“REMEMBER,” PROPHET CHILDS has said. “God punishes those who sin.”
Prophet Childs, as sharp as my Russian Olive thorns, has preached that a woman who dies pregnant or having babies is a sinner. He’s said manufactured medicine is from Satan. He’s said doctors meddle and take away our God-given freedoms.
Here’s what I’d say. Here’s what I know. If someone, anyone, would listen to me I would whisper in their ears. I’d say, I know my mother. She’s as good as the sun on a cold day. She’s sweet to me as honey from the comb. Some nights I crawl in beside her, when Father is with another wife. She always smoothes my hair. She always says, “Kyra, you are music to me.”
Prophet Childs has said it’s wrong to think outside the fences of The Chosen. To think of taking from people outside of our fences.
“We make do with our own and for our own,” he’s said.
But I have read in the newspapers that the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels brings me once a week. I know there is more help for pregnant women. Outside of here. Away from here, there is help.
I HAVE SISTERS and brothers running all over the place. My mother is Father’s third wife. Our trailers, one for each Mother with her children, sit in a group, like wagons circling a fire. This is the way it is all over the Compound, not just with us. Fathers with all their wives grouped together. Making a circle. Like how we’re one eternal round in heaven.
Sometimes we meet as a family, in the early morning, as the sun rises, and read scriptures and have prayer, all of us together in that center.
But not this morning. Not this morning because Father has gone to talk to the Prophet in the belly of the Temple, where the Apostles and Prophet meet most mornings before the sun has risen.
Not this morning. While Mother lies in bed, my sisters and I work in the garden. All the homes here in the Compound have huge gardens. They are cut out of the red sand, fueled with manure and rich dirt brought in from the outside by the truckload. Or from the barns where the cows stay the nights. Or from the chicken yards that each trailer has.
It’s still early and there is the promise of sun. The sky to the east lightens, and everything around us seems like an old photo, kind of gray. The way I feel, I think, worn out and gray.
“Jesus loves the little children,” Carolina sings, her voice thin and high, just like a baby’s. Only all her ls make w sounds. Her dress is covered with an apron. Her tennis shoes splotchy with dirt. She has a bit of oatmeal on her chin.
Margaret, who is always grumpy in the mornings, stands nearby with the watering can. She has a hand on her slim hip, just like me with Joshua, just like Mother Claire. Margaret’s dark hair is loose from last night’s sleep. Her lips are a flat line, not a bit of smile coming from her. Her eyes, a fierce brown.
“What’s the matter?” Laura asks. But Margaret won’t say. For one brief moment I wonder if maybe she knows my sick stomach. Does she realize that I’m leaving home and won’t be back? She must. Ten is nearly a woman.
“The morning’s grand,” Laura says to Margaret.
“Don’t be such a sour face,” I say.
Margaret looks away. “Your face isn’t happy,” she says.
I ignore what she’s said. I can’t even look her in the eye. “Work fast,” I say, pulling weeds right next to singing Carolina. “Water please, Margaret.”
“You’ll leave soon,” she says.
I nod.
“Don’t talk of that,” Laura says to Margaret. Then she smiles at me from where she searches for bugs, squishing them between her fingers. Laura’s a lot tougher than I am. “I’m not even worried about this. Father has said he will talk to the Prophet and he will. If anyone can change a person’s mind, it’s Father.”
“You’re right,” I say. It feels like there’s a band around my throat. The band grows tighter and tighter, squeezing my breath away. “Father has gone to the Prophet.”
From behind the other two trailers, I can hear my other brothers and sisters working, laughing in the morning, hurrying. A rooster crows, calling to the dawn.
“But he said he had a vision,” Margaret says. “Can Father change a vision?”
Laura is quiet.
“Father can do anything,” says Carolina.
Now Margaret just waters.
I work, pulling weeds from the damp soil. When the wind is just right I can hear our own chickens clucking, and smell them, too.
Voices call out from the other trailers. I stand, stretching out my back, and listen. There’s Adam’s voice. And Emily’s.
What happened after I left, when everyone went to their own homes? Did Mariah keep screaming? Did they all cry? Did Father comfort them? Or did they say the marriage was a blessing?
Uncle Hyrum. Uncle Hyrum.
In the garden I squeeze my eyes shut.
This must be because of my sins. It must be.
Carolina stops singing. “Can I water now?” she asks.
I nod. “Of course you can.” Quick like, I hug my little sister. Carolina lets me squish her up close for a minute and kiss her. Her face is fat under my lips.
At that moment I see everything, plain. I look at Laura, my very best friend. Look at grumpy Margaret. Feel Carolina close. Her body warm in my arms. The smell of the morning. The sun throwing all those beginning colors into the sky. All of it should save me. All of it should free me of my fears. But instead I have a horrible thought.
I see each of my sisters married to the oldest man in the Compound, Brother Nile Anderson. Married to him. He has to be 150 years old. In my head, I can see his spotted hands, yellowed nails, and those fat blue veins that look like they might pop any second.
This comes into my mind because of last night. Of course it does. Because that is what our lives are, I realize, holding on to my little sister.
We are here for the men.
I try to make my mind remember the last time there was a marriage of a young man and a young woman. I can’t think of any, not any, not for a long time. It seems all the old men are marrying the young girls.
Like my uncle and me.
It’s as though someone punches me in the throat.
Carolina wiggles, pushes away, and starts to water radishes and peppers, sloshing water from the heavy bucket. She’s singing again. But Laura, she looks at me.
“What?” she says. “Did a rabbit run across your grave?”
It’s something Father says when one of us shivers.
I can’t even nod.
“Kyra?” Laura says, and she reaches for me, touches my wrist with her buggy fingers. “What’s the matter? Is it last night?”
I shake my head no. I can’t say I’m worried for you. I can’t say this is all wrong. So instead, I say, “No. It’s not last night.”
But this little voice of Carolina’s? Her little singing voice? It crawls under my skin, burrows toward the gash in my heart. If I didn’t know better, I would think for sure I’m bleeding out.
WHEN MOTHER IS ASLEEP, when the gardening is done, I stand on the back porch and look to where I know Amaretto City sits. It’s a few hundred miles away, but it’s a big place. Big enough for a girl to get lost in.