by Micol Ostow
dream myself sharp teeth, angles,
edges.
angela is still.
“you know?” she offers, eyeing me casually,
“i think i’ll hang on to this stuff. just for now.”
it is not a question. not even a challenge.
it is simply a fact.
i swallow.
i know what leila would say to that:
everything stays here.
she’d rap her knuckles against the tinny frame of the lockbox, and angel-a would genuflect.
leila would bare her teeth, and angela would collapse in on herself like a dying star.
leila knows:
people’s dirty secrets.
how best to make them bleed.
leila knows.
but.
i am not
leila.
so.
i swallow.
i blink.
i speculate
inwardly
as to what Henry might say about this
exchange.
but.
i don’t say
anything
at all.
full
the campfire burns for angela.
she has just finished her first dinner with us, with our family; now, we loll, sated and content, bathed and backlit by the campfire’s glowing embers.
i watched angela while she ate—
couldn’t not-watch—
studied the twitches and quivers of her muscles,
the curves of her frame.
she isn’t like the other sisters.
unlike the rest of us, angela didn’t devour her meal, didn’t disappear into it. didn’t consume it with voracious need, with bottomless, infinite want. didn’t scrape her fork against her empty dish to capture every last drop of sustenance, or lick the tracks the fork tines left behind.
angela chewed thoughtfully. toyed with her silverware. pushed her bowl aside when she’d eaten to her fill.
said, no, thank you, when Henry dipped into His ever-present bag of family medicine, of fairy dust.
until angela arrived, i don’t think i’d realized that there was such a thing as one’s fill. hadn’t known there was such a thing as saying no
to Henry.
i would never want to say no
to Henry.
i am never
full.
i spied leila, across the leaping, dancing, dangerous flames. i saw that she, too, had taken note of the limits of angela’s
appetites.
leila clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth;
she all but bared her teeth.
angela may be
full.
but leila is
consumed.
welcome
there is a second part to my promotion.
i have a second, separate job—a task, a responsibility to oversee in order to fully welcome angela into the fold.
i have my orders.
Henry explained it all to me back when we waited on the porch of the general store, back when i was wrapped in a blanket of heady, smoke-driven dreams of consciousness and anticipation.
back when i basked in the beacon of being chosen.
chosen. as i am:
still. now.
always.
i have a task.
over the lapping fire, the snaking, creeping smoke, i catch shelly’s eye. she giggles, winks. squeezes at my shoulder with tight, warm fingers. presses her hands against the flesh of her thighs, pulls herself to her feet. tugs at my own clasped hands and pulls me up.
arms hooked around the hollow curves of each other’s waists, we slink in tandem along the circumference of the campfire, wander toward where angela is perched.
Henry sits cross-legged atop the nearby picnic table. catches our eye. nods.
shelly and i light down on either side of angela. shelly hooks a slender arm around the soft space between angela’s waistband and her top, rests her nimble fingers on a hip.
sighs.
angela glances up, her face a question mark.
tilts her halo at me, quizzical.
i breathe:
in.
out.
in.
this is my now, my moment to serve my family. this is the task for which i have been
chosen.
this is my chance. to fulfill my orders.
but.
i freeze.
shelly’s musical laugh echoes in my ears, and:
i freeze.
i cannot speak, cannot so much as shift where i sit.
i am cement-set.
and angela’s face is still a textbook
waiting,
wanting,
to be read.
i shut my eyes, reach inside, clutch desperately at the rule book that
<—please oh please—>
surely must reside at the base of my core.
i grapple helplessly for the lessons i have heard Henry preach, for the infinite catechism that has saturated my every cell.
but.
my splayed fingers come up empty:
words and gestures, directives, imperatives, all of Henry’s teachings—
they slither through my webbed spaces,
the open places of my self.
my splayed fingers come up empty.
i am
empty.
i look up, shake my head in the hopes of clearing my thoughts.
i see shelly, my sister, gazing at me. her lips are pursed, unsure. i open my mouth to implore her—
to explain to her that i’ve somehow been erased, somehow robbed of language—
but the words are mesh, meaningless; they dribble down my throat, run silent, like hourglass sand.
i don’t. know.
anything.
after a moment, there is rescue:
hot breath on the back of my neck.
there is energy:
form, and matter.
there is solidity.
there is everything i am not.
Henry.
He is everything.
He is a fever, throwing sparks.
He lowers Himself to the ground, His eyes refracting light so that the air before me seems to dazzle,
seems to shimmer.
seems to waver like a membrane.
like possibility.
i breathe:
in.
and out.
again.
“thing is,” He says, grinning easily at angela, “it’s your first night here. and newbies get the royal treatment.”
well.
could it be
that i am
jealous?
of my newfound
sister?
it could.
it could be.
it could very well
be.
angela is silent for a breath.
she bites her lower lip, draining it momentarily of color. her eyes are narrow slits.
“um.”
Henry’s aura shines harder, telegraphs love and light.
“why don’t you head over to the barn with shelly and mel?” He suggests, undeterred.
“they’ll show you some familial love.”
He is so close to her that they share a shadow, a looming, shapeless, amalgamated figure
that creeps along the pebbled surface of the ground.
“our family can be real friendly, i promise.”
a promise. a premise.
and shelly and i are tasked with fulfilling it.
shelly and i are sworn to Henry.
to our family.
she is lucky, i venture. angela is. lucky.
i tickle the nape of her pale neck, twist an errant curl around the length of my index finger.
i think:
when i was a newbie, i had junior to contend with. junior and his cut-glass frame, his icy overcoating. his bottomless wants.
whereas angela has she
lly and me and soft mouths and sisters and always.
she is new to our family.
and she is lucky.
i blink, feel the heat of the campfire along the fragile edges of my eyelids.
i breathe in.
and out.
angela’s face puckers. her eyes squint, and the freckles that dot her cheeks contract and expand again.
she shakes her head, setting my probing finger loose.
she breathes.
in.
and out.
she says:
“no, thank you.”
no.
thank you.
there is a hiccup in my ears, in my chest, through my spine. a ripple in the atmosphere that surrounds me.
there is no such thing as saying no to Henry.
no reason why anyone would want to.
i swoon. i sway.
shelly is rocked by the motion of my frame,
gathers me,
guides me away,
off to bed.
there is no collective familial embrace, no initiation for our newcomer.
there is only shelly.
she cocoons me, swathes me, consumes me.
doesn’t speak.
i don’t speak, either.
i sleep.
i dream.
i breathe:
in.
and out.
in my mind,
i say yes to Henry.
now.
always.
infinitely.
yes.
gone
when i wake in the morning, angela is gone.
she has left no trace, no track.
no indication that she ever existed to begin with.
with her, my first promotion, my first task—
my first failure at the hands of Henry—
disappears.
it is a relief.
we don’t speak of her. none of us do.
certainly not Henry.
it is as though she were a mirage. a fun-house mirror-image.
a collective hallucination.
a cautionary tale.
immaculate
today, we are told to clean.
today, Henry says, the ranch must be in pristine condition. immaculate.
He is expecting a visitor.
not another would-be sister, another shameless, empty imposter. another angela. nothing like that.
angela does not exist for us, for our family, anymore. she is a wisp, a whisper, a faint outline that fades against each rainfall.
it is almost as though she never existed at all.
today, Henry is expecting someone
important.
the music man who will widen our scope, our reach.
our orbit.
someone who can pull strings, can make things happen. someone who knows how to spread Henry’s music, Henry’s word.
Henry’s love.
someone who will send Henry’s message out and into the world, where it belongs. where it can be shared by all who seek joy. truth.
love.
someone who believes. who trusts.
someone who will widen our circle, burst the half-life open.
someone who will ionize our ironbound orbit.
someone to multiply the sticky netting of our family
exponentially.
it is time.
ties
still. i have to wonder. how Henry made His connections.
His ties.
i understand, of course: His truth. His totality. the trail that He leaves with anyone that He deigns to touch.
just the shadow, the suggestion, the outline of Henry’s being is enough; He links people, bonds them, binds them irreversibly.
He is. our pied piper.
this, i know.
but still, i have to wonder.
about
the visitor.
about the man who, we are told, wants to spread Henry’s word. His message.
His love.
the ranch, as ever, is a disconnect. the ranch is neverland,
an imaginary playground.
our family is self-contained.
sequestered.
we have no windows,
looking out or in.
so how, then, does the visitor see us?
how did he find us?
where is Henry’s point of origin?
where does His orbit
begin?
and how far
do his ties
bind
?
la-la land
Henry says that the city of angels is, in fact, full of phonies.
He says it brims with half-truths and doublespeak, bursts with sleek, snakelike parasites, crawls with yawning, searching, devouring mouths looking to bleed you dry. to swallow you whole.
looking to consume you.
los angeles is dirty, a house of cards coated in a thin veneer of pixie dust. a place where magic is mere trickery, and
“love” comes
cheap.
regardless, it is the most logical starting point for Him, for Henry:
los angeles.
it is a mecca, a point of origin for those who bear a message. it is littered with blank, important people who can make things happen.
if only they were people you could trust.
los angeles is filled with broken promises, unfulfilled premises, ersatz-everything. charlatans, hucksters, tricksters. folks looking for a fast break, an easy buck, an open door.
an in.
“whereas i,” Henry says,
“have always been
out.”
horizon
i don’t believe it, really. not quite.
i don’t, won’t, cannot fathom this notion, this ugly, aching whisper of a half-life.
this idea of Henry ever being out, that is.
the suggestion of Henry ever being pushed aside; being cast
away; being shuttled; swept off; shifted toward just beyond the endless, ageless, boundless horizon. being sent, spiraling, toward just past the limits of a collective, collapsing sight line.
Henry is everything, after all.
and everything is the opposite of out.
but Henry says so. says that it is so. tells us how, time and again—
how, infinitely—
He has been ushered to the wayside, carried to the outskirts, expelled. taken swiftly to the rough, rudderless edges of the undertow.
He understands our doubt, our disbelief, of course. our flawless, blinding, boundless faith in Him, in His eternity.
but. He reminds us:
this is how He first found us, after all. first came upon us. first understood us.
first saw us. first knew.
us.
each of us. all of us.
this
outside, this undertow—this is how He sharpened His consciousness, His perception, His now.
His
orbit.
this is how He honed His pinprick-precise, razoredged gaze. how He learned to best reflect the core, the coiled, curdled chasm of our inner mirror-selves.
how He uncovered our wants. how He collected us. how He gathered all of the
wandering, wondering bodies, the drifting, shiftless members of our ever-growing
group.
this is where the recognition, the yes, now, always began.
this space, this in-between place—
this tangled tip of our universe’s boundaries,
the horizon,
the craggy, quivering gap
just beyond the limits of our vision—
this is the point of origin.
this is where the orbit spun into being, where the ions charged to life. how the shimmering, yawning vortex began its
deep, fierce, inescapable
outward spiral.
so Henry says. to us. it is how He explains. how He gathers us back, pulls us away from the thorny, knotted edges of any ankle-deep doubt. from the muck, the rot, the mire.
it is how He herds us back toward His circle, back into His consciousness. back toward the sanctum of His orbit, His always, His infinite, ever-outward spiral.
and Henry’s orbit—
His half-life, His atmosphere—
His word.
is.
always.
truth. peace.
love.
open
i open myself to Him,
toward Him.
to Henry.
for Henry.
still.
now.
always.
at night,
each night,
when He will have me:
i offer my hollow places.
i still don’t quite believe Him,
still am not wholly convinced of the rejection
He so casually references,
of His
preaching,
His detailing of a
feeble,
fractured
conscience.
of blurred but binding boundaries, of a life—
His life, sometime in the unspoken before—
on the outside, the outskirts.
after all,
there is no outside of—
can be no alternative to—
this space,
this collective sphere,
that
we all
have come to know
as Henry’s atmosphere.
His half-life.
His infinite
now.
so.
i open myself.
unfold.
for Him.
toward Him.
always
Him.
Henry.
i expose the howling, hollow places,
offer up the gentle, raw,
in-between spaces.
i listen for sounds.
His sounds.
His word.
His music.
His
His love.
i listen.
for Him.
and He comes to me.
gathered