County Mobile Library on Wheels later this afternoon. I can hold on till that. I can.
I dish oatmeal and pull muffins from the oven. The girls and I have prayer, kneeling in Mother’s bedroom. Mother prays, asking God to answer the most sincere desire of our hearts.
Is she thinking what I’m thinking? Is she asking God what I’m begging for? Has Father? My other mothers?
Then I sit beside Mother in the bathroom as she throws up her few bites of toast and her tea. The strawberry jam is like hunks of blood. I pray for Mother Sarah. And me.
“REMEMBER,” PROPHET CHILDS has said. “God punishes those who sin.”
Prophet Childs, as sharp as my Russian Olive thorns, has preached that a woman who dies pregnant or having babies is a sinner. He’s said manufactured medicine is from Satan. He’s said doctors meddle and take away our God-given freedoms.
Here’s what I’d say. Here’s what I know. If someone, anyone, would listen to me I would whisper in their ears. I’d say, I know my mother. She’s as good as the sun on a cold day. She’s sweet to me as honey from the comb. Some nights I crawl in beside her, when Father is with another wife. She always smoothes my hair. She always says, “Kyra, you are music to me.”
Prophet Childs has said it’s wrong to think outside the fences of The Chosen. To think of taking from people outside of our fences.
“We make do with our own and for our own,” he’s said.
But I have read in the newspapers that the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels brings me once a week. I know there is more help for pregnant women. Outside of here. Away from here, there is help.
I HAVE SISTERS and brothers running all over the place. My mother is Father’s third wife. Our trailers, one for each Mother with her children, sit in a group, like wagons circling a fire. This is the way it is all over the Compound, not just with us. Fathers with all their wives grouped together. Making a circle. Like how we’re one eternal round in heaven.
Sometimes we meet as a family, in the early morning, as the sun rises, and read scriptures and have prayer, all of us together in that center.
But not this morning. Not this morning because Father has gone to talk to the Prophet in the belly of the Temple, where the Apostles and Prophet meet most mornings before the sun has risen.
Not this morning. While Mother lies in bed, my sisters and I work in the garden. All the homes here in the Compound have huge gardens. They are cut out of the red sand, fueled with manure and rich dirt brought in from the outside by the truckload. Or from the barns where the cows stay the nights. Or from the chicken yards that each trailer has.
It’s still early and there is the promise of sun. The sky to the east lightens, and everything around us seems like an old photo, kind of gray. The way I feel, I think, worn out and gray.
“Jesus loves the little children,” Carolina sings, her voice thin and high, just like a baby’s. Only all her ls make w sounds. Her dress is covered with an apron. Her tennis shoes splotchy with dirt. She has a bit of oatmeal on her chin.
Margaret, who is always grumpy in the mornings, stands nearby with the watering can. She has a hand on her slim hip, just like me with Joshua, just like Mother Claire. Margaret’s dark hair is loose from last night’s sleep. Her lips are a flat line, not a bit of smile coming from her. Her eyes, a fierce brown.
“What’s the matter?” Laura asks. But Margaret won’t say. For one brief moment I wonder if maybe she knows my sick stomach. Does she realize that I’m leaving home and won’t be back? She must. Ten is nearly a woman.
“The morning’s grand,” Laura says to Margaret.
“Don’t be such a sour face,” I say.
Margaret looks away. “Your face isn’t happy,” she says.
I ignore what she’s said. I can’t even look her in the eye. “Work fast,” I say, pulling weeds right next to singing Carolina. “Water please, Margaret.”
“You’ll leave soon,” she says.
I nod.
“Don’t talk of that,” Laura says to Margaret. Then she smiles at me from where she searches for bugs, squishing them between her fingers. Laura’s a lot tougher than I am. “I’m not even worried about this. Father has said