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Show Moon - 236 I tell them a little about my teaching, my life with Josh, whom they met only briefly. They didn't come to our wedding, saying something about not liking oppressive institutions. I tell them about Windfall and a little about my journey. It's awkward to describe, for I can't come out and say, "Hey, I took this trip because I kept waking up thinking I should kill myself." "Why did you get married?" Caleb asks, his serious face screwed into a frown, the way he gets when he's going to be intellectual. "Why shouldn't I have?" "It makes women the property of men." Lee leans toward his older brother, the look of eager argument upon him. This,T think, is how they enjoy each other. Long debates, someone to push against, a play of rhetoric and theory, the realm of feelings carefully avoided. "Marriage has to exist," Lee says, "to protect the children." Caleb looks at me with his calm green eyes and says, "But it's too late for you to have children." I place my hand on my belly and smile, for he might be wrong about that. My brothers don't notice, for they've again locked eyes with one another, eager to get on with the debate. A heat rises from my chest into my face. I think of holding in my arms a tiny girl sucking and tugging at me, spitting up, pulling at my hair with her little hands. For a brief moment, I allow myself to see that I want this more than anything I have imagined. My mother seems too far away to speak to now. How I wish I could ask her: Can you divine a baby inside me like an underground stream? Are you glad for me? Afraid? It's been a long time since I read those books in New York and learned I was a victim of the white male system in which motherhood keeps us enslaved. This was a |