Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Georgie
All my life, I’ve wondered what it’s like for normal families. For children to have access to their fathers.
“Dad? What’s going on? Why are we here?”
His smile is mixed with genuine confusion as if this appointment was in my phone calendar—as if I were allowed to have such a device.
“You think I’d forget your birthday?” He leans in, planting his elbows on the table.
I stare at him. I’d forgotten entirely. In all the days I was counting off by scratching marks on the floor, I never once thought about it.
“I’m 20 today,” I say, barely audible.
He smiles, and his kind eyes crinkle.
My dad has always been one of the more handsome of the church elders. So many of the prospective sister-wives vie for Elder George’s attention. They don’t know that the favorite wife barely has enough allowance to feed her brood every month.
The silver specks in his dark hair glint in the light from the diner’s smudged window as he tilts his bulky frame back, allowing room for our server to set down his plate of steak fries and chicken fingers.
I barely remember the last time I had one-on-one time with my dad. Let alone a meal with him on a birthday.
Then, something clicks.
In this family, these outings usually happen on a daughter’s 16th birthday. It’s when Dad gives us the “talk” about who we’re promised to. This is when the grooming begins, preparing us for marriage at 18.
The quicker and easier we’re married off, the fewer mouths he has to feed.
But when I was 16, I was sick. That’s what sent me to Goldie in the first place, and that’s what got me interested in herbs and natural medicine. My periods were so painful that my father delayed my marriage plans for as long as he could. I milked my illness for years, lying about the fact that I might not be able to bear children.
That charade worked until it didn’t.
More women were escaping. Families with children up and vanished in the middle of the night.
Two months ago, weeks after Goldie escaped, the elders came snooping around the greenhouse. I knew the “talk” was coming soon, so I secretly stashed as much food away as I could for my younger siblings, stealing some from the silos little by little over a period of weeks. And then, I asked to use a stranger’s phone while running an errand in town.
There was a phone number written on the inside of the wax paper wrapper from a sucker found in the mysterious bag of candy left for the school children.
So I called it. And that night, Olivia, Louisa, and Goldie came with their trucks, a trailer, and half a dozen men with rifles.
It felt like my life was finally about to begin.
I look pointedly at my father across the table from me.
“I’m not going to get married. They can lock me up again if they want to.” My chin wobbles at the thought. If I go back behind lock and key, I’ll die. I’ll either waste away, or I’ll die fighting to get out.
My father squirts some ketchup into his basket of fries. The burger and onion rings in front of me remain untouched. A shame, because I love onion rings. But the sense of doom in this conversation is making me queasy. “You don’t even know who it is.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Doesn’t matter if it’s not Jefferson Hope.
“That’s your problem right there,” he lectures, pointing at me with his fork. Dad dislikes getting his hands dirty. He eats sandwiches with a fork and knife. “It’s your close-mindedness. I’ve put off your engagement for as long as I could. I knew you weren’t still sick at 18, Georgie. You should thank me for covering for you as many years as I did.”
I suppose I should thank him, but I just gape at him in surprise. Thank him for what? He could have pulled strings to prevent me from getting locked up as punishment for running away.
How can he just sit there and eat while we’re discussing the end of my life as I know it?
“You know, if you keep eating like that, you’re going to have a heart attack.” I’ll bet Jefferson doesn’t eat crap food like that. He has to stay healthy so he can chase people on foot. Probably.
“Georgie, don’t change the subject.”
“If you can’t work and support your wives, you know what happens.”
“Georgie. I’m fine.”
“I mean, sure, you might not die,” I go on, ignoring his growing impatience. “And maybe your employer over at the chemical plant has disability coverage. Maybe. But you know what the elders will say. You’ll lose your status. The elders have unwritten rules about the disabled.”
His eyes widen at my insolence.
But he knows I’m right. And he knows if he tries to shut me up, I’ll get louder.
He shifts his eyes to another table of customers. People are eavesdropping. People in this town love to know the tea about the polygamists.
“You get downgraded, and they move your wives around. Well, except for mom. She is the legal wife, correct? You have so many, I can’t remember.”
A storm is brewing in Dad’s eyes. “You need to stop,” he says through his teeth.
I don’t want to argue with him. I really don’t.
But then I deliver the knife to the gut. “Do you refuse to push back on this forced marriage stuff so they don’t take you out back and shoot you like a lame horse?”
“Georgeanne Lucille.” The addition of my last name is a warning, but I ignore it.
“Like they did with Trace?”
The color drains from my father’s face, and he drops his fork.
No one says anything for a long moment. He won’t make eye contact with me.
Finally, staring out the window, he grumbles low, so no one can overhear him. “If I’m dead, there’s no one to work the system. If I’m alive, I can use my influence to make sure you marry someone decent. Someone close to your age.”
How did we get here? How did the elders and The Prophet manage to convince everyone that forced marriage and betrothing underage girls in marriage was okay?
“Do you remember the before-times? You and Mom chose each other. That’s what I want. Choices.”
Exhausted and weak, my body slouches in the booth as the tension in the air abates for a moment.
Dad sighs and takes a drink of his pink lemonade. “I was too indulgent with you when you were younger. So was your mother. You walked early, talked early. You were so smart. We knew you were special. We were too lax on spankings. And now, I’m picking you up from the DisciplineCenter on your birthday rather than celebrating your wedding.”
I bite my lip hard, refusing to cry. The Discipline Center? Is that what they call it? My god. “You know, I would have enjoyed some alone time with my dad at 16, even if I was sick at the time,” I say.
He smiles wryly. “Well, what would we have talked about?”
I blink. “Anything. Anything other than me learning to cook and clean and birth babies and how to budget a monthly allowance.”
“What do you want me to say, Georgie? That’s the way things are.”
My face heats, and I shrink into myself. I feel like an eight-year-old again. The first time Uncle Nevyn locked me in a closet for smarting off during my catechism lesson. That was only eight hours.
“Daddy,” I say, swiping the back of my hand over my suddenly wet cheek. Dammit, I don’t want to cry. “Why didn’t you come and get me out of there? Why did you let them shut me up for so long?”
He grimaces. “It wasn’t up to me.”
I slap the table and it rattles the silverware. “Yes it is. You’re my dad. You’re supposed to be the one to protect me.”
So I guess we’re arguing after all.
My father looks down at the table and clears his throat.
“I’m sorry, Georgie.”
He’s right about one thing. He was much more lax with me than many other elders with their children. I’ve never shied away from saying what everyone was thinking.
So I say my peace. “I love you, Dad. But you’re pathetic. All of you who have the slightest bit of guilty conscience since letting The Prophet take charge are pathetic.”
“Now, Georgie, you know why we have rules.”
“You let them burn the library.”
He nods. “That, also, wasn’t up to me. If Louisa had not secretly filled the shelves with utter smut and content not fit for children…”
I pound the table again. “They took all my notebooks from the greenhouse. Did you know that? Everything I need to go back to work is gone. Probably burned, too. Everything Goldie did, years of work, is all gone.”
He nods. “I’m sorry. But the good news is, you won’t need to go back to work if?—”
“I don’t want to hear that.”
People are blatantly staring now.
My dad backs down, holding out his open palms in surrender.
“If you want, we can go and buy you a notebook to replace what you lost.”
A notebook. A single notebook. Lord almighty, he has no concept of what I’ve lost.
“Dad,” I say slowly. “What I really want is a phone.” For one month, I had a burner phone that I used to keep in touch with my friends. I miss it.
He lifts an eyebrow. “You know you’re not allowed to have those.”
I know, but I ask anyway. The last time I used one, it was a stranger’s phone at the grocery store when my chaperone was having a bathroom emergency. I’d called the phone number in the candy wrapper, and later that night, Olivia, Louisa, and Goldie came to get me with a whole cavalry of people.
“I just want to let Olivia know that I’m okay. Why am I not allowed to have a phone?”
“It’s better if you don’t question it,” he says.
I sigh. “Then let me use yours.”
He purses his lips. “Why?”
I arch my eyebrow. “It’s better if you don’t question it.”
“Georgie.”
“Dad. Don’t you want a better life for me?”
He shakes his head and scrunches up the paper napkin. After a few seconds, he drops the napkin into his abandoned basket of fried food and then gets up to go to the bathroom.
He leaves his phone face down on the table.
I look around, wondering if we’ve been accompanied by any spies from the church.
I pick up his phone and to my surprise, it’s been left unlocked.
Did he do that on purpose?
I glance up at the bathroom.
He’ll be back any second. If he sees me using his phone, he’ll have to make sure it looks like I’ve taken it without permission. Thinking quickly, I dig for the tattered business card that I keep in my bra and has now migrated under my boob. I can feel the eyes of the lady at the next booth judging me. As I root around, I meet her gaze.
“Can I help you with something?” I ask, smiling sweetly.
She shrugs and looks away.
This card is the only thing my uncle didn’t find and confiscate before he locked me away.
Quickly, I type and retype a message. What kind of language would convince Jefferson it’s me, but would also not implicate my father if someone in the church reads his messages?
Eventually, I go with:
I have Georgeanne. She’s fine. We’re stopping at the superstore in ten minutes to pick up a birthday cake and a present. Let everyone at Mom’s house know I’ll have her home soon.
There. Jefferson will know what to do with that.
I hope.