Chapter 14 Crystal
The radio crackled at oh-five-fifteen on day fifteen.
I was in the kitchen tent. Mark was at the wash basin.
Tess was at the stove. Brecca was at the corner cot with Sebastian.
Sebastian was three weeks old this morning and had finally started sleeping through a four-hour stretch and Brecca had been carrying him to the kitchen tent at dawn so Rael could sleep, and Rael was sleeping for the first time in his year-long southern integration tour because Rael had come home four days ago, on day eleven, when the radio had confirmed the team was alive at the Urbana approach.
Auriel was on Tess's hip.
Auriel had said eh twice this morning. Tess was convinced Auriel was trying to say Drew. Tess might have been right. Tess might have been a mother projecting onto a six-month-old. Either was the true that nobody was going to test.
The radio crackled.
I went to the radio.
Loren was at the radio. Loren had been at the radio for eight hours every morning since the team had left.
Loren had been at the radio at oh-five-hundred this morning because Sylvia had told us, on the long-radio last night, that the convoy was running ahead of schedule and would hit Springfield by oh-six-hundred and would call from the cache.
Sylvia's voice on the radio. Sylvia.
"Mojave. Mojave. This is the convoy. We are at Springfield.
Cache is intact. All hands present. Repeat: all hands present.
Convoy has the team plus Veron, Lucian defector from the Tyvor-southern cohort, anti-Tyvor for six years, integration request pending, plus twenty-one returnees from Urbana.
Eighteen alive, three deceased. Deceased: Mara, taken to the truck-bed for burial at Mojave.
Two children from the Urbana cohort lost to the fever before our arrival.
One Free-the-Children fighter, Patrick, taken alive by Hess-cell, presumed alive, location unknown.
Patrick is the next operation. Hess is dead. Cora kissed his."
A pause.
"Hess is dead. Cora drew blood. Drew took the blade. Drew is healing. Sylvia speaking. Crystal. Crystal, are you there."
I keyed the radio.
"Sylvia. Crystal here."
"Crystal."
"Sylvia."
"Crystal. Mara. Mara held the wall for forty minutes with a fever of a hundred and three.
She killed five. She bought Nina an hour.
She bought the kids the boiler room. She knew she was sick.
She went down on her terms. Nina was there.
Nina has been carrying the words for Cora to bring you.
Cora has them. Cora is going to tell you when we are home.
I am telling you now because the words are coming home and you have a week to get ready and I wanted you to know. "
I sat down on the floor of the radio tent.
Loren put his hand on my shoulder.
I sat.
I cried.
I did not cry for ninety seconds. The ninety seconds had been the body-habit.
The crying went past the ninety. The crying was the crying of a woman whose oldest friend in the alliance had been killed at her post and had earned a death-on-her-terms and had bought the rescue with her own body, and whose oldest friend's body was now in the second truck under a tarp and would be home in nine days and would be in the ground under the rosemary by Easter.
I cried.
Mark sat beside me.
Brecca came in with Sebastian on her shoulder. Brecca sat on the other side of me. She did not say anything. She held the baby. The baby was asleep.
After a long time I keyed the radio.
"Sylvia."
"Crystal."
"Tell me about my daughter."
Sylvia's voice was the medic-voice.
"Deedee is on the bench seat of the lead truck with Cora at the wheel and Drew in the passenger seat.
She is awake. She is sleeping in two-hour stretches because the fever broke three days ago and she is still recovering.
She is eating. She had oatmeal for breakfast. The dried oats Cora pre-cached at Springfield, with the honey Cora pre-cached at Springfield.
Deedee said Cora this morning before she said anything else.
She has said Drew once. She has not yet said Mama.
She has not asked for you yet. I think she is waiting to ask in person. "
I did not say anything.
I closed my eyes.
I sat on the floor of the radio tent with Mark on one side of me and Brecca on the other and Sebastian asleep on Brecca's shoulder and Loren at the radio table above me and Auriel.
Tess had brought Auriel into the tent now, Auriel was on Tess's hip again.
Auriel was on the inside of the tent, twelve feet away, watching us.
Auriel said: "Eh."
Tess said, gentle: "Yes, baby."
Auriel said: "Eh-eh."
Tess said: "Yes."
I opened my eyes.
I keyed the radio.
I said:
"Sylvia."
"Crystal."
"Tell Cora. Tell Cora I want to know how Mara died.
Word for word. When we are home. Tell Drew I want to thank him in person.
Tell the team I will be at the gate on the morning of day twenty-four.
Tell Deedee. Tell Deedee her mother loves her.
Tell her her mother has been waiting. Tell her her mother slept the night Drew got on the team and has been sleeping since. "
"Crystal."
"Yes."
"I will tell them all of that. Crystal. Cora has something to tell you when she gets in.
About the count. About the name. About a thing Drew told her on a bridge in Missouri.
About what happened in the bathroom at Urbana the morning we left.
I am not going to relay those things on the radio.
They are for in person. But you should know that the things are coming.
Cora is bringing them. She is bringing them with her. "
"Sylvia."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"You are welcome."
"Sylvia."
"Yes."
"Bring her home."
"I will."
The radio went quiet.
I sat on the floor.
Mark held my hand.
Brecca held the baby.
Tess held Auriel.
Loren stood at the radio table. He had not said anything during the call.
He had let me have the call. Now he came down off the table-step and sat on the floor with us, and Kiera came in from the perimeter and sat with us, and Cassi came in from her morning run with Elena and sat with us, and Elena.
Elena, who had been doing the camp's morning walk by herself for the last three weeks.
Elena came in last and stood at the tent door and looked at us and said:
"Crystal."
"Elena."
"My daughter brings them home."
She did not always say sentences. When she said them, they were the kind of sentences a woman said who had been in a tank farm for three years and had spent the last two recovering the use of her voice. The sentences came when they came. When they came, they were the sentences that mattered.
Cassi was crying. Elena had said my daughter which she had not yet said in two years.
I stood up.
I went to Elena.
I held her.
She held me.
She had not held anyone of her own accord since they had pulled her out of the tank farm.
The arms came up slowly, the way arms came up in a body that had spent two years figuring out where the arms went.
The arms wrapped around my back. The hands found my shoulder blades.
Her chin came down on my shoulder. Her breath was slow and shallow and steady, the breath of a woman who had learned to breathe again in the last six months, and the breath was warm on my neck and the warm of her breath against the cool of the kitchen tent canvas behind me was the temperature-line that meant Elena was here, alive, in the room, holding me.
She said: "My daughter brings them home, Crystal."
I said: "Yes."
She said: "Yours too."
I said: "Yes."
She said: "Mine is bringing yours."
I said: "Yes."
She said: "That is a thing."
I said: "Yes."
She held me for a long time.
She had not held me for two years.
Cassi was watching us. Cassi's arms were across her own ribs the way Cassi did when she was holding something inside her chest that she had not yet decided whether to let out.
Cassi had been the keeper of Elena for two years.
Cassi had been the one who sat with Elena every morning at the cot when Elena had been silent.
Cassi had been the one who had said Mama to Elena three hundred times before Elena had said Cassi back.
Cassi had been counting the words Elena said the way Cora counted bottles.
I had counted alongside Cassi in my head for two years.
Today Elena had said three sentences in a row.
Cassi knew the count.
I knew the count.
Elena did not know about the count. Elena would have hated the count if she had known.
Elena was the woman who, three months into the camp at Mojave, had picked up a kitchen knife and started chopping onions because somebody had to and had chopped onions every morning since.
The onions had been her recovery. The onions had not been measured.
The onions had been the work. The sentences were like the onions, except slower. The sentences came when they came.
Today they came.
Today they came three in a row.
Today Cassi was crying at the tent door and Elena had three sentences inside her and was using them on me, on Crystal, on the woman whose daughter Elena's daughter was bringing home.
I held Elena.
I held her for as long as she would let me.
She let me hold her for a count of forty-eight in my head before her arms began to lower.
I knew because I had counted. I had not meant to.
I had counted because Cora had taught me to count and Cassi had taught me to count and the whole camp had been counting Elena's sentences and Elena's onions and Elena's footsteps to the kitchen tent for two years, and counting was the way the camp knew Elena was still here.
Her arms lowered.
She stepped back.
She looked at me.
She said: "Crystal."
"Yes."
"I am going to sit down."
"Yes."