by Peggy Riley
She silences her daughters with her outstretched hands, stopping all questions and complaints with baloney. She soaks beans in water, to boil them come morning, and settles her daughters into a mustardy tangle to sleep. Tomorrow, she tells herself, she will go back into his house. No voice or daughter or man or devil will stop her. He has food and she will take it.
BEFORE:
The Fiftieth Wife
The first of the patrol cars came while Zachariah was still away, at the golden end of summer, when little fingers worked to strip the last of the berries, overripe, nearly fermented, from the rows and vines before the house. The leaves were turning ruby at their tips.
It was Amity who came for her, lips stained and swollen, berry-red. ‘Mother, a car!’ she said. ‘Is it Justice? Is it Adam? Are they come back?’
Is it Hope, Amaranth thought, heart leaping. She brushed the buckwheat flour from her hands and hurried out. Hope, Dawn, and the two boys had been gone since late spring. She missed them, particularly her oldest friend, her confidante, mentor, and midwife.
At the end of the gravel path she met the black-and-white car. She told Amity to run back to the house and to keep everyone in. She approached the driver and leaned into the open window. ‘You got a warrant?’
‘You think I need one?’ A tubby policeman swung the door out toward her and squeezed his gut past his steering wheel.
‘If you want to come on this land, you need a warrant.’
‘Just want to ask you a few questions,’ he told her. ‘You got some ID?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe I could come inside. We could have a chat. Hot day and all.’
‘Get a warrant,’ she said. She turned to go.
He nodded and pulled a small pad from a top pocket, scratching his chin against its spiral binding. ‘You know a woman called Hope?’
She glanced back at the house, checking for wives and children. ‘Maybe.’
‘She came in and told us some things. Said she knew you and that there were problems with a child here.’
‘We’re doing nothing wrong here,’ she told him. ‘There’s no law against what we’re doing.’
He raised dark brows. ‘I think there is.’
A curly-haired boy led a goat between them, pulling it by a striped tie. He was the child of Wife Thirty-Eight, she thought. Or maybe Forty. ‘Look at me, I’m a goat shepherd, Mama,’ he said. She shooed him away, goat bleating. The policeman watched him walking away in the skirts all the boys wore.
‘This is a consensual community,’ she told him. ‘We are adults here and there are no laws about cohabitating or having children out of wedlock. None.’
‘Well, and that’s a pity,’ he said. ‘It’s why the whole of the country’s going to pot, but I’m not here about that. I’m here about the child.’
‘What child?’ She thought of Adam and Justice, remembering the day they were sent away, banished by her husband.
‘Let me see here, it’s a funny name.’ He riffled through his pages. ‘Sorrow? You got a girl here called Sorrow?’
She looked the policeman in the eye. ‘No.’
She waited until he inserted himself back behind the steering wheel and took his slow, methodical time in turning the car, reversing and forwarding around on the gravel. She watched until he rolled away. And she told no one. But the cars continued to come.
The summer had been fraught and frictional from all that had happened in spring. Women squabbled and fell out over petty matters, moving unattended pans off burners so that jam wouldn’t set, or neglecting to change or nurse a child who wasn’t strictly their own. Children watched, sucking their fingers, as mothers sniped and snapped.
With Zachariah gone, there was nothing to tether them to each other but hard work. They didn’t have the inclination to pray, to spin, or to worship. There was simply too much work in the summer, some wives might have said, too much preparation for the hard winter to come. But the truth was that the women needed him for spinning. With no axis in place, they might have spun off in every direction and never come back.
Other wives worried, every year, that he might never come back, and then what would they do? Every summer seemed to last longer than the one before; some years he didn’t return until almost fall. It was Amaranth’s role as first wife to hold them together, this collection of abandoned women, these hippies and spinsters, reformed junkies and winos, embittered divorcées and single mothers. They had nothing in common but their husband and a longing for utopia. She realized she had lost track of them, of what they wanted, since Hope had left.
After a supper that was filled with shouting, upset pitchers of goat’s milk, and spoiled squash, Amaranth called the women at last to the temple. It surprised the newer wives, who had never seen her do it and who wondered aloud to each other whether she could, while it reminded older wives of the last time she did it and the state of their community at the time. They had worked to heal much since then.
Amaranth drew them into a circle and told them to close the door. When she told them that the police and then a social worker had come, the women hissed and clicked their tongues. None of them had any love for the police. All had suffered at their hands in some way – from their whims, their laws, their searches, or their discriminations – even Amaranth. ‘They’ve heard things about us,’ she announced to them. ‘They’re looking for someone who will talk.’
Sorrow listened from the altar, chewing her fingernails into ragged stumps. She stared at the closed temple door.
‘We don’t know what they know or what they’ve been told. They’ll be fishing for information on our backgrounds and our practices. Do not tell them anything unless you’re prepared to follow through.’
‘Through with what?’ a wife called.
‘Our marriages are eternal,’ Amaranth proclaimed. She felt herself spread her arms as her husband did. ‘Our bonds are indissoluble. And yet wives have left us. It can be done. You’ve seen it done.’
Women buzzed and chattered. What was she suggesting?
‘If you’re thinking of leaving, be careful,’ she called above the noise. ‘That’s all I’m saying. You can try to go, but you will be watched, do you understand? Do you want to leave? Because now is the time to do it. Does any of you want to leave?’
The temple door flung open and Zachariah entered, white hair pulled back and his traveling suit rumpled. He looked tired and worn, but he clapped his hands to silence the women. ‘Who calls you to pray?’
The wives of the room pointed at Amaranth. She turned to Sorrow. He greeted his wives and kissed them all, then sent them away. He bent to Sorrow, so that she might whisper into his ear. Amaranth watched her, stony-faced, until her husband sent her away, too, and they were alone.
‘You talked to the police?’ he hissed.
Amaranth backed toward the altar, hands out. ‘Better me than a young wife. Better me than one who might tell them something. I dealt with them.’
‘Dealt with them? We don’t “deal” with the police. Know that you are watched, wife.’
‘We are all watched, by you and God.’ And by Sorrow and by other wives, she thought.
‘Know that you are first and will be last.’ He stood before her, ramming her into the altar, and she could see, through the window, how the sun set on the clump of wives around his van, welcoming, no doubt, some new young woman, another reason for his delayed return.
‘First, I am. Not last.’
‘No one replaces you.’ He put his hands about her waist and leaned into her, so she could feel him. He pulled her apron strings open and she caught the garment, setting it aside lest she lose what she kept in its pocket, what Hope left her.
‘It was a long summer, husband,’ she told him.
He felt up the front of her, her bodice, her breasts. He felt her belly and cupped her crotch. ‘Not so long,’ he said. ‘You are much the same.’
She nodded. She took care not to become pregnant after Hope left. Not all wi
ves were as careful, but who would pull their babies free now? Amaranth knew the work would fall to her and she did not feel prepared for it, did not feel sufficiently trained. She never thought that Hope would leave them – Hope, a name none of them dared utter now.
His hands worked their way up into her skirts. They pulled at her shift, worming their way between her legs, and her body welcomed him home – Jezebel – as it always did, betraying her year after year.
The girl he brought back, a shy and pockmarked girl, would become his fiftieth wife once the vines were lacy with hoarfrost. She would be the last to wear a veil over the black roots of her bleached hair, last to slip the ring onto her finger, last to watch it slip up and down the finger of every wife before her. As with every wife before her, she married them one and all; each took her salty kiss.
Across the temple, he called, ‘The end of time will come with the marriage of the Lamb!’
Sorrow called back, ‘Worthy is the Lamb who is slain for power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!’
‘The end of the world will come with fire!’
‘Hallelujah!’ wives called and spun. They spun about the room and took the fiftieth wife. Each wife took her as her own. They spun her hand to hand, and then he spun her into bindings. He spun her around the temple, clothing her as he would any wife, as wives wrapped her, embraced her. Then he spun her back to remove the bindings, making her nude as Eve. Amaranth watched her husband take the pink plums of her breasts into his hands, watched him nuzzle the woman, consecrating and anointing her skin with his mouth and his words. Wives spun, unmindful, unheeding. She remembered when his wives could have fit in one bed, then one room, then one house. Now women stretched across the temple.
He held his hand out last for Amaranth, calling her to the fiftieth wife. But she was watching Sorrow; Sorrow, who sulked and stroked her china bowl, stroked her belly.
Her eyes met her daughter’s across the winding sweep of women and the new bride, her new mother, and there was something in her face that she couldn’t define. Something like regret tinged with hope, or anger mixed with triumph. Something like love and betrayal. It was a look she had never seen on her child, after all that happened, and she wondered what her own face showed, what Sorrow could see were she looking.
Could she see that it was still hard to watch it, though she had had years to get used to her husband’s hands on other women?
But then, she thought, so had Sorrow.
11
The Gas Station Oracle
Two sisters stand, strapped together on either side of a bathroom door.
Sorrow stands inside the dark room, the strap stretching through the doorknob hole to Amity at its other end, outside and sweating in the sun. She watches the orange ball spin and listens to Sorrow do her work. The sink fills and splashes, then drains away with a sucking sound and Sorrow’s groan. She hears china ping off the sink and chip off the wall tiles, as if it has been thrown, but that could not be. It is far too precious to Sorrow.
The strap goes lax and the door crashes open. The strap comes flying through the hole. Sorrow barges out, the front of her chest soaked and her eyes red. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘But you are the Oracle.’
‘It doesn’t take this long at home.’
‘We’re not at home.’
‘Don’t you think I know that? Dolt.’
Amity knows her sister wants the temple, where she sits at the altar and searches the water, where she tells Father in secret prayer all she sees. It is silent, holy work, and Amity knows that Sorrow probably doesn’t think it should happen where people go to the bathroom. And then she thinks that maybe Sorrow can’t do her work without Father. And if that is so, how can the bowl show her where Father is?
‘Maybe you need a new bowl,’ Amity says.
‘Idiot. This is my bowl.’ Sorrow shakes the shard at her.
‘The bowl isn’t the Oracle. You are the Oracle.’
‘Idiot,’ Sorrow says again. Then she begins to smile.
Sorrow twirls water in the plastic bucket, spinning the piece of china within it. She hunkers down on her knees and elbows, pulling Amity flat, strapped again. She peers at the water across the top of it, with a frog’s-eye view, then she swoops up to stare down with a high bird’s eye, pulling Amity onto clog tip and her strapped arm saluting. She floats her hand on the surface, like the feet of Jesus. She stares at the water to trouble it, tries to fairly bubble it with her glare. She rocks the bucket from side to side, then plunges her head into it, only to rise up, choking and spitting. She dangles her fingers in the bucket of water, stroking the shard, wishing for God.
Amity prays to the spinning ball, which is whirling, as mothers do. ‘Please help Sorrow’ is all she can think of to say. God answers back with the spinning of the ball, bright as a sweet in the lace of His clouds, and the pensive whir of its motor. The sound builds with her praying, grinds with His passion, and she is sure the motor will burn and the ball burst into flames and come crashing down like the heavens falling at the end of time.
‘Can you hear that?’ Sorrow asks her, head cocked.
‘Is it a sign?’
‘Yes, it’s a sign – it’s a car, you dope.’
‘A car?’ And then the sound is unmistakable. It is a car’s engine, growing louder, coming toward them. ‘Thank you, God,’ she tells the ball.
Sorrow shouts and runs from the gas station, waving her arms at the dirt road.
‘Car!’ Amity shrieks. They jump for joy as a car emerges, dirt rising and steam pouring from the hood. They call the car in, toward the gas station, guiding it to a pump in the canopy’s shade. The car slows, hissing and ticking.
‘Thank goodness you all are here,’ a woman says, bright-lipped, a blond thatch of hair ricked high on her head. She fans the back of her neck with a magazine, eyeballs and elbows on every page. ‘We didn’t think anybody was down here, did we, but I said a body’s got to have faith.’
‘Oh, we have faith,’ Amity chirps.
‘You all work here?’ A jowly man scans the forecourt. He looks the girls up and down, their long skirts and caps, and he looks about the station and its little shop. ‘You don’t even look open. This your family’s place?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Amity says, leaning in toward his window. ‘We all pitch in and work it. We all do our share.’ Sorrow shoots her a satisfied grin. In the backseat Amity sees a car seat and a baby in it, jiggling the fat rolls of its legs and arms. She wiggles her fingers at it.
‘All righty,’ he says. ‘What else can I do? You all pump or are you self-serve?’
‘I’ll pump you,’ Amity says, and she leaps to unscrew his gas cap.
‘I’ll need some coolant, too,’ he calls back to her, drumming his fingers on the wheel.
‘Yes, sir,’ she says to him. ‘Right away, sir.’
The hood release pops and smoke billows over the car, sweet as syrup. Amity fiddles to unhook the gas pump as Sorrow, on the passenger side, spots the baby. Amity squeezes the trigger, but no gas comes. She doesn’t know how to work it. She turns to the pump and she hears the man holler, which makes her drop the pump, fling her hands up, and scream. Then she turns back to see that he is hollering at Sorrow, who is reaching in through the car’s rear window, trying to unhook the baby. She fumbles with the car seat’s webbing, some complicated kind of strap, while he turns his bulk around in his seat and the woman reaches over the back of hers, slapping at Sorrow’s hands.
Amity takes hold of the driver’s window frame. ‘Will you take us with you? Will you take us home?’
‘Get the hell out of my car!’ The man starts his engine as Sorrow tries to get a better grip on the baby. The woman crawls over the back of her seat, cursing at Sorrow, and the car begins to roll forward, hood up, traveling blind. Sorrow jogs to keep up with it, arms in the window, pulling at the baby. The car speeds up, Sorrow trotting beside, and she makes one last desperate snatch. She misses
. She drops back from the car, arms reaching, and it drives off, smoking and steaming, swerving and weaving, the man yelling, the woman howling, and, finally, the baby giving its own confused mewl.
Amity waves her arms from the station. ‘Stop – stop!’ But they will not.
Sorrow stares, her eyes as small and sharp as pins. ‘I had him.’
‘They would have taken us. Isn’t that what you wanted? To go home?’
‘I had him,’ she whispers. ‘Lamb of God.’
12
Home Preserves
Amaranth stands in the cool of the curtained pantry, itemizing. Old cans of candied yams, creamed corn, and succotash, labels crisp and flaking. Rust-topped Mason jars of home preserves, okra, wax beans, beets, applesauce, and spiced peaches in cloudy syrup. She counts and sorts the beans and grains, pulling what can be eaten from what is spoiled.
There is food enough to feed her family. Not as much as her community had saved for Armageddon, but then they were nearly a hundred mouths. Who was meant to eat all this food? It is a sin to let it go to waste – surely that is one rule worth keeping. It is her duty – her right – to use this food before it rots. And before it is gone, she is certain that a sign will come for her and she will know what to do.
She has her hands in barley pearls when she hears Bradley stomp onto the porch, the squeal of his door, the thud of his boots dropping, one, two. She freezes like a looter, fists full of grain. He hums his way into the kitchen with a tune she can almost remember, from long ago, something about love and dancing. He sings words here and there, taps out a beat on his table. She hears the rustle of a paper bag and a cap unscrewing from a bottle, his long, deep drink. She holds her breath but she knows it’s only a matter of time before she shifts something, makes some noise, and when she does he flings aside the pantry curtain, broom held in his hand like a sword.