old kidbinder and I spoke out and said I’d be feathered to have Peony for my old child. I was old then. Now I’m seventy‑nine. In our village it isn’t common for people over sixty to mother. But Peony liked the idea.”

Arthur spoke again, grinning. “Peony jumped up and down, shouting, ‘Yes, Crazy Horse is for me!’”

“I’m an old hard‑bitten comrade. I spent ten years in the war. I stiffed it all over Latin America working on reparations–I was one of the teams that worked out the details, in the early days when there were still endemic diseases raging. For a whole year after I could digest no fat. I didn’t settle down in Fall River till I was fifty‑five. I’d had a child at fifteen, live‑born child of my own body, and saw my baby die of tularemia when they loosed the plagues on us … . Peony–Jackrabbit–was like wine to me. Didn’t care for the right and wrong. I figured you grow through things. I can still remember being hungry as a child, always hungry … . What a pretty child person was–gawky, long‑limbed, awkward, but coltish and gifted in giving joy. I had only three years of mothering but years I loved. I didn’t give dandruff if Peony was irresponsible. We were each comping Peony in opposing ways. No wonder person went mad at naming. I was gobbling up every prank like candy and Arthur here was pushing the straight and narrow … .”

“What of the third mother?” Bee asked.

“In Oregon now. Gentle, quiet. Couldn’t fix Peony against our heaving and hauling,” Crazy Horse said. “Still, Jackrabbit grew strong, and rough times can shake a body down. I never met a kid I liked better.”

Arthur shook his head. “Jackrabbit used to fall by to see Crazy Horse whenever person worked near us, and we’d talk. Even last year we were arguing. Somehow we could never leave off arguing. I loved Jackrabbit, yet I think I must have spent ninety percent of the time we had insisting person was always wrong. Clipping, binding.” Arthur sat down abruptly and blew into a big orange handkerchief.

At the back someone rose to play a sad melody on a flute. The flutist played for perhaps ten minutes, joined by a guitar, a flat twangy instrument, a drum. After the others stopped, the guitar played a song many joined with that muffled blurry sound people have when they’re not trying to sing in unison:

“I feel like dry grass

combed by the wind, the wind.

I feel like last year’s grass

raked by the salty wind.

The tides creep in the marsh,

the water rises,

the water falls,

but the old grass finally breaks

under the wind.”