The Patron Saint of Butterflies(3)
Placing the book back inside the front of my pants, I retie the itchy string around my waist, tightening it until it cuts into the soft flesh. I started wearing the waist string three months ago, after I got mad at Benny and yelled at him. Now, every time I feel it chafe against my skin, I offer up the pain for any failings I have committed that day. I also fast pretty regularly—skipping breakfast and dinner at least three days a week. Fasting is a big thing with saints in general. Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Catherine of Siena used to go weeks without any solid food. My personal record is four days, but then I fainted in the pool and almost drowned, so I had to start eating again. But I have never slept on a bed of broken glass or rocks. I’m sure it will hurt, but like the others, it will be a great test of my will.
Smoothing my robe back into place, I stand up slowly, taking care not to distract anyone, and walk toward Christine in the back of the room. Christine Miller, an older woman in her late fifties, is in charge of all the kids at Mount Blessing. She has three or four young women who help her—especially with the little kids—but she’s the one who calls the shots when it comes to us coming and going. She watches me wind my way through the room, narrowing her eyebrows a little. Her long black braid hangs over one shoulder and little wisps of loose hair curl around the sides of her face. I stop in front of her, hesitating as her lips pause midchant.
“I have to go lie down upstairs,” I whisper, rushing over the words. “My stomach is killing me.”
Christine studies me for a moment. I am counting on her knowledge of what went on this morning, hoping it will persuade her to let me leave. She and I will never talk about what went on inside the Regulation Room—or that the reason the three of us were summoned there at all was because she went and told Emmanuel that we were misbehaving—but I know she feels bad about it. She always feels guilty when one of the kids has to go to the Regulation Room. She’s been in charge of all of us for fifteen years now, but she’s still pretty much a softie.
“Go ahead,” she whispers, reaching out and straightening the belt cord around my robe. “I’ll come up later to check on you.”
Afternoon prayers won’t end until 2:45, which means I have a little over an hour to find Honey, assess the situation, and get the two of us back before Christine realizes I’ve left the building. I sneak out the back door, fastening my hair into a bun at the nape of my neck, and head toward the barn, which is where Honey escaped to the last time. The barn is all the way on the other side of the grounds, only a ten-or fifteen-minute trek if I use the main path. But since it is Ascension Week, I walk along the back road, staying low to the ground to avoid being seen.
The sky is a brilliant bowl of blue. I hate that. On days like this, when everything hurts the way it does, I wish the sky would turn black and that it would rain and rain until I felt better again. I move as quickly as possible, bent over at the waist, clutching the hem of my robe in one hand, pausing briefly to stuff my pockets full of small stones. The welts on my rear end and the backs of my legs make the awkward movements painful. I grit my teeth and offer up the pain for the lie I have just told.
The smell of green is everywhere. The five or six apple trees that line the path are just starting to blossom; from a distance, they look like enormous pink cotton balls. Bright gold petals dot the field like splayed fingers, and every few moments the lonely caw of a crow splits the silence. Up ahead is the schoolhouse, a large brown building shaped like an A-frame, where all the children at Mount Blessing attend school. Honey, Peter, and I are in ninth grade this year. There are only two other kids in our class: Amanda Woodward, who is incredibly smart, and James Terwilliger, who can swim three lengths of the pool underwater. I like that we have a small class. Benny’s first-grade class has seventeen kids in it, and Honey told me once that public schools can have as many as thirty kids in one room. That would drive me crazy. I don’t know how I would think!
Honey complains about it all the time, but I love living here at Mount Blessing. I can’t imagine living anywhere else or being anything but a Believer. That’s what we’re known as, the Believers, because that’s what we do. We believe. Specifically, we believe in two things: Christianity and Emmanuel, which, when you think about it, is everything we could possibly need or want. I’ve never left the grounds of Mount Blessing, but I wouldn’t want to. I actually get hives when I think about it. It’s so huge and dangerous out there, and so full of sin. How could anyone possibly be a saint with all those temptations surrounding them? I feel sorry for the men at Mount Blessing who have to go into the outside world to work so they can help pay the bills. My father, for example, works at a mattress company in Fairfield. I asked him once what it was like having to leave every morning and sell mattresses, and he touched my cheek with his finger. “There’s no place in the world I’d rather be than right here,” he said. “But if Emmanuel wants me to work, then that’s what I’ll do.”
There are rules here that we all have to follow, like wearing the blue robes, going to three daily prayer services, not eating red or orange food (which is symbolic of the devil), and things like that, but they’re not a big deal. When you think about it, if a place with two hundred and sixty people living in it didn’t have rules, it would be chaos! The really important rules—ones we abide by to live as holy a life as possible—are the ones that really count, anyway. These are known as the Big Four, and they were probably the first things we learned when we started to talk. The Big Four is what being a Believer is all about: