The Tithe

by Elle Hill

  A daughter of the desert, Josh knew little about snow, and the only ice she’d seen swam in drinking glasses. Nonetheless, she could hear it, his words as smooth and hard as ice, each syllable cracking in the warm air. She shivered.

  Sound and motion froze for a brief moment. Finally, Marcus extended a hand, gesturing for Blue to sit down.

  You don’t own this moment, Josh thought. She understood showmanship, however. Sighing, she tugged on Blue’s hand, and he sat.

  “No more personal comments from any of us,” he said. “Everyone, what do you think of this?”

  “This isn’t a discussion!” Jeet shouted. “It’s Elovah’s will.”

  “Even the holy scholars engage in discussions about the exact meaning and practical applications of the Bit’,” Josh pointed out.

  And so they discussed. After a few minutes, Josh sat back, closed her eyes, and rode the swells of conversation.

  This is what Blue experiences, she thought. Did conversations come alive for him, streak along like multicolored lights until the room glowed with voices? No, of course not. He didn’t know lights and colors. What metaphors could one use without falling into the trap of recreating the visual world?

  “The conversation rose and fell, building to false climaxes, gamboling into dissonances before resolving into tired finales.” A musical metaphor. Not bad, although she didn’t know enough about music to make it really fit.

  Eventually, the discussion ebbed. The sixty-three members decided to honor most of Jeet’s group’s points. Just like services: everyone promising to do everything right and then leaving the synasch or rab’ri and living their lives. Only, Josh had never been the one to leave, and until now, she hadn’t given a great deal of thought to those who did. Her world was her books, the services, the imrabi. And, of course, the pain. Always that.

  I don’t care what you all decide, she thought. Come bedtime, Blue and I will cram ourselves into a tiny cot and revel in the comfort we never knew we needed.

  She opened her eyes, then, and stared into Lynna’s. Maybe she looked defiant, or perhaps annoyed. Or heaven, even slightly guilty. Lynna’s tight smile stretched beneath the balls of her cheeks. In that moment, two women defying the religious dictates that helped shape the foundation of their towns’ legal system, they understood one another perfectly.

  Later, after RJ had rolled herself into the kitchen to start dinner, Josh turned fully to Lynna. “I would like a hand going to the bathroom,” she said stiffly. “Please.”

  Lynna’s face pinched into confusion, but she nodded and rose to her feet. Josh accepted her hand and rested her forearm atop Lynna’s as they walked toward the bathroom. She’d contrived the excuse to get the other woman alone, but, truthfully, leaning on someone else relieved some of the pain of trying to balance on weak and wobbly feet.

  Another woman reached the bathroom at the same time. Huffing, Josh tended to her business and glanced meaningfully at the woman when Lynna raised her eyebrows. She spent at least a minute thoroughly washing her hands, scrubbing extra hard at those cuticles . . .

  “Finally,” she sighed as the door swished closed after the third woman.

  Lynna shook her head. “You know that was completely transparent, right? You never ask for help.”

  Josh chewed her lip. “Obvious, huh?”

  Lynna raised her eyebrows. “So what did you want to tell me?”

  “Ask you, actually.” Josh shut off the water then tottered to the hand dryer. Twenty seconds passed while she dried her very clean hands.

  “Yes?”

  Josh studied the tops of her hands, the palms. Very dry. Beige, short-fingered, and dry. “I was wondering,” she began, still gazing at her hands. Unremarkable hands, really: short and rather broad with uneven nails.

  The sound of Lynna’s muffled laughter snapped her chin upward.

  “It’s not funny,” she snapped.

  “Oh, it is,” Lynna reassured her. With a quick movement, she tossed her flower garden hair over her shoulder.

  “Do you . . . know . . .?” Josh grew frustrated, and then angry, with her shyness. “You know, I mean, know, why I’m, well, why we’re—” She ground her teeth against the words.

  Lynna’s laughter sputtered out from between pursed lips. She clapped a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Josh,” she said, but she giggled again. “You’re just so cute.”

  “This isn’t cute,” Josh growled.

  “Okay, you’re right. Very un-cute.” Lynna pursed her mouth into a parody of seriousness. Then, she smiled. “And yeah, of course I know. You wanted to tell me about you and Blue, right?”

  Josh glanced around the bathroom, even though she knew they were alone. Finally, slightly hunching her shoulders, she nodded.

  Lynna’s face softened into more gentle mirth. “I’m glad,” she said. “And he’s perfect for you. He thinks you’re one step down from a divine being.”

  Josh glanced down at her shoes. Her feet burned, but she could handle a few more minutes, especially if she moved around a bit. She took two steps forward, two back.

  “You think so?” she asked, feeling a grin, toothy and ridiculous, splitting her face. If she could have ordered the grin gone, she would have, but it also felt warm and comforting, like pulling fuzzy slippers on tired feet.

  Lynna nodded. “You’re like the air he breathes, you know?”

  “I don’t get it,” Josh said softly.

  Her friend shrugged. “It does that sometimes. I’m glad. Every girl’s first time should be with someone who loves them.”

  Josh’s feet tangled, and she stumbled. Lynna rushed forward and caught her, helped steady her. “We should get you back to the couch,” Lynna fretted.

  “No, no,” Josh gasped. “We can’t talk there.” She paused. Then, “I didn’t . . . we haven’t . . . you know. We haven’t.”

  “No? Huh.” Suddenly, Lynna’s expression smoothed into understanding. “Ah. You wanted to ask me something. You want to know how?”

  “No. Well, yes. But, really, I was thinking of, well—” She paused for a moment, held her breath, and then exhaled her word, “kissing.”

  “You haven’t kissed?”

  “No. Well, kind of. A little bit.” Once again, Josh’s head drooped downward.

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with kissing, Josh,” Lynna said. Her voice was very serious now. “Or with sex, for that matter.”

  “The Bitoran says . . .”

  “That book says a lot of things,” Lynna said with a sigh, “most of them to do with keeping us under very tight control.”

  Josh opened her mouth to refute the point but stopped. First of all, she didn’t have enough time to discuss that, too, and second of all, she wasn’t sure she entirely disagreed.

  “But kissing,” she said instead.

  Lynna smiled. “Kissing. It’s pretty grand, isn’t it?”

  Insides roiling with the fluttering of pleasure, the heat of embarrassment, and the tangle of anger at her adolescent behavior, Josh nodded. In a voice that annoyed her with its smallness, she asked, “How does one know if one is doing it right?”

  “One only knows when it feels right. To one.” A smile lifted the left half of her mouth. “You can have a bunch of different techniques, but each person is different. You see what feels right—at an angle, tight pucker or soft opening, how much tongue—make note, and tell him.”

  Josh’s right hand curled into a loose, thumb-pointed fist as if clutching a pen. Oh, if only she could take notes.

  “You get tongues involved?” she whispered, eyes darting.

  Lynna nodded. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s all closed mouthed.”

  Angles, lip firmness, presence or absence of tongue. She could remember that. “Anything else?”

  Lynna chuckled. “This isn’t a class. Honestly, Josh, it’s how you feel with him.”

  “Uh-huh.” Heat sizzled up her calf muscle. “Can we finish this tomorrow?”

  After promis
ing her they would continue their collaboration, Lynna led Josh back to the couch. While Lynna bustled off to the kitchen to spend time with her ladylove, Josh sank down with a sigh and rubbed her ankles and calves through the fabric of her boots. Sometimes, the best feeling was the end of pain. Failing that, the diminishing of it.

  Moments later she turned to Blue and stared. In profile, his nose seemed sharp, proud, maybe a touch too big for the rest of his face. A handsome nose, she realized, on a beautiful face.

  “Can you tell I’m staring at you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How?”

  He was silent for a long moment. “I heard you move. I listen for your movements. But even if I’d been distracted, I’d have felt the heaviness that comes when people focus on me.”

  “You’re very handsome,” she told him. Had she ever thought him otherwise?

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled at his casual acceptance of the compliment. Did the words mean less to a sightless person, or did they not carry the same meaning they did to her? “Tell me about your childhood.”

  “What about it?”

  “What’s your best memory?”

  Blue sat beside her, a statue painted in colors he would never know. “There isn’t. Child or adult, my memories are of existing. I ate, I slept, I listened to services. Sometimes the food was worse, sometimes the services more interesting. But there’s nothing like happiness or sadness. There only was.”

  “Was what?” she asked softly.

  “Me.”

  She shook her head. “It sounds so sad.”

  “It wasn’t. You can’t have sadness unless you know happiness. I knew neither.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes.

  Finally, in a voice mere decibels from a whisper, Josh asked, “What about now?” Shameless, she knew, but maybe voicing the question would exorcise it.

  “Why are you asking a question you already know the answer to?” he asked in his inflectionless voice.

  “I don’t,” she insisted.

  “Everything changed when you touched me,” he said.

  After a confused moment, and with many darting glances, she asked in a low tone, “In bed?”

  “In the hallway. You touched me, and my life cleaved into a before and a now. Before, I existed, and it was fine. I was content. And then, you. Everything cracked open, and I felt as if I’d just reminded my senses to function. Now, everything feels so raw. Sometimes just the passing of time abrades my skin. Being with you is exquisite and real. And painful.”

  Very carefully, Josh put her hands on her knees and leaned forward. She stared at the wall opposite them, against which Taro no longer pressed himself. In she breathed, and out. In and out.

  No, she didn’t understand. Or, maybe a little. When she was a young girl, maybe six or seven, a new imrabi had made it her goal to befriend her. Josh hadn’t known what to think of this tall, strong young woman, her right cheek and half her brow stained with a wine-red birthmark. Her name was . . . well, honestly, Josh didn’t remember her name. The imrabi hadn’t stayed long. Another rab’ri had needed her.

  The woman must have pitied her, this plain, sassy little girl who dressed herself in the morning and braided her own long brown hair. She made it a point to sit with her during services, to sneak her chocolate milk and extra biscuits, to ask her about herself. Josh had responded cautiously, although she’d never refused a single buttered roll.

  Then, one time, the imrabi decided to tickle her. It was what adults did with children, but Josh had no way of knowing that. She only knew few of the imrabi spoke with her, let alone showed her physical affection. When the woman’s fingers brushed against the sensitive undersides of Josh’s arms, she shrieked. The imrabi, mistaking Josh’s reaction for laughter, persisted.

  Unsure what to think, only knowing the strange, almost painfully tender feeling of the woman’s fingers on her own untouched skin, Josh began screaming. The woman rocked back in alarm, overbalanced, and fell on her bottom. Josh’s screams bounced off the stone walls, rebounded, scratched at her own ears. The imrabi stared hard at her before rising to her grand height and quitting the room without a word.

  The woman never spoke to her again, and a few months later, she left their rab’ri.

  Twenty-year-old Josh straightened her posture and rubbed her calf with her other foot. “What can I do to make it hurt less?” she asked him.

  Blue’s lips thinned into a smile. “I don’t want it to hurt less. Every second that scrapes my skin is another one I spend with you.”

  She wasn’t used to being precious to someone. Tolerated, of course. Special, sure—no one catalogued and organized the rab’ri’s library with her level of efficiency. But not cherished, treasured, adored.

  At the end of my life. The end of my life. She bowed her head, clenched her fists. Six years she’d known about this, six years she’d prepared. She’d never wanted to die, but she’d been ready for it—until coming here.

  The worst part? Knowing her time with her friends, these people who had become as dear to her as breathing, might end tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or in ten nights. But soon. Surely she should hope the angels came for her before everyone else.

  Stop being selfish, she thought, before her diaphragm clenched in a single laugh. Was she being more selfish in hoping she died first, or last?

  Sometimes she thought leaving them here for another seventy days was the cruelest thing Elovah could have visited upon them.

  Blue’s hand grabbed hers, and she held on tightly, willing to pretend for a moment it anchored her in this dust storm of uncertainty.

  Before the imrabi had transferred her, their library had trembled constantly on the verge of chaos. No one had established a system for requesting books—more precisely, no one had enforced it. Before Josh came, the libraries ran something like the rab’ri itself: people walking in, grabbing what they needed from a random imrabi, and returning their borrowed items whenever they managed to remember.

  All this changed when fourteen-year-old Josh had begun her library internship. Ima Emm had probably sent her to the library to spend her remaining six years with Ima Christina, one of the sweetest and most cheerful imrabi Josh had ever known. Ima Christina had always treated Josh with something a little closer to friendship than pity. Josh liked her, even considered her a friend of sorts, but she never understood why anyone had entrusted a library to this round, giggly woman whose juggling of affections was the most organized thing about her.

  Within a month, Josh had established a system for keeping track of borrowed books. As imrabi would discover when they exceeded their borrowing schedule, Josh’s determination to retrieve overdue books was . . . unshakable. Some said “Bitoranic.” Comments about imrabi awakening to find Josh standing by their cot, hand outstretched for overdue books, became a gentle running joke.

  Josh smiled when imrabi feigned terror upon borrowing the books. In fact, she encouraged the jokes; it saved her some work. She would never do such a thing, of course. Standing outside their door in the morning worked perfectly well.

  By year’s end, Josh had rearranged the books according to subject matter rather than title. Shortly thereafter, she had begun correspondences with other imrabi library caretakers, and they established a system of transfer and exchange.

  Ima Christina stopped pretending Josh was her apprentice. She spent more and more time away from the library, eventually only filling in on the rare occasions when Josh was otherwise occupied.

  In the years following, she’d developed a pattern of sorts. In the morning, she would tend to book requests, hunt down her precious overdue books, and deal with correspondences. After lunch, she would re-shelve books, a task made slower by her wonky legs. Once everything had found its place, she would settle into her little padded chair, reading books and making notes that she would later turn into detailed synopses. Poetry, novels, theology, research on esoteric topics: She read them all and translate
d their complexity into something orderly, concise, and understandable. The rab’ri’s researchers adored her project and crowed her praises to Ima Emm.

  Josh had spent the last six years of afternoons with a book in her hands. Every afternoon, they curled themselves into receptacles. For the past few days, she’d had nothing to put in them. Well, except this afternoon, when Blue’s hand wrapped around her own.

  “I’m not a sinner!”

  This afternoon, once again deprived of productive work, she’d fallen into a waking slumber. The shout awakened her, as it did most people. As one, people in the Great Room looked toward one of the hallways opposite Josh and Blue’s.