“I’ve heard you use that phrase before.I’m not sure what you mean.”She said to Hawkeye, then turned and looked at Raven, too.“I’d been a woman for months before I was given to Warren.”
Hawkeye shook his head slowly.“I’m assuming that in Jericho, becoming a woman means you’ve started bleeding?”
Delilah’s face heated.She dropped her gaze to her lap and nodded.Her monthly cycle, and that she’d never even been late, had at first been a mark in her favor.Her mother had said it meant she would conceive easily.As she’d gotten older, after she was married and was expected to help during births, she’d wondered why she was never pregnant.Month after month, year after year, never a single day late.She’d been punished for it more times than she cared to recall.
Hawkeye went quiet.She didn’t want to look at him.She didn’t want to see his anger, his disgust, or whatever he was thinking.She didn’t want him to see her shame.
One finger applied gentle pressure to her chin, tilting her head up and turning her to look at Hawkeye.
“You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about, little dove.”
“I can’t do my duty.I can’t have children,” she whispered.“I’m useless as a woman.”
“No, baby, you’re not.”He shook his head slowly, never breaking eye contact with her.“That might be how things are done in Jericho, what those fuckers are teaching children, but it’s not like that everywhere.”
She tilted her head and watched him.“What do you mean?”
“Things are a little different in every state, but in all of them, no one is considered an adult until they turn eighteen.There are a lot of things you can’t do or can’t do on your own until you’re legally an adult.Getting married is usually one of those, but there are some exceptions.Some states allow marriage as young as sixteen with a parent’s consent.”
She frowned.She knew several women who had three or four babies before they turned eighteen.She couldn’t think of a single one of the girls she’d known growing up who hadn’t been married long before eighteen.And she had been the only one without at least one child.
“But I still can’t have children.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Hawkeye said.“But even if it is, it doesn’t matter.There are people who don’t care if they have kids.There are people who don’t want them and there are ways to have children, even if you can’t carry them yourself.Especially if you’re not stuck on them being genetically yours.”
Delilah frowned.“I don’t know that word.What does it mean?”
“Which one?”Hawkeye didn’t seem fazed by her question.He hadn’t acted like it was odd that she didn’t know.She liked him a little better for that, because she knew most people outside of Jericho considered her strange.She didn’t blame them.She was, and she was trying to learn how to live outside of The Calling, but it was harder than she’d anticipated.
“The one that sounded like your jeans.I can usually figure out what something means by the context but not that one.”
“My jeans?”Hawkeye frowned.
“She means genetically,” Raven said.She twisted around to look at him.
“Yes, that one.”Delilah said as she turned back to Hawkeye.“What does genetically mean?”
“It means related by blood.Your mother, father, siblings, they’re all genetic relatives.There’s more to it, but that’s the basics.If you’d like we can find more for you to read about it.”He blinked then watched her.“Do you know how to read?”
“I do.We all learned.I started teaching the younger kids when I was about ten.”
“Did you go to school at all?”
“When I was little.I was in school until I was about eleven.Then I finished school and stayed home with my mother to help with the babies and to learn how to keep house.I would only have a couple of years to learn everything I would need to know, so I had to work hard.”
Hawkeye’s gaze flicked to Raven then back to her.She didn’t know what she’d said but he didn’t like something.She hoped he would tell her what she’d done wrong.
