All Good Children Page 26
There are no Over outside the maternity house. The women in varying degrees of their pregnancies prefer this. Though there is always—always—one of them present at the birth.
June stands up from the table. Their neighbors to the right are playing a board game. One of them cries out—“Yahtzee!”—and laughs in a displeasing manner. June says to Omalis, “Thanks for coming by.”
Omalis stands up, smoothes out her skirt. She reaches a hand to shake June’s, smiling. When June takes her hand, the smile drops, and Omalis’s grip tightens like a vise. She pulls June close. Her eyes have changed color—or only deepened to a startling near-black.
“They’re dying, June.” She says this low, mouth barely moving, the words rumbling from her throat like thunder. “Jordan is killing them. She will kill them. Just wait. Wait.”
She lets go of June’s hand and falls hard to her chair. June stumbles back and rubs at her palm. Omalis sits for a second or two, a hand pressed to her throat, looking at the tablecloth. Then she looks up, blinking. “Oh,” she says. She stands. “I’m sorry. You have to go, don’t you? Don’t want to keep that kind girl waiting.”
June forces her mouth closed. She squints at Omalis, then holds a hand above her eyes to pretend it’s only the sun. She nods. “Mm, yes. Duty calls.”
“You’re doing a good thing here, June,” Omalis tells her, stepping around the table. “Jeremy and Jay—it’s not the best of circumstances, but they’re happy. They’ll find a kind of happiness again. And all these girls, what you’re doing for them. Your loss is great, but…it means something. I do hope you know that.”
June looks at Omalis. Her eyes have faded back to their sky blue. “I miss them,” she says.
Omalis squeezes June’s shoulder with so much compassion June almost weeps. Omalis smiles again, sad, picks up her purse from the table and adjusts it over her shoulder. “I’ll come back next week. Behave until then.”
June had never invited Omalis here; she only showed up that first week and June never told her to leave. Breathlessly, June waves goodbye, watches her round to the front of the main house and disappear.
A near-weightless croquet ball rolls across June’s feet. Beverley Niece—eighteen, three months along for the second time—jogs over to retrieve it, stringing soft apologies behind her. June pays her no attention. She is looking in through the slightly open French doors, to the just-visible side of one of the Over standing around the corner.
It just stands there, night and day, unmoving. If Omalis can be believed, some day—maybe soon—it will cease to breathe.
And June will be there to hear it.