Trina and Joyce exchange looks of resignation and a smile. Trina decides to cheer up her mother and herself. She switches from slow to fast. She looks around, and seeing no prefect or guard’s eyes on them, she slaps her mother on the behind and says that the clothes hanging like this in row upon row of lines resemble a theater full of headless people. Her mother looks about, and seeing that the coast is clear, she asks Trina if it could be that ghosts occupy the clothes. Trina replies that must be it exactly, an open-air theater of ghosts, an audience of ghosts looking at the two of them onstage, putting on a show. Joyce likes this. And what kind of a show are we in? her mother wonders. Trina says it is a show about a mother and her daughter lost in a forest and waiting for rescuers destined to come someday. Joyce asks if she can try harder to be happy as she waits to be rescued. Trina promises that she will be happy and will make a bigger effort to be happy if she can be sure of rescue someday and if it will please Joyce.
—Yes, it will please me to think that my daughter is happy with me no matter where we happen to be.
Trina passes pins to her mother, a couple at a time, and wet clothes, one at a time. They edge sideways as they fill the line. Trina asks her mother how the play they are in will end.
—Happily, therefore be happy. But the exact details of the happy ending aren’t known. Not even by the actors.
—The ghosts know, don’t they?
—Nope. They are in the audience because they don’t know the ending, either.
This makes Trina laugh and squash the laugh with her hand to her mouth. Joyce drags the basin of wet clothes along with them while Trina pulls her bucket of clothespins, a two-handed pull with her legs far apart, and the bucket of pins grows imperceptibly easier to drag as the line fills and dips with the weight of the clothes, and some drip and pockmark the dirt.
Trina hears her name from more than one source. Joyce looks alarmed and tries to hide her concern with a smile at her daughter, whose entire frame stiffens at the sound of her name. A prefect runs up to Trina and says she must come right away, at Father’s request. Seeing the concern on their faces, the prefect tells them not to worry, that this time it is a good thing. The prefect leads Trina to the dormitory, where she collects her flute. He leads her from the dormitory to Adam’s cage; the preacher waits there for them. He wears a starched and well-ironed white shirt and white pants with a prominent leg seam. He is about to give Adam his breakfast. The preacher greets Trina with a smile and says he hopes she will be his helper. Two guards, rifles slung over shoulders, stand a few paces from the preacher and Trina. One of the guards carries a bucket full of vegetable and fruit peels, some limp salad leaves, and lettuce and ripe bananas. The other holds a bucket of water.
—You play the flute while I feed him.
—Yes, Father.
At the sight of breakfast, Adam scrambles from his bed to the gate of his cage. The man points to the back of the cage, and Adam retreats there. The preacher takes the basket of food from the guard, fishes a bunch of keys out of his trouser pocket, flicks through them with a jangly sound, and stops at a large silver key. He inserts that into the fat lock and turns his wrist, and the lock flicks open. He sinks the bunch of keys in his pocket and stifles their song. Next he pulls the chain from the coupling and places lock and chain on the ground next to the cage door. A guard leaps forward and opens the door for the preacher, who steps inside with the basket of gorilla goodies. The guards become edgy. Trina plays and looks at the sandals on the preacher’s feet, crisscrossed black leather polished to a shine and held in place by a spotless silver buckle. His toenails are cut in a straight line and longer than she thinks they should be, with sharp edges on account of the straight cut, nails that could burst a balloon if one landed on his foot, or cut someone if he kicked them.
The preacher pours the contents of the basket into a trough and comes back out for the bucket of water, which he carries into the cage and pours into a large bowl. He stands inside and looks at Trina as she plays. Trina lowers the flute. He nods to Trina to resume playing and beckons her to join him in the cage. Adam eats, but his eyes follow Trina as she comes. He pauses with a mouthful of lettuce and remembers that he should view the two of them right there in the cage with him as his most important allies in the community. This man and child bring him food and music. The preacher watches Adam eat while Trina plays her flute. People around the compound stall in their chores and steal glances their way. Joyce stoops to pick up wet clothes and pretends to sort through the laundry as she fights to breathe and keep her head clear and see what her daughter is doing with the preacher. Adam reminds himself that all he has to do is obey the preacher, carry out orders from him to the letter. Adam pretends to eat as he looks askance at the preacher and at Trina playing her flute.
—A friend of yours did something wrong to me, to himself, to everyone at this commune, and to God.
The preacher’s words pound Trina’s body. She feels her energy drain from her. Her arms weaken, and she lowers the flute and stares with wide unblinking eyes at the preacher.
—You know his actions cannot go unpunished, don’t you, Trina?
—But Father. He won’t ever steal again.
—That’s not the point, Trina. Listen to me.
—But he’s good, Father. He made one mistake.
—If you say “but” to me again, I will lock you in this cage with Adam. Do you understand?
—Yes, Father. Sorry, Father.
—If I don’t make an example of him, others will take it as a sign of weakness, and anarchy will spread like wildfire through this community.
—Yes, Father.
—I need your help to restore order. You’re this boy’s friend, so you’re the best person for the job.
—What job, Father?
—Play some more.
He tells the guards to stand a little farther away. Trina makes up a tune that comes from listening to the wind in the trees and then the rain made by trees and the arrival of sunshine through that rain. Adam again stops chewing and listens. The preacher nods in time to the tune or some thought that roughly matches Trina’s playing. He touches Trina’s shoulder for her to follow him, and he walks backward out of the cage, so Trina steps backward as well. She glances behind her to see where to place the ball of her foot while avoiding the preacher’s razor toenails. After they’re out of the cage, the preacher replaces the heavy chain and big lock and keys it shut. The preacher walks away, leaving Trina standing next to the cage with the guards holding a bucket and a basket between them. The guards pass the basket and bucket to the nearest passerby and follow the preacher at a safe distance. The preacher pulls a notebook and pen from his pocket and, every few steps, notes something that is wrong, an eyesore in need of someone’s attention. He frowns throughout. A smile and a nod break out on his mask of distemper the moment Trina scoots beside him and curtseys. He takes her hand in his, and she wants to look at his hand to check why it feels soft and warm, but she just returns his grip and stifles an instinct to break into a skipping step. She knows her mother sees all this, so Trina tries to act as she imagines her mother would instruct her to act, with engagement but not unseemly enthusiasm. Therefore no skipping. Therefore she swallows the nursery rhyme brimming in her throat.
—Your flute playing’s coming along.
—Thank you, Father.
He places his pen in his shirt pocket and ruffles her hair and points in the direction of the school building for Trina to head there, and she runs toward it and looks over her shoulder at him and he waves at her and she waves back. She glances at the clothesline. Though Joyce stoops over a basin of clothes as if sorting through for the right item to fit on the last space left on the line, Trina knows her mother crouches at that particular angle to take a good look at how her daughter is conducting herself with the preacher and the beast.
Trina waves at her mother by pretending to wave away a fly. Trina even says, Shoo, fly. And she speaks quite loud. Every muscle in Joyce�
�s body wants to wave back at Trina, but she knows better than to attract the attention of a prefect or guard. Like every parent at the commune, she has to downplay public displays of affection toward her child. Trina belongs less to her and more to everyone in the community. Every adult is a parent to her child, and therefore Trina belongs to everyone as much as she belongs to her mother. And everyone in the community belongs to God, whose prophet is Father to all of them. Joyce allows herself a brief smile that she smothers by burying her face in a small wet shirt. She sniffs at the shirt as if she detects a sweat stain on it and, certain she has wiped that smile from her face, holds the shirt up to the light in an ostentatious act of inspection. A breeze whips through the rows of clotheslines, and the garments flap in a burst of applause. Joyce marvels at Trina seeing the ghosts in the clothes hanging on lines, and takes a bow to her audience. What a child. She has worked out already at her delicate age that everything they do at the commune, each chore or demonstration of loyalty, has to carry with it like a shadow a performance for some other thing that can never be shown. The chore can never be that Joyce simply hangs wet clothes on the line; Joyce tries to perform the chore as if she were Trina. What would Trina do on a stage in front of an audience of ghosts? Joyce thinks for a moment. She pauses and listens to the clothes. How to find the rationale for bowing in the open to no one in particular? She thinks like the mirror image of her daughter. It comes to her in a flash. She drops her clothespins, reaches down to retrieve them with a slight bend in her knees, and straightens again before the clothes. Her disguised genuflection is as good as taking a bow. The wind picks up. The clothes flap. Joyce sings to herself, barely a song, more a hum:
—Captain, Captain, put me ashore . . .
She sees her daughter with her on a boat with a man in a sweat-stained captain’s hat standing at the helm. The picture of the captain makes Joyce’s temperature rise. She replaces the captain and his boat with an image of Trina playing her flute.
NINE
In the schoolhouse, the head teacher asks the assembly of children who walks them from calamity to safety. Father, the children reply. With so many voices saying the word, it booms from the building and resembles many other words: fatter, farther, fadder. The youngest children sit in the front rows and the older children at the back. Teachers brandish four-foot-long flexible canes and stand around the sides with a few older prefects drawn from the most obedient of the children to help keep the others seated, looking straight ahead, and still, no fidgeting, no whispering, or else a quick flick of a cane on the arms or legs. The prefects decide one child is guilty of a gross infraction when he continues to whisper after a warning hit and fidgets unduly despite a tap of a cane on his legs. They pull the child out of the assembly and make him hold out a hand, and the cane tastes his flesh six times, three licks on each outstretched palm.
Trina sits at the front and waits for the preacher, as instructed. She spots Rose a few rows back; no sight of Ryan. Trina looks without looking at a mirror image of her mother. Trina has perfected the act of staring straight ahead with her eyes thrown to the corners to catch glimpses of things to her extreme left and right. She times her survey of the room to coincide with any disturbance that might occur. The moment another child is reprimanded, in the middle of the lash or extraction from the row of seats, usually through pulling that child by an ear, Trina looks behind and away from the focal point of the room to see what else is happening and who is doing what to whom. She finds it much more interesting to consider the events that will happen next rather than the events that are almost done and over with.
Where is Ryan? She maps the position of each teacher and prefect. The farther away from her the prefect or teacher, the more she can scope out her environment undetected. All she wants to do is scratch if she feels like it or cross and uncross her legs without someone shouting at her or lashing her arms and legs. Trina spots Rose, who looks particularly unhappy, barely able to stop herself from crying. Trina knows if Rose bursts into tears, she risks a beating. It happens all the time. The prefects beat a child who they think is crying for nothing. They say by beating the child, they are giving him or her a real reason to cry. Trina tries to catch Rose’s attention and smile and cheer her to save her from punishment.
First, she thinks, distract the prefects. Trina bumps the child to her right with her shoulder. That child bumps the child to her right, and the bumping runs along the row of seats until a prefect shouts at the children to stop their nonsense and two more prefects leave their stations and come over to investigate. Second, Trina turns to face Rose and beams to her the biggest smile she can fit on her face. Trina also crosses her eyes and sticks out her tongue and curls it up toward her nose. Rose smiles, and so do many other children who witness Trina’s antics. The prefects shout and tap at more children.
Trina scans the faces around her to take her attention away from the front of the room. She hates how an adult asks a question in order to occupy the thoughts of a child minute by minute. It seems every adult in the commune is bent on emulating the ways of the preacher. Trina sees it as rude, because she has enough things to think about already. She cannot bear setting aside all her thoughts for a relay of questions everyone knows the answers to. As the assembly shouts a reply to a question, Trina moves her lips soundlessly. She creates the impression of her engagement and full participation in the proceedings. If the teachers and prefects are far from her, she does not bother to move her lips. She uses the time to examine how the other children look, and she weighs on scales in her mind just how much happiness there is among the children as opposed to misery. This morning is ruled by misery. Ryan is missing. To get through her day, she decides to smile at as many children as possible.
—Who puts food on your table?
The head teacher paces across the front of the room and makes an arc of her cane in front of her chest and lashes the sides of her legs as if to spur herself on with her interrogative formulations. The children reply:
—Father.
Trina moves her lips, since she is seated three seats from the end of the row and easily observed by a prefect who stands nearby and stares at every child in the vicinity for seconds at a time, as if looking for some sign on the child’s body that will indicate imminent rebellion.
—Who protects us from our wicked ways?
—Father.
Trina lip-synchs some more.
—Who will guide us through the gates of paradise?
—Fadder, farther, farter.
Trina moves her lips and keeps a smile away from her mouth and confines her glee to her narrowed eyes. The children bow their heads, and the head teacher asks the Lord to forgive them their evil ways, for they know not what they do in their actions that serve the devil and their thoughts that invite evil into their minds and hearts, and only the preacher can save them from themselves, amen. Amen, the children reply. The prefects and teachers order the children to clear the central space of the assembly room. Beginning with the front row, each child takes a chair to a corner of the hall and adds it to a stack. Older children help the young ones, who cannot lift their chairs onto the stack. The children stand to the side. It takes five minutes of scraping and bumping to clear the hall and gather all the children around the sides of the room. The head teacher calls Trina to the middle of the room. Trina stands and looks around to see if she can spot Rose and whether this concerns Ryan. The head teacher extends her cane to Trina, who hesitates. The teacher says Trina had better take the cane or taste some licks from it right there in front of everyone. Trina considers the ultimatum. The head teacher leans in close to Trina’s ear and whispers that this order comes from the preacher, and not to obey it would mean terrible things for a lot of people, not just Trina. The teacher urges Trina to think of her mother. Trina takes the cane and holds it beside her. The cane is as tall as Trina.
The head teacher calls on the assembled children to pay special attention to this exercise. Prefects step forward and form two lines, o
ne on either side of Trina. Each prefect wields a similar cane. She says that a child among them went against the communal ideal by committing a crime of theft. Two guards march into the hall and join the front of the two lines. One of the guards is the young man recently promoted from a prefect as a reward for snitching on his mother and who likes to beat children. The head teacher says that the only appropriate lesson for a thief is a public beating. The young guard lifts a whistle to his mouth and waits for the head teacher to finish her speech. The whistle hangs on a plain piece of string around his neck. The head teacher says that by special decree of the preacher, Trina is to head the group who will carry out the punishment. The head teacher nods at the young guard, who looks at the door and blows his whistle. A shrill beaded sound reverberates in the hall. Trina’s ears ring. The whistle seals her ears tight. All eyes train on the entrance to the hall. Trina feels her body become limp, her blood drain, her air vacuum, her legs lose their polarity of bones. She looks for Rose in the crowd. She thinks of her mother. If only Joyce could walk in and put a stop to things.
Four guards march in with Ryan in the middle. The hall full of children harvests whispers, gasps, shuffling feet. The youngest of the children begin to whimper, Rose among them. Trina finds Rose, squeezes her eyes almost closed, and barely nods. Rose stems her tears. For Trina. Rose inhales deeply to calm herself. For Ryan. He looks around the room. His eyes are red. His clothes dirty. He stares blankly at Trina without showing the slightest sign of recognition. The guards position Ryan at the end of the two lines. He faces Trina, who stands at the other end. The young guard tells Ryan to walk to Trina and turn around and walk all the way back. He must stay in the middle of the lines. He must not bump into any of the prefects or guards. He must not run, he must not fall to the ground, or the whole thing will happen again from the beginning. He wants to know if Ryan understands. Ryan nods. Ryan looks at Rose and nods. This must happen. Ryan nods at Trina again. And the best way for it to happen, the smoothest way, is for everyone to play his part to the best of his ability. Trina nods back. The prefects and guards raise their canes and sticks, and Trina follows their gesture. She lifts the leaden weights of her arms with the cane in her hands. The young guard’s whistle slices the air to ribbons, and Ryan’s punishment begins.
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