Things that may or may not have come to pass: a forest engulfed in flames, the white cliff swarmed by military, a thousand birds falling from the sky at once, their stiff little legs grasping at nothing. How can she know if these pictures are true? She’s been buried for years. One sequence comes to her again and again: a girl running and running and then tripping, falling, captured by terrifying men. With this, she wakes drenched in sweat. Who is the girl? She never sees her face, only the back of her small figure, hair flying out behind her, bare feet pounding the burning sand.
Most recently, she is transfixed by a horrific tableau that she stitches into the quilt’s centrepiece each evening, trance-like, until she cannot keep her eyes open. She shows it to no one. She cannot shake its importance: it is a message, certainly. But for whom? It feels connected to her beloved older sister, long since exiled. Certainly not Father Ernst or Susan. If either of them sees it, Rebekah will get much more than a whipping. She will suffer and burn.
Bedtime, at long last. Rebekah prays she will not wake on the morrow.
Since childhood, this has been a sanctuary: her cotton-swabbed dream world where all the mothers retire in glory and their dead babies sleep unperturbed. White and fuzzy filters for this softly padded place of pale blue light. It smells good here and voices ring like bells, clear and bright. She hears them, and though they do not speak any kind of language, she knows their meaning. She is transported, comforted. Elsewhere.
She is in a sun-drenched meadow.
She is up a gnarled oak.
She is swinging a metal pail on the way to milking.
Lo, she is in her lover’s arms, nesting in the orchard on the southwest ridge, watching the sunset.
Then Susan’s scraping voice: “Hie thee!” A thump on her cot.
Rebekah’s eyelids twitch, and she grips her rough blanket, trying to claw her way back to that wonderful place. It eludes her. Her eyes open to the dismal room, and she groans. Finally, she sits up on the thin mattress and coils squeak in the bedframe. The horror of another dank day. The indignities of bunker living, of Father Ernst’s putrid chamber.
“Good morning, Mother Rebekah,” sings Leah.
“Good morning,” say the twins, Rachel and Helen, their uncanny movements mirroring one another.
“Morning,” she whispers.
Ruth watches her with haunted eyes—now what has she gone and done?—and Susan’s sharp gaze follows Rebekah as she slowly stands and shakes the bed sheets out, as she straightens and folds and turns them back carefully, just as she does every day.
Rebekah hangs her nightdress and cap. She dons a cotton dress over the full slip she no longer removes. With her back to the others she rests a hand on her hard belly, hoping. Nothing, at first. Then, there it is: a slow turning inside. How could it be? Rebekah wipes at her eyes. How could he leave? She ties an apron high on her waist with a sharp tug and follows Susan, the grim reaper herself, out to the galley kitchen.
Breakfast, such as it is. Susan rings the bell. Spoons knock against bowls and then the sweeping, mopping, the washing up. Tending the children, the pretty, clinging children. They love her, a small mercy. Lunch, there is hardly anything. Then more sweeping, more washing up. Minutes are hours, hours an eternity. She’ll do laundry if there’s water. Tidy the bedrooms if not. Her body is pulled toward the infirmary; she pretends it wants dusting. Rebekah catches her reflection in the medicine cabinet door. She is all angles and shadow. Who am I? Inside, the shelves are nearly bare. A bit of gauze and expired ointment, a thermometer. Taped to the underside of the bottom shelf are the last three pain pills, believed by the Family to be long since gone. She takes one, cuts it in half with a razor blade. Swallows a piece dry. Dabs at the chalky crumbs with fingertips that she licks greedily. She hides the other bits with the blade and secures the tape back in place. How else can she get through these days?
Now, supper. She has her strength back. It hardly matters that she must wash the dreaded dishes, again. And all that praying. Praying he’ll return soon. Praying for swift retribution, that’s what. For an end to their suffering.
After dinner, the lighting is so poor she can hardly manage the fine work on the quilt, much of which is by hand. The ancient treadle machine, powered by foot, finishes the longer seams. She will use it to bind the edges, sealing all three layers together. Despite severe restrictions—fabrics co-opted from raggedy old clothes, limited embroidery floss, and threads in strange colours—Rebekah is pleased with her stack of finished bold blocks. She is almost done connecting the top layer: double diamonds for the border squares, pinwheels as the main background, yards of gunmetal sashings, and the beautiful appliqué corner blocks—painstaking portraits of the first four mothers. The central image, her secret mosaic, demands meticulous paper piecing. It’s a variation on the Ascension, a pattern she designed last year, and her best work to date.
She asked Ruth to help, but the girl is all thumbs and her sloppy quarter-inch seams had to be ripped out and redone twice. Ruth is better with her knife than with a needle. So much for the romantic notion of an underground quilting bee. It could have helped pass the time, given them a shared sense of purpose. But the magic, the profound sense of satisfaction, was lost on the others.
“Memaw always said that a proper quilt requires the precise convergence of mathematics, logic, and creativity,” said Rebekah. “A true masterpiece holds, in addition, an unnameable element, its own uncommon spirit.”
“I hate sewing,” said Ruth.
“It’s not just sewing, it’s an archive. A history, if you know how to look.”
“Arthritis,” said Susan, flexing and curling her fingers.
Alas. Rebekah inters herself in the work, busies her hands, her mind. She transposes her mystical images into rough sketches and animates them with fabric. She measures, marks with pencil, pins, and finally, commits to precision snipping with the long-handled scissors. A dismembered dress piles at her feet. Sleeves, now cut to pieces. Bodice, ripped open on the seams. And the labour-intensive reparations: stitching all these forlorn bits back together into one cohesive work of art. Functional—and infused with her very essence.
Rebekah’s only other solace is her stolen moments with the boy. Grimy, sweet skin and lips as soft as a girl’s. A terrible chance to take. They are doomed, but she can’t, she won’t stop. With him topside, it’s pure misery. And what if he doesn’t return? He barely survived his last forage. She can’t endure this dreary place without Paul.
She will not.
Until his return, there is the quilt to finish—an utter compulsion—and the dreamtime that consumes more of her, sleeping and awake. She can travel there almost on whim. The pills help. Sitting quietly in the hard fast, for example, or during Reflections, or even at table, her body still inhabits the Great Hall but her mind may be full of beauteous, otherworldly creatures. God’s garden—the Family speaks of it endlessly—is where Rebekah travels when she’s between worlds, she’s sure of it. And any moment that she is permitted to sit, even working her needle and thread, she can fly there swiftly in secret and lose herself in her world of forest and fairy and infinite possibility.
CHAPTER 6
Ruth stifles a yawn. Cousin Silas paces in front of the children, just like Father Ernst, but it doesn’t have the same mesmerizing effect; they can’t sit still. He taps the front of the classroom with a long ruler. Nothing. He taps Leah, the littlest, on her head.
“That’s enough,” he says. “If you long to speak, tell the story of our Great Standoff, of our Martyrs’ Sacrifice and our Exodus, of our going to ground. Elsewise, shut your mouths.”
He turns and sweeps his arms, also like Father Ernst, and in his most dramatic voice says, “Humble, we are, though ever despised by godless fornicators for our faith. This is our legacy, your inheritance, more precious than gold or weapons or water.”
“We shall never starve so long as we hold history in our mouths,” the children reply.
“Very good
,” says Silas. “So ends our Lesson on the Doctrine.” He shoos them away with a flick of his wrists, another gesture copied from Father Ernst.
Will he ever command a room like Father? Ruth sincerely doubts it. Yet he is driven to try, starved for attention of almost any kind. With Paul topside, he’s got even less competition. From pity she says, “You done a good job, Silas.”
“Really?” His face warms with pleasure. “Tomorrow I’ll review our Martyrs’ Pledge. What do you think about that?”
But Ruth is gone already; not even her shadow lingers.
Ruth corrals the girls back to their room where the twins solemnly brush and braid one another’s hair. She sits on her cot, entranced, watching Helen and Rachel. Their daily grooming has become an elaborate, private ritual, wordless, yet language flows through their bodies in the acts of looking and touching and knowing. In the knotting of hair, spells are cast.
“Do mine?” says little Leah, climbing onto Ruth’s lap waving a comb.
The twins stop and stare until Leah squirms.
“I never get to say nothing,” says Leah.
The older girls resume their mirrored dance, twining and plaiting and tying with ribbons.
Ruth begins to work through Leah’s thin curls. The comb snags and Leah whimpers. “Sorry. We’ll get those out, don’t worry. At least there’s no lice.” Loose strands gather and, much like Ruth’s own, fall out in tufts. Ruth collects them in a separate pile that she worries between her fingers. Bald patches are beginning to show on the child, which Rebekah once said is on account of not getting enough protein.
“There,” says Ruth when she’s done, and pets Leah’s hand-me-down sweater. Its one Ruth also wore many years ago, though the colours are faded and the sleeves are stretched to fraying. Leah’s fingers trace Ruth’s face and settle on her lips.
“Where’s Mother Hannah?” asks Leah. “Is she my mother?”
“All of the mothers are your mother,” says Ruth, pretending to chomp those fingertips. “You know that.”
“Yes, but do I belong more to one?”
“Maybe, but not Hannah.”
“Then who?”
Helen says, “You belong to God.”
Rachel and Helen climb onto the bed beside Ruth and Leah. Their downy limbs hook together at the knees and elbows to huddle for warmth. “Leah come out of Mother Rebekah,” says Rachel.
“Mother Rebekah?” says Leah.
In that instant, Rebekah appears in the doorway. Gaunt in the shadows, sections of the quilt she’s been working on folded neatly over one arm.
Leah reaches out for her. “You’re my tummy mother?”
Rebekah covers her face with the quilt and gasps. She’s crying. Just as suddenly, she disappears back into the dark hallway.
Ruth clears her throat but says nothing. What on earth is wrong with Rebekah?
“Nobody likes me,” pouts Leah.
“Don’t be silly. I like you. Now it’s bedtime.” Ruth nudges Leah back to her cot. She whisks her out of her patched dress and rummages in the underbed storage trunk to find a clean nightshirt.
Leah rubs her rounded belly. “What about them? Who’s their mother?”
“Mother Susan bore the twins,” says Ruth. She shakes loose a nightshirt and helps Leah change into it.
The twins strip out of their dresses. “Susan,” one says. “That old humpback don’t even like us. Why can’t we have Hannah? Hannah’s pretty.”
“Hmph. Hannah’s not old enough,” says Ruth.
The twins fold and tuck their clothes away. The nightdresses, all cut from the same pattern, are greying and translucent with wear. When the girls file out the door and down the hall they drift like little ghosts.
“Toilet, then wash hands and faces, then brush teeth,” says Ruth. In the latrine she pushes the grey-water bucket closer to the sinks. She is already tiring despite the mouthful of meat. Ruth’s hunger wakes, as though the bite they had for supper—which seems like days ago rather than an hour or two—only made it worse. Tomorrow they’re back to plain oats with a pinch of salt to help it go down. Not even a shake of spice or sugar or dried fruit. Only God knows when Paul will return or what he’ll bring.
Three sets of eyes stare at her. Helen whispers to Rachel.
“What?” says Ruth.
“Who’re you talking to?” asks Leah.
“No one.” Was she speaking out loud?
Normally, Rebekah puts the girls to bed. Susan, on the other hand, will sweep the Hall three times over to avoid it. And Hannah is too good for either chore. She and Father Ernst practice begetting quite a lot—the muffled sounds of which send Ruth shamed and curious to her own bunk—so Hannah is never around at bedtime. Hannah wants to conceive like she wants to win at checkers, but it doesn’t come easy. Mother Susan says none of them has got enough on their bones; it’d take a miracle. She should know. She birthed a dozen in her time, now mostly departed by one means or another.
And as Rebekah whispered so strangely the other day, “What will we do with another baby?”
“You’re mumbling again,” says Leah.
“What—”
“Who’re you talking to?”
“Oh,” says Ruth. “Nobody.”
Back in the bunkroom, Ruth tucks the girls in bed. Rebekah is still missing, who knows where—not that there are many places to hide. She must be elbow deep in her quilt pattern to not say goodnight.
“Tell us a story?” says Helen. “Tell about the Martyrs.”
Ruth sits on the edge of Leah’s bed and rubs her hands to warm them. It wasn’t that long ago she herself was being put to bed, most often by Rebekah, who whispered stories from a book she knew almost by heart, a forbidden book of tales she had been given by the nameless sister. It had been secreted to their home and kept hidden in Mother Deborah’s topside house for years. “I’d have snuck it into the bunker had I known how long we’d be here,” Rebekah once said in private. “I miss the pictures.”
Ruth says, “Here’s a story told to me long ago. It’s secret. Can you keep a secret?”
“I can,” says Leah.
“She cannot,” says Helen. “She blabs everything, doesn’t she, Rachel?”
Rachel nods and Leah says, “I can so!”
Ruth says, “There’ll be no story if you don’t shut it. This story—that we will not mention outside this room—is about twelve princesses, all sisters.”
“What’s a princess?” asks Leah.
“A king’s daughter,” says Ruth.
“You mean Jesus Christ, King of Kings?” That’s Helen.
“No. Just a regular king, a person in charge of a country.”
“Like Father Ernst?”
“Kind of. Are you done?”
“Fine,” says Helen.
“The king was upset because each morning when he unlocked the bedroom his twelve daughters shared, they were exhausted. It was as though they had not slept, and each morning their shoes were worn down to nothing, as though they had been walking or running or even dancing all night long. Each day, twelve new pairs of shoes had to be made for their feet, and the following morning it was always the same; the girls were tired and sore and bad-tempered, and the soles of their shoes were worn right through.”
“I didn’t know shoes had souls,” says Rachel.
“The other kind,” says Ruth, and pulls off her slipper. She shows them the thinned-out bottom bit.
“The king wanted to solve this mystery, so he announced a contest all across the land,” Ruth continues. “If anyone could discover what the daughters were doing at night, he would be given jewels and a feast and a castle and a dog and a horse and a beautiful sword and pie and also he could marry any of the daughters that he liked. But if he failed to solve the mystery, he would be brought into the Great Hall of the palace and he would have his head cut right off and that would be the end of him.”
“Ooh.” Rachel draws back against the pillow, frightened.
“How did
they cut off the head?” says Leah. “With scissors?”
“No. Probably a sword or a machete. Maybe an axe. They’d make him kneel over a bucket, so the man’s head would land inside and make less mess for the old woman who had to mop.”
Rachel says, “Yuck.”
Leah says, “I’m scared.”
“Listen,” says Ruth. “If you don’t like this one, I can tell you about a winged dragon that breathes fire—”
“The Devil!” says Helen.
“Or a toad that becomes a handsome man when a girl kisses it, or one about an old gnome who turns hay into gold thread.”
“Cousin Ruth, what’s the meaning of this?” Susan is leaning in the doorway behind Ruth. How long has she been there? “What stories are these?”
Ruth opens her mouth, then shuts it.
“That is not the Doctrine, nor the history of our great Martyrs. Answer me.”
“Only a dream I had,” says Ruth.
“Sorcery and lies,” says Susan. “Be zealous, therefore, and repent!”
“I’m sorry,” says Ruth and ducks her head.
“Unclean beasts, fornication, false prophets,” says Susan, advancing on Ruth. She strikes her about the head and shoulders, shouting. “‘Behold, he cometh with clouds: and all kindred of the earth shall wail because of him.’ Get, and do not show yourself again tonight! The Devil has had at you.”
Ruth is up and out the door, down the hall. The Great Hall is empty, just Silas peddling, slow and steady on the stationary bike. He waves. The tunnel door is unlatched and Ruth slides it open, closes it behind her. It’s dark and cold, colder than the bunker main rooms. She strides halfway and curls up at the cairn.
“Father in Heaven forgive me,” she says.
A whipping, most likely. She’ll have to reflect tomorrow, take her licks from Father Ernst. Rebekah, too, if he finds out about the book.
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