Strange Children

by Sadie Hoagland

  It didn’t any of it feel real.

  Time to get out now, his Pa had said.

  It was a still a dream, but different than the one he thought he’d have if he ever got out.

  Emma

  Even after I was married and my belly was growing with child, I could not quit the loitering at my Mama’s house, even though I had work and bed and sisterwives and everything else back at Josiah’s, I did not have my Mama. My Mama has red hair just like me, which our people call matchstick, and her temper too is that color and I like the way she sassed me or Annalue or would tell us that He like to destroy our whole house for the smallest of our idlenesses and also the way she would crow or towelspank me or pull my braid and all of this bespoke what was not yet in my new home. Everyone there was polite or rude to me, but never just plain loving or plain mean and it was these two things I missed and also my Mama’s apple bake to which she added ginger, her matchstick secret.

  When my washing and work was done for Lizbeth, Josiah’s first wife and Jeremiah’s mother, I would get me down to the house if I could and my Mama would look at me when I come in and say Well I see you plan on refusing God’s good graces once again, and cluck cluck with her hen mouth, but I knew by the way she would always soon after I come in push over a bowl of peas for me to shell or corn to husk and then set down with me to put our hands to work together that she was not really so riled to see me.

  Mama never gave me no married lady talk, the night before I left she said she would have but it seemed I had already reaped that knowledge for myself and why, by the way, on God’s red earth I would sin so would be an everlasting mystery to her. I, she told me, was a pious woman who did not even lift my eyes let alone my dress before being married to your Pa at sixteen devout years of age. So I do not know but that it was an unlucky day whence we baptized you, and we should have known it would take a team of plow horses to keep you from sin, and yoked you up right then, right there.

  And so over peas or corn she would tell the story again of the unlucky day of my baptism when I was seven years old and memorizing my tenets last minute because I was the kind of child who’d lose my hair if it hadn’t had the good fortune to be growing direct from my head, and it was a foreboding morning with dark thunderheads in the southern sky and first things first Mama went to get my white gown from the washing line and wouldn’t you know it had blown right into the trough and was not white but gray with horse water and wouldn’t that be hardly worth remembering if not also at the same time a sandstorm begun to blow fierce, and shut down all doors and windows and wasn’t everybody so busy battening down the hatches that the oats on the stove we were to eat before House time boiled all over and made a mess on the floor and burned Levi, who crawled over to eat them and scalded his tiny palm and then was screaming to raise the dead before their time, and then to top it all off, my Mama, said, While we was waiting for your dress to dry, quick as can, Annalue came in and lift her own dress like a harlot to show me her body plagued with enough chicken pox to fill the night sky and so Jenna, who was not married to your father and I but a year, had to come and watch your poor ailing siblings whose bodies had been touched by the Devil the very day we dressed for God, while we put you in a damp dress only to get wetter in the waters of Redemption and finally we made it to House, and you were cradled in the blue of the sacred pool and were blessed but just as soon as your sweet face emerged, the wind that blew the dress blew the power and the House was dark but for the red whirlwinds outside the tall thin windows of the baptismal and all went quiet, a sign from him, perhaps, until you, who were dripping wet with His waters looked up at us all and said Amen. Everyone was laughing, then, and remembering Nephi, “even babes did open their mouths and utter marvelous things,” because we did not know that you would take that utterance into a life so stained by the Devil’s brand on your neck that you like to destroy us all when He come again.

  And here my Mama would touch the birthspot behind my right ear, a raspberry-jam color shaped like a melting quarter.

  My Mama would say things about that sacred day and now I think looking back it was not some forecast of a sinful life but a pious one I read: How my dress was stained to keep from vanity; How I did not get the chicken pox though Annalue and later Levi did; How God struck the power when I accepted him into my heart. These, I see now, are signs that though tested by the Devil, I would be later among his most devout. But then I believed Mama my inherent evils and almost liked the way she talked about the trouble I got to, exasperating, but gentle-like, and though I knew she was not liking what I had done, and how it had turned out, and how I left my work in her kitchen some two years early, I also did not think my Mama would be like to damn me to hell, if it was up to her. She would just sigh sad and either blame the baptism or the woman, Hannah Sanders, who took over the primary school from my grandmother once she got so old her hands went stiff. That woman, she would say, taught you to read silly books about manners and hair pinning when she should have been teaching you scripture and tenets. Who cares what you serve with potatoes, in fact I’ll tell what you serve with potatoes, MEAT, and any good wife knows that and knows you don’t need two cents to know that men like a sweet girl, with good grooming, and what a waste of time when you should have been learning the stories of our faith. And if Annalue was sitting with us, which was some afternoons, she would always say, but Mama, aren’t you glad I know how to read your colors? And laugh at the old joke about the most ridiculous lesson that Hannah ever taught us out of her Guide to Homemaking, because there was only hand-me-downs in our house and so to read one another’s colors we said this: Well, now, Annalue, with your hair so light and your eyes so blue, it’s best you wear: OLD.

  And Mama would tisk, tisk, and say a waste of time but no matter because hadn’t she sent her daughters there and at least they could read, and God willing maybe one day we’d even read the Book wherein lay the salvation we both seemed so intent on thwarting. And wouldn’t she pray for it lest she be all alone with only Pa in her Celestial heaven, childless as the day she was born and wouldn’t we just know the suffering we put her through one day when we were older.

  And Mama would say that we would know one day, but even when her tongue was loosed like this, she never gave no mention of the growing bump under my dress. I know she saw it because she stopped and looked at it sometimes when it was getting to be noticeable and sighed but never said a word and I do not know if it was because she worried in her heart that it might be the son’s child and not the father’s, like I thought God hath ordained, or if it was because when she saw it, she just saw one more sign of our ill-fitting, too big to hide from the eye of God, like Annalue’s chicken pox, or Levi’s burnt hand, both who still bear pink specks of scars. And though at that time I yearned to talk to Mama, to tell her Josiah had just been with me just the once and then said not again until I was older and I wanted to ask her if this made me a bad wife. To tell her and then to hear Mama’s words and the shoring up I knew she could give about that and this coming baby, but that I knew I would not hear it because I had broken with the plan she had for me, and I had loved Jeremiah and had gotten dirt and grass on my dress and so was married and having a child these two years early, and that my punishment, if not before God, would be before her and that was to bear this my burden all alone, with no soft words to ease the child out into this world, and even though this my Mama’s silence gave a glow of sadness to my visits home, I still went most every day because I knew that once that child came, I would not be able to go so much, and also was not sure I would be welcome.

  Listen. Sometimes things are already over before they begin.

  In Jeremiah’s case they were over the minute he was born a boy. His birth a death, a fall that prescribed to him a lifetime of waiting for it to be over until all of the sudden it was. Over and he was out. Exiled.

  In my case they were over when I met him a second time. He called my name in the hall and caught up with me and told me his name again in
case I had forgotten but I hadn’t and he held out his hand like an old man, and I laughed and liked his blue eyes, and I shook his hand and his palm was sweaty, and then someone spun me around and he was calling my name again only now I was there at that party on the back patio.

  We will get there, to the back patio, to the end, but once we are there, I’ll be right back here in this chalky land. I’ll start all over again.

  Jeremiah

  He wasn’t done at the Home, even after the night when he felt Duke’s throat. Not yet. That next morning, he woke up to Duke standing over him again.

  Shit, he said. I’m sorry, Duke. And he was, he didn’t have anything against Duke. He was nice and he’d had a rough time and he’d been real kind to Jeremiah when he first got there.

  Man, no worries, I was an asshole, I deserved it. Duke stuck out a balled hand, and Jeremiah bumped his fist against it.

  We’re cool, Duke said. Then, Hey you want to go to school with me?

  You go to school?

  Sometimes, yeah. When there’s nothing better to do. Where you think all the girls are at? Duke rubbed his hand on his jaw like he was stroking an invisible beard.

  And so Jeremiah had a reason to put off leaving.

  At the school, it turned out Jeremiah had to be a visitor and just go to Duke’s classes with him. Duke told the women in the office that Jeremiah was a cousin who’d be moving here from Texas next year, So they, as he explained to Jeremiah, don’t get all over you. The woman who helped them had a pin in the shape of Utah on her sweater and said All right, Texas, Sweetie, here you go, as she handed him a badge that said VISITOR. Don’t forget to sign out at the end of the day, now.

  Jeremiah nodded and followed Duke out of the office.

  Jeremiah couldn’t believe how many kids were in the hall. Kids their age, making noise, laughing, pushing each other, touching each other, girls in super short skirts, some without tights even in the cool of late fall, boys in T-shirts and baggy jeans. The space was hot with bodies, it smelled with bodies and echoed with voices and laughs and screeches of shoes on the tan tiles. Kids everywhere. Kids with headphones in, with braces, glasses, hats. Kids slamming lockers, high fiving each other, shoving past each other, someone kicked a soccer ball down the hall and hit a girl in a yellow sweater and green skirt in the butt. She turned and yelled, Asshole! The skin, the voices, the very vibration of the hall as the bell went off and through it all Jeremiah could hear the voice of the Prophet: Wickedness is like water in their world, that they drink from its well each day, and it courses through their bodies like blood until it is their very nature.

  The first class they went to was History. The teacher asked students to turn to a chapter in their book on the start of the Civil War. Neither Duke nor Jeremiah had a book. Duke turned and winked at Jeremiah before moving his desk closer to a girl with long brown hair, looking at the page over her shoulder. Jeremiah just sat there and tried to listen as the teacher read.

  He’d been to the schoolhouse in Redfield until he was nine or so. He could read some. He could write his name. He hadn’t heard of the Civil War but it sounded interesting. The two sides were the North and the South, he gathered, but he didn’t know of what. He’d ask Duke later, maybe.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder. The girl in the yellow sweater from the hall was motioning him to scoot over, share her book. She had a curly auburn hair to her chin and bright green eyes and she smiled at him and he tried to smile back. He moved his desk over a little and could smell her. Like strawberry jam.

  The book had a lot of small print words, so Jeremiah tried to look at the pictures. One was of a bearded man that looked like an old Prophet. The other was of a black-skinned man in chains.

  When the bell rang, the girl held out her hand, her eyes grass.

  I’m Haley, she said.

  Jeremiah. He shook her hand.

  Where you visiting from?

  Duke stood over them. Texas!

  Haley looked at him and squinted. Where are you really visiting from? She lowered her voice.

  Duke leaned over and got real close to her; she didn’t flinch.

  This boy’s a runaway slave, Duke said, and slapped Jeremiah on the back. They got up, and Haley stood too, looking with raised eyebrows at Jeremiah. Jeremiah shrugged and went to follow Duke but Haley grabbed his shoulder.

  Really, where you from?

  Redfield, he turned again to see Duke give somebody a high five as he walked out the classroom door.

  Wait . . . that polygamist place? You’re from there?

  Yeah, I . . . he looked again to where Duke was going but Haley put a hand on his arm.

  Why don’t you come to math with me?

  They had reached the hall, and it seemed even more chaotic than it had an hour ago. Duke was nowhere to be seen.

  Come on, we’ll find him after third period.

  He let her guide him down the hall to another classroom, almost identical except for the décor. This one had laminated posters of shapes and graphs all over the walls. During class he tried to listen to what the teacher was saying but Haley kept elbowing him as she wrote notes on the side of her notebook. He tried to read them.

  Did you run away?

  Jeremiah shook his head.

  Are you just visiting then?

  He shook his head again.

  Did you get kicked out?

  Jeremiah read this slowly. He stared straight ahead once he understood what she was asking and tried to listen again to the teacher as she talked about the angles of a triangle she’d drawn on the board.

  Haley tapped the question with her pencil eraser and gave him an exasperated look. He stared straight ahead again, but shrugged.

  The teacher asked them to take out their compass and draw a circle and find the radius. Haley pulled out a sharp gadget and showed Jeremiah how it worked. You put the point in the middle of the paper, and it’s sharp so it could go right through, then you move the second part around like you are winding a clock. He tried it himself, and tore her paper but she laughed and put her hand over his. Together they made three circles, each one smaller than the last.

  She didn’t write any more questions on her paper.

  After the next bell, Haley said she had a free period, which meant no class to go to. Jeremiah said he should find Duke.

  Haley led him out to the parking lot and into the far corner where there was sunny strip of grass. It was getting cold up North, colder than it would be in Redfield.

  He usually hangs out here.

  You know Duke, then?

  A little, from parties, and he used to go out with one of my friends. Haley pulled a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket on her green canvas backpack. The pocket had a patch with a smiley face. Want one?

  Jeremiah just looked at her.

  Wait, have you ever had one?

  Jeremiah blushed and looked down. Haley squealed in delight.

  She lit two and handed him one. Breathe in slowly, she said and then watched as he did.

  He coughed immediately and deeply. His eyes watered and she nodded, That happens to everyone the first time.

  She inhaled her own cigarette gracefully, and Jeremiah liked the way she just barely held it between her two middle fingers.

  Where was the Civil War? Jeremiah asked as he tried to inhale the cigarette again, this time softly, barely getting any smoke down.

  You’re kidding.

  Jeremiah blushed again and Haley quickly spoke. It was here, in the United States, between the North and the South. The South had slaves, and the North wanted to free them.

  Jeremiah looked up again at her and nodded.

  He watched her smooth her skirt with her hand. The North won, obviously.

  Jeremiah said, Oh. I mean I heard of slaves. Like in the Bible.

  Haley laughed a little, You’re funny.

  Jeremiah looked at her sideways, he couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him.

  I mean, it’s fun hanging out with you
, it’s like you’re an alien visiting our world and I get to show you everything.

  Jeremiah made a face, one his sisters always made to make the babies laugh, by putting his fingers into his eyelids and pushing them up, sucking his cheeks in.

  Haley giggled and gently reached over to tap Jeremiah’s cigarette, a cone of ash fell off into the grass.

  Duke found them there after the next bell.

  Did you learn anything, shithead? He grinned at Jeremiah. Let’s get out of here already.

  Jeremiah stood up and reached down to help Haley up, she took the hand. See you later, thanks for the cigarette . . . he turned toward Duke.

  Duke stared at him, then motioned his head at Haley.

  Jeremiah just stared back. Duke cleared his throat.

  Haley picked up her bag and grabbed a notebook out of it. She tore a corner of a page off and got out a pen. Why don’t I give you my number she said, and wrote something before tearing it off and giving to Jeremiah.

  In case you have any more you know, history questions, she giggled and turned away, walking back towards the building.

  Man, Duke had his hands on his head, that was painful.

  What?

  Never mind, dude, you got her number, that’s what counts, man. That means that this was not a total waste of time.

  As they walked toward the bus stop, Jeremiah realized he still had his VISITOR badge on. He slipped it off his neck and into his pocket next to the slip of paper with Haley’s number.

  I become so good at being a ghost. At whispering, at becoming the dream that someone has that gives them an idea they think is theirs. Is theirs.

  I went back to their sad little house when the sun was almost down. The mother, Beth, was napping on the sagging brown couch like a leaf curled with wilt. She was with child, I could see. Could see the two heartbeats pulsing. There was jam stuck to the coffee table like glue. Manti and the little girl on the floor dozing, him cupped around her. I knelt next to them.