I hate this night.
I hate it with all my guts because this night is the only one where my father brings women into his home. Women who look like my mother … but can’t ever measure up to her.
But it doesn’t matter to him. As long as he gets his fix, he’s happy.
Despicable.
“Are you sure you don’t want one?” my father asks as he totes another woman on his arm.
A woman who just got married by right to another man. He fucked her first, claimed her first, gave her a child …
And now my father will besmirch all of it in the name of the Lord. He picked her out of all the girls that participated in a ritual during the ceremony. I pity her for having to put up with him tonight.
“No, thanks,” I say, waving it off.
“C’mon, at least have a drink with us,” he says, holding up his glass while the woman pours him another. They’re so devoted and look happy when they serve him, but I know it’s just a farce.
Being chosen by a patriarch isn’t something to be taken lightly, and she’ll do anything she can to please him … which makes me want to smash that glass out of his hands. He doesn’t deserve that kind of love.
“I’m tired from the ceremony,” I lie. I really just want to get out of this foyer before he does something I can’t unsee.
“Boy,” he says, his voice stern all of the sudden. “It’s time you stopped pining after something you lost. It’s too late.”
I was about to leave, but this comment … this comment makes me want to punch him in the gut.
“It’s never too late,” I reply, trying to control my emotions.
“Fine, suit yourself. Go waste away, I don’t care,” he says, shrugging, as the girl wraps her arms around his neck. “At least I’m having a good time and doing my duty. I can’t say the same thing about you.”
I ball my fists. He’s always trying to get under my skin, but I won’t let him.
He doesn’t know the lengths I’d go to get exactly what I want and how I want it … and who.
Natalie.
He doesn’t know about her, and it’s better that it stays that way.
“Good night, Father,” I say, and I turn around and march out the door.
Natalie
A few days later
It’s my first time going to the dining hut. Before this, an elder wife would bring a tray of food specifically for me and April to our huts and let us eat only with her present. But it’s been days since the ceremony, and I haven’t had a falling out with anyone since. Now we’re suddenly allowed outside. Does that mean they’re starting to trust me? Do they think I’ve succumbed to the Family and their indoctrination?
The longer I think about it, the more I realize I don’t even know the answer for myself.
In front of me is a giant hall filled with all kinds of people; men, women, children. All eating their meals while talking amongst themselves.
Except for one group: Initiates. The unmarried women.
They’re wearing scarves around their mouths.
None of them speak.
Suddenly, an elder ties a scarf around my face, and for a second there, I almost think she’s attempting to choke me. But she neatly ties it into a knot behind my head.
“Time for food,” an elder wife says, pushing me forward.
“Why is everyone wearing scarves around their mouths?” I whisper toward Emmy.
All she does is point toward a sign hanging from the wall that says “Initiates,” and below that, there’s an image of a mouth with a finger on it which is crossed out.
No speaking.
But why only the initiates? Everyone else is happily conversing with each other. But it’s just the wives, the husbands, and the children who are allowed.
Do not speak unless you’re spoken to, it says underneath another sign.
Of course, this also only goes for the initiates, who are apparently beneath everyone else.
No wonder Emmy and Holly are looking forward to escape the stigma and become a wife. Anything is better than this. All I see is another form of indoctrination, and the strange part about knowing it is, is that I also know it’s working because every time someone else opens his or her mouth, I feel envious. Betrayed by my own need to speak up.
Everyone looks at us as if we’re foreigners invading their land. Women wearing scarves are like the stain on this community. Once we’re married, we no longer are denied the basic need of communication with fellow members of the group.
Exactly the kind of thing I’d expect in a cult.
I won’t call it anything else even though I only have these thoughts in my head, and I’d never say the word out loud. Thinking is the only thing that keeps me sane around here.
We walk to the end of the hall where a line of people and a whole host of cooks serve food to everyone walking by. I grab a plate and wait in line, just like everyone else, until it’s my turn. One of the cooks snatches my plate out of my hand and throws on a mixture of soup, bread, and sloppy greens, then hands it back. The next one hands me a metal cup filled with steaming tea, which I greedily take.
We all walk toward an empty table that has enough chairs for all of us, and we sit down and eat our lunch in silence. All I can do is stare at April and hope she gets the message I’m trying to convey with just my eyes.
This. Is. Insane.
She nods. I know she understands. She’s thinking the same thing I am, but we have no say in the matter, no control over anything that’s happening to us right now. We’ve been taken into the rabbit hole with no way out except forward. Which means abiding by their rules until you forget they’re rules in the first place, until you forget who you really are and where you came from … until, for better or worse, these people truly become the only family you have.
I shiver in place at the thought.
Everyone around me is eating, and it’s boring to watch, so I look at the people standing in line instead.
Suddenly, a woman with long, auburn hair who’s not wearing a shawl walks past the people standing in line, and I do a double take, blinking a couple of times.
Who was that?
I get up from my seat and take a good look at the woman barging around the hall, asking things from the husbands and wives quietly eating their lunches. She’s unaware of me, but I am fully aware of her presence and wonder if I’m dreaming.
Because I know that woman.
I know her … from before I came here.
My pupils dilate.
Emmy suddenly tugs at my arm, forcing me to look at her. Her eyes scream ‘sit down, or else!’ and I know she’s right, but I need to know if my eyes really did see that just now.
But when I turn to take another look, the woman is gone, completely vanished into thin air as though she never existed. Did I make the whole thing up? Was it a figment of my imagination created by my mind to ease the stress? Or am I losing it for real?
I sit back down slowly, contemplating whether I should try to find her, but Emmy’s steely eyes force me to stay. I know she’s not trying to be harsh, but it’s in her nature to comply.
I glance at April, who looks back with questioning eyes.
I wish I could tell her.
I wish I could scream it out to the world.
I wish it was safe to say …
That I think I saw my mother.
