Black Widows

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Black Widows Page 32

by Cate Quinn


  I realize the Homestead layout is based on Salt Lake City. For some reason, this feels like another betrayal. Like the adults copied someplace else—someplace better—and never told us.

  At the corner of my eye, something is flashing, red, white, and blue, out of keeping with the sea of beige and brown buildings and the road. When I turn my eyes to the distraction, I see police cars on the highway in the distance.

  They’re so far away, they look like little blinking beetles in the distance. Even so, the road they’re on only leads to one place. In twenty minutes or so, they’ll pull up at the Homestead.

  Guess they found me.

  If I’m really going to do this, go back there, I’m running out of time.

  I descend from the guard tower and make my way on foot along the wide, dusty road. I look down, remembering how my boots would kick up the stones. The moment the houses come in plain sight, it’s like my feet have a mind of their own. They know where to go.

  As I draw toward the first two-story family cabin, I begin noticing details I hadn’t realized I still remember. Posts to tether horses, entrances labeled “husband only,” a water hydrant, flaking to rust. I remember the day this was painted white, along with all the other hydrants and outdoor faucets.

  The roads look even broader now there are no cars on them. An occasional upended school desk or abandoned chair litters the main road. Tears begin rolling down my face. I wipe them with the back of my hand, but they won’t stop. There’s no way back now. I’m going to the red graveyard.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Tina, Sister-Wife

  After all that time, scared to be alone, I drove back out to the ranch.

  Guess God spoke to me after all. Maybe I was hopin’ to patch things up with Rachel, but her car’s not here.

  I pull up, turn off the engine, and climb out to the dusty crunch of desert beneath my feet. Not quite sand but soil enough to confuse a few optimistic cattle farmers before they up and quit. Catch a burning handful, and it’ll pour right through your fingers, leaving a dirt mark that won’t brush off.

  I shield my eyes from the sun.

  Home sweet home.

  Heaped about in no clear order are the agricultural buildings of the old ranch. The corrugated iron cowshed that Blake used as a workshop. Our big leaky-roofed barn where Rachel canned food. A bunch of mechanical parts are strewn around on the ground, along with the weird lifeguard tower Blake rescued from someplace.

  Toward the back is the old wooden farmhouse, which at a distance looks a lot like a first grader’s drawing. A triangle on a square, with two windows, a central door, and straight sides set right on the dirt—no yard or fence, only a smattering of dollar-bill-colored shrubs fighting for a hold.

  When you get closer, you see the mix of old and new planks on the front and the dark patches of roof tile where Blake replaced shingle. Speared through the center is a big brick chimney, as though someone started with high hopes and ran out of good material. A mishmash but it worked. A little like us, I guess. For a while.

  I walk to the front door, which was salvaged from the inside of an old city town house—a four-paneled internal door with a round handle that was never designed to lock. The desert dust smell hits my nose as I walk inside. That dust blows in everywhere.

  Since there’s been no one to wipe and sweep, there’s already a fine layer on the creaky floor and our little round dining table and scattered over the big stone hearth. The small battered sofa and Rachel’s crochet rug seem to have repelled it somehow, like they know the trick of wild living.

  Now that I’m back all alone, I’m sorta regretting not goin’ downtown. Like someone has left me raw and exposed. I got a lotta ways of not thinking about things. I think I was sorta expecting to return to the ranch of my memory. Us three girls, circling about the place like moons orbiting a sun, tryin’ not to bump each other. Gettin’ mad with one another. Fucked up for sure, but better than havin’ no one. With no one to be frustrated with, there’s nothing to disguise all the thoughts in my head.

  Truth is, I swapped out drugs for an addiction to something else. Love. Religion. I never really changed what was underneath.

  Too painful, right? It’s difficult to explain to a regular person, but growing up with a mom who couldn’t care less about you… It’s not actually that bad—because to you at least, it’s normal.

  The problem, the hard part, is you. What you become because of it.

  It makes you different from other people, and when they don’t like you for that fact, well, that’s real tough.

  That was always the issue with me and Rachel, I think as I take in the familiar old ranch. That mix of hardness and neediness. Pull me close, push me away. Rachel has it. Emily too. We’re like an old T-shirt I saw once. Same same but different.

  I’m letting all these thoughts pool in my brain when my stomach growls at me.

  I guess if I’m gonna be here alone overnight, I’d better fix my own food. It occurs to me this is the first time I’ve done that here. I barely know where anything is. I suddenly feel real grateful toward Rachel. It musta been hard work, doing all the shopping and cooking. Growing vegetables, canning things when they were ready. Maybe I didn’t like what she put on the table, but I guess I appreciated not having to think about it all.

  I start poking around the tiny kitchen. More like a kitchenette really. The kinda thing I remember from my days sleeping in crack dens, though much cleaner, naturally.

  There’s a propane tank, a single-ring burner, a battered old pan. That’s about it, besides a wheeled little table, about the size of my forearm, for all the cutting and prepping. I’ve seen it all before. But I never really saw it in relation to how the hell you get a meal together.

  Guess that explains why Rachel wasn’t so creative. Now that I’m faced with the apparatus, I actually think Rachel was somethin’ of a genius in the kitchen.

  There are a few packages of noodles and cans of soup in the single cupboard, but I can’t face the half hour it will take to fetch and boil water. I head for the pantry. Most likely there’s something preserved I can spoon right out of the jar. Rachel wouldn’t approve, of course. She’d at least want it laid out on one of her plastic plates that showed a view of the Salt Lake at different parts of the day. Rachel always chose dawn. Crazy Emily always pretended to forget and picked that plate if Rachel was late to the table with a hot dish. One time, they had this tight-lipped tug-of-war that was so hilarious, but I could see from Blake’s face I shouldn’t laugh.

  Was it you, Rachel? Did you find him jerking off at his fishing spot? Was Emily getting picked that night the final straw? Did you find the sexy underwear he bought me?

  I have this image I can’t shake of her swinging a weapon, with this ice-cold look on her face. Slamming it repeatedly between his legs.

  It’s the kind of thing me and the Vegas block girls would joke about doin’ to the johns who beat on us. Not so much joke in actual fact. More like fantasize.

  I think back to my wedding night. How when I saw Blake without his clothes on, there were some real bad scars that he’d never mentioned, right around his groin. Blake saw me staring. Said he’d had surgery for an STD.

  “A youthful indiscretion on my Mexican mission. Don’t make a big deal of it.”

  Obviously, I was shocked. With all the guys I’d been with, I’d never heard of an STD gettin’ so bad you needed surgery. I pictured the teenage Blake dyin’ of shame, prayin’ for God to miraculously cure him, until things got so bad he was hospitalized.

  When I asked him if it meant he couldn’t have kids, Blake had this choked-up expression. “I thought it was me you loved,” he said. “I didn’t realize you saw me as nothing more than a baby maker. I thought you were different.”

  I had looked down at my low-rent honeymoon underwear.

  Time to face facts, Tina, said a m
ean voice in my head. You’re only good for one thing. You want this marriage to work, you’d better deliver.

  “Listen, baby.” I put on a false smile. “Forget all that. Lie back, c’mon. I’ll do you a little dance.”

  Blake had huddled back on the bed, slightly pacified. I turned away, allowing him full view of my butt in the thong panties.

  “Come over here,” he said, breathing hard. “How did I get so lucky?” he added. “My sexy new wife.” He put his arms around me and kissed me. “Sit on top of me,” he whispered, fiddling with my panties. “No, not like that. Turn around.”

  That was my wedding night. And when I raised the topic of Blake’s scars with Rachel a few days later, she went real quiet, like I’d said somethin’ inappropriate. That was when I first realized how much I hated Rachel. She could deny anything if it made her world more comfortable and screw anyone who got hurt along the way. I was so mad at her for covering it up, it never occurred to me ’til later that Blake covered it up too.

  Chapter Ninety

  Rachel, First Wife

  The bizarreness of the deserted Homestead takes my breath away. Every road, every corner is a memory, forgotten and now found again. The huge doors of the community storehouse stand open. Its vast hangar-like interior is entirely stripped of provisions, empty shelves running into the distance like train tracks.

  Our big vegetable patches are entirely given over to desert. The stable blocks no longer hold horses or even a lingering smell of them. Mildew, dust, and neglect are all pervading.

  I pass by the great white outdoor amphitheater, still only half-finished, crumbling construction debris scattered. Then toward where the ground begins changing color, deepening from tan to yellow. Until up ahead, in the middle distance, is a large outbuilding with corrugated steel walls.

  The clinic.

  It takes me a good five minutes’ hike across the scrubland. The dirt path I remember has long since returned to desert. Thorns and burrs drag at my calves as I pick over the undergrowth. This part always was wild, even before it was abandoned. Remote enough from the main dwellings for night animals to prowl.

  Gradually, the clinic nears and the ground beneath starts to change. This outer-limits part of the compound is on an old riverbed. Scree rocks are beneath my feet. The scatter of cinder-toffee boulders and amber-dusted sand is burned into my memories.

  Desert scrub is more prevalent now. Pale yellow-green clumps climb the sides of the larger boulders. But vegetation hasn’t fully grown over what comes next. Little red-sand mounds. Lots of them, only partially hidden under the scrubby grass, within fifty feet of the clinic.

  We kids never understood why we weren’t allowed to come here. Now I see it. What it is.

  The red graveyard.

  Little burial mounds. Maybe thirty. I’ve stepped on one without even noticing.

  This is why they never found it. To an outsider, it looks like nothing at all. It’s overgrown, and scratchy thorns and pale grasses hide the little stones almost completely. You’d only notice it if you knew exactly where to look.

  Toward the center are the oldest graves. These have something approaching headstones. Handmade tablets, fired in the local kiln. At first, you see one, two, then you realize there are tens of them stretching all around.

  My eyes drift to the clinic on the horizon.

  I’m remembering.

  It’s dark. I heave myself out of bed and stagger toward the basement door. I’m stumbling, slipping on my own blood and fluids. I crash into a hospital cart and send several pieces of shiny metal equipment crashing to the floor.

  I wait, hunched over a little, praying no one has heard. My eyes fall on the nearest white bed. A girl’s eyes glint in the moonlight. She’s seen me. Very slowly, she shakes her head, like she won’t tell.

  A spasm of pain encircles my belly. I grit my teeth, waiting for it to pass. Then turn the handle to the basement. Getting down the stairs is the hardest part. Every step is agony. I grip the banister, praying for strength. At the bottom is a harshly lit room with a bad smell. Like someone had poured bleach everywhere, but it didn’t cover up something worse, glowering underneath. Cool air.

  It’s a morgue.

  There’s a metal table, and on it are a line of coffins. Five or so. Small. Laid out just so in a neat line. At a right angle to them is a metal gurney holding a bunch of medical tools. Birthing things. Forceps, suction cups.

  A bloody pillow.

  I’m at the edge of the cemetery now. Newer graves are announced by the kind of metal markers you get with seedling packets. Names have been written with a fingertip before firing. Some just have dates or tiny handprints, pushed into the clay. Where a gardener might write “sweet pea” or “sugar beet,” Ambrosine girl, stillborn or Baby boy, 2 months old is scrawled in the half-formed script of the unschooled.

  Babies don’t die like this out in the real world. Not this many, this quickly. Plenty of folk out there might never go to a baby’s graveside. It was only when I joined the real world that I realized it’s not normal to die young in America.

  Inbreeding, I guess. My eyes lift back to the clinic.

  Inbreeding and maybe a little help.

  I’m at the far edge now, past the burial mounds. There is a tree here. As I reach it, tears fill my eyes. I drop to my haunches like I used to do as a little girl, desert dust on my prairie-dress hem.

  This was where I buried her. Safe and sound, so no one might know what I’d done.

  I reach out and put my hand on her grave.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Rachel, First Wife

  I’m outside the Big House.

  The sun is setting as I take in the Prophet’s enormous residence, a rambling compound of cabins, communal areas, and secret passages snaking out in every direction he didn’t want people to see.

  The front is mazed by wooden steps and balconies, which allow access to numbered family rooms. At the end, it wasn’t uncommon to see whole families cleared from their privileged positions in the Prophet’s house and someone else reallocated their premises.

  I walk through the door, where a wide hallway is floored in white marble. Only it’s all covered in rubble and loose dirt.

  It’s then I see the statue. Smooth white stone. My father, immortalized in rock. He stands on a high plinth. I’d hoped I was doing the right thing, visiting him in prison. Telling him his followers were starving and he needed to change his edicts. But he always did know how to win. Right when I thought I might have been getting through to him, he went all quiet and said in that singsong melodic voice, “What if they find that graveyard, Rayne?”

  I had frozen in shock. I didn’t even think he remembered. I’d forgotten how he did that. Remembered small details to punish you.

  For a long moment, I look at his placid face carved in stone. Someone has tried to give him a benevolent expression, but it hasn’t come off right. It takes some effort to drag my eyes away.

  Behind the likeness is a white-carpeted staircase, winding upward.

  I follow it up, reaching the grand chapel prayer room at the top, where we were sometimes allowed to pray. It’s high-ceilinged, white and gold, in approximation of the beauty of the Salt Lake Temple. Long wooden benches are in disarray: toppled on their backs, moved out of line. This room used to house almost several hundred people at a time, crammed in, listening to the Prophet’s hypnotic monotone for hours on end.

  Someone has covered the entire back wall with brown paper. The kind you wrap old parcels in. I move toward it, remembering. There are heavenly murals underneath. They were papered over for some community sin. I can see a corner of green fields peeking out.

  I walk over, grab the brown paper, and rip it. Beneath, the mural spans the whole wall—celestial hills, crystal-clear babbling streams, beaming sunshine, and a benevolent Jesus beckoning.

 
Come with me. There’s no pain here.

  I know rather than remember that this is a secret panel. It leads to the celestial bedchamber. One of several ways in.

  White beds, white carpet.

  Behind this heavenly image, the prophet conducted lengthy sessions with his underage brides.

  I reach out a hand to touch Jesus’s smiling face. Just as my fingers connect, I hear a noise from behind the mural. Like someone is banging something in the bedchamber beyond. I picture Aunt Meg, surgical tongs in hand. Then her face morphs to Melissa’s, and she’s lying in a grave, holding a blue shoebox.

  My heartbeat picks up. Jesus’s sweet smiling face seems to be speaking to me.

  Don’t be afraid. Nothing in that room can harm you.

  My finger moves down all by itself and finds the hole I remember. The hidden hole that makes the handle to the secret door.

  The banging starts up again. Loud. Angry. Disjointed.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  I take a breath. Brave like Jesus.

  I crook my finger and pull. A portion of the mural peels away. Behind it, a large room is revealed. My throat tightens at the familiar sight.

  The walls are wood-paneled, and the white carpet is yellowed with age.

  It’s empty. No one here. My eyes switch to the far window. It’s partially broken. Someone has tried to seal it with plastic sheeting and duct tape. As I watch, the wind catches, rippling through the plastic and slamming it back. Bang, bang, bang.

  Besides the throes of the sheeting, the room is silent and deserted. Nothing here but memories.

  I allow myself to absorb more details now. The bed is gone. Papers are scattered all over the mildewing carpet.

  There’s another entrance on the far side. At one time, it was concealed behind wood paneling, but all is smashed apart and exposed now. This is the way I first entered the room. It connects to a maze of secret passages, one of which arrives at the clinic basement.

 

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