“She decided we needed to band together and rid ourselves of men so that our abilities to self-conceive would reawaken. Men had come in and made us reliant on them, and we began to believe that it was just the way of things. But maybe, within the right environment, our bodies could remember again. There are animals that reproduce parthenogenetically when they’re in captivity without proximity to males. In our case, Margaret said, it would be a similar mechanism, but a freeing from captivity.” She smiled. “Such a bold mind on her. Listening to her talk was like nothing else.”
I’d never seen the Homestead from this angle before. The women existing without the influence of men. Bellanger had always been such a prominent figure, standing there in that blazing white lab coat. “That’s how you started the Homestead?” I asked.
“Back then, everyone knew someone who was part of the back-to-the-land movement. I had a little stretch of land in Vermont that my parents left me, and so I proposed to Margaret that we move there. The least I could do was support her with whatever resources I had. Margaret had the vision, I had the means. A classic pairing, don’t you think?”
“How did you find the others to join you?” Cate asked.
“Oh, they found us and we found them. Girls from other communes, mostly, and girls on the run from abusive men. I was the one who organized these things, but I wasn’t charismatic. I know that about myself. I’m always getting in my own way.” She touched her hair with her free hand, suddenly selfconscious. “I tried to keep quiet. It was your mother who wooed the others. She made it seem so possible. She was our North Star.”
The secret boldness of my mother’s curiosity overwhelmed me for a second. If I hadn’t grown up poring over Bellanger’s letters, if I hadn’t seen my own body as proof in the mirror every morning, would I have known it was possible?
“At first it was the start of something new and wonderful. We were on our way to bringing this impossible plan to fruition. We lasted about six months like that. Six beautiful months. Six painful months. No men—oh, we saw to that. But no babies. All that hope with nowhere to go. We weren’t taking care of ourselves. Some girls were fasting or using drugs. Taking herbal concoctions that nearly killed us. Angela had to go to the emergency room. They assumed she was just some poor hippie, strung out. We were all getting discouraged. We’d known it wouldn’t be easy, but this was too much.”
Outside the windows, the ruffling breeze scraped through the trees, a low-hanging branch tapping against the glass.
“Margaret was more and more insistent that we had to rely on solid research if we wanted to get our babies. She could be so stubborn. I loved her for it, and hated her for it too sometimes. She believed that we needed to reach out to scientists and ask for professional advice. Some of us strongly disagreed, particularly since many of these scientists were men. I said, ‘A little strange, isn’t it, asking men to help a group of women rid the world of the male persuasion?’”
Cate gave a little huff of agreement. I felt myself gently disconnect from the two of them; I’d never fully envisioned a world without men. There was this huge thing they shared that I didn’t, setting me apart. I pulled my thigh away, crossing my legs, and Cate gave me a quick glance I couldn’t decipher.
“But when your mother had an idea, she wouldn’t let it go, and I trusted her. So Margaret wrote to Joseph Bellanger. A former up-and-comer kicked out of medical school. Maybe that made him more open to us, as crazy as we sounded. I think he reminded Margaret of Pincus, because of his controversial experimentation with rats and sheep. When Bellanger’s colleagues heard that he was aspiring to move on to human experimentation, he was ejected from his school and blacklisted from the official ranks of the scientific community. It unsettled me. Margaret just took it as proof that he had ambition. He could be exactly what we needed him to be: a scientist who didn’t follow convention. He had nothing to lose by working with us.”
I’d always loved the vision of Bellanger as a maverick, an outcast bold enough to defy the meek rules of society and alter history itself. Apparently my mother had felt the same way about him. For a moment, my mother felt so close. Like she was right there in the room with us, hanging back in the corners. I could turn and ask her: What were you doing? Why did you never tell me? I nearly did turn my head, the back of my neck going cold.
Rising abruptly, Patricia went to the kitchen and deposited the cigarette into the pit of the garbage disposal. A harsh, mechanical grinding as the sink ate the evidence. She reached for a small can of air freshener, spritzed the stinging smell of artificial pine throughout the room.