"I noticed you avoided saying ‘Mad Cow,’" Paula said. "And Kuru."
"You know about Kuru?" Louden said.
"Of course she does," Gerrholtz said. "She’s done her homework." The doctor put her hands on the foot of Paula’s bed and leaned forward. "The disease that killed Stephanie doesn’t have a name yet, Paula. We think it’s a Kuru variant, the same prion with an extra kink. And we know that we can’t save the people who already have it. Their prions will keep converting other proteins to use their shape. You understand what this means, don’t you Paula?"
Still trying to scare her. As if the promise of her own death would break her faith.
On the screen, the reporter gestured at two uniformed officers sealing the front door with yellow tape that looked specially chosen to match the house. Paula wondered if they’d found Merilee yet.
"It means that God is an idea," Paula said. "An idea that can’t be killed."
The house shimmered in her vision, calling her like a lighthouse; she understood now why they’d painted it so brightly. Minutes after the accident her vision darkened like smoked glass, and now only the brightest things drew her attention. Her companion guided her down the dark streets, walking a few feet in front of her, surrounded by a nimbus of fire.
Steph opened the door. When she saw the tears in her eyes Steph squealed in delight and pulled her into a hug. "We’ve been waiting for you," she said. "We’ve been waiting so long." And then Steph was crying too.
"I’m sorry," Paula said. "I’m so sorry. I didn’t know ... "
The other women came to her one by one, hugging her, caressing her cheeks, all of them crying. Only Merilee couldn’t get up to greet her. The woman lay on the same couch as four months ago, but her limbs had cinched tighter, arms and legs curled to her torso like a dying bug. Paula kneeled next to her couch and gently pressed her cheek to Merilee’s. Paula spoke the Fore greeting: I eat you.
That was the day one life ended and another began.
Her vision slowly returned over the next few days, but her companion remained, becoming more solid every day. They told her she didn’t have to worry about him leaving her. She called in sick to work and spent most of the next week in the yellow house, one minute laughing, the next crying, sometimes both at the same time. She couldn’t stop talking about her experience on the road, or the way her companion could make her recognize her vanity or spite with just a faint smile.
Her old life had become something that belonged to a stranger. Paula thought of the blank weekends of Scotch and Vicodin, the screaming matches with Richard. Had she really burned his record collection?
When she called him, the first thing she said was, "I’m sorry."
"What is it, Paula." His voice flat, wary. The Paula he knew only used "sorry" to bat away his words, deflect any attack.
"Something wonderful’s happened," she said. She told him about Steph and the women of the house, then skipped the communion to tell him about the accident and the blinding light and the emotions that flooded through her. Richard kept telling her to slow down, stop stumbling over her words. Then she told him about her companion.
"Who did you meet?" he said. He thought it was someone who’d witnessed the accident. Again she tried to explain.
Richard said, "I don’t think Claire should come back there this weekend."
"What? No!" She needed to see Claire. She needed to apologize to her, promise her she’d do better. She gripped the receiver. Why couldn’t Richard believe her? Why was he fighting her again?
She felt a touch on the back of her head. She turned, let her hand fall to the side. His blue eyes gazed into hers.
One eyebrow rose slightly.
She breathed. Breathed again. Richard called her name from the handset.
"I know this is a lot to adjust to," Paula said. The words came to her even though her companion didn’t make a sound. "I know you want the best for Claire. You’re a good father." The words hurt because they were true. She’d always thought of Richard as a weak man, but if that had once been true, Claire’s birth had given him someone weaker to protect. As their daughter became older he took her side against Paula more and more often. The fights worsened, but she broke him every time. She never thought he’d have the guts to walk out on her and try to take Claire with him. "If you think she’d be better off with you for awhile, we can try that." She’d win his trust soon enough.
In the weeks after, Claire stayed with Richard, and Paula did hardly anything but talk with the yellow house women. At work the head nurse reprimanded her for her absences but she didn’t care. Her life was with the women now, and her house became almost an annex to theirs. "We have room for more," Paula said dozens of times. "We have to tell others. It’s not right to keep this to ourselves when so many people are suffering." The women nodded in agreement—or perhaps only in sympathy. Each of them had been saved, most of them from lives much worse than Paula’s. They knew what changes were possible.
"You have to be patient," Steph told her one day. "This gift is handed from woman to woman, from Merilee’s grandmother down to us. It comes with a responsibility to protect the host. We have to choose carefully—we can’t share it with everyone."
"Why not?" Paula said. "Most of us would be dead without it. We’re talking about saving the world here."
"Yes. One person at a time."
"But people are dying right now," Paula said. "There has to be a way to take this beyond the house."
"Let me show you something," Steph said. She brought down a box from a high bookshelf and lifted out a huge family Bible. Steph opened it to the family tree page, her left hand trembling. "Here are some of your sisters," she said. "The ones I’ve known anyway."
The page was full of names. The list continued on the next page, and the next. Over a hundred names.
"How long has this been going on?" Paula said in wonder.
"Merilee’s mother came here in 1982. Some of the women lived in this house for a while, and then were sent to establish their own houses. We don’t know how many of us there are now, spread around the country. None of us knows all of them." She smiled at her. "See? You’re not so alone. But we have to move quietly, Paula. We have to meet in small groups, like the early Christians."
"Like terrorists," Paula said bitterly.
Steph glanced to the side, listening to her companion. "Yes," she said, nodding. And then to Paula: "Exactly. There’s no terror like the fear of God."
He woke her at 3 a.m. Paula blinked at him, confused. He hovered beside the bed, only half there, like a reflection in a shop window.
She forced herself awake and as her vision cleared the edges of him resolved, but he was still more vapor than solid. "What is it?" she said. He teasingly held a finger to his lips and turned toward Esther’s bed. He paused, waiting for her.
Paula slipped out of the bed and moved quietly to the cabinet against the wall. The door came open with a loud clack, and she froze, waiting to see if she’d awakened her roommate. Esther’s feathery snore came faint and regular.
Paula found her handbag at the bottom shelf and carried it to the window. Feeling past her wallet fat with ID cards, she pulled out the smaller vinyl case and laid it open on the sill like a butterfly.
The metal tip of the syringe reflected the light.
Paula made a fist of her left hand, flexed, tightened again. Working in the faint light, she found the vein in her arm mostly by feel and long familiarity, her fingertips brushing first over the dimpled scars near the crook of her elbow, then down half an inch. She took the syringe in her right hand and pressed into the skin. The plastic tube slowly filled.
Paula picked her way through the dim room until her hand touched the IV bag hanging beside Esther’s bed. The woman lay still, her lips slightly apart, snoring lightly. It would be simple to inject the blood through the IV’s Y-port.
But what if it was too late for her? The host incubated for three to six months. Only if the cancer stayed in remission t
hat long would the woman have a chance to know God. Not her invisible, unseen God. The real thing.
Paula reached for the tubing and her companion touched her arm. She lowered the syringe, confused. Why not inject her? She searched his face for a reason, but he was so hard to see.
He turned and walked through the wall. Paula opened the door and stepped into the bright hallway, and for a moment she couldn’t find him in the light. He gestured for her to follow.
She followed his will-o’-the-wisp down the deserted corridor, carrying the syringe low at her side. He led her down the stairwell, and at the next floor went left, left again. At an intersection a staffer in blue scrubs passed ten feet in front of them without seeing them.
Perhaps she’d become invisible too.
Her companion stopped before a door and looked at her. It was one of the converted rooms where doctors on call could catch some sleep. Here? she asked with her eyes. He gestured toward the door, his arm like a tendril of fog.
She gripped the handle, slowly turned. The door was unlocked. Gently she pushed it open.
The wedge of light revealed a woman asleep on the twin bed, a thin blanket half covering her. She wore what Paula had seen her in earlier: a cream blouse gleaming in the hall light, a patterned skirt rucked above her knees, her legs dark in black hose. Her shoes waited side-by-side on the floor next to the bed, ready for her to spring back into action and save her world.
Paula looked back at the doorway. Dr. Gerrholtz? she asked him. Did he really want this awful woman to receive the host?
His faint lips pursed, the slightest of frowns, and Paula felt a rush of shame. Who was she to object? Before Steph had found her Paula had been the most miserable woman alive. Everyone deserved salvation. That was the whole point of the mission.
Dr. Gerrholtz stirred, turned her head slightly, and the light fell across her closed eyes. Paula raised the needle, moved her thumb over the plunger. No handy IV already connected. No way to do this without waking the woman up. And she’d wake up screaming.
"Hello?" Dr. Gerrholtz said. Her eyes opened, and she lifted a hand to shade her eyes.
Jesus is coming, Paula said silently, and pressed the needle into her thigh.
Paula and Tonya stooped awkwardly at the edge of the pit, clearing the sand. They dug down carefully so that their shovel blades wouldn’t cut too deep, then pitched the spark-flecked sand into the dark of the yard. They worked in short-sleeves, sweating despite the cold wind. With every inch they uncovered, the pit grew hotter and brighter.
It was hard work, and their backs still ached from this morning when they’d dug the pit, hauled over the big stones, and lined the bottom with them. But Paula had volunteered for this job. She wanted to prove that she could work harder than anyone.
Inside the house, women laughed and told stories, their voices carrying through the half-opened windows. Paula tossed aside a shovelful of sand and said, "Tonya, have you ever asked why no men are invited?" She’d thought about her words for a long time. She wanted to test them on Tonya first, because she was young and seemed more open than the other women.
Tonya looked up briefly, then dug down again with her shovel. "That’s not the tradition."
"But what about Donel? Wouldn’t you want this for him?" Donel was Tonya’s son, only two years old. He shared a bedroom with her, but all the women took care of him.
Tonya paused, leaned against her shovel. "I ... I think about that. But it’s just not the way it’s done. No men at the feast."
"But what if we could bring the feast to them?" Paula said. "I’ve been reading about Merilee’s people, the disease they carried. There’s more than one way to transmit the host. What if we could become missionaries some other way?"
The girl shook her head. "Merilee said that men would twist it all up, just like they did the last time."
"All the disciples were men last time. This time they’re all women, but that doesn’t make it right. Think about Donel." Think about Richard.
"We better keep going," Tonya said, ending the conversation. She started digging again, and after a moment, Paula joined her. But she kept thinking of Richard. He’d become more guarded over the past few months, more protective of Claire. When her daughter turned 14—another of Merilee’s rules—Paula would bring her to communion. But if she could also bring it to Richard, if he could experience what she’d found, they could be a family again.
Several minutes later they found the burlap by the feel under their shovels. They scraped back the sand that covered the sack, then bent and heaved it up onto a pallet of plywood and one-by-fours. After they’d caught their breath they called the others from the house.
Over seventy women had come, some of them from as far away as New Zealand. None of them had come alone, of course. The air was charged with a multitude of invisible presences.
Eight of the women were chosen as pall bearers. The procession moved slowly because so many of them walked with difficulty. God’s presence burned the body like a candle—Merilee’s early death was proof of that—but not one of them would trade Him for anything. A perfect body was for the next life.
Steph began to sing something in Merilee’s language, and the others joined in, harmonizing. Some knew the words; others, like Paula, hummed along. Women cried, laughed, lifted their hands. Others walked silently, perhaps in communion with their companions.
There was an awkward moment when they had to tilt the litter to get through the back door, but then they were inside. They carried her though the kitchen—past the stacks of Tupperware, the knives and cutting boards, the coolers of dry ice—then through the dining room and into the living room. The furniture had been pushed back to the walls. They set the litter in the center of the room.
Paula gripped the stiff and salt-caked cloth—they’d soaked the body overnight—while Steph sawed the length of it with a thick-bladed knife. Steam escaped from the bag, filling the room with a heady scent of ginger and a dozen other spices.
The last of the shroud fell away and Merilee grinned up at them. Her lips had pulled away from her teeth, and the skin of her face had turned hard and shiny. As she’d instructed, they’d packed ferns and wild herbs around her, dressing her in a funeral dress of leaves.
Steph kneeled at the head of the impromptu table and the others gathered around. The oldest and most crippled were helped down to the floor; the rest stood behind them, hands on their shoulders.
Steph opened a wooden box as big as a plumber’s toolbox and drew out a small knife. She laid it on a white linen next to Merilee’s skull and said, "Like many of you I was at the feast of Merilee’s mother, and this is the story Merilee told there.
"It was the tradition of the Fore for the men and women to live apart. When a member of the tribe died, only the women and children were allowed at the feast. The men became jealous. They cursed the women, and they called the curse kuru, which means both ‘to tremble’ and ‘to be afraid.’ The white missionaries who visited the tribe called it the laughing sickness, because of the grimaces that twisted their faces."
As she talked she laid out other tools from the box: a filet knife, a wooden-handled fork with long silver tines, a Japanese cleaver.
"Merilee’s grandmother, Yobaiotu, was a young woman when the first whites came, the doctors and government men and missionaries. One day the missionaries brought everyone out to the clearing they’d made by the river and gave everyone a piece of bread. They told them to dip it into a cup of wine and eat, and they said the words Jesus had spoken at the last supper: This is my body, this is my blood."
Steph drew out a long-handled knife and looked at it for perhaps thirty seconds, trying to control her emotions. "The moment Yobaiotu swallowed the bread, she fell down shaking, and a light filled her eyes. When she awoke, a young boy stood at her side. He held out his hand to her, and helped her to her feet. ‘Lord Jesus!’ Yobaiotu said, recognizing him." Steph looked up, smiled. "But of course no one else could see him. They thought she wa
s crazy."
The women quietly laughed and nodded.
"The doctors said that the funeral feasts caused Kuru, and they ordered them to stop. But Yobaiotu knew the curse had been transformed in her, that the body of Christ lived in her. She taught her daughters to keep that covenant. The night Yobaiotu died they feasted in secret, as we do tonight."
Steph removed the center shelf of the box, set it aside, and reached in again. She lifted out a hacksaw with a gleaming blade. A green price tag was still stuck to the saw’s blue handle.
"The body of Christ was passed from mother to daughter," Steph said. "Because of them, Christ lives in all of us. And because of Merilee, Christ will live in sisters who’ve not yet been found."
"Amen," the women said in unison.
Steph lifted the saw, and with her other hand gently touched the top of Merilee’s skull. "This we do in remembrance of him," she said. "And Merilee."
The screaming eventually brought Louden to her room. "Don’t make me sedate you," he began, and then flinched as she jerked toward him. The cuffs held her to the bed.
"Bring him back!" she screamed, her voice hoarse. "Bring him back now!"
Last night they’d taken her to another room, one without windows, and tied her down. Arms apart, ankles together. Then they attached the IV and upped the dosage: two parts Topamax, one part Loxapine, an anti-psychotic.
Gerrholtz they rushed to specialists in another city.
A hospital security guard took up station outside her door, and was replaced the next morning by a uniformed police officer. Detectives came to interrogate her. Her name hadn’t been released to the news, they said, but it would only be a matter of time. The TV people didn’t even know about Gerrholtz—they were responding to stories coming out of the yellow house investigation—but already they’d started using the word "bio-terrorism." Sometime today they’d move her to a federal facility.
Minute by minute the drugs did their work and she felt him slipping from her. She thought, if I keep watch he can’t disappear. By twisting her shoulders she could see a little way over the bed and make out a part of him: a shadow that indicated his blue-jeaned leg, a cluster of dots in the speckled Linoleum that described the sole of a dirty foot. When the cramps in her arms and lower back became too much she’d fall back, rest for awhile, then throw herself sideways again. Each time she looked over the edge it took her longer to discern his shape. Two hours after the IV went in she couldn’t find him at all.
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