“Hey,” I whisper. “Why’re you still shaking? It’s okay. We’re out of there now. Those psychos are history. They’re not thinking about us at all anymore.” I wrap my cold fingers around the figurine and bring him down against my chest. My heart feels like a tiny, untethered ball knocking around under my rib cage. “It’s okay, little guy. It’s okay. Deep breaths, remember? In and out. In and out.” The sun, a bright lemon disk, warms the cold skin on my face and legs. “In and out, George. That’s it. In. And. Out.” My arm, heavy as a log suddenly, sinks down across my eyes.
I try not to think about it, but the whole Regulation Room scene unreels itself like a movie in my head. Emmanuel’s thin lips loom in front of me, followed by Veronica’s ice-blue eyes. I can’t stand Emmanuel, but I hate Veronica with an intensity that frightens even me. I hate that she is beautiful, not because I’m jealous, but because her beauty has been wasted. No one as mean as Veronica deserves to carry around a face like that. She has milky white skin, a high forehead, and large, perfectly round blue eyes. Agnes says they are the color of sapphires. I think they are the color of death. I also hate that she is the only person in this place—aside from Emmanuel—who doesn’t have to play by the rules. As the queen of Mount Blessing, she calls her own shots—no questions asked. She doesn’t want to wear her robe one day? Fine. She wants to buy a television for Emmanuel’s room, even though all electronics are forbidden at Mount Blessing? No problem! In fact, why not buy a gigantic color television that will hang on the wall of Emmanuel’s room like a fish tank?
I hate that she is cruel. Not cruel like Emmanuel. Emmanuel’s cruelty is freakish, something almost inhuman. Part of me wonders if he was just born that way, that maybe he doesn’t even have a choice. Veronica, on the other hand, is a whole other deal. She’s learned how to be cruel over the years, and the more powerful she’s become, the meaner she’s gotten. She used to leave Emmanuel’s room whenever one of us kids was brought in to be interrogated. Eventually she got to the point where she could stay, but with her eyes riveted on the floor and her fists clenched in her lap. Pretty soon, though, she was participating in the question-and-answer drills, even interrupting Emmanuel at times to ask us to “clarify” something further. Now she even takes over occasionally in the Regulation Room, the way she did this morning. Despite all this, everyone still considers her to be on the same level with the Blessed Virgin Mary. It makes me want to puke when I think about it.
But most of all, I hate that the Believers here refer to her as the mother of this place. As far as I’m concerned, the words “Veronica” and “mother” should never be in the same sentence. Yeah, I know my own mother ran off and left me, so what do I know about mothers, right? I guess I should be grateful that I have some kind of pseudomother stand-in at all. Well, I’m not. I might not know anything about what having a mother feels like, but I’ll tell you what: I do know what having a bad mother feels like. And I’d bet my life that having a bad mother is worse than not having any mother at all.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing I know, Agnes is snuggling in next to me, exactly the way we used to when we were kids sharing the same crib in the nursery. Her breath is soft as a rose petal against the back of my neck. Something inside my chest swells as our breathing aligns itself. For a moment it feels as though the old Agnes, the one I’ve known since we were born, is back. The new Agnes, who seems to have sprung whole and fully formed from inside the bowels of Emmanuel’s room after he presented her with that freaky The Saints’ Way book on her birthday, just doesn’t do things like that anymore. (I didn’t get the book on my birthday, which is two weeks after Agnes’s. Agnes was all upset for me, but I told her to relax. Emmanuel probably thinks it would be wasted on me and for once he’d be absolutely right. I’d probably burn the damn thing if I got it.) I hardly recognize Agnes anymore. Now, as if the rules we have to follow here aren’t enough, she has become completely obsessed with becoming an actual saint. She walks around with this glazed expression on her face, mumbling prayers under her breath, trying to be perfect. Half the time she doesn’t even eat.
It’s been a long year, watching and listening to my best friend turn into a robot-girl. I miss her. I miss the light and easy way things used to be with us, the way she used to be able to make me laugh so hard I practically peed in my pants. I can’t even remember the last time she was funny—about anything. I miss sitting in the old apple trees on the path to the barn and talking for hours, about any and everything. When we got hungry, we would just reach up and pluck an apple, warm and sweet from the sun, from one of the branches and eat it. I miss the way we used to steal extra snacks from the snack tray after dinner—usually plastic bags filled with dried cereal—and run down to the frog pond so we could eat it without being seen. If Agnes stole anything now, she’d probably have a heart attack. I miss the dumb jokes she used to tell me and the way her eyes would fill up with tears when she watched the sun go down at night.
Most of all, though, I miss running with her in the rain. Agnes is small, so you wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but she can run. Fast. When she takes off, it’s like a set of wings sprout from the back of her shoes. No one—not even any of the boys—has ever beaten her. Not once. It’s like trying to keep up with a cheetah. We used to spend the majority of our free time, especially in the summer, racing against each other. I liked running in the heat, but Agnes would literally drag me down the hill to the bicycle ring whenever the skies threatened rain. Her eyes would gleam with excitement as the wind whipped up the dust around us and the air began to fill with the strange metallic scent of the coming storm. We flew across the ring over and over again as the drops fell, going faster and faster as the rain picked up speed.
It’s been over a year since we ran together. Whenever I suggest a race, Agnes just shakes her head. It’s just as well I guess, since she can barely even muster the energy to walk the quarter mile to school every morning, let alone run a race, thanks to all that ridiculous fasting. The whole thing pisses me off. It really does. Agnes said once that running against the rain made her try harder, that it forced her to reach down inside herself to a place she usually didn’t go. If you ask me, that place was the only thing that kept her normal.
Now I don’t know what’s in there.
After Agnes and Benny leave to go find Nana Pete, I get up slowly and head back down to the East House. I’m dying to go down to the butterfly garden and see how things are going with Winky, but I don’t dare. I’ve already been missing for four hours. After the last Regulation Room visit I was gone for one hour, and the time before that, almost forty-five minutes. I don’t know how much longer Christine will let me get away with doing this kind of thing, but I don’t want to find out.
Except for the occasional whistling of a bird, the grounds are eerily quiet. Even the wind is still, as if it too understands this week’s rule of silence. Ascension Week is one of the holiest times of the year, when the Believers celebrate Jesus Christ’s ascent into heaven. For the next seven days, talking is allowed only at the barest minimum, and then in the lowest tone possible. Any activity that takes place outside is strictly prohibited. Even school is canceled for the week. Everyone is inside somewhere, either praying or participating in “Ascension activities,” which will culminate at the end of the week with the Ascension March.
So when I hear a strange noise suddenly, like the crunching of gravel, I freeze in my tracks. A strange car emerges from around the bend in the dirt path, moving slowly up the hill. Darting behind a lilac bush, I peer out through the leaves. Sleek and compact as a bullet, the car is the color of gunmetal. Its glossy exterior is spotless, and the tiny silver hood ornament catches the sun in a flash of light. The little hairs on my arm stand up as I catch a glimpse of Veronica sitting behind the wheel. She is not wearing her robe. No surprise there. Gold bracelets encircle her thin wrists and a blue scarf, knotted at the throat, covers her blond hair. I hold my breath as the car passes in front of me. Ther
e’s no telling what will happen if Veronica catches sight of me now, especially after all the trouble I got into this morning. I hunch down farther against the bush, but the car rolls on past and continues without pause up the remainder of the hill.
Spooked, I run the rest of the way down to the East House without stopping and poke my head in cautiously. The prayer service has obviously ended, as a bunch of the older kids are crowded around the window in the front of the room.
“Did you see it?” I hear Peter ask. “I think it’s called a Mercedes. My dad told me Emmanuel was ordering it from somewhere in Long Island.”
I roll my eyes. Out of all the boys in my group, Peter is definitely the most gullible, which is why I dared him to stick his tongue in my mouth this morning. Thinking about it now, the way he nearly lunged at me with his mouth wide open, I feel sick to my stomach. I should have picked someone with a little more backbone, someone who at least would have made going into the Regulation Room afterward worth it. Peter was too easy. Plus, he gave me up in a heartbeat when Emmanuel demanded an explanation, pointing at me from across the room with a trembling finger. “It was Honey’s idea,” he whispered. “I didn’t even want to.” What a jerk. His little ears, which turn pink when he gets embarrassed and had appealed to me earlier, now just looked stupid. To tell you the truth, though, I wasn’t really surprised. Peter is a carbon copy of his parents, especially his mother. Mrs. Winters practically kisses the ground Emmanuel walks on. She’s been telling that poor kid what a godlike person Emmanuel is since he was old enough to talk.
You know, some days I think I am going to lose it when I think about the fact that I don’t have the faintest idea who my mother (or father) are, but other times I seriously believe that their absence has given me an advantage over the rest of the kids here. Think about it: I am the only kid in this place who doesn’t have a second set of authority figures yammering in my ear day in and day out about how divine Emmanuel is. And while everyone around me seems to think that my parentless “situation” is pitiful, I think it has actually provided me with room to think for myself. Poor Agnes and Benny and Peter and all the rest of the kids don’t have any room left in their heads to have an original thought. Not only are their brains crammed with all of Emmanuel’s and Veronica’s crap, but they have their parents’ crap on top of it. They can’t win.
Now I look at my group, which is made up of the twelve-to fifteen-year-olds, over in the corner, rubbing their knees and stretching. The littlest kids are wandering around the room in a kind of daze, their eyes rheumy from staring at the cross on the wall for so long. Six-year-old Iris Murphy, who is always making a fuss about something, is crying about the shooting pains in her legs. Christine rubs her back, trying to console her.
Ducking into the bathroom across the hall, I splash cold water on my face and then look at myself in the mirror. Horrible. Swollen, puffy eyes, splotchy skin, three bright red pimples on my chin. I squeeze one of them until it bleeds and decide against squeezing the rest. Pulling the rubber bands off the bottom of my braids, I shake my hair loose, snatching out pieces of grass. Christine told me once that when I was born, my mother laughed and laughed to see her hair on me. Saffron red, with the same tiny curls just around the ears. Of course at Mount Blessing, red hair, like everything else red, represents Satan and hell and all that good stuff. So while my mother may have thought my hair was cute, my flame-colored tresses have only added to my already damaged reputation here. I guess I can’t win either.
I’ve had exactly one conversation about my mother with Christine, who told me that aside from the red hair, Naomi was just eighteen years old when she arrived, and that she played the violin. Really well. In fact, she was so good that Emmanuel himself took notice and invited her on more than one occasion into his room to play for him. Which is no little thing. Emmanuel used to be a classical pianist, and while I’d personally rather stick needles under my fingernails than have to sit in his room listening to him play, I have to admit, the guy knows his stuff. For real. I mean, he doesn’t even have to look down at his fingers or anything when he plays. So Naomi must have impressed him quite a bit with her own musical abilities.
“Actually, she was taken into his spiritual inner circle almost immediately,” Christine had said, getting a faraway look in her eyes as she remembered. (Even after twenty-five years, Christine has never been made a part of Emmanuel’s inner circle. I don’t know why she hasn’t, but sometimes I wonder if that made her jealous of my mother.) “Like a month after she got here, which is practically unheard of. But Emmanuel was so taken with the way she played the violin that no one was really surprised when it happened.”
“But then what?” I asked. “What happened that made her run away, especially if Emmanuel was so amazed with her?” I paused and bit my lip. “Was it me?”
“Honestly, Honey,” Christine said. “I just don’t know. One day she was here, visiting you in the nursery, and the next morning she was gone. No one ever saw her again.”
I didn’t press things after that. For one reason, I believed Christine, who, when I really thought about it, didn’t have any reason not to tell me the truth. But there was another smaller part of me that didn’t really want to know. What reason could ever be good enough for abandoning your own child?
Now, braiding my hair again quickly, I blow my nose, run my tongue over my lips, and slide my arms back inside my robe. Fastening the silk cord loosely around my waist, I glance down. Where the heck are my shoes? When did they come off and how did I forget to put them back on? Well, I’ll have to look for them later. Thank God my robe just barely covers my feet. I stroll nonchalantly back into the room, taking small steps so my feet don’t stick out, and look around. Peter spots me instantly and breaks away from the little group at the window.
“Hey,” he says, trying to act all casual. “Where have you been?”
I shrug and bend my knees so the robe covers my feet again. “Around.”
“Yeah,” Peter says slowly. “Well.” He clears his throat. “You know … I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry that I—”
“I’m sick of prayers!” Iris shouts suddenly, interrupting Peter midsentence. She is wriggling away from Christine. “I want to go back to school!” The room erupts with laughter as Iris bursts into tears. She has wild, curly blond hair and a stubby nose. “And no one’s listening to me! My legs hurt! They’ve been hurting all day!” Poor Iris. She says whatever’s on her mind, no matter what the consequence. It won’t get her into too much trouble here with Christine, but she’s always getting it from her parents, who, after Peter’s parents, are two of the most devoted Believers at Mount Blessing. They have no qualms about telling Emmanuel every single thing she does wrong. Like me, Iris is no stranger to the Regulation Room.
“Go upstairs and lie down, Iris,” Christine says. Her voice sounds tired. “I’ll be up in a minute to rub your legs.” I turn back to Peter and chuck him softly under the chin with my fist.
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “But thanks for saying it.” Peter’s face changes from one of relief to one of alarm as Christine walks up to the two of us.
“Honey,” she says, her dark eyebrows knitting themselves into a line above her blue eyes. “I was just going to have someone go look for you.” She touches my arm as Peter drifts back over to the window. “Are you all right?”
I nod and stare down at the floor. Christine moves her hand up to my shoulder. When I look up, her eyes are rimmed with tears. “You’re sure you’re okay?” she whispers.
I shove my hands into my pockets and shrug. “Yeah, of course. I’m fine.”
I guess Christine has been the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever known. Once, when I had the chicken pox, she stayed up with me for two days straight, taping a pair of mittens around my wrists so I wouldn’t scratch myself. Another time, when my fear of the dark started to get really bad, she brought a tiny yellow night-light in the shape of a heart and plugged it into the wall next to my crib. It was
no larger than a belt buckle, and to this day I don’t know how or where she got it, but I still have it. When I was younger, I guess, the fact that she was nice to me sort of canceled out the fact that she also ratted me out to Emmanuel every now and then. But I’m older now. And I know better.
Christine is a huge Emmanuel fan. Huge. Her devotion to him stems back twenty years, when he healed her of some weird compulsive disorder and then convinced her that she couldn’t live without him. I’ve heard her story about joining Mount Blessing at least a thousand times. She used to tell it to all of us when we lived in the nursery, sort of a last-resort bedtime ritual that she would launch into whenever she got bored or sentimental.
Christine was more or less an old maid before Emmanuel came along. At least that’s how she tells it. At the age of thirty-six, she still lived with her mother in a little town in Iowa, worked at the local library, and had never been out on a date. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she also had some kind of ailment that made her face and body do all sorts of weird things. Her mouth would squish itself up into horrible grimaces, or she would start to make clicking noises with her tongue. Other times, she would yank at her hair or stamp her feet. She had no control over these things; she said it was as if her body and her brain lived on two separate planes and operated independently of each other. There was no known cure for the disorder, and her life ahead looked bleak and hopeless. Until Emmanuel and his first followers moved into the house next door. Christine had heard little things about him from the women she worked with at the library; apparently he was already making a name for himself at the college, where he taught divinity classes, inviting students of his to “healing services” he held at the house. And after a few neighborly nods and a wave here and there from the front porch, Emmanuel invited Christine to come to one of the services, too.
The Patron Saint of Butterflies Page 3
