Swarm by Lauren Carter

wild mint. She took it, stepped back into the house.
    â€œThe floor’s wet,” she said as I followed her. I stopped in the kitchen doorway and saw the prints from her bare feet appear across the linoleum and quickly fade away. Kneeling beside an aluminum bucket, she scrubbed at the tile with a bunched-up rag. Elastics around her forearms held her shirtsleeves up. One arm stretched across her breasts, holding them in place. Tendrils of black hair curled around her face, drawn in concentration.
    â€œYou’re busy.”
    â€œThe house is filthy. It’s always filthy.”
    I stepped back into the hallway. “Where’s the baby?” She didn’t answer so I walked from room to room, looking.
    Stretched across the baby’s cheek, the red mark looked like a wing. Her eyes fluttered open and closed and she smacked her lips, the bottom one marked by a white worm of skin where it was chapped. Carefully, I lifted her small, warm body off the quilt pushed into a blue recycling box and carried her to the kitchen, her tiny, hard head cupped in one palm. Her left arm pinwheeled and she released a puff of air. Standing at the counter, Shannon filled the kettle from a plastic jug and brought it to the electric stove, fuelled by power from their solar panels although the battery banks are beginning to corrode. Still, I’m jealous because all I have is fire. Dirty, slow to heat up. I cooed to the baby, brought her face closer to mine.
    â€œDon’t wake her,” Shannon said as she spooned a powder of roasted dandelion root into a mug. A green cabbage, small, not even ripe, sat on the counter.
    â€œYours are ready?” I asked, although I knew they weren’t, that she’d harvested it early.
    â€œThat’s what Sarah told me to do,” Shannon said, turning to face me. She pulled open her shirt to show the wrinkled edge of a cabbage leaf sticking out of her yellowed bra. The skin on her chest was flushed red. “It isn’t working. Big surprise.”
    â€œMaybe it takes time.”
    I cooed at the sleepy baby and she said again, her voice edged with warning: “Don’t wake her.”
    Light shone through the clean windowpanes. The bulrushes that Eric had cut were in a bunch on the counter, their tops lopped off and the outer green peeled away. The white had started turning brown. I didn’t want to ask for them, despite Mr. Bobiwash’s offer.
    Steam lifted around Shannon’s head as she filled a mug. From outside I heard Eric and Graham calling to each other through the fields. The sounds of a game, a pretend battle, or negotiations over a job they had to do. As she carried the imitation coffee to the table I thought of telling her about you, but her face was grim, deep lines bracketing her mouth. I stayed quiet, leaning against the door frame, the baby a weight in my arms. She sat down and I realized she hadn’t made a drink for me.
    â€œWhat else did Sarah say?”
    â€œNothing,” Shannon said and blew on the surface of her drink. She stared into the corner at a crate of empty jars, ready for autumn preserves, their glass walls dusty from storage. “Jack thinks it’s just a rash. Just a temporary thing.” Her gaze slid over to me and stopped on the baby. “But it’s so fucking red it’s like a bull’s-eye.”
    â€œHe’s worried about you.” In my voice, I heard the argument, the pitch of imploring, and I thought of my dad—trying, over and over again, to convince him it would be all right, that we’d be okay without the farm, and how nothing I said ever seemed to help him. He was sunk inside himself, imprisoned. I couldn’t help him and I couldn’t help Shannon either. Suddenly I felt very tired and refocused on the baby, that child, you, all our new beginnings. They needed such care, such cautious attention, lest we poison them with our old diseases. I thought of leaving, backing out