Before we came to the Community, nobody could’ve mistaken us for saints. With my parents, there was always something unspoken and static-charged beneath the surface, but I was too preoccupied with childhood to notice. My days were simple and divided up into clear segments: the time of eating cereal, the time of watching my mother fold laundry, the time of my father arriving home. My mother would pull the zipper on his yellow jumpsuit, and he’d step out of it like a discarded shell, his undershirt salty with drying sweat.
The world was small where we lived, on a dirt lot that all the trailers on our street backed crookedly on to, where the neighborhood children ran on chubby legs in raggedy, stained clothes and diapers that dragged on the ground. We’d congregate at the rusty swing set and dented slide that sounded like sheet metal shaking every time someone went down. The lot wasn’t much to look at, covered with trampled brown snow in the winter, and in the summer a weed clawing out of the earth every few feet. The only spectacular things in that place were the view of the mountains, so big they could stun you every day with your own smallness, and an apple tree that grew from the very center.
The day my father brought the Prophet home for the first time, the leaves of the apple tree shone almost silver in the sunlight, and the apples were unripened green buds the size of my fist.
I stretched my hand high in the air, trying to reach the lowest hanging apple, just to see if I could.
A hand darted out and wrenched the apple from the branch. The stem was green and unbreakable still. The hand had to pull so hard that, when the apple came free, the tree shook its boughs like arms waving in anger.
Above me hung the face of a man with pebbled eyes, peering through a pair of thick, yellowed glasses, a heavy beard patched over his cheeks. He looked normal, like any of the paunchy dads in the neighborhood who drove beat-up trucks and tuned their TVs too loud.
“Here you go,” he said, holding the apple by the stem.
I reached for it and he placed it on my palm. My fingers closed around it.
“Aren’t you going to eat it?” he asked.
“It’s not ripe. They don’t taste good yet.”
He plucked the apple from my hand, stuffing it into his mouth whole. He watched me as he chewed and swallowed.
The screen door opened with a screech. My father was standing on the back porch. He said something odd then. He told me this man was holy beyond understanding. That I was to do whatever he asked. That I was to believe everything he said.
Because he spoke to God.
Chapter 17
I walk down to lunch with Angel and Rashida. It’s become easier since I discovered that, even without Angel around, the girls don’t mess with me. In fact, they avoid me. It’s my shoes.
They gave me Velcro shoes because of my hands, but Angel told me most of the girls who wear them aren’t allowed real shoes. She says they’re the ones who will kill you if you look at them wrong. The ones who can’t be given shoelaces for fear they’d hang themselves or strangle someone else.
“Why do you never eat the chicken nuggets, Rashida?” Angel asks. I’ve been staring down into my watery red trough of tomato soup. I glance over at Rashida’s tray which contains only mounds of coleslaw and fruit cocktail.
“Why do you care, Angel?” Rashida asks.
“’Cause you eat more’n anybody here, and everyone knows the chicken nuggets is the closest thing to appetizing we got.”
Rashida’s smile drops a couple notches. “I been in the prison when they electrocuted somebody. Visiting my uncle in Deer Lodge. After they cooked the guy, you could smell it in the whole place, and it smelled just like it does here on chicken nugget day.”
Angel’s face is serious for a moment then splits open in a laugh. “You’re lying. You’ve never been to Deer Lodge in your life.”
“I have too! And I could smell the guy’s brains being cooked inside his skull, bitch.”
“I think your brains got cooked a long time ago, Rashida.”
“I’ll have you know I’m passing all my classes,” she says. “Miss Bailey says I have a unique intelligence that can’t be defined by normal standards.”
“You’re abnormal, she means,” Angel says.
“Who’s Miss Bailey?” I ask.
“My reading teacher,” Rashida says. I nod. I’ve seen the guards watch me sidelong, trying to decide if I’m ready for school. During the day, there’s not much to do except stare out the bars. Angel’s brought me a couple of comic books from the library, and I make my way through those pretty quickly, even if I don’t know half the words. Sometimes, from her cell next to mine, Rashida describes what the weather was like outside the classroom window that day, and I can usually persuade Benny to tell me about the book she’s reading, always some time and place I’ve never heard of, but mostly I’m alone with my thoughts and my rememberings.