Chapter Eighteen #2
“Carlos, you’re a god for all I know. Thank you!” I wrap my arms around him. The poor kid looks like he’s seconds away from bursting into flames.
All day, I shake with excitement, anxious for them to finish work so I can pester Carlos with questions.
While I wait, I open drawers and cupboards over and over, taking stock of all the ingredients we might use tonight.
It’s strange to think that such a young boy knows things I don’t, but I guess that’s the advantage of growing up here, rather than out in the wilds.
Eventually, April tells me that I’m ruining the vibe for her, so she heads upstairs to the empty apartment.
“At least there won’t be any distractions,” she says dolefully.
When Carlos finally finishes work for the day, he comes bearing eggs recently collected from the farm hens.
“We’re having huevos rancheros,” he says, setting the basket on the counter. “Well. White people huevos rancheros.”
“But you aren’t white though, are you?”
“No, but a white lady taught me how to cook.” He shrugs. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got.”
We start by crushing chilis and garlic together, and rendering pig fat so we can fry everything once the chili sauce is ready.
From one of the cupboards, he pulls out a pot of beans left to soak overnight and gets them on to boil, so we can have them on the side.
That will help make what traditionally used to be a breakfast meal more filling and dinner appropriate.
And tomatoes! He pulls a jar of canned tomatoes out of the cupboard and adds them to the sauce.
“Do they have jobs where you do this all day? Just cook for people?” I ask.
“Sure. There are a couple of restaurants in town. It’s hard to get those jobs, though.” He cracks the eggs carefully into the pan, so not a single yolk breaks. “The woman who hosted me when I first came here ran a café. She taught me all this shit.”
That explains why the others defer to him in the kitchen. I remember Sid saying the group was split up when they sought sanctuary, but I hadn’t thought about how that would shape them all into different people.
“How old were you when you came over?”
“I was five.”
“Wow! That’s pretty young. Why didn’t you stay with your sanctuary host?” Working in a café, cooking food all day sounds amazing to me.
“I thought about it. My host liked me.” He washes his knife slowly, eyes dropping away from mine as the question sends him back to earlier memories.
“But… she liked me because I was useful. We got here, and I was scared as shit they would do something to us, so I behaved. Never felt like myself there.”
“Yeah… I know that feeling.” I envy him, that he managed to please the people around him, instead of making a thousand enemies.
“But Sid and Silas would come visit. They’d check in on me, and I knew they would want me around no matter what I did. Plus, they saved our lives, so…”
“They did?”
“Totally. I mean, I was a good soldier. But who would want that for a life, y’know?” he says. “They saved us.”
“Soldier?” An icy prickle travels down my spine. Sid said the way he met the guys was a long story. “You were a soldier when you were five?”
“No joke. TNS is screwed up. Who gives a kid that little a gun? It only had blanks in, but that’s still dangerous, man.” Carlos is too busy dicing green onions to notice I’m missing the context. Or should I say, was.
I should have seen it coming. A group of boys who came here on a boat. There’s only one group besides Salt Spring that controls boats. True North Strong. TNS.
No wonder Sid skimped on the details.
“Totally!” I busy myself with picking leaves off cilantro so that he won’t realise I’m freaking out. Shit shit shit. I am married to a member of TNS. I am in a house stacked to the gills with those build a new and purified Canada, shoot first, ask later gun nuts and—
No.
No, I can’t let my mind go there. Just because they lived in TNS once doesn’t make them mindless drones.
I know how I feel about people learning I lived in a cult.
I was eager to please the Grand Astrologue, because he was going to decide who I’d marry one day.
He used to say I was beautiful and healthy; that I would make the perfect mother for the babies needed to repopulate the world.
He made it all sound so… natural. I spent a lot of time tending April, even back when my parents were alive.
Dad was busy running a woodshop and Mum just wasn’t herself.
She and Dad called it post-partum depression, though when I asked what that was at school in Astolia, the teachers insisted it was made up.
The Grand Astrologue even talked to me about it.
He came by the school, pulled me aside and gave this long lecture about how some people were born weak and unfortunately, my mother was one of them. But I was different.
“Look at you! Ten years old, and already you know how to raise a child. The stars have told me you’re going to be a wonderful mother one day,” he said with confidence. “You’re such an important part of the work we’re doing here.”
How was I supposed to argue with that? How was any kid? He wasn’t even totally wrong. I did enjoy caring for my baby sister. But he twisted that love against me and made it seem like it was the whole reason I existed. It was easier to believe him than I dare admit.
When I was fourteen, my teachers made all the girls in my age group strip down to our underwear so they could measure our chests and hips.
All part of assessing our reproductive fitness.
They gave Beth-Anne an A and me a B+, as if we had any control over the angles of our curves.
I was terrified and confused, especially when they told us not to tell our parents.
It was an important part of showing our loyalty to the Grand Astrologue’s mission.
But my mother always knew when something was wrong.
She prodded. I told her. That was the final straw. We started planning our escape.
So yes, there are skeletons in my closet, too. As Sid put it, we both had to leave a shitty situation. But all I can think about is April’s offhand joke about bodies underneath the floorboards. It sure seems less funny now.
“That’s enough cilantro,” Carlos says, noticing the massive pile of plucked leaves.
“Oh. Great. I’ll wash up.” What I really want is to retreat. To get my head together so that I don’t accidentally suffocate Carlos with the ghosts of my past.
“Yeah, we’re about done. I’ll round up the guys,” he says.
I intend to come back. All I’ve found out is that we have more things in common—we all grew up brainwashed. How nice is that?
But once I’m inside the washhouse, my composure breaks.
Instead of cleaning myself up, I double over, retching into the drain next to the pump.
Hands shaking, I move the fish bathmat out of the way so I don’t stain it.
My fingernails scrape against the floorboards as I heave, again and again, until my stomach is empty, my whole body trembling.
Because as much as I want to be understanding, one key difference divides me from these men.
My cult never murdered their families.