My Life with the Liars

by Caela Carter

  “Zylynn.” I hear Charita’s voice call from below the pink stripes. “Come down for lunch!”

  I keep forgetting that lunch happens every day here.

  “This is a new decree,” Father Prophet said.

  There was a wiggling of excitement through the Chapel, a straightening of spines, an opening of ears.

  I was being held against a larger body. I was small, tiny. My head was on a chest and my arms were draped around a pair of huge shoulders and my eyelids were heavy. “Don’t fall asleep,” a soft voice kept whispering in my ear. “You can’t fall asleep in Chapel, Zy-Zy. Father will get angry.”

  I strained to keep my eyes open.

  We were sitting on stone benches and in front of us Father Prophet stood on the small red stage with the scratchy floor. He wore bright-white pants with a certain crease in the front of each leg. He wore a white T-shirt and a white cape was draped over his shoulders. His hair was brown and his face was round and mushy like if I stuck my finger into it, it would hold that shape. His eyes were gray.

  He closed them and began to mumble under his breath. “Hem in ay ah. Hem in ay ah. Hem in ay ah.” The sound was rhythmic and soft in my ears and I felt my eyelashes flutter against the neck of the body that was holding me.

  “Open those eyes, Zy-baby,” he said, barely audible. “Listen to the Father.”

  Father Prophet’s voice boomed against the stone benches and the stone walls and the ceiling with its oblong lights running across it. “Mother God is here! Let us be grateful for her presence.”

  We jolted upright. We kissed the air to show our love for the Creator of Light.

  “Have we pleased you, Mother God? Have we been good Children?”

  We held a breath, waiting for her answer. Her answer would determine everything about the coming week: how much food we would eat, how often we’d get to be outdoors, who would stay and who would go.

  “Hem in ay ah. Hem in ay ah. Hem in ay ah.”

  Now I was awake. My little heart beat against my little rib cage, my little brain eager to soak up whatever new words or teaching Mother God had for us today.

  With a whoosh of his breath and his cape, Father Prophet stopped chanting. He almost seemed to deflate to normal height and normal eyes.

  “She is not happy,” he said.

  The big people all around muttered immediately: “Mother of Light, Mother of Light, we are sorry. Mother of Light, Mother of Light, we deserve nothing. Mother of Light . . .” The Act of Contrition. I was too small to know it back then, though.

  “SILENCE!” Father Prophet belted.

  Silence.

  “She says we are bothering her,” he said.

  We rattled with surprise. We sucked in air.

  “She says there are too many small requests every day. She’s getting tired, weary.”

  He squished his gray eyes closed again.

  “What shall we do?” he asked.

  I felt the body I was braced against deflate. I felt the entire room deflate. The energy zapped from body to body to body: worry, fear, guilt, shame. We all felt the same things like we were supposed to.

  “It is not your fault,” Father said. “I told you to pray to her. But how could you know what to pray? You all come from Darkness. You all work ceaselessly to cast the dark ways far from your souls. You cannot be expected to pray perfectly.”

  There was nodding now, mumbles of agreement. Relief.

  I was awake, staring at the stubbly chin of the person who was holding me. I was confused.

  “I will fix it,” Father said.

  We erupted into calls of “Thank you, Father” and “Yes, yes” and “I believe, we believe” and “Praise the Light.”

  “Say your bedtime prayer,” he said when we calmed down. “Say your morning prayers, say the standard prayers that you have learned, that you have been taught here Inside. Say only the prayer that you have perfected through me.

  “But do not use your own prayer. If you have a specific need that you think is deserving of Mother God’s time and attention, you must bring it to me. First. And I will present your need to Mother God, Creator of Light.”

  I felt the body that was holding me go stiff. I saw the green eyes in his head go angry. From the bodies around me there was still relief, thanks, praise. But something was not right with the arms clasping me close.

  “Do not speak directly to Mother God in your own words,” Father Prophet concluded. “I will bear that burden for you. I will be your voice. I will take your prayers to our Mother perfectly. And she will always answer me.”

  “Zylynn,” Charita says from behind my head as I sit again at the table in their little kitchen. “Do you like turkey?”

  Her words shake the memory from my brain leaving me only with questions. Was it Louis holding me so many years ago? Was he really there? Why can I remember this now?

  “Zylynn? Turkey?” Charita repeats.

  I shake my head to clear the questions. I have to find a way home. I can’t let Curiosity get into my brain now.

  “Is that a no?” Charita asks. “You don’t like turkey?”

  They must be stupid here, in Darkness, because they haven’t figured out that I don’t want to talk. That I won’t if I can help it. And, of course, everyone likes turkey. It’s meat. A delicacy. But I know whatever they will give me, turkey or peanut butter or strawberries or Pop-Tarts, I know it’s a lie. They can’t figure out what I know.

  I’m angrier at Charita now that we’re back on her compound with all of those lies piled on my bed. She made me like the clothes. But I won’t believe in them. I know that as soon as the Darkness addicts me, the clothes and food and hugs and smiles will all disappear.

  “Turkey, Zylynn?” she says again.

  I chew the inside of my cheek.

  Across the table Junior and Jakey stare at me with those bright green eyes like they think I’ll answer. I feel sorry for them, for never having a chance.

  But eventually the Gatherers will come for them. Eventually they’ll learn the truth and get to choose between Light and greed. Everyone gets the choice at some point. That’s what Father Prophet said.

  Even though some of the Children Inside the Light choose to turn back to Darkness. Some choose to become Liars all over again. Did Louis do that? Why would anyone do that?

  A little hand tugs at my elbow. I turn and there’s Elsie. Her hair is in braids again today and her smile reveals a row of white teeth divided with huge gaps. “I like turkey,” she says. “Do you?”

  When she talks to me, it’s different, right? She’s not an Agent of Darkness. She’s too small.

  “Everyone likes turkey,” I say.

  She smiles.

  I have a feeling inside my chest, a lightness, almost like its own little smile. I have a feeling like I put that smile there on Elsie’s face.

  It’s nighttime again. I say my Bedtime Prayer under the lightbulb and lie down on the bed. I kick the plastic bags to the floor hoping that the crinkling sound will escape from between the pink stripes and somehow remind Louis of what he said a few nights ago. Make him take me back.

  I beg for a way home all day every day and I’m still here.

  It feels unfair. It feels like Louis broke a promise even though I only heard him say it through the pink stripes in the first place. And even though he’s a Liar and I can’t trust anything he says.

  It’s been four days.

  Now there are two plates of food under my bed, brimming over. I only took a few bites at dinner tonight; my stomach is full, so full it aches. My belly button was pushing out toward the mirror on the wall when I looked. I didn’t know a stomach could get this full off actual food, not just water.

  But I have to stop thinking about food and smiles and hugs.

  Tomorrow there will only be six days before my thirteenth birthday. I cannot believe I already failed for four straight days. I need to spend every second remembering Father Prophet so that he will give me a way to escape.
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  I close my eyes and try to see his face. The gray, darting eyes. The white collar around his neck. The gray hair so short it would tickle our palms if he was in a good mood and let us touch it. The stubbly cheeks that hung off his eye sockets and jaw in excess.

  I remember all of those things about it, but when I try to put them together, to make a picture of his face in my brain it doesn’t happen. It gets mixed up with Louis’s ears and Junior’s eyes and Elsie’s smile.

  No! Think! I tell myself. Father Prophet.

  I shake my head to erase all of the other colors and faces and thoughts. I concentrate on his crooked nose, lumpy forehead, large waist, creased white pants.

  He’s not there. Only pieces of him are floating around in my head. I can’t make my brain put the puzzle together.

  My heart speeds up and my breath catches. I’ve forgotten him already. In only a few days. I can’t picture him anymore.

  Father, Father, Father, I plead. Help me.

  Nothing happens. Nothing has been happening. I keep talking to him but I’m still here in Darkness and hearing nothing. Why won’t he come?

  Now I’m close to angry, which has to be worse than simple forgetting. Now I’m close to panic, which is the opposite of trust.

  Who can I turn to if Father is gone?

  What would happen if . . . ?

  It’s Curiosity making me do it. A little Curiosity mixed in with good things like desperation and despair. For the first time in my life, I turn in the wrong direction.

  Mother God, Creator of Light, I don’t mean to bother you with this, but I need to get back into your Light. Will you please help Father Prophet find me?

  Will you please protect me from the Darkness?

  The light above my head flicks brighter, dimmer, brighter, dimmer, brighter, dimmer.

  If Father Prophet can’t hear me, at least she can.

  Still, I feel guilty as I fall into sleep.

  Ten

  THE KNOCK ON THE PINK STRIPES Room door the next morning is not click-y and full of fingernails. It’s not rough and low like Louis’s either. It’s a bouncy little sound that seems too small for knuckles.

  I turn to look at the closed door, but I don’t say anything. I said too many words yesterday.

  I’m sitting at the window again, staring out of it and down the street toward Inside but I’m not picturing Father Prophet sweeping me up in a laser of light. I’m trying, but I can’t quite remember his face, or the way his hand felt when he patted the top of my head, or the way his voice bounced off the stone benches in Chapel.

  Will he be mad at me for praying to Mother God? It felt like I couldn’t reach him; but what if I didn’t try hard enough? What if praying to Mother God means I’ll never get back Inside? Or my punishment will be even worse than a Hungry Day or a pinging or standing between the boards? The worst punishment yet?

  But Mother God is the Creator of Light and order and everything good. She’s supposed to love me. So how could she punish me forever? As long as I get back to her, she won’t punish me forever. But if I’m stuck out here . . .

  Bonk, bonk, bonk.

  The knocking on the door continues.

  I look down at my feet. I’m wearing the green flip-flops, the blue jean capris, the yellow T-shirt. I’m wrapped in a rainbow. My heart squeezes between the prongs of my ribs when I think about how fun it was to dress myself this morning. But the guilt is little; it’s smaller than it was yesterday or any day before.

  And the parts of me where the guilt is gone are filled up to the top with something else: sadness. Loneliness.

  With one final bonk the door inches open. It creaks behind my head.

  “Zylynn?” says Elsie’s squeaky voice. Her head sneaks around the white door, one braid swinging toward the floor. She fuses her eyes on me.

  I nod.

  She’s smiling so huge it’s like a pinprick to my heart.

  She scurries across the gold carpet coming closer and closer to me and I think about hiding against the wall like I would if Louis were approaching, but I don’t because she’s so small or because her smile is so big or because of what happened yesterday when I told her I like turkey. I’m not afraid of her.

  She bounces over the bed and drops to sitting at my feet.

  “Cool!” she says, too loudly. “What is that?”

  She points to my lap. In it is the turtle. Even though it’s plastic, it feels warm and happy on my leg, like a stone that’s been in the sun all day.

  I don’t want to let it go, but I hand it to her.

  “Cool,” she says again, in a hushed whisper. I wonder if cool and warm are opposites Outside. She turns it over in her hand, studying it, then stands it up on the floor and makes one of its legs go back and forth. “Hiyaaah! Hiyah!” she says. “I’m kicking all the bad guys, see, Zylynn?”

  I look at her on my carpet, smiling at me.

  Could this be why Father Prophet let them take me? Is Elsie my reason? If I bring her back, will I finally be forgiven for my Abomination? Do I need to do something that huge to make up for the most awful thing I ever did?

  “Did Mom get him for you while we were at camp yesterday?” she asks.

  I nod. “Mom” is what they call Charita. They call Louis “Dad,” like he said. When they say they’re going to “camp” it means they aren’t here in the house or on the compound. It’s confusing. I don’t know why everyone can’t go by their names and stay where they’re supposed to be.

  “Hiyah!” she says again, with another fake kick. Then she looks up at me and her eyes are so wide and so green and so much like mine. I want to sit on the floor with another plastic turtle and let her pretend to kick it. “It’s so cool that you share,” she says.

  Share (v.): to divide and distribute, apportion

  My heart shakes in my chest. I do not want her to divide my turtle.

  My turtle. Is it really mine? My pulse is like the loudest wind ever in my ears. My heart hangs—heavy, guilty—close to my stomach.

  “I always wanted a sister,” she goes on.

  I flip for the word but it isn’t there. She’s looking at me like sister is me, even though I was already daughter. It’s all so confusing and I only want to be Zylynn.

  Actually, not even that. I only want to be a part of the Light.

  But with my turtle.

  Elsie holds the turtle toward me, the yellow part of his shell first so that I can see his face, and his arms look like they’re reaching out to grab my hand. “What’s his name?” she asks.

  I tilt my head.

  “He’s cute,” she says. “What’s his name?”

  Her smile finally makes me use my voice. “I don’t know.” Do turtles have names?

  She giggles. How can she do that so easily? “He’s your turtle,” she says. “You should give him a name.”

  My turtle.

  “I should?”

  Elsie nods. “What do you want to call him?”

  I shrug. She smiles at me for so long I can’t keep my mouth still. “Turtle,” I say finally.

  She giggles again, nodding. “Turtle,” she says. “Can Turtle sit between us at breakfast?”

  “I don’t know.” How would I know? How does she expect me to know these things?

  I feel a strange pinch in my cheeks, an ache in my jaw. I move my fingers to my lips and that’s when I realize it: I’m smiling too.

  There’s a bang behind us. We both jump. When I turn, Louis is standing on the other side of the open door, coughing and wiping his eyes.

  “Daddy!” Elsie squeals. In an instant she’s back across the room and has climbed onto his hip like he’s not an Agent of Darkness at all. I brace myself to save her if I have to.

  “Meet Turtle,” she says, shoving the toy into his wet face.

  “I’m heading to work, girls. You keep playing, OK?”

  Play (v.): to exercise or employ oneself in amusement; to engage in a game alone or with others

  Elsie squeezes the
Liar’s neck in a hug and I wonder: playing. Is that what we were doing?

  Back at home, after breakfast, we will all go to school. Well, all of us except me.

  Our first class is Computers, then we start Outside Studies. We will sit in rows: oldest girls in the front, then oldest boys, medium girls, then medium boys, small girls, small boys. The Teacher will walk between the aisles, his feet shifting over the sand. He’ll yell a new word.

  “Turtle!”

  And we’ll chant the answer. “Any reptile of the order Testudines, comprising aquatic and terrestrial species having the trunk enclosed in a shell consisting of a dorsal carapace and a ventral plastron.”

  Or he’ll yell a word we learned years and months ago. It might be new for the littles or the mediums. “Helicopter!”

  And we’ll chant the answer. “Any of a class of heavier-than-air craft that are lifted and sustained in the air horizontally by rotating wings or blades turning on vertical axles through power supplied by an engine.”

  Sometimes one of us will get it wrong and that one will have to stand between the painted wooden poles with our back pressed too tight against one of them until class is over and there’s a blue streak painted next to our spine. The only color we ever wear on our clothes. Shame.

  Unless there’s a stranger in the classroom. Sometimes there are strangers. They started showing up months or a year ago. Recently. A man or a woman dressed in black with a jacket on, even when there’s no air-conditioning in the classroom. The strangers never say anything to us. They sit in the back and take notes.

  There was a stranger there when Hermeel got the answer to “helicopter” wrong. He stood. He was walking toward the Boards of Shame to press his back against them.

  And Brother Manamak said, “Sit, Hermeel.” We didn’t know why. He got the answer wrong. He was not supposed to sit. But Hermeel sat. The stranger’s pen went scratch-scratch-scratch on this board thing she was carrying around.

  Hermeel didn’t get punished until later. Until after she left. He didn’t get the Boards of Shame, he got a pinging instead. He stood with his nose pressed to the fence, as close to Outside as he could be while he was still in the Light. And we stood a few feet away from him. I didn’t like pinging him with those rocks that day. I didn’t like flinging the rocks so they would hit his legs and back. Usually the pingings are fun. Usually they’re Mother God’s way of using us to get her justice. Usually we squeal with delight when we get a direct ping.