Laura, Margaret, and Carolina are quiet. We work together making breakfast and when I go to step outside and work in the garden, Margaret says, “I’ll do your part today.” I would kiss her, but my lips seep blood.
There’s a knock at the door and Mother Claire comes in. She cringes when she sees my face, then glances away.
“I’m here to pin that dress to you,” she says.
I gather the pieces of material Mother cut out. When did she do this? While she was waiting for me to come back from seeing the Prophet? While she was waiting for Father?
I think of her on her knees on the floor, cutting the material for my wedding dress with her scissors given to her by her mother.
“Let’s go, Miss Kyra,” Mother Claire says.
I move to her and she picks up this and that, pinning at my shoulders, under my arms, down the back.
“Stand on the chair,” she says.
I do and she pins up the hem.
My voice comes out low. “I don’t love him,” I say.
Mother Claire is silent.
“Not as an uncle. Not as a husband.”
“You’ll learn,” Mother Claire says.
I look down at her. From here I can see that some of her hair is turning gray. How can that be?
“You’ll learn to love him.” She says this around straight pins she holds between her lips. “If you put your heart in God’s hands.”
“I want my heart where it is,” I say, tapping my chest.
“You’ll learn,” she says.
“We do what we have to do,” she says.
“I did it,” she says.
I look into Mother Claire’s face. She’s worried for me, I can see it. With the back of her hand, she smooths my face where there is no hurt. I close my eyes at her touch.
THAT NIGHT MOTHER GOES into labor. I know without anyone saying anything it’s because of the way I look. Because of what happened to me. I can’t even go in the bedroom with her. Every time Mother sees me, she cries. Mother Claire, petting me, sends me out. She and Mother Victoria take turns sitting with my mother while Mother calls out.
“Something’s wrong!”
I hear Mother say this, hear the words early Sunday morning. Mother Victoria is with her. She mumbles something.
“There’s something wrong with the baby.”
I run to Mother’s bedroom door. Look in at her. Her hair is damp, stuck to her face. The sight of her scares me. Her words scare me.
“What is it?” Laura says. She’s pushed past me.
“Go out,” Mother Victoria says. She’s working between Mother’s legs. The blankets, the covers, are twisted. Mother’s knees are like a girl’s. “Get Father.”
Laura turns, runs.
Mother, her whole face screwed up, looks at me. Just once. She screams.
“Out,” Mother Victoria says.
I run for my tree.
I SAW HER.
Perfect. Hands and fingers. Feet and toes. Red. Skinny. Too skinny. Struggling to breathe.
She gasped for air, that baby, fighting for a moment to live.
“Please, Victoria. Please, Claire,” Mother said. “I’ve lost too many. Please.”
“She’s not going to make it, Sarah,” Mother Claire said.
“Her name is Abigail,” Mother said.
I wept near the dresser. Laura and Margaret crowded near me. Carolina was with Emily.
Then Father came in, walked past like we weren’t there.
“Abigail,” Mother said.
“Not now, Richard,” Mother Claire said. She worked over that baby. Worked the best she could.
But Father ignored her and fell to his knees next to the bed, where the sheets were twisted and wet, where the towels were spattered with blood. The room smelled like birthing babies, and my mother looked too worn to breathe herself.
I stared at Abigail. A baby six months in the womb would survive outside of this place. I knew it to be true. I’d seen it in the newspapers Patrick brought. Hospitals that saved premature babies.
When Abigail pulled in her last breath, never making a sound, but twisting and fighting to breathe, when Mother, heartbroken, cried out, I left the room.
Now, I was a murderer, too.
IN MY DREAM, snow pelts against the window. Tapping and tapping. The wind whispers my name, Kyra.
I awake with my heart sitting on the back of my tongue.
“Kyra.” The tapping sounds again. “Wake up.”
It’s Joshua at my window.
What?
“What are you doing out here?” I whisper. I crawl to my knees, press my face to the screen.
“I’m leaving, Kyra,” he says. “I’ve got to go. They came by our house tonight.”
Joshua’s so upset that his voice shakes. In the near dark I can see the bruises.
A fat selfish part of me rears up. What will I do with him gone? “You can’t go,” I say.
“They’re making me.”
“Who?” I’m so close to the screen I smell dust. I don’t even care if Laura wakes up.
“The Prophet. The Apostles. The God Squad. They’re sending a bunch of us away. Me because I asked to Choose you.”
It feels like a stool has been pushed from under my feet. I’m sliding sideways in all this.
He presses his forehead into the screen. We are separated only by the mesh. I can feel his skin. Smell him through the dust. “The girls here are for all the older men. They told me that yesterday.” He takes a breath.
“Where will you go?”
For a moment he’s quiet. “We’ve heard there’s a safe house. We’ll try for that.”
I say, “Let me come with you.”
“I just wanted to tell you good-bye,” Joshua says. His voice cracks.
Just like that, I’m crying. “Let me come with you,” I say again.
“I’ll come back for you,” Joshua says. “If you want me to, Kyra.”
There’s a sound behind him, and for a moment I think someone from the God Squad is there. I feel sick to my stomach.
But there are two other boys with him. “We’ve got to go,” one of them says. I think it’s Randall Allred. “I told you we shouldn’t stop here. We got to go. Now. They’re only giving us so much time, then they’re following.”
“Let me come with you. I can get dressed. Wait for me.”
“No!” says another voice I don’t recognize. “She’ll slow us down. We only have so long. We gotta move now, Johnson. Now!” The voice is urgent. Scared.
“I’ve got to go,” Joshua says. He presses his hand to the screen and I put my hand on his. I can feel his warmth. And then he’s gone.
“Come back for me,” I whisper, watching him in the darkness. But I’ve no idea at all if he’s heard me.
A SPECIAL MEETING’S called.
“Hurry,” Mother says from her bed. “You have to go without me.”
Where is the baby?
“Are you still hurting?” Laura asks as we hurry to the Fellowship Hall. Her eyes are red from crying over Abigail. Little Abigail. So small.
I squint in the light, feel weak from pain, from not sleeping much, from crying.
There are murmurs all around. We divide ourselves, women on one side of the room, men on the other. The air conditioner blows in, cooling me.
“Children come forward,” Brother Mathias says. “Come to the front. Sit close to our beloved Prophet.”
They have moved a chair down for him, down from the stage so he can sit near us.
All the Apostles motion at us now, moving us forward with their fingers. Uncle Hyrum looks in my direction. He helps the children forward.
“Sit close,” they say. “Sit close.”
I’ve already settled near Mother Claire and I don’t want to go closer to where the Prophet will be.
“You too, Kyra,” Mother Victoria says. She smiles with her lips.
I’m reluctant, but I go forward, taking Mariah from Mother Claire so I can hold he
r on my lap.
Why am I here? How can I be here? My littlest sister is dead, my face is broken, the person I love is gone. How can I sit here and pretend that I want to be in this room? I want to run.
Women near me look away. My face tells them I’ve been disobedient. I’ve been disciplined. It’s plain to everyone.
We all settle down, all of us children, on the blue carpeted floor. Some of the kids play, some sit with little smiles on their faces.
Then Uncle Hyrum is on his feet. He starts singing, his voice rich and deep. Beautiful. I hate him. “God sent the Prophet,” he sings. “God sent us the Prophet of all. Of all. To lead. To guide. To take us to heaven.”
People rise and clap as Prophet Childs comes in the room. He nods to us, lifts his hands to us, motions for us to sit. He takes his place in the maroon-colored chair, the microphone in his hands.
“I have been in prayer all morning,” Prophet Childs says.
“Praise Jesus,” a man calls from the back of the room.
“A Prophet prays for his people,” Prophet Childs whispers these words.
“The word of God,” another man cries out.
We’re all quiet.
Mariah sits on my lap without moving. It feels like a rattlesnake winds around in my stomach. I concentrate on the blond of her hair. All the colors I see there. Near white. Three shades of yellow. A golden strand.
“He prays for his people. He wishes them no harm,” Prophet Childs says.
Is he talking to me? He wishes me no harm?
His mouth is so close to the microphone I can hear his breath.
“But some children do wrong,” he says.
I’m still not looking at anything but Mariah’s hair. All that hair that’s so fine to the touch. All that hair that’s so curly she’ll have a hard time keeping it in braids when she’s older. Can she feel my heart beating in her back?
“Some of you have done wrong,” he says.
My eyes can’t see. I can only hear his words.
“This place we have here is to keep you safe from Satan. And he is outside our walls. Everywhere. On the street. In the stores. On the televisions and computers. Those people who do not believe what we believe, they carry Satan’s lies and fabrications in their heads. They will kill you, if you even dare to look in their direction.”
Prophet Childs pauses.
“Keep away from the outside,” he says, “or it will burn you on the inside and on the outside.”
He’s on his feet now, I know without looking at him. He’s moving closer.
“Keep away from Satan. He will destroy you.”
He stands and walks amongst all of us on the floor. The room so wide you could throw a football across it. I know because Joshua did that very thing with a friend of his when they were supposed to be cleaning the room and making it ready for the Sabbath.
“Satan is in what we read, if we read anything but scriptures.”
Does he know, I wonder, my sin of reading? I put my face close to Mariah.
“He is in our thoughts, if we think of any place outside of this sanctuary.”
Does he know I want to leave now? That I’m planning to leave?
“He is looking for you.”
Prophet Childs stands right before me now. He has made his way to me. I see his shoes, so shiny. Was it his foot that stepped on Joshua and me? Mariah reaches out for her reflection, and he moves back.
“Look up,” he says.
Can he be telling me that? I look at Mariah and me in the toe of the shoe and see how dark we are. Grabbed by Satan already. Though Mariah couldn’t be. Not yet. Isn’t she too young?
“Kyra,” Laura says, her whisper so slight I bet no one can hear it but me.
“Look up,” the Prophet says again.
The whole room is dead quiet.
I look up. Way up. He’s so tall when I’m here on the floor.
“Three boys ran last night.” He says this to everyone, though he stares at me. I look at his ear.
“And we won’t go looking for them.”
Joshua. My heart pounds.
“They’ll die in the desert.”
I hear a woman draw in a gasp of air. Joshua’s mother? One of the other boys’?
“Die of thirst and heat and soon the buzzards will pick their bones clean. They will die a sinner’s death at the hands of God.”
A light behind the Prophet shines around his head like a halo.
And right there in front of him, right where he stands so close he can maybe read my mind, I think, Joshua will not die. He’ll make it out of here for good. And he’ll come back for me.
That’s when I look Prophet Childs in the eye.
He stops speaking. Stares at me. And I stare right back. Because I know in the center of my heart, in the place I’ve kept all our secret meetings and all my secret warm thoughts about Joshua, I know there that he will get away.
For what seems an eternity, Prophet Child stands above me, staring down.
Then he says, “You will be punished for breaking God’s commandments.”
I feel the touch of someone’s hand to mine as the Prophet walks back to the front of the room and then dismisses us.
_______
“WHY?” Mother Victoria says.
We are all at her trailer so that my mother can sleep.
“Why did he single Kyra out? Why did he stand over her like that? He said three boys ran last night. Why did he stare at her?”
“I don’t know,” I say. My lie burns at the back of my throat.
“What have you done?” she asks.
“Nothing. Nothing more than what you know.”
But they know nothing. At least, I think they know nothing. I have said nothing of Joshua. This shame would be too much for my family. Maybe Mother Claire would also go into labor. Maybe she would lose her baby, too.
Abigail.
“Kyra,” Father says. He leans close. “You know consequences can be severe. You know what they do to those who are disobedient.”
I nod.
“Tell me,” he says.
People run, I want to say. They go. They get away. But I say, “Amber Holdman was beaten when she ran and they brought her back.” I can see Amber’s face, so swollen her eyes wouldn’t open, all that dark hair, those dark eyes just slits. She was supposed to marry Brother Felix. And she did, eventually. “And they’ve sent a lot of the boys away.” I wonder if Father’s thinking of his oldest boy, Adam. He’s seventeen. But Father’s tried hard to keep all his sons quiet and obedient.
“They drop some of the boys off in the desert,” Mother Claire says. She stands, leaning against the dining room wall, her arms folded over her belly. “They leave them out there to die.”
Mother Victoria says nothing. Just keeps her face down.
“If necessary they kill the unrighteous,” Father said. “Blood sacrifice.” He’s taken my hands in both of his. “You must be obedient to God.” His lips are thin with worry. I’ve never seen him like this. “My Kyra, we couldn’t stand to lose you. We’ve lost too much already.” His voice cracks in two and my father begins to cry. Out loud, cry. He folds in on himself, and his whole body shakes with despair. I hug him, as do his first two wives.
Father sobs out loud. Mother Victoria dips forward, encircling Father with her arms. “Shh,” she says. “Shh.”
Father says, “I always want you to be a part of our family, Kyra.”
Mother Claire’s eyes are squeezed shut, like she has a headache. Like maybe I am her headache.
There’s a knock at the door.
Father tries to control his crying. As he wipes at his face, Mother Claire goes to the front door.
“Don’t cry, Father,” I say. My own tears threaten. I’m exhausted with the worry and death and fear of it all.
“Brother Carlson,” a man’s voice says. It’s Prophet Childs.
Father stands, wiping at his face once more. I get to my feet.
Prophet Childs moves i
nto the trailer, taking up all the good air.
I actually wince, then move behind Father. A scream edges up my throat, but I clamp it quiet behind my teeth.
“Sit,” Father says, and he gestures to his own chair.
Prophet Childs just stands there. Father does, too.
Will he say something now? Will my father stand up for me?
“A man who cannot control his family does not deserve them,” Prophet Childs says.
The Prophet looks at Father a good long while, then at me.
“If you can’t keep your wild girls in line, Brother Carlson,” Prophet Childs says, “we will give them to a man who can. You will lose this whole family if God finds you a failure. Do you understand?”
Father’s face grows rigid, but he says nothing.
“We need to marry this child of yours off fast,” Prophet Childs says. “This wedding will come sooner than the others. Your brother is the man to care for this one and teach her obedience.”
Father still says nothing.
“Punish the girl accordingly, Brother Carlson,” Prophet Childs says. “Otherwise you will lose all there is. Your children. Your wives. And your place in heaven.”
No one says a word. The air in the room is too heavy to shoulder. I stagger beneath it, falling onto the sofa.
“Punish her.”
“I believe,” Father says, and I can’t see his face when he speaks, “that she’s learned her lesson already.”
Prophet Childs is quiet. “You have just this one chance,” he says after a bit, “to make things right with God Almighty.”
Mother Claire slips next to Father. She takes his hand, hardly making a move to do it. Mother Victoria stands next to Mother Claire. They are a line of bodies in front of me.
“Make her speak to you,” Prophet Childs says, “then you might change your mind about the sin she has brought upon you all.”
He leaves without shutting the door behind him.
There is no sound in the house except for the ticking of a clock. Emily wanders in from outside.
“I saw the Prophet,” she says to Mother Victoria, hugging her mother with both arms.