The Virtue of Sin

by Shannon Schuren

  “What did he do to you?” he asks, blending both compassion and horror into his question.

  There is only so much I can take. My knees still ache from the hours spent praying in the desert sun, begging God—and Daniel—for forgiveness. I won’t accept Aaron’s pity.

  “I deserve it,” I say. “It’s my fault.” Confession is a dam that, once opened, is hard to plug.

  “You can’t really believe that.” He peers at me, then presses me gently to the couch. “Your lips are chapped. Let me get you some water.”

  “‘With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him. All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver; as a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know it will cost him his life.’” My lips move of their own accord. “Proverbs 7:21.” My voice is but a whisper, and Aaron is in the kitchen, so I don’t think he hears me.

  “‘If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury,’” he says, returning and handing me a glass of water, “‘but if you injure him, you will always remember.’”

  My hand trembles, and water splashes into my lap. “Is that scripture?”

  “It’s not scripture. It’s poetry. Kahlil Gibran.”

  My body has begun to shake uncontrollably, though I can’t tell if it’s a delayed reaction to my confrontation with Daniel or a response to Aaron. “This Kahlil. He is your prophet?”

  A smile tugs at the corner of Aaron’s mouth, and he winces as he touches a finger to his fat lip. “That’s funny. But he’s not a prophet. He’s a poet. Like Frost. Or Wordsworth.”

  I draw a blank at the strange names. This is not right.

  “Shakespeare?”

  I try to put my cup down. It spills across the table, but I’m too weak to pick it up. Instead, I slump into the couch and hold my shaking hands over my ears. I don’t know what he’s saying, but his words terrify me.

  “How is any of this your fault?” His voice is muffled, but I can still hear him. “I called your name. You had no choice.”

  “But I spoke first. I spoke to you.” I have to work to get the words out, as if I’ve reached the end of my finite allotment.

  “So? I was bitten by a rattler. Wouldn’t letting me die be a bigger sin?” He goes to the kitchen and brings back a wet washcloth. “Is that what this is all about?” As he folds the cloth into thirds, he asks, frowning, “How would Daniel even know about that? I didn’t tell him.”

  The cool relief as he drapes it across my forehead almost makes me weep. I don’t deserve it. “Don’t.” But I’m too weak to throw it off. Instead, I let the water drip down my cheeks and soothe the salty burn.

  “‘Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it,’” Aaron says. “I can quote scripture, too. The real test of goodness isn’t in words. It’s in actions. You people should have thought about that, before you chose your prophet.”

  He spits the last word at me and stalks away, and I’m too tired to argue anymore. I’m not sure what I’d say anyway. Everyone knows you can’t reason with a heretic.

  Even if he is your husband.

  15

  MIRIAM

  WHAT CAUSES QUARRELS AND FIGHTS AMONG YOU? IS IT NOT THAT YOUR PASSIONS ARE AT WAR WITHIN YOU?

  —James 4:1

  I’ve been married for exactly one week, though I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been counting. It feels much longer. The days blend together, hot and dry and monotonous, broken only by the cold nights spent alone in the bed I’m supposed to be sharing, watching the moon creep slowly across the windowsill and listening to the coyotes in the distance. Why do they go on, night after night? Crying doesn’t change anything. Or perhaps I’m only imagining the mournful notes on the end of their howls. Maybe they’re just trying to be heard above the sound of the spring sandstorms whipping across the desert. There was another last night, the roar of the wind like a scream, and I had to hold my pillow over my mouth to keep from joining in.

  A week, or an eternity, during which I’ve tried my best to avoid both my mother’s pleas and Daniel’s instructions on obedience and submission. The Council continues to send food, and I refuse to cook it and instead go to bed early each night, alone. Truthfully, though, neither of these seem to bother Aaron. Nothing does, really. Not even the calls to Lessons, which, despite my mother’s assurances to the contrary, come every day except the Lord’s day.

  I don’t know what the men are learning, but so far, instead of talking of wifely duties, we women have studied Eve, Deborah, Mary Magdalene, and my namesake. If anyone else finds Phoebe’s choice of topics strange, they don’t say so, and I certainly don’t complain; these women and their stories are a welcome distraction from the nightmare that is my marriage. But even at Lessons, Rachel and I rarely have time to say more than a quick “keep faithful,” and we certainly don’t have time to talk about Delilah. For once, though, Susanna’s ear for gossip has proven useful, in that she tells me Delilah is still here, spending time with her family before she is sent away. I haven’t been allowed to see her, but I take comfort in knowing she is nearby.

  Saturdays we spend in Chapel, from sunup to sundown, like always, only now we sit with our spouses rather than our parents. The Call to Prayer still comes thrice daily, and so far the only complaint I can make against my new husband is this: When we are alone in our apartment, Aaron ignores the calls. At first, I pray harder, to make up for his refusal. But when no one questions him or comes to punish him, I start to ignore the sunrise call, too. After so many sleepless nights, it’s a sinful relief to spend those extra minutes in bed. And I’ve stopped recording my dreams. After my punishment outside the schoolroom, Daniel kept my journal, so it’s only a matter of time before he reads it and I get punished for that, too. In the meantime, I should start another, but what’s the point? I’ll have to fill it with either more lies or evidence of my wicked heart.

  I continue to dream of Caleb, though I haven’t seen him. I’m not sure I want to, either. My disobedience began with him, with reading those messages and believing them. If I hadn’t, would I still be burdened with this unhappiness, this inability to accept Aaron as my husband? Maybe this is Caleb’s fault. Maybe he didn’t pray hard enough. Or maybe he never meant to choose me at all. Sometimes when I first wake, I can almost convince myself it was all a dream—the drawings in the sand, Caleb’s strong embrace, the ache in my heart that won’t go away. Then reality settles on me, like the layer of grit that coats everything in this awful apartment. I feel raw inside, too, like sand has gotten in through my cracks and settled in corners I can’t reach, constantly chafing.

  Today, the morning call is immediately followed by an order to begin our Vocational Duties. I thought Aaron might ignore this summons as he’s ignored the prayer calls, but he finishes his piece of toast and brushes off his hands in the sink. “Ready?”

  He waits as I tie on my head scarf: gray, like my mood. “I didn’t even know we had a wool mill,” he says, as I lead him out of the apartment and past the courtyard, toward the spindly wooden building on the edge of the city. “I never learned to knit. Do you suppose that matters?”

  I slow and stare at the back of his head as he moves in front of me. Does he even know what weaving is? Possibly not. It’s a woman’s duty. He’ll be in charge of maintaining the equipment. But he knows how to cook, so it’s not a completely ridiculous thought. “Is everything opposite Outside? Men do women’s chores and women do men’s?”

  “What?” He frowns, maybe confused because I’ve asked my own question instead of answering his, but then he says, “No. There aren’t . . . people aren’t just one thing. Men and women do a lot of the same things.”

  “The same things.” I snort. If only that were true, I’d be much less worried about Delilah being sent Out. “You’re telling me men are willing t
o scrub toilets? Mend socks? Or how about bleeding? Birthing children?” Even Outsider men can’t be that different from us. They’re still men.

  Aaron rolls his eyes. “You asked about chores. Not biology. And yes, men are capable of household chores. Mopping and sewing are not functions of your uterus.”

  My cheeks burn with embarrassment. I hope no one has overheard. Aaron has even less desire to hold back his words than I do, if that’s possible. And the paths are bustling with all our neighbors this morning, everyone relieved to get back into the pattern of our daily lives. I nod at their hearty greetings, but I don’t return them. Don’t they know that nothing will ever be as it was? Though even I can’t deny the satisfying pull of the familiar. Life is much easier when you know what to expect, and what’s expected of you. Maybe my dark thoughts will fade once the routine of my life as a weaver takes hold. The dull, monotonous routine.

  Just before my thoughts send me screaming toward the gates, Aaron stops and squints into the sun. “That’s the mill? I thought it was an old barn nobody’d bothered to tear down.”

  “What need would we have for another barn?”

  “What need do you have for a mill without a water wheel? Where’s the river?”

  I thought he was handling this marriage better than I, but maybe not. Maybe he’s finally gone crazy. “There is no river here,” I say slowly. “We’re in the desert.”

  “Yes, but a mill needs . . . Never mind.” He pulls open the door and holds it for me.

  I promptly trip over his feet and sprawl across the planked floor. Dear Lord, I’d forgotten how much I hate this place.

  Aaron puts out a hand to help me up, but I ignore it. Instead, I get up and yank at my skirt to straighten it while I wait for the thick cloud of dust and humiliation to clear. I haven’t been in this wide, high-ceilinged room in some months, but time hasn’t wrought any improvements. Sunlight still pierces the gaps in the boards, haphazardly splashing the sinks and counters lining the east wall as well as the long table in the center of the room. It even encircles the heads of the Elders standing at the table, like halos.

  But Lydia and Mishael aren’t angels. They’re Susanna’s parents, and more important for Aaron and me, they are the weavers who will be conducting our Vocational Training. I know the basics of weaving. Growing up in New Jerusalem, it was one of the skills I was required to learn. The Second Generation regularly practices all of the chores needed to keep the Community running smoothly. Once our talents emerge, Daniel and our parents begin to talk of Vocations. At my Vocational Sessions, we talked about the Chapel Choir and secretarial duties, but weaving was never mentioned, and there’s a reason for that.

  Mishael is the first to break the awkward silence. “Welcome, Brother.”

  No greeting for me. Not that I want one. Mishael has always made me uncomfortable. He is also a Council Member, like my father, and has attended many Gatherings at my house. Gatherings where he talked loudly over my mother, as if she weren’t there, though his red, piggish eyes followed her around the room.

  The way they follow me now.

  “Good morning, Lydia,” I say, turning away from him and toward his wife. She is his opposite in nearly every way, brittle and dried out where he is greasy and swollen. Her threadbare tan shirt hangs off her bony shoulders as if it’s given up, while her apron is cinched around a waist so tiny I can’t believe she doesn’t snap in half. I’ve seen cactus spines wider. Lydia looks like Susanna with all the life drained out of her. Maybe by Susanna herself. I almost feel sorry for her. It can’t have been easy, having a daughter like that.

  Lydia sniffs, and the crucifix that all the Elders wear bounces against her bony chest. “Your hair is showing.” She thumps a fist against a head scarf as washed out as she is, then goes back to plucking her thin, wax-bean fingers through a batch of wool laid out on the table in the center of the room.

  Then again, maybe there’s a reason Susanna turned out the way she did. I yank off my scarf and tousle my curls.

  Aaron shakes his head, a subtle shiver of warning. I’m tempted to ignore it. I can tell by the way he watches me, by the small wrinkles that form at the bridge of his nose when I do or say something inappropriate, that he thinks I’m going to get us in trouble. Already I’m learning to read him, though I don’t want to. I should be grateful one of us is trying. Instead it’s one more thing I have to resent him for. I’m Second Generation. Shouldn’t I be the one teaching him our ways? But I knot the fabric anyway and twist it back into place, tucking stray curls as I go.

  “What are we doing today?” Aaron asks, taking my hand.

  Without thinking, I slap it away.

  Lydia stares, her hands frozen clawlike above the rough-hewn table.

  “There’s a Gathering for the newly wed this evening.” Mishael drops his gaze to my shirt front as he hefts a bucket of fleece and dumps it onto the table, covering the clump Lydia is picking through. “But it’s not for the Shameful.”

  I duck my head and rest my fingers loosely in Aaron’s, resentment and guilt bubbling in my chest. It’s my fault we can’t attend tonight. I had hoped that since Daniel hadn’t held my Shaming publicly, it would go unnoticed by the rest of the community.

  I should have known better.

  Daniel is throwing a dinner in the Pavilion to welcome the newly married couples into the fold. Up to this point, we have attended Chapel together but gone separately to Lessons and otherwise kept to ourselves in our apartment, per Daniel’s instructions. But he announced this morning that tonight, for the first time since the Matrimony, the new couples can appear in public as husband and wife. For Aaron and me, this means we must start acting like husband and wife.

  Only tonight, we’ll have to do it at my parents’ house instead of at the Gathering.

  “Start the water,” Mishael barks.

  Lydia’s hands still, and her face tightens before she turns silently to the sinks behind her.

  “We’ll pick. The women can clean.”

  This sounds like a dismissal, so I move to Lydia’s side. She stares down into the deep cast iron sink as it fills slowly with water.

  “Temperature’s the important part,” she says finally. It’s clear she doesn’t want to teach me, any more than I want to be here, but as usual, I, we, have no choice. “Too cold and the lanolin congeals. Too hot and you’ll shrink the fiber.”

  I nod, though she can see me only in the reflection of the water.

  “First, we soak.” She digs through the pile on the table and yanks out a fleece, the one she was working on.

  “First, we pick.” Mishael’s voice is louder than it needs to be. He and Aaron have their backs turned, so only I see the angry curl of Lydia’s lip when her husband speaks.

  “And what if we forget to pick?” I ask. Not just because I don’t like the way he corrects her and speaks around her but never to her; I’m also curious. This job seems so insidiously boring, I’m sure someday I’ll forget a step.

  “What if we just throw it in the water?” I touch the fleece in her hands, rubbing it between my fingers.

  “Every step of the process is important. If you skip even one, the wool is useless.” Lydia pulls the wool from my hands and shoves it into the water, giving the faucet a hard twist.

  “Surely the weaving is more important than the picking or the washing? Without the weaving, you’d just have wool.”

  Lydia snorts. “Without the washing, you’d have a blanket of goat dung.”

  I press my lips together as I pull up my sleeves. As usual, my mouth has done nothing to help the situation. Better to keep it shut and try not to mess up. I plunge my hands into the water to turn the sticky wool.

  “Get your hands out of there,” Lydia snaps, and I snatch them back. “You don’t want to agitate it.”

  Of course not. We don’t agitate anything around here, do we? This time
I manage not to say my thoughts out loud.

  “If you move it too much, the wool will felt,” she says.

  The back of my throat burns with the unfairness of it all. Surely this must be punishment for some grievous sin, something much worse than speaking out of turn. But what did I do? Covet? I don’t know how to stop wanting. Each night I pray for these feelings to go away, but each day I awaken with the memory of Caleb’s arms around me, and a dull ache settles in my chest as I realize it’s just another dream.

  Aaron works on the other side of the table, his dark head bent over a matted cloud of wool. Each strand must be picked free of sand particles and other debris, using a contraption that looks like a narrow rectangular box filled with nails. Once the wool is placed inside the box, a panel is slid back and forth across the wool. It looks every bit as boring as washing, and maybe more tedious. I can’t imagine how any of this can possibly turn into something beautiful. Then again, the wet mass in the sink no longer looks like the thick coat of the Angora goats. Already it’s become something else. Something other.

  I tug at the fringe of my own woolen head scarf and feel the heat radiate off Mishael as he moves behind me.

  “You should learn to use the picker as well,” he says, sliding the nail box in front of me and wrapping his hands around mine.

  Unlike the other Elders, Mishael had letters inked on his knuckles before he came to New Jerusalem. I’ve seen them before, but today is the first time I’m close enough to read them. Together, they spell out LOVE on the left hand and HATE on the right. Who or what did he feel so strongly about—and so conflicted—that he needed the words on his body as a constant reminder? I know exactly whom I love. And what I hate.

  I’m pinned against the table, his engorged belly pressing into the small of my back. Even Aaron has never dared to touch me like this. And Mishael is a married man the same age as my father. I shoot Aaron a pleading glance across the table, and he frowns, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Maybe he feels trapped, just like me. Maybe he doesn’t know how to resist without causing a scene. Or maybe he isn’t thinking about me at all. Maybe he’s wondering how it became our life’s purpose to serve at the mercy of these people.