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The sterile wives of Padia
7:25 a.m.., Friday, Mar. 23, 2007
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In the mountains of Eduhar, there is a town called Alicia. The people that live there are dying.
It used to be you could cross over from the sunny sided hills to greener pastures. Now you see only rot. And ruin.
Far below, in the valley, there is Pelling. A small city that most have never heard of. It's where Anna Rheem met the man who would be her husband. A John. That was in nineteen fifty seven. He was a day laborer at the quarry. She, the budding daughter of Trace and Bill Beddington.
Their romance was swift. Neither earth shattering nor orgasmic. They were married on the grass just outside of town. It came at the urging of her father. He being wise in the ways of the young and their hormones, preferred his grandchildren be born in wedlock.
Not long after, her John read a notice that had been posted on the wall in the men's room of the tavern that he most usually visited before coming home from work.
There was to be a new mill. Up the mountain. A lumber and paper mill.
John wanted in. Even if the work was hazardous. It would be worth it. The lumber company was building a small community for the workers and their families. They would have a house. Anna and the offspring would be well cared for.
There were many tearful goodbyes, as Anna and her John packed their few belongings and joined the caravan that would carry them up the mountain.
Anna noticed the others were all couples as well. All very young. Most newly wed.
The house was small but comfortable. With two bedrooms. Anna wondered what would happen if they had more than two children. But she kept her worries to herself. The house had electricity, plumbing and gas for heat after all. And a nice little yard. With a little white picket fence out front.
It seemed her John had made an excellent choice.
In the mornings, the bus would arrive, as if to collect children for school. But this one had no writing on the sides and drove away with grown men.
Anna spent that first day alone, as did all the other wives left behind. There was nesting to be done. Things to be unwrapped. Things to be place just so, wherever it was decided they belonged. In this new home.
In the evenings, the bus would return. The men all sweaty and amorous. Food would be served and beer downed. Beds would be messed.
Life would be good.
The next day, Anna ventured out. As did most of the other wives. They stood out in the sunshine on lawns shaking one another's hands and talking. Stories were shared, life history's and heartbreak and how they missed their families.
By the time the bus returned though, they were all right back in their cozy little rooms.
As time passed, the women began to think of themselves as a community. Akin to a very small town. So none took it lightly when a small sign was erected one day, next to the road that led out up to the mill. It read: Alicia
After the daughter of the man that owned the mill.
Taken at face value, it seemed a small slight. To live under the name of a girl that none of them had ever met. But it smelled of arrogance and they resented it. So they chose to pretend it had never happened. Instead they made up a name of their own. Padia
After the matronly saint of sisterhood.
The men worked six days a week. The seventh was reserved for the Sabbath. All were expected to attend services at the Church of the Divine God, at eleven o'clock sharp.
And all of them did. Each attired in their very best dress. Each man, freshly shaved. Just like in the good ole days.
And so life went on. The women of Padia grew to know one another very well. They formed cliques and excluded those who didn't quite fit in. They cooked and cleaned and made up rumors and quashed others at a dizzying pace.
All while waiting for the children to arrive.
It began to grow colder. The summer ended. Fall began. Which was itself taken over by winter. Surely by spring some of them would be wearing maternity clothes.
But they weren't. Not a one.
By early summer, the men had taken to avoiding looking one another in the face.
In July, a doctor was brought in.
The news was very difficult to swallow.
Chemicals from the paper mill had seeped into the water they all drank. It had collected inside of them and made them sterile.
The women. Not the men.
Permanently. The chemicals had destroyed some vital part of them. Something that could not be cured.
In the beginning there were tears. Just tears at the awful truth. They were still female it seemed, but no longer women. Never would they bear children. Any of them. Never would they hold a baby in their arms. Or nurse. Never would they wake to that sound that women for eons have come to know as cries of desperate need. For them.
Then there was anger. At the lumber company, their husbands, themselves for being such easy victims. But the lumber company was beyond reach. The pay was increased to make up for the loss, but their wasn't much else they could do. The husbands were just as confused. And gone. Most of the day.
Leaving the only target for their anger, each other.
What had once seemed annoying in a neighbor, now seemed unacceptable. What had once been amusing, now was congestive.
They began to pick at one another. At first, with only words. Small nibbles at each others core.
Then violence. Short physical confrontations. Slapping, biting and a lot of tearing of skin with fingernails.
Some of the women demanded a return to the city.
But there was the matter of those contracts that had been signed. And not just by the men. The lumber company had made the women sign too.
Five years is a very long time when you have nothing to do but stew.
By winter, most of the women stayed in their houses all day. It was cold out. Bitter. And sometimes dangerous. The lumber company had installed a big satellite dish right next to the grocery store. Every house in Alicia, now had an antenna on the roof and three whole channels on their brand new black and white television sets. They'd also put up a radio tower so everyone could listen to news and music from the city in the valley below. And there were rumors that there would soon be telephones.
But, like steam in a closed kettle, there is bound to be an explosion sooner or later.
It came in the spring. After the snow melted.
Some of the women still refused to come out.
After some very serious undercover investigational work, it was discovered that there were babies now, in some of those houses.
The ones without, were certainly confused.
It took some doing, but the truth finally came out. Over the winter, some couples had managed to sneak their way down the mountain, slip into the city, grab somebody's child, and had then made their way back up to their homes.
Deals were struck. But they only lasted a short while. Offers were made. Some pleaded, some begged. Others tried to snatch the children away so as to claim them as their own.
But in the end, it was war.
Men beating men. Women with knives. People dying.
Babies crying.
The lumber company hired men from outside to try to make some peace. But they soon grew caught up in the shared plight.
In the end, there was nobody left to get on the bus in the morning. Nobody left to meet in the afternoons.
The echo of voices against the mountainsides faded and disappeared.
The lumber company, tiring of all the fuss, closed down and moved to another place. To exploit people of another race.
And all that's left of Padia, is the tears the women left behind.
Sometimes, you can feel it, in the early morning rain. Or hear their sobbing, in the wind.
But you'd have to go there.
But no one ever does.