Woman on the Edge of Time

“Below the age of twelve, forty‑nine in our village. We’re maintaining a steady population.”

“I mean you: have you had any children?”

“I myself? Yes, twice. Besides, I’m what they call a kidbinder, meaning I mother everybody’s kids.” Taking her arm, Luciente nudged her toward the blue dome she pointed out as a fooder. “Let’s hurry. I put in a guest slip for you, in case we got through. I’m mother to Dawn. I was also mother to Neruda, who is waiting to study shelf farming. Person will start in the fall; I’m very excited. Course, I no longer mother Neruda, not since naming. No youth wants mothering.” All this time Luciente was hustling her along the stone path toward the translucent blue dome.

Connie waited to get a word in. “So how old are your children?”

“Neruda is thirteen. Dawn is seven.”

That put Luciente at least into her thirties. “Is your lover Bee their father? Or the other one?”

“Father?” Luciente raised her wrist, but Connie stopped her.

“Dad. Papa. You know. Male parent.”

“Ah? No, not Bee or Jackrabbit. Comothers are seldom sweet friends if we can manage. So the child will not get caught in love misunderstandings.”

“Comothers?”

“My coms”–she pronounced the olong–“with Dawn are Otter and Morningstar–you’ll meet them right now.”

The room they entered took up half the dome and was filled with big tables seating perhaps fifteen at each, mostly dressed in the ordinary work clothes that Luciente wore, the children in small versions. The pants, the shirts, the occasional overalls or tunics came in almost every color she could name, many faded with washing and age, although the fabrics seemed to hold up. Everybody looked to be talking at once, yet it wasn’t noisy. The scene was livelier than institutional feeding usually made for. A child was climbing on a bench to tell a story, waving both arms. At the far end a man with a mustache was weeping openly into his soup and all about him people were patting his shoulders and making a big fuss. People were arguing heatedly, laughing and telling jokes, and a child was singing loudly at the table nearest the door. Really, this could be a dining room in a madhouse, the way people sat naked with their emotions pouring out, but there was a strong energy level here. The pulse of the room was positive but a little overwhelming. She felt buffeted. Why wasn’t it noisier? Something absorbed the sound, muted the voices shouting and babbling, the scrapes of melody and laughter, the calls, the clatter of dishes and cutlery, the scraping of chairs on the floor–made of plain old‑fashioned wood, as far as she could tell. Unless it was all some clevar imitation? She could not believe how many things they seemed to make out of wood. Some panels in the wall‑ceiling of the dome were transparent and some were translucent, although from the outside she had not seen any difference.

“No reason to look in. The fooder has to be well soundproofed, or on party nights, at festivals, nobody who didn’t want to carry on would be able to sleep. The panes with the blue edge come out. We get the breeze from the river–when it gets too hot, we take the panels out.” Luciente was heading for a table on the far side, where everyone except the littlest child stopped eating to watch them approach. “Some you can see through and some not, because some of us like to feel closed in while we eat and some–like me–want to see everything. The fooder is a home for all of us. A warm spot.”

On the translucent panels designs had been painted or baked in–she could not tell–in a wild variety of styles and levels of competence, ranging from sophisticated abstracts, landscapes, and portraits to what must be children’s drawings. “Where did the art come from?”

Luciente looked surprised. “The walls? Why, from us–or some of us. I don’t fiddle with it. I’m one of the sixty percent who can’t. We find all the arts fall out in a forty/sixty ratio in the population–doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re talking about dancing or composing or sculpting. Same curve. Me myself, I drum magnificently!”

Like a child! She could not imagine any woman of the age they must share saying in El Barrio or anyplace else she had lived, “Me myself, I drum magnificently!” Indeed, they were like children, all in unisex rompers, sitting at their long kindergarten tables eating big plates of food and making jokes. “I can see wanting to look at your own child’s drawing. But wouldn’t other people get tired of it?”

They had reached the table through a sea of spicy odors that touched her stomach to life. Two places were vacant, set with handsome heavy pottery dishes in earth colors, glass tumblers on the heavy side, and cutlery of a smooth substance that was neither silver nor stainless steel and perhaps not even metal. Someone–slender, young–leaped up and hugged Luciente, held out his?/her? arms to her, checked the gesture, and smiled a brilliant welcome. “You got through! Wait till everybody hears about this!”