Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
The brutal July sun beats down on me as I pluck the blueberries and deposit them into plastic containers. They’ll be collected and taken to the processing shed where a Hearth and Vine Farm sticker will be added. Then they go on to the roadside stand or the flea market to be sold.
We have to do lots of different jobs here, but this week almost everyone is picking.
I wish Jane was here, but she was moved to wife training duties last year after she got her first blood.
We don’t get to hang out as much. She’s learning how to take care of a husband, babies, and a home instead of working in the fields.
I look up to see Troy walking toward me through the rows of bushes. “Sybil, you need to go to your dorm.”
Alarm straightens my back. “What? I didn’t do anything!”
“You aren’t in trouble. Your mom said you have a doctor’s appointment. She’s waiting.”
I haven’t seen a doctor since I’ve been here, not even when I had chickenpox. “I’m not sick.”
Troy shrugs and flashes a grin at me. It always puts butterflies in my stomach.
He’s so funny and kind, not like the other guys here.
We’ve become good friends in the three years since we met.
The older sons and daughters aren’t usually allowed to be friends, but he gets special treatment.
Probably because his father is a governor.
“Come on. I’ll pull your cart.” He takes the cart of blueberries to the processing building while I jog back to my dorm. At least I’m getting out of the heat.
“Ugh, look at you. You’re filthy,” Mom says as soon as I enter.
“I was in the field.”
“Go shower and be quick about it. We’re going to town to see the doctor.”
Excitement floods through me. I haven’t left this property since we got here. I don’t want to risk changing her mind if I ask questions or point out that I feel fine. It’s probably for vaccinations or something.
I shower and get dressed in record time, but it isn’t until I’m in the car that I ask why I’m going to the doctor.
“Because you should’ve had a period by now.”
My face heats, and I glance at the back of Paul’s head who’s driving us. I have to call him Steward Paul now. “Matron Lana said some girls are late bloomers. She didn’t start until she was sixteen. I’m only fifteen.”
“Don’t you think I know how old you are?
” she snaps. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t.
She’s had two babies since we arrived, and now I see her maybe once a month for an hour to visit.
Other than that, I see her at gathering, but the children sit separately.
She doesn’t seem to care so I try not to either.
“Sorry,” I mumble, not feeling the least bit sorry.
“Women in our family have all started their period by fourteen years old. Except for those who were born without a uterus, like my sister. It can run in families, so we need to make sure you aren’t like her.”
I’ve never met my mother’s sister. She ran off to Canada with a guy when she was eighteen and cut all ties to her family.
What happens if I don’t have a uterus? I learned all about conception and pregnancy in Matron Lana’s reproduction class. If I don’t have a uterus, I won’t be able to have babies. Babies are a woman’s main purpose. If I can’t do that, will they still make me a wife?
I would never say it to anyone, but I don’t want to be a wife or mother. Jane used to feel the same, but she changed her mind last year when she found out she was promised to Steward Nolan. She likes him and can’t wait to be a wife. It’s all she talks about now.
The women’s clinic is a two-story building with large glass windows along the front.
Steward Paul waits in the car while Mom signs me in.
She stays in the waiting room while I’m taken to a room where they give me an ultrasound.
It doesn’t hurt or anything. It’s followed by another scan in a machine, and then an embarrassing exam where the doctor put her fingers inside of me.
By the time I return to the empty waiting room, all I want to do is get out of there and take a shower to wash off the goo I can still feel between my legs.
Mom emerges a few minutes later and the way she looks at me is something I’ll never forget. The burning resentment in her eyes feels like a hand shoving me backward. I’ve always known that she doesn’t like me much, that she’s annoyed by me, but this is different. She hates me.
I’m too afraid to ask what the doctor said. As soon as we’re back in the car, she thrusts the paperwork in her hand toward Steward Paul.
He scans them and frowns. “You were right. She’s withered.” Mom shakes her head and lets out a frustrated breath.
Withered. I’ve heard that word before in Keeper’s sermons during gathering.
It’s what they call a woman who can’t have children.
As if her insides have dried and shriveled like an autumn leaf.
I remember the diagram of the ovaries and uterus from class.
My hand unconsciously goes to my lower abdomen as I picture mine turning brown and crispy. Is that what’s happening to me?
I’m not sure how to feel. They’re angry which means the governors and matrons likely will be too, but the first thing I feel is relief. I saw one of the wives, Emma, give birth last month and it looks awful. I’ll never have to do that.
Women who join the collective when they’re past childbearing age are matrons, teachers, or kitchen workers, not wives, which doesn’t seem too bad. I’m good at knitting and I love it. Maybe I can teach it.
Steward Paul stops at a liquor store on the way back, and they go inside, leaving me alone in the car. I take the opportunity to read the paperwork from the doctor.
Absent uterus but vagina is structurally unremarkable.
I know that means normal, but why does it sound like an insult? Are there remarkable vaginas?
From what I was taught about reproduction, this means I’ll never have a period or get pregnant, but sex is still possible. There’s just no point to it.
I toss the paper on the front seat and sit back before Mom and Steward Paul return. Neither of them says much on the way back, and I’m glad to escape the car to go to dinner.
Jane waves at me from one of the tables and I hustle over with my tray to join her. “Hey!” she exclaims. “I’ve been looking for you. Guess what? Keeper gave his permission for me to marry Steward Nolan on my birthday!” She’s bubbling over with excitement, her eyes shining.
“Wow, I thought it would be, like, a year or something.” She’ll be turning sixteen that day, the age that girls can marry in our state with parents’ permission.
Some girls marry as early as fourteen if they’ve gotten their first period, but it’s done through a ceremony, and they have to wait to get it recognized officially when they turn sixteen.
“Me too. We were only engaged last week. But I think Steward Nolan got his dad, Governor James, to ask Keeper to let us do it earlier.”
A pang goes through me. I miss the times when we were both determined not to be a wife, when we dreamed of running away from this place someday.
The last thing I want to do is wipe that smile from her face, so I force one to mine.
“Congratulations. Are you making the announcement at gathering tomorrow?”
“Yes! Well, Governor James is, you know.”
Yes, I know. Only men are allowed to make announcements or proclamations. Specifically, only Keeper and his close advisors, the governors, are allowed to address the collective.
She drops her voice and looks around. “Don’t tell anyone, but he kissed me. I know we really aren’t supposed to before we’re married but he said it was all he could think about. Isn’t that sweet?”
“What was it like?” I ask, sipping my grape juice.
Her cheeks flush and she smiles. “His lips were soft and it made my stomach flutter. But like, in a good way.”
I wonder what Troy’s lips would feel like.
Two other girls join us, so we quickly change the subject to the bonfire that’s planned for tonight.
Once a month, there’s a fellowship bonfire where everyone, governors, stewards, wives, matrons, sons, and daughters gather to socialize.
Steward Hal and Steward Gene play guitar and everyone sings.
The kids roast marshmallows and catch fireflies.
After dinner is over, Jane goes with me to retrieve a sweatshirt from my dorm, but I stop her on the walk there. “I found out something today. You have to promise not to tell anyone.” I’m sure it won’t be a secret forever. Others are going to ask why I’m not a wife.
She tilts her head with an expression of concern. “I promise. What’s wrong?”
“Mom took me to the doctor because I haven’t had a period yet. I don’t have a uterus. I can’t have kids.”
Her jaw drops and her words are barely a whisper. “Like, ever? You can never get pregnant?”
I shake my head, disturbed at how horrified she is at the news. “No, but it also means I never have to have a period. You told me how awful the cramps are. So it isn’t all bad. Maybe I can be a teacher or something.”
She wraps her skinny arms around me in a hug. “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have gone on about my wedding and everything if I knew that you won’t…”
“Be a wife? It’s okay, really. I don’t want that like you do, anyway.” Her silence as we continue walking puts a stone in my stomach. “We’ll still be friends, right? After you’re a wife and I’m…a teacher or matron or whatever?”
“Of course we will be. We’re friends forever. I’ll need someone to talk to when Steward Nolan gets on my nerves, and you’ll need someone to gripe to when those bratty kids drive you crazy.”
Thank goodness. I’ve made other friends here, but none like Jane. We’ve always just understood each other. Laughing, I feel a little better as we enter my dorm.
Jane halts her steps and I hear her take a sharp breath the second before I see them. Keeper and Steward Paul stand near my bed. Neither of us says anything. You don’t speak to Keeper before he speaks to you.
“Jane, what are you doing in the daughters’ dorm?” Keeper asks calmly.
There’s a tremble in her voice as she replies, “I was accompanying Sybil to get her sweatshirt for the bonfire.”
“Sybil will not be attending the bonfire. You’re dismissed, Jane.”
“Yes, Keeper, pleasant evening to you.” She gives me a distressed glance before rushing away.
My mouth opens but I force it closed before I can speak out of turn. My heart pounds in my chest.
Keeper stares me in the eye. “Do you understand what was discovered at your appointment today?”
Keeper isn’t scary looking. He’s well under six feet tall and in his late forties, with a body gone soft from years of ordering other people to do the work for him.
His pot belly pokes out under his narrow chest and shoulders.
Graying hair clings like a halo around his head, leaving the front and middle shiny.
It’s not his appearance that’s so intimidating, but his power.
My mouth feels dry and I lick my lips before responding. “Yes, Keeper. I can’t have children.”
His expression remains impassive. “You’re withered.”
There’s that word again. I hate it. “Yes, Keeper.”
“You will be taken to the reflection hall. You will pray and consider what you’ve done to cause your body to be misaligned with the natural order.”
The unfairness of that overrides my fear and training. “But I didn’t do anything wrong! Mom said it runs in the family. I can’t help that I was born like this.”
Steward Paul’s hand whips across my cheek so fast that the cracking sound of it reaches me before the pain. “You will not talk back or argue with Keeper.”
I stumble backward, barely staying on my feet.
Keeper stares down at me. “Women are created to bear children. God does not make mistakes. You were set outside the natural order for a reason. Your grudging obedience does not make up for your lack of faith.” He nods at Steward Paul. “Take her.”
Steward Paul’s hand wraps tightly around my bicep and he marches me out of the dorm.
Tears pour down my face, but I don’t try to argue or plead.
It’ll only get me hit again. I can feel the eyes of the others on me as he pulls me toward the three-story house where Keeper lives.
All I know about the reflection hall is that it’s in the basement and you don’t want to be there.
None of the daughters have been sent before. It’s reserved for severe offenses like defying Keeper, female adultery, or challenging the authority of your husband. The air conditioning inside the house blasts against my hot cheeks as we enter.
Steward Paul veers to the left and opens a door to a narrow staircase going down. There isn’t enough room to descend side by side, so he releases my arm and barks, “Go.”
A mildewy smell creeps over me at the last step.
A long gray hallway with four doors lining one side stretches ahead.
Steward Paul grips the back of my neck when I don’t move and forces me down to the second door which stands open.
Without a word, he shoves me inside. The door is slammed and locked behind me.
Sobs rack my body as I take in my surroundings.
It’s more like a prison cell you’d see on TV than a room.
A concrete box. A harsh fluorescent light shines overhead, illuminating a thin mat that lies on the floor with a tattered blanket.
A toilet and sink sit along the back wall.
An old milk crate under the sink holds a few rolls of toilet paper.
This can’t be happening. It isn’t my fault.
Those words keep escaping between my sobs as I sit on the mat and tuck my arms around my knees. It isn’t my fault.