The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly (8 page)

V
alentine's Day just passed. We never celebrated in the Community, but I remembered what it was supposed to look like. Some girls got cards in the mail and some smuggled little candies inside and passed them around beneath the cafeteria tables, and the guards pretended not to notice the wadded-up red foils littering the floor. A few boyfriends visited and passed over fistfuls of carnations wrapped in wet paper towels and, even if they weren't allowed to touch, the girls looked buoyed for days afterward. They wore the flowers in their buttonholes till they turned brown.

In the Community, holidays frightened me. The one I liked least—Saint Jared's Day, which celebrated the killing of the last giant in America—called itself a festival. It was always in winter, with a bitter wind that flung the eerie chanting of our voices up into the frozen air. “Killed the giant, yes indeed. Cut his throat, oh yes indeed. Fell to Earth, oh yes it did. Died in agony, oh yes it did.” My feet frozen as a glacier, I carried an icicle in my open palm while the little children made to stab the air like they were killing monsters. My stomach fumbled watching them. It was always entirely too easy for us to imagine killing.

• • •

“Do those things hurt you?” Angel asks around a mouthful of corn muffin.

She's staring at my stumps, lying next to my tray of watery soup and shrunken bread. “Not as much as they used to. Why?”

“Because you got a look on your face,” she says. “Sorta pained.”

“It's just . . .” I stretch my toes out the side of the cafeteria table. “My bones hurt. My leg bones. They feel like they're being stretched.”

“You're growing,” she says. “You're not the first girl to put on a few pounds in juvie. Most of us aren't used to three square meals.”

I've already grown out of my first jumpsuit. The new one is roomier and has a zipper down the front with a cord that I can grab with my teeth. Going to the bathroom takes less time now that I don't need to ask Angel or a guard to fumble buttons back into holes.

“That's the problem with this whole thing,” Angel says, waving her arm. “They want you to be contrite for getting thrown in here, but this place makes a fuck ton more sense than the outside, if you really think about it.”

“Like how?” I ask.

“Like,” Angel searches. “Like this.” She lifts something yellow from her tray.

“Is that a banana?” I say. “I haven't seen one of these in years.”

“Outside, everything gets so distorted. In here, a banana's just something they give you because the government says we inmates gotta eat less junk. But, you know what the pastor at my uncle's church used to say about bananas? They prove the existence of God.”

“How?”

“He said they must've been designed by a creator because they're easy to open and are shaped perfectly for the human hand. But you know what else is shaped perfectly for the human hand? A dick, but don't try telling them that means God intended people to masturbate because that will get you kicked out of Sunday school. I can vouch from experience.”

A shadow crosses our table. Officer Prosser surveys us, her face beet-colored at the cheeks, tiny orange hairs escaping the knot of her bun.

In her hand, she holds small squares of paper.

“Notices,” she says simply. She flicks one at Angel who catches it in the air. With a serious look, she lets a notice fall to the plastic tray in front of me.

“What's it say?” I ask Angel.

“It's your notice of rec time. The better you act, the more you get.”

“What do we get to do?”

“Hardly nothing. The options are lame. You can choose from exercise time in the yard, the library, the TV room, or the visitors' lounge if anyone comes to visit you, fat chance of that happening. Oh, and youth group.”

“Where do you go?” I ask.

“Library most days, but I've read all those books practically. They have to bring books in for me from the county library, but my newest ones aren't here yet. So today, I guess it'll have to be the TV room.”

When the bell rings, we walk together to a small concrete-walled room with stains on the carpet and a television sitting on a low wooden stand covered in peeling wood-printed plastic. The couch in front of the TV is already full of girls, but they scoot off when Angel comes in. “You know,” I say, sitting beside her, “everyone here is so scared of you. But you don't seem that tough to me. Bet you're all talk.”

She snorts. “You're funny.”

Angel takes the TV remote and presses some numbers until the picture changes. In the center of the screen, a blue ball hangs suspended on an ink-black background. The black is impossibly black, and the ball is laced with wisps of white.

“What's that?” I ask.

Angel turns to look at me, her forehead bunched up. “Earth.”

“Our world?” I shake my head. “It looks like that? How'd they get a picture of it?”

“A spaceship or satellite or something.”

The camera zooms in to the surface and I shut my eyes. When I open them, the camera is beneath the ocean, a dark wilderness of shadows and pockets of blue light. It is vast, much vaster than I ever imagined. My brain is stunned watching it, taking in all the endless blue.

“All right, Angel. Enough science shit.” Rashida snatches the remote from Angel's hand. “I'm switching it to my show.”

“Don't even try, Rashida,” Angel says lazily.

Rashida stands with her fists on her hips. “You ain't gonna beat me up, Angel. You like me too much.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really,” Rashida says. “I see you admiring my fine body day after day.” She does a quick twirl and slaps her butt. “Too bad I got a boy on the outs. Else, you and me'd make a cute couple.”

Angel cocks her head. “Please, Rashida, you look like a bunch of chopsticks got tied together with a rubber band.”

Rashida gasps, her hand flying to her hair, tied back into a puffy bun. “Angel, someday you gonna come asking for me and I'm gonna say, ‘Bitch, I don't think so, you had your chance.'”

Angel laughs.

Rashida falls heavily into one of the ragged, duct-taped armchairs and punches a number into the remote. The image of the ocean is replaced by a picture of tanned girls shouting at each other.

“Give that back,” Angel says, tackling Rashida in the armchair and grappling for the remote.

The screen starts flicking through channels and the pictures fire past so quickly, my brain can barely keep up. An advertisement with a car driving through a forest. And an impossibly perfect-looking family eating dinner. A woman in a doctor's coat talking to the camera. And—a man with a graying beard in a khaki prison jumpsuit.

“Stop!” I shout.

Rashida and Angel freeze where they've been shouldering for the remote and look at me sideways. It's the loudest I've spoken since I got here. Most of these girls haven't heard me say a single word.

“Go back.”

Rashida clicks back a few channels. “There,” I say.

My father's face peers up from the screen. I slide off of the couch and sit on my knees, so close to the television I can see the tiny squares that make up the screen. My father shuffles slowly into a courtroom, his hands and ankles fastened to a chain around his waist. His beard has grown. Photographers and news people line the back of the courtroom, flashbulbs firing every few seconds.

“Samuel Bly will be the first of the leaders of the Kevinian cult to stand trial,” a woman's voice narrates. “The DA is assembling a case against him that includes charges of statutory rape, accessory to statutory rape, endangering a minor, assault, and manslaughter. Bly was reportedly second in command to church leader Kevin Bilson, a self-described prophet who led the group into the woods twelve years ago.”

The image changes to a picture of the Community, perfectly preserved in a layer of snow and encircled in yellow police tape bright enough to shock the senses. The snow is so unbroken and white, it hardly seems anything unusual happened there, until strange shapes begin to reveal themselves beneath the snow. A large triangle betrays what was once a roof and, just as suddenly, the shapes of fallen-down houses start to materialize, a dozen of them, in a ring.

At the corner of the shot hangs a noose, drifting lazily in the wind. My throat closes at the sight of it.

“Bly is one of twelve men charged in connection with the events that took place in this clearing, where a religious group existed in total isolation and self-sufficiency for more than a decade. The world only came to know of the cult when a fire started here two months ago, killing the group's leader. The group's total population is estimated at over one hundred. The remaining women and children are being housed in undisclosed locations.”

The image switches to a slick-lipped woman talking too fast about an upcoming snowstorm. I stay kneeling in front of the TV, my head falling forward on my shoulders.

“You all right?” comes a voice behind me.

I turn and see a girl I vaguely recognize standing with a hand on her hip. She's tall and big-chested with thin eyebrows. I don't know much about her, but she wears Velcro shoes.

“Fine,” I say, standing.

“Your name Britney?”

My eyes pinch in confusion. “My name's Minnow.”

She laughs like I just made a joke. “My name's Krystal,” she says, placing a hand on my breastbone so I can't turn. “I think you and I should get to know each other.”

I glance away. Angel's eyes stare firmly at the TV screen. Rashida sits cross-legged on the duct-taped chair, her bottom lip between her teeth and a wrinkle between her eyes. Nobody in the room moves.

“You got real pretty hair,” Krystal says. She pulls a lock of my long, crooked hair out of the wild mop that cascades down my back. I shiver at the feeling of her fingers. In the Community, our hair hid inside bonnets and braids, never touched by anyone.

Slowly, she slides her hand across my chest until it reaches my arm. She squeezes.

“Don't touch me,” I say, the words coming out mild and strange. Krystal's smile stretches even broader.

I'm shuddering. This girl could be the Prophet. The fingers gripping my arm could be his rough and wire-haired fingers. The feeling in my chest is the same wasted, powerless feeling he always put inside me. I can't break free, and I'm about to start dragging frantic breaths into my lungs when the girl's head snaps back. I stumble backward, free of her grip.

Angel's fist hangs in the air.

Krystal has miraculously managed to stay on her feet, but her cheek is crimson where Angel's fist connected.

“Krystal, we've missed you in gen pop,” Angel says. “What a shame your latest attempt to off yourself was unsuccessful. Next time I suggest drinking the
whole
bottle of bleach.”

Krystal chuckles darkly. “I like your new toy, Angel,” she says, raking her eyes over me. “I didn't think pink-bellied newbies were your type. I thought you went for older men.”

Angel slugs Krystal in the stomach before she can react. When Krystal is doubled over, Angel forces her to the floor, her knee pressing hard into her gut. One hand leans against Krystal's forehead and the other is suspended in the air, ready to strike.

Angel's next words come in a muttered breath. “You don't get to hurt people,” she says. “Not here.”

Krystal twists her head to the side and screams, but is silenced when Angel lands one punch into her temple, then another, then too many to count. The room is quiet but for Krystal's grunts. I glance around the room for a moment and everyone's faces are still. Krystal's arms flail against Angel's face, but Angel doesn't slow. Her jaw is set but otherwise her face is relaxed.

For a moment, I can imagine her killing her uncle, strangling him or stabbing him or shooting him with that look painted on her face, and it doesn't seem so impossible anymore.

Finally, Angel stands, shaking out her wrist. Krystal is still on the floor, dazed, the side of her face blown up and purple.

Angel walks to the window in the metal door and knocks twice. Benny's large face fills the meshed glass. At the sight of Angel, she opens the door.

Benny looks over to Krystal, who's moaning on the carpet.

“She tripped,” says Angel.

Benny nods and grips Krystal by the armpits. “Get up, Krystal.”

Krystal shakily rises to her feet, darting an evil look at Angel with quickly swelling eyes. She and Benny shuffle out of the TV room as Angel falls back down onto the couch.

“Now, I'm changing it back to the science channel,” she says. “Anybody going to disagree?” The remaining girls exchange big-eyed, terrified looks.

Angel laughs.

I
don't hear anyone talking about what Angel did to Krystal, but by dinner, it's clear that everyone knows. They always avoided her; now they retract into themselves when she comes near, make themselves unnoticeable, turning their eyes to study the floor.

I wonder, at the back of my mind, how they would react if they knew what I did to Philip. A little pang jabs just beneath the breast pocket of my jumpsuit, somewhere near my heart, like it does whenever I think about that night beneath the bridge.

“I can tell you're dying to ask something,” Angel says after we get our dinner. “Just get it out. I can't stand looking at your face all folded up in concentration like that.”

I turn my head to the side. “Why does everybody do what you say?”

“You're really asking that?”

“I mean the guards and everything.”

She shrugs. “I practically run this place. Been here longer than anybody. I've seen three wardens, a couple dozen guards, hundreds of girls come and gone, and here I am, rock steady through it all.”

Angel's bashed-up fingers rest on the table, the hard skin on her knuckles split open like grapes.

“What about Benny?” I ask.

“I got here when I was twelve. Benny was the first person I met. If anybody raised me, you could make a pretty good case for Benny.”

• • •

Dr. Wilson visits the next day after breakfast. Immediately, he eyes the new additions to my cell: two stuffed animals and a paper crane. I have recently been inducted into the complex trading system in juvie. Angel gave me a pack of gum Benny gave her for helping clean up puke in the cafeteria, and at lunch I traded the gum with a redheaded girl with a neck tattoo for a powder-blue stuffed bear. Later, I got a red turtle whose stomach had been removed to smuggle something inside, and an elaborate origami crane an albino girl hands out to everyone as part of her counseling.

“I love what you've done with the place,” he says.

“Decorated it myself.”

“And might I compliment you on your choice of stainless steel.” He nods toward the toilet. “Timeless yet functional.”

I almost laugh but in the next moment he's opening up my file and scanning his notes.

“I heard the guards talking about your roommate. Said she got into a fight.”

“She was defending me,” I say.

He nods. “You should be careful with lifers like Angel. They have less to lose.”

“Lifers?” I ask.

“Angel's here on murder charges, and she's not getting out anytime soon. Inmates with longer sentences sometimes like to groom other girls. Get them to do things for them on the outside.”

“She's not like that.”

“Maybe not. Just be careful. You're out of the Community, and that's a good thing. That's the best thing, but it doesn't mean there aren't people here who'd take advantage of you.”

“No,” I mutter, and I feel my brain tip sideways. His words smack me as something obvious, something basic that I should've come to on my own. Since I've learned all the wrong the Community held, I'd begun to think of the cities as peace-realms, places I might really be safe.

It's not true. No place is ever safe.

“When do you want to talk about what happened with Philip?” Dr. Wilson asks.

I look up quickly. “How about never?”

“You'll have to at some point. He's part of this, too.”

I shake my head. “I don't want to talk about him ever again. Ask another question.”

“All right,” he says, leaning back. “Tell me about losing your hands.”

“That?” I shrug. “I barely remember it.”

He lifts his eyebrows.

“Fine,” I say. “But I want to tell it my way.”

“Of course.”

“No interrupting,” I warn.

“I'll do my best.”

• • •

When I woke up that morning, my bedroom was humid with the breath of my ten sisters. The plastic sheeting stapled over our only window was beaded with moisture.

I smelled the smoke before I opened my eyes. Everyone knew what it meant when the purple smoke unfurled from the Prophet's chimney and smudged the sky. It meant that, at that moment, the Prophet was in his house, talking with God, hearing the whisper of it inside his ears, and writing everything down into the Book of Prophecies.

Everyone was a little on edge, waiting for the prophecy. We tried to go about our daily chores—the women milking, the men carving new tools out of fallen pines—but it was difficult with the smell of that smoke filling our nostrils. Prophecies could be meaningless—“And lo it is Commanded that thee plant wild onion in ampler supply.” But prophecies could also change everything. It was a prophecy that brought us to the wild. It was a prophecy that named each deacon, and it was prophecies that punished us.

In the courtyard, I did laundry with my younger sisters Martha and Regent, both raven-haired like their mother Vivienne, until the Prophet rang the little silver bell on his porch that meant he was ready to speak the message that God had told him. He waited for us to congregate, his long black robes shaking in the cold breeze, arms stretched in the air.

“God has sent me a message,” he called. “I am to take another wife.”

The crowd exhaled. The Prophet had received this message many times since we moved to the Community. He already had eight wives. They were huddled close to the porch railing, looking lost. No children jostled into their calves like the other women. None of them, not a single one, had managed to bring a baby to term. They'd produced some crooked little skeletal things that might've been babies in some daydream of God's, but that's all.

“And the woman who will be my new wife,” the Prophet continued, “who will serve God through me, who will bear beautiful children of light, is our own dear Minnow.” A smile bloomed under his big, gray beard.

I didn't understand at first. I was too conscious of other things, like my hands chapped from scrubbing clothes on a washboard, the purple smoke burying into my sinuses, and the image of Jude's face that I couldn't shake out of my eyes no matter how hard I tried.

The Prophet approached me.

“What do you say to this, Minnow?” he asked. “Do you not rejoice?”

“No,” I said, my voice traveling.

He placed his hand on my shoulder, his thumb tracing the strap of my undergarments.

“Does it not please you, Minnow, to know you will be servant to God's chosen messenger? That you will bear the children of God's chosen messenger?”

I searched the crowd but no one would catch my eye. No one but my mother. She stood at the other end of the courtyard. From beneath her bonnet, I could see a strand of the simple blond hair I didn't inherit and the dead eyes I'd grown used to, not registering any of the unfolding events. Silent, impassive.

“I don't want to marry you,” I whispered.

The Prophet smiled as though I'd made a joke. And it was a joke. There was no choice. I'd be forced to marry him whether I wanted to or not.

“I am sure you will feel differently when your belly is round with a child of God.”

I breathed a sharp breath and, without thinking, slapped him hard across his bearded cheek. Everyone gasped, including me. I held my hands together over my open mouth and took a quick step back.

His fingers found his reddening face. I could practically see the plans forming inside his head, the tortures, the punishments marching into formation like soldiers, hot pokers and stocks and cleverly tied rope.

He took one step toward me, then another, until all he had to do was lean forward to place his lips near my ear.

“You
will
be my wife,” he whispered.

He straightened and looked for my father. “Take her to the maidenhood room where she shall be sequestered until our wedding day, praise God.”