by Caela Carter
“That’s Uncle Alan,” I blurt. “But with hair.”
Elsie giggles. “Now he’s bald.”
Charita pats her leg. “Elsie, honey, that’s not nice,” she says. I stare at Uncle Alan and his hair. Short. Yellow. Clumpy against pale skin. Just like mine.
“Why does his hair look like mine?” I ask.
Now Charita’s head turns back to me quick-quick. Her smile is so huge. “You noticed that, huh? It’s because he’s your uncle. Just like—did you notice that Elsie and Junior and Jakey and Louis all have green eyes like you?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Well, that’s because they’re your brothers and sister and you are Louis’s daughter.”
Questions flood my brain. Curiosity rubs her furry body up and down my legs making me squirm. But I keep them there in my skull. If I ask her more about the green eyes, she’ll say that thing about Louis again. And I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to start yelling like I did yesterday, not in front of Elsie.
I need Elsie to want to come back with me. I can’t scare her.
Charita turns a few more pages and we watch Elsie stretch into a three- four- five-year old. Then she flips the book closed. On the front there is a piece of tape with ELSIE printed on it.
“That was fun,” Charita says. “Now who wants ice cream outside?”
Elsie, Junior, and Jakey all start screaming in that weird way that screaming can be happy. I’ve figured out that their “outside” means “in the air.”
And now I know that strawberry ice cream is cold and smooth and sugary and filly-up and delicious.
It’s later in the day, right before dinner, and Charita is herding us through the kitchen to go upstairs and wash our hands. The photo albums are still on the coffee table. Six big bound-up books. Six strips of tape. I only glance at the one closest to the stairs.
ZYLYNN.
“Perhaps you are curious,” Father Prophet said. “Perhaps you wonder this or ponder that.”
In Chapel. Hard stone against my back, cold on the back of my arms. Jaycia sitting too close to me. Humming softly.
“Perhaps you think you’d like to experience, see, taste, or feel what cannot be found here Inside.”
Jaycia stopped humming and stared at Father, hard. Her fingers gripped the edge of the stone bench until her hands turned red.
“Perhaps you think you cannot help it when Curiosity, conniving seductress that she is, climbs into your soul and orders you to test the Darkness out, to play with the edges of your Light, to ask the questions. It is hard for you; I know. I am compassionate to all of you who are born of Darkness and greed and the Outside. I understand Curiosity can be a powerful force.”
I thought Jaycia might rip the skin over her knuckles, the way she was clutching the edge of the bench.
“But remember this: The Light is more powerful than any force.”
He paused. The lights shined off every inch of his white pants and shirt and cape. I knew to my bones that Curiosity would never get to me. Father would always keep me safe.
“If you do succumb to the traitorous vixen that is Curiosity, if you do not try hard enough to summon your Light and cast her out, then you are responsible for all of the pain that will befall us this week, this month, ever. Curiosity is the most cunning disguise of Darkness.”
Jaycia was shaking, but only I could tell.
I worried for her. I worried that Curiosity had gotten her already.
It’s the middle of the night. I stand in the open doorway of the Pink Stripes Room and stare out. The hallway is dark. Pitch-dark. If I step into it, if I let Curiosity make that choice for me, my skin will burn. My hair will fall out. My face will contort. I’ll be marked forever.
She is wires wrapped around my rib cage, pulling me forward, pulling me into the night.
The last time I left my bed in the middle of the night, I was cast into Darkness.
I make the same promise I made last night. I’ll tell them to take me home. They’ll ask what I want to do again. And then I’ll say it.
Curiosity yanks and I’m standing in the black. The Darkness. Except there’s a puddle of light climbing up the stairs. I move toward it. The light in the living room is on.
I feel more alone in the living room than I do in the Pink Stripes Room. It’s lonelier to be somewhere that’s usually full of people.
There are sounds around me: the dishwasher in the kitchen, the creak of a floorboard over my head. But they aren’t human sounds. I glance over my shoulder to make sure Charita and Louis and everyone else stayed where they sleep and didn’t follow me and don’t know I’m here because I don’t want them to know that I want to know what they maybe do or maybe don’t want me to know.
I’m only going to look at the cover of the book. The tape. I’m not going to open it.
I was right. The black letters are bold against the white tape in the living room light: ZYLYNN.
There’s ELSIE, JUNIOR, JAKEY, VACATIONS, JUST THE TWO OF US. And ZYLYNN.
Curiosity has her fingers pulling my hair, her palms pushing my back, her elbows nudging my shoulder blades. I move forward, away from the right direction, away from the Pink Stripes Room, away from the Light, until I plop on the leather couch.
It squeaks under my pajamas. I jump. I look back toward the stairs and freeze for minutes or hours.
No one’s there. I’m still all alone.
Is the ZYLYNN from the book cover me? Could there be another Zylynn? I want to check that. That’s all.
I lean forward, slip my palm beneath the cover of the Zylynn book, and flip it over so the back side is up. In case it is me. I’ll only look at the recent ones. The ones where I look like me now. It won’t be as creepy if I don’t look like two people when I’m really only one.
There are a bunch of blank pages in the back of the book and Curiosity motors my fingers as I flip through them.
There’s only one picture on the first filled-out page I find. It’s me. It’s seven-days-ago me. I’m tiny, far away from wherever the camera was taking the picture. Brother Chansayzar is on my left, Brother Wrinkesley is on my right. They wear creased white pants and linen shirts with white buttons down the front and on the shoulders—the Officials of the Light. The most important Brothers, the closest to Father Prophet. They each have a hand on one of my elbows. I’m a speck between them.
Those whitewashed bricks are behind us. We’re standing outside the compound.
I figure it out. The picture was taken one minute before they put me into Louis’s car. It was taken right after I was forced out the gate. Right after they took me by the shoulders and told me nothing.
It was my first moment in Darkness. I was terrified.
I lean over the coffee table until my nose is almost touching the glossy page. I study myself in the picture. My hair is sticking up in weird angles, pasted to my ears and forehead in big chunks. I run a finger through my real hair, my now hair. It’s smooth. It’s getting used to shampoos. I bring my hand down to my cheek. I feel the way I can push a finger into it next to my lips. There’s skin there. Something there. The girl in the picture is so skinny her cheeks collapse between her jaws.
Her eyes are blank. She looks dead.
The camera was wrong. I wasn’t dead. I was too scared to look that dead.
My heart bounces in my chest.
I flip the page. I don’t find another picture at first. Instead, the next few pages I look at are articles on paper, the way Charita showed me you could use Google to look up articles about anything. They’re printed out and sealed beneath the plastic. The first one says Prophet or Profit? The next one says It Happened to Me; It Could Happen to Anyone. The next one says Doctor Flees with Horror Stories. What do these have to do with the tape: ZYLYNN?
I want to read them. I want to know what they mean. But I’m wondering if Louis and Charita put this book here on purpose. If they want me to read them. If they’ve lured me down here with the promise of pictures to trick
me into reading a whole bunch of lies about where I come from.
So I flip through without reading another word.
After pages and pages and pages there’s a picture again.
It’s a girl. A small one. She’s sitting on a sandy floor, looking up. Her eyes are green.
It’s me. Little Me and Now Me are both in the room, like it went with Elsie earlier.
How old am I there? It’s hard to tell because I’m sitting, but my hair is long, past my ears, so it must have been a few years ago. It must have been before Father mandated matching haircuts.
I had forgotten there was a time of long hair. But now I remember. Because of the picture. I’m probably not supposed to be remembering things.
There’s a blue crayon in my little hand, but I don’t have any paper. I am looking right at the camera, but I’m not smiling.
I stare at the picture so hard I almost don’t see the note pasted next to it.
Louis
Everything is fine here. Please don’t worry about us. You can see that Zylynn is beautiful and growing.
Me
Goose bumps climb to my elbows from where my fingertips rest on the picture. They snake up my arms and make a nest on the base of my neck. I glance up the stairs. It’s still dark up there.
I know I shouldn’t, but Curiosity has control of my fingers. They turn the page.
I’m smaller in the next one. Barely able to reach the mattress of the bottom bunk that I’m leaning against. Maybe four or five years old. But I also look older than I did in the last picture, in some ways. My cheeks puff out. I’m smiling. There are rolls on my stomach and you can see them because my shirt is too small, riding up on my back. And my shorts . . . they’re green. I thought I’d never worn a color until I got here.
Louis,
Here’s Zylynn on her sixth birthday. Just in case you care. Just in case you decide to come back into the Light to be saved with your daughter.
Me
Daughter.
The next picture. On my fifth birthday, I’m wearing blue overalls and a gray T-shirt. My smile is even bigger. I’m sitting at a table with a huge bowl of ice cream in front of me.
Why don’t I remember colors or ice cream or smiles?
Louis,
I cannot believe we haven’t seen you for a year. Please come back. It’s not too late for you to come back here and be a part of the Movement. I don’t want to lose you.
Me
On my fourth birthday there are two pictures. I’m wearing a pink dress. A dress. Who knew I ever wore a dress? In one of the pictures I’m alone, fat, smiling. I don’t know how I know it’s me, but I do.
In the other, there are people in the picture, so many. I recognize Itheera and Morthasia and Wontansia and Brother Malcomen and Brother Tomlinkin and Brother Carpalyle and Thesmerelda and Taneely. There are oodles and oodles of people who crowd into the picture, some of them I know have disappeared and I can’t remember their names and their faces are fuzzy in my mind. Others I forget all the way. What are they all doing in the picture? Why do we all look so happy? Why are we even gathered for my birthday? I was only four, not thirteen.
Then, in the middle of the picture, I see him. He looks different, but it’s him. His gray eyes. His cape. His face is skinny. Four-year-old me is in his arms: Father Prophet.
It’s hard to read the note with the tears in my eyes.
Louis,
I don’t understand why you left Zylynn and me. The Movement needs you. Remember he has always said from the beginning that if we are going to paint the world Light, we have to do it all the way. Commitment, he said. We have to block out greed. You’ll get addicted to it again. I’m so worried about you.
Father says there are so many things to fear out there: greed, drugs, guns, Curiosity.
I know I left last month, but I left for the mission. I left for the Movement. I was being obedient to the Light. I didn’t leave like you did. I’m afraid for you. You need to return and cast the Darkness out. I’ll be here waiting for you.
Me
Who is Me?
That’s the end of the notes. After that there are pages and pages of pictures. Of me. I’m a toddler doing toddler things. Playing with a big plastic truck. Drawing on the walls with a crayon. Hugging some lady’s leg. You can’t see her head in the picture. There are ones of me and Louis. I know it’s him. He’s not so wrinkled and his fur is not so gray but his eyes are green and his face is kind and it’s the same shape and it’s him. He’s kissing my cheek, throwing me in the air, handing me a big bowl of ice cream.
He knew me.
He was there.
He was Inside.
I look at the pictures slowly, tracing my finger over myself in each one. The whole book is backward from how it’s supposed to be, from how Elsie’s was. I’m getting fatter, bigger, more normal-looking as I get younger and younger. I trace my fat rolls, my smiles, my yellow hair, the colors of my clothes. I turn pages until I’m not a toddler anymore. I’m a baby doing baby things: sucking my thumb, smiling without any teeth, smearing food all over my hair. I turn and turn the pages until I really do get small and then I get bald and then I look like a raisin like Elsie did. And I know that picture is coming now, the one that was of Elsie in Charita’s arms all wrapped up in a blanket and I turn pages faster because I wonder if I’m going to be in Charita’s arms too and I think I want to see that because I think that if Louis and Charita both knew me, if they knew me longer than I’ve even known myself, maybe I can make everything make sense, maybe they aren’t Liars, maybe they aren’t part of the Darkness at all. Maybe Father has some plan. I want to see what Charita looked like all young and I want to see me all snuggled up in her arms and I want to try to remember what that felt like back when I was that tiny and when I didn’t know that I should be afraid of her and when I didn’t know what hungry was.
I turn the page. And then bam.
I see that picture. I jump. I slam the book closed. I whisper a scream.
It was me. It was me bundled up in a blanket looking like a shaved rodent with a head too big and a face full of wrinkles. But the woman holding me was not Charita.
It was Thesmerelda.
I left Brother Tomlinkin’s with a note. He scribbled it out, frowning at me, and said, “Here, give this to your Exercise Coach today.”
I was walking back across the angled path of the third circle. I wasn’t thinking about the way Brother Tomlinkin frowned or the way he asked if I was only eight or even how long it had been since we’d seen the women and had a real feast. I wasn’t thinking anything because I was obedient.
Footsteps came plunking behind me. Bare feet clapping against the clay quick, quick, quick like someone was chasing me.
“Zylynn,” she said.
I turned my head. I saw Thesmerelda standing a foot behind me, maybe more. I made my hand move in an arc.
In my bones, I was scared. The women were still away. We hadn’t had a feast and they hadn’t squeezed and rocked us and we weren’t supposed to see them again for a while. What was she doing here?
I kept walking. “Zylynn, wait. Wait, Zylynn!”
You will not see the women until the next feast. You may not talk to each other while walking on the clay paths. You must listen and obey anyone who is older than you.
Which rule was I supposed to follow?
I froze. I looked at her.
Gray hair twisted around her head like a wreath; her long white skirt picked up the pink dust from the ground; the white shirt slipped off her shoulder. I stared.
I remembered the night of the orange and the banana. I wondered if this was some sort of magical person Mother God had placed on the compound. I wondered if she was magical like this for only me or for all of the girls and boys.
“Where are you going?” she said.
I held up my note. “Exercise.”
She nodded. Her mouth was twitching. Her eyes looked too wet. She opened her arms. “Zylynn, Zylynn,” s
he said. “Come here.”
I didn’t move.
“I miss you. I miss my baby,” Thesmerelda said.
I shook. I panicked. She said “my.” She called me a baby. She called me hers even though I belong to Mother God alone.
I shook and shook and shook.
Father must be testing me, I thought.
I ran away.
Sixteen
THE SUNLIGHT DANCES ACROSS MY FACE, scratching at my eyeballs before I even open the lids. When I do, the sun is spilling through my window so much it drowns out the lightbulb on my ceiling. I roll toward the light, enjoying the way I can feel it warm on my arms, cutting through the air-conditioning that’s always purring in their house.
And then I freeze. I bathed in the sunlight. I didn’t look for the lights on the walls. I didn’t listen for the Caretakers. I didn’t wonder where the breathing of the girls sleeping around me had disappeared to.
It’s the first morning I know exactly where I am before I open my eyes. It’s the first night I haven’t woken up panicked again and again and again.
I have to get out of here—now. Before the Darkness swallows me whole.
The house feels empty when I wander into the hallway in pink shorts, a blue shirt, and green flip-flops. They slap my feet; they’re so loud in the quiet hallway it makes me jump.
Have they left me here? Was looking at those pictures last night a Mistake? Am I in the real Darkness now? Am I alone?
There are three other doors, all of them are open, yawning into the hallway and begging me to cross the threshold and try to find the people: Louis or Charita or Elsie or Junior or Jakey. Why did no one knock this morning?
I walk into and out of the rooms. I see beds—one big, three little—with blankets heaped and twisted on top. I see toys strewn across the carpets in two of the rooms—plastic cars and trucks and huge LEGOs in one room, stuffed animals and coloring books in the other one. In the room with the big bed the carpet is empty but the rest of the furniture is covered with folders and papers and pens.
It’s like Mother God plucked all of the people from this compound right in the middle of their lives. It’s like, by opening that photo book, I cast them all even further from the Light and they will feel the sting of Darkness forever.