The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly (25 page)

A
sk anybody and they'll tell you I got sent here because of a boy. Because I kicked his face in, and sat down on the hard snow beside the result, and didn't cry.

That it was a boy who planted the seeds of rebellion in my mind, who helped turn my own thoughts into weapons. The boy I loved and didn't understand simultaneously.

Or maybe it was the Prophet who got me here with his rules and edicts, his mystic justice that threaded through every pore until I was a walking prayer shawl, and the prayers were all his.

Or my father who sold me away on that first day beside the fist-tight apple tree when I was five, when he told me to listen to the Prophet and do whatever he said.

It wasn't any of them, you know.

“It was in the stars,” is an expression Miss Bailey taught me the other day, and by that she means that it was fated this way.

What if it was in the stars for me to be here? That I was hurtling toward this inevitability for my entire life, because now that I'm about to leave it, everything about this place seems entirely meant to be.

• • •

Benny visits as Dr. Wilson is leaving, an oversize brown paper sack under her arm. She rolls down the top of the sack and pulls out the outfit I wore to court, six months ago, the skirt and blouse and belt.

She lifts out the last item carefully, like she's holding an ancient relic. Jude's shirt. I wore it every day for a month after he died. It's stained with coin-sized blotches of blood and decomposed down to threads, but the shoulder seams are there. I could wear it. It would still fit.

“Keep?” she asks.

Slowly, I pick the shirt up between my stumps. I hold it out to her. “Not anymore.”

• • •

There is a place in Missoula where goldfinches swoop yellow and plentiful as sunflowers. It is beyond this cell. Soon, I will find it. The day will be spring, I'll make sure of that, when the trees are perfect with new green that stuns the eyes, and robins stuffed in branches, and mice flying down little mice trails that only they can see. I'll be out meandering through streets and, without meaning to, happen across a park in the center of the city. I'll sit among the people and the noises of basketballs smacking concrete and children screaming in a way that means joy.

And I'll walk through a stand of white trees that'll be rediscovering themselves, feeling they are maybe more than white, maybe they are something like green. And they'll push green from their fingers as if to prove it to themselves. The air will smell equally of gasoline dust and greenness like it does in the city.

There will be a feeling that anything is possible this springtime. There will be a feeling that I am more than a girl in a wool dress not of her choosing. There will be an atmosphere of decision making that day. The power to understand myself, finally. To believe or not believe, to know which it is.

I will crane my neck to the sky, the kind of odd evening sky that allows for sunlight and stars at the same time. I'll find a star and hang on to it with my eyes. The periphery of greenery will swish away as my vision rises and rises and rises to greet that star. I will feel my body left behind.

When I tear my eyes away and shake my head, my brain will become bleary with the suddenness of my soul sailing through the atmosphere, back into the spacious cavern of my skull. For a moment, my head will feel heavy with it. How much heavier than I'd ever imagined. How much sturdier.

Acknowledgments

I
never realized just how many people shape a book. This book would not exist without the dedicated efforts of many professionals, friends, and family members. I'm especially grateful to the amazing team at Dial who worked so passionately to get this book made. My editors, Stacey Friedberg and Nancy Conescu, deserve the highest acclaim for their tireless work on this book. From our first phone call, it was clear you believed in Minnow and understood her like you'd known her forever.

I'm also eternally grateful to my enthusiastic and hilarious agent, Jennifer Laughran, who saw the potential in this book and believed in it before almost anybody. You're the reason Minnow is meeting the world.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone at the MFA program at Eastern Washington University, particularly my poetry cohort and my poetry professors, Christopher Howell, Jonathan Johnson, and Melissa Kwasny.

Thanks to the educators and students at Mercer Middle School in Seattle and Libby Center in Spokane for being so over-the-moon about this book, especially the wonderful Kristin, Larry, Priscilla, Susannah, Maggie, and Alex for the Minnow party, complete with goldfish crackers. Thanks to the Chetty family for your support and the awesome cake, to Fran Bahr for the good chats and great feedback, and to the incredible Christa Desir who read multiple versions and has been my staunch ally through this entire process.

Finally, thanks to my entire family for your wholehearted support for my dreams. Especially thanks to my mom, Annie Oakes, who has been the most enthusiastic cheerleader that anyone could ask for. You have inspired me and shown me it's never a waste of time to dream big and stare at the computer screen for hours on end.

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