The Y Chromosome Read online
OTHER BOOKS BY LEONA GOM
FICTION
Housebroken (1986)
Zero Avenue (1989)
After-Image: A Vicky Bauer Mystery (1996)
Double Negative: A Vicky Bauer Mystery (1998)
Freeze Frame: A Vicky Bauer Mystery (1999)
Hating Gladys (2002)
The Exclusion Principle (2009)
POETRY
Kindling (1972)
The Singletree (1975)
Land of the Peace (1980)
Northbound (1984)
Private Properties (1986)
The Collected Poems (1991)
Copyright © 2019 Leona Gom
This edition copyright © 2019 Cormorant Books Inc.
First Cormorant Books edition
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1.800.893.5777.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through Ontario Creates, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.
Excerpts from “Goodbye to Beef” and “Gorgeous” by Erin Moure, from Furious (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1988). Reprinted by permission.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gom, Leona, 1946–, author
The Y chromosome / Leona Gom.
Originally published: Toronto : Second Story Press, ©1990.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77086-548-8 (softcover). — ISBN 978-1-77086-549-5 (html)
I. Title.
PS8563.O83Y2 2019 C813’.54 C2018-905077-2
C2018-905078-0
Cover design: angeljohnguerra.com
Interior text design: tannicegdesigns.ca
Printer: Houghton Boston
Printed and bound in Canada.
CORMORANT BOOKS INC.
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www.cormorantbooks.com
PRAISE FOR THE Y CHROMOSOME
“This is not another novel to be miscast as ‘another woman’s book’ but rather one that deserves a slow and careful read from readers of both sexes.” — Globe and Mail
“I really had a good time with this book. I really found myself involved with it.” — Peter Gzowski, Morningside
“If you, as a male, have ever wondered how the unequal power between women and men could possibly tilt a sexual relationship in the man’s favor, then read this book. If, as a woman, you have ever had trouble explaining to a man how inequality gets carried over to the bedroom, get this book…. It deserves to be as widely read and widely discussed as The Handmaids Tale.” — Kingston Whig-Standard
“Gom’s courageous third novel dares to challenge misogynist and feminist alike. The Y Chromosome is compellingly written; its taunt prose seldom falters. Gom’s even-handed treatment of both male and female characters and her refusal to descend into caricature or diatribe make her novel a powerful exploration of the complexity of the gender-difference issue.” — Edmonton Journal
“The Y Chromosome has all the making of a political bombshell Gom is a writer with a brilliant gift for narrative. The book’s plot powers along at breakneck speed. It is going to provoke quite a storm." — NOW Magazine
“Frequently, sci-fi and futuristic fiction is devoid of the real substance that makes writing exciting. Gom’s novel is given the grace of humanity. It is the predictable nature of compassion and jealousy, parental love, that gives this book credibility. Her future society, often self-righteous and self-serving like any functioning Utopia, is treated with gentle satire." — Vancouver Sun
“The Y Chromosome is really just a dandy novel, a page turner.” — Victoria Times-Colonist
“Gom’s novel affords a well-written platform for thoughtful, gentle and at times quite witty reflection… It has a good balance of elements: nicely paced suspense, believable characters, and provocative social commentary.” — B.C. Report
“A chilling depiction. Reviewers, both male and female, have praised her attempt to balance gender portrayals in her novel.” — Toronto Star
Contents
Chapter 1 - Daniel
Chapter 2 - Bowden
Chapter 3 - Daniel
Chapter 4 - Bowden
Chapter 5 - Daniel
Chapter 6 - Bowden
Chapter 7 - Daniel
Chapter 8 - Bowden
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Landmarks
Cover
Title-Page
Other Books by Leona Gom
Copyright
Praise for The Y Chromosome
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Acknowledgements
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For Dale, as always, through the years
1
DANIEL
HE HEARD THE HORSES before he saw them. And the voices: two people at least. He dropped the pail of raspberries and hunched down beside it. He could feel his heart begin to bang at his chest, the sudden pulse of sweat in his armpits. He peered through the canes, relieved that he could see nothing, that he must be reasonably well hidden from the road.
They were directly opposite him now. The beat of hooves on the road was so loud it felt as though someone were clapping in his ear.
“My ass is aching,” exclaimed a voice. A stranger. “How much farther?”
“A kilometre or so. Not long.” It was Doctor. He knew her voice. But she sounded nervous, afraid almost.
“You were right,” sighed the other voice. “I didn’t know I was so out of shape.” Doctor made some reply, but they were past the raspberry field now, into the bush again, and Daniel couldn’t make out her words.
He left the pail of berries where it had fallen and ran. The branches beat at him, and twice he fell as the underbrush tangled his feet, but he leaped up and kept running. He had to reach the farm before the stranger did. He slid down the gully into the dry creek bed, looking anxiously to his right, although he knew the crossing that the road took was a quarter of a kilometre to the north, where the incline was less steep, and he was fairly certain Doctor would keep to the road. He clambered up the other side, his feet knocking loose rocks and earth, but he grabbed at the birch-tree root he knew would be there and pulled himself up. He hadn’t used the shortcut since he was a small child, but his body remembered the route as though he had just come this way this morning. A prairie chicken fluttered up at his feet. He jumped over it without slowing his pace. He could feel the burning in his side, but he couldn’t stop; he was almost there, just through the clearing and past the last fringe of poplar. He could see his aunt’s house now, flickering among the branches, and then he was through.
His aunt, Highlands, was in the garden, hilling the potatoes, the hoe clanging down on the hard, dry soil as though it were metal. He leaped carelessly over the rows of peas and cabbage. Highlands’s hoe stopped in mid-air.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded.
He stopped three rows down from her and bent over, his hands on his knees. “Stranger,” he gasped. “Coming with Doctor.” He gestured feebly at the road where it entered the farmyard.
Highlands had already dropped her hoe and was running to her house, her shirt flapping behind her like a torn wing. He watched her go, his breath raking his chest. He saw her pull the bell twice, the danger signal, and then he made himself hobble to the longhouse. When he reached it, his father was already opening the door, and his cousin, Montney, Highlands’s son, ran up from where he had been working on the other side of the garden.
“What’s happened?” Montney asked, excited. It had been a long time since the danger bell had sounded.
“Stranger coming,” Daniel said. “On horseback. She’s with Doctor.”
His father took his arm. “Come on,” he said. “Don’t stand around out here.” Then he dropped his hand quickly, as though he remembered that Daniel was eighteen now and could no longer be ordered about like a child. Daniel gave him a little smile, acknowledging both the mistake and his tolerance of it. He enjoyed being eighteen, the sudden new respect, something Montney would have to wait a few more years for.
Once inside, his father closed the door and bolted it.
“They’re here!” Montney shouted from the window, dropping below the sill and pulling out the loose piece of plaster between the third and fourth logs. Daniel joined him, squinting into the sunlight.
They were there, all right, dismounting now. The stranger, a middle-aged person with long grey hair pulled into a braid on one side of her head, grimaced as she slid down. Highlands came up to them, and Daniel could see them exchange greetings, the funny formal gripping of the shoulders, the dipping of the head, he’d had to learn. When he’d protested, his mother had
insisted, “It’s better they think us odd than that they should find out about you.” And so he had learned the peculiar mannerisms he would be expected to exhibit around strangers, if he ever had to meet any. But it was rare for visitors to come here. An ancestor had made up a name for the inhabitants of the four farms with others like him — Isolists — so that outsiders would consider them a religious cult and leave them alone. It had worked well. When strangers did come, what they noted as unusual was not what was really unusual. Misdirec-tion, Highlands called it, a magician’s trick.
More of the farm people were coming up to Doctor and her companion now, all of them sombrely greeting the stranger in the same mannered way. The children, he saw, all wanted to try it, most of them not yet having had a chance to practise on a real stranger. Daniel could see Highlands exchanging an anxious look with their mothers.
“Go back to work now!” shouted someone, and the children backed off, suddenly reminded this was no game. Only Bluesky and her sister, Shaw, stayed, confident in their new status as adults. Shaw, he remembered, had taken advantage of her option of choosing a second name and insisted on being called Shaw-Ellen now. But it was Bluesky he watched. She was tall and muscular, her thick pale hair pulled back from her face with two red pins. He remembered the way she had been yesterday, in this very room, naked above him, her eyes squeezed shut and her lips pulled back as though she were in pain. He had to close his eyes to stop seeing her, but still the erection pushed warmly at his thigh.
“They’re going into our house, I think,” his father said.
Daniel snapped open his eyes. Highlands and Daniel’s mother had already gone inside, and Doctor and the stranger were following them in. Two of the others went in, as well, and the rest waited outside for a few minutes, whispering nervously, and then went back to their own houses. He thought he saw Bluesky throw a quick look at the longhouse.
His father turned and leaned back against the wall, his legs thrust out in front of him like two long, thick logs. He ran his callused thumb absently around the head of a nail starting to work itself loose from the floorboard beside him.
Daniel turned, too, sat with one leg pulled up against the inside of the other. He didn’t resemble his father at all; small-boned and blonde, he looked more like his mother. It was his sister, Mitchell, who looked like their father, heavy and dark, with the large mouth and brows like two hedges overhanging the eyes.
“I wonder why Doctor would bring her,” his father said.
“I don’t think she wanted to,” Daniel said. “I heard them on the road. I think the stranger insisted on coming.”
“She must suspect something. Merde.” There was a frightened edge to his voice, and Daniel looked at him, catching his fear. His father rubbed his hand up and down one cheek, and the sound of stubble rasped against his fingers.
The Y Chromosome