Eleven kids contacted relatives on the Net. Only one, Amy, had a parent still alive, but the other nine found brothers or sisters. Susan, Amy, Rebecca, and Jon had train tickets booked for them, and Hannah had an actual airline ticket, worth more than the entire farm income for a year. Scott had driven them in the bus to the train station at Wenton, and they had disappeared into the vast disorganized mess that was the United States transport system. Theresa hoped they would each reach his or her destination, that they would stay in touch as long as the farm computer held out, and that she would never see any of them again.
The other six—Julie, Bonnie, Sophie, Jason, Mike, and Derek — had located siblings that could not afford to send for them. Theresa had already explained that there was not enough money to buy them train tickets. She had found them all jobs, the boys as laborers and the pregnant girls as clerks in town. They would work a few months in return for room, board, and a train ticket “home.” They, too, had gone on the bus to Wenton.
That left eight kids with nowhere to go: Madison, Sajelle, Jessica, Emily, Alex, Rafe (whose older brother had recently died), and Sam. And Lillie.
The boys weren’t really a problem; they could bring more land under cultivation, free Theresa’s sons for more skilled work. Strong young backs would earn their own keep, and then some. It was the five pregnant girls that Theresa and Senni had argued about. “Five now, and how many later?” Senni demanded. Her lusterless hair straggled around her thin face. “Scott Wilkins says each of those girls is carrying triplets!”
“What do you want me to do, Senni? Abandon them on the range to die?”
“Find them jobs in Wenton, like the others!”
“It was tough enough finding town jobs for the other three girls. I had to call in every favor we owe.”
“On their behalf. Strangers.”
“Not to me.”
“What do you think the boys are going to say when they find five pregnant teenagers here? Eating our food and whelping God-knows-what… what do you think the people in Wenton are going to say?”
Theresa went silent. Bonnie, Julie, and Sophie would all have left Wenton before their pregnancies began to show. That was part of the bargain that Theresa, hating herself for having to negotiate with bewildered and frightened children, had insisted on. Wenton, like most small towns now, was pretty conservative. It was a survival trait. People supported each other, helped each other, protected each other. The other side of that was conformity, provincialism, distrust of anything strange. Nothing could be stranger than Madison, Sajelle, Jessica, Emily, and Lillie. Unless it was their fetuses.
“Senni,” Theresa said, and merely saying her daughter’s name brought welling up all the love and frustration Theresa felt for this most difficult of her four living children. All her life, Senni had hurled herself against circumstances. Almost always, she’d lost. Theresa’s heart ached for her.
“Senni, I know what people in Wenton are going to say. Even if Madison and Jessie… you know. But I can’t help it. Don’t you see… there’s nothing I can do. All my choices are bad. I can’t send them someplace else because there is no other place for them. I can’t throw them out to die. I can’t do anything but keep them and try to muddle on. All of us, getting through.”
“And I don’t have a vote.”
It always came down to this, with Senni. “No,” Theresa said wearily, “you don’t. I still run this farm, which means I still make the decisions. Not you, not the boys. That’s the way it is.”
“Fine,” Senni said, with the triumphant coldness of having forced her mother into the role of bully. Which of course left Senni as the innocent victim. “You get your way, Mother. They stay.”
Theresa let Senni have the last word. God, she was grateful that her sons all had more easy-going temperaments. They might not like having the kids here, especially Carlo, given to fits of religion. But they wouldn’t fight her.
That left only the fight with Madison and Jessica, which also took place in the barn. The old horse dozed in his stall, and the half-feral cat, Pablum (never was a cat more inappropriately named) toyed with a maimed rat in the corner. Theresa hoped that Madison, fastidious, didn’t notice the rat.
Madison said, “Tess, I mean it. I want an abortion.”
“Me, too,” said Jessica.
“I told you, it’s not that simple,” Theresa said patiently. “One more time… this is not the world you left. Abortion is illegal again. Too many Christians decided that all our troubles were caused by Godless practices, starting with Roe v. Wade.”
“With who?” Jessica said.
Madison said, “You also told us that laws don’t count for much any more, because there’s nobody to enforce them.”
True enough. Theresa, Senni, and the boys had learned to defend what was theirs. All of them could shoot. Ammunition was a high priority on her yearly budget. And as arable land shifted in their favor, there could only be more “refugees” to defend against.
She heard Senni’s voice jeering in her head: “So why shoot them and not this lot? Same thing.”
“Yes, Madison, there’s nobody to enforce laws. Mostly. But there’s also nobody to perform abortions. You already argued with Scott, and he absolutely refuses.”
“He’s too interested in the monsters we’re supposed to give birth to,” Jessica sneered. “Wants to take apart their genes. No way. Not me. Let Emily and Sajelle and Lillie be his own private genetic experiments. Shit, Sajelle probably will love having his wrinkled old hands on her.”
Madison ignored Jessica. “I don’t believe there’s no place in Wenton or Amarillo to get an abortion! I just don’t believe it! My mother told me that abortions were illegal when her mother was a girl and people got them anyway!”
When Madison’s grandmother was a girl. A hundred and ten years ago.
Jessica said, “If you don’t help us, Theresa, I’ll do it to myself.”
“You’d kill yourself.”
“Maybe.” Jessica smirked. The girl knew there was no way Theresa would let her do it to herself, or to Madison.
“I wish you weren’t so damn maternal!” Cole had once yelled at Theresa when they’d been fighting about how little time she gave him since Jody and Carlo were born. It hadn’t been a happy marriage.
“Please, Tess,” Madison whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “I can’t go through with this birth. I just can’t.”
And Theresa had given in, out of God-knew-what twisted reasons. Pity. Friendship. Jealousy. Practicality. Fear. So now she sat on the hard bench of the primitive cart Spring had made, behind a wheezing horse, going to the train at Wenton and then on to Amarillo to find Lillie an uncle and Madison an abortionist.
“Why is the town called ‘Wenton’?” Lillie asked. The sun was rising, gold and pink, above the endless plains.
“Because we just ‘went on’,” Theresa said. “It’s not a real town, just a stop on the railroad that was routed through here after the climate shifts made these parts of New Mexico and west Texas better for ranching and farming. The global warming—” She saw that Lillie again wasn’t listening.
Just in time, Theresa stopped the cart. Lillie leaned over the side and threw up.
Only she and Emily had morning sickness. Lillie’s was worse. Scott said it was normal (Theresa had never been sick during her pregnancies, except for Carlo) and might go away after the first trimester. The fetuses, as far as he could tell with the equipment with him, were all healthy and thriving. Jessica was right about one thing: Scott was intensely interested in the pribir children’s children. It was the reason he stayed on. Not even Senni objected to that. Already townspeople had heard there was a doctor in the area. Three people had come for treatment, paying Scott (and the farm) in livestock or Net credit.