Children of Exile

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “We have lots of other clothes,” I said. “When are our suitcases coming from the airport?”

  The mother narrowed her eyes at me.

  “You didn’t tell me you had suitcases,” she said.

  “I thought—”

  The mother waved a dismissive hand, not waiting for me to straighten out my thoughts.

  “You and your father can pick them up this afternoon,” she said. “If they haven’t been stolen.”

  Why did she sound like it would be my fault if someone stole our bags?

  The back door of the house creaked open and then banged shut, making the walls shiver. The father stepped into the shadows just inside the door. It felt like he was watching us, even though he was only listening.

  “You could come to church with us,” the mother told him, her voice breaking. “We could be a complete family, giving thanks together. Everyone would see—”

  “Humph.” The father gave a grunt of disgust. It was a sour, bitter sound. “You know I can’t see. You know I won’t go there.”

  I looked back and forth at the mother and the father. If they’d been my Fred-parents, they would have exchanged a glance, then Bobo and I would have been sent out to play, and when we returned all the tension between them would have been talked out and gone.

  But these were my real parents. One of them was blind, and the other didn’t seem to have any expressions on her face besides glaring and sorrow and anger and fear.

  The mother began making shooing motions with her hands.

  “Take your turn in the privy,” she told me. “At least smooth down your hair. Then let’s go. Hurry!”

  Five minutes later—my hair semitamed, my dress no less wrinkled for my trying to straighten it out—the mother and Bobo and I stepped out the front door, leaving the father behind in his dark corner.

  I wouldn’t have said the mother was joyful walking to church, but there was a certain eagerness to her step that I hadn’t seen before. Bobo skipped along beside her, bouncing up and down in a way that might have been because of all the sugar he’d had for breakfast, but might have happened anyway. Bobo was always a big skipper.

  Doesn’t he see how scary all the houses on our street are? I wondered. I was paying more attention than I had the day before. I could see that our house—ramshackle as it was—was actually one of the nicer ones in the neighborhood. The others were mostly boxes and boards propped together randomly, spackled with dried mud. They looked like they could be knocked down by no more than the breath of a child making a wish blowing on dandelion fluff.

  “This way,” the mother said, tugging Bobo and me onto a dirt path winding through a field of weeds.

  It wasn’t long before we came to a large open building made of cinder blocks that stopped halfway up, with solid- looking posts leading the rest of the way to a shiny tin roof.

  A crowd of some thirty-five or forty people had already gathered—maybe we were late. We took up a place at the back and sat down on the floor. I looked around at the other kids.

  If Edwy’s here, I thought, then . . .

  Edwy wasn’t there. But I did see Cana, the little girl he’d once had spy for him. A man who must have been her father had his arm around her shoulder, holding her close—maybe at least she had real parents who were nice. She shyly raised a hand and waved at me from across the room. I really wanted to see Aili, too, the girl the rude man had grabbed from me on the plane yesterday, but she was also missing. Most of the children around us were babies and toddlers.

  Someone I couldn’t see began blowing on a flute, and five adults stood up at the front and started singing about joy and rejoicing. Around us, people began to stand up and dance in place, waving their hands in the air, throwing their heads back and singing along.

  “Can I dance too?” Bobo asked, leaning toward me.

  “Yes,” the mother said loudly, as if he’d been asking her, not me.

  I nodded, because if Bobo was happy enough to dance, it would be wrong to hold him back. Both he and the mother stood up and joined hands and began swinging their arms and their hips back and forth in time to the music. But I sat still, because I wasn’t happy. I didn’t feel like dancing or singing about joy.

  Finally the music ended and everyone sat down, even the singers. A man stepped up to a table in the front. Maybe it was an altar; it held nothing but a rough wooden cross.

  So this is a Christian church, I thought, as if I expected my religious studies Fred-teacher to be proud of me for knowing that. Christian, not Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or Jewish or Taoist . . .

  The mother glanced over and must have seen me watching the man at the front.

  “Pastor Dan is a missionary,” she whispered. “That’s why he looks so different. But don’t . . . don’t hold it against him. He’s been so helpful. . . .”

  Looks so different? I thought. The man had just bowed his head in a silent prayer—was that what the mother meant? Another thought occurred to me, one that made me uncomfortable. Was she pointing out the fact that the man had paler skin than anybody I’d ever seen in person before? And that his eyes tilted in a way I’d seen only in pictures?

  That was wrong to focus on, rude to talk about.

  “What he looks like doesn’t matter,” I whispered back to the mother, just like the Freds would have wanted me to.

  Something eased in the mother’s expression.

  “I just started coming here a month ago,” she murmured. “So I’m still learning. But the things he says, the way he sees things . . .”

  “Yes, the Freds always said it’s the content of a person’s character we should pay attention to, not how they look,” I said. “That’s what the Freds taught.”

  I thought she would be glad that I was agreeing with her, that the Freds agreed. But she flinched, and anger flashed across her face. Still, she didn’t lash out, like she had before. She jerked her head forward and closed her eyes, as if she felt a sudden need to pray, too.

  I didn’t think I should try to say anything else to her, and it felt wrong even to notice all the ways this man looked different. So I thought about the word “missionary” instead. We’d talked about missionaries in religious studies class back in Fredtown: They were people who went to a foreign land to share their religion.

  I remember Edwy asking all sorts of questions.

  “Isn’t that rude and disrespectful, to be a missionary?” he’d challenged the teacher. “Isn’t that like saying to the people in the places they travel to, ‘The religion you believe in now is totally wrong and mine is right’? Why is that allowed, if people are supposed to have respect for everyone who’s different from them?”

  The Fred-teacher had surprised us both by saying, “I cannot comment on that. In a sense, I myself and all the other Freds are missionaries. . . .”

  Then I started asking questions too, but the Fred-teacher said that was the end of school for the day.

  When we went back the next day, we had a different teacher.

  The missionary at the front of this church finished praying, put his hands up in the air, and called out, “Praise be to God!”

  “Praise the Lord!” all the adults around me shouted back at him.

  “Isn’t this the most glorious day?” the pale man asked. “You have your children back! For twelve years you wept for your children, just as Rachel wept for her children in the Bible. But now you have your children back! They were returned to you! You stood up against evil, and now, by the grace of God, you have triumphed. Your patience and persistence have been rewarded. The evildoers have been vanquished!”

  His voice thundered in my ears, his words worming their way into my brain.

  Stood up against evil . . . The evildoers have been vanquished. . . .

  And then I understood: He was talking about the Freds. He was saying the Freds were evil.

  I bolted upright; I was on my feet before I was conscious of deciding to stand.

  “Stop it!” I screamed at the pale
man. “Stop!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Everybody stared at me.

  I’d wanted to say, The Freds aren’t evil! They’re the kindest people ever. Take it back, what you just said! I’d wanted to say, Oh, right, while you’re feeling so triumphant and gloating about your victory, did you ever think about what it feels like to be a kid ripped away from Fredtown? From our Fred-parents and everything we’ve ever known? Did you ever think how confused and scared we are? Did you ever think of just being kind and patient, and explaining everything? What if you’re actually the ones doing evil? Did you ever think of that?

  But everyone was staring at me.

  It wasn’t like how everyone watched me when I was the narrator in the school play back in Fredtown. Then, every single gaze was kind and encouraging; every face seemed to be saying, Oh, you’re doing so well! I’m so happy to see you succeed! I’m rooting for you!

  The faces staring at me now in this cinder-block building were all grim and disapproving. And I didn’t have to guess at what the people around me were thinking, because I could hear them start to murmur:

  “Who’s that? Who does she think she is, interrupting like that?”

  “Surely that’s not one of the children, is it? She’s so tall!”

  “What if that’s one of those Freds, who snuck back in, after all? She sounds like a Fred!”

  I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe.

  Bobo flung himself at my leg.

  “This is my sister,” he cried, grabbing on tight. “She’s Rosi! She’s not a Fred!”

  Bless brave little Bobo. He gave me the courage to take a deep breath, and that helped. Everyone was still glaring at me, though, except for the missionary at the front, who mostly looked puzzled and concerned. So did the little kids who were old enough to be paying attention. My eyes met Cana’s, and she mouthed something at me. Was it Be careful? Was she smart enough to know to say that?

  Behind me, a baby started to cry.

  “I—,” I began. I choked on the word and had to try again. “I think you forgot how scared little kids can get, hearing about evil. And how much babies cry. If you want, I can take all the little kids out into the field to play until the service is over.”

  This was a cover-up, a replacement for what I was too scared to say.

  Bobo nodded vigorously, his head bouncing up and down against my leg.

  “You can take me out into the field to play!” he said, his voice so merry it was like he didn’t notice anyone glaring at us. “Especially if there’s going to be a lot of sitting still and listening. I’m not very good at that.”

  Any Fred would have laughed, and then gently told Bobo that the only way he was going to get good at sitting still and listening was by practicing sitting still and listening. But no one said anything in this cinder-block church.

  The baby behind me cried louder. I glanced back, and the mother holding the baby didn’t even seem to know she should bounce him up and down and murmur, “Shh, shh. You’re okay.” The mother just sat there, watching her baby cry.

  The pale man at the front tilted his head sideways, watching me.

  “It’s true we are out of practice dealing with children, and thinking about what children need,” he said. “Next week we’ll have Sunday school classes and start taking turns with nursery care. But for this week, maybe it would be best if this girl—Rosi?—takes all the children out into the field to play until our service is over.”

  I reached back for the crying baby. The mother didn’t seem to know what to do except hand him over. The baby’s fat little hand grabbed one of my fingers, and I let him guide it into his mouth, between his gums.

  “He’s teething,” I said. “That’s all.”

  The baby gnawed on my finger, biting down so hard that it hurt. But at least he stopped crying.

  The mother looked angry, not grateful.

  “Come on, then,” I said to Bobo.

  He and I went out into the open field, me carrying the baby, a trail of other little kids following us.

  “Who wants to play Duck Duck Goose?” I asked.

  “Me! Me! Me!” the children around me cried.

  I started arranging them in a circle. Someone tugged on my skirt.

  I looked down and saw Cana looking up at me.

  “No one is to be called an enemy,” she said solemnly. That was one of the principles we’d learned in Fredtown. It was part of a longer quote, which also included the words All are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves. The Freds always said this when a kid treated someone unfairly, or when we refused to take someone else’s feelings into account. It didn’t mean anyone had literally said “You’re my enemy”—who would do that? It was just a sign that we were pushing someone away, acting divisive.

  When Freds quoted this principle, they always seemed particularly sad.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!” I said frantically now, to Cana. “That man just kept talking about evil, and—”

  Cana blinked up at me, her tiny features so innocent and sweet. And knowing.

  Was she right? Had I just turned every adult at that church into an enemy?

  I’d never had an enemy before. Unless you counted Edwy.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Church ended, and the parents came out to claim their children from the field. I’d kept the kids entertained and reasonably quiet for more than an hour in a space where there was nothing to do but run and shout and pick weeds. We’d played Duck Duck Goose, London Bridge, Ring-Around-the-Rosie, and, when I ran out of other games, Hunt for the Prettiest Flower. But none of the adults said thank you. They just stared at me distrustfully and whispered when they thought I wasn’t looking.

  The Fred thing to do would be to calmly and politely say, “Excuse me. Is there a problem? Is there some issue you would like to discuss with me?”

  I couldn’t do it. Not when they’d already been whispering about me being a Fred only pretending to be a child. Not if they thought Freds were evil.

  The mother and Bobo and I walked back to our house.

  “Nelsi?” the mother called as we pushed the door open. Was this the father’s given name? How could I not know that about my own father?

  I didn’t know the mother’s given name either. Why hadn’t the Freds told us that basic information? Why hadn’t they done that years ago?

  Had the Freds thought, even up to the moment we stepped on the plane, that we’d really never need to know our parents’ names, because we’d never meet them?

  I didn’t ask the mother about names now. No one answered her, and she began wringing her hands.

  “Looks like he’s already left to sell the apples,” she said. She stepped quickly through the house to the kitchen, scanning the table and countertops. The dirty skillet still lay on the stove. The mother reached for a loaf of bread. “Here, Rosi, you take a sandwich for him and a sandwich for you. Hurry! When he doesn’t get lunch . . .”

  “You want me to take him lunch,” I repeated. “Can you tell me where he is?”

  The mother paused in the middle of slapping sandwiches together and frowned at me as if my question annoyed her. As if it were my fault I didn’t know where the father might be selling apples.

  That’s not fair, I wanted to say. How would I know?

  I kept my mouth shut. But I could feel my lips puckering together into a sulk.

  “He’s downtown, of course,” the mother said. “Where we were yesterday . . .” She seemed to remember that we’d followed a convoluted path coming from where the plane landed. “Look. All you have to do is go to the end of our street, where there’s the creek. Follow the creek until it bends like a hairpin. Then turn to the left. That’ll take you to the market. Where your father sells his apples. The two of you can bring your luggage home when you’re done.”

  “Can I go too?” Bobo asked, bouncing up and down.

  I was pretty sure it was the word “creek” that caught his
ear. Bobo liked anything to do with water.

  The mother’s frown deepened.

  “No, no, Rosi has to hurry. You’ll slow her down,” she said. “And maybe you should take a nap. You’re not too old for naps yet, are you?”

  How could she not know if her own son still took naps?

  “He takes them when he gets up early,” I said. “Like he did today.”

  Bobo gave me the stink-eye, because he hated naps.

  The mother yawned.

  “I could use a nap myself,” she said. “I’ll lie down beside you, and as you’re falling asleep, I’ll tell you stories. . . .”

  “About when I was a baby?” Bobo asked eagerly.

  “Sure,” the mother said to him. “Here,” she said, handing me the sandwiches, now wrapped in a ragged cloth. “Bring the cloth back when you come home tonight. Now go!”

  She actually pushed my arm to hurry me up. I stepped out the front door, into the baking sunlight.

  Bobo gets cuddled and told stories and I’m pushed out the door, treated like a servant, I thought bitterly. That’s not fair either.

  But immediately it was like all the Freds I’d grown up with were talking in my head: Big kids should never be resentful of little kids getting special privileges, because you were treated that way too when you were little. And remember that as you grow and get more responsibilities, you also get more freedom and more rights, more opportunity to make your own choices . . .

  “Right,” I muttered under my breath. “I got so much choice about whether to leave Fredtown, whether to come here.”

  But the Fred voices in my head had shifted my perspective. It was good to be outside, not trapped in that dark hut being forced to take a nap. It was even good to be alone for now. Maybe I would run into other kids; maybe I could ask around and find out where Edwy lived.

  It was easy to find the creek, easy to walk along it on a dirt path clearly beaten down by lots of other feet before mine. Because the creek was lined with soaring trees, it was cooler there than along the street of falling-down houses.