John Adams - Wastelands 2

We will never forget.

It’s just too bad that services are so boring.

Alice in Wonderland

Pride and Prejudice

Birds of India and Asia

Moby Dick

Morning Light

Jane Eyre

The Sun Also Rises

I sit on my cot, slowly sounding out the strange words. Of course the sun rises—what else could it do? It’s rising now outside my window, which lets in pale light, insects, and the everlasting hot wind.

“Can I see, Grandma?” Hope, naked in the doorway. I didn’t hear the door open. She could have been Gloria. And is it right for a child to see this much sin?

But already she’s snuggled beside me, smelling of sweat and grime and young life. Even her slight body makes the room hotter. All at once a memory comes to me, a voice from early childhood: Here, Anna, put ice on that bruise. Listen, that’s a—

What bruise? What was I to listen to? The memory is gone.

“M—m—m—oh—bee—Grandma, what’s a ‘moby’?”

“I don’t know, child.”

She picks up a different one. “J—j—aye—n… Jane! That’s Miss Anderson’s name! Is this book about her?”

“No. Another Jane, I think.” I open Moby Dick . Tiny, dense writing, pages and pages of it, whole burned forests of it.

“Read the sin with the picture of trees!” She roots among the books until she finds Alice in Wonderland and opens it to that impossible vision of tens, maybe hundreds, of glorious trees. Hope studies the child blessed enough to walk that flower-bordered path.

“What’s her name, Grandma?”

“Alice.” I don’t really know.

“Why is she wearing so many wraps? Isn’t she hot ? And how many days did her poor mother have to work to weave so many?”

I recognize Gloria’s scolding tone. The pages of the book are crisp, bright and clear, as if the white plastic bubble had some magic to keep sin fresh. Turning the page, I begin to read aloud. “‘Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank—’”

“She has a sister ,” Hope breathes. Nearly no one does now; so few children are carried to term and born whole.

“‘—and tired of having nothing to do: once—’”

“How could she have nothing to do? Why doesn’t she carry water or weed crops or hunt trunter roots or—”

“Hope, are you going to let me read this to you or not?”

“Yes, Grandma. I’m sorry.”

I shouldn’t be reading to her at all. Trees were cut down to make this book; my father told me so. As a young man, not long after the Crash, he himself was in service as a book sacrificer, proudly. Unlike many of his generation, my father was a moral man.

“‘—or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversation in it.’ And what is the use of a book , thought Alice, without pictures or conversation? ‘So she was considering—’”

We read while the sun clears the horizon, a burning merciless ball, and our sweat drips onto the gold-edged page. Then Gloria and Bill stir in the next room and Hope is on the floor in a flash, shoving the books under my sagging cot, running out the door to feed the chickens and hunt for their rare, precious eggs.

The rains are very late this year. Every day Gloria, scowling, scans the sky. Every day at sunset she and Bill drag themselves home, bone-weary and smeared with dust, after carrying water from the spring to the crops. The spring is in the dell, and water will not flow uphill. Gloria is also in service this year and must nurse one of the trees, wiping the poisonous dust from her share of the leaves, checking for dangerous insects. More work, more time. Some places on Earth, I was told once, have too much water, too many plants from the see-oh-too. I can’t imagine it. Island has heard from no other place since I was a young woman and the last radio failed. Now a radio would be sin.

I sit at the loom, weaving. I’m even clumsier than usual, my fingers stiff and eyes stinging. From too much secret reading, or from a high see-oh-too day? Oh, let it be from the reading!

“Grandma,” Hope says, coming in from tending the chickens. “My throat hurts.” Her voice is small; she knows.

Dear God, not now , not when the rains are already so late… But I look out the window and yes, I can see it on the western horizon, thick and brown.

“Bring in the chickens, Hope. Quick!”

She runs back outside while I hobble to the heavy shutters and wrestle them closed. Hope brings in the first protesting chicken, dumps it in her sleeping alcove, and fastens the rope fence. She races back for the next chicken as Bill and Gloria run over the fields toward the house.

Not now , when everything is so dry…

They get the chickens in, the food covered, as much water inside as can be carried. At the last moment Bill swings closed the final shutter, and we’re plunged into darkness and even greater heat. We huddle against the west wall. The dust storm hits.

Despite the shutters, the holy protection of wood, dust drifts through cracks, under the door, maybe even through chinks in the walls. The dust clogs our throats, noses, eyes. The wind rages: oooeeeeeeeooooeeeee . Shrinking beside me, Hope gasps, “It’s trying to get in!”

Gloria snaps, “Don’t talk!” and slaps Hope. Gloria is right, of course; the soot carries poisons that Island can’t name and doesn’t remember. Only I remember my father saying, “Methane and bio-weapons…”

Here, Anna, put ice on that bruise. Listen, that’s a—

A what? What was that memory?

Then Gloria, despite her slap, begins to talk. She has no choice; it’s her service year and she must pray aloud. “‘Wail, oh pine tree, for the cedar has fallen, the stately trees are ruined! Wail, oaks of Bashan, the dense forest has been cut down!’”

I want Gloria to recite a different scripture. I want, God forgive me, Gloria to shut up. Her anger burns worse than the dust, worse than the heat.

“‘The vine is dried up and the fig is withered; the pomegranate—’”

I stop listening.

Listen, that’s a—

Hope trembles beside me, a sweaty mass of fear.

The dust storm proves mercifully brief, but the see-oh-too cloud pulled behind it lasts for days. Everyone’s breathing grows harsh. Gloria and Bill, carrying water, get fierce headaches. Gloria makes Hope stay inside, telling her to sit still. I see in Gloria’s eyes the concern for her only living child, a concern that Hope is too young to see. Hope sees only her mother’s anger.

Left alone, Hope and I sin.

All the long day, while her parents work frantically to keep us alive, we sit by the light of a cracked shutter and follow Alice down the rabbit hole, through the pool of tears, inside the White Rabbit’s house, to the Duchess’s peppery kitchen. Hope stops asking questions, since I know none of the answers. What is pepper, a crocodile, a caucus race, marmalade? We just read steadily on, wishing there were more pictures, until the book is done and Alice has woken. We begin Jane Eyre : “‘There was no possibility of taking a walk that day…’”

Birds of India and Asia has gorgeous pictures, but the writing is so small and difficult that I can’t read most of it. Nonetheless, this is the book I turn to when Hope is asleep. So many birds! And so many colors on wings and backs and breasts and rising from the tops of heads like fantastic feathered trees. I wish I knew if these birds were ever real, or if they are as imaginary as Alice, as the White Rabbit, as marmalade. I wish—