Escape from Eden (3 page)

“It’s pink,” Sister said, her voice rusty with age. “Pepto-Bismol pink. Calamine lotion pink.” She flipped the fabric over and mumbled, “But this pink won’t heal. Won’t heal much at all.”

“I just want to look pretty,” Aliyah said.

“That you will, darlin’.” Sister nodded, bobbing her head. “That you will.”

But what Sister had said echoed in my head. “What do you mean won’t heal?” I asked her.

Sister chewed the inside of her cheek like gum and shook her head at me. “Don’t listen to me. I’m an old seamstress who talks nonsense.”

Aliyah, as instructed, ignored her. “I’m also making banana rice pudding to take to Prayer Circle tonight. Do you think they’ll like it?”

Before I could answer, Sister let out a long-suffering sigh. “You girls need to get on out of here. I need to work in peace. I’ve got these girls trained to keep quiet while I work.” She thrust a knotted thumb back at Suzanne and Kori, both of whom glanced up. “I can’t listen to all this talk. These ruffle sleeves ain’t gonna ruffle themselves.”

I grabbed Aliyah’s arm and dragged her toward the door. By the look on her face, I knew she didn’t want to leave.

“I’ll be back after dinner service,” Aliyah said to Sister.

She waved us off with a gnarled hand clutching a tiny needle, the pink thread swaying with the movement.

Outside, an occasional breeze eased the relentless humidity. Sister’s sewing cottage sat on a small crest. Edenton, bordered by the jungle, stretched out in rows of wooden cottages and cobbled paths below. I could see the kitchen, behind it the herb garden, and behind that the path through the trees to the acres of vegetable gardens and fruit orchards.

Along the outside wall of the schoolhouse, painted a deep beet red, the younger kids lined up, Max among them, after recess in the play yard. Mama clapped her hands to get their attention before ushering them back into the schoolhouse through the large double doors. A strange echo caused the noise to sound a split second after her hands came together.

At the commune’s gated entrance, men unloaded a truck of supplies, stacking boxes along the side of the road. The trucks were inspected and heavily guarded. Every box passed through a long building next to the Edenton front gates and came out on the other side, divided into piles.

As the wind shifted, I heard something strange. A beat. A deep, thudding beat.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Aliyah.

She cocked her head. “Hear what?”

“That,” I paused, listening to it fade in and out. “That music.”

“Music? Here?” Aliyah let out a small laugh. “You know the Reverend wouldn’t allow it outside of congregation or … ” her expression took on a dreamy quality, “Prayer Circle.”

Ignoring her Circle worship, I stopped, trying to pick up what direction the sound was coming from. But the rumble of a truck leaving through the front entrance sounded, mingling with the kids’ voices as they filtered into the schoolhouse.

“I heard it, Aliyah.”

“It was probably coming from one of the delivery trucks. If the Reverend heard music around here, whoever played it would end up in Contrition for a week!”

Those who sinned—and were caught—were sent to confess their wrongdoings to the Reverend, then he doled out his punishment–anything from praying for hours on end to digging out the muck from the latrines in the work fields.

“But it wasn’t coming from the trucks,” I said, pointing to the entrance. Slowly, I spun around, finger still outstretched, trying to pinpoint where the music had come from. As I did, I caught a quick beat, and another before it was swallowed up by the wind. I froze. “It came from that direction.”

“That’s the jungle, Mia. There’s nothing for ten miles.”

I dropped my hand. “Can sound travel over that kind of distance?” I asked, mostly to myself.

“No,” Aliyah said. “But it can travel from one of the trucks. The main road is pretty winding outside the gates from what I remember. Maybe there’s a truck out there.” She grabbed my hand. “Come on, we have dinner to prep.”

“Already?”

I looked up at the sun. It was lower in the sky, but as incessant as ever. Doc Gladstone, and the wound on my leg, would have to wait until after dinner.

I let Aliyah drag me down the hill, but I kept my eyes on the thick jungle encroaching on the border of Edenton. She was right. There was nothing out there but thick, wet foliage, brown recluse spiders, and poison dart frogs. Pit vipers that clung to branches, and birds, colorful and loud, almost mocking from their safe haven high in the trees. It was no place for people. Not ones who wanted to live, anyway.

After dinner service, the members of the Flock drained out through the dining hall doors as I collected the breadbaskets from the long tables. I spotted Mama slipping outside.

“Mama,” I called. I placed the stack of breadbaskets on the gray cart and ran out through the door after her. “Mama, wait.”

With a sigh, Mama turned. Her hair, a few shades darker brown than mine, hung in a braid that flipped over her shoulder. Ever since I was little, people told me I looked like her: the same wide green eyes, same rosebud mouth, same golden complexion. But the stiff gray of her uniform dress sallowed her skin in the evening sun. At her hip, Max held her hand and grinned at me.

“Yes, Mia?” she said.

Her cottage mate Jin Sang stopped as well. Bae John, her son, stood with his back up against her legs. Her arms were crossed over his chest protectively. She said nothing, but I saw the wariness in her almond-shaped eyes. She’d heard me argue with Mama the last few weeks, although I hoped she didn’t hear what we argued about.

“Can we talk later?” I asked Mama. “I’ll come by?”

She glanced at Jin Sang. “Will you take the boys back to our cottage?”

Jin Sang took Max’s hand. “Of course,” she said in her tiny accented voice.

Max waved goodbye to me with a curl of his fingers.

Mama glanced around before chucking her chin toward the outside corner of the dining hall. We walked behind a hibiscus bush studded with red blossoms. The perennial battalion of insects—mostly mosquitos—swirled in the evening air.

“You need to stop this, Mia,” Mama said to me quietly.

“All I want is to talk about it. Calmly and rationally. We don’t have to argue about it. Just discuss our options.”

The lines in Mama’s forehead deepened. “No. This conversation is over. And whatever you do, don’t talk about it to anyone, understand?”

“But Mama—”

She thrust her finger in my face and dropped her voice to a harsh whisper. “Look, you’re not the only one here who remembers life before Edenton.”

“I’m the only one of my friends.”

“It’s a life we left behind,” she said.

“A life you left behind! I was ten, what choice did I have?”

“What has come over you lately?”

What had come over me? I was finally doing what Papa had always told me to do before he left us all those years ago. Before he couldn’t deal with her anymore. I was thinking. Questioning. Something no one did in Edenton. I placed my hands on my hips and stared her down.

“Good God, Mia,” she said. “Stop it. Edenton is our home. This is where we belong. Bring this up one more time and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I said. “Turn me in to the Reverend because I want to leave?”

“Ssssh!” she said, and took a step back away from me. “Get back to work before Agatha starts looking for you.”

I spun away from her, slammed through the dining hall doors, and wheeled the cart with the breadbaskets back to the kitchen. I spent the next two hours during dinner cleanup simmering about Mama and her closed-mindedness. I wasn’t asking for the moon tied up in a perfect red ribbon. All I’d wanted to do was discuss options. Options that would lead me on the path out of Edenton. Maybe I’d have to find another way, without Mama’s help. Without her knowledge.

“Mia,” Octavio called, jogging around the corner of the building as I left the kitchen after dinner service. I’d been on my way to the infirmary to see Doc Gladstone about my leg, and looking forward to the short walk alone.

I smiled at him, as I always did, and he smiled back. A dimple in one cheek. His eyes were warm, like his sister’s. But that rush of excitement, those stupid tingles I felt with Gabriel—someone I hardly knew—was missing when I looked into Octavio’s eyes.

Octavio pushed the curls off his forehead. The sky above was flushed pink as the sun disappeared behind the tall trees. His dusky complexion, flawless and clear, practically shone in the light. Octavio was a beautiful boy. But he couldn’t be my boy, even if he wanted to be.

“I wanted to see if you’re going to be on the beach tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow?” I asked.

“Training is on the beach tomorrow instead of in the gym. You weren’t in training today, so I was wondering—”

“Oh, yeah.” I grinned at him. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

His shoulders sagged in relief. “Good,” he said. “Can I walk you back to your cottage?”

“I’m actually going to the infirmary,” I said, and his expression turned to worry. “It’s no big deal, just a splinter. And, yeah, walk with me over there.”

“Okay.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his head toward the path leading into the main walkway.

We walked together in companionable silence. Along the way, I wondered what there really was for us to discuss. How the fishing was this month? Were the papayas growing on schedule? Or maybe the Reverend’s latest sermon on the importance of service in the eyes of God? What did any of us talk about, anyway? Nothing, if I thought about it. We talked about what the Reverend wanted us to talk about—benign and unworldly topics.

“Here we are,” Octavio said as we approached the door to the infirmary.

I smiled at him again–it was easier than saying anything–and watched silently as he waved goodbye and walked back in the direction of the boys’ cottages.

A hollow pain sat in my chest, and I let it linger there as I stood on the steps of the infirmary watching his liquid shadow dance along the cobblestones. He wasn’t enough for me. Octavio was sweet, and caring. But I wanted so much more. I admitted to myself that I wanted what I’d felt when Gabriel was close to me, whispering in my ear. Why did the Reverend choose who our lifelong partners were anyway? What did he even know about me? About any of us, really?

Inside the infirmary, Doc Gladstone sat behind a small desk. Papers fanned out before him and he scratched a signature along the bottom of each. His fingers were long, holding the pen at a graceful, left-handed slant. I wanted that paper. That pen. Such a luxury to feel the ink slide across the surface. The small desk lamp illuminating the papers was the only light in the cool room and I caught movement in the shadows, closest to the back hallway. In a flash, the overhead fluorescent lights came on.

“We have a walk-in, Doctor,” Nurse Ivy said in her rusted voice, the green cast of her scrubs reflecting her pallor.

She was skeletal, and creepy, and of indeterminate age. The glossy locks of her honey-colored hair seemed youthful and healthy, but the thinness of her skin, the tracing of bluish veins right below the surface, aged her.

“Hello there, Mia,” Doc Gladstone said in his lilting Caribbean accent. He stood, gathering the papers into a pile. “What can I help you with this evening?”

I told him about the splinter, all the while watching Nurse Ivy cast a cold eye in my direction. Not until I was on the exam table did she leave the room, taking the papers into the darkened back hallway.

Doc Gladstone stretched on gloves. “On your stomach,” he said. With gentle fingers, he examined the back of my thigh. “Mia, there’s still a piece of splinter in your leg.” Up close, he looked tired, the shadows under his eyes more pronounced. “Why didn’t you come here right after this happened?”

I faltered for a moment. If I hadn’t spent the day making those cookies and accompanying Aliyah to the sewing cottage, I would have been here taking care of myself. But Edenton was about community—thinking of others, not yourself. And that was so ingrained in me I was almost ashamed. I couldn’t allow my health to be compromised. It was all I had.

“I had breakfast prep last night,” I said, lifting my head from the pillow to turn back to Doc. I hadn’t slept the night before. My neck was stiff from tossing and turning. “And then today I got busy.”

A fan blew from the corner of the infirmary, oscillating evening air from the open window and I wondered idly why the infirmary’s cots were more comfortable than my own bunk.

“Busy?” he asked. “Mia, without health life is not life, it is only a state of languor and suffering—an image of death.” He grinned at me. “The Buddha.”

“You’re quoting the Buddha and referencing death because of a splinter?” I lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not sure about your bedside manner.”

He laughed. “Infection, girl. It’s rampant in this humid jungle and you know it.” I felt a pinch and jumped. “This is going to hurt, it’s in there deep.”

As I tensed for the pain, I heard rioting voices coming from the infirmary’s entrance. The shock of the sound, here in ever-so-peaceful Edenton, brought me up on my elbows.

“Stop squirming!” Grizz, one of Edenton’s security guards, yelled.

His massive frame filled the doorway. Behind him, three other guards muscled forward, craning to see what Grizz held in his arms. He threw someone forward onto the polyurethaned floor. That someone landed with a thunk.

“Easy now, Grizz,” Doc Gladstone said, going down on one knee. “This is one of God’s creatures.”

“This creature punched me!” Grizz said, his ham-sized hand motioning to the heap on the floor. “Twice! And it took three of my guys to wrestle him off me!”

Flickering fluorescent light washed over the dark figure crouched at his feet. The figure pushed himself up. Excitement electrified my skin as Gabriel lifted his head. Then I noticed a livid purpling bruise around his left eye and, beneath it, a cut trickling blood. Something tugged in my chest, and I realized I was worried about him. It had been so long since I worried about anyone.

Doc Gladstone gently lifted Gabriel’s chin and examined his face.