Children of Paradise: A Novel (13 page)

—Your flute playing’s coming along.

—Thank you, Father.

He places his pen in his shirt pocket and ruffles her hair and points in the direction of the school building for Trina to head there, and she runs toward it and looks over her shoulder at him and he waves at her and she waves back. She glances at the clothesline. Though Joyce stoops over a basin of clothes as if sorting through for the right item to fit on the last space left on the line, Trina knows her mother crouches at that particular angle to take a good look at how her daughter is conducting herself with the preacher and the beast.

Trina waves at her mother by pretending to wave away a fly. Trina even says, Shoo, fly. And she speaks quite loud. Every muscle in Joyce’s body wants to wave back at Trina, but she knows better than to attract the attention of a prefect or guard. Like every parent at the commune, she has to downplay public displays of affection toward her child. Trina belongs less to her and more to everyone in the community. Every adult is a parent to her child, and therefore Trina belongs to everyone as much as she belongs to her mother. And everyone in the community belongs to God, whose prophet is Father to all of them. Joyce allows herself a brief smile that she smothers by burying her face in a small wet shirt. She sniffs at the shirt as if she detects a sweat stain on it and, certain she has wiped that smile from her face, holds the shirt up to the light in an ostentatious act of inspection. A breeze whips through the rows of clotheslines, and the garments flap in a burst of applause. Joyce marvels at Trina seeing the ghosts in the clothes hanging on lines, and takes a bow to her audience. What a child. She has worked out already at her delicate age that everything they do at the commune, each chore or demonstration of loyalty, has to carry with it like a shadow a performance for some other thing that can never be shown. The chore can never be that Joyce simply hangs wet clothes on the line; Joyce tries to perform the chore as if she were Trina. What would Trina do on a stage in front of an audience of ghosts? Joyce thinks for a moment. She pauses and listens to the clothes. How to find the rationale for bowing in the open to no one in particular? She thinks like the mirror image of her daughter. It comes to her in a flash. She drops her clothespins, reaches down to retrieve them with a slight bend in her knees, and straightens again before the clothes. Her disguised genuflection is as good as taking a bow. The wind picks up. The clothes flap. Joyce sings to herself, barely a song, more a hum:

—Captain, Captain, put me ashore . . .

She sees her daughter with her on a boat with a man in a sweat-stained captain’s hat standing at the helm. The picture of the captain makes Joyce’s temperature rise. She replaces the captain and his boat with an image of Trina playing her flute.

I
n the schoolhouse, the head teacher asks the assembly of children who walks them from calamity to safety. Father, the children reply. With so many voices saying the word, it booms from the building and resembles many other words: fatter, farther, fadder. The youngest children sit in the front rows and the older children at the back. Teachers brandish four-foot-long flexible canes and stand around the sides with a few older prefects drawn from the most obedient of the children to help keep the others seated, looking straight ahead, and still, no fidgeting, no whispering, or else a quick flick of a cane on the arms or legs. The prefects decide one child is guilty of a gross infraction when he continues to whisper after a warning hit and fidgets unduly despite a tap of a cane on his legs. They pull the child out of the assembly and make him hold out a hand, and the cane tastes his flesh six times, three licks on each outstretched palm.

Trina sits at the front and waits for the preacher, as instructed. She spots Rose a few rows back; no sight of Ryan. Trina looks without looking at a mirror image of her mother. Trina has perfected the act of staring straight ahead with her eyes thrown to the corners to catch glimpses of things to her extreme left and right. She times her survey of the room to coincide with any disturbance that might occur. The moment another child is reprimanded, in the middle of the lash or extraction from the row of seats, usually through pulling that child by an ear, Trina looks behind and away from the focal point of the room to see what else is happening and who is doing what to whom. She finds it much more interesting to consider the events that will happen next rather than the events that are almost done and over with.

Where is Ryan? She maps the position of each teacher and prefect. The farther away from her the prefect or teacher, the more she can scope out her environment undetected. All she wants to do is scratch if she feels like it or cross and uncross her legs without someone shouting at her or lashing her arms and legs. Trina spots Rose, who looks particularly unhappy, barely able to stop herself from crying. Trina knows if Rose bursts into tears, she risks a beating. It happens all the time. The prefects beat a child who they think is crying for nothing. They say by beating the child, they are giving him or her a real reason to cry. Trina tries to catch Rose’s attention and smile and cheer her to save her from punishment.

First, she thinks, distract the prefects. Trina bumps the child to her right with her shoulder. That child bumps the child to her right, and the bumping runs along the row of seats until a prefect shouts at the children to stop their nonsense and two more prefects leave their stations and come over to investigate. Second, Trina turns to face Rose and beams to her the biggest smile she can fit on her face. Trina also crosses her eyes and sticks out her tongue and curls it up toward her nose. Rose smiles, and so do many other children who witness Trina’s antics. The prefects shout and tap at more children.

Trina scans the faces around her to take her attention away from the front of the room. She hates how an adult asks a question in order to occupy the thoughts of a child minute by minute. It seems every adult in the commune is bent on emulating the ways of the preacher. Trina sees it as rude, because she has enough things to think about already. She cannot bear setting aside all her thoughts for a relay of questions everyone knows the answers to. As the assembly shouts a reply to a question, Trina moves her lips soundlessly. She creates the impression of her engagement and full participation in the proceedings. If the teachers and prefects are far from her, she does not bother to move her lips. She uses the time to examine how the other children look, and she weighs on scales in her mind just how much happiness there is among the children as opposed to misery. This morning is ruled by misery. Ryan is missing. To get through her day, she decides to smile at as many children as possible.

—Who puts food on your table?

The head teacher paces across the front of the room and makes an arc of her cane in front of her chest and lashes the sides of her legs as if to spur herself on with her interrogative formulations. The children reply:

—Father.

Trina moves her lips, since she is seated three seats from the end of the row and easily observed by a prefect who stands nearby and stares at every child in the vicinity for seconds at a time, as if looking for some sign on the child’s body that will indicate imminent rebellion.

—Who protects us from our wicked ways?

—Father.

Trina lip-synchs some more.

—Who will guide us through the gates of paradise?

—Fadder, farther, farter.

Trina moves her lips and keeps a smile away from her mouth and confines her glee to her narrowed eyes. The children bow their heads, and the head teacher asks the Lord to forgive them their evil ways, for they know not what they do in their actions that serve the devil and their thoughts that invite evil into their minds and hearts, and only the preacher can save them from themselves, amen. Amen, the children reply. The prefects and teachers order the children to clear the central space of the assembly room. Beginning with the front row, each child takes a chair to a corner of the hall and adds it to a stack. Older children help the young ones, who cannot lift their chairs onto the stack. The children stand to the side. It takes five minutes of scraping and bumping to clear the hall and gather all the children around the sides of the room. The head teacher calls Trina to the middle of the room. Trina stands and looks around to see if she can spot Rose and whether this concerns Ryan. The head teacher extends her cane to Trina, who hesitates. The teacher says Trina had better take the cane or taste some licks from it right there in front of everyone. Trina considers the ultimatum. The head teacher leans in close to Trina’s ear and whispers that this order comes from the preacher, and not to obey it would mean terrible things for a lot of people, not just Trina. The teacher urges Trina to think of her mother. Trina takes the cane and holds it beside her. The cane is as tall as Trina.

The head teacher calls on the assembled children to pay special attention to this exercise. Prefects step forward and form two lines, one on either side of Trina. Each prefect wields a similar cane. She says that a child among them went against the communal ideal by committing a crime of theft. Two guards march into the hall and join the front of the two lines. One of the guards is the young man recently promoted from a prefect as a reward for snitching on his mother and who likes to beat children. The head teacher says that the only appropriate lesson for a thief is a public beating. The young guard lifts a whistle to his mouth and waits for the head teacher to finish her speech. The whistle hangs on a plain piece of string around his neck. The head teacher says that by special decree of the preacher, Trina is to head the group who will carry out the punishment. The head teacher nods at the young guard, who looks at the door and blows his whistle. A shrill beaded sound reverberates in the hall. Trina’s ears ring. The whistle seals her ears tight. All eyes train on the entrance to the hall. Trina feels her body become limp, her blood drain, her air vacuum, her legs lose their polarity of bones. She looks for Rose in the crowd. She thinks of her mother. If only Joyce could walk in and put a stop to things.

Four guards march in with Ryan in the middle. The hall full of children harvests whispers, gasps, shuffling feet. The youngest of the children begin to whimper, Rose among them. Trina finds Rose, squeezes her eyes almost closed, and barely nods. Rose stems her tears. For Trina. Rose inhales deeply to calm herself. For Ryan. He looks around the room. His eyes are red. His clothes dirty. He stares blankly at Trina without showing the slightest sign of recognition. The guards position Ryan at the end of the two lines. He faces Trina, who stands at the other end. The young guard tells Ryan to walk to Trina and turn around and walk all the way back. He must stay in the middle of the lines. He must not bump into any of the prefects or guards. He must not run, he must not fall to the ground, or the whole thing will happen again from the beginning. He wants to know if Ryan understands. Ryan nods. Ryan looks at Rose and nods. This must happen. Ryan nods at Trina again. And the best way for it to happen, the smoothest way, is for everyone to play his part to the best of his ability. Trina nods back. The prefects and guards raise their canes and sticks, and Trina follows their gesture. She lifts the leaden weights of her arms with the cane in her hands. The young guard’s whistle slices the air to ribbons, and Ryan’s punishment begins.

Ryan walks like an automaton, slow, joints stiff, his arms by his sides. He winces and blinks from shadows of sticks, from the involuntary register of a heavy object brought down fast and hard on his body. His eyes fill with tears, against his will to keep them clear and empty of his surroundings. Each strike approximates to a hard punch or kick. His body jolts with the blows. He hears his name attached to curses. He meets Trina with her arms raised over her head and a stick in her hands. He sees her through eyes full of water so that she looks blurred in parts and bulbous and wavy, almost boneless. More sticks rain down on Ryan, and Trina’s image runs down Ryan’s face. He sees darkness with no sound and feels numbness all over his body.

Outside the school building, Adam shakes the bars of his cage and howls. Joyce and Ryan’s parents edge close to the school to pick up what they can of the events going on inside. A guard stationed outside the building orders them to move away. He walks with them and repeats his order, and they move slowly ahead, just out of reach of his stick.

A convoy of four army jeeps pulls up in front of the preacher’s white house, and several uniformed men hop out. One of the soldiers carries a light but big briefcase, light from the way he swings it around with ease as he moves. Four pairs of soldiers each grab four large cases and head for the front door of the preacher’s house. They huff and puff with the cases and call directions to each other about which one should start up the steps and which one should follow. Another soldier pins under his left arm what looks like a foot-long sandwich in a brown paper bag. The guards at the front door push the door wide and hold it open for the soldiers to enter. The group files into the house and leaves the driver of the first vehicle to keep watch. The guards close the front door and admire the vehicles from afar. The soldier steps from behind the wheel and stretches. There is a pause during which the driver unbuttons the left breast pocket on his pressed uniform and fishes out a cigarette pack decorated with a camel. The two guards’ attention wanders from the four jeeps to the soldier. He peels off the clear plastic seal, shakes the pack until one cigarette frees itself, takes it between two fingers and taps it on the packet, pulls a lighter from the same pocket, shields it with a cupped hand, and lowers his head to the flame. The guards step down from the porch to join the driver, who offers them each a cigarette. They look around and decline. One guard says somewhat perfunctorily that the commune considers cigarettes to be devil sticks. The soldier shrugs and draws deeply and looks away from the guards in the direction of Adam’s cage. The guards watch as smoke from the cigarette climbs out of the nostrils of the soldier and scatters to enviable invisibility. They quiz the soldier about the capital. He says things are tough in the city. People cannot find work. Basic supplies like flour, sugar, milk, and rice are hard to come by. The driver marvels at the compound around him. He says the guards are lucky to have food, clothing, and shelter guaranteed. Even in the army, a soldier has to buy his uniform. The only free things are ammunition and a gun. The guards say that the most difficult food to find is food for the spirit. The army driver agrees and blows a smoke ring whose halo drifts above his head and evaporates. Is army life good to him? It takes the driver two puffs, the first short and the second long, to consider the question. He says he has a regular wage and a roof over his head, but the things that he has to do to make ends meet, to supplement his wage, none of it is to be found in any army training manual and yet all of it has to be practiced. Such as what, the guard wants to know. Well, here he is in this compound in the middle of the jungle, and why is that. The guards shrug. The driver asks them to think about it. He puffs twice and squints through the smoke as he looks at the guards. He lights up another by gently meeting the fresh cigarette with the ruby stub, then drops and mashes the stub into the soil. He offers the packet absently, and the guards liberate two cigarettes each and conceal the little devils under their cloth hats.