“Her identity is inconsequential. Her only purpose is the duty her womb performs in growing the body of God. That is truly the highest calling of womankind. Any of you should be lucky enough to birth God.”
He looked down into the near audience, where the children sat on the curled carpet, boys and girls separated. His eyes caught on mine.
“Maybe you, Sister Minnow, will someday have the honor of giving birth to God. How would that be?”
“That would be . . . glorious,” I breathed. “Glory be to God our savior.”
The Prophet’s approving gaze filled my stomach with burbling pride. I looked back at where my parents sat. A smile had crept through my father’s new beard. My eyes flicked to my mother. She was heavily pregnant with Constance and doubled over her stomach, drawing designs on the stretched fabric of her dress. She hadn’t heard a word.
“Does He live in our country?” asked Deacon Karl.
“Of course. God is American.”
“How did He come by the name God, if His real name was Charlie?” asked Deacon Martin.
“There has always been a name for God. He just wasn’t there to use it yet.”
None of the children asked questions, even the older ones. I was the youngest child by far, but I still felt bolstered by the Prophet’s suggestion that I could birth God, so I raised my hand.
“What happens when Charlie dies?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t call Him by that name, Minnow,” the Prophet said. “It’s a special name. One reserved for special times.”
“What happens when God dies?” I asked.
The Prophet smiled, his eyes crinkling. “He is reborn.”
“But what if He decides not to come back?”
“He always comes back. It’s His great sacrifice, to live among us and concern Himself with human problems instead of dwelling in the Great Infinity.”
“Will Char—I mean, will God always come back?” I asked.
“Always,” he said. “God is the one person you can always count on.”
Though the Prophet discouraged it, I never stopped thinking of God as Charlie. A human God. How preferable to an invisible God, I thought, one you’re not even sure exists. I was never taught basic math, but by the time I figured out how to finger count, I deduced that Charlie was around my age.
Sometimes I could barely remember what came before the Community. I had to remind myself forcefully, create faces of people I might know if I ever found a way off the mountain. Somewhere, there was a girl by a train. Somewhere, there was an old man swinging loaves of bread into a shopping cart. There was a woman selecting the clothes she’d wear to work, the coral-colored blouse that would touch her skin all day while she typed at a computer and commuted on a bus that smelled of the seconds after lightning.
And somewhere was a teenage God. A boy with vibrant green eyes. A boy named Charlie. I could meet Him, if I left here. So why didn’t I? And why didn’t they?
It was years before I asked. The Prophet stood before the congregation again, but now at the front of the massive wooden structure of the Prophet Hall, nestled inside an unending sea of evergreens. Stretched between his two hands was the Scroll of Salvation, the sheath of silver foil he found on the mountain the day he discovered he was a prophet, covered in glyphs that contained the language of God.
I still sat on the ground with the children, but now I was the oldest, my half sisters Prudence and Leah sitting to my left and right. Constance sat behind me, and every once in a while I could feel her stroke the tail of my braid with her tiny fingers.
“Why don’t we live in the lowlands?” I asked. “If that’s where God lives, why don’t we live where God lives?”
“We will, Sister Minnow,” the Prophet replied. “He will let us know when the time is right.”
“How?”
“That’s for Him to decide.”
“So, we have no way of knowing when we can go back?” I asked. “I could be eighty by the time He decides. I could be dead.”
“Don’t be impertinent,” my father’s third wife, Vivienne, hissed. In that moment, I became aware of the creaking of dry wooden pews as the dozens of adults behind me shifted in their seats.
“You’re not a prisoner here, Minnow,” the Prophet said in a measured tone. “You are free to go whenever you want.”
I swallowed. This wasn’t true. I knew the consequences of running away. I recalled Bertie’s dead-eyed face, indented like a thumbprint in a peach. “No, I wasn’t saying . . . I’m just excited to meet God.”
The Prophet smiled and extended his hands gracefully toward the congregation. “Aren’t we all?” The room nodded as one.
The Prophet focused his eyes on me once more. “I hope you decide to wait for God’s call, Minnow. We are the chosen. The Sanctified Prophets of Heaven. We will be rewarded grandly if we do God’s will. You won’t just meet Him. You will dine at His table every night. He will bathe you and heal you. He will touch you with His unknowable green eyes, and you will be saved.”
Chapter 15