Out of Heaven's Grasp (12 page)

After I ate, I felt exhausted again, and so I climbed into the back of my truck and slept again. It seemed like that was all I wanted to do. It was respite. When I was asleep, I didn’t have to face the fact that everyone I’d ever cared about had abandoned me.

When I thought about Abby, especially, it was a physical pain, something sharp and aching. I didn’t like the feeling, so I tried not to think about her. She’d chosen to stay behind. She hadn’t chosen me. I had to forget her, just like she was going to forget me.

But I did have one thought, as I was drifting off. I remembered that this would have been the night of Abby’s wedding, and I knew that she was with Bob Carroll. I thought about that horrible old man with his hands all over her, and I started punching the bed of my truck so hard that it made my knuckles bleed.

When I stopped, I realized how stupid it had been. It hadn’t been enough for my father to hurt me, I had to hurt myself too?

All the exertion of beating up my truck knocked me out, and I slept again.

It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning that I felt like I really had any energy and that my thoughts were clear at all.

I had needs, things I was going to have to take care of. I needed a place to stay. I needed more money than five hundred dollars. I was going to have to get a job.

I started going from store to store in the strip mall that contained the Costco, asking inside every place that I came to if they needed help. A few places let me fill out an application (which was an exercise in futility, considering I didn’t have an address or a phone), but most places took one look at me and told me to get lost.

One manager said to me, “I don’t think so. I’ve tried hiring you boys from that weird commune place before. Never works out.”

I realized that the problem was my clothes. I looked like I came from the Life, and that didn’t make anyone trust me. So I took some of my money and went into a clothing store. Once inside, I was sort of overwhelmed. All the shirts had things written on them, but it was confusing. Why did they say things like
Levi’s Jeans
? They were shirts, weren’t they? Jeans were pants, not shirts.

I wandered around until I finally found some shirts that were just plain colors—no writing or pictures on them. I didn’t know what size I wore. My mother had always made my shirts, and some of them had been hand-me-downs from others in the community. I held things up to myself, trying to get an idea if it was right or not. With an armful of clothes, I wandered through the store to buy them.

“Do you want to try those on?” said one of the workers.

You could do that? I nodded. “Yeah. That would be great.”

The worker unlocked a door to a room and let me in.

I began trying the clothes on. I’d done a terrible job at guessing my size. Most of the pants were too small, others too big. I noted the size of the one pair that I’d gotten that actually looked okay. I wanted to just wear it out of there, but I didn’t know if that was permitted, so I took them off and put my community clothes back on again.

I stepped out, looking for the worker who’d let me in. I wanted to ask him what I should do with the clothes that didn’t fit.

But the worker wasn’t around. Instead, there was another guy. He didn’t look at me as he folded jeans. “You can just put the stuff you don’t want there.” He gestured.

I recognized his voice.

“Anthony?” I said. “Anthony Kelby?”

He snapped around to look at me, and I realized that I was right. It was Anthony. He’d grown up in the community, but he’d been cast out about six months ago when they found out he was sneaking around with Marilyn Jones. It was Anthony, all right, but he looked different. He’d cut his hair and dyed the tips of it bright orange. He had piercings all over his face—his nose, his lip, his ears.

“Whoa,” he said, grinning. “Jesse Wallace. What the hell are you doing here?”

I let out a sigh. “Well, they, uh, they kicked me out.”

He laughed. “All right. Welcome to the den of iniquity, man.”

I managed a small smile.

“How long you been out?” he said.

“Uh… a day? Two days?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s rough at first. Real rough. Look, where you staying?”

“My truck, I guess.”

His eyes widened. “You got your truck out?”

“I bought it myself, so I went back and took it.”

“Very cool.” He grinned. “Well, if you got nowhere else to go, you gotta come to the crash pad. There’s like four of us, and we’re all splitting the rent on this house. The more the merrier, you know?”

Oh. A place to stay. That was good. I took a deep breath. “That would be great, actually.”

He chuckled. “What the fuck are you trying to wear, man?” He started riffling through the clothes in my arms.

I felt embarrassed. “I just, um… well, most of it doesn’t fit.”

“No, no, no,” he said, pulling stuff out and tossing it. “None of this weird collar shit, okay? You’re gonna look like a grandpa. And plaid? Seriously?”

“I…” I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Come on, I’ll help you find better stuff.” He gestured with his head.

I put down the rest of the clothes and went after him.

He turned to me. “Your dad do that to your face?”

I looked away.

He clapped me on the back. “Well, don’t worry. You’re never going to have to deal with that asshole again.”

* * *

Abby

I must have fallen asleep at some point, but I certainly didn’t remember it. I woke up alone in bed, and sunlight was streaming in through the window. When I tried to get out of bed, everything hurt. It was sore between my legs. The skin there felt like it had been rubbed raw. I’d bled a little bit, and there was something sticky and liquid leaking out of me. I wasn’t sure exactly what that was, but it smelled disgusting.

I hobbled to the bathroom, and I retched over the toilet. I hadn’t eaten much in the past few days, though, so there was nothing in my stomach to throw up.

I could still smell Bob’s sweat on my body, and I felt soiled, so I got in the shower.

There was no hot water, just as Fern had warned.

The frigid water was bracing, but I needed to get clean, so I endured it for much longer than I might have normally.

Afterward, I got dressed and started to braid my hair.

There was a knock on the door.

I jumped, afraid it was Bob, come back to do what he’d done to me again, just after I got myself cleaned up.

But the door swung open, even without waiting for a response from me. In walked Holly, who was one of Sally’s children. She was about twelve. She looked me over, seeming unimpressed. “You’re supposed to be at the wives’ meeting.”

What had I done to make this girl dislike me?

“I just got up,” I said.

“Well, Mother sent me to tell you that you were late.” Flipping her braid over her shoulder in disdain, she marched out of my room.

I clutched the edge of the dresser, biting down hard on my lip. I wanted to go home.

Tears threatened, but I forced myself to swallow them down.

I finished my braid and went off in search of the other wives.

Luckily, I didn’t have to look for too long. I found them in the dining room, all sitting at one end of the table.

Fern looked up as I came in. “You missed breakfast.”

I sat down in an empty seat. “I’m sorry. I’m used to someone waking me up at home.”

“You should speak to Bob about getting yourself an alarm clock if you can’t wake up on your own,” said Fern.

I nodded quickly, staring down at the table. I was sorry not to have any breakfast. I hadn’t been very hungry for days, but I realized that it had been quite some time since I’d eaten anything, and I was starting to feel a little light headed.

“Now, that she’s here, can we please talk about the schedule?” said Sally.

“Sure.” Fern opened up a leather-bound planner.

“Since she took my night,” said Sally, “I think I should get two nights with Bob next round.”

“I don’t see why that would be necessary, Sally,” said Fern. “Bob can take his night with you, and the rotation can just continue with Abigail inserted into it where she is.”

“No,” said Sally. “Because that means that Abigail would come before me, and she shouldn’t be. She should be fourth.”

May leaned across the table to touch Sally’s arm. Her voice was soft. “Does it really matter, Sally? After all, you’ll still be seeing him every four days.”

Sally snatched her arm away. “Of course it matters. You two wouldn’t understand, but then neither of you are having children anymore. I
need
to see Bob.”

“Well, then I think we’ll adjust the rotation for this week to correct it,” said Fern, seeming unruffled by Sally’s outburst.

“But then I miss a day with him,” said Sally. “That’s why I should have two nights.”

Fern looked down at the planner. “All right, he’ll spend tonight with you, then, Sally, to make up for last night. But then next rotation, you’ll be third and Abigail will be fourth.” She raised her gaze. “Does that work for everyone?”

Sally nodded curtly.

“Good,” said Fern. “Next up, we’ll deal with the food preparation. Up until now, we’d settled into a routine in which I made breakfast, since I’m an early riser, Sally was in charge of lunch, since she still has small children, and lunch is a bit less arduous, and May has been doing dinner. But now, we’ll want to work Abigail in somehow. Now, there’s several ways we could do this. We could alternate days, having each woman do all the meals one day, and then be off for three days. Or we could each have Abigail spell us, so that one day Abigail will make breakfast, the next lunch, and the next dinner, and then she’d have a day off. In that way, we’d all have one day a week in which we didn’t have to do any meal preparation. It’s really up to us how we want to work it.”

“Well, I certainly couldn’t make all three meals in one day,” said Sally.

May nodded. “I think that would be a bit of a challenge for anyone.”

Fern shrugged. “We’ve only got eight children left in the house. We’re not cooking for an army anymore.”

“Well, but Abigail will be having children soon,” said May, smiling at me.

I blanched. Even though my sister had told me that having children would make everything more bearable, I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect at all. Children would make me feel trapped here.

I scolded myself for the thought. I oughtn’t think of this house as a trap. It was my new home, and I’d have to get settled here.

“Um,” I said. “Lunches might be difficult for me. I do work at the school, teaching the small children.” They’d given me a few days off for my wedding, but I was planning to be back tomorrow.

Sally sniffed. “You shouldn’t be there. You’re a married woman, and your place is at home.”

“Doris still works there,” I said. “She’s been married for months.”

Fern scribbled things on her planner. “What days do you teach? And what hours?”

“It’s Monday through Friday. Eight to two.” I noticed that Fern didn’t acknowledge Sally’s pronouncement this time either. Was that how these women got along? By ignoring each other?

I knew that there had been friction in my house, mostly before my mother had married my father. She was the third wife, and apparently, she’d helped to smooth things over between Mother Deborah and Mother Claudia, who’d argued a lot before she arrived. There had been a few spats, of course, but my childhood home had been a place of harmony.

Fern scribbled that in her notebook. “Well, then, we’ll just make your lunch days one of the weekends, yes?”

“Okay.” I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d cook in this house. I didn’t know where anything was. I’d been assisting my mothers my whole life, but that was at home, in a kitchen that I understood.

“You should probably shadow one of us a few times anyway,” said May, smiling again. “Fern has a certain way she likes things in the kitchen, and if you screw that up, she’s not a happy camper.”

Fern’s nostrils flared, but she didn’t acknowledge that otherwise. “I think this might be complicated to work out, so it might be better if I sit down and work on it myself. Then I’ll post it in the kitchen so that we can all see it.”

“What if we don’t like the way you’ve worked it out?” said Sally.

“It will be fair, Sally.” Fern’s tone was firm.

Sally made a face, but she didn’t say anything else.

Fern cleared her throat. “Well, as far as schedule adjusting goes, that only leaves laundry. And we’ll just add in a day for Abigail.”

“Abigail’s one person,” said Sally. “I don’t think she needs a whole day. You only wash your clothes and Bob’s. Why can’t you and Abigail share a day?”

“Because Abigail will need her own day when she has children,” said Fern.

“We could readjust then,” said May.

Fern looked back and forth between the two of them. “Fine.” She turned to me. “I’ll have my laundry done by five o’clock each third day. You can have the evenings.”