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The Wilderwomen

Ruth Emmie Lang
Chapters (37)
  1. Copyright Notice
  2. Dedication
  3. BEFORE
  4. AFTER
  5. ONE THOUGHTS ON SUN HATS
  6. TWO TIME FOR CAKE
  7. THREE TWELVE MONTHS
  8. FOUR PSYCHIC KARAOKE
  9. FIVE A SECOND SLEEPING BAG
  10. SIX SIX MONTHS
  11. SEVEN THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE PANCAKE
  12. EIGHT SIX MONTHS
  13. NINE FOLLOW THE MUSIC
  14. TEN THE STARS ARE BRIGHTER IN THE DESERT
  15. ELEVEN SIX MONTHS
  16. TWELVE EVERY STAR HAS A SONG
  17. THIRTEEN PSYCHIC KARAOKE
  18. FOURTEEN ONE MONTH
  19. FIFTEEN A WELL-TRAVELED HAT
  20. SIXTEEN JOEL VS. THE VOLCANO
  21. SEVENTEEN TWO WEEKS
  22. EIGHTEEN HOUSE OF MEMORIES
  23. NINETEEN IF TREES COULD TALK
  24. TWENTY THREE DAYS
  25. TWENTY-ONE SEARCH PARTY
  26. TWENTY-TWO NOT THE SAME ZADIE
  27. TWENTY-THREE WAVES OF SMOKE
  28. TWENTY-FOUR THE DAY OF
  29. TWENTY-FIVE THE SKY IS FULL OF BIRDS
  30. TWENTY-SIX NEST
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. EPILOGUE
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT A SONG ABOUT A BIRD
  34. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  35. Also by Ruth Emmie Lang
  36. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  37. Newsletter Sign-up
Cover: The Wilderwomen by Ruth Emmie Lang

Copyright Notice

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Dedication

To my parents, Norma and Jas,

who made us a home despite missing theirs

BEFORE

Nora Wilder was supposed to be a bird. At least that’s what she thought when she looked at herself in the mirror and saw arms where wings should be. The closest she actually came to flying was when her younger daughter, Finn, slipped from her grasp and sprinted toward a busy street. Nora swooped down on the toddler, and Finn’s tiny body began to tremble in her arms. As her daughter anxiously kneaded her chest, Nora stroked her soft-spun curls and wished she didn’t have to scare her baby to keep her safe.

Although her wings were imaginary, Nora felt an almost continuous desire to stretch them, to unclench the knot in her back that tied them down and with one powerful flap, lift off into a cloudless sky. Their being imaginary also didn’t mean that her wings weren’t so blue they were almost black, the kind of blue you wade into and disappear. That’s what Nora saw when she walked out her front door for the last time: the tips of two ink-blue wings fanning her peripherals, one for each of the daughters she would leave behind.

Nora’s elder daughter, Zadie, must have been part bird because she knew how to squawk. When Zadie was a baby, Nora was convinced that she must have swallowed bagpipes filled with broken glass, because that was the sound that came out of her mouth every time she cried. It sometimes lasted for hours at a time, and Nora did everything she could think of to get her to stop. She would try rocking her, feeding her, changing her. When all else failed, she’d play one of her favorite cassettes in hopes it would soothe her daughter to sleep.

It wouldn’t. Zadie would only wail harder. Nora would look at the phone on the wall and wish she had someone she could call, someone who’d rush over and recommend a kooky home remedy like rubbing smashed bananas on her baby’s chest while counting to one hundred. That wouldn’t work, either, but at least she’d have someone to talk to and hug when she started crying, too.

She was alone in a town she barely knew with a screaming baby who had terrible taste in music, but something outside of herself was telling her this was the place she was supposed to be.