by Abby Bardi
When I got back to the cabin, I put the piece of paper in my suitcase and sat down. I felt a little weak, maybe from working so hard without eating much. We always had our meals at the end of the shift, and sometimes by then I was so tired of the sight of whatever we had been serving, turkey chili or turkey burgers or turkey tetrazzini, that I didn't want any. While I was sitting there, Mama came in, and I debated whether to tell her about Cyrus or not. Then I thought, well, I better let her know, since things could get pretty complicated around here soon. I took the paper out of my suitcase again and showed it to her. She looked at it and leaned against the cabinet, like Cyrus's message had blown her over, then shook her head. “Do you understand all this, Mary Fred?” she asked. She still called me Mary Fred, though a lot of people had started calling me Catherine. Her face looked serious and kind of gray. “You understand what he wants from you?”
“I think so, ma'am,” I said. “But I always thought—”
“This is one of the differences—” She stopped as if uncertain about how to continue.
I waited, not saying anything.
“It's not that they don't accept the teachings of Fred here,” she went on, not looking at me, almost like she was just talking to herself. “They accept that Fred was a true prophet. But they believe that there were other prophets that came after him. Cyrus is just the last one in a long line. So they believe—”
“I know,” I said. “Someone told me. I understand.”
“If Cyrus is really a prophet,” she said, walking over to the window and looking out, “then it's true what they say. His physical, uh, love is divine.”
Neither of us said the words “but what if he isn't.” They just hung in the air.
Mama walked over to me and put her hands on my shoulders, just where Cyrus had put his, though of course they felt much different. “I don't know what to tell you, Mary Fred. You're a big girl now. You're sixteen. I wasn't much older than that when I married your father. I guess this is a decision you have to make for yourself.”
Mama had never said anything like this to me before. All my life everyone had told me what to do, and now when I really needed them to, no one was telling me anything, except Cyrus. I was holding the piece of paper in my curled fingers like it was something precious, and then I knew exactly what I was going to do, I was going to go and do whatever it was he wanted, because I guessed he was the head of our church now, and it seemed like people thought he was more important than Fred himself, so that meant I ought to do whatever he said. Besides, all the warm parts of me were whooshing around, sending me there like a wind.
“We need to get ready and take our things to the Bunker,” Mama said, walking away and changing the subject. “We need to settle in there tonight. It all begins tomorrow morning and they want everyone to be ready.” She looked back at me and said in a soft voice that didn't sound like her own, “You might want to have a bath first.”
As I lay in the bathtub, I looked over my body. It was long and blue-white under the water. The scar from my surgery curved like a lightning bolt across my abdomen. It was still redin the middle and white along the edges, and the skin was still puckered. I ran my hand along it, then lightly touched myself below there, where my hair floated on the surface of the water. I sank under the water until it covered my face, then rose up again. I washed my hair with baby shampoo, rinsed it under water, soaped my whole body extra hard, rinsed, and stepped out on the bathmat. There was a mirror on the wall, which still seemed odd to me. It was clouded with steam, and all I could see in it was a strange blurred naked woman, someone I didn't know.
Mama and I walked to the Bunker without saying much, carrying our suitcases. After a little while, I asked her what “Bukulahara” meant, and she said she didn't know, exactly, but that Cyrus had heard it in a vision, and everyone here said it instead of good-bye. “He says it's Chinese,” she told me. There were other questions I wanted to ask her, but she seemed to be in her fog again, and I didn't know how to ask them anyway. They all seemed to be the biggest questions in the world, but I guessed that I was just going to have to find out the answers for myself.
When we got to the Bunker, men with guns directed us to a huge room in the first cellar. It was already packed with women, and there were a lot of cots, though it was clear that most people were going to have to sleep on the floor on mats and in sleeping bags. There were a bunch of little kids, too— evidently this was a room just for women and children. I had seen the men getting everything ready on the other end of the floor, past the first warehouse, when I went for supplies, and I guessed that their rooms were down there.
Everyone was making themselves at home in their little corners, putting dolls on the cots, which seemed odd, since I had never been allowed to have dolls, and tacking up photographsof Cyrus. Some of the little kids had drawn pictures of turkeys, and they were putting those up too. People were hanging bunches of turkey feathers tied together with purple yarn in the corners of the room, for good luck. I put my suitcase down, and Mama and I went up to the kitchen and worked the dinner shift. She stayed and had some stew, but I couldn't eat a bite. I was carrying the note from Cyrus in the pocket of my dress. My stomach was all in knots, and I didn't know what to do, or even where to go, since I didn't know where Cyrus was.
At about nine, a man with a gun started to send everybody downstairs. He said it would be lights out soon, and we needed to hurry. I stood there for a moment. Then I took the note out of my pocket and showed it to him. He gave me a look that I didn't much like and called on another man. “She goes to Cyrus,” he said, and the other man gave me the same look, then led me down a long corridor toward the back of the building and up some stairs to a part of the Bunker I had not known was there. Another man with a gun was standing outside a heavy wooden door, and I showed him the note. He opened the door and motioned me to go through it. I hesitated, and for a moment I wanted to turn around and run, but then I felt myself entering the doorway as if I had suddenly sprouted wings on my heels and they were bearing me away.
When I got inside, it looked as if I wasn't in the Bunker anymore, but in a fancy hotel, or maybe even a palace. I wandered through a small waiting area, with new-looking red velvet couches on either side, and entered through some wooden double doors that led into a larger room with purple fabric on all the walls, and no windows. There was no furniture except for Cyrus's throne at the back of the room, but he wasn't in it. Another man with a gun leaned against the back wall, and I started to show him my note, but he waved me into anotherroom to the left. It was smaller, but full of people, a few more armed men but mostly a lot of girls, blondes, lounging on leather couches that lined the walls, and chatting. Some of them were the pregnant girls I had seen in the church. No one even looked at me as I entered.
I stopped walking and just stood there, and suddenly I was terribly afraid. I turned around and looked behind me, wondering how I could leave without anybody knowing I'd been there, but at that moment, Cyrus appeared. A blond girl followed behind him, but I barely noticed her, since I was just looking at him. His braid hung over his shoulder, and he was wearing a purple T-shirt and blue jeans. His feet were bare. He saw me and started walking in my direction, and when his eyes landed on me, blurry behind his wire-rimmed glasses, they froze me to that spot. I stood there wanting to move, maybe even to run, but was unable to do anything but stare back at him. “Catherine,” he said, and the way he said my name, or whosever name it was, made me feel grand and important. He came forward and took my hand, and began to lead me back into the room he had just come from. I followed him past the blond girls, who barely seemed to take any notice of me, and through the doorway. He turned around and closed the door. I stopped breathing, in fact I tried to take a breath but my lungs had locked up and were just tiny little things that no air would fit in.
In front of me was the most enormous bed I had ever seen. It took up half of the room, and was covered with messy purple sheets. On either side of the bed were
couches. They were orange brocade, and they clashed with the draperies, which were purple too. Cyrus, still holding my hand, led me over to the bed and motioned for me to sit down. I kept waiting for him to say something, like that he was glad to see me, but hepositioned himself next to me, and started to unzip my dress. It was one of the brown dresses I'd had for years, and the metal zipper didn't work very well, so he had to use both hands and struggle a bit. I was still not breathing. He yanked on my dress and I had to move so he could slide it over my head. He laid it on the edge of the bed, but it slipped down onto the floor. We both watched it fall. Then he looked at me. I was wearing the newest-looking white bra I could find and white panties, and I found myself again wishing I had kept some of my nice pink underwear.
“You understand what your duty to me is, don't you?” he said, looking at my body, not me. I had never felt before that my body and I were two separate beings, but his look made me feel like my head had become completely detached from the rest of me.
“Yes, sir, I think so,” I said. But suddenly the head part of me, which hadn't really been operating very well up to now, said loudly to the body part of me, No, wait, I don't understand, I don't understand at all.
“This is an important moment in history, Catherine, and you are part of it. We are going to transcend earthly life and begin the world again. We are a race of fresh beings. This is your moment, Catherine. This is the moment your real life begins. Are you ready for that?”
I tried to answer but I couldn't—my voice wouldn't come. I just sat there staring at him as he unfastened my bra. I covered my breasts with my arms, but he moved them away and said, “Very nice,” like he was looking at something in a store. He motioned for me to lay my head down on the pillows, and as I moved, he slid my underpants off me so I was lying there stark naked in front of him. In the strange new parts of my mind, I had seen this moment before, but what I hadn't known was that instead of feeling like it was magical or full of glory, as italways was in those glimmers, I was so scared, and so unable to breathe, that there was nothing happy in it at all. I was just cold and revealed and alone.
Cyrus lay on top of me, his clothes still on, and his mouth moved along my neck. His face was scratchy, like he needed a shave, and his body felt big and lumpy. It felt so foreign and unnatural to have such a heavy man on top of me, as heavy as a thousand bricks. From this close up, he looked old. There were tiny wrinkles in his skin, and his braid flapped against my neck like a rope. I kind of hoped that he would kiss me again, since that at least had felt good before, but his mouth just stayed on my neck. Then he rolled off me and ran his hand along my stomach. “You had a nasty wound here, didn't you?” he said, tracing my scar.
“It still hurts,” I said. “It hurts a lot. When you lay on me, that hurt.”
“I'll try not to hurt you,” he said, but as if it didn't really matter to him. There was something about the lack of concern in his voice that made me feel even stranger, like I was dreaming or going crazy.
“And they told me,” I said, I don't know why, maybe because I was talking from inside a dream, “they told me I could never have any children. That there was something wrong with my insides. They got sewn up together the wrong way or something.”
Cyrus snatched his hand away and stared at my stomach as if there was something completely disgusting about what I had just said. The strangest thing was, I had told him this lie to get him to stop, to go away and leave me be, but when he took his hand away, I just wanted him to put it back. “Is that true?” he said, running his fingertips along my scar again, like he had just noticed it.
“Yes, sir. They said everything had been all ripped up. Like an explosion went through me.”
He shook his head and then leaned on one elbow, staring into my face. “That's sad, Catherine, that's just sad.” And then he started to talk to me about angels and clowns, about how my problem was that I had been all caught up in the fifth seal, and that now, in the end time, all manner of things would occur like this, unnatural things where the weasel would eat the eagle, and the ocean would be on fire. “I mean, look at that lake in Ohio,” he said, and went on about the spirit with the crown and sickle, and the marsh full of onions, and the rainbow made of sobbing clouds. Some of these images were familiar to me, as familiar as bread, but others were weird and unsettling. He talked about snakes hanging from the ceiling, and babies smoking cigars. “Women are whores,” he said, in a matter-of-fact voice like he was talking about what he wanted for lunch. “They're all whores in the end time. But someone like you, Catherine, why, you're the bride of the Lamb. You're the golden city. You're pure and undefiled.” He seemed more interested in me now, like he was picking up steam. “Nothing can spoil you, girl. You're the crystal jewel.” Then he moved over, stood up, and walked out of the room.
I lay there for a while, not even breathing. Everything in me ached, partly because his weight really had hurt me, and partly because I wanted him to come back. It seemed unfair that a body and mind could be so muddy and cloudy like an old pond. I felt incredibly tired, like I had been awake for days, for weeks, and my body sank into the bed like I was falling into the water. As I fell, I soared through wet space. Water surged and lapped around me, and as I looked down to see where I was falling to, way far down below me, I could see the earth, a tiny blue ball in the water that was getting larger and larger. AsI fell closer to it and could see it better, though, I could see that it wasn't a real ball of rock at all, but a bunch of bags of garbage that were all hanging together somehow, plastic sacks of moldy bread, someone's old bags of lunch, and some heads of brown iceberg lettuce, and just as I got really close and was about to land on it, the whole thing exploded, blowing apart into a million pieces. Garbage flew into the air in all directions, flying past me like escaping wild birds.
I opened my eyes. It was dark, and I was still lying in the huge bed with no clothes on. The room had gotten cold, and I had rolled myself into a ball to try to keep warm. As my eyes began to focus, I heard a noise to my right. I turned my head and looked over. A streak of light came in from the door, which was open a crack, and fell across the bed. Two naked people lay beside me, moving together, one on top of the other. I recognized one of the little blond girls I had seen outside, though I couldn't tell which one it was, and on top of her, Cyrus flashed like a running horse, his long bare back curving above her. Sounds were coming from them, slapping and sucking sounds, moans, and breathing. I rolled over sideways so I could get a better look at them. They didn't seem to notice me. I couldn't see Cyrus's face, but the girl's mouth was open and her eyes were closed, and she looked like she was dying, but then her eyes fluttered open for a moment, like butterflies, and she smiled upward a little, then closed them again. This is it, I thought. This is the mystery itself, and I am watching it. I felt very powerful suddenly, like I was looking down from the other world on the little beings here on earth, at how small they were, and how like animals. There was nothing beautiful about it, but it interested me. I waited, watching them, until I was quite sure they had no idea I was there at all.
Then I slid out of the bed. As I crawled along the dark floorand found my dress, I saw their naked bodies in my mind, and it was some days before I was able to make the image go away. I put my dress on silently, not even zipping it in case that made noise, and I crept on my hands and knees to the door. It was still open a crack, and as I got there, I eased it open so I could pass through it. In the living room, the men with guns were asleep on couches, and none of the pregnant girls were there anymore. When I passed the men, I stood up and tiptoed to the door. I smoothed my hair, zipped up my dress, opened the door, and stepped out into the dark hallway.
In the women's room, all the lights were out, and the room was covered from back to front with sleeping bodies, women and kids flopped all over the place. I went to my mat, but someone was on it. Mama was sleeping on a mat right nearby. I wanted to crawl in next to her, but there wouldn't have been room, since there were peopl
e on either side of her, so I lay down on a mat I found on the other side of the room and tried to sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw them, Cyrus and the girl, naked and thrashing like fish beside me.
I guess I must have fallen asleep, finally, because when the lights went on, I couldn't remember where I was. Everyone rose, groaning and wiping their eyes, and soon the little kids were running around the room, all excited because it was finally April 15.
Mama looked surprised to see me. “But Mary Fred,” she said. “I thought you were—”
“I had to leave,” I said. “Things weren't exactly what I expected.”
“They never are,” Mama said, which surprised me. She stared down at the floor for a second, then touched my arm and said, “Are you all right?”
I told her I was just fine, and that there was nothing to worry about.
“Did you—”
I shook my head.
Tears filled her eyes and she took my hand. I had never seen Mama cry, not even when my brothers died, and I gave a little gasp of horror. “It just doesn't feel right,” she said in a whisper. “I thought it was the right thing, I truly did, but now—”
Just then a man came into the room carrying a machine gun and told us that it was time to assemble in the main hall. Everyone quickly finished getting dressed and we all dashed there, traveling up the stairs in a crush, crowding into the big meeting room in the west wing of the Bunker. At the front of the room was a stage with a pulpit on it, and I saw Cyrus come in from a side entrance. I was far enough toward the back of the room that he couldn't see me, but I could see him. He didn't look like the same person I had been with last night, in fact he didn't look familiar at all. A white robe with red and purple trim covered him, and he had let his braided ponytail loose so his wrinkled hair spread across his shoulders. He raised his hands like he was blessing us and said a little prayer. Then he picked up a cell phone from behind the pulpit and dialed.
