Lib, also true to his word, never brought it up again. There was just one hitch: Lib could pay someone off from the Good Shepherd Family Placement Services to expunge Harmony from my file, but was powerless to remove me from hers.
“It won’t matter,” he said blithely at the time, the last time we talked about her. “By the time she’s old enough to take a looky look, you’ll have bumped twice already!”
Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way. And now that my secret twin has taken off with my RePro, laying waste to two years of string-pulling and favor-calling and reputation-risking, I’m waiting for Lib’s face to combust in a toxic conflagration of synthetic skin.
“So it’s your identical twin, the Churchy who has God who’s bumped pretties with Jondoe.”
Ram suddenly comes to.
“Hey, that’s my wife you’re dishonoring like that!”
The outburst takes me by surprise, and him too, I think. He just as suddenly thuds backward onto the couch as if he’s expended his last milligram of energy. Tocin drop.
Lib cackles and claps with delight. “She’s married?”
“My wife is not an adulteress,” Ram moans.
Lib is smiling in an unpleasant way. “You all HIGHLY misunderestimate Jondoe’s gifts. . . .”
Lib’s whatever attitude about this fiasco is giving me a squelchy feeling in my stomach. And it doesn’t help that word has gotten out that I’m on the MiVu right now. The screen is filling with 1Vu pop-ups on mute: Celine Licht-
blau, Tulie Peters, even Ventura Vida herself mouthing away with her abundant gums. All these bubbleheads think I’m still with Jondoe and hope I’ll go into @Vu mode so they can all get a glimpse of the world’s hottest RePro for themselves.
“I had NO IDEA I was talking to HER this morning,” Lib says.
“You talked to her this morning?”
I woke up to what I thought were the sounds of Harmony talking to someone on the MiVu and she denied it. She was on her knees and claimed she was praying. My reproaesthetical ass, she was praying. She was plotting to counterfeit me. Is that really why she came all the way out to Goodside? I assumed that she had wanted to thump me into becoming like her. Is it possible that she really wanted to become more like me?
Lib is still chucking to himself. “It all makes SO MUCH SENSE now. Why she was wearing that TERMINAL nightdress . . . And the freckles!” He leans into the screen to get a closer look at me. “YOU DON’T HAVE FRECKLES AND SHE DOES!” He goes into a whole new fit of giggles.
I’m trembling with fury. And the happier Lib gets, the more off-the-spring crazy I feel. Zen has tightened his grip around my waist, as if to hold me together, to keep me from disintegrating on the spot.
“Where are they now?” Zen asks Lib.
Lib sucks on his polymer veneers.
“WHERE ARE THEY NOW?”
Lib is annoyed that someone as lowly as Zen thinks he can speak to him like that.
“We don’t know,” he says casually.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“No one knows. They’ve gone off grid. I’m SURE they’ll turn up after she tests positive.”
Holy piss on a stick.
He pauses and quickly shifts to business mode. “So you and . . . what’s her name?”
“Harmony,” I say.
“Harmony,” Lib says, almost as if he’s having a private conversation with himself. “She has the same DNA as you? So there’s really no difference between you and her? She could be you.” Another high-pitched hoot. “Right now she is you! Only frecklier!”
It’s exactly what Lib had warned me about. We are the same. Interchangeable. Which makes me utterly expendable. And before Lib even gets around to asking if she has representation, I know that he has already given up on me. I am bad business. A worthless investment. But if he plays this right, there’s still a chance that he could recoup his losses with the product of Harmony and Jondoe’s union. He’s already winking and blinking and eye rolling his way to finding my twin before I do. If he has any clue as to where they might be, there’s no way he’ll let me get to her before he does.
I cannot for another second look at his fake approximation of a face.
“Fuck you, Lib,” I say, blinking him out of my view. “And this whole business.”
There’s a moment of stunned silence before Zen explodes with excitement.
“I always knew you had it in you!”
Zen is still carrying on, clapping and congratulating me for finally standing up for myself, when one of the 1Vu bubbleheads catches my eye. It’s Shoko, the only one smart enough to know that I’ve probably turned off the volume. She’s waving a handwritten sign to get my attention. I tap her pop-up to enlarge. It reads:
WATER BROKE! BIRTH CENTER! NOW!
WE’RE SITTING AROUND THE KITCHEN TABLE, OUR HEADS BENT over four bowls of orange noodles. My right hand is holding Jondoe’s left, my left hand is holding his mother’s right, as his father leads us in prayer.
“Father God, when more than two of us come together we know that You are with us, and we just come to You to give up our thanks for all the blessings You have seen fit to deliver. . . .”
Only my right hand is sweating.
“We just want to thank You, O Lord, for watching over the hands that made these bowls of macaroni and cheese. And we also offer our thanks for bringing the beautiful Melody into our home because her beauty is a gift from You, O Heavenly Creator. . . .”
Jondoe squeezes my slippery hand.
“And we just want to give our thanks once more for returning our potent son home to us, even if it’s just a short while. Because as much as we would like to delight in his company, O Lord, we can’t be selfish, we must let him do the work that You have called him to do and we hope that You will continue to protect and bless these two soldiers in Christ’s army so they can carry on in their mission to glorify God’s kingdom and sow the seeds of faith in His blessed name. Amen.”
“Amen,” says Shelby.
“A-men to that,” says Jondoe.
Everyone’s eyes are on me. I am bewildered.
“Amen?”
The prayer finished, the three begin to dig into their bowls.
“Gabriel,” his mother says, “please tell us about your mission with Miss Teen Venezuela.”
“You read up on that?”
“Oh, Gabey!” his mom says, tousling his hair. “We follow everything you do!”
The tabletop is gray stone tile, and every fourth square is engraved with a different inspirational passage. I look to the wisdom of the Scripture to ground me.
Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
I imagine that this is what our kitchen would look like in Goodside if we were allowed to use more than a wood-burning stove, a small propane-fueled refrigerator. My housesisters will be rising with the sun soon enough, gathering wood for the fire in the stove, scrubbing the cows clean for the milking. The Church rejects most modern technologies because an idle life would give us too many free hours to make trouble out of nothing. Melody can’t even bring herself to press a button to warm up a meal that was made in a factory on the other side of the world. Too much idle time! It’s no wonder her parents try to fill it up for her.
I hope she’ll believe me when I say that I never meant to hurt her.
If she ever speaks to me again.
I read another tile.
The soul of the sluggard craves, and gets nothing: but the soul of the diligent is made fat.
Shelby catches me staring.
“You like that verse?” she asks.
“My sisters do,” I say. “Work hard at being a good wife and God will reward you with a husband and a big, blessed belly. . . . ”
Shelby’s eyes light up. I see more of her in Jondoe—and Jondoe in her—when she gets excited.
“How many sisters do you have?”
“Seven.”
“Seven!”
Jondoe raises an eyebrow. “Seven?”
“Three have already moved out to start families of their own,” I explain.
“Any brothers?” his mother asks.
“About the same. Six or seven.”
The three of them laugh. “You’re not sure?” Shelby asks.
Does Ram count as my housebrother now that he’s also my husband?
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“She was adopted,” Jondoe explains. “And wants to do for others what her birthmother did for her parental unit. She wants to make a family.”
Shelby and Jake have tears in their eyes. “Praise the Lord.”
I wonder how many times Jondoe’s mother has grown fat from God’s rewards.
“Do you have any siblings?” I ask Jondoe.
“You haven’t told her about Joshua?” Jake asks.
“No,” Jondoe says, examining his reflection in a spoon. He turns it back and forth, concave and convex, his face flipping upside down, right side up, upside down, right side up.
“He’s being too modest again,” Shelby says in a teasing voice.
“Is Joshua your brother?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. Then he looks away from his own face and says, “He was also my first client.”
GETTING TO THE BIRTH CENTER ISN’T AS EASY AS IT SOUNDS. It’s only a few miles away, totally doable by bike, but I need to get myself on the pedal, like, right now and Zen is for seriously roadblocking me.
“You can’t go alone,” he says, placing himself between me and the front door. “You’ve been through too much already today. . . .”
“You can’t come with me,” I remind him. “You won’t be allowed anywhere near the place.”
It’s totally true. Too many deliveries were getting stolen by black-market traders sneaking into the centers by claiming to be friends and relatives of the birthers. Now access is restricted to a list of vetted guests submitted at least sixty days prior to the due date.
“So what are we supposed to do while you’re there?” Zen asks.
A snort rips through the house and shakes the rafters. I refer Zen to the common room, where Ram is in full snore on the couch.
“You are going to nanny him through his narcoleptic Tocin nap,” I say. “Now step aside so I can fulfill my duties as a peer birthcoach.”
And Zen does the surprising thing by actually stepping aside the first time I ask. And he continues to do the surprising thing by not saying a word as I unlock my bike. By the time I’ve turned on all my night-lights, put on my helmet, and am ready to kick off down the gravel, his silence has become more oppressively judgy than anything he could possibly say. I can’t take it.
“WHAT?!” I shriek.
He shifts uneasily in his thick-soled sneakers. Five foot seven and a half. Ish. If that.
“I hope it goes better than last time.”
I take off toward the birth center without a thank-you or a goodbye.
I put all my energy into pedaling as fast as I can.
Into forgetting about what happened the last time I took this same trip.
I was there when Malia awoke from her Obliterall nap and asked to hold her baby. The nurses told her the delivery had already crossed state lines. She started screaming, “Where is my baby? I want my baby! They took my baby!” A half-dozen medical professionals put her in the restraints and gave her enough Obliterall to keep her under for the rest of the day.
I was there eight hours later when she came to. She started right up again with, “Where is my baby? I want my baby! They took my baby!” as if she had never stopped. They knocked her out again.
I was there when she woke up for the third time. She apologized for her hormonal overreaction and convinced everyone that she was back to her nice and normal self. She waited for all the doctors and nurses to leave, looked me dead in the eyes, and said, “You let them take my baby.” Then she smashed a vase on the floor and slashed both wrists with a jagged triangle of broken glass.
I can’t say any more.
Not because I’m not allowed to, but because it hurts too much to remember.
JONDOE’S FATHER BEGINS THE STORY.
“Joshua is eight years older than Gabriel. He never dated much in high school. In his sophomore year at Somerset Christian College, he fell in love with a sweet girl named Hannah.”
“They were both twenty years old,” says his mother in a whisper.
I hear the unspoken: God had already closed her womb.
“They got married after graduation . . .”
“It was the most beautiful wedding! What a blessed day!”
“And right away looked into their options for starting a family. They didn’t have a lot of money—Joshua works as a youth pastor—not enough to hire professionals anyway. But Gabey was fourteen at the time, and Hannah’s sister, Diana, was sixteen years old and they were both looking to find a way to put their faith into action. . . .”
Jake lets me connect his unfinished sentence to what Shelby says next.
“And now we have one beautiful grandchild with a second on the way!”
Like my housesisters, Jondoe’s parents are ignoring the act. I guess they’d like to believe that all these births are virgin births, like Mary herself. That is, if it weren’t blasphemous to think so. I, however, can’t hold my tongue.
“But it’s a sin!” Then I stop myself because I’ve forgotten who I’m supposed to be right now. Am I Melody? Or am I me?
Jondoe’s parents exchange looks.
“There’s nothing wrong with sex,” Shelby says. “God invented it, after all. If He didn’t want us to do it, He would have designed another way!”
“We’re procreationists,” Jake tells me.
“Amen to that,” Jondoe says.
I’m so confused. The Bible has a lot to say on the subject of premarital immorality. Did they somehow miss Paul’s letters to the Corinthians?
“But Jondoe and Diana weren’t married! Aren’t you supposed to believe that bodily sharing is for the marriage bed?”
I say this, but I don’t quite believe it myself.
I think about the first—and only—time I lay down with Ram. Or tried to. He was patient and kind and, thinking about the way he shook under the sheets, as petrified as I was. The kiss on the cheek that sealed our marriage was our first brush with intimacy. How could we expose ourselves to each other physically and emotionally just a few hours later? We weren’t ready for this—at least not with each other. We put on our clothes, and slept fully dressed and back-to-back until I snuck out.
I never understood how my housesisters were able to give themselves over to their new husbands on their wedding nights.
Then I met Jondoe.
“Sex is biblical,” Shelby says matter-of-factly. “If you choose to read it that way.”
Jondoe is nodding with studied seriousness, the way my housebrothers do during Sunday services when they’re only pretending to pay attention.
“The way we see it, Jondoe and Diana were bodily stand-ins for Joshua and Hannah,” Jake says. “It was a spiritual marriage, not for pleasure, but for procreation.”
Jondoe is biting his lip.
“Look to the Bible,” Shelby says.
Here’s what I find troublesome about that advice: I know the Bible. Very well. I know it as a curious reader who loves words with little to no access to any other reading material. The Bible contains some of the most inspirational and miraculous stories ever put to paper, but also some of the most vicious and vile acts imaginable. Mass murder! Human sacrifice! Inappropriate affections with livestock! I know the verses that the preachers don’t like to talk about on Sundays. I also know that you can find a verse to support just about any argument, and another verse to shut it down. If it’s all the Word of God, how can we simply ignore the parts that don’t fit our beliefs?
I was twelve when I asked Ma these questions; she said, “You better not let your husband hear you ask questions like that
.”
I was told to put my faith in the Council, who knew more about the Scriptures than I did. They would tell me what verses to read. And they would tell me what to think.
And now, four years later, I don’t know what to think about anything.
Which, as I’m finally realizing, is exactly the way the Church wants it.
Jondoe clears his throat. All eyes are on him.
“Humans are sexual beings,” Jondoe says. “Instead of fighting our natural, God-given urges, we should find the best way to use them to glorify His kingdom.”
When he speaks, it’s like I can’t not listen. And believe.
“I’ve got this great gift,” Jondoe says, speaking for himself for the first time. “A gift that can really help people and bring them happiness and fulfillment in their lives. I’m giving people what they want more than anything else on this earth, but can’t get without my help.” His eyes are brighter, his face flushed. “You know, before the Virus, people created life in a petri dish. No intimacy! I think it’s deep that two souls come together as one body and create a new life.”
A one-flesh union, I think to myself.
“To me, it’s even deeper when four souls come together and create a new life.”
When he puts it like that, it does sound divine.
“Our granddaughter, Ruthie, is truly the most precious angel that you will ever lay eyes on,” Shelby says.
She shows me a picture of a cherubic toddler who looks like a tiny version of . . . herself! It’s no wonder that she’s so taken with her granddaughter. This is a possibility I had never considered before: I might see my unknown birthmother’s face reflected in that of my own child.
“Ruthie has brought so much joy into all our lives,” Shelby says, before turning to Jondoe. “You have brought so much joy into our lives and the lives of so many others!”
Jondoe lowers his head, closes his eyes. A humbled pose.
“He got the call,” Jake says, clapping his son on the shoulder. “To do the Lord’s work in his own unique way.”