A Cup of Normal

  “Anointed,” they’d said, “one of us now.” They named me Dawn.

  So caught with my cleanliness and Setham’s thoughtfulness, the raising girls didn’t bless me as women bless women, as girls bless girls, fingers between fingers, breathing each other’s exhales with heads bent in close, giving that sure feeling of being accepted, safe, sistered.

  Maybe that was how the difference inside of me started. The difference I couldn’t push away, sing away, nor carry up Mount Discard and heave over the side to watch it fall into the heaps of junk below.

  When I was old enough, I asked Setham why he cleaned me up like that, and he said with a face so straight you wouldn’t think it could hold his quick smile, “Did it to get an extra scoop of sweetberries for dessert.”

  His smile flashed, was gone again. “Got it, too.”

  Then he went off to the birthing soils, walking all day through the fields of garbage, clambering up rotted hills and wading waist deep through oil, sewage and the burning mix of chemicals that bleed out of the walls of garbage. Dead things, broken things, rust and filth bob in the muck and sewage, stare with tumored eyes, cut, sting, bite. Setham leaves the home blocks every day to dig sky babies out of that muck.

  Finds them, too. Enough babies that each of us girls had to become a raising girl, so all the babies got fed and cleaned and watched and taught. The boys, the uncles, brothers, nephews, take care of hunting and trapping rats and bringing in the buckets of drinking water from the copper pipes that stick out of concrete. We all scrounge for things needed for living: squares of clear plastic, heavy blankets scrubbed and cleaned until they don’t move on their own any more, shoes with good strong soles, steel marbles, and strange things of twisted metal and plastic that became chairs, walls, and more.

  Doesn’t always go that way. Sometimes the boys get into the raising, and the girls get into the hunting. Sometimes the boys fall into scorpion holes, or rats chew them apart. Sometimes the girls die of the fever that comes from handling the babes and not staying clean enough.

  I am fifteen now, and I raise the babes and teach the old songs. Not the songs that drift down on a good wind from the sky above the brown clouds. I teach the old songs, songs whispered from lips to ears by uncles and aunts who long ago climbed Mount Discard, spread their shuddering new wings, and vaulted up to the skyworld to see if the sky was any different on the other side.

  I teach songs of patience of pain. Of mud and toxweed milk and hunger and sharp things waiting just below the soft of the world.

  Songs about the summer flower you ache to smell but burns you blind if you get too close, the spring and autumn thorns and the wild winter dogs that tear out baby hearts and crush bone and skull.

  I teach the real songs. Dirt songs.

  Sometimes, I imagine that my aunts and uncles, gone to wing, sing down to me in the night to call me up. It is a childish thought, to wish those with wings would remember their birthing soil, would remember the songs they taught, or the babes they raised.

  Fifteen, and I am the oldest girl.

  Bell who was three years older than me, walked to Mount Discard today. We waited at the flat beyond the blocks, the babies at our feet fussing some, playing some, while Bell walked to the mountain. Took her most of an hour to get there, and another hour to scramble up to the flat wedge of metal that crowns the mountain top. She didn’t wait, didn’t wave. She just ran and jumped off the mountain. Fell so fast, my heart stopped beating to see her drop. Setham was next to me, and I saw his wingless back stiffen, his hands curl into fists, as if it was his fault she hadn’t lifted up to the sky.

  Ten-year-old Jarn, who was Bell’s favorite nephew, said, “No.”

  I took Jarn’s hand in my own, felt how little and cold it was.

  We waited while our hearts beat. No flutter of wings. No stir in the distant air. Bell had fallen below our line of sight. Had broken herself, was probably dead.

  Reez, who is nearly fifteen, spat. “Stupid. She should have practiced more.” Reez never smiled unless he was killing rats. He smiled now. “I get her wings.”

  “No!” Jarn screamed.

  “Wait,” Setham said, his gaze still locked on the foot of Mount Discard.

  Reez scowled. We waited. The babies sitting at our feet or tied to our chests made baby sounds — oblivious to Reez’s anger, Setham’s focus, or Bell’s fall.

  “Stupid,” Reez said again, this time looking straight at Setham who would not look away from Mount Discard.

  “There,” Setham said.

  Bell beat her way up from the hold of the earth, her wings crooked and out of rhythm, her head bent down to her chest, her arms tight against her ribs, as if every ounce of thought, every bit of her strength was in her wings — pumping her up the slippery sky.

  “Go,” Jarn said. “Fly!”

  We watched until she was swallowed by the greasy brown clouds.

  “Patience,” Setham said, leveling such a look at Reez, “isn’t stupid.”

  “You should know,” Reez said.

  “If I had not been patient, you would not be here,” Setham’s voice was low and quiet, and stronger than a yell.

  And Reez knew that. He’d asked Setham to tell him the story of his birth-find over and over again. How Reez had landed deep in the muck. How Setham dug harder and faster than ever before. How the muck was so wet, the hole kept filling in. How finally, he had pulled Reez out, bruised and cut, his baby eyes swollen shut and blood coming out of his ears. That Reez survived because he was strong.

  Usually the story put Reez in his place, reminded him who he was in our family. Not today. Reez started pacing, like he couldn’t hold still, like he didn’t want either foot to be on the ground for too long.

  I let Jarn lean against me and put my arm over his thin shoulders.

  “You know what I saw today?” Reez said.

  The other children, most just babies except for Iya, who was seven, shook their heads.

  “A little bitty baby rat. Didn’t have no front feet.” He pulled his arms into his shirt so the sleeves flapped loose. The babies smiled.

  “Do you think his feet are going to grow? Maybe catch up with him while he’s crawling, face in the muck?”

  The babies shook their heads. The aunts and uncles, ten other girls and six boys, all younger than me by a year and more, smiled at Reez’s story.

  “No? Not even if he’s patient?”

  The babies shook their heads.

  Setham stiffened at that, his wingless back straight.

  “You’re right,” Reez said. “And his litter mates knew his feet wouldn’t ever grow too. So they ate him.” He sprang forward, all teeth and hard smile, bent over the babies, sleeves flapping.

  The older babies squealed in terrified delight. Some started crying. The uncles and aunts laughed.

  “Reez,” I said, “stop that.”

  Reez looked up at me, bent so that his shirt was tight against his back and I could see his wing buds, like two angry fists between his shoulder blades. He would be a man soon, would take to the sky.

  Setham could see them too. Which was Reez’s point.

  “Just telling a story, Dawn,” Reez said. “Patience doesn’t make feet.”

  “And stories don’t make brains.” I regretted the words immediately.

  Reez’s eyes hardened until they matched his killing smile. He straightened, looked at me, then looked at Setham.

  “What have I missed lately?” he asked. “Did you crawl into her blanket, Setham?”

  “Enough!” I said, hot-faced at the insult. “You know the rules. I’d stab him if he tried.” Wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I stab my favorite uncle if he touched my cheek softly, traced his hands down my back?

  “Napping time now, babies,” I said, before Reez could come up with more nonsense. The other raising girls plucked up their babies or held onto the children’s hands. Jarn pulled away from me and looked up. He was ten, too old to be treated as a babe. I took his hand anyway. It w
asn’t easy to watch your favorite aunt or uncle fly away. He squeezed my fingers and was silent as we started back to the blocks. I crooned to him about tomorrow skies, hellos and good-byes.

  Neither Reez nor Setham followed us. When I looked back, Reez was walking the other way, his shirt off, his budding wings red and sore at the base of his shoulders and curled like new thistle leaves reaching up toward his neck.

  Setham just stood there, like he was rooted to the ground, his face tipped to the mountain, to the sky where Bell had just been.

  The babies went to sleep easily and the other boys coaxed Jarn into a game of sticks and marbles. Melda said she’d watch the babies while the other raising girls strained the greens for dinner. I went for Bell’s things. She hadn’t left much behind, but tradition says all left-behinds go to the big room where anybody can take what they wanted.

  I picked up the basket of her stuff: a square of soft red cloth, a perfectly round silver disk, a piece of charcoal, four cups, and a string of metal bars so thin they rang out when the wind touched them. I wondered if Jarn had had a chance to look through her things. I took out the red cloth and put it on Jarn’s blanket, then I walked through the low-ceiling maze of plastic walls to the center of our home.

  I had not expected Setham to be looking at his naked body in the broken mirrors that covered the wall from ceiling to floor. He was turned so he could look at his own back. He had strong, straight limbs, a wide-shouldered torso and a flat, muscled stomach.

  He caught sight of my reflection. His look was angry, then ashamed, and he picked up his breeches from the floor and covered his groin. I could still see his butt and his long, lean, wingless back in the mirror.

  “Didn’t know you’d come in,” I said, trying to make my voice normal.

  He must have bathed recently because I could see the color of his blush. His hair brushed over his eyebrows, long enough to hood his eyes when he tipped his head down.

  I felt a curious, quick heat below my stomach, and knew I was blushing too. Was this the lust that drew the wings to the sky, to mate, to join, to drop their babies here in the compost and let them be raised by aunties and uncles with no wings of their own?

  “Dawn, please don’t tell,” he said.

  I nodded, unable to keep from snatching glances of his back, so odd and beautiful, with all the muscles of a man, but no wings. His thighs and calves were spread just enough, and bunched tight enough, it looked like they alone could carry him into flight.

  I shrugged. “I don’t have any wings.”

  “Yet,” he said.

  “Yet.”

  “But you still have time.”

  “So do you.” I didn’t remind him that he was older than me, older than the oldest girl who hadn’t thrown herself off Mount Discard.

  “Do you know how many aunts and uncles I have seen take wing?”

  I shook my head.

  “Thirty.” He said it again, softer, as if it were a number he’d never heard before: “Thirty. And all of them were your age, Dawn. Not old, like me.”

  I put the basket down and stepped closer to him, to my brother-uncle, older than me all my life, strong and patient as he scoured the earth for pieces of the sky.

  “You are not old, Sethem. Maybe twenty-one?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “You will fly. You have wings here.” I pressed my fingertips against his chest, over his heart. I could feel the heat from his skin and the rhythm of his blood pumping. He took a small, quick breath. His eyes closed. He placed the fingers of his left hand over mine — his other hand still holding breeches against him.

  “Dawn,” he whispered.

  “Found a new nest of rats,” a voice called out from the door.

  I jerked, and Setham’s head snapped up to look over my shoulder at who had just walked in.

  Reez’s scowl shifted to a hard, wide smile. I saw him in the mirror behind Setham, and knew he saw Setham’s naked back.

  I turned, and stepped to block Reez’s view of the mirror.

  “Enough for dinner?” I asked.

  “Killed them all,” he said, gaze still on Setham. “Worked up a hard hunger.” Reez’s hands, dirty with rat blood, clenched and unclenched.

  “I’ll help you clean them and start the fire,” I said.

  “You got babies to watch?” he asked.

  “Not right now, they’re sleeping.”

  I walked over to him, caught my fingers around his hard wrist. The rat blood stank like burnt hair. I slid my hand into his hand. There was a change in his face then, a hunger that was frightening and hot. I’d seen it before, from the men on the edge of wings. It was a look only the sky cured.

  “Leave us, Dawn,” Setham said. “Reez and I need to talk.”

  I looked over at Setham, and he was the uncle I had always known, patient and strong. He was taller than Reez, and stronger, I now realized. But the smell of blood and Reez’s fists made me hesitate.

  There was nothing in tradition about this, nothing in the old songs that talked of men hating men, of wings and no wings. I felt outside this, alone. Scared.

  “Dawn,” Setham said again in a tone I had obeyed since birth, “go start the fire. We’ll be out soon enough.”

  I walked out. But I went around to the back halls behind the big room and pressed into the little space between two walls, where the plastic and cardboard weren’t strong enough to keep me out. I pressed my forehead against the wall and listened.

  “. . . elder,” Setham said. “You are not the first to want my place, Reez.”

  “I don’t want your place. I want you dead.”

  “You want Dawn. Have for years.”

  That startled me. Reez and I had been babes together. Sibs. I’d never thought of him as a man wanting until today.

  “You don’t understand,” Reez growled.

  “Because I don’t have wings?” Setham laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “I understand, Reez. Even without wings. And I’ve made my choices. One of them involves you.”

  “I don’t want any part of you, Setham.”

  “I’m leaving tonight.”

  It felt as if all the world shook out from under my feet.

  “Dawn will be the eldest instead of me. You will listen to her and obey her as your elder. She will now make the rules and the decisions. You will not touch her. It is forbidden.” Then his voice changed to the familiar, kind uncle.

  “I know you can wait for that knowing, that touching, until you wing,” Setham said. “You are strong enough. You belong to the sky. Don’t tie yourself to the earth.”

  It was all I could stand to hear. I pushed away from the wall and walked away. I heard the babies crying, and the raising girls’ voices shushing. I wanted to walk and keep on walking, away from the blocks where suddenly I was the oldest, to a place, a somewhere no one could take away, leave or change. But I had a fire to start and rats to clean.

  By the time night came on, all the brothers and sisters and babies had gathered around the cooking pit while the sky above brooded red and orange.

  The smell of cooked rat and stewed toxweed filled the air. I held Shida in my arms. She was two years old already, and loved to run. I could usually make her hold still for meals, but she was wriggling to get free tonight, and I wasn’t doing much to keep her still.

  Reez turned the rats on the spit. His face was dark as night in the orange of the fire and his eyes looked at me with regret when he thought I didn’t see.

  I looked for Setham.

  Once the meal was cooked, the babies settled down a bit, and even little Shida quieted. We fed them toxweed boiled milky blue. We scooped the soft sweet weed into the babies mouths, and they suckled the juice. The older babies helped themselves to the plate of rat and greens, happy and unaware that something had just changed, something more than another aunt flying away.

  Reez knew though. And so did I.

  Setham melted in from the shadows, his shirt off, and wearing only breeches and bo
ots. The babies looked up at him and called his name. He was their favorite uncle. He brought them new brothers and sisters, and would lift each of them high in his arms and spin them, laughing, whenever they asked.

  Setham smiled as three of the babies ran to him and tugged him over to the fire.

  He turned enough that I could see the hard, bare muscles of his back. No wings. Showing all the others his lack and wordlessly telling them he would leave on foot instead of air. My stomach felt cold, and the smell of dinner made me ill.

  “Dawn will be the elder now,” Setham said. Everyone nodded.

  Reez said nothing, though I caught his satisfied smirk.

  I ate a little toxweed and drank warm water, but couldn’t stomach my worry.

  At the end of the meal, Melda and the other raising girls gathered the babies and took them off to tuck under thick blankets. The other boys touched Setham’s hand or shoulder, saying their good-byes in the way boys do, with nods and thin smiles. Jarn was the last. He threw his arms around Setham and drew him into a tight hug.

  “I’ll miss you,” Jarn said.

  “I’ll remember you,” Setham replied.

  Jarn released him and dashed off after the other boys.Reez stood and stretched.

  “Good-bye, Setham. Enjoy the wilds.” He whistled as he walked away, his stride confident, strong.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Setham.”

  “For what? I have no wings. So long as I don’t throw myself off Mount Discard, I won’t die of it.” His smile was quick and warm.

  He took the few steps to lower himself next to me, his knees folded criss-cross, facing the coals of the cook fire.

  “You’re leaving tonight?” I asked.

  “I should. Though I worry about Reez.”

  We were silent a while.

  “Has he touched you, Dawn?”

  I shook my head. “I’d stab him — any of the girls would — then we’d throw him in a scorpion hole.”

  Setham chuckled. “You have grown. I’ll miss seeing you in wings.”

  I reached out for his hand, and we twined fingers. His fingers were long and strong, and warmer than mine. They felt fine and right between my own. I felt accepted, blessed, belonged.