talking, careless. And brake lights down the street as a ute even older than mine, a white Ford, backed out of a tight spot.
I ran. He shot forward at a not-sharp-enough angle, and I heard the crunch as he hit the bumper of the car ahead. He didn’t stop, just backed again, and I was almost there. I grabbed the edge of the bed and saw his reflection in the rearview mirror. A face made of angles, cheekbones and jaw and chin. Dark hair.
I saw his eyes.
He shot forward again and into the street, swerving violently, sending me sprawling. An angry, panicked hoot and the screech of brakes, and I scrambled back out of the traffic.
He was gone.
Daisy
When we got home after our errands, Fruitful went to take the first shower, and Obedience and I got to work cooking for tomorrow, since the afternoon was going to be busy enough, and maybe because … because I wanted to make Gray something special.
Well, anyway. We were cooking. I was using my hands to mix ground venison, bulgur wheat, onion, anchovies, and seasonings, and Obedience was chopping dates for a sticky-date pudding. I had music on, because it made me feel a bit more normal, a bit less like I was in a stranger’s house with two sisters who were nearly strangers themselves, with no car and no flat and with my normally controlled life careening dangerously close to out of control.
Obedience said, staring down at her dates, “People were looking at me today.”
“Yes,” I said, keeping on with my squishy mixing and adding a bit more garlic powder. Men liked garlic. “People do look at other people, and you’re pretty.”
She didn’t look up.
I said, “It’s all right to be pretty. It’s all right to stand out. You can think of it as a gift from God, if you like. We all have gifts.” Obedience was, in fact, the prettiest of all of us. Her dark eyes were huge, her eyebrows winged, her features delicate, her hair wavy and colored a rich chestnut. She had more curves than Fruitful or me, too, even at sixteen, and she was the tallest.
She said, “That isn’t why they were looking. It’s because I was wearing your dress, and … you know. My legs being so … odd.”
“What?” I said. “Your legs are pretty.” Which they were.
“No.” She was flushing a little, measuring flour and sugar, not looking at me. “Nobody else has hair on them. I saw, because they were all wearing such short … things. Shorts and skirts. Showing their legs. Only men have hair, except for Fruitful and me. Are we … deformed, at Mount Zion? Is something wrong with our … inner parts? Our hormones?”
I laughed out loud, and when she looked stricken, I said, “Sorry, love. No. You’re not deformed. Women usually remove the hair from their legs and underarms. Men do their chests sometimes, too. They shave them, or they wax the hair off.”
She was staring at me now. “They do not,” she breathed.
Fruitful came out of the bath, crutching along in my dressing gown with her hair wrapped in a towel, and took a seat at the island as if she did it every day. “They do not what?” she asked.
“Daisy says men shave their chests, Outside,” Obedience said. “So they look like boys. And women shave their legs.”
“You’re in for more of a shock than that,” I said. “Some women shave or wax their vulva, take all the hair off, or most of it.” And when they did nothing but stare at me, I threw caution to the winds and said, “Their genital area. That’s what it’s called. Your vulva. I do that myself, the waxing. I like it because it feels more sensitive, and that’s an area where it’s nice to be sensitive. Most women at least get rid of some hair there, and so do men. Looks nicer. Neater.”
“No, they don’t,” Fruitful said. “That’s not possible. It’s … not having hair would look like you’re not a woman yet. Why would you want to do that?” She didn’t address the rest of it.
“You saw me,” I reminded them. “In the shower. And you saw Gray without his shirt as well.”
“I thought you had an accident,” Obedience said. “Or were ill, maybe. Or something. And that Gray was … that he’s …” She blushed deeper.
“She means that he’s dark-skinned,” Fruitful said. “And maybe that she’s ashamed she looked. It’s all right to look,” she told Obedience. “Daisy