by Jess Bentley
Agatha scowls at me, as though the ceremony is something we’re not supposed to mention. “Won’t be long now,” she sniffs. “You both need to be trained up, so just do these bags and try not to complain so much.”
I cough back a retort. Try not to complain so much? Since when do I complain about anything?
But then I remember she's been working with Mama for years. Who knows what she's heard. Mama doesn't really keep her dissatisfactions to herself.
“Angel will explain it all to you,” Agatha tells Tulip when she walks up next to me. “If you get through all of these bags, there are more stacked up by the back door.”
“Wow, that's a lot of bags,” Tulip breathes. Her eyes are wide with excitement.
And it is exciting, I guess. I was sort of looking forward to doing this myself. I want to see what other people think is suitable to give away. What kind of treasures are in the bags. It’s definitely kind of like opening presents. They're not presents for me, exactly, but still. I was going to enjoy the element of surprise.
“So how do we get started?” she asks me. She looks at me just like normal, like everything is fine. Then I realize I'm being cranky for no good reason. I try to smile like I would have a week ago, when we were both girls.
“So, we just go through the bags and pull out what we can use. Keep the white bags. Put everything we can't use in the black bags and stick them over there so they can be donated to the Salvation Army. Whatever.”
She shrugs. “Well, that sounds easy. Let's get started!”
She picks up a black bag and heaves it onto the long table. We untie it carefully so that it can be reused and tip out the contents. Small shoes tumble across the table in kid sizes. Stacks of dingy, formerly white dishtowels roll out in a clump.
“We keep all this?” she asks absentmindedly. She's distracted by the assortment too.
“Well, I suppose we should keep the shoes, right? Can never have too many shoes around here. What with all the babies and everything.”
She bites her lips and smiles at me as she pushes the shoes toward the other end of the table which I suppose is the keeping area.
“Maybe you'll be having a baby soon, eh? Now that you’re a woman?” she smirks at me, carefully hiding her broken tooth. She's blushing a little bit too as she’s thinking about it.
“I don't know… maybe,” I answer slowly. I hadn't even thought about that part. Baby? A baby with…
“Yeah, that's totally what's going to happen!” she continues excitedly. “We'll get our Masters and then get married and then… Who knows! Maybe we can be pregnant at the same time!”
I have to smile back. The idea is rather exciting. After all the things I've discovered in the last few days, I should have known there would be even more coming up.
“Yes, that would be pretty amazing,” I have to admit. Her excitement is infectious, and I feel my bad attitude melting away.
The hours go by quickly. We are almost to the end of the first pile of bags and have accumulated an impressive array of whites and shoes and a few sun hats. There was even a bolt of canvas cloth in one bag, something that will be easy to use. A few more woolen blankets didn't hurt either.
All of the T-shirts that have sports logos or inappropriate slogans, ladies’ blue jeans, and commercially made underwear have gone back into the black bags and are sitting by the back door, slumped like sleeping bear cubs. I hear a noise behind me and turn around to see Brother Owen walking into the room. As soon as our eyes meet, my heart leaps. A corner of his mouth curls in a familiar smile that he quickly transforms into a more serious expression.
“Brother Owen!” Tulip exclaims. “It's so nice to see you here!”
Mary scowls at him from her chair by the door. She's reading a dog-eared, tattered book that she pulled out of one of the bags and immediately took away to read. I see her lean to one side and stuff the book under her wide bottom to hide it away.
“I just want to see how you are doing with your new duties?”
“Oh, we love it!” Tulip chatters. “People have been so generous! Look at these cute little baby shoes!”
He smiles graciously at her, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. In fact, he stares at her just a moment too long. Then he looks away, as if aware I noticed it.
“Can I speak with you for just a moment?” he says to me.
I nod, biting back an acidic surge of what must be jealousy.
We step toward the back door, and he hovers over me protectively, keeping his back turned to Mary and her nosy glare.
“So are you all right here?” he asks me. His voice is tender, subdued. I try to use that to push back the dark thoughts in my heart. But why is he being so nice to Tulip?
“Yes, it's a very interesting duty,” I reply, trying to smile. I want to reconnect with him, to make sure our union is still vivid and solid. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it.
“Silas would like for us to meet tonight, again, at dusk. Will that be all right?”
I take a deep breath. I have nothing to worry about, I tell myself. They still want to train me. My purpose in life — and love — is yet to be revealed.
“Yes, of course,” I breathe. I lean closer to him, just a little, so that he knows how excited I am about it.
He rewards me with another tender smile. I can tell he wants to touch me in some way, but it's not going to be possible here.
“Until then,” he finally says. He strides back out of the room, allowing the screen door to bang shut behind him.
“Back to work!” Mary barks as soon as he's off the porch. She drags the paperback out from beneath her buttocks and scowls at it as she tries to find her place again.
“Yes, Mary!” Tulip sighs, rolling her eyes since Mary is not looking at us.
I resume my place and Tulips leans slightly over the table. “What was all of that about?” she asks me in an excited whisper.
“Oh, Father Daddy has a… job for me,” I answer quickly, aware of how thin and pathetic the lie sounds. She hears it too and twists her lips in a scowl.
“Fine, don't tell me,” she huffs as she pulls a nearly transparent nightgown from the next bag. She holds it up and glares at it in surprise before crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it into the bag next to her feet. “I'll just ask them at my ceremony. Then I’ll know all of the woman secrets, won't I?”
My mouth falls open a little bit. “Your ceremony?” I repeat stupidly.
She blushes immediately, breaking into a wide smile. “Yes, it's next week! Can you believe it? It's finally happening!”
Jealousy floods me. I can feel it seeping through every part of me like a dark yellow stain. It crawls over my skin. I very much want to say something mean.
“Why don’t you call Mary ‘mama?’” I hiss back at her. I don't know why, it just pops into my mind.
She flinches. I know she wanted me to congratulate her, and I should have.
“Because Mary isn't my mother,” she mutters, looking down. “My mother isn’t here anymore.”
“Really? Where did she go?”
Tulip casts her weight to one hip, suddenly saucy.
“They sold her.”
I blink. She just blurted it right out, just like that. I didn't mean to start this conversation, but now here it is.
“Sold her?”
I see the anger rising in her like a blush that spreads across her cheeks. Her eyes glint dangerously. “Yes, to pay our debt. After they took her in, the sheriff came and arrested her for something else… something before our time here. I was just a baby. Father Daddy paid the bail, and she needed to pay it back. So…”
I shake my head. This is not all making sense to me now. Sold her? To pay a debt?
“Who would buy a woman?” I ask.
“Lots of people would buy a woman. Men need women. You know that.”
“Did you ever see her again?” I ask more softly.
Taking a long time to answer, she continues rummag
ing through the bag before she figures out what she's going to say to me.
“No, I never saw her again. I live with Mary now. She had a debt and… it wouldn't be fair for her to take the Family's resources like that. She had to pay it back. That was all she had.”
“What was all she had?”
Tulip rolls her eyes in disgust. “Her… flower. You know. Men will pay for that.”
I shake my head and drag a folded bathrobe out of the bag. It smells like soap and something else. Vomit. I don't even need to make sure. I just stuff it into another black bag.
“I'm so sorry,” I mumble. It seems like sort of a pathetic thing to say, since I started this argument.
She glances up at me, her eyes flashing. “Yeah, well, thanks, I guess. I mean, she had to, right? Shouldn't everybody pay their debts?”
“What do you mean?” I stammer, sensing that she has much more she wants to say.
She points a finger at me, poking the air viciously. “You know your mother has the same kind of debt, right? She's never repaid it. So why do some people just get to live off of all of us? Can you tell me that?”
I shake my head. I wish I never said anything. “I don't know, Tulip,” I admit. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”
She breathes through her nose for a few seconds, then forces herself to shrug and looks down.
“Forget it. Just forget it.”
But how can I forget it? Mama has a debt? Is this like… is this what Brother Owen was talking about? Is this what Father Daddy has been concerned about?
Suddenly I want to be out of here. I want to escape from the room. I want to run, keep running. Sold? Is that possibility?
But if I kept running, where can I go? I don't know how to live outside of the Kingdom Come. What would I do?
But it’s a debt, and it must be settled. It can’t continue like that. Can it?
“Excuse me, I don’t feel good,” I mumble as I push myself back from the table and walk across the room.
“I'll be back in a little while,” I tell Mary, but this is a lie.
Hopefully that’s the last lie I will have to tell. I just let the door close behind me. I believe it was a necessary thing.
Mama isn't home, so I rush into my room begin pulling my few things out of my drawers. I stack them all up on the bed, trying to imagine where I'll go, what I'll do. The pile looks so meager compared to what I just pulled out of trash bags, things people didn't even want anymore. How can I consider it? What does it take to live out there?
I realize I have no idea.
Slowly I shove my undergarments and dresses and woolen socks back into my dresser drawers. Desolation. I feel desolate. It was sort of pointless to think that I could run away. Who runs away? Children run away.
And I'm a woman now. I need to stand up and take my place.
But what Tulip said rattles around my brain. Am I going to be sold? Like her mother? Like Brother Owen implied? The words didn’t make sense to me at the time, but since my training I think I have some idea what that would really mean now.
Then again, if that's what makes it all right… That maybe that's what I have to do.
The front door slams shut and I hear my mother's footsteps bang across the living room.
“What do you think you're doing?” she barks at me as she barges into my room. Her eyes flicker around the room, looking for anything out of place.
I just stand here stupidly. There's no trace of what I was considering, but it must look pretty suspicious.
“I'm not doing anything,” I say truthfully. Not anymore.
She jams her fists on her hips. “Mary said you left the reclamation duty. Is this true?”
“Just for a minute,” I answer back. “I was on my way back there right now.”
“You realize that wasting time is a sin, right? You are spending something that you owe the group. Your labor is something you owe the Family.”
I take a deep breath. I could have this argument with her now. I could just ask her what the nature of her debt is. I could ask her why she never paid it, and why it seems to be falling to me to take care of it.
But I'm not going to do that.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” she hisses, narrowing her eyes. This is the most energy I have seen out of her in weeks. She seems dangerous, like a possum disturbed in the middle of the day, hissing with its mouth open.
“I'm just on my way back,” I mumble, looking away.
“You're grounded,” she announces.
“What?” I gasp. “You can't… I'm not grounded. I have work to do!”
She stabs her finger toward me viciously. “You're grounded,” she repeats. “Other people are already doing your work for you. I can't believe you would humiliate me like this! You're not going to leave this house until tomorrow morning, and that's final!”
“No, it's not final!” I dare to yell back.
Her eyes widen. Her nostrils flare and I see her set her jaw. She's angrier than I've ever seen her. I've never talked back to her before.
“Oh yes it is! We’re not leaving this house until tomorrow, and don't you dare even try!”
She slams the door to my bedroom so hard it shakes the house, and I hear her stomp across the room and then drop herself into the chair by the door. She's guarding me like a prisoner.
And I'm supposed to meet Father Daddy and Brother Owen in just an hour or two. What am I going to do?
Chapter 17
Silas
“Who does she think she is?”
“Just calm down,” Owen scowls. He waves his hand in the air as though I'm being ridiculous. “She said she'd be here. She will be here.”
I find myself pacing back and forth. What am I doing? Waiting? Out of sorts and driven to anger? By someone who was considered a child just a week ago?
“This is ridiculous.”
Owen doesn't say anything. He probably feels irritated too, but is afraid to admit it. He set up the meeting, but maybe he did it wrong.
I stop pacing for a moment and listen. I don't hear anybody on the path outside. I don't even hear voices far away. It's not dusk anymore. It's night.
“She's not coming.”
“She said she would,” he says again, but I can hear the irritation creeping into his voice.
Did she do this to embarrass me? There is always that chance. Sometimes when you train up a woman, they get ahead of themselves very quickly. The feel the power they have over us, and it goes right to their heads. Then they feel like they need to show us who's boss, step out of line and dare us to do something about it.
Angel doesn't realize what I’ve done for her. She doesn’t realize the thin ice she's treading on. In the Family, and with me especially.
“We didn't have to do this, you know. We didn't have to treat her special,” I mutter.
“That was your decision,” Owen reminds me sourly.
“Excuse me? What is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugs and looks away, shaking his head. “I had a suggestion for you, before the ceremony,” he answers reasonably, with an I told you so sort of tone in his voice. “You're the one who chose this direction. Because she reminds you of her mother, right? Like she reminds you so much, maybe you should think twice about getting too involved. Her mother is no innocent. You should have listened more closely to my suggestion.”
“To sell her? To Dustin? That's your big suggestion?”
He quirks an eyebrow at me. “You got a better one, I suppose?”
I grind my molars. The truth is, I don't have a better suggestion. It doesn’t look like anyone's going to be dying and sending us a mysterious check in the mail this week. And he did try to make this suggestion. I just didn’t really want to listen for some reason.
“Why don’t you just give him a call?” he suggests reasonably. “You can make a decision with all the facts. Find out if he is even still interested. Maybe he doesn't even want her anymore.”
“What's that suppos
ed to mean? He doesn't want her anymore?”
Owen scoffs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He knits his fingers together, looking at me like he's explaining something to a child. This only angers me further.
“I said maybe,” he reminds me patronizingly. “You should look into it. You should make a decision, since apparently everything is your decision.”
I stalk away. I need to not look at him for a few moments.
What is happening to me? Fighting with my own brother? Over some girl?
Over some woman?
She's clouding my judgment. She's making me look like a fool. I won’t be treated like this, not by anybody.
Without another word, I yank open the door to the barn and walk out into the night air. It's cooler out here, the dewy moisture hanging in the air. I glance off to my left and see low, brownish clouds on the horizon. Then just now, the faintest rumble of thunder in the distance.
That must mean rain. That has to be rain. We need it so badly.
I wonder if it’s a sign.
Back in my office, I pick up the old-fashioned telephone off the wall and pull on the twisted cord so that I can sit behind my desk.
I dial 411.
It takes the operator a little while to pick up. Do people even use these kinds of telephones anymore? I don't think they do. I should probably be grateful it still works.
“City and name?” the operator asks me in a nasal voice.
“Longboard County,” I answer, reaching for the words. “Dustin's Roadhouse.”
She gives me the number and I memorize it temporarily, then jam my thumb on the cradle to hang up and start again.
I hear a ringing tone, then the click as someone picks up the line.
“Dustin's,” a lady's voice sneers. I hear the puff of air as she probably blows out a long plume of cigarette smoke. In the background I hear some kind of crappy southern rock playing, and voices. Lots of voices.
“Is Dustin around?”
“Who's askin’?”
“Silas Redken,” I growl, irritated by her sass. I had forgotten how women in the outside world talk to men. Pure impudence.
