“There was so much love in that room,” Christine always said, closing her eyes during this part of the story. “All just radiating from Emmanuel. There were seven or eight other people in there, seated in a semicircle at his feet, but I hardly even noticed them. I couldn’t take my eyes off Emmanuel. The light from the lamp next to him made his skin look as if it was glowing. He held out both of his hands as I came into the room and gave me the most beautiful smile. I started to get nervous. ‘Come closer,’ he said gently. I took a few steps, and as I got close enough Emmanuel reached out, put his hands on my head, and started to pray in Latin. As he prayed, his hands began to tighten, until the pressure on my skull was so intense I thought he might push me through the floor. There was no pain, but I remember the heat from his hands, how it traveled all the way down my body. Then suddenly he tilted my head back so I was looking directly into his eyes. They were the strangest color I had ever seen—a sort of milky gray with little specks of gold and green. ‘Be still,’ he said, gazing at me with those eyes. ‘Be still.’”
I don’t know if I believe anymore that Emmanuel has magical healing powers the way I used to think he did when I heard this part of the story. But after that night—and to this day—Christine got her body back again. The foot stamping, the clicking noises, the hair pulling, all of it, just disappeared after Emmanuel prayed over her that night. Lately I’ve been thinking that maybe she wanted so badly to be healed that her body did it for her. Or maybe her belief in Emmanuel was stronger than the wacky way her brain was wired, and once she had something to replace that part of it, it withered and died. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. Whatever the case, it was enough for Christine to pack her bags when Emmanuel moved East, kiss her mother good-bye, and follow him. Twenty-five years later, she has never looked back.
Now, back at the East House, Christine clears her throat and adjusts the rope of braid along her shoulder, all business again. “Well, then you’re just in time. We’re about to start making the banners for the Ascension March.”
I bite my lip, stifling a scream. There’s no way I can sit around now and start making banners. My head is pounding and it feels as if it has been stuffed with cotton. I’ve got to get down to the butterfly garden or I’m going to freak out. “Did you know Nana Pete’s here?” I ask, thinking quickly.
Christine blinks. “Yes, I know. Agnes’s mother came down a little while ago and told me.”
I look up with my best pleading stare. There is no need to explain to Christine the special relationship I have with Nana Pete—it was Christine who let me tag along whenever Nana Pete took Agnes out of the nursery for a visit. But she winces now, as if reading my mind.
“And … you want me to let you go visit with her?” she asks. “Now?”
I nod my head vigorously.
Christine puts a hand on her hip. “Honey, you just missed the whole afternoon prayer service. During Ascension Week!” She lowers her voice. “I can’t keep giving you special treatment all the time. Emmanuel is going to find out about it.”
“Just this once,” I beg. “Please, Christine. It’s a surprise visit, which means she’s probably not even going to be staying very long. I just want to go down and see what the story is. Please let me go.” Unlike Agnes, I’ll lie until I’m blue in the face if I have to. Anything to get out of here. Christine takes a deep breath and looks uneasily around the room. Peter and the boys are in deep conversation again about the new Mercedes. Amanda Woodward is sitting in the opposite corner of the room, reading a book.
“All right,” she whispers finally. “I guess it is sort of a special circumstance.” I quell the urge to jump up and down. Christine grimaces and lowers her voice. “And find your shoes before dinner, got it?”
I nod. “Got it.”
Cresting atop the wide hill behind the back door, I glimpse the slanted roof of the Milk House, where I have lived with Winky Martin for the past seven years. Unlike the other houses on the compound, which are set in a kind of semicircle around the Great House, the Milk House sits alone in an opposite field, an island adrift in a grassy sea. Its name originated years earlier, when Emmanuel founded Mount Blessing with his first ten followers, and they used the house for storing milk from the community’s three cows. As the community grew, the cows were sold off and the house was left empty. The Milk House itself is tiny, with just a first floor and side steps leading up to an open loft. The original shelves used to store the milk bottles still run the length of each downstairs wall, and wide wooden beams meet in a V across the ceiling. When it rains, a smell like damp hay and violets fills the rooms.
When I was first sent to live in the loft here at the age of seven, which is the cutoff age for the nursery, I cried for a week. It was the first time since I had been born that I was going to be separated from Agnes, who was going back to live with her parents. (Another Mount Blessing rule dictates that all children be separated from their natural parents at six months of age and raised in the nursery until the age of seven. This is supposed to ensure that Emmanuel remains the primary parental figure.) I would still spend the majority of my days in school, and Christine was instructed to come down every night to make sure that I was in bed, but without Agnes next to me in the little cot we shared for so long, I literally thought I was going to disappear. Even worse than that, now I was going to have to share space with Winky Martin.
I saw Winky just about every day as he pushed a mop around the floors of the Great House, but I, like the rest of the kids, had always kept my distance. I wasn’t really sure what it was, but there was definitely something wrong with Winky. In the head, I mean. Some people even said he was retarded, but I just found him frightening. He grunted and wheezed, his meaty face shining with perspiration as he moved his mop back and forth across the floor. Even under his blue robe, his heavy, awkward shape was apparent, and when he walked, he led with his head, swaying it back and forth like a giant agitated bear. Agnes clutched me when we heard the news, her blue eyes big and round. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. Just hide under the covers whenever he comes in.”
I did just that for the first week, listening to his muffled grunts from under my blankets, squeezing my eyes shut and clutching George so hard my palms got sweaty. I stared at my little yellow night-light and waited for Winky to climb the steps up to my room and do something horrible to me. But the dreaded footsteps never came. In fact, it seemed as if Winky didn’t even realize—or much care—that I was there in the first place. And then one night, after I climbed into bed, I noticed a strange book under my pillow. It was large and heavy, like a dictionary, with an enormous orange and black butterfly on the front cover. Over the picture, in an arc, was the title The Encyclopedia of Butterflies. The inside was jammed with information about every butterfly known to man. It was the most beautiful book I had ever seen. I pored over it, savoring every drawing and photograph, memorizing whole passages about the flight patterns and mating habits of the tiny insects. There were butterflies with fantastic names, words I had never even heard before: whirlabouts, skippers, emperors, sulphurs, and monarchs. It took me two weeks to read the book from cover to cover, still under my blankets, with George perched on the mattress next to me.
After that I began to poke around downstairs. There wasn’t much to look at, since Winky’s entire room consisted of a dresser with four drawers, a single bed (unmade and wrinkled), and a chair covered with a green corduroy material. The items on top of his dresser consisted only of a blue hairbrush (minus half its bristles), a clock, and three other books about butterflies. But his bed was messy. I liked that. My bedspread upstairs, stretched taut the way Christine had taught me, was just another reminder of the “strive for perfection” rule we had to follow, which, in my book anyway, is complete crap. Who in their right mind seriously thinks that a human being can go through life without making a mistake? It’s impossible! I’m constantly trying to get this through Agnes’s head, but she just won’t listen. She doesn’t lis
ten when I point out some of the other inconsistencies of the Big Four either, especially the one about tempting not lest you be tempted, which is supposed to explain why there are no TVs or magazines or radios anywhere on the grounds. But why is it, I’ve asked her, that Emmanuel himself—and now Veronica—is exempt from this rule? Why is Emmanuel’s room full of material things like stereo equipment, a baby grand piano, expensive wines, and that enormous color television? Agnes says that Emmanuel is entitled to these things, since he has achieved a “plateau higher than temptation.” Like she even knows whatever the hell that means.
Anyway, for this reason alone, Winky’s unmade bed made me happy. It was the first time I had ever come across anyone who dared dismiss Emmanuel’s rules, however trivial. I sat down on the edge of his soft mattress and swung my legs and wondered what other rules he broke.
It wasn’t long before I found out. One night, after hearing strange noises coming from downstairs, I crept to the top of my stairs and peeked over the railing. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Winky sitting in his green chair staring at a tiny black-and-white TV. The screen was no larger than a piece of loose-leaf paper and the picture, which at times skit-tered up and down, was fuzzy at best. Guys in rimmed hats and black-and-white-striped uniforms stood around a gigantic baseball field, and a crowd roared every time one of them hit the ball. When someone got up to bat, Winky shifted restlessly in his seat and grunted. I sat still as snow and watched the rest of the game from the stairs. When it ended, Winky stood up, burped, unplugged the television, and pushed it back under his bed. I crept back to my own bed, listening to my heart pound in the dark as Winky’s snores filled the house. Segregated or not, the Milk House was starting to feel like home.
Now I tiptoe around to the back of the house. Winky is on his knees in the middle of the garden, tamping down soft dirt around the pepper bushes in the back row. Perfect. I back up slowly and sneak into the house. Moving as quietly as possible, I angle the tiny TV out from under Winky’s bed, set it on the orange milk crate next to his slippers, and plug it in. Days of Our Lives is nearly over, but I watch the last ten minutes of it breathlessly, trying to figure out what I missed. I think someone may be plotting to kill Hope, but I’m not sure. It’s just a hunch. I keep an eye on Winky, peeking out the window every few minutes. He once caught me watching this show and flipped his lid. He doesn’t care if I watch baseball with him, but he thinks everything else is trash and he doesn’t want to be responsible for me watching it. My mouth waters as a Coke commercial comes on. I wonder what a Coke would taste like. Too soon, the credits start to roll and when the hourglass appears on the screen, I flick the television off and shove it back in its hiding spot. Then I stroll out to the garden.
“Hey!” I squat down next to Winky, watching as he pours a bucket of water over the pepper bush. He grunts in response but doesn’t look up. “I was afraid you might not be here. How’d you get out of Ascension duties today?”
Winky reaches under his robe and removes a small pair of garden shears from his back pocket. “I was peeling potatoes, but Beatrice said I was too slow. She told me to go away.” He struggles to get the words around his tongue, which lolls heavily against his lower lip.
“Oh, Beatrice is an idiot,” I say, sitting down carefully on the grass. “She thinks she can boss everyone around because Veronica put her in charge of the Ascension dinner this year. She’s impossible. Don’t take it personally.”
Winky begins snipping off the dead leaves from the pepper bushes. “I don’t think she likes looking at me. She gets scared. She always tells me to go.” His left eye, which spasms uncontrollably as he talks (and is the reason for his unusual nickname), is moving so fast that I wonder if there is a small engine underneath the lid.
“Well, that’s her problem. I can’t think of too many people who like looking at her, either, especially with that big ugly mole on her chin.” I stand back up. It hurts way too much to sit right now. Plus, while it’s nothing new, I still get agitated when I hear about people brushing Winky off, as if he were some kind of subhuman species. It’s not his fault that he can’t think as quickly as they do, or that his weird older brother who arrived with him ten years ago decided to leave to “pursue other avenues”—without his handicapped younger brother. Most people at Mount Blessing barely give Winky the time of day, and if they do, it’s usually because they’re complaining about something he didn’t do or scolding him for doing it wrong. I know they just take their cues from Emmanuel, who has never bothered to have an actual conversation with Winky about anything, let alone acknowledged his presence. I know for a fact he’s never gotten a copy of The Saints’ Way, and while we’ve never talked about it, I’d bet my life he’s never seen the inside of the Regulation Room. I’m not sure he even knows it exists. Emmanuel would never waste his time trying to “retrain” someone like Winky, who is still “broken.” Winky’s just … here. Kind of like me.
“Wow, this garden is really coming along!” I put my hands on my hips and survey the neat rows of butterfly bushes we planted last night. “It’s gonna be huge this year!” This is the time of year when Winky’s butterfly garden, which he dug and planted all by himself ten years ago, begins to turn into a carpet of color. The pepper and butterfly bushes will bloom in just a few weeks, small pink, purple, and white flowers that will perfume the air with a wonderful lemony smell. By the end of May, most of the purple phlox, French marigolds, nasturtium, and verbena plants will have opened, and in June the rows of purple coneflowers, scarlet sage, and wild zinnias will take center stage.
Of course, the best part of the garden—and the reason Winky planted it in the first place—is the butterflies it attracts. Winky is obsessed with butterflies. He says that the healthiest environments are the ones that attract lots of butterflies. (Don’t think it’s any accident that Winky had to actually build a butterfly garden himself to get butterflies to come to Mount Blessing, but that’s beside the point.) At the height of summer, there will be hundreds, maybe even thousands, of winged visitors to his garden, each one hovering inside its favorite flower. Winky has planted specific flowers for specific butterflies and they love him for it. At times the air seems to hum with the beating of paper-thin wings.
“I don’t know,” Winky says, twisting his head to look up at the sky. “Farmers’ Almanac says it’s supposed to be a dry summer. It might not do so good this year.”
“Well, I’ll pray for rain.”
Winky snorts. “You? Pray?”
I kick at a loose clod of earth. “Hey, did you hear anything about Emmanuel buying a new car? A Mercedes?”
Winky nods. “I heard Beatrice talking about it. It’s for Veronica. Her birthday, I think.”
I shake my head. “It’s just unbelievable. It really is.”
“What, the car?”
“Yeah, the car. And the TV and the stereo and the baby grand piano and all the rest of it. I mean, how stupid is everyone, just nodding and smiling whenever he brings some other ten-thousand-dollar toy into the place?”
“I think the Mercedes cost a little more than that,” Winky says.
“Well, whatever.” I reach down and scoop a handful of the dark earth into my palm. It is cool and dry against my skin. “Seriously, Wink, are we the only two people who think it’s just slightly ludicrous that Emmanuel gets to be the exception to every single one of his rules? I mean, the man is a complete hypocrite! All the way through!” I lob a small stone into the distance. It arcs cleanly over the garden, landing in the field behind it. “And I’ll tell you what, one of these days, I’m going to do something about it.”
Winky turns around and squints up at me. Even with his swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth, I can tell the left side of his face is cocked up into a grin. “Oh yeah? You and what army?”
I shrug. “Maybe I don’t need an army. Maybe I’ll figure out something on my own.”
Winky shoves his scissors back into his rear pocket and looks around carefully. “W
hat’re you talking about exceptions for, anyway? You know I got a TV under my bed.” He acknowledges this with a hoarseness in his voice, as if the guilt is eating him alive.
“Oh, who cares?” I say impatiently. “The thing barely even works, Winky. And the only thing you watch is baseball, for crying out loud.” I pause. “Unlike me.” I mutter this last statement, but Winky jerks his head up and eyes me suspiciously.
“You watching those bad shows again when I’m not around?”
I kick at the ground as the blood rushes to my cheeks. “They’re not bad, Winky. I told you that. They’re just … ”
He struggles to his feet and cuts me off roughly with a wave of his hand. “I told you, Honey!” His face gets red; spit flies out of his mouth. “I told you be fore!”
I raise my hands against my chest. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I won’t do it ever again, okay? I promise.”
“You said that last time,” Winky says accusingly. His nostrils flare under his wild eyes. “You lied.”
I hang my head. “I’m sorry. I really am. I won’t do it again.” I watch shamefacedly as he drops down again to his knees and begins yanking at a patch of weeds. Minutes tick by in an awkward silence. The only sound is the forceful ripping of roots from the ground. After a while I get down on my knees opposite Winky and start weeding my side of the garden, pretending with every pull that I am wrenching Veronica’s head out from between her shoulders.
It feels good.
AGNES
As Benny and I wind our way down the path that leads to the Great House, I catch a glimpse of Nana Pete’s green Cadillac parked in the driveway. The Queen Mary.
I stop momentarily, regarding the physical proof of her presence with an inflating sense of happiness. “Wow, it really is her.”
The Patron Saint of Butterflies Page 4
