Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

“Female circumcision was invented by men!” I retort. “To keep women at home and subservient to them. To take away a precious part of their lives. Patsy, think about this. You’re young. Once done, you can’t go back.”

“Sure you can. At the midwife’s site, there’s a link to a place that can make you look like you did before. Here.” She is fiddling with her net link. I press the Off on my master control again.

“That’s appearance, not functionality.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. And you should know that much before you get into this. I can’t understand how that woman can do this to girls.” The parent part is getting the better of me. I clamp my lips down.

Patsy shakes her head at me. “Granma! It has always been women doing it to other women, in all the cultures. Look.” She reaches over to push my master button back On. “Here’s a link to her website. Go look at it. She has all the historical stuff posted there. You like anthropology. You should be fascinated.”

I stare at her, defeated. She is so sure. She argues well, and she is not stupid. She is not even ignorant. She is merely young and in the throes of her time. Patsy will do this if she is not stopped. I don’t know how to stop her. Her words come back to me. Women doing it to other women. Women perpetuating this maiming. I try to imagine what she must be like. I can’t. “I’d have to meet her,” I say to myself.

Patsy brightens. “I hoped you would. Look. On her site, my link is the Moon Sisters. Our password is Luna. Because we chose the full moon. There’s pictures of us, and the date and time and place. You’re invited. Mary wanted to have a webcam on the ceremony, but we voted her down. This is private. For us. But I’d like you to be there.”

“Will your mom be there?”

Again her snort of disbelief. “Mom? Of course not. She gets all worked up whenever I talk about it. She threatened to kill our midwife. Can you believe that? I asked her if she ever bombed abortion clinics when she was a kid. She said it wasn’t the same thing at all. Sure it is, I told her. It’s all about choice, isn’t it? Women making their own sexual choices.” Her beeper chimes and she leaps from the stool. “Wow, I’ve got to get going. Big date with Teddy tonight.”

I make my last stand. “How does Teddy feel about this?”

She shakes her head at me. “You just don’t get it, Granma. It’s not about Teddy. It’s my choice. But he’s excited. After this, if I have sex with him, he’ll know it’s not because I’m horny at the moment, but because I want to give that to him. And I think he’s excited because it will be different. Tighter because of how she sews us up. You know men.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer from me, which is good, because right now I am sure that I don’t even know women, let alone men. As soon as she is out the door, I phone Katie. In a moment, I see her in the corner of my wall screen, but she does not meet my eyes. She is looking past me, at something on her own wall screen. I stare for a moment at my beautiful talented daughter. By a supreme effort of will, I don’t shriek, “Circumcision! Patsy! Help!” Instead I say, “Hi, whatchadoing?”

“Sorting beads from the St. Katherine site. It’s fascinating. You know my beadmaker from the Charlotte site? Well, I’m finding her work here, too. They’re unmistakably hers from the analysis. Which means these people traded over a far greater area than we first supposed.”

“Or that the trade network was greater.” I have to smile at her. She is so intent, her eyes roving over the screen as she continues working. When she is enraptured in her archaeology like this, she suddenly looks eighteen again. There is that fierceness to her stare. I am so proud of her and all that she is. She nods her agreement. I know she is busy, but this is important. Still, I procrastinate. “Do you ever miss actually handling the beads and the artifacts?”

“Oh. Well, yes, I do. But this is still good. And the native peoples have been much more receptive to our work now that they know all the grave goods will remain in situ and relatively undisturbed. The cameras and the chem scanners can do most of the data gathering for us. But it still takes a human mind to put it all together and figure out what it means. And this way of doing it is better, both for archaeology and anthropology. Sometimes we’re too trapped in our own times to see what it all means. Sometimes we’re too close, temporally, to understand the culture. By leaving all the artifacts and bones in situ, we make it possible for later anthropologists to take a fresh look at it, with unprejudiced eyes.” She glances up at me and our eyes meet. “So. You called.”

“Patsy,” I say.

She clenches her jaw, takes a breath, and sighs it out. The intent eighteen-year-old anthro student is gone, replaced by a worried, tired mom. “The circumcision.”

“Katie, you have to stop her!”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t?” I am outraged.

She is weary. “Legally, her body is her own. Once a child is over fourteen, a parent cannot interfere in—”

“I don’t give a damn about legal—” I try to break in, but she continues doggedly.

“—any decision the child makes about her sexuality. Birth control, abortions, adopting out of children, gender reassignment, confidential medical treatment for venereal disease, plastic surgery—it’s all covered in that Freedom of Choice Act.” She gives me a woeful smile. “I supported that legislation. I never thought it would be construed like this.”

“Are you sure it covers things like this?” I ask faintly.

“Too sure. Patsy has forced me to be sure. Shall I forward all the web links to you? She has, in her typical thorough way, researched this completely . . . at least in every way that supports her viewpoint.” She shrugs helplessly. “I gave her a set of links to websites that oppose it. I don’t know if she looked at them at all. I can’t force her.”

I realized I have my hand clenched over my mouth. I pull it away. “You seem so calm,” I observe in disbelief.

For an instant, her eyes swim with tears. “I’m not. I’m just all screamed out. I’m exhausted, and she has stopped listening to me. What can I do?”

“Stop her. Any way you can.”

“Like you stopped Mike from dropping out of school?”

Even after all the years, I feel a pang of pain. I shake my head. “I did everything I could. I’d drop your brother off at the front door, I’d watch him go into the school, and he’d go right out the back door. Battling him was not doing anything for our relationship. I had to let him make that mistake. I stopped yelling at him in an effort to keep the relationship intact. At least, it saved that much.”

“Exactly,” Katie says. She stares past me at her screen, but I have broken the spell. She can no longer forget her daughter’s decision in wonder at some ancient beadmaker’s work. “I was quite calm last night. I told her that all I asked was that she always remember the decision was hers and that I completely opposed it. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Fine.’ At least this way, she’ll come back here after the damned ceremony. If she gets an infection or doesn’t stop bleeding, at least I’ll know about it and can rush her to the hospital.”

“Can you legally still do that?” I ask with bitterness that mocks, not her, but the society we live in.

“I think so.” She stops speaking and swallows. “Pray, Mom,” she begs me after a moment. “Pray that when the other girls scream, she loses her courage and runs away. That’s my last hope.”

“It’s a slim one, then. Our Patsy never lacked for guts. Brains, maybe, but not guts.” We smile at each other, pride battling with despair. “Once she’s said she’ll do a thing, she won’t back down no matter how scared she is. She’ll let that woman cut her up rather than be seen as a coward by her friends.”