She sees me on the sofa. “Oh, Kyra,” she says. “Jesus wants you to know he’ll take care of you.”
Her words give me courage.
“Sit beside me, Emily,” I say. She does. I take a breath. “I have to tell you something, Father.”
I tell them about Joshua and me with Prophet Childs. I tell them how he was beaten. How he came by that night to tell me good-bye. I tell them I love him.
I leave out the parts where we kissed.
Leave out how we held hands.
Leave out how I would go to him right now, right now, if he came back for me.
If looks could melt, I’d be a goner. And not because they are angry at me. They are so shocked that all three stand looking down at me with their mouths open. Emily gives me a pat pat pat.
Mother Claire finds her way to her rocker and sits down. Mother Victoria just stares at me. Then she says, “Oh no, Kyra. Oh no.”
Father shakes his head. Just keeps shaking his head. His eyes close and when he opens them again, he’s still shaking his head. And Mother Victoria is a broken record, saying the same thing over and over. “Oh no. Oh no no nonononono.”
“I didn’t mean it,” I say, holding my hands out to them like they might give me forgiveness if I wait long enough.
“Don’t you understand?” Father says. “All the times we’ve met together as a family? The way we’ve taught you to be wise. How could you do this?”
Mother Claire rocks. The chair lets out a slight squeaking sound. She looks away. “They’re watching us now,” she says. Then she glances at me, and in that look I know she understands what it is like to be in the eye of the Prophet.
Pat pat pat goes Emily’s hand.
“Watching you and me and your mothers and your brothers and sisters,” Father says. His voice is low.
“You’ve turned their attention to us,” Mother Claire says. Still staring away.
I look out the window to our trailer, to where Mother lies sleeping. She has no idea. My whole face hurts. My back hurts. Everything hurts. Nothing I can say will fix what I have done. Nothing.
“They’ll watch you forever, Kyra.” Father’s voice is worn out. Old. I think he might cry again, but he doesn’t. But I know the way he feels, the fear he feels, is because of me. All because of me. “They’ll watch you till they know you’re broken.”
“This,” Father says, and he motions to me, “this is just the beginning.” His voice cracks. “Kyra.”
I put my arms around my father, even though it hurts to move like this. Emily moves to comfort him. Now she is pat pat patting him. Together we sit on the sofa.
“Let’s not tell Sarah for a while, okay?” Father says.
The sun starts to set, and the room where we all are grows dim. Jackson comes to the door and says that everyone’s hungry. Mother Claire says soon, they’ll eat soon.
When the door closes behind him, I say, “We could all go.” My words are low to the floor. But they rise up some, float around our ankles. “All of us, Father. The whole family. We could leave.”
The words move up up up until everyone hears them. Something close to excitement flitters in my chest. “I know we could make it, if it was all of us. All of us, Father. We could go. Run in the middle of the night.”
Mother Claire glances at Father. Maybe . . . Mother Victoria is openmouthed again. They look at one another, back and forth. Have they thought this themselves? Will they leave this place?
“Where would a family like ours live?” Father’s voice sounds heavy. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink for a long few moments. “It’s God’s will we stay,” he says at last. He rubs his face, and for a moment I see him as an old man in this place with no way out. I crumple up inside.
Will I be an old woman here? The seventh wife to my uncle? The mother of my uncle’s children?
We won’t be leaving as a family. Father won’t do it.
“They can’t make me marry him,” I say.
“They can,” Father says.
Mothers Claire and Victoria nod. They believe it, too.
And for the first time I think, I think, they are right.
_______
THERE ARE PEOPLE who have run from being a Chosen One. Some stayed in hiding for a long time. The God Squad looked for them. Sometimes they brought the people back, the women back. Sometimes a boy would get away.
Joshua and I, we were in hiding right here in front of everyone.
In the night. When it was late. When all were asleep. When the front gates were locked. That’s when our hiding began.
We hid next to the community building where the women sometimes have quilting bees. Or on the far side of the building where there’s a shadow so dark Joshua and I could stand still and not be noticed.
The back side of the Temple. In the basement stairwell.
Out behind my trailer.
Under his bedroom window.
Near the Fellowship Hall where people used to dance before and now we have barbecues each month to break two-day fasts.
Near the wild Russian Olive trees that make me sneeze every spring.
We hid every place we could.
Will Joshua be one of the boys who makes it?
And will he remember to come back and get me?
FOR FOUR DAYS I worry about Joshua. We bury Abigail. We finish my wedding dress. My mother cries about everything, visits her fourth dead baby’s grave. The bruises on my face start to change color, from blue to a greenish yellow color.
At night, when I lie next to Laura, I think of Joshua. I imagine him coming back to my window. No! He comes to my front door. He says, “I’ve come for you, Kyra. I have a place for us. I’ll bring you back to see your family all the time.” Then he drives me away.
I’m not sure when I realize what’s going to happen, but it comes to me like I’ve fallen flat on my face.
Joshua won’t come.
I don’t even know if he’s alive. Not really.
I’m on my own. And in less than a week I’ll be sharing my wedding bed with a man fifty years older than me.
IV
Only one thing makes me feel like I can make it.
It’s books. Reading. I have to go back. Just one more time. If I can go to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels one more time, smell the books, touch them, if I can do that, I think I’ll make it. And at the same time I can tell Patrick not to come back, ever. “Just drive on past here,” that’s what I’ll say. “Just drive on past here, Patrick, and don’t stop, no matter if I stand in front of the van. You just keep going.”
Knowing I’m going to say all this makes me feel better. Makes me feel all right about visiting Patrick one more time.
The facts are these: They know I wander.
And Sheriff Felix has stopped Patrick at least once.
I always walk. And maybe now, it would be strange if I didn’t keep walking.
But they are watching. They are all watching now. My brothers and sisters. My father and mothers. Only Mother Sarah, who keeps weeping, only she doesn’t seem to notice me. She is gone off in her head, I think. To a place baby Abigail would live? I don’t know.
But when Wednesday morning dawns, I am so itchy to get to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels I have to scratch at my arms. My heart seems to be working double time. Pounding extra. I’m afraid and I have hours before anything will happen.
If I go walking.
Like I always have.
Even though they are watching.
At last I choose to go.
Thank goodness, thank goodness I have this last Wednesday to see Patrick at the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels and tell him, “Don’t come back. This is me just telling you good-bye. Good-bye and thank you.”
Just thinking the words makes a lump come up in my throat.
As I walk past the Temple toward the chain-link fence, I wonder if I should have shared this with Laura. The sun is hot. I’ve kept two secrets from her. Both secrets a
bout men: Joshua and Patrick.
“But secrets will keep her safe,” I say to myself as I edge my way out of the Compound.
The God Squad sees me go. From the corner of my eye, I watch them watch me.
But I always go, I think. Always.
I don’t run. I act bored. I act the way I always act. Right?
Can they see my heart beating?
Can they smell my sweat?
I look behind me over and over as I walk away.
No one follows. Not one person. At last I can breathe air that isn’t coming between clenched teeth.
It’s when I’m waiting for the van of books to come pulling up—hoping Patrick will come, but maybe, maybe he won’t—that panic sets in. Maybe he won’t maybe he won’t come by here again maybe because he was stopped once before and Sheriff Felix is scary maybe he has come by and I missed him and I should be home working on the veil for the ceremony The veil that will shield my face from Uncle Hyrum when we are married maybe he has been by and why should he stop now I wouldn’t if I saw Sheriff Felix and he did and everyone is watching me they all are.
I wait, in the shade of the Russian Olive trees. I wait, just in case. And I decide right then, I can still read. Even if I am married.
I can read.
Women can read.
Their husbands don’t have to know. I could do it in between all the other things a youngest wife has to do, including being available to her husband in case he wants her, because I cannot get to heaven if I don’t have babies.
A young mother can read. If she wants it bad enough.
I could, I think in the shade, watching first one way down the road and then the other, I could read to my babies. No one would know. Uncle Hyrum is an Apostle. He might be gone a lot. He’d never know.
I could go to my trees. I could say I’m visiting my mother. I could walk right out here, if I wanted. I could.
An even better idea comes to me. Why, I could memorize the books. Just come to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels once a week and write out a few pages of Hop on Pop or Go, Dog. Go! I could do that. I could. And then whisper the words in my babies’ ears.
“You are crazy, Kyra Leigh Carlson,” I say right out loud and that’s when I see him. Coming from a distance. That big van, lumbering toward me. There’s the Big Gulp cup on the dashboard. The fans are working, turning, and the closer the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels gets to me, the more my heart throbs, like it’s squeezing in on itself.
“I won’t stop coming here,” I say to the wind. It’s picked up some. I can feel it blowing, carrying bits of sand. “Just because I’m married doesn’t mean that I can’t check out books. And I could memorize things. Or I could hide the books and . . .”
There are tears in my eyes as I climb the van’s stairs.
“Kyra,” Patrick says when he sees my face. “What happened to you? Oh my gosh, what happened to you?”
And without a thought to how I shouldn’t, I tell Patrick everything. Everything.
About The Chosen and Joshua and about Abigail coming too early because I got Mother Sarah so upset. I tell him everything. Standing on the steps, I start, then on the inside of the van. I lower myself to the floor. Words pour from me like water from a spigot, I speak that fast. So fast the words seem like they are all one. I’m not even sure he understands it all.
Patrick listens, crouching next to me.
I tell him all of it. Uncle Hyrum and those who have run and Ellen and the dead twins and my marriage and the beating. All around me are the smells of fresh newspapers and books. There is Patrick’s smell, something sweet.
“I cannot believe this,” he says after a moment. “This is un-freaking-believable. They beat the hell out of you.”
What can I say to that?
Instead, he speaks again. And when he says it, the words are almost not there. “I’ll take you with me.”
I look at Patrick.
He’s squatting there next to me, his economics book on the floor, that Big Gulp cup sweating.
“Right now,” he says. “We’ll get help. You can stay with my wife, Emily, and me. We’ll do what we have to, Kyra. If you want.”
He moves to his seat, waits for my answer, his hand hovers above the ignition.
I nod.
He starts the van, shifts into gear, and we are off.
AT THE SOUND of the engine, I start to cry. It’s like my life flashes before my eyes. I see Laura, Margaret, and Carolina. I think of Father and Mother Sarah, empty of a baby and with me gone, no one to take care of her.
The tears fall warm on my hands as I look into my lap.
I’m still on the floor, right near the W section of this mobile library.
“It’s okay, Kyra,” Patrick says. “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.” He turns his head. Looks at me briefly over his shoulder. Drives on.
The back of the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels sways and I am rocked against books. I pull my knees under my chin, missing my family more than I thought possible.
I’ve left my music behind. And my sisters. And mothers. And father.
And Uncle Hyrum, a voice says.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
What will happen now?
When I don’t go back home, what will happen? When will they notice? When will they see I am gone? Will the God Squad see me not come home? What will Mother Sarah do? Will she look for me, holding her stomach where Abigail used to be? Will Mother Claire and Mother Victoria go out with Father, walk the perimeter of the Compound, check the irrigation ditches?
What will Uncle Hyrum do?
Will Laura miss me? Margaret and Carolina? Will they miss me? What about Emily? Will she be okay if I’m gone? And Mariah?
How long before the Prophet sends someone to look for me?
“Stay down until we go past where you live,” Patrick says. He flips on music and rocks his head in time. Then he says, “We’re past. Give me a mile or so more.”
I bounce a bit on the van floor. This bookmobile drives a lot more rough than our old van.
I’m so sad I can’t even look at book titles. I’m so sad I think my heart may never be okay again.
Is getting away from Uncle Hyrum worth leaving my family for?
Don’t think about home right now, the voice says. Just get away.
Patrick’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “You want to come sit up here with me, Kyra?” He nods at the passenger seat as we drive away from my family. My family and Uncle Hyrum.
I’m still sniffling, but I say I will.
I make my way to the front of the van, swaying with the movement.
“It’ll be okay, Kyra,” Patrick says. I look him right in the eyes. I see he believes it.
Outside, flat land rolls past.
“I miss them already,” I say and burst into fresh tears. “I’m never going to be allowed to see them again.”
I know this is the truth as soon as I say it.
Laura will sleep alone from now on.
I won’t scrooch up next to her.
I won’t hold Mariah.
Again, Patrick reaches over and pats me. This time he pats my arm, right on a bruise, but I don’t tell him so. The movement is awkward. Nothing like Father with me. Nothing like the way Mother loves me. Or Emily. But Patrick is sincere. And I have to believe in his sincerity. Maybe it will save my life.
WE HAVEN’T GOTTEN even fifteen miles from the Compound when Patrick says, “What? I wasn’t breaking the speed limit.” He taps at the brakes.
I look out the sideview mirror.
A police car is behind us and has its lights on.
All the sudden I am so full of energy, I could run faster than we’re driving. “Don’t stop,” I say, my voice high and loud. “Patrick, don’t stop.”
“Why not?” he asks, still slowing the van. “It’s a cop.”
“No!” My voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to me. “He’s from the Compound. You cannot stop.”
Patrick’s face goes all funny. He says, “Is your seat belt on, Kyra?”
“Yes.” I’m having trouble breathing.
I clutch the arms of the seat. The van bounces down the old road. Patrick slams the gas pedal all the way to the floor. He doesn’t even slow down for potholes now.
Behind us a siren goes on. I can see the flash of the lights in the mirror.
“Oh no oh no,” I say. “Oh no.”
We race, and I know, like I know I may never see my family again, that we’re racing for our lives. The scenery flies past. I’ve never gone this fast before. Not ever. Not when I’ve driven with my mothers or when I’ve driven by myself. The sage and fencing seem like a blur.
The police car drives up next to us. I see Sheriff Felix in the front. He motions with his gun for us to pull over.
I scream so loud I hurt my own ears.
“Damn it,” Patrick says. “This old thing won’t go faster than seventy-five.”
We hit a large hole and books smack onto the carpeted floor behind me. Patrick’s Big Gulp drink trembles in the cup holder.
“There’s someone else,” Patrick says. He clutches the steering wheel. His knuckles are white. His face has lost all color. I can tell he’s scared.
I’m scared. I am so scared I think I might throw up.
Again I look out the back in the mirror. As soon as I see the black Hummers, I know we’re doomed.
“This is kidnapping,” Sheriff Felix says through a loudspeaker. “Pull over.”
“We just have to make it to the Ironton County line,” Patrick says. Only he says it like he’s been running for miles, not driving.
The police car pulls in front of us, and slows down. A Hummer moves in on the side, and one closes in at the back.
“Hold on, Kyra,” Patrick says. “I’m not slowing down.” And as if to prove it, the van hits the back of Sheriff Felix’s car.
“Ohnoohnoohno,” I say. And then I start praying out loud. “Dear God, help us. Help us. Keep us safe. Help us. Please, God.”
A car from behind rams the van. My head snaps forward, the seat belt catching me before I’m thrown into the dashboard.