by Caela Carter
We do all of that every day. Except today. Today we all do that without me.
I was maybe asleep against the window. I don’t know. But the crackling of fat and the salty smell that sneaks under the door pulls me away from the now bright-light window. It’s the sun making it bright, not the lights from Inside. It’s like I’m in a shower instead of a room.
It’s daytime again. Time to sneak out and go home.
But the crackling sounds and salty smell freeze my thoughts where they are.
I cross the carpet to stand with my face pressed against the door, trying to resist the smells and sounds. I shouldn’t follow them. If I eat his food, I might have to talk to him.
I might hear his soft voice.
I might start to like him.
That is the ultimate evil, to like the Darkness.
It won’t happen to me, Father Prophet. Hear me, please. Please, hear me.
But my stomach is stronger than my fear. It pulls me through the door and down that set of stairs.
I stand at the bottom and look down the short hallway into the bright kitchen. I like that it’s bright. I like that it’s full of noise: talking and chairs scraping and plates clinking.
But I can’t trust that; I can’t trust what I like.
There’s a woman there. There are children too; I hear their voices. But I can see the woman through the door. She’s about twenty feet away. Her back is to me. I can tell it’s a woman by the way long hair is piled in curls on her head, by the curve of her backside in her jeans, by her high-pitched humming.
I haven’t seen a woman in weeks or months.
She’s by the stove. Flipping the bacon. It’s her bacon. Woman’s bacon. So can I eat it? Whenever Father Prophet warned us about the evil Outsiders who would try to get us and make us doomed and unsafe forever, he was talking about men. At least, I thought he was. But she is a woman. And there’s bacon. It’s like my birthday. Maybe it is my big thirteenth birthday, ten days early.
Maybe this is what’s supposed to happen. Maybe this is the celebration that I’ve been preparing for, for almost thirteen years.
Except I know it’s not, because there was no ceremony in the Chapel and none of the other girls ever got bacon. We only have bacon at the feasts.
The woman turns. Her face is like none I’ve ever seen before. Eyes that are as brown as the darkest part of the bacon. Skin the color of the pomegranate tea we drink before bedtime. A wide smile with the whitest teeth.
“Zylynn,” she says. I don’t know how they keep knowing my name. “Come in and join us. Would you like some breakfast?”
I nod. I want to get home. I need to leave. I will find a way to leave. But first, there’s bacon.
I walk slowly into the brightness. It’s almost as bright as our own Dining Hall, which has lights on the ceiling and the walls. But this kitchen only has lights on the ceiling.
When I cross the white tiled floor, the smell almost knocks me over. My stomach is singing as my nostrils suck it in greedily. There are three kids at the wooden table in the corner. They’re smaller than me, much smaller, noisy and bouncy and they fall silent and stare at me when I walk in and I know that they will eat my bacon.
The woman turns with a plate in her hands. The plate is right at my elbow. There’s bacon and other stuff. Strawberries. Something round and flat and tan.
“Here,” she says like she thinks she’s going to give me the whole plate and I know that has to be a trick or a lie or both. She’s evil too. Father Prophet said not to trust anyone or anything in Darkness. He said not to give anyone any more words than you must to survive.
I need to get out of here. I need to run away.
But I also have to eat.
I take another step toward her, slowly. I raise my left hand, slowly. I raise my other one.
She stares at me like she doesn’t know what I’m doing. Like she’s never seen anyone eat before. Like she’s waiting for the perfect moment to yell “Ha-ha!” and to make the food disappear.
But I’m smarter than she thinks. I’m smarter than she is.
Bam. The bacon—two whole strips—is in one hand, a strawberry is in the other. My feet are moving. Fast now. Foot. Foot, foot, foot, foot. Those kids won’t catch me. That woman won’t make my breakfast disappear. Foot, foot, foot. Out of the kitchen, down the hallway. Boom, boom, boom, go my feet up the stairs. Then I’m back in the room with the stripes.
I stand there with my back against the closed door and I stare at the treasures, the huge breakfast, the salty and sweet snacks. I am all alone, with food. I can eat slowly now. No one can come and steal them. No one can stop me.
Maybe it is good to sleep in a room with no one else.
My teeth sink into the bacon. It’s salty. It’s full of stuff, filly-up stuff. I can feel all the stuff as it falls from my tongue to my throat to my belly. Stuff that will line my stomach with relief.
On my second bite, he bangs a fist on the door and my head bounces against it. “Zylynn?”
I chomp again.
“Zylynn, sweetie? Come down. Have breakfast with us.”
I lick the strawberry. Sweetness explodes against my taste buds. So much better than eating white, pasty oatmeal.
“You didn’t get very much to eat, Zylynn.”
I look at my hands. Two whole strips of bacon. One huge strawberry. He’s trying to trick me.
He’ll come in here and take it back. He’ll be in here any minute.
But he doesn’t. Maybe he can’t enter the Pink Stripes Room. Maybe Father Prophet stopped him somehow.
The man is gone. I eat one bite in peace before there’s a tapping, like fingernails on the other side of the door. Long ones. Painted ones. “Zylynn?” It’s the woman.
She might be tricking me too. She might be there saying my name so that he can come in and confuse me with lies until I am also a Liar and evil. “Zylynn?” Her voice is so high. “It’s Charita. Can I come in?”
I step away. Then she’s in the room.
When the women came home, there was a feast. Meat. Fruit. Sweets.
We would prepare for weeks, the men and the boys and the girls and the Gatherers-in-Training—the girls who are over thirteen but not yet old enough to go out into the Darkness every day. We would cook and decorate, like we were supposed to. There was a buzzing excitement that ran through our veins for days and days as we waited and waited for them to arrive. We were ready for the feast and the singing and the cheering and the games that always happened when the women came home.
They would descend on the Meeting Hall in the first circle, the one between the gates of the whitewashed wall and the Girls’ Dorm. The new souls that our women had brought with them would stare wide-eyed and scared because they weren’t used to joy yet. They had never seen Light. We would sing and dance and throw flowers at them and celebrate.
The women who came back would hold us against their chests and rock back and forth, tears falling on our heads as they squeezed all of the Darkness out of their bodies.
The feast was always good. We would eat and eat and eat. And during the eating, each new grown-up member would present himself or herself to Father Prophet. They would kneel before him where he sat on his throne. They would lay everything they brought at his feet—money and jewels and electronics. All of the things that were making them greedy and keeping them in the Darkness. Then they would stand and Father would say, “Mother God welcomes you to her Light.” And we would pause our eating to applaud. The new men would become Brothers and get a work assignment like Caretaker or Teacher or Messenger or Official to the Prophet. The new women train to be Gatherers.
The new kids would eat with us. Then they’d go back to the dorms with us. They’d be assigned their bed and their whites. They’d drink their tea. They’d go to sleep. Just like us. They’d be us.
After the feast was good too. It was always a long time until a Hungry Day or a pinging at the fence or any other sort of punishment. Mother God usuall
y waited for the women to be home a few days before she punished us again.
But the women would be tired. They’d sleep in the Men’s Dorms, all the way in the second circle, for days. They’d forget the singing. We’d go back to eating oatmeal and mushy pasta and potatoes and bread-and-lard for every breakfast and every dinner. We’d go back to regular days: mornings with the Caretakers, school with the Teachers, exercises with the Coaches, Coming to the Light with Father Prophet, bedtime prep with the Caretakers, sleep.
When the women were around, there were always hugs.
Father Prophet says that hugs are only for between a woman and a child. He says that’s the only time Mother God is present. He says other hugs are “laying claim” and “laying claim” is the ultimate evil. So we’d go weeks and days and months with no hugs. Then there were hugs-hugs-hugs-hugs and just when our arms and bodies got used to it, the women would be gone again.
During the first days after the feast, the newest kids would tell us their names. Sometimes they got to keep them. Those names were short and sharp in our ears and on our tongues: Mark and Zach and Jill.
The boys and girls Father Prophet liked the most would get new names, ones that were soft and a whole bunch of beautiful sounds linked together. Like Thesmerelda. Like Jaycia. Like Zylynn.
During the first few days, when the women were still there, Father Prophet would come to the kids’ building every night. He’d teach us a little lesson about the four most Ultimate Truths:
1. Everything good comes from Light.
2. Light, all Light, is Mother God and Mother God is all Light.
3. There is no Father except the Prophet; there is no Mother except God.
4. We belong to someone else.
“It’s freeing,” he’d say. “Soon you will see what true freedom is.” He’d lead the bedtime prayer and tell us all good night. “Good night, Melhanisian.” “Good night, Sharuma.” “Good night, Zylynn.”
Then he’d leave.
The babies would cry because they were addicted to Darkness.
We’d all fall asleep thinking of the hugs, hoping the women wouldn’t be gone for so long the next time.
Now there is a woman in the striped-wrapping-paper room. She’s holding that plate, the one I stole from, the one overflowing with food.
She takes a step toward me. I take a step back. Then another. Another.
I forget how the carpet feels soft against the soles of my feet until my back is pressed against the wall next to the window.
“I’m sorry you’re afraid, Zylynn,” she says. “Do you want your dad to come chat with us too?”
Dad is Louis, the Outsider, the soft voice, the one who drove me into the Darkness.
I shake my head.
Dad is scary. This woman is also scary. She’s also an Outsider. She’s also a Liar and evil and dirty.
She takes another step toward me. She’s going to take my bacon. She’s going to tell me to put the fat red strawberry back on that plate.
I take my palm and shove the fruit into my mouth, green stem and all. It’s too big for my jaws. I stretch my lips over the parts of the berry protruding from between my teeth.
She looks at me with big eyes, like she’s scared of me, like I’m the one from Darkness. I bite down on the fattest part of the strawberry and juice runs down my throat and between my lips and down my chin. The little seeds crunch between my teeth. My entire mouth—taste buds, teeth, tongue, throat, lips—is singing for joy, but the rest of my body is trembling so much I can hear my bones clink against each other.
The woman takes another step closer. I can’t back up anymore. If she tries to touch me, I will jump out the window.
She puts the plate down on the little table next to the pink bed.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Zylynn. Neither is your dad,” she says. “We won’t do anything you don’t like, OK?”
Her voice is so nice and slippery and musical and I want to believe her. But I can’t. Because they already did something I don’t like. They already took me away, into the Darkness.
She keeps talking. “If you want to eat in your room, that’s OK,” she says. My room. I wonder if she thinks the pink stripes are mine. I wonder how she doesn’t know that nothing can belong to me because I belong to someone else. “Why don’t you finish your breakfast and then we’ll get you cleaned up and into some clean clothes?”
I look down at what I’m wearing, our clothes. The ones we always wear. White T-shirt, white undershirt, white underwear, white shorts. I look back up at her. These clothes were just cleaned some number of days ago. There are only a few dirty gray streaks on my shorts; my T-shirt is not even that yellow yet.
“Do you want more breakfast?” she asks.
She looks at the plate on the table. So do I. I still have the piece of bacon in my fist. I still have a little strawberry on my tongue; the green part is wedged between my molars. But the plate is exploding with colors and smells and more food than I’ve ever seen in one spot. She seems to think it’s all for me. She seems stupid.
Or that’s all the food I’ll ever get. Maybe that’s my food until I figure out how to escape. Maybe that’s my food for up to ten days.
I nod.
“Do you want to eat it alone?”
I nod again.
She’s gone. The plate is still here.
Three
FATHER PROPHET STILL HAS NOT COME.
It’s a few hours later, I think. The Liars are everywhere I look, in every room, in every place. I can’t get out of here.
I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to open my mouth and leave my voice here, my mark here, myself here in the Darkness. So I follow their directions, I do what they say, while in my brain I promise Father Prophet over and over that I’m not forgetting him.
Charita runs me a bath. I’ve never seen a bath before, but I know what one is. Then she leaves me all alone in the bathroom, but she takes my clothes, so there’s no way I can run away now. The bathroom is not-quite-white everywhere and the lights on the ceiling are bright, almost like the lights at home. They reflect and bounce off the floor and the walls and the tub, which is also white and right in the same room as the toilet and sink.
I sit in the tub. All alone in the room. It’s so weird to be alone.
The hot water swishes around my body, pulling dirt off my skin and turning me soft and wrinkly. I rub the orange washcloth against my face, my bony cheeks and jaw and chin, and I scrub until everything feels raw and sore and new.
I like the bath.
I like the three strips of bacon, the two strawberries, the one round-and-flat circle thing with the sticky brown sweet stuff that are now sitting in my stomach making it feel warm and full and comfy.
I like the other two strips of bacon, the other two circle things, and the other four strawberries that are hidden on the plate under the bed in the Pink Stripe Room.
I know that all of these things are lies. They’re tricks. I know that as soon as I start to believe them the Darkness will descend and the Outsiders will finally reveal themselves to be the evil people they are. I know.
I can’t help what pleases my eye or what feels good on my skin.
But I won’t like them so much that I believe in them. I won’t like them so much I start to trust that they will stay.
I won’t.
“We live in the evil state of America,” Father Prophet said in Chapel soon after Jaycia was taken. “We live in a state where choice belongs only to those who are at least eighteen years of age, where if they get you they will not understand the urgency of your thirteenth year. Every one of you has found the Light, regardless of your youth. The Light is the most important thing about you. Outside our compound is a Dark state that does not understand that Light will ultimately win.”
We, all the kids, sat on the benches in the front of the Chapel like always. In the early morning, the stone was hard and cold against the bones in our butts and backs. Father Prophet was
talking about Jaycia. Even though a lot of the kids had forgotten her already.
I tried to remember her. I tried imagining her blond hair and her blue eyes and her laugh, which always felt like soap bubbles floating from the bed next to mine.
I worried that if it wasn’t for the Abomination, I’d be one of the kids who forgot her completely.
“The Light will always win in the universe,” he said. “But the Darkness can win in you. It wins in thousands of souls who choose to stay far away. It wins in anyone who spends his or her childhood here, but is not here, with me, on this stage when she turns thirteen, when he turns thirteen.”
We felt a shiver go up our spines. Not being here at sunset when we turn thirteen: we couldn’t imagine anything worse.
After we turn thirteen, we start training to do the Work. The teen boys train for different things: as Cooks or Caretakers or Coaches or Officials who help Father Prophet all day long. The teen girls train to Gather Souls. They all go to school with us, but only in the morning. In the afternoons, we can see the thirteen-, fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-, seventeen-, eighteen-, nineteen-year-old boys all over the compound, helping out all of the Brothers. Preparing to be Brothers themselves in one way or another. The teen girls spend afternoons in another classroom where they learn how to go Outside. How to guard themselves against the dark. What to say in order to earn new souls, to make people follow them into Mother’s Light.
Once we turn thirteen—even though we still go to school and train—we’re not kids anymore. We’re real. We’re a part of the Light.
We wait our whole lives to stand on that stage in our Ceremony. And if we aren’t there at that moment, if we don’t turn those Lights on with Mother God, our whole life was a waste.
“You all choose to be here, right?” Father Prophet said. “You each choose to be here, right? In the Light?”