Ana asked hesitantly, "Is Jason your son?"
The shopkeeper gaped at her for a moment, and then laughed loudly, a noise more uncomfortable than amused, and shook her head in rejection of the idea. "Oh, no, no. And Dulcie's not my daughter. She's just a good friend who's helping out in the store for a day or two. Aren't you, honey?" she said to the girl, and reached out to give her an awkward hug, which Dulcie allowed but did not respond to.
Ana seized the small opening and introduced herself. "I'm Ana Wakefield," she told the woman. "I just got into town, and I'll probably be staying for a while. You have a great shop."
"Carla Mclntyre," said the woman in return, and picked up the mug to check on the price. "And the shop's not mine, it's a communal effort." It sounded like someone else's phrase, but she chose not to continue with the quote. Instead, she wrote up a sales slip and gave it to Ana, saying, "That's ten fifty."
It was more than the mug was worth, but Ana meekly handed her the money and waited for her to wrap it and put it into a bag. She thanked Carla, said good-bye to her and to the child, and went back out onto the street, the bell tinkling behind her.
Thirty-five minutes later, right on time, the shop closed. On the doorstep Carla, bent over the lock, felt Dulcie tug at her sleeve. She pushed away the brief irritation she felt at the child's interference with the always difficult task of locking up, which involved inserting the key and then easing it out the tiniest fraction of an inch before jiggling it and hoping it would turn.
"What is it, honey?" she asked absently. She really was going to have to insist that someone fix the lock. One of these days it wasn't going to work at all.
Her only answer was another tug. Hopeless to try locking the door with the child hanging on her arm. She summoned the patience of the truly wise and reminded herself that a child would lead them.
Probably not this child, but one never knew.
She straightened up and looked to see what had caught Dulcie's interest, and found herself staring down the road at a human backside emerging from the remains of an exploded engine.
That was an instant's impression, but on closer examination Carla decided that the assorted parts and tools lined up along the edge of the sidewalk were too orderly for an explosion, and besides, she hadn't heard anything. Someone was just working on his car.
"Yes, I see, Dulcie," she said, and turned again to the lock. "The man has just chosen a strange place to fix his engine,"
Ah, success, and the satisfying click of the bolt sliding across. Carla was so pleased at this minor victory, it was a moment before she registered the fact that the child Dulcie had spoken.
"What did you say, honey?" Carla's voice slid upward in astonishment and excitement: Dulcie could talk, and occasionally had in the weeks she had lived at Change, but she had been silent all that day.
Now, however, she even repeated herself.
"I said, It's the lady."
Carla had been instructed not to fuss if Dulcie decided to verbalize. However, It wasn't easy to be natural, thinking how pleased Steven would be when he heard.
"Lady?" she said. "What lady?"
Dulcie apparently thought that Carla could figure that one out by herself, because she did not answer, merely put the hand that was not busy carrying the canvas bag with the future rug in it into her pocket, and studied the blue-jeaned buttocks of the person emerging from the Volkswagen bus.
Ana dropped back to her knee again, holding a length of frayed tubing in the greasy fingertips of a hand clothed in fingerless wool gloves. She reached behind her for the toolbox, rummaged through it a bit, and then seemed to notice her audience.
"Hi," she said cheerfully. Her frozen hands found a roll of duct tape in the box. "Hello, Dulcie. Going home now?" She began to pick at the end of the tape with a thumbnail, with limited success. Both hands and tape were too cold.
"What are you doing?" Dulcie asked her. Amazing, thought Carla. Three times in a matter of minutes.
"Well," said Ana, "my old friend here sometimes has things go wrong with her. Today it's her heater, which is not very convenient, considering how cold it is. So I thought I should try to patch it together before I turn into an icicle. Can you get that end loose for me?" She held out the roll of silvery tape to Dulcie, who put her bag down between her feet, pulled off her mittens, and worked at the end of the thick tape until she had a half-inch or so of corner free.
"That's great," said Ana. "I can get it from there.".
Dulcie gave her back the roll, and frowned as she saw Ana take the loose corner between her right front teeth and tug free a length of tape with a loud, ripping sound.
"You shouldn't do that," the little girl said to Ana in disapproval. "Your teeth will fall out."
"Will they?" asked Ana. "You mean like this?" She worked her tongue across the roof of her mouth and then reached up with her black fingers to pop loose the small plastic plate that held her other front teeth, the two false ones on the left. She then grinned at the child with her jaws clenched, poking the tip of her tongue through the hole left by the missing bridge.
Dulcie stared openmouthed at the gap in Ana's teeth, and at the thin device of pink plastic and wire with the two neat white teeth attached that lay in the palm of the greasy woolen glove, and then burst into a paroxysm of giggles. Tears came to her eyes at the absurdity of the lady with no teeth, and she bent over and laughed so hard, she probably would have wet herself if Carla hadn't made her use the toilet just before they left the shop.
There is nothing more contagious than a child's giggles, and Ana's mouth twitched, then she started to laugh, and soon she was reduced to a weak-kneed collapse onto the wet street and rather needing a toilet herself. Even Carla, who had little sense of humor at the best of times and who was moreover distracted by the unexpected descent of the problematic, enigmatic Dulcie into an ordinary silly five-year-old, even Carla began to grin at the two of them.
It took a long time for the storm to pass, because every time Ana looked at Dulcie, one or the other of them would snort and set off the laughter, and when Ana put her bridge back in, Dulcie couldn't bear it, and demanded—in words—to be taken back to the shop to use the toilet again.
While they were inside, Ana brushed herself off and tore away (with her fingers) the now-crumpled and stuck-together length of tape, bringing on a fresh piece, which she wrapped tightly around the worn tubing and cut off with her pocketknife. She bent to replace it, deep in Rocinante's guts, and heard the tinkle of the shop bell behind her.
As the child's footsteps came to a halt behind her, Ana whirled around with her finger out and started to growl "Don't you dare laugh," when the words strangled in her throat at the sight of Dulcie stumbling backward in her panic to get away, her face twisted into a mask of sudden terror. Ana immediately took a step back and raised both her hands, palms out in a declaration of peace.
"Whoa, it's okay, Dulcie. I was just pretending. I'm not angry, not a bit, I was just acting fierce so you wouldn't laugh at my wet bottom." She turned and bent to point her forty-eight-year-old rear end at the child, a rear end with a perfect circle of dark denim where she had sat down on the wet street. She looked over her shoulder at the child. "It looks pretty dumb to have a wet butt."
The admission of adult frailty combined with the mildly rude word brought the beginnings of a smile to the child's face. Ana straightened up to look at her.
"I'm sorry, Dulcie. I didn't mean to surprise you like that."
Carla, who had lagged behind to fight with the lock and had missed the exchange, joined them with a puzzled look, knowing something had happened to change the mood so radically, but uncertain about asking. Instead, she gestured to the bus.
"Did you get it fixed, then?"
"Not really. It'll last for a bit and then die when I need it most. She's an old car, and parts are hard to get."
"Is that your only heater? I mean, don't you have a stove or something?"
"That's not very safe. I have some
good warm blankets; I just crawl in and go to bed early."
Although Ana was prepared to go much further than that in laying hints, she did not have to say any more. Carla had been thinking hard about Dulcie's strange openness, and although she wanted to believe that she had been responsible for freeing the child, wanted Steven to look at her with respect and a word of praise, she had to admit that it wasn't her, but this woman who had somehow, unknowingly, pried Dulcie out of her shell. Five times Dulcie had spoken—and laughed! There was nothing to do but bring this odd woman with the ugly haircut and try to hang on to her until Steven returned home. He would want that.
"Why don't you come back with us?" Carla said. "We live in a community about forty-five minutes away. There's plenty of room. And lots of fireplaces," she added.
Dulcie did not say anything; she didn't need to, the way she stood gripping the lumpy bag, waiting for this lady to say yes.
Strangely enough, Ana was the one to hesitate. She had been prepared to spend days working her way into the community. Instead, she was slipping in after bare hours, but still she hesitated—for a brief moment, true, but a concentrated one..
She could only wish the child didn't look so much like Abby.
Chapter Nine
Cults Among Us 87
leads to the macho confrontational approach to resolving a standoff—what I think of as the "create-a-crisis" or "Look you little bastards, you can't mess with me" point of view. There is no denying the appeal of having a clear goal and definite action, following in the footsteps of the Israelis at Entebbe and performing a deft and forceful coup, rescuing the hostages and crushing the hostage takers.
However, frustrating as it may be to men hedged around by boredom, testosterone, and the pressures of media and their own higher ranks to DO SOMETHING, the coup de guerre does not work when there is no one to rescue, and one must always bear in mind that in a strong religious community, whether one calls it a cult or a sect or just a group of believers, there are no hostages; I repeat, there are no hostages wanting rescue. Typically the men, women and children of the community love and believe in what they are doing, and will die-willingly, freely die—before submitting to the perceived enemy, the hands of Babylon, the government representatives. This is as true now as it was in first century Palestine when the Jewish rebels at Masada committed themselves to their own blades rather than surrender their children to the Romans, or when the Russian Old Believers, who were
From Cults Among Us by Anne Waverly, Ph.D., Oxford University Press, 1996
As soon as Ana opened Rocinante's door, she knew that Carla had not misled her about the fireplaces. The air was sweet with piñon smoke, that incense of the high country, and the night moved across her face, smooth and cold and clear. It was a sort of night to make even a middle-aged woman with a bad knee want to do something mad, throw off her clothes and raise her arms to the stars, perhaps, or lift her face and howl at the young moon.
Reluctantly, she came back to earth and looked around to see what had happened to Carla. The woman was standing at the passenger door of her pickup truck, laden down with parcels and a bulging grocery bag, exhorting Dulcie to get down and come on. Ana closed Rocinante's door, thought about locking it and decided not to, and buttoned up her jacket while she walked over to see if she could help.
The child had been sleeping, she saw, and was still more than half asleep, fisting her eyes against the thin brightness of the pickup's cabin light and whining the inarticulate protest of the very young.
"Can I carry something?" Ana asked. To her dismay, Carla stepped back from the truck and nodded at Dulcie.
"Why don't you just carry her in?" she said with thinly concealed annoyance. "Otherwise we're all going to freeze to death out here." Carla turned and walked away.
Ana swallowed and stood where she was. Dulcie's arms came up in the natural, trusting gesture of a child waiting to be lifted up, her normally guarded expression rendered soft and vulnerable by sleep; it was all Ana could do to keep herself from bolting for the safety of Rocinante.
"Is something wrong?" Carla called.
Ana shuddered and felt the sweat break out under her hat and along her back, but she bent down and put her hands under the child's arms. "Come on, Dulcie," she said thickly. I'll give you a ride."
This was not by any means the first time she had held a child since her daughter had died. All the other contacts, though, had been casual, daytime hugs, pats, or rough-and-tumble play, and none of the children had resembled Abby. Not for eighteen years had a trusting young child reached up to slide her arms around Ana's neck, hitched herself up to perch on a maternal hip, and then dropped an utterly relaxed head against Ana's shoulder. The fierce and immediate response of her own body to the sensation of holding Dulcie took Ana by storm, and she could only stand stiffly, fighting for control.
Dulcie was too drowsy to be aware of Ana's reaction, but behind them Carla, impatient at the delay, had turned back to see what the problem was. Ana heard the crunch of her feet and stepped back quickly, kicked shut the door of the pickup, and hurried to join her, infinitely grateful for the poor lighting along the path.
The nearly unbearable luxury of the warm, limp body clinging to her made it impossible to concentrate on anything more complicated than placing her feet without stumbling, but she was peripherally aware of buildings around them, of spiny desert plants and low shrubs behind the light-colored rocks that lined the borders of the path, of a few lights behind windows. Then Carla was struggling to open a door, and they were inside.
Rough plaster walls, uneven red paver tiles underfoot, and exposed timbers over their heads placed them solidly in the Southwest idiom of architecture, even without the bright rug on one wall and a collection of Indian pottery arranged on a shaky-looking table, little more than lashed-together branches topped by unsanded planks. The scale of the hall and the rooms they passed was large, as if designed for the gathered community, but at the moment they were echoing and empty.
As if reading Ana's thoughts, Carla spoke over her shoulder as she led Ana down the hallway toward the back of the building and the sounds of clattering dishes.
"There's normally a lot more people around, especially right after dinner. But just at the moment we have a busload of kids and adults down in Tucson for a basketball game and to visit Biosphere, and some of us are off at the sister house in England. Steven's there, but he'll be back in a couple of days. I hope you'll stay—we've got plenty of room, and I know you'd love to meet him."
"Who's Steven?" Ana asked ingeniously.
"His name is Steven Change, but we just call him Steven. He's our spiritual counselor. He founded the community."
"Oh. Like your guru?"
"I don't know about that," Carla said disapprovingly. "He'sjusta very wise man. He sees things, and helps others see them. I hope you'll stay to meet him."
"I hope so, too."
One last door took them into the sudden brightness of the communal kitchen, a room Ana had seen dozens of times in her past: huge, battered stainless steel pans (never aluminum, no matter how cheap it was—the health risks were unacceptable) heaped precariously on open shelves from which hung ladles and spatulas and industrial-sized spoons; stacks of ill-assorted mixing bowls nested on other shelves, dented stainless steel resting inside peeling plastic inside hand-thrown pottery objects so heavy most people could not wrestle them from the shelf. The cupboards would be filled with cheap, chipped partial sets of department-store stoneware plates, graying, scratched Melmac cereal bowls, and all the handmade coffee mugs too lopsided or ugly to sell at the craft store in Sedona. The drawers would hold vast numbers of flat spoons, twisted forks, ill-suited knives, and all the odds and ends that collect in a kitchen, the balls of twine and meat thermometers, the toothpicks and egg separators and paraphernalia bought or brought by one cook or another, abandoned under the pressures of quantity food production or when the cook tired and transferred over to work in the vegetable garden or we
aving shed. One of the drawers would be jammed solid with plastic bags from the grocery store.
It was familiar, as comforting and dreary as a homecoming, and Ana found she was smiling even before Carla started introducing her to the three women cleaning up the evening meal.
The names made less of an impact on her than did the warmth on her face (rubbery with the cold of the long drive in Rocinante's still-unheated interior), the smells of cooking on her stomach, and the weight of Dulcie on her arms. She nodded in acknowledgment to Suellen (a small woman with a pale blond bun on the back of her head), Laurel (tall, bony, glasses, and thick brown plait), and Amelia (round, glasses, a bad burn scar on the upper part of her forearm, and older than the others, perhaps a year or two older than Ana), and while Carla was easing her various bundles down to the counter and into the hands of the three women, Ana looked around for a chair, found a bench against the wall, and went over to it. She shifted Dulcie's legs to one side and sat down cautiously, but the bench seemed more sturdy than decorative, and she relaxed. Dulcie burrowed into Ana's jacket and gave a little grunt of contentment, a sound that reached straight out of Ana's past and gave her heart a hard twist.
"That sure smells good," she said loudly. "One of the drawbacks of living in a bus is that you find yourself eating the same one-pot meals all the time. And you never have really fresh bread."
The meaningless little speech succeeded in not only attracting the attention of the other women, but also woke Dulcie, who sat up, blinking crossly at the light. Amelia put down the red cabbage she had taken from a bag and came over to where Ana sat, bending to smile into Dulcie's face. She smelled of mint and perspiration and she had a small mole with a pair of dark hairs growing out of it on the side of her jaw. As she bent forward, Ana caught sight of a heavy silver chain under the edge of her blouse.
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