Amity & Sorrow (23 page)

‘Why?’ says the girl. ‘How many do you have?’

‘Fifty.’ Amity looks at the girl.

‘What do you do with fifty?’

‘Well, I only have one father.’

The girl leans in. ‘What’s it like to have fifty mothers? Do they all tell you what to do?’

It was getting harder to remember it. ‘Mostly, when we’re all in a circle and they’re spinning, it feels like the whole of the world is my mother. The whole world is spinning in love.’

The girl looks around them and whispers, ‘Aren’t you afraid you’ll go to hell – or to jail?’

‘No. We’re the chosen ones.’

‘We’re the chosen ones,’ the girl says, straightening the pile of books between them. ‘What you do is most likely a sin, but it’s not my place to judge you.’

A long green car pulls up with plenty of empty seats. The girl grabs her books and skips to it as Amity calls behind her, ‘Maybe I could come home with you?’ She pictures herself a Mennonite, her hair swinging out from a smart navy triangle. The woman driving wears a kerchief and she gives Amity a smile. But once her daughter points at Amity from the front seat, they both stare until Amity turns away from them. And then they go.

S
orrow doesn’t want to leave the parking lot. In fact, she’s not overly keen on leaving the car. No tug of the strap will dislodge her.

Amaranth studies the strip mall shops surrounding the parked cars: dry cleaner, doughnut shop, pet shop, nail salon. Nothing she wants, nothing she needs, but she wants to look at the things they sell, as if to pretend that they are a simple mother and daughter, like any who parked or walked past them, out for a day of frivolous spending. She tries to picture Sorrow with her lips around a doughnut or holding her nails out to be filed and painted pink. She watches the closed door of the bar where Bradley is and wishes she were in with him, then she thinks of Sorrow beside her, strapped around a bar stool.

‘What are they looking at?’ Sorrow points at a crowd outside a Korean barbecue.

‘Let’s go see,’ Amaranth says, desperate to see anything but the dirty inside of the windshield. They negotiate the parked cars together, strapped. She jerks Sorrow back as cars swish by, looking for spaces. She tells her to look both ways, as if she is leading a toddler or an alien.

Sorrow hurries toward the crowd, as if she can sense she is missing something, and Amaranth’s heart sinks when she sees the plain, flat frontage and the sign beside the barbecue:
THE HOLY CHURCH OF THE ONE TRUE LOVE
. Only Sorrow could find a church in a mini mall.

The glass doors open and a purple banner, felt wheat spears on a satin cross, emerges. A bone-shattering organ chord comes from mounted speakers, accompanied by the jangle of metal tambourines. Sorrow looks at her mother, all smiles now. Before the shop front, a congregation gathers, plain-dressed worshippers with paperback Bibles. A cheer comes from the crowd when a man steps through the doors, white-suited, in a cowboy hat. He lifts a hand in a blessing while before him, barely visible through the crowd, is a tiny blond boy in a shorts suit and a broad-brimmed black hat that’s held up by his ears. The crowd surges forward, cars honking, people shouting, and a final organ-chord crash.

‘Can I get a “Hallelujah” from someone who believes?’ the man calls.

‘Hallelujah!’ roars the crowd. Sorrow looks about her, eyes wide at their noise.

‘We come together to praise the Lord!’ the man shouts. ‘We praise Him in the churches and we praise Him in the streets. We praise Him in the fields when the crops come! Let us pray!’ He whips his hat off and bows his head, showing off his scalp.

The little boy bows and his hat tips up. Sorrow does not bow her head but studies those who do, the crowd, the preacher, and his son, while Amaranth keeps a firm hold on the wrist strap, poised to yank her back.

‘O Heavenly Father, we come to You from our harvests. We come to You from our fields. We come to You with nothing, as a people humbled, blessed with Your bounty, Lord, which we do not deserve. For we are miserable sinners.’

‘I’m a sinner, Lord!’ a man cries out.

‘Who’s a sinner?’ Sorrow asks her.

A car squeals past them and a spiky-haired woman rolls down her window to holler, ‘Get outta the road, ya Jesus freaks!’ At that, the tambourines rattle, a chord comes, and the crowd begins to sing. ‘How is it that they know the same song?’ Sorrow asks.

‘It’s a hymn,’ Amaranth tells her over the singing. ‘All churches probably sing it.’

‘All churches?’ Sorrow strains forward now. ‘How many are there?’

‘Far too many,’ says Amaranth grumpily.

The preacher greets the passing cars. ‘Are you ready for the final days, friends?’ They honk in response or salute him with middle fingers. ‘Are you ready for God to take you away?’

Sorrow raises her arm to him, but the man ignores her, sweeping his arms and saying, ‘Let’s hear from the Prophet. Speak, Prophet, speak!’

The small boy is scratching furiously, the back of his lace-up shoe hooked behind the other leg to work on bug bites. Hearing silence, he stops, puts his hat under his arm, and looks up at the sky. ‘I want to thank You, Lord-uh,’ he chants, the end of his lines dropping off in a grunt. ‘I want to thank you, Jesus!’

‘Thank You, Lord. Thank you, Jesus,’ the crowd repeats.

‘The Lord kept our rain from us and then He gave it back-uh. He took our crops and He let us reap-uh. But this is our final harvest, be in no doubt. The Lord will pull the righteous from their boots-uh, and cut the sinners where they stand-uh, like stalks with His sickle! For the Lord is a-comin’.’

‘Praise the Lord,’ the man calls.

‘Fear God and give Him glory!’ Sorrow calls back.

Amaranth tugs the strap. ‘Don’t.’

The man looks at Sorrow and puts a single finger across his lips.

‘Mother,’ Sorrow whispers. ‘Can anyone build a temple?’

‘It looks like it,’ she says.

But already Sorrow is turning back to the boy, then pushing through people to get closer to him, pulling Amaranth behind her. ‘Who calls you Prophet?’ Sorrow calls. The crowd parts to get a look at her, this creature in the cap and dress, as Amaranth shuffles along like a string trying to keep up with its kite.

The man gives her a thin-lipped smile and reaches a hand out to greet Sorrow. ‘Hello, Sister.’

She doesn’t take it. ‘Who says he is Prophet?’ She points at the little boy.

‘Who are you, Sister, that you should ask?’

‘I am the Oracle.’

‘The Oracle?’ The man looks about at his worshippers and his strained smile stretches to a full-out grin of mockery. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘Have you no Oracle? How can he receive prophecies? How can he read the signs of God?’

The man guffaws. ‘Sister, we don’t need no Oracle. Everybody can read the Good Book for himself, can’t they? Nobody needs to interpret God, ’less you’re some papist. Our God speaks to all of us – if only we will listen – but the world has gone deaf!’ He holds a hand up to the crowd and they cheer.

‘How does God speak to you?’ Sorrow calls to him.

‘Well, through the Bible, Sister. You do know your Bible?’

‘I should do. It is inside me.’

The little boy looks at his father for reassurance, then squares up to Sorrow, turning his scuffed chin up from her chest to look her in the eye. ‘How is the Bible in you?’

‘I see through the Father’s eyes. I touch through the Father’s fingers. I have His holy words running through me like water, all the time. It is all I hear and see.’

‘You can’t see God,’ the boy tells her.

The man says, ‘It is foretold that in the final days false prophets will rise among us. And God will not spare them; no, He will not. He did not spare the angels when they sinned and fell! He did not spare the world from the might of His floods! The day of the Lord will come as a thief and the righteous will be stolen away!’

‘The righteous have gone,’ Sorrow says.

The man falters. ‘So are you not among the righteous?’

‘I was taken away from them.’ Sorrow tips her head at Amaranth, who mouths an embarrassed hello. ‘But the end is coming. It will come with fire.’

The boy says, ‘Beware of false prophets.’

Sorrow smiles. ‘You will know a prophet by his works and his gifts.’

‘That’s the devil talking,’ the man says, gesticulating. ‘Only false prophets try to show you miracles; it’s the devil making them boast.’

‘Our work glorifies God,’ Sorrow bites back. ‘What works do you do – what gifts have you?’

‘He has the gift of tongues!’ a woman in a wheelchair calls.

‘Then speak, Prophet,’ says Sorrow.

‘Speak!’ the woman urges, and the crowd picks it up. ‘Speak!’

‘You got nothing to prove, son,’ the man says, but the little boy screws his face up, throwing his head back and opening his mouth in a susurration of consonants, a string of long and sensuous vowels. A woman in a caftan falls to her knees, hands up to fondle heaven.

Sorrow flings her own head back then and roars her gift through clenched teeth. Where the boy’s words are silken, hers come as stabs. Where his slip along a slick path, hers are a switchback of barbs and hooks, grunts and clicks.

‘Listen to that!’ the man calls. ‘Will the grapes of our Lord be gathered from thorns?’

The woman in the caftan struggles to get back up, grabbing hold of the wheelchair arms. ‘That’s the devil’s talk!’

‘It is not!’ Sorrow protests.

‘You’re making it up,’ the boy says. ‘Yours is a bunch of noise.’

Sorrow pokes the boy in the chest. ‘You’re making yours up.’

‘You are!’ The boy’s face goes red. ‘You’re only a girl!’

‘And you’re too little to make Jesus!’

‘Sorrow!’ Amaranth grabs Sorrow by the shoulder as the man steps forward. They each put a hand on their holy child. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Amaranth tells him, pulling Sorrow toward her. The tambourines rattle and pretty girls produce empty baskets, even as the cars honk and the crowd threatens to engulf them, and the music surges and the baskets fill up with dollar bills. She hurries her daughter between the parked cars and the idling cars waiting for spaces. She rushes her toward the bar, fearing the wail of sirens and police, someone coming to take her child away. She rips across the busy street, cars honking, fists waving, dragging her daughter by the arm, but Sorrow’s head is turned back at the church and its people, even as she reaches the bar door and flings it open, calling into the darkness, to the smoke and the jukebox Elvis, ‘Bradley!’

D
ust shouts at Amity. ‘You couldn’t wait, could you? You want what you want when you want it. You’re as bad as Sorrow. What if I lost you? What would you do? What would your ma do to me?’

She sits and takes it. She could take it all day, but once he’s shouted himself quiet she hops off the bench and holds her hand out to him. ‘Can we go get the book now?’

‘Oh, jeez,’ Dust says.

The purple-haired woman demands his library card, but when she sees it presented to her she says, ‘This is a children’s card.
The Grapes of Wrath
is an adult book.’

‘What’s an adult book?’ Amity asks.

‘One with dirty bits in,’ Dust says.

The woman tuts and Amity nods; the Joads were nothing but dirty.

Dust pulls a nylon wallet from his pocket. ‘I got ID. You can see I’m not a kid. I got a learner’s permit means I can drive.’ And before Amity knows it, the librarian is stamping a new card and Dust is setting a book in her hands. ‘There you go.
Grapes of Wrath
. Happy now?’

Amity looks at the cover. ‘That’s not it.’

‘It is. Lookit.’

‘Where are the grapes and the man’s big hand?’

Dust looks at her. ‘You can’t read.’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t need to read.’

‘You do,’ he tells her, walking her back to the counter. ‘People will take advantage of you. I could tell you anything and you’d believe it.’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘But I could. You can’t trust people.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they’re bastards.’ Dust hands the book to the woman and she stamps it. ‘You could learn to read,’ he says. ‘I’ll find you a site on how to do it.’

‘What sight?’

‘Come on.’ Dust pulls her to a row of veneered study carrels filled with white plastic boxes.

‘What are these, Dust?’

‘Haven’t you seen a computer before? Oh, man.’

‘What’s a computer?’

‘Here. You can read on it and look for things.’

‘Like an Oracle? Is it an Oracle?’ She leans toward it as he sits and taps at keys. ‘Could it help us find Father?’

‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘What’s his name?’

Amity tells him all she knows, even secret things, but it isn’t much. She knows his name is Zachariah and that he has fifty wives and twenty-seven children, more or less, including the first two, who were banished. She tells him about the fire. Dust nods and types the words she gives him: ‘Zachariah + church + fire + fifty wives.’ He also types in other words, ‘cult + polygamy,’ but he doesn’t say them to her. Then there are lights and colors and symbols, a blue spinning circle. He pulls up pictures of churches on fire, buildings consumed in infernos, but none is their temple. The box shows pictures of black children huddled together and crosses burning, then a flock of young girls in bright, ruffled dresses being put on a bus. Their hair swoops and swirls. Amity shakes her head at it. ‘That isn’t us, but it looks like my cousin. Look at how pretty they are.’

‘Are you kidding?’ he asks her.

The screen fills up with symbols and Dust takes them all in. But she stops him when she sees it – a picture of Father, but not as she’s ever seen him. It was taken a long time ago, for he looks young and dark-haired, handsome. He holds a tray of symbols across his chest.

‘This says he’s wanted,’ Dust says, his voice full of wonder.

‘Sorrow wants him.’ Dust only stares at the screen. ‘Am I stupid?’ she asks him.

‘No. You’re ignorant. That’s not your fault.’

‘What does it say, all those things?’