Third week he stopped.
Dust billowed up around us. I could taste the dirt. Crunched sand.
He rolled down the window. “You want a library card,” he said, adjusting the ball cap he wore. It wasn’t even a question.
And I nodded, like he’d done to me these past weeks.
“You can take four books out at a time,” he said when I inched my way into the truck, cooled by fans and air-conditioning.
I’d never seen so many books. Never. The sight made my eyes water. I mean, tear right up.
“Four?” I said. There was that sand on my tongue, gritting between my back teeth.
“Four.”
I eyed the man. Eyed the books. Stood still, my heart thumping.
“Maybe just one,” I said.
“You could start with this,” he said and handed me something from a basket near his feet. “A girl just your age turned it in on my last stop. She said she loved it. I loved it myself.”
His last stop? Another girl? He’d read this book?
I took the novel from him and glanced at the cover. Bridge to Terabithia.
I was there just a minute and I only took the one. One, I knew, would be easier to hide.
But oh, how my life changed with his stopping. My life changed when I started reading. I was different with these sinful words.
Who was this Katherine Paterson? Who was this Jesse and Leslie? People the writer knew? I could hardly read this book fast enough.
And when I did
when I got to the end
when I got to the end and
Leslie died
and Jesse was left alone without his best friend
I cried so hard that coming in from my hiding place, my tree, the book stashed in the branches, high in the prickles, Mother Victoria said, “Where have you been, Kyra? I needed help making bread.” Then she looked at my face and said, her voice all worried, “Honey, what happened?”
I couldn’t tell her a thing. Not about Leslie or May Belle or Jesse all alone. I couldn’t tell Mother Victoria a thing about drowning or running or painting.
Instead, I threw my arms around her waist and said, my head on her shoulder, crying my eyeballs out, “I love you so much, Mother Victoria.”
Then I set out delivering bread to my other mothers and to Sister Allred, who just had a baby, half-crying the whole way.
MY SINS.
A plan. Books. And a boy.
There’s a boy.
Oh, I am carrying the weight of what I have done. But no one seems to notice.
Mariah reaches for me. I look the other way. I’m too nervous to hold Mariah, baby Mariah.
I grip Laura’s hand and try not to think of what I’ve done. Keep my prayer chant going.
Everyone whispers together, all dressed up on a Tuesday evening, hair smoothed with water or in braids.
Mariah, quiet, holds her hands to me still.
I get to my feet again.
“Kyra?” Father says.
Mother Sarah looks at me. “Are you feeling okay, honey?”
“I want to . . .” I stop mid-sentence. I want to what? Leave? Stay? Run? Hide? “I was thinking about playing the piano,” I say. A big, fat lie. One more sin added to all that I carry.
Laura tugs on my hand and I sit down beside her again.
THERE ARE JUST a few places in the whole Compound with pianos.
Prophet Childs has a concert grand in his front room. I’ve seen it myself. Right through the plate-glass window. Pure white and shiny, that piano is. It has to be a concert grand. I bet a body could see her face in the shine of that thing. He lives in a brick house, so big it casts a long shadow on the lawn when the sun starts to set. The Apostles have houses and pianos, too. Not only does being an Apostle mean blessings from God, but blessings from the land, too. That’s what they’ve told us, and it seems that’s true.
There’re three pianos in the Temple, though I’ve only played the one in congregation room when Sister Georgia is ill. The final two pianos sit in the Fellowship Hall. One is an old Kawai. It’s my favorite.
It was there, on a Sunday morning after meetings that I wandered up to that piano and started playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Just like that. Like I was born with the song stuck in my head. I was almost four.
“Listen to her,” Mother Sarah said. She ran right up to me, swooped me close, and said, “Did you hear her playing that song?”
Sister Georgia, who taught music lessons outside the Compound a long time ago, before she felt she was called to be a part of The Chosen, teaches anyone who wants to learn. My mother didn’t even hesitate when I plunked out that first song ten years ago. She marched me right up to Sister Georgia and said, “My Kyra is musical. She needs teaching.”
And I said, “I do.”
Music carries me away. Has since I was little. I can feel notes under my skin. Feel music in my muscles. Sometimes I even dream in Mozart or Beethoven scores. In the dreams, people speak out black musical notes, not words. And I understand every bit of it, exactly what they’re saying, when I dream.
“NO PIANO NOW, Kyra,” Father says. And right when he says that there’s a tap at the door.
“They’re here,” Margaret says and Mother Sarah says, “Coming to see us,” and sits up straighter. She is pale and in the light of the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling I can see her face is damp with sweat. She must feel awful.
Father sets Trevor and Foster on the floor and goes to the door. Quick, I pray one more time. “Please, dear Jesus. Please.”
Everyone is silent.
The only sound is Father’s church shoes on the floor as he walks over to open the front door. The room has grown hot with our being together.
“Ow,” Laura says.
“Sorry,” I say, realizing that I’m squeezing her hand too hard. I let go.
Please, please, Jesus. I’ll believe. I’ll be good if you choose my father. I’ll never think of killing anyone again. I swear it. I can’t quite say anything about the reading and there’s no time to think anything more than Joshua’s name.
Father opens the door.
“Prophet Childs,” he says. “Brother Fields. Brother Stephens. Welcome. Oh!” Father’s voice sounds full of smiles. “Hyrum, I didn’t see you back there. Come on in.”
The four men move into the room. We offer our Prophet the comfortable chair and he takes it. Mother Victoria moves to the floor and sits near his feet. The other brethren, including my uncle, settle into the kitchen chairs.
“Brother Carlson,” Prophet Childs says. He is thin as a tree, tall with eyes so dark they look black. His brown hair is slicked back from his forehead, the comb lines visible. He smiles at us all. Lifts his hands to us. “Look at this family. Look at your heritage to the Lord, Brother Carlson.”
My father nods, beaming.
“Beautiful family,” the Prophet says. “Your older boys are honorable young men.” He nods. “The older girls are . . .” He stops. He’s looking at Emily. Our wonderful Emily. Right then I see her the way our Prophet must. I see her wide face, her slanted eyes, her smile that’s almost glowing. She looks at him with so much love I cannot understand how he cannot love her back. But I know he doesn’t. I’ve heard him say he doesn’t. I’ve heard him condemn her.
And I know what they do to those who are not whole.
“SINNERS ARE SICK. Sinners are not complete. Sinners do not please God and are cursed,” he has said in meetings.
Some of the congregation cheers. Some sing, “Amen.” Some are quiet. Our family is quiet.
“The unwhole won’t meet God,” he says. “Those who are lacking here,” tapping his head, “or here,” tapping his eyes, “or here,” tapping his heart, “do not qualify for the kingdom.”
I know it happens. It’s all part of the New Cleansing and mothers don’t talk of it much. The New Cleansing is part of what’s quiet around here.
Sister Janie Abbott had two baby boys. Tiny things. Not more than a po
und or two. One died after an hour. But the one like Emily, he lived awhile.
Prophet Childs went to their trailer. Sister Janie wasn’t but thirteen. A first wife to her husband just six years older. She cried for a long time when they said the unwhole shouldn’t live. She cried, hanging on to that baby as long as she could. But at last Prophet Childs had her talked out of that tiny thing.
They did away with him.
Not sure how, but I know they did. I listened in on Mother Victoria telling Mother Sarah and Mother Claire. She whispered the whole story to my mothers while I stood in the dark of the living room, quiet in the night so they might not notice me.
“They killed that unfit baby,” Mother Victoria said. Her voice was full of something. Sorrow? I waited in the dark, not moving, my skin cold prickles from her words. “Thank God, thank God, the revelation came after Emily was born. This prophet’s father was nothing like he is.”
“That’s right,” Mother Sarah said.
And Mother Claire said, her voice low, too, “This is a new Prophet. A new leader. A new time. He’s not a thing like his father. Things were hard before. They’re harder now.” There was silence and then, “God is mysterious.”
Prophet Childs became prophet when his father died seven years back. The mantle was handed down to him. The line of authority going through the blood. That’s what Father says. There was a big funeral when Prophet Childs’s father passed.
But not even a tiny burial gathering for those two babies of Sister Janie’s.
I’ve seen her since, great big with child again, out in the cemetery, kneeling over those two small graves that Brother Abbott dug while she stood by, alone, and watched.
NOW PROPHET CHILDS looks around the room at us. Mother Victoria wraps her arms about Emily, who says, “The Prophet. The Prophet. See him?” and lets out a laugh full of joy.
“Quiet the girl, Sister Victoria,” Uncle Hyrum says. His eyebrows meet right over his nose with his unhappiness.
“Hush now, Emily,” Mother Victoria says. She looks nervous, the way she glances at Uncle Hyrum and then at Brother Fields and Brother Stephens and last of all at the Prophet.
“Duck, duck, duck,” Emily says.
“Shhh, shhh,” Mother Victoria whispers. “Shhh for now, my sweet girl.”
Emily goes quiet. But she looks me right in the eyes and grins full on. She gives me a thumbs-up sign, and if I weren’t so worried about everything, I would laugh.
“Brother Carlson,” Prophet Childs says to Father, at last.
Father nods, hands clasped. His face is still pink, but there’s worry near his mouth.
“I have joyous news.”
Laura, sitting so still beside me, takes in a breath of air. Now she grabs my hand and squeezes.
“I’ve been in the belly of the Temple for some time. Thinking, praying”—he points his finger toward the lightbulb—“and talking with God. It has been revealed to me that your oldest daughter, Sister Kyra, is to wed Apostle Hyrum Carlson. She will be his seventh wife in the Lord.”
The room goes dead quiet. Not one sound. I think, Father hasn’t been called after all. And then Prophet Childs’s words sink in, sink in, sink in.
Me? What? Me to be married? I think I have no blood. I think I have lost the ability to breathe.
“Is this not a joyous occasion?” Prophet Childs says, and Brother Stephen lets out a “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”
Uncle Hyrum looks right at me.
I feel my face burn.
“The ceremony is in four Sundays, after ser vices,” the Prophet says.
It’s at that moment I find my tongue. Before my mothers, before my father. Laura’s hand is squeezing me tight and I smell body odor. I think it’s me.
“What?” I say.
“In a light bright as the sun the revelation came,” Prophet Childs says. He stares over our heads like he’s seeing things all over again. “The two of you at the stone altar, wearing the ceremonial dress, Brother Hyrum standing, you kneeling at his feet. I saw it all. I saw it all. You have been saved for him.”
Uncle Hyrum nods. “I will treat you well, Sister Kyra,” he says. “We will raise children unto the Lord.”
“I can’t do that,” I say, sick just-like-that to my stomach. I stand, Laura holding my hand so tight my fingers have gone purple. When I look into her face, I see her eyes have filled with tears. I glance at Mother Sarah. She sits up straight in her chair.
Father says, “Prophet Childs, I think there must be a misunderstanding. This man is my brother.”
I shake free of Laura. Step over my brothers and sisters whose faces are pale and seem like floating balloons.
“Duck, duck, duck,” Emily says.
Mariah lets out a bit of a cry. Does she feel what I feel? I turn and she reaches for me. But it’s like I look at a photograph, one that changes. I see her face collapse when I back away. See her little mouth open wide. Hear her start to cry.
Brother Fields reaches for me as I try to run, grabs the sleeve of my dress, but I slap his hand away and run out into the darkness. Mariah’s voice follows me.
“Wait,” someone calls. Mother Claire? Then, “Hush, baby. You hush now.”
How can this be? Is it for my sins? I have punished us all for my thoughts? For the books? And Joshua?
Just like that I’ll be marrying my father’s brother.
Just like that I’ll be marrying my own uncle.
MOTHER CLAIRE MARRIED FATHER when she was fourteen and he was seventeen.
Mother Victoria married Father when she was thirteen and he was nineteen.
Mother Sarah married Father when she was thirteen and he was twenty-one.
And now me. Me. Marrying my uncle who must be sixty, at least.
Saved for him?
OUTSIDE THE SKY has gone all dark except for the half-moon. All is quiet except Mariah’s wailing—a piercing cry that causes my heart to skip a beat. I almost turn back. The air is crisp, cool, though heat still rises from the desert. My uncle! I run from my family. At first, I start toward my tree. Then I think better of it.
“I don’t need a tree,” I say into the dark. “I don’t.”
So I turn around. I head back, past my trailer, past where my family meets with the Prophet and his Apostles and the old man I’m supposed to marry. My own uncle.
I trip on a line of bricks that Mother Victoria set up to surround a small flower garden and fall right into her petunias with an “Oof.” The sweet smell makes me sick and I think I might puke. My hands and knees hurt from the fall, and my shinbone feels like a gouge of meat has been scooped out against a brick. For a moment I hesitate. I want to cry. To howl like Mariah, who is really worked up now. But I can hear the rumble of voices from the trailer one over. Can hear one of the men say, “She’ll learn her place,” and another say, “God’s will.”
I push to my feet, and hurry away, right to the biggest sin of my life. I go to Joshua’s place.
THE FIRST TIME I really noticed Joshua Johnson was seven months ago at school (Did the books make me notice? Did my disobedience make me see him?) when I was coming out of quilting bee and headed for home.
“Hey, Kyra,” he said as we passed in the hall and he nodded at me like maybe he knew something I didn’t.
Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! My heart thumped. His eyes were so blue. Blue like the daytime sky. And he was using his eyes to look at me. Me!
Of course he’s using his eyes, I thought and looked at the floor then back at Joshua. “Hey to you, too,” I said.
He grinned and I felt my face redden. I hurried out the door and toward home.
Joshua. Joshua Johnson. Blue-eyed Joshua Johnson.
“Oh my gosh,” I said just as Laura came running up next to me.
“Where are you off to so fast?” she asked. “And ‘oh my gosh’ what?”
I swallowed at my jittery feelings, then leaned close to my sister. Her strawberry blond hair was pulled back into long braids.
Her eyes, squinty whether she’s in bright light or not, looked hard at me.
“You’re embarrassed,” she said.
Touching my face, I nodded.
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, “Joshua Johnson said hello to me.” Laura stopped on the sidewalk that leads from the Fellowship Hall to where we all live. I could see the freckles sprinkled across her nose. “So?”
“So,” I said, then I let the words rush out of my mouth. “He is so cute. So cute.”
Laura stared at me a moment, then started toward home again. “You know you shouldn’t even let that thought in your mind.”
I said nothing at first, bothered by my sister. She was right. I knew that. But still. “I can look, can’t I?”
Laura didn’t even glance my way. Just marched toward home. “No,” she said. “No, you can’t look and you know it.”
Again I was quiet, then I said, “You’re right, Laura.”
She grinned at me, her squinty eyes growing sparkly. “Good then,” she said.
But I thought about him anyway. All the way home.
THE LIGHTS ARE ON STILL at the Johnson trailer and so I wait. I wait until all the lights have switched off. I hide near their chicken coop, the smells so thick I could have hurled them at someone.
I hear when the Prophet and Uncle Hyrum walk past.
Hear someone slam a door shut and a coyote cry out and get an answer from someone’s dog.
I hear Mother Sarah, and then Father, call me in.
But I don’t move. I wait in the dark, the soft cluck of chickens near, to make sure everyone at the Johnson home is sleeping. Then, in the light of that moon that has turned the color of cream, I tap on his bedroom window.
ONE AFTERNOON, when the sun sat in the sky like a crown on the mountains, I asked Mother if I could go play the piano.
“Just at the Fellowship Hall,” I said.
“Of course,” she said.
I tucked a fat book of Beethoven under my arm and started away. If I hurried, there would be plenty of time to play. I breathed deep the desert air, happy for the golden light that ended the day. Happy for a moment to fall into my music. I hummed the beginning of a concerto. In my head I could see the notes of a cadenza that was giving me fits. A few minutes of that to start, I decided. Then a jump to the end, maybe fifteen minutes’ practice there. That would get my piece . . .