Children of Paradise: A Novel (12 page)

Joyce tries to hang wet clothes on the clothesline with her sore left hand in a bandage. She keeps several clothespins in her mouth and throws an item of clothing over the line. She arranges the item with a few adjustments and pins it in place. Trina runs up to her and hugs her. Joyce pushes her daughter away and looks around in a panic. Seeing no one, she pulls her daughter back to her embrace and apologizes several times.

—The guards took Ryan last night.

—I heard. I’m sorry. They’ll use him as an example to test us. You must be strong.

They look at each other for a moment and nod. They tell each other they are fine and that they love each other. Trina offers to help hang the wet clothes. Joyce asks Trina to hold up her hands and decides at a glance that she needs to wash before she handles clean clothes. Joyce asks her to fetch more clothespins; she is about to run out, and then where will she be? Trina heads to the laundry room, where a group of women and girls attend to a dozen or more washing machines while others hand-wash certain items that cannot be machine-washed. More clotheslines are strung about the yard behind the laundry room with the clothing at various stages of being sunned. A breeze passes through, and the clothes flap like flags, and as the breeze picks up strength, the sound of the clotheslines mimics clapping or people slapping their thighs.

The clotheslines fall into four distinct groups: women, men, girls, and boys. No one owns anything, so the aim is to find something that fits. The different dormitories and houses apportion clothes in the sizes of the children and adults living in them. This simplifies finding a clean item only a little, since the enormous task remains for a child or adult to wear something that is not too tight or too baggy.

The commune’s rules against vanity discourage complimentary remarks about a person’s appearance. The preacher maintains that the beauty that matters most happens to be within and not in any outward appearance. The exterior look should attend to good hygiene, and that is the end of it. For cleanliness, says Father, is next to . . . He trails off and waits for the collective answer. Trina’s mother makes sure her daughter understands what size dress she needs to find and to pay particular attention to her choice of underwear—it should be clean and free of holes before she steps into it—and never to wear clothes that stand out and invite covetous eyes. The mending crew operates in a room packed with sewing machines. They make new things and repair old ones, cut large items down, and patch elbows and knees with pieces cut from items too damaged to restore to decency. Ironing is kept to a minimum, for the commune leader and his cadre of assistants only, and for the others to welcome an important visitor, perhaps a politician or other government delegation, to the compound. Clean clothes can be found in a series of storehouses with large shelves built in to walls, some fitted with drawers. Each section has a label according to age group and a one-word description. For Trina, the area to hunt for clothing is the girls’ section and the six-to-ten age group; she has to hunt for underwear or dress or skirt or blouse (never the immodesty of trousers for the girls) in the drawers with those labels. A folding crew is responsible for keeping everything tidy, down to ensuring that fresh adhesive or tape holds those all-important labels in place.

Trina and her mother end up on laundry duty together. Trina washes her hands at a bucket beside a water barrel not far away. She shakes the excess water from her hands in the warm morning air and finds a bucket full of clothespins, just inside the door of the laundry room, and grabs it. But the bucket is so heavy, she has to walk back to her mother by gripping the handle with two hands and carrying it between her legs. This keeps her legs wide apart. As she steps, she rocks her body from one side to the other with the bucket kept very still between her legs. Trina’s mother looks around and sees her daughter swaying toward her, laden down with pins in a bucket, and she has to hold her sore ribs and cover her mouth to stifle her laughter, since levity is not encouraged outside of sermons. Trina reaches her mother, who looks around to be sure they are not observed before she hugs and kisses her daughter several times in quick succession and tells her that she loves her in a rapid volley and, with the same lightning speed, resumes her task of hanging wet clothes.

—Mom, can you help Ryan?

—I don’t know if I dare say anything, much less do something.

—We can’t just abandon him.

The postman’s van enters the compound. The approaching engine grabs everyone’s attention. The postman drives into the main clearing that separates Adam’s cage from the preacher’s house. He stops his van at the front steps of the preacher’s house, and people doing chores in the vicinity of the main clearing glance surreptitiously at the vehicle. The two guards stationed at the preacher’s front door help the postman with his many sacks of mail for the commune. Trina’s mother looks without looking, as she calls it. She knows it is considered slovenly and wayward to stop work and watch anything that does not relate directly to the task in front of her.

—Maybe you can help him.

—Me?

—Yes, Trina. You.

—But how?

Joyce whispers to Trina to keep her eyes on her work while she steals a glance or two in the direction of the mail van. The fact that so much mail arrives and none of it for anyone other than the preacher, including more than two hundred checks signed over to him by pensioners, makes everyone think of their homes and relatives who must be curious about them. Seeing the mail van induces a longing in Trina for another place more than for a father. She never knew her father, but she remembers another country. She misses the fact of never knowing her father less than she misses the country that she left to come to the jungle. A faraway land fathered her. Her mother never talks about him except to say he was a drinker and gambler and ungodly and unworthy of her love and loved no one but himself. If Trina asks where he came from or what he looked like, Joyce says he told her he came from all over and he looked like any man with selfish intentions. And that now the preacher is Trina’s father and no man on earth would do for them what he has done for them and for everyone at the commune.

Trina’s longing remains undiminished despite what her mother says. She sees the mailman and thinks what she feels must be multiplied in the bodies of everyone on the compound. Combine all that longing and hope and they should fill those huge mailbags, each longing in the shape of an envelope, each hope a sheet of paper filled with writing and sealed inside. Trina glances about and sees how everyone nearby, from the kitchen to the laundry to the cleaners and yard workers, lingers and tries to look at the mailman without making it obvious, how slow they become with half of their attention on the job and the more important half on the mailman. The van turns in three points and accelerates away and raises a little dust that disperses while it raises those seeds of longing and hope.

Trina and Joyce exchange looks of resignation and a smile. Trina decides to cheer up her mother and herself. She switches from slow to fast. She looks around, and seeing no prefect or guard’s eyes on them, she slaps her mother on the behind and says that the clothes hanging like this in row upon row of lines resemble a theater full of headless people. Her mother looks about, and seeing that the coast is clear, she asks Trina if it could be that ghosts occupy the clothes. Trina replies that must be it exactly, an open-air theater of ghosts, an audience of ghosts looking at the two of them onstage, putting on a show. Joyce likes this. And what kind of a show are we in? her mother wonders. Trina says it is a show about a mother and her daughter lost in a forest and waiting for rescuers destined to come someday. Joyce asks if she can try harder to be happy as she waits to be rescued. Trina promises that she will be happy and will make a bigger effort to be happy if she can be sure of rescue someday and if it will please Joyce.

—Yes, it will please me to think that my daughter is happy with me no matter where we happen to be.

Trina passes pins to her mother, a couple at a time, and wet clothes, one at a time. They edge sideways as they fill the line. Trina asks her mother how the play they are in will end.

—Happily, therefore be happy. But the exact details of the happy ending aren’t known. Not even by the actors.

—The ghosts know, don’t they?

—Nope. They are in the audience because they don’t know the ending, either.

This makes Trina laugh and squash the laugh with her hand to her mouth. Joyce drags the basin of wet clothes along with them while Trina pulls her bucket of clothespins, a two-handed pull with her legs far apart, and the bucket of pins grows imperceptibly easier to drag as the line fills and dips with the weight of the clothes, and some drip and pockmark the dirt.

Trina hears her name from more than one source. Joyce looks alarmed and tries to hide her concern with a smile at her daughter, whose entire frame stiffens at the sound of her name. A prefect runs up to Trina and says she must come right away, at Father’s request. Seeing the concern on their faces, the prefect tells them not to worry, that this time it is a good thing. The prefect leads Trina to the dormitory, where she collects her flute. He leads her from the dormitory to Adam’s cage; the preacher waits there for them. He wears a starched and well-ironed white shirt and white pants with a prominent leg seam. He is about to give Adam his breakfast. The preacher greets Trina with a smile and says he hopes she will be his helper. Two guards, rifles slung over shoulders, stand a few paces from the preacher and Trina. One of the guards carries a bucket full of vegetable and fruit peels, some limp salad leaves, and lettuce and ripe bananas. The other holds a bucket of water.

—You play the flute while I feed him.

—Yes, Father.

At the sight of breakfast, Adam scrambles from his bed to the gate of his cage. The man points to the back of the cage, and Adam retreats there. The preacher takes the basket of food from the guard, fishes a bunch of keys out of his trouser pocket, flicks through them with a jangly sound, and stops at a large silver key. He inserts that into the fat lock and turns his wrist, and the lock flicks open. He sinks the bunch of keys in his pocket and stifles their song. Next he pulls the chain from the coupling and places lock and chain on the ground next to the cage door. A guard leaps forward and opens the door for the preacher, who steps inside with the basket of gorilla goodies. The guards become edgy. Trina plays and looks at the sandals on the preacher’s feet, crisscrossed black leather polished to a shine and held in place by a spotless silver buckle. His toenails are cut in a straight line and longer than she thinks they should be, with sharp edges on account of the straight cut, nails that could burst a balloon if one landed on his foot, or cut someone if he kicked them.

The preacher pours the contents of the basket into a trough and comes back out for the bucket of water, which he carries into the cage and pours into a large bowl. He stands inside and looks at Trina as she plays. Trina lowers the flute. He nods to Trina to resume playing and beckons her to join him in the cage. Adam eats, but his eyes follow Trina as she comes. He pauses with a mouthful of lettuce and remembers that he should view the two of them right there in the cage with him as his most important allies in the community. This man and child bring him food and music. The preacher watches Adam eat while Trina plays her flute. People around the compound stall in their chores and steal glances their way. Joyce stoops to pick up wet clothes and pretends to sort through the laundry as she fights to breathe and keep her head clear and see what her daughter is doing with the preacher. Adam reminds himself that all he has to do is obey the preacher, carry out orders from him to the letter. Adam pretends to eat as he looks askance at the preacher and at Trina playing her flute.

—A friend of yours did something wrong to me, to himself, to everyone at this commune, and to God.

The preacher’s words pound Trina’s body. She feels her energy drain from her. Her arms weaken, and she lowers the flute and stares with wide unblinking eyes at the preacher.

—You know his actions cannot go unpunished, don’t you, Trina?

—But Father. He won’t ever steal again.

—That’s not the point, Trina. Listen to me.

—But he’s good, Father. He made one mistake.

—If you say “but” to me again, I will lock you in this cage with Adam. Do you understand?

—Yes, Father. Sorry, Father.

—If I don’t make an example of him, others will take it as a sign of weakness, and anarchy will spread like wildfire through this community.

—Yes, Father.

—I need your help to restore order. You’re this boy’s friend, so you’re the best person for the job.

—What job, Father?

—Play some more.

He tells the guards to stand a little farther away. Trina makes up a tune that comes from listening to the wind in the trees and then the rain made by trees and the arrival of sunshine through that rain. Adam again stops chewing and listens. The preacher nods in time to the tune or some thought that roughly matches Trina’s playing. He touches Trina’s shoulder for her to follow him, and he walks backward out of the cage, so Trina steps backward as well. She glances behind her to see where to place the ball of her foot while avoiding the preacher’s razor toenails. After they’re out of the cage, the preacher replaces the heavy chain and big lock and keys it shut. The preacher walks away, leaving Trina standing next to the cage with the guards holding a bucket and a basket between them. The guards pass the basket and bucket to the nearest passerby and follow the preacher at a safe distance. The preacher pulls a notebook and pen from his pocket and, every few steps, notes something that is wrong, an eyesore in need of someone’s attention. He frowns throughout. A smile and a nod break out on his mask of distemper the moment Trina scoots beside him and curtseys. He takes her hand in his, and she wants to look at his hand to check why it feels soft and warm, but she just returns his grip and stifles an instinct to break into a skipping step. She knows her mother sees all this, so Trina tries to act as she imagines her mother would instruct her to act, with engagement but not unseemly enthusiasm. Therefore no skipping. Therefore she swallows the nursery rhyme brimming in her throat.