The elders talked to her while they cut, telling her stories of the Hidden Ones. These were creatures in exile, cousins to angels, who wanted to reenter the world. Greta—little Greta!—was the key to opening that door. The symbols that she wore were like candles to their more fierce flames. Like to like, they said.
The sessions continued—once a month, twice at most, because the wounds needed time to ripen into high-ridged scars. The weeks of recovery were harder than the cut days. She constantly ran a low-grade fever. Antibiotics accompanied every meal. Some days she never left the cabin she shared with her mother.
Then Greta had to explain to the group that it was not really a cabin, but a rusting VW camper van, immobile for a decade, squatting in high grass. It was clean, though, and dry, and she and her mother were happy to have it. The Sisters had taken in Greta’s mother when she was running from her boyfriend, a dangerous man. This was not an unusual story at the farm. Many of the women were hiding from dangerous men: husbands, boyfriends, fathers. The founders of the farm, back in the ’70s, were three middle-eastern women who fled first their marriages, then mainstream Islam. They had decided upon a different course. They welcomed other women, of all races and religions, and slowly introduced them to the mysteries of the Hidden Ones.
One night the fever climbed, and she couldn’t sleep. She tore at the bedclothes, crying. Then suddenly a man was standing beside the bed. A man, but also a column of smokeless flame; both those things at once. He was beautiful. His eyes were half lidded, his lips slightly parted. The flame pulsed with his breath. He frightened her, and aroused her. She opened her legs to him, but he refused to come any closer. She thrashed and wailed. Still he wouldn’t move.
In the morning, when Greta told her mother what she’d seen, her mother burst into tears and ran to tell the elders. The news spread instantly. When Greta walked through the farm to the showers, the women and children stared at her.
“I felt like a rock star,” Greta told the group. “And then it got weird.”
“Ohhh,” Stan said. “Then it got weird.”
A few weeks after her sixteenth birthday, the mood at the farm changed. The elders whispered just out of earshot, and studied her with worried expressions. Then she overheard her mother pleading with one of the elders, saying, She’s not ready, she’s too young.
Greta was worried, but not scared. She’d been raised up in full knowledge of her uniqueness—she was made unique. Still, she didn’t demand that the elders tell her what was going on. She would not ask even her mother—at least in public.
“That night I confronted my mother,” Greta said. “I asked her, Is it happening? Is it finally happening? And my mother broke down. Started crying. She kept saying, They can’t make you, I’ll help you get away.”
Greta shook her head. “I think I laughed at her. I know I felt like laughing. Because why would I ever leave? This was my home. This was where I was loved. But my mother was so upset. She took my hands and said, ‘Aunty Siddra is dying. She’s coming here to perform the ceremony.’”
“Did I miss something?” Stan said. “Who the hell is Aunty Siddra? Was what finally happening?”
“My wedding day,” Greta said.
Silence crackled like a static charge.
Then Stan asked: “To who?”
“The human torch guy,” Martin said.
That only exasperated Stan more. “But what does that have to do with her scars?”
Greta started to answer, and Harrison said, “They were trying to make her look attractive to something from the other side.” He glanced at Greta and she held his gaze for a moment, then looked down.
“That’s what you were seeing before,” Harrison said to Martin. “She’s not a monster. She’s monster bait.”
The convoy (Greta told them, her voice soft but insistent) arrived in the afternoon, grinding and thumping through the potholes in the gravel road. First a boxy sedan with a cracked window, then a pickup truck with a blue tarp flapping over the bed, and last a school bus. Or rather, a former school bus; this one was hand-painted in reds and oranges, obliterating the yellow and black. The three vehicles drove up to the farmhouse and parked in a semicircle before it. The bus seemed somehow larger than the house, and instantly became the capital of their little community.
Half a dozen women emerged from the pickup and car, smiling and stretching. They were dark-haired women in jeans and T-shirts, some in head scarves. Sisters came hurrying in from the fields, and the elders called out names, drew the visitors into hugs.
Greta watched from the periphery. The bus door did not open. A figure moved behind the wide windshield, another dark-haired woman who reached up and tugged the curtains closed. Greta realized the vehicle was a kind of RV. Most of the bus’s side windows had been filled in, and the rest were curtained. The roof was piled with luggage.
Her mother called Greta’s name, and the girl stepped nervously forward. The visitors exchanged looks, then one of the women approached Greta, holding out her hands. Greta didn’t know what to do, so she held out her own hands, and the woman laughed and took them in her own. “Little sister,” the woman said, and suddenly the rest of the visitors were surrounding her, touching her, laughing with her.
Finally they withdrew, and the elders moved off into the farmhouse. The bus remained sealed, its engine keeping up its watchdog rumble. Was Aunty too ill to leave? Greta’s mother had said she was dying. How old was the woman? Greta had heard stories about her since she was a child. Siddra was the only surviving member of the three original founders. She lived somewhere far away, and Greta had imagined a mansion, a fortress, a treehouse. Anything but this ramshackle bus.
All that afternoon Greta never strayed far from the vehicle, her eyes moving between the side door and that big curtained window. No one entered or exited.
Her mother came back to the cabin very late, and Greta pretended to be asleep. Her mother stood over her in the dark, breathing. Greta watched her silhouette through half-lidded eyes.
Then her mother knelt beside the mattress. Her clothes smelled of some strange spice. She touched Greta on her hip. “Oh,” her mother said quietly. “Oh my daughter.”
She was going to try to talk her out of it, Greta thought. She held her body still. If she waited long enough, her mother would give up.
Then her mother said, almost breathing it, “You are so lucky.”
The next morning, her mother set out a pretty, pale green dress that still had the JCPenney tags. Greta stood very still at the bathroom mirror as her mother combed her hair and—a first—applied mascara to her eyelashes. “Pout,” her mother said, and touched Greta’s lips with coral lipstick.
Together they walked to the center of the farm. Greta resisted the urge to take her mother’s hand. The fields around them were empty, but sisters stood on the porch of the main house, or in the doorways of their campers and cabins.
Greta and her mother stopped in front of the bus, looking up at the door. Nothing happened. Greta glanced at her mom, and then the door of the bus folded open. One of the dark-haired women from last night stood at the top of the stairs beside the driver’s seat, holding the metal handle of the lever with a cloth, as if it were an oven mitt. She smiled and gestured for her to come in.
Greta stepped up. The inside of the bus was twenty degrees hotter than outside. The dark-haired woman was sweating.
Greta realized her mother hadn’t stepped up after her. “You’re not coming?” Greta asked. She tried to keep her voice calm.
Her mother’s lips were pursed, her eyes gleaming. “I’ll wait for you here,” her mother said. “Go on.”
The bus door closed. The dark-haired woman touched Greta on the shoulder, then gestured for her to sit in a chair in the middle of the room. The woman walked past her to a wall made of faux wood paneling that did not quite meet the curve of the roof. A curtain covered a doorway, and the woman disappeared behind it.
Greta smoothed out her dress and controlled her
breathing as if preparing for a new cut. Everything in the room seemed to be wrapped in layers; couches covered in colored sheets piled with blankets topped by pillows; scarves over purple lamp shades over tinted bulbs; rugs askew atop other rugs. Color upon color upon color. The air too was almost liquid with incense and wood smoke and the smell of strong coffee.
Too much. Too much.
She began to sweat. In front of her was a low cloth-draped table, perhaps a storage trunk, upon which were set nine or ten candles, burning in small glass cups of green and purple and yellow. The little flames seemed to fill up the room with heat. On the other side of the table was a huge armchair that Greta assumed belonged to Aunty Siddra. The arms of the chair had once been upholstered, but now they were bare wood, scorched black. The velour seat cushions, however, looked new.
The curtain moved, and it was as if an oven door had opened. Hot air swept over her and made her shrink in her chair.
Aunty Siddra appeared. She was a collection of spikes and angles, like a burnt tree still standing after a forest fire. And she was marked, too. Candlelight limned every ridge and scar.
Greta started to get to her feet and the old woman waved for her to sit down. She moved slowly, as if her limbs might snap under her own weight. She settled into her throne-like chair one bone at a time.
The woman wore a sleeveless shirt and a skirt that hung to her knees, so arms and hands and shin bones were visible. Every inch of visible skin mirrored Greta’s; the designs were the same. They were two copies of the same document, penned decades apart.
No, not copies. Not exactly. The woman’s forehead was branded, where Greta’s was unmarked. The top scars made a jagged line, as if a serrated knife had sawed away at her skull, and that line curved inward at each end.
Aunty Siddra smiled. “Candy?”
“Pardon?”
The woman held out a glass bowl full of what looked like dusty marbles. “Go on,” she said.
Greta did not want any candy, but she took a reddish brown lump. The surface felt crusty, like a sugar cube. She held it to her nose, then put it in her mouth. It tasted of some spice she didn’t recognize, like licorice but not.
Aunty smiled as if she’d trapped the girl. “I bet you don’t get much candy in this shit hole,” she said.
“Not much,” Greta agreed.
Aunty popped a candy into her mouth. “I didn’t expect a white girl. But I guess vanilla is the hot new flavor.”
Greta didn’t know what to say to that.
“Do you know why you’re here?” Aunty Siddra asked.
“I think so.”
“Hmm.” The woman leaned back. “Guess my age.” When Greta said nothing she said, “Go on. Don’t be shy. Sixty-five? Seventy?”
Greta shook her head.
“I’m fifty-two,” she said. “Fifty-two.” She looked at the ceiling.
Greta sat still for a minute, two. Suddenly Aunty Siddra looked at her. “There was supposed to be a revolution. We were supposed to form our own society. And the Hidden Ones would be our nuclear deterrent. You know what a nuclear deterrent is?”
Greta nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure.
“Yeah, well, the revolution’s always around the corner. We just wanted to have our weapon in place. And once we made our deal with foreign powers—well, you know, don’t you? One from our side, one from theirs.”
“‘A bridge and a bond,’” Greta quoted from her lessons.
“Right,” Aunty Siddra said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to do everything the other guy says.” She sat up straighter. “Listen to me, this is important. Don’t ever let go. Hold tight to the reins. You can do this, yes? Because we need a woman who won’t flinch, who can take it. Who can hold on to that son of a bitch, no matter how much it makes you hurt.” She gripped the sides of the chair. “Are you that woman?”
“Yes,” Greta said. “I am.”
“Thank God,” Aunty Siddra said. “I don’t think I can hold out much longer.”
A final step was required, Greta told the group. She was to come back in an hour after they prepared the bus for the surgery. Back in her cabin, she stared at her face in the bathroom mirror. She ran a finger across her smooth forehead, saying goodbye to it. Her mother pestered her with questions she didn’t know how to answer. What was Aunty Siddra like? Was she nice? Did she approve of Greta?
Greta shut the bathroom door on her mother and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. She was sick to her stomach, and her skin felt clammy.
Before the hour was up, a neighbor came to their camper and banged on the door. “Something’s wrong,” she said.
A crowd had gathered around the bus. The door was open, and dark-haired women were hurrying in and out. Greta went in without asking for permission. Aunty Siddra lay on the couch. She was not moving. One of the women sat cross-legged on the floor, holding her hand.
“What’s the matter with her?” Greta asked.
“Cancer, child. It’s all through her.”
“But—but what about. . . ?”
“Sit.” She pointed to the huge chair Aunty Siddra had occupied less than an hour ago. Greta did as she was told. She put a hand down on the chair arm, then quickly lifted it; the arms were coated with black soot.
The dark-haired woman said, “Someone get the knives. Hurry!”
But it was too late. Aunty Siddra had taken her last breath.
“And then . . . .” Greta told us. “The fire.”
“I was the only one who made it out of the bus,” Greta said. “I crawled out, between the legs of the women. The fire seemed to jump from Sister to Sister. And then it spread to the farmhouse, the other outbuildings.”
“I don’t understand,” Barbara said. “Where did the fire come from?”
“It was the Hidden One,” Greta said. “Aunty Siddra had let go of the reins, and it was free.”
“They fucked it up,” Harrison said. “They didn’t complete the ritual. They were supposed to move the thing from the old lady to Greta—one bottle to another. But they didn’t get it done before the first bottle broke.”
“What are you talking about, bottles?” Martin asked.
“You know what they call ‘hidden one’ in Arabic?” Harrison said. “Al-jinnī.”
Martin thought for a moment, then got it. “Oh come on!”
“It’s just a word for something they don’t understand. It’s not Barbara Eden, or Robin fucking Williams.”
“We’re already out of time,” Jan said. “Next week we can—”
“Nobody move,” Martin said.
Harrison and Barbara looked toward Jan.
“Please,” Martin said.
“What is it?” Jan asked him. “What do you have to say?”
Martin turned his broken face to Greta. “So. These Sisters. They thought you were special.”
Greta nodded.
“Special enough to kill for?”
“Oh,” Barbara said. And Stan said, “What?”
“The people who attacked me,” Martin said. “Some of them were women, I’m pretty sure. Maybe all of them. And they were protecting Greta.”
“There are no Sisters,” Greta said. “The fire killed everyone. Everyone but me.”
No one spoke. Martin saw that Harrison was staring at the floor, lost in thought.
Most of us were watching either Martin or Greta. Jan, however, was watching Harrison. He was staring into the middle distance with a thoughtful look on his face.
“End of story,” Greta said. She looked at Martin. “Happy now?”
He wasn’t happy. But he was satisfied.
Chapter 8
We knew each other, at first, only by our words. We sat in a circle and spoke to each other, presenting some version of ourselves. We told our stories and tried out behaviors. Dr. Sayer said that the group was the place for “reality testing.” What would happen if we exposed ourselves and shared our true thoughts? What if we talked about what we most feared? What if we b
ehaved according to rules that were not predicated on our worst suspicions?
Perhaps the world would not end.
For Stan, the group was his opportunity to test the assumption that every living person was repulsed by him. Decades of personal experience had convinced him of this. Understandably, he’d taken the position that the best defense was being offensive. He shouted at medical staff. He accused doctors of minimizing his problems before they could even hear his complaints. He stared at people on the street, daring them to look away.
Being a psychologically savvy person, he knew that the others might perceive his house as an expression of his inner defense mechanisms. He’d grown up in this house, and had returned to it after his experience with the Weavers. It was his castle, his fortress, and defended by palisades of junk. Every room was filled, with narrow paths winding through the piles of broken appliances, books, clothing, children’s toys, lawn equipment. Only the Medicaid-paid staff dared enter, and they didn’t stay long; home health workers were on the lowest rung of the medical economy and they didn’t collect hazard pay.
Dr. Sayer, had she known about his living conditions, would have been more likely to reach for the DSM-5 for a label; hoarding was a cousin to OCD and its victims sometimes responded to SSRIs. A steady dose of Paxil could do wonders in a small minority of patients.
Stan, however, knew that the house was not his problem, people were.
So it was that he’d surprised himself by inviting Martin to spend a night or two there, “just until he found a new place.” The invitation had been Barbara’s idea. She’d cornered him after the meeting in which Greta had told her story, just to “brainstorm.” She played upon his conscience, daring him to help someone in greater need than himself. “Mentor him,” she’d said. Of course, she’d never been to his house either.
Martin regretted accepting the invitation almost as much as Stan regretted offering it. There was something about Barbara, however, that made him want to be a better person. Perhaps it was because she seemed to think he was, despite very little evidence, already a good person. Both Martin and Stan didn’t want to disappoint her.
We Are All Completely Fine Page 8