Future Home of the Living God(84)

“A nice little house in South Minneapolis?” she says brightly. “I lived in Northeast. The art district. I worked in clay.” She flexes her hands. “But my work was sculptural. I didn’t throw pots.”

“I was a teller at Wells Fargo,” says Estrella. Then she whispers. “At least you’re already inseminated. When I came here I had to go through it, over and over. They leave you alone afterward with your hips up. See if you take.”

There is a rustle of whispers all through the dining room, a swirl of motion in one corner. The burly redheaded woman is standing up in front of the wall of women. She is holding her belly. Her silence commands everyone’s attention. Tears shining in her eyes, she nods and all at once, all together, the women start to hum. It is a beautiful, powerful, all-knowing sound. They open their mouths to sing a song that I already know. The song must be in me. Is it the song I sang to Tia? Maybe we all learned it in former lives, deep places, gathering grounds, caves and huts of sticks, skin houses, prisons, and graves. It is a wordless melody that only women sing. Slow, beautiful, sad, ecstatic, we sing a hymn of war and a march of peace. Over and over, many times, we continue singing as the guards take away the redheaded woman.

Mother moon and sister night, I think.

Saint Kateri. You owe me. So get busy and pray for us.

After we sing we file out in rows.

“What just happened?” I ask Estrella.

“Ask somebody else,” she says, her face strained and desperate. “Please? Just ask somebody else.”

But I don’t have to ask.

After all of the other women leave, I slip back and stand before the wall. The women in the photographs are alert, smiling, hopeful, perfectly made up. Thanks to Miguel. There are women of every coloring and age, many younger than me, others older, some wear hats, head scarves, or a hijab, some wear a glittery barrette, even an old-school scrunchie. I step closer to read their names. Lily-Ann. Idris. Janella. Senchal. Megan. Vendra. Beneath each name are two dates. Birth. Death. And below that a line that says: She served the future.

I step back from the wall of martyrs.



December 6

During mandatory Watching Hour, we sit on wobbly plastic chairs crammed together in the viewing room. Mother is the only channel. Sometimes she brings on Papa, a sunken-eyed man with stiff white side-parted hair and the same lipless hatch of angry whitened teeth. Mother surges into view, round cake-pan face, busy calm.

“Hello, my dears. Today I want to talk about the divinely infused eternal soul that you carry within you, and I want to say that I understand how difficult it can be to nurture this soul in your body. Maybe you didn’t feel it was your time. However, you are blessed. Because God felt it was your time!”

“Here’s the part where she’s going to ask us to hold hands,” says Estrella.

“Please reach out to your sister, and pray, pray along with me. Please reach out and hold hands.”

On one side, Estrella’s hand is dry and thin. A fuming black teenager on the other side of me grabs my hand. Her hand is restless and strong. As Mother talks, we hold on harder.

“Jesus, please get me the fuck out of here,” the teenager whispers.

“Amen,” we say together.

The huge fingers of a baby’s hand splay behind Mother like a plump star. She gives a busybody nose twitch before she starts. Mother lifts her arms mechanically, up and down, working out her words like water from an old-fashioned iron pump. Her bangs are pasted in a smooth curve today. Her bright brown eyes peep out from underneath the fringe. When she gets excited her hair flops hound-eared to each side of her rough large-pored cheeks.

“You are here because you did something wrong,” she says, “but this is a place of forgiveness. Open your heart! Your mind! Your body and your soul! Accept life. You can be absolved of anything you did, you can completely win back God’s love, by contributing to the future of humanity. Your happy sentence is only nine months.”

Her chins wobble and her thin lips blow her words out like bubbles as she enters her prayer.

“Always know that I care about each and every one of you. Women are powerful. You are empowered to the max. Women are heroes. Superheroes, in fact. You can talk to me anytime. You can bring me your worries, your concerns. I am all about communication, my dears. I care about each and every one of you one hundred percent forever.”

We are not allowed to look away.

“These nine months will pass like a few weeks,” she says in her thick voice. And to think, I could have killed her. My finger squeezes an imaginary trigger as she begins another endless prayer. A waterfall of burning syrup. I try to sleep with my eyes open. Nobody gets out of here in nine months. I’m positive. Nobody gets out of here at all.



December 8

“You’re due for your ultrasound,” says the round dark woman at my door. Her eyebrows are thick and bushy. Her hair is braided down her back. She smiles at me and sits down beside my cot. She takes my hand.

“Some of my ladies hate ultrasounds. I promise there will only be this one.”

“They always say that.”

“It won’t harm your baby.”

“That’s not true.”

She smiles indulgently.

This morning, I saw that the redheaded woman’s portrait had been put up onto the wall during the night. I forced myself to look carefully, then, at all of the other pictures, in case I had missed one. I closed my eyes when I was finished. Started breathing again. No Tia Jackson.