so I can hold her on my lap.
Why am I here? How can I be here? My littlest sister is dead, my face is broken, the person I love is gone. How can I sit here and pretend that I want to be in this room? I want to run.
Women near me look away. My face tells them I’ve been disobedient. I’ve been disciplined. It’s plain to everyone.
We all settle down, all of us children, on the blue carpeted floor. Some of the kids play, some sit with little smiles on their faces.
Then Uncle Hyrum is on his feet. He starts singing, his voice rich and deep. Beautiful. I hate him. “God sent the Prophet,” he sings. “God sent us the Prophet of all. Of all. To lead. To guide. To take us to heaven.”
People rise and clap as Prophet Childs comes in the room. He nods to us, lifts his hands to us, motions for us to sit. He takes his place in the maroon-colored chair, the microphone in his hands.
“I have been in prayer all morning,” Prophet Childs says.
“Praise Jesus,” a man calls from the back of the room.
“A Prophet prays for his people,” Prophet Childs whispers these words.
“The word of God,” another man cries out.
We’re all quiet.
Mariah sits on my lap without moving. It feels like a rattlesnake winds around in my stomach. I concentrate on the blond of her hair. All the colors I see there. Near white. Three shades of yellow. A golden strand.
“He prays for his people. He wishes them no harm,” Prophet Childs says.
Is he talking to me? He wishes me no harm?
His mouth is so close to the microphone I can hear his breath.
“But some children do wrong,” he says.
I’m still not looking at anything but Mariah’s hair. All that hair that’s so fine to the touch. All that hair that’s so curly she’ll have a hard time keeping it in braids when she’s older. Can she feel my heart beating in her back?
“Some of you have done wrong,” he says.
My eyes can’t see. I can only hear his words.
“This place we have here is to keep you safe from Satan. And he is outside our walls. Everywhere. On the street. In the stores. On the televisions and computers. Those people who do not believe what we believe, they carry Satan’s lies and fabrications in their heads. They will kill you, if you even dare to look in their direction.”
Prophet Childs pauses.
“Keep away from the outside,” he says, “or it will burn you on the inside and on the outside.”
He’s on his feet now, I know without looking at him. He’s moving closer.
“Keep away from Satan. He will destroy you.”
He stands and walks amongst all of us on the floor. The room so wide you could throw a football across it. I know because Joshua did that very thing with a friend of his when they were supposed to be cleaning the room and making it ready for the Sabbath.
“Satan is in what we read, if we read anything but scriptures.”
Does he know, I wonder, my sin of reading? I put my face close to Mariah.
“He is in our thoughts, if we think of any place outside of this sanctuary.”
Does he know I want to leave now? That I’m planning to leave?
“He is looking for you.”
Prophet Childs stands right before me now. He has made his way to me. I see his shoes, so shiny. Was it his foot that stepped on Joshua and me? Mariah reaches out for her reflection, and he moves back.
“Look up,” he says.
Can he be telling me that? I look at Mariah and me in the toe of the shoe and see how dark we are. Grabbed by Satan already. Though Mariah couldn’t be. Not yet. Isn’t she too young?
“Kyra,” Laura says, her whisper so slight I bet no one can hear it but me.
“Look up,” the Prophet says again.
The whole room is dead quiet.
I look up. Way up. He’s so tall when I’m here on the floor.
“Three boys ran last night.” He says this to everyone, though he stares at me. I look at his ear.
“And we won’t go looking for them.”
Joshua. My heart pounds.
“They’ll die in the desert.”
I hear a woman draw in a gasp of air. Joshua’s mother? One of the other boys’?
“Die of thirst and heat and soon the buzzards will pick their bones clean. They will die a sinner’s death at the hands of God.”
A light behind the Prophet shines around his