Amity & Sorrow

by Peggy Riley

  Once they’re off the highway, fields give way to parking lots and rows of buildings on either side. The road narrows as they turn toward town, and Amity watches for Mother’s signal to duck down and hide, but it never comes. So she watches as the street does a circle dance around a redbrick building, grand with four cream columns standing upright as apostles. ‘Is that your temple?’ Amity shouts above the roar of cars.

  ‘It’s the courthouse!’ Dust hollers.

  Bradley drives them down a main street lined with windowed shops, bright colors and striped awnings, flags flapping and piles of goods: shoes and ladders, lawn mowers, fruit. He pulls them into a busy parking lot and finds a space beside an expanse of yellow grass, where he points at a dark bar and tells them that’s where he’ll be if they have any catastrophes, but Amity’s off, racing toward a metal gang of animals, dashing from the truck and across the grass to mount the back of a giant squirrel. It grinds on a rusty spring. Mother shouts behind her, ‘Watch where you’re going – watch for cars; stay with Dust – do as he tells you!’ She doesn’t see Mother telling Dust what it is he may and may not tell her to do.

  Dust calls her from the squirrel and walks her through the town, the fluttering, glorious wonder of it, all the people walking and driving, all the people staring. She smiles back at them, everyone, but they only stare. ‘Why do people stare so?’ she asks him.

  ‘Well, look at you,’ he says.

  She does look, in every window they pass, but she sees nothing remarkable. She’s smiling and they aren’t. She’s dressed and they aren’t, for the most part, with their toes exposed and their pantaloons cut off, way up at their crotches. In one window alone a whole row of women sit with their heads uncovered, hair hanging long and wet down their backs, right there where anyone could see them. She gasps as a man shears each one with his scissors. ‘I should stare,’ she says.

  ‘Women don’t cover up so much as you do.’ He only stares at a window full of dark blue jeans and pointy-toe boots in every kind of leather.

  She tugs on his sleeve. ‘You said you’d take me where the books are.’

  ‘Today ain’t all about you,’ he says. ‘I’m the one just got paid for working.’ He goes inside and she tells him she’ll wait right outside. ‘I promised your ma I’d watch you,’ he says. ‘Don’t go anywhere. Stay right there.’

  Amity tries to stand still, but the town moves her. Women push babies in carts so wide she has to jump out of the way and into the street, where cars honk and make her jump back. Big girls march by in high-heeled packs, spread across the sidewalk, and they must be run from, their pointing and laughing. And when she stops to look for Dust, she can no longer find his window. She can’t find his stack of pants or boots, or mother, truck, or squirrel.

  She walks in circles to look for help. She knows better than to speak to strangers, but when she finds a modest woman, her dress well below her kneecaps and a hat of straw on her head, she goes to her and takes her hand.

  The woman withdraws it, sticky, and leans down to her. ‘You need something, sweetie?’

  ‘The house of The Grapes of Wrath,’ she says. And when the lady tries to leave, she sings out, ‘Library! Library!’ remembering the old man’s name for it.

  When she gets to the door, she knows it is the best of temples – dark and lit by small windows, where motes spin in shafts of light like tiny angels and the quiet hush of pages turning is soft as cloth on boards. A woman stands at its center instead of an oracle, with long purple hair and a silver star on her chest.

  Amity walks to her and speaks in her bravest voice, loud and clear. ‘I have come for your Grapes of Wrath.’

  ‘Shh,’ says the woman. A slim silver ring in her nose wiggles when she smiles then, whispering, ‘Fiction’s in the corner.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  The woman frowns. ‘Shh.’

  The walls and the dark shelves are lined with books, old as the old man’s, their spines in lines like a jiggedy rainbow. They are cool and slick in plastic sleeves when she touches them and when she pulls them out she can see their pictures: platters of meat and birds of prey, women bulging lustily from gowns and creatures wrapped in bandages. She presses on for a hand with grapes, setting the books down onto the floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The woman is beside her then, picking her books up and sliding them back onto shelves so she won’t know where she’s looked now.

  ‘I’m looking for The Grapes of Wrath.’

  ‘Well, you’re not even in fiction. You ought to be in the children’s section anyway. You don’t belong here.’

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘Dust told me to wait.’

  The woman points her back into the corner and Amity moves her way toward it, distracted by dogs and soldiers and cakes, and when at last she pulls the book out, she gives a mighty ‘Hallelujah!’ A shush comes from every table as she dances the book to the door.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The purple-haired woman catches hold of her book.

  ‘I’m taking Grapes of Wrath,’ Amity says.

  ‘No, you are not.’

  ‘The old man says they’re free.’

  ‘Well, they’re not.’ The woman looks around the room, as if for help or divine intervention. ‘You need a library card to check them out.’ She looks at the book’s cover. ‘This is Viticulture for Fun and Profit. What is this?’

  ‘Those are grapes, ma’am. Grapes of wrath, ma’am.’

  ‘Does it say “grapes of wrath” here?’

  Amity looks up at her. ‘I don’t know what it says, ma’am.’

  ‘Look, we have a section of picture books and easy readers. Let me show you where those are. Why don’t you bring your mother back with you? Or your father?’

  ‘Sorrow says he’s coming.’

  The woman finally folds her arms around the book. ‘Young lady, this is no place to play games. Run along now. Go.’

  Outside in the sun there is no Dust waiting for her. There is only a peeling bench and a girl atop it, beside a giant stack of books. She knew how to get them.

  ‘Hello,’ says the girl.

  Amity flinches. The girl is smiling at her, not staring, not pointing. She looks – like Amity. Her dress is dark and her head is covered, not with a cap but with a crisp blue triangle of fabric, holding auburn twists back from her face.

  Amity gives her a smile. ‘You’re a modest people like we are, aren’t you? I thought it was only us.’

  ‘We’re Mennonite. What are you?’

  ‘What’s Mennonite?’ Amity scoots closer. ‘Are there more of you?’

  ‘Of course. My family and our church.’

  Amity nods. ‘How many sisters and brothers do you have?’

  ‘Four brothers. No sisters. I wish I had a sister.’

  ‘You can have mine,’ Amity tells her and the girl laughs. ‘How many mothers do you have?’

  ‘Why?’ says the girl. ‘How many do you have?’

  ‘Fifty.’ Amity looks at the girl.

  ‘What do you do with fifty?’

  ‘Well, I only have one father.’

  The girl leans in. ‘What’s it like to have fifty mothers? Do they all tell you what to do?’

  It was getting harder to remember it. ‘Mostly, when we’re all in a circle and they’re spinning, it feels like the whole of the world is my mother. The whole world is spinning in love.’

  The girl looks around them and whispers, ‘Aren’t you afraid you’ll go to hell – or to jail?’

  ‘No. We’re the chosen ones.’

  ‘We’re the chosen ones,’ the girl says, straightening the pile of books between them. ‘What you do is most likely a sin, but it’s not my place to judge you.’

  A long green car pulls up with plenty of empty seats. The girl grabs her books and skips to it as Amity calls behind her, ‘Maybe I could come home with you?’ She pictures herself a Mennonite, her hair swinging out from a smart navy triangle. The woman driving wears a kerchief and
she gives Amity a smile. But once her daughter points at Amity from the front seat, they both stare until Amity turns away from them. And then they go.

  26

  The Tiny Prophet

  Sorrow doesn’t want to leave the parking lot. In fact, she’s not overly keen on leaving the car. No tug of the strap will dislodge her.

  Amaranth studies the strip mall shops surrounding the parked cars: dry cleaner, doughnut shop, pet shop, nail salon. Nothing she wants, nothing she needs, but she wants to look at the things they sell, as if to pretend that they are a simple mother and daughter, like any who parked or walked past them, out for a day of frivolous spending. She tries to picture Sorrow with her lips around a doughnut or holding her nails out to be filed and painted pink. She watches the closed door of the bar where Bradley is and wishes she were in with him, then she thinks of Sorrow beside her, strapped around a bar stool.

  ‘What are they looking at?’ Sorrow points at a crowd outside a Korean barbecue.

  ‘Let’s go see,’ Amaranth says, desperate to see anything but the dirty inside of the windshield. They negotiate the parked cars together, strapped. She jerks Sorrow back as cars swish by, looking for spaces. She tells her to look both ways, as if she is leading a toddler or an alien.

  Sorrow hurries toward the crowd, as if she can sense she is missing something, and Amaranth’s heart sinks when she sees the plain, flat frontage and the sign beside the barbecue: THE HOLY CHURCH OF THE ONE TRUE LOVE. Only Sorrow could find a church in a mini mall.

  The glass doors open and a purple banner, felt wheat spears on a satin cross, emerges. A bone-shattering organ chord comes from mounted speakers, accompanied by the jangle of metal tambourines. Sorrow looks at her mother, all smiles now. Before the shop front, a congregation gathers, plain-dressed worshippers with paperback Bibles. A cheer comes from the crowd when a man steps through the doors, white-suited, in a cowboy hat. He lifts a hand in a blessing while before him, barely visible through the crowd, is a tiny blond boy in a shorts suit and a broad-brimmed black hat that’s held up by his ears. The crowd surges forward, cars honking, people shouting, and a final organ-chord crash.

  ‘Can I get a “Hallelujah” from someone who believes?’ the man calls.

  ‘Hallelujah!’ roars the crowd. Sorrow looks about her, eyes wide at their noise.

  ‘We come together to praise the Lord!’ the man shouts. ‘We praise Him in the churches and we praise Him in the streets. We praise Him in the fields when the crops come! Let us pray!’ He whips his hat off and bows his head, showing off his scalp.

  The little boy bows and his hat tips up. Sorrow does not bow her head but studies those who do, the crowd, the preacher, and his son, while Amaranth keeps a firm hold on the wrist strap, poised to yank her back.

  ‘O Heavenly Father, we come to You from our harvests. We come to You from our fields. We come to You with nothing, as a people humbled, blessed with Your bounty, Lord, which we do not deserve. For we are miserable sinners.’

  ‘I’m a sinner, Lord!’ a man cries out.

  ‘Who’s a sinner?’ Sorrow asks her.

  A car squeals past them and a spiky-haired woman rolls down her window to holler, ‘Get outta the road, ya Jesus freaks!’ At that, the tambourines rattle, a chord comes, and the crowd begins to sing. ‘How is it that they know the same song?’ Sorrow asks.

  ‘It’s a hymn,’ Amaranth tells her over the singing. ‘All churches probably sing it.’

  ‘All churches?’ Sorrow strains forward now. ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Far too many,’ says Amaranth grumpily.

  The preacher greets the passing cars. ‘Are you ready for the final days, friends?’ They honk in response or salute him with middle fingers. ‘Are you ready for God to take you away?’

  Sorrow raises her arm to him, but the man ignores her, sweeping his arms and saying, ‘Let’s hear from the Prophet. Speak, Prophet, speak!’

  The small boy is scratching furiously, the back of his lace-up shoe hooked behind the other leg to work on bug bites. Hearing silence, he stops, puts his hat under his arm, and looks up at the sky. ‘I want to thank You, Lord-uh,’ he chants, the end of his lines dropping off in a grunt. ‘I want to thank you, Jesus!’

  ‘Thank You, Lord. Thank you, Jesus,’ the crowd repeats.

  ‘The Lord kept our rain from us and then He gave it back-uh. He took our crops and He let us reap-uh. But this is our final harvest, be in no doubt. The Lord will pull the righteous from their boots-uh, and cut the sinners where they stand-uh, like stalks with His sickle! For the Lord is a-comin’.’

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ the man calls.

  ‘Fear God and give Him glory!’ Sorrow calls back.

  Amaranth tugs the strap. ‘Don’t.’

  The man looks at Sorrow and puts a single finger across his lips.

  ‘Mother,’ Sorrow whispers. ‘Can anyone build a temple?’

  ‘It looks like it,’ she says.

  But already Sorrow is turning back to the boy, then pushing through people to get closer to him, pulling Amaranth behind her. ‘Who calls you Prophet?’ Sorrow calls. The crowd parts to get a look at her, this creature in the cap and dress, as Amaranth shuffles along like a string trying to keep up with its kite.

  The man gives her a thin-lipped smile and reaches a hand out to greet Sorrow. ‘Hello, Sister.’

  She doesn’t take it. ‘Who says he is Prophet?’ She points at the little boy.

  ‘Who are you, Sister, that you should ask?’

  ‘I am the Oracle.’

  ‘The Oracle?’ The man looks about at his worshippers and his strained smile stretches to a full-out grin of mockery. ‘What’s that, then?’

  ‘Have you no Oracle? How can he receive prophecies? How can he read the signs of God?’

  The man guffaws. ‘Sister, we don’t need no Oracle. Everybody can read the Good Book for himself, can’t they? Nobody needs to interpret God, ’less you’re some papist. Our God speaks to all of us – if only we will listen – but the world has gone deaf!’ He holds a hand up to the crowd and they cheer.

  ‘How does God speak to you?’ Sorrow calls to him.

  ‘Well, through the Bible, Sister. You do know your Bible?’

  ‘I should do. It is inside me.’

  The little boy looks at his father for reassurance, then squares up to Sorrow, turning his scuffed chin up from her chest to look her in the eye. ‘How is the Bible in you?’

  ‘I see through the Father’s eyes. I touch through the Father’s fingers. I have His holy words running through me like water, all the time. It is all I hear and see.’

  ‘You can’t see God,’ the boy tells her.

  The man says, ‘It is foretold that in the final days false prophets will rise among us. And God will not spare them; no, He will not. He did not spare the angels when they sinned and fell! He did not spare the world from the might of His floods! The day of the Lord will come as a thief and the righteous will be stolen away!’

  ‘The righteous have gone,’ Sorrow says.

  The man falters. ‘So are you not among the righteous?’

  ‘I was taken away from them.’ Sorrow tips her head at Amaranth, who mouths an embarrassed hello. ‘But the end is coming. It will come with fire.’

  The boy says, ‘Beware of false prophets.’

  Sorrow smiles. ‘You will know a prophet by his works and his gifts.’

  ‘That’s the devil talking,’ the man says, gesticulating. ‘Only false prophets try to show you miracles; it’s the devil making them boast.’

  ‘Our work glorifies God,’ Sorrow bites back. ‘What works do you do – what gifts have you?’

  ‘He has the gift of tongues!’ a woman in a wheelchair calls.

  ‘Then speak, Prophet,’ says Sorrow.

  ‘Speak!’ the woman urges, and the crowd picks it up. ‘Speak!’

  ‘You got nothing to prove, son,’ the man says, but the little boy screws his face up, throwing his head back and opening
his mouth in a susurration of consonants, a string of long and sensuous vowels. A woman in a caftan falls to her knees, hands up to fondle heaven.

  Sorrow flings her own head back then and roars her gift through clenched teeth. Where the boy’s words are silken, hers come as stabs. Where his slip along a slick path, hers are a switchback of barbs and hooks, grunts and clicks.

  ‘Listen to that!’ the man calls. ‘Will the grapes of our Lord be gathered from thorns?’

  The woman in the caftan struggles to get back up, grabbing hold of the wheelchair arms. ‘That’s the devil’s talk!’

  ‘It is not!’ Sorrow protests.

  ‘You’re making it up,’ the boy says. ‘Yours is a bunch of noise.’

  Sorrow pokes the boy in the chest. ‘You’re making yours up.’

  ‘You are!’ The boy’s face goes red. ‘You’re only a girl!’

  ‘And you’re too little to make Jesus!’

  ‘Sorrow!’ Amaranth grabs Sorrow by the shoulder as the man steps forward. They each put a hand on their holy child. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Amaranth tells him, pulling Sorrow toward her. The tambourines rattle and pretty girls produce empty baskets, even as the cars honk and the crowd threatens to engulf them, and the music surges and the baskets fill up with dollar bills. She hurries her daughter between the parked cars and the idling cars waiting for spaces. She rushes her toward the bar, fearing the wail of sirens and police, someone coming to take her child away. She rips across the busy street, cars honking, fists waving, dragging her daughter by the arm, but Sorrow’s head is turned back at the church and its people, even as she reaches the bar door and flings it open, calling into the darkness, to the smoke and the jukebox Elvis, ‘Bradley!’