The Big Dark Sky (18)

She loved Cricket Moon with a passion that surprised her because for so many years before this child came along, Wendy had been dead inside. Well, her organs worked and her blood flowed and all that, but she didn’t feel anything. Or she didn’t feel much, not anything worth feeling: sadness, a quiet and persistent anxiety, self-loathing. She left home with all that bad psychological baggage and little else when she was fourteen. Anyway, it wasn’t really a home that she left, just a place where her mother did dope and her father drank. Often the old man was in a mean mood, and the only thing that cheered him up was hitting someone too small to hit back. When Wendy got out of there, she lived on the street with a paper bag over her head, holes cut in it to see and breathe, and she had a special corner where she sat with a donation jar and a hand-printed sign that said: SEVERE FACIAL DEFORMITIES. SO UGLY NO ONE WILL HIRE ME. GOD BLESS YOU FOR CARING. Some people took her claim seriously, as if she were the girl version of the Elephant Man, while many others thought it was a scam but a funny one, and both types dropped coins and singles in the jar, sometimes larger bills. By concealing her face, which was actually pretty enough, she remained able to panhandle without much risk of being taken into custody by child-welfare authorities. She slept in churches and bathed after midnight in public fountains and reflecting pools, and she had money for food, movies, whatnot. Nothing really terrible happened to her, but nothing good enough happened to make her feel better about herself, which was why she was so susceptible to the Snake when he pitched her on the glories of his mission and his pure heart, and brought her to live in his compound at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley.

She was fifteen when she became the Snake’s “bride.” In her mind, she always put quotation marks around the word because there was never a wedding and because she wasn’t his only “bride.” He had four or five at any one time, although this was not known by those beyond his inner circle of advisers, the so-called First 10. The other “brides” were often pregnant, and the Snake had a doctor in his mission, one who performed ultrasound scans to be sure that the mothers and their unborn babies were okay. The Snake wasn’t a gentle husband, nor did he appear interested in a wife’s needs or emotions. However, his concern for their health during pregnancy suggested that he cared about them more than he could easily express. If something was wrong with a baby—something often was—an abortion ensued. If the baby was healthy, its arrival was celebrated by all the “brides” as the birth of another right-thinking missionary who would grow up to help their father lead the world to its destiny. Wendy became pregnant when she was sixteen. Her unborn baby passed its ultrasound test. She was seventeen when she reached term. When her labor began, two other wives attended her. In the penultimate moment, as her child was about to enter the world, she woke to the terrible truth of what she had done.

Falling under the thrall of the Snake and becoming part of his mission had done nothing to alleviate her sadness, anxiety, and lack of self-worth. If anything, her anxiety increased, for the Snake’s greatest talent was instilling fear of many things in others. Being pregnant had not been a source of joy, had not given her a sense of purpose. However, as her contractions grew more violent and as she felt the baby’s head emerge from the birth canal, she realized something she had known but repressed: Of the children born to the “brides,” all were girls, as was Wendy’s baby. And this was no accident. The Snake claimed to know the future—what it should be, what it would be—and the future he meant to create for himself included a harem without regard for the crime of incest. Horror gripped her as she gave birth to Cricket Moon and saw that sweet innocent face, for she suddenly understood that she would be responsible for delivering her daughter into a life worse than the one she had fled at the age of fourteen. If she ever hoped to value herself, she must value her child; they were each other’s salvation.

Three months after giving birth, Wendy began to worry that she had slimmed down enough to be attractive to the Snake. She wouldn’t risk being mother to a second child of his, nor would she let him have partial custody of—or even visitation rights with—their firstborn. None of his “brides” ever spent the night with him; each was dismissed once used, and he slept alone. At two o’clock in the morning of the day when she began to become herself at last and find dignity, Wendy swaddled Cricket in a blanket, settled the infant in a large basket, carried her to the garage, and left her, basketed and sleeping, on the floor in front of the passenger seat of a Mercedes sedan, one of fourteen vehicles owned by the mission.

From the adjacent mechanic’s shop, she fetched a three-gallon bucket and a length of flexible siphon with which she half filled the container with gasoline from a Lexus SUV. She went to the Snake’s private quarters and cautiously opened the door. He snored softly in the low lamplight, for he was unable to fall asleep in darkness. She threw the gasoline on him—and then the bucket. He scrambled awake, gasping for breath in the fumes. She struck a flame with a butane lighter and told him that she’d spare him this time as long as he stayed on the reeking bed and listened to her. “But if you ever try to find me or my child, I’ll know. For the rest of my life, I’ll carry a knife, two knives. I’ll know if you’re trying to find us, and I’ll find you first, find you when you least expect to be found, and disembowel you.”

Then she threw the lighter on the bed. He screamed, but of course the flame went out the moment she was no longer depressing the gas lever, and he was not immolated. She left him sobbing with terror even as he continued gasping for clean air.