by S. E. Amadis
I clenched my fists around Lindsay’s arm.
“I’d really rather prefer to wait until Lindsay finishes washing the dishes, and have her take us. She’s my friend, my dearest friend. And I want to spend as much time with her as possible.”
Yosef waved at me with deliberate nonchalance.
“Well, if you’uns were to move out here to live with us, you could see Tikvah as much as you like,” he suggested, not very subtly I had to admit.
I decided to remain on neutral ground on that subject.
“I’ll definitely think about it,” I assured him. “But at this moment, all we want is to go home. We don’t mind waiting until Tikvah finishes washing the dishes.”
Yosef bent and pulled up a stalk of clover and stuck it between his teeth.
“Yeah, well. You see. When Tikvah finishes with the dishes, she’ll have to go and weed the strawberry fields. Orders from above.” He gestured upwards vaguely. “So I think the best thing we can do, if you want to leave right now, is I’ll take you. Or you could wait till tomorrow. We’ve set some time aside so Tikvah can drive you to the stop tomorrow.”
He sucked on his plant and thumped his hat against his thigh.
“Well? What do you say? You trust my driving?”
Lindsay glanced at me pleadingly.
“Look,” I said firmly. “Why don’t we pitch in and help Lindsay weed the strawberry fields? Then she’ll be done with enough time to take us to the stop.”
But Yosef was shaking his head in disapproval, ripping away on the clover leaf with his teeth until it disappeared in his mouth.
“Naw. Even with your help it’ll take too long. We were planning on giving her the whole weekend to weed the strawberry fields, because that’s how long it takes. But we were going to grant her some free time before supper tomorrow so she could take you to the stop. But that’s all the time we can spare her.” He scowled at Lindsay.
Lindsay trembled slightly.
“Well, your choice.” He took a long drag on the clover stem, which was the only thing that remained of the plant, as if it were a cigarette. “You either wait till tomorrow night, or I can take you to the station right now.”
I thought of another endless night in this wilderness. I imagined Romeo gasping for breath again, except this time it didn’t ease up. I remembered Chaya’s tactics to “recruit” us.
“Come on, Romeo.” I pushed Romeo along the path towards our trailer. “Let’s go and pack our bags.”
Romeo’s look of immense relief only added to Lindsay’s stricken expression. She tailed after us, listless, as we walked to our trailer.
“So, you’re going to leave me? You won’t wait till tomorrow, and let me drive you to the stop?”
I leaned against the trailer door and crossed my arms.
“I’ll wait if you promise you’ll come with me,” I said sternly.
Lindsay shook her head.
“I can’t promise you that.” Her voice was a wail of despair. “What if I change my mind, and want to come back here? If I run away like that, I’ll never be able to come back again. Not here, and not in any of the communities that they have anywhere in the world. They’d know me. They’d have me banned for life.”
I shrugged.
“So? Don’t come back. You’ve lived thirty-three damn years without them and nothing bad’s ever happened to you for that. And don’t tell me you seriously like those blokes ordering you around like that, telling you what to do every minute of the day. You practically can’t even take a piss without their permission.”
I reached into the trailer and lugged my suitcase to the floor.
“Linds, you were always such a freedom-loving soul, before.” I paused. “No one could ever kick you around. So? You coming with us? Shall we wait until tomorrow for you?”
Lindsay bent down and grasped a clover stalk as well. Tears stung her eyes.
“No,” she whispered. “Go. I can’t come with you.”
I grabbed her in my arms.
“Hey, wait. I’ll wait for you. I said I would. Come with us tomorrow.”
Lindsay clenched her jaw and hardened her expression.
“I said I couldn’t go with you, and I meant it. So go. Leave. If you’re not planning on staying here with me, then go. Right now. Never come see me again.”
She dashed away.
“Lindsay,” I cried.
She covered her ears with her hands and loped towards the main house as fast as her legs would take her.
Chapter 16
Calvin heaved a tremendous sigh of relief and folded me in his warm embrace.
“Oh, thank heaven, thank heaven you returned to me, Annasuya,” he whispered. “I was so scared. These nasty, sleazy places have a way of sucking you in, in spite of your best intentions. So many people who go there, and never come back. You read all this horror shit on the internet.”
He rubbed my arms.
“Or, well, they might come back, like Lindsay did. But just long enough to get rid of their belongings and pack their bags.”
I snuggled against him.
“I told you I’d be back,” I whispered. “I could never leave you.”
“What if you had to choose between Lindsay and me?” he asked.
The question lingered in the air.
“How can people be so brainwashed in such a short period of time?” Calvin wondered.
“They were boasting that they could get anyone hooked on them within three days. Three days is all it takes to brainwash the majority of visitors to the community, apparently.”
“Well, it sure worked on Lindsay. But how do they do it? It just blows my mind.”
“All those hypnotic chants and sermons several times a day, I suppose,” I ventured. “They have a gathering three times a day. That’s three times every day you’re hearing ‘The outside world is doomed to hell and damnation.’ They tell you they’ll be the only ones who will be resurrected when the Messiah comes, and the rest of the people will suffer eternal torment in the afterlife.”
“And people actually believe that?” Calvin’s eyes were round with incredulity.
I nodded.
“Well, I can understand how it might impress a little kid, like that girl you were telling me about... what was her name?”
“Devrah,” I responded automatically.
“Yeah, her. At that age you’re impressionable and you’ll believe anything your trusted loved ones tell you. But don’t you tell me a fully grown woman like Linds has bought into all that, just like that.”
I strummed against my lips as if they were guitar strings.
“Well... you know that Lindsay just happened to be frantically searching for... something. And when you’re that desperate, you’ll grab at straws. And I guess seeing her mother so happy with those Witnesses, but rejecting the Witnesses themselves, it made her vulnerable to anything similar. She wanted what her mother had, just, only with other people. She was ready for something like that. Ripe and open to it.
“Besides which,” I added, “when you’re in there, everyone tells you the same thing. There’s no one around to contradict what you’re hearing day and night. I had Romeo with me, who hated it and gave me a different perspective. But I imagine if you go there all by yourself, like she did, and everyone tells you the same thing, you end up giving up the fight. You just get worn down.”
Calvin settled down in front of the computer.
“And I suppose, also lack of food and sleep,” he mused. “You said you were starving all the time.”
“Yeah, they don’t eat a whole lot over there. And they work hard. No wonder Lindsay was almost skeletal. And they go to sleep late, because they have to work late in the kitchens, and get up early.”
“Exactly.” Calvin jabbed with a finger at the desktop. “So you don’t have any physical forces to put up a fight with either. It’s easier to just give in and agree with everybody. Only way I can think of to explain how they managed to convince someone as rat
ional and intelligent as Linds in such a short time.”
I sat next to Calvin and peered over his shoulder at the laptop.
“I’m also wondering, perhaps Lindsay had some sort of problem she wasn’t telling us about? And maybe that group solved the problem for her?”
“Huh?” Calvin stared at me, mystified.
“Well.” I rubbed my eyes. “For example, they were telling me something about how kids over there never get bullied. If Romeo had been having trouble at school, a place like that would’ve seemed idyllic to me. And they said something about how I wouldn’t have to worry about getting kicked out for not being able to pay the rent, or worry about losing my job. They solve all your problems for you.”
“Mmmhh. I see what you mean.” Calvin strummed his lips too. “Yeah. I wonder... Do you think Lindsay was scared of losing her job, maybe? Or of not being able to pay the rent? Maybe she had troubles she wasn’t telling us about?”
“I dunno...”
*
Once again I met with Grant over coffee, this time for an interrogation — er, just a friendly chat, I meant — in search of some answers, of course.
I noticed his eyes were red and bulging out of his face as he got up to greet me when I walked into the café.
“I almost didn’t expect to see you again,” he said by way of explanation. “I was afraid they might’ve eaten up your brains too.”
I giggled.
“Don’t worry. My head’s tougher than that.”
Grant ordered a cappuccino for me.
“Let me invite,” he said. “To celebrate that you’ve come back in one piece, with no thoughts of running off to hole yourself up for the rest of your life there, like Lindsay.”
I waited until they brought my coffee, wondering how to broach this delicate subject.
“Grant,” I said at last, then hesitated.
He looked at me with expectation.
“I know maybe this is none of my business, but...” I stirred uncertainly at my coffee. “Did Lindsay ever talk to you about any problems she was having? Things she maybe couldn’t find any solution to?”
“What problems?”
“I don’t know. Was she worried about work, maybe? Was she having problems with her boss, or with some client, or she wasn’t selling any houses?”
Grant shook his head, casting his gaze about.
“Not that I can think of...” He dragged his hand down over his face. “Nope. I can’t recall her mentioning anything about that.”
“Or how about her rent? Did she say anything about it?”
“Nope. Well, the subject simply never came up...”
I stared into the depths of my coffee as if it held all the answers.
“Too bad I can’t read coffee grounds—”
“Oh! Or, wait!” Grant nearly leapt out of his seat. “How could I of forgotten?”
“Forgotten what?”
“There was this guy. He was threatening this lawsuit. He wanted to get back the money he’d paid for the house. He wanted to take her to court, said she was going to jail. He was out of his mind...”
“Wait. Hold your horses. What the hell are you talking about?” I cried. “And why didn’t she tell me about it? I thought we were best friends.”
“Well, probably cos she didn’t have time.”
I arched my eyebrows at him.
“It happened on the very Friday she went off to that sect. I met her over coffee just before she took off. She mustn’t’ve had time to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“About what happened, of course.”
I cocked my head.
“So, what did happen?”
Grant thumped his fingertips against his coffee cup.
“Seems a guy burst in on them on Friday morning, shrieking his damn head off. Said she’d lied to him. She’d said the house had been recently reformed and renovated, and it wasn’t. In fact, it was still with the original pipes and electrical systems that had been installed over forty years ago. There was a short circuit or something, and the house burnt down.”
“Well... I’m sure that wasn’t her fault.” I picked at my coffee stirrer for want of anything better to do. “Probably the original owner lied to her or something of the sort. That wouldn’t have been her fault. How was she to know he lied?”
“Yeah, but the problem is, the original owner never produced any sort of certification. Certifying that the house had been completely rewired, I mean. She only had his word on it. And you know in legal matters, having someone’s word on something isn’t enough. Like, the new owner said she was the one who lied, just to make a sale. How was she supposed to prove otherwise?”
“I’m sure, I’m positively sure sure sure, as in, I’d stake my life on it, that Lindsay wasn’t deliberately lying to her client.”
“Lying, no. But... She trusted the previous owner. She shoulda known better. She shoulda known that in this hard business world, you can’t just go on people’s words.” He bashed at the side of his coffee cup. “She should’ve asked for that damn certificate.”
I nodded, fidgeted with my hands.
“If she was in so much hot water, why didn’t she tell me?” I wailed.
“Like I said, probably didn’t have time,” Grant commented in a reasonable tone of voice. “She was in a hurry to catch that bus, after all.” He paused. “Maybe she meant to tell you when she got back. But of course, by the time her three days up there were over, all of that woulda fled her mind completely. The only thing filling up those grey cells of hers by then woulda been how to hightail it off to live up there as fast as possible. The pigs.”
I picked at my coffee stirrer some more.
“So what do we do now?” I passed my hands over my hair, pushing it back like a hairband. “I miss her so already. I can’t imagine living a life without her, or never seeing her again.”
Grant leaned back on the back legs of his chair.
“I’ve no idea, Annasuya. I haven’t the faintest.”
*
“Maybe she’ll see the light one day, and return,” Calvin said in what he intended to be a consoling tone of voice.
But I wasn’t consoled at all.
I curled up on my favourite sofa-futon with the burgundy spread and opened my laptop.
“Heart of Christ, sect,” I googled.
“Look, they’re almost a world-wide organization,” I said. “They’re present on almost every continent, except Africa.”
“Holy shit. You don’t say.”
“They use the typical techniques for brainwashing people.” I continued reading from the website. “They’re efficient. Whatever it is they do, it works. I don’t know why it works and I’m not a psychologist to try and figure that out, but the fact of the matter is, it does. Just looking at Lindsay proves it.”
I rested my hands on my keyboard.
“So, Calvin, what do we do now?”
He ogled at me.
“Do? What the hell do you mean, do? School’s started, in case you haven’t noticed, so what you do is you just continue pelting down the street in your running shoes with Romeo every morning to get him into class on time. I’ll spend the greater part of my useless life lounging about on the sofa doing absolutely nothing and enjoying a wild time, getting off my butt only when my boss calls and you...” He pulled himself close and kissed the top of my head tenderly. “You’ll keep building your clients and contracts and soon you’ll have a million dollar business. That’s what we’ll do.”
I stared at him. Then I stared at my laptop. Then I sighed.
“That’s not enough,” I sentenced, finally.
Calvin turned an inquiring look at me.
“I feel so helpless. Powerless,” I said.
Calvin sighed in sympathy.
“Yeah, I understand that. But what else can we do?” He drew himself to my side and began massaging my shoulders. “I guess you just have to accept the inevitable. What’s that famous saying? To have th
e serenity to accept those things that can’t be changed, or something like that?”
“Damn!” I shoved my laptop down onto the cushions beside me emphatically, making Calvin jump as the cushions whooshed upwards. “I can’t accept that. I just can’t, Calvin.”
“So?”
“And when something just won’t jive with me, that means... Well, that means something.”
Calvin chuckled.
“Haven’t the faintest what you’re talking about. What if I get some macaroni and cheese out on the board?”
From his position near his PlayStation, Romeo groaned.
“Macaroni and cheese again, Mimi?”
I jumped up.
“Tell you what. We’ll have macaroni and cheese, but I’ll make the cheese sauce. How’s that sound?”
Romeo cheered. I headed for the kitchenette.
“And as for me,” I continued matter-of-factly, “what I’m planning on doing is, I’m going to figure out a way to get Lindsay out of there.”
Calvin’s jaw nearly dropped off his face.
“You what, Annie? Did you just say something I think you didn’t say?”
“What I said. I’m getting Lindsay out.”
Calvin gazed at me deadpan.
“I thought you already tried to convince her to leave, and it didn’t go over with her.”
I shook my head.
“I didn’t say I was going to keep trying to convince her to leave.”
I pulled out a saucepan.
“You know, I’m not up to Twenty Questions,” Calvin remarked at last. “So if you’re not planning on trying to talk her into coming back, what did you have in mind, exactly?”
I glared at him.
“I’m sure you can guess.”
Calvin fingered his chin.
“Well, let’s say I’ve got my suspicions. But up till now I also thought you didn’t need a psychiatrist. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Actually, you are perfectly right,” I said. “We’re going to get Lindsay out by force, against her will.”
“Huh?”