In March, Monica Lewinsky was interviewed by Barbara Walters about her affair with the president. Taured wheeled the big TV into the cafeteria so everyone could watch. Plates of cookies were passed around, the chocolate warm in their mouths as Miss Lewinsky explained why she hadn’t dry-cleaned her dress. It felt like they’d barely dusted the cookie crumbs off their laps when the TV appeared again in April, with bowls of rice pudding: this time, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had murdered twelve students and one teacher in the Columbine massacre. Summer couldn’t eat the pudding; sprinkled with cinnamon, it looked like freckled skin. She watched as hundreds of students ran for their lives across the grass, arms behind their heads lest they be mistaken for a shooter, and wondered what she’d do in that situation. The building Harris and Klebold had terrorized looked similar to the compound, filled with windowless hallways and limited exits.
In May, a tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, and for forty-five minutes, its winds fluctuated around 301 mph, devastating everything in its thirty-eight-mile path; it killed thirty-six people and injured five hundred more. Taured ushered them into the cafeteria for this, too, and they ate a dinner of sweet potato, watching survivors being pulled from the rubble. Why were these things happening? Both in nature and to the nature of people? America, Taured told them, had become godless, and as a result, the country as a whole was under a spiritual attack. They’d had a hard year money-wise, eating their crops instead of selling them. Even so, Taured sent missionaries out that summer, her mother one of them, and they came back with a widower named Jon Wycliffe and his teenage daughter, Feena. After that, they ate okay again, and they got a couple new TVs for the main building.
The first time Summer saw Feena she was in the cafeteria, standing near the soda fountain, her hands clasped politely at the waistband of her jeans. She was elfin and pretty-faced, with spiral-curled red hair and creamy yogurt skin that the Nevada sky would eat up. Below her neck, she was all woman. None of the other girls had rounded breasts or hips that curved like an S, and because of that, every single one of them was looking at her. She was standing with her father and Taured, and despite that she was the news of the evening, her eyes were watching their exuberant leader, and only him.
Taured wasn’t like the other adults; Summer and Sara agreed on this. He spoke to them with the same respect he used with their parents. There was no difference between young and old, male or female; if anything, he was nicer to women than he was to men. She noticed that they all looked at him in the same hungry way—not just the older girls, but all of them: the men, the women and the children. But who was Taured looking at?
At the moment, he was looking at Feena, and the feelings Summer experienced could only be explained by one very basic word: envy. Her eyes dragged between them as they spoke: Feena polite and nervous, Taured interested. Jon was smiling between them, a content chaperon. The smell of frying onions reached her nose, and remembering that she was here to meet her mother, she dragged her eyes away from the group and began to look for her.
After Summer moved to Kids’ Camp her mother had worked different jobs around the compound for months before Taured began sending her on the four-to-eight-week trips. The missionaries stayed in motels, her mother told her, some really gross, but recently Taured had bought an RV, and they were going to use that instead. When she asked Lorraine if she liked going on the mission trips, she said yes, and then pressed her lips together so tight they’d turned white. They saw each other less and less, it seemed, but Summer was so busy she hardly had time to recognize it. She spotted Lorraine at a table, her tray already in front of her, and made her way over, still thinking of the way Taured was looking at Feena.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Lorraine asked when Summer sat down without a tray. Summer studied her mother’s face for a moment, trying to understand what had changed, and then saw the tiny gold studs in her ears.
“You got your ears pierced?” Her tone was accusatory, she realized, but the women here were restricted from tattoos and piercings, especially a woman such as her mother, who was sent on mission trips.
Her mother shrugged, leaning her chin on her fist, and looked down at her soup and bread indifferently.
“Here,” she said, pushing the plate toward Summer. “Have mine.”
“I’m fasting,” Summer said quickly. She hid her hands under the table as to not be tempted by the food. She was trying not to look at it. When had she eaten last? It doesn’t matter, she thought. The longer you go, the more blessed you’ll be. Taured had said so himself.
“Why are you fasting? Did he make you fast?”
Summer drew back like she’d been slapped; she hated when her mother got like this.
“Why did you get your ears pierced?” she tried. If they were going to be asking questions, she had a few of her own.
Lorraine, who seemed to realize the trade of information her daughter was asking for, leaned back in her seat with a sigh. They were in the back corner of the room near the AC vents. No one liked to sit there because of the noise, but Summer suddenly realized her mother might have chosen the table for a reason. The area was often used for dry storage, the table stacked with overflow boxes of instant mashed potatoes and macaroni when the storage room was full. Today, it was empty.
“I guess I thought, why not? I’ve always wanted to.” Her mother tilted her head to the side, making her little earrings flash attractively. Summer felt disgust as thick as vomit fill her esophagus.
“But it’s against the rules.”
“Not mine.”
The soup sat between them, no longer steaming, as Summer considered what to say next. She wanted to know when she’d had it done, and who had gone with her, and what she’d been thinking at the time. Instead, she settled on a more direct question: “Has Taured seen?”
That drew a reaction. Her mother’s expression seemed to curdle, her eyes growing dull and her lips shriveling up like dried fruit.
“Why are you acting like this?” Summer lowered her voice, though she didn’t need to; the air conditioner was groaning loudly. “When you brought me here, you told me that these people...these people were here to help us. Now you’re acting...ungrateful. Like you don’t want to be here.”
Something passed over her mother’s face—she couldn’t tell what. Then, all of a sudden, the look disappeared from her face and she leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms.
“Ungrateful.” She said the word as if she were tasting it. “Taured should be grateful to me. Can’t you see the new meat I bring him?”
Her mother was purposefully staring over Summer’s shoulder. She turned around in her seat to see Taured, now sitting at a table with Feena and Jon.
“‘New meat’? That’s terrible. What’s wrong with you?” Summer was appalled. She shook her head, a sneer pulling the corners of her mouth. For months, her mother had been changing, looking different with each appearance she made at the compound. She journaled her thoughts about it to Taured and then sent them to him through the computer like a prayer. He never responded, but she knew he was reading. Now, she wished she’d asked him for advice on how to handle a situation like this. She sat up ramrod straight and practiced her leadership abilities. She doubted it would work on her mother, but it was worth a try.
“The work that you do is important. You gather lost souls and bring them to help.”
Her mother laughed. The sight of her with her eyes closed, white teeth exposed, was beautiful. The sound that her laughter made was not. Feeling cynical and raw, Summer flinched away from it. No one looked, thankfully. Everyone was too busy being nosy about the new people.
“I don’t bring them to help, Summer,” she said. “I bring them to hell. He’s brainwashed you—they’re all brainwashed.”
“Mama—”
“Yeah, I am your mother, Summer, I am. And I made a grave mistake bringing you here. I need you to listen to me, and listen carefully, okay?” Lorraine reached for her daughter, but Summer’s hands were under the table in her lap. She would have yanked her hands away, anyway, if her mama had dared touch her.