Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [102]
“Gentlemen. I’d better go act like a decent hostess and see if we’re going to have any ice cream,” she said. Frank reached out to snag the empty bottle out of her left hand and press a full one into it.
“We are sinking deep in sin,” she sang quietly as she walked past Mary Edna with a Serpent in each hand, heading down toward the barn to check on the progress of the ice cream crankers. She felt a tightness in her lower abdomen, not from the elderberry wine but from something else, a body sensation she recognized but couldn’t place. She’d been feeling it all day—a fullness, not really unpleasant but distracting, and a constant small twinge on the left side of her belly. And then it came to her, just as she spied the bald pate of an enormous whole moon rising above the roof of the barn. Of course. What she felt was her cycle coming back. She’d been on the pill for years, since college, but she’d tossed out the pink dial-pack several weeks ago when she finally made herself clear Cole’s toothbrush and shaving things out of the bathroom. Now, after years spent suppressed in hibernation, her ovaries were waking up and kicking in. No wonder the men were fluttering around her like moths: she was fertile. Lusa let out a rueful laugh at life’s ridiculous persistence. She must be trailing pheromones.
Halfway down the hill, Jewel’s five-year-old flew into her legs, causing her to spill wine on herself and nearly lose her footing.
“Good grief, Lowell, what is it?”
“Crys made me cut my leg!” he wailed, pointing frantically. “It’s bleeding! I need a Band-Aid.”
“Let me see.” She sat down on the ground, set both her bottles firmly into the grass, rolled up Lowell’s pants leg, and scrutinized the unbroken skin for damage. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s the other leg,” came a weary voice through the darkness. It was Crys, trudging up the hill after her brother. “He scratched it on a nail in the barn cellar.”
Lusa was flustered by the child’s hysteria. To calm both him and herself she held him in her lap while she examined his other leg. She found a scratch on the ankle, but it hadn’t even broken through the second layer of epidermis. Definitely no blood. “You’re OK,” she said, hugging him tightly. She picked up his leg and kissed it. “This will heal before your wedding.”
Crys flopped onto the ground beside Lusa. “Did he say it was all my fault?”
“No, he did not.”
“Well, he will. That’s what he’ll tell Mama. But I didn’t ask him to climb under the barn with me. I told him not to. I told him he’s a tattletale sissy and he always gets hurt and cries.”
“I am not a tattletale sissy!” wailed Lowell.
“Shhh,” Lusa said, putting an arm around Crys’s shoulders while Lowell quieted to an occasional racking sob in her lap. He clung to Lusa endearingly, clutching her around the waist with his small hands. “Nothing’s anybody’s fault,” she said. “It’s hard to have a big sister who can do everything in the world. Lowell just wants to try to keep up with you, honey.”
Crys shrugged off Lusa’s arm without a word.
“Lordy, is that my Lowell hollering?” It was Jewel calling out from behind them, sounding worried.
“We’re OK,” Lusa called back. “Down here by the barn. Wounded in action but headed for recovery, I think.”
Jewel appeared and sat down heavily on the grass, reaching out to stroke Lowell’s forehead. He practically leapt from Lusa’s lap into his mother’s embrace. Crys stood up and disappeared.
“He just got a little scratch,” Lusa reported. “He was trying to climb around in the barn with his sister. No B-L-O-O-D, but I’ve got Band-Aids in the bathroom upstairs if you think that would help the patient’s morale.”
“Who wants ice cream?” a female voice beckoned through the darkness—one of Lois and Rickie’s teenaged daughters, Lusa guessed. The two of them had taken