The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly (7 page)

I
n the Community, I woke up early each morning to milk goats and punish the earth with a trowel to fill it with seeds or dig grown things out. I'm used to waking up before dawn, so every day, without thought, my eyes open at exactly the same time, when the air is the bruised color of winter mornings and everyone in the jail is still sleeping. Sometimes, the echoed weeping of a girl winds through the scaffolding, but most mornings the place is quiet and still, and it's possible to imagine the bars and the guards and the razor wire away, imagine there's nothing surrounding you but your own soul.

Until six, when every fluorescent bulb in the place spasms to life, the light like a punch to the face. The noise starts a moment later, talking and shouting and girls using the toilet and trudging down to the showers.

During showers, I have no choice but to strip down in front of the others, their eyes taking in the parts of me I was taught to keep hidden.

Here, the scars usually shielded beneath yards of orange cotton are on display, the whip marks scoring my back from countless childhood punishments, the thick bands of red scar tissue cuffing both ankles. But, when I cast my eyes at the other bodies, I see skin tarnished with small holes of cigarette burns and pink puckered knife wounds and white lines like hash marks on forearms. Here, my scars are the only part of me that could be called normal. It seems like every girl here has had their own personal Prophet.

And then it's breakfast, and runny oatmeal and juice with a straw, and after that, the pill line.

There's a long corridor beside the cafeteria by the nurse's office. From a small window in the door, white paper cups are passed to each girl. Every ten seconds or so a new girl approaches the window, picks up her cup, and slams the tiny white and blue and red circles down her throat.

Angel sidles up to the window. Her cup is heavy with pills. She upturns it over her mouth and chews.

“Why don't you just swallow them?” I ask.

“Makes them work faster,” she says. “Plus, the Adderall tastes like Skittles.”

They give me only one pill, a giant speckled one shaped like a bird's egg.

Angel's asked me a hundred times what it is. “It's not Ritalin. It's not Xanax. It might be Thorazine, but why'd they be giving you that?”

I never respond. I don't want her to know. The woman doctor who saw me when I was locked up only said it was very important I take it every day.

“Don't let anyone try to buy this pill from you,” she said firmly.

She explained that my growth had been severely stunted, probably from malnutrition. She instructed me to eat everything that's put in front of me and take the high-dose multivitamin every morning, even though it rakes my throat on the way down.

We arrive back at the cell and I can tell the pills are starting to work because Angel's talking to me, her voice higher and faster than when she's unmedicated.

“I think it's time I educated you,” Angel says.

“In what?”

“Prison life.” She flops down opposite me on the floor. “First thing you gotta know, there's cliques here worse than on the outs. Girls stick together and the alliances mean something. The Mexicans are okay. If you ever got nail polish to trade, they'll be your best friend. Don't mess with the meth girls. Most of them had their brains turned mushy from it, still talk about finding more meth, like they can just buy it at the commissary. And when you remind them nicely that they're in jail, they scratch. Crazy bitches.”

“Which one are you in?”

“Don't really got one. The lezzes can be all right. Mostly just stick to themselves, and sometimes I talk to the smart girls, the ones who always go to class and study and stuff. Really trying to make their lives better. But they can be so damn serious. I don't know. Ain't no one here really just to talk to.”

“What about me?”

She shakes her head. “You're a trial run. I'm still feeling you out.”

“Not like you could get rid of me if you decide you don't like me.”

“I can. You be here as long as me, you start calling the shots.”

“How long's your sentence?”

“Nunyo.”

“What?”

“Nunyo business. That's personal.”

“Ha, real personal,” I snort.

“What's that sposta mean?”

“
Godseyes
, I can hear you pee at night,” I say. “Not like we got much personal stuff, anyway.”

“That's why I like to keep private what I can. Not all of us are little blab mouths like you.”

“Have your secrets, then, Splashy,” I say. “That's my nickname for you. Because of the pee.”

Angel's eyes narrow and she looks like she's thinking about smiling, but the muscles in her face tighten just as quickly. “Couple things you should know,” she continues. “You gotta lose the way you talk.”

“What way?”

“Like you're in church all the time. You don't talk like the girls here. ‘
Godseyes!
'” she mocks. “You sound like they dug you out of a time capsule.”

“But I don't know any swears.”

“Jesus, I'll make you a list then.”

She stands and rips a square of paper from a spiral notebook on her bed and scribbles out five or six words with a small pencil. She hands it to me.

“I can't read,” I say.

“You can't even sound the letters out?”

“Only a little.”

Her mouth shifts to the side. “Here.” She places her finger next to each penciled word and pronounces it, then makes me repeat after her. My heart beats hard, and not only because I'm holding the Devil's words in my mouth. This is the first time anyone has taught me to read since Bertie.

“Get these ones down and you should be all right.”

“Why are you helping me?” I ask.

“It saves me a headache later on. If you get in trouble, you'll look over at me with those pathetic eyes and expect me to help you. Well, it ain't happening.”

She leans heavily against the wall again. “And second, if you don't understand what someone's saying to you, don't respond. Don't say a word. You'll get yourself trapped.”

“Like what?”

“Like, if anyone ever holds up their hand like this,” she makes a circle with her fingers, “that means they're asking if you're gay.”

“What?”

“They're asking if you like girls. And if they wanna know if you have a friend on the outs named Britney, they're trying to claim you, 'cause a Britney's the name for someone's bitch, someone to have sex with. A Candy is a coward and a Tricia is someone with something to trade.”

“Gawl,” I say, my head teeming.

Angel scowls at me.

“I mean . . .” I clench my eyes, thinking. “Shit.”

“Better.”

“I guess I can't ever ask someone if they like girls,” I say.

“Huh?”

“No fingers.”

Angel squints.

“That was a joke,” I say. “Don't you ever laugh? Even I laugh sometimes and I got a lot more reasons than you to be depressed. About . . .” I hold up my arms and look down to where my fingers had been. “. . . ten reasons.”

Angel carries on, ignoring me. “You'll be deciding soon what gang to join,” she says. “I 'spect you'll be with the Christian girls.”

“I'm not Christian,” I say.

“No, but you're leaning in that direction, I can tell. You got religion in your blood. Trust me, by next week you'll be quoting Job to me, telling me what Jesus said about this and that. I heard it all before.”

“You were raised religious, right?”

She nods. “Everyone around me was. My uncle . . . he was real religious.”

I don't ask if this is the same uncle she's locked up for killing.

“What're the Christian girls like?”

“Like Tracy,” she says. “You know, fake.”

“Like how?”

“The dumb ones really think they mean it 'cause they're scared, and they think they can actually turn their lives around. But the smarter ones are only pretending 'cause they wanna look good in front of the parole board. That's all religion is. Strategy.”

“How are you so sure?”

“I'm good at spotting liars. And that's all they are. They're just real good at lying to themselves,” she says, her voice low. “Real good at it.”

I
've been wondering if jail does anything it's supposed to. It's not true justice, not really. Philip's organs aren't knitting themselves together any faster because I'm locked in here, and it's not fixing me, either. It's punishment, and for now I probably need a little time sitting under the weight of everything I've done. I deserve to feel the blackening caverns of my heart pull inward every time I remember Philip's blood sketched across the fallen snow. To look my guilt about Jude and Constance straight in the eyes. To sink down in the pain and let myself feel exactly as bad as I should.

“You did nothing wrong,” is what Angel says on the occasions I talk like this, but I know it wasn't natural or right what I did, and I question how it all could have happened. Not just for me, but everyone in the Community. How each of our hands went from farming and praying to hurting and killing.

It was never supposed to be like that. From the beginning, things were supposed to be better than they'd been.

Before we came to the Community, nobody could've mistaken us for saints. With my parents, there was always something unspoken and static-charged beneath the surface, but I was too preoccupied with childhood to notice. My days were simple and divided up into clear segments: the time of eating cereal, the time of watching my mother fold laundry, the time of my father arriving home. My mother would pull the zipper on his yellow jumpsuit, and he'd step out of it like a discarded shell, his undershirt salty with drying sweat.

The world was small where we lived, on a dirt lot that all the trailers on our street backed crookedly on to, where the neighborhood children ran on chubby legs in raggedy, stained clothes and diapers that dragged on the ground. We'd congregate at the rusty swing set and dented slide that sounded like sheet metal shaking every time someone went down. The lot wasn't much to look at, covered with trampled brown snow in the winter, and in the summer a weed clawing out of the earth every few feet. The only spectacular things in that place were the view of the mountains, so big they could stun you every day with your own smallness, and an apple tree that grew from the very center.

The day my father brought the Prophet home for the first time, the leaves of the apple tree shone almost silver in the sunlight, and the apples were unripened green buds the size of my fist.

I stretched my hand high in the air, trying to reach the lowest hanging apple, just to see if I could.

A hand darted out and wrenched the apple from the branch. The stem was green and unbreakable still. The hand had to pull so hard that, when the apple came free, the tree shook its boughs like arms waving in anger.

Above me hung the face of a man with pebbled eyes, peering through a pair of thick, yellowed glasses, a heavy beard patched over his cheeks. He looked normal, like any of the paunchy dads in the neighborhood who drove beat-up trucks and tuned their TVs too loud.

“Here you go,” he said, holding the apple by the stem.

I reached for it and he placed it on my palm. My fingers closed around it.

“Aren't you going to eat it?” he asked.

“It's not ripe. They don't taste good yet.”

He plucked the apple from my hand, stuffing it into his mouth whole. He watched me as he chewed and swallowed.

The screen door opened with a screech. My father was standing on the back porch. He said something odd then. He told me this man was holy beyond understanding. That I was to do whatever he asked. That I was to believe everything he said.

Because he spoke to God.

I
walk down to lunch with Angel and Rashida. It's become easier since I discovered that, even without Angel around, the girls don't mess with me. In fact, they avoid me. It's my shoes.

They gave me Velcro shoes because of my hands, but Angel told me most of the girls who wear them aren't allowed real shoes. She says they're the ones who will kill you if you look at them wrong. The ones who can't be given shoelaces for fear they'd hang themselves or strangle someone else.

“Why do you never eat the chicken nuggets, Rashida?” Angel asks. I've been staring down into my watery red trough of tomato soup. I glance over at Rashida's tray which contains only mounds of coleslaw and fruit cocktail.

“Why do you care, Angel?” Rashida asks.

“'Cause you eat more'n anybody here, and everyone knows the chicken nuggets is the closest thing to appetizing we got.”

Rashida's smile drops a couple notches. “I been in the prison when they electrocuted somebody. Visiting my uncle in Deer Lodge. After they cooked the guy, you could smell it in the whole place, and it smelled just like it does here on chicken nugget day.”

Angel's face is serious for a moment then splits open in a laugh. “You're lying. You've never been to Deer Lodge in your life.”

“I have too! And I could smell the guy's brains being cooked inside his skull, bitch.”

“I think your brains got cooked a long time ago, Rashida.”

“I'll have you know I'm passing all my classes,” she says. “Miss Bailey says I have a unique intelligence that can't be defined by normal standards.”

“You're abnormal, she means,” Angel says.

“Who's Miss Bailey?” I ask.

“My reading teacher,” Rashida says. I nod. I've seen the guards watch me sidelong, trying to decide if I'm ready for school. During the day, there's not much to do except stare out the bars. Angel's brought me a couple of comic books from the library, and I make my way through those pretty quickly, even if I don't know half the words. Sometimes, from her cell next to mine, Rashida describes what the weather was like outside the classroom window that day, and I can usually persuade Benny to tell me about the book she's reading, always some time and place I've never heard of, but mostly I'm alone with my thoughts and my rememberings.

The closest I've gotten to school, besides those weeks with Bertie, were the mild, green-smelling days in the Community when the Prophet taught the children beside the pond. He read aloud from the Book of Prophecies, tales of sage believers garbed in golden feathers fighting the hell demons of the Gentiles with swords made only of God's light.

One afternoon, when I was eight or nine, the Prophet called the children for a lesson. Constance walked, hand in mine, in that jerky way of almost-babies, and we arranged ourselves around the pond. In the distance, men thunked axes into wood, and nearby my mother breathed through her nose as she stared into the murky surface of the pond. She couldn't do much else, so she was put in charge of the children while the Prophet gave his lessons.

From his billowing cloak, the Prophet extracted the Book of Prophecies.

“‘Do not stray into the land of the Gentiles, for they humiliate God with their arts that pay Him no homage, with dances that contort the body in evil motions that defile purity, with the wicked writings that question Him and criticize Him and say He doesn't exist and never has.'”

I had heard this passage a thousand times. It formed the rule book for our behavior—the Gentiles do these things, so we do not.

“Why can't we write, Prophet?” I interrupted.

He let the book fall a few inches as his sharp eyes took me in. “Because it is an abomination in the eyes of God.”

“You write,” I noted.

“The only people who need to write are those who record God's deeds.”

“Then why can't we read? So we can know the deeds of God.”

“If you could read, you would be able to read the wicked writings, too, and God does not approve the risk. You have a Prophet to read to you, and that is just as good as reading for yourself.”

“Why can't we do painting?” I asked. “Surely that can't be an abomination to God.”

He crossed his arms. A darkness darted across his face, a storm growing in his gray-shot eyes. “I'm not sure I can explain it in a way you will understand. You are merely a girl child.”

“I'll try to understand, Prophet,” I replied.

Maybe he knew that the question wouldn't die without an answer. His eyes roamed upward. “Do you know what the sky is?”

He raised his hand as though to touch the clear blue expanse above. “It is a great piece of canvas stretched all the way across the world. And on it, God paints. We do not paint because there is no need. The greatest painting of all already exists.”

“The sky is a canvas?” I asked, turning my eyes to the bright blue that, to me, appeared endless. It looked like a clear pond that went on forever.

The Prophet nodded, his hand shadowed darkly against the brilliant blue. “God made the sky for us to know Him. When it's sunny, can't you feel His joy beaming down? When it storms, you can't mistake His anger. And rain—what do you think rain is?”

“Tears,” I said, catching on. “But what about at night? What does the darkness mean?”

“It means He's sleeping. It means His eyes are closed.”

“But what about lightning and—”

“God's bad dreams,” he cut in, already one step ahead. “Now, does that answer your questions, Minnow?”

I chewed on my lip and nodded.

I barely heard the rest of the lesson because, over my head, the universe was receding, the world growing smaller and smaller, and the Prophet growing larger and larger. Somewhere, far off, I sensed a sound like pressure rising in the air, the feeling that a hinge was squeaking. The next time I looked, the sky didn't seem so endless anymore.

I shot a glance at my mother. She didn't appear to even see us, the way she swirled her toes in the water.

“But what are the stars?” I demanded too loudly.

The Prophet turned to me, his lower lip twisted. “Why do you want to know, Sister Minnow?” he asked pointedly. Constance, her body a warm presence at my side, grew tense. “Your questions could lead one to believe that you are doubting God. There are consequences for disbelief.”

My heart began to thump loudly. “I just . . . just want to know . . . about the world He created.”

He considered this. “The stars . . . they are a way for God to see us even when He is asleep. They are His eyes. And when you see the stars flickering, that's how you know He is watching you.”

My heart squirmed in my chest, my hands pink and tightly fisted in my lap. Whenever I pictured God, I didn't imagine an omnipotent force that could observe us from on high. I imagined a boy my age, going to school, living in the world. A boy named Charlie.

“But—” I sputtered, “but how are His eyes up in the sky if He's really Charlie? I thought He was walking the earth right now.”

“Do you think God can't do two things at once?” the Prophet asked, his voice rising so my mother's head finally flicked up. “God can do anything. God can watch every person alive at the same time, and even the dead, and He can walk the earth, because He is God, and He is almighty.”

Suddenly, he snatched Constance up from where she sat beside me. He propped her up on her tiny legs facing me, her expression bundled up in fear. “I said there are consequences for disbelief, Minnow,” the Prophet said, shaking Constance by the shoulders. “But consequences sometimes have a way of missing their target.”

He shook Constance again, a whimper escaping her mouth. “If you ever have a question, Minnow, the answer is always God. Anything you wonder about the earth or the sky, the answer is always God.
Always
God
,” he repeated. “If you doubt, the cure is God. And if you continue to doubt, the fault is yours, not His.”

A heat had crept into my face. I nodded because I knew enough to do that. He turned Constance's body toward him, smiled broadly, and let her slump back down near me. I could feel her body shaking.

“Remember, God created you and that means you owe Him a life.
Yours
,” the Prophet pronounced firmly. “You will be in debt to God for the rest of your days.”