Lost Things

The cult leader’s wife loses her youngest daughter at the department store. They had gone there to look at bedding, rode in a car driven by another woman from the cult. The cult leader’s wife has never learned to drive, twists her purse strands in her hands.

On the ride over, they listened to one of her husband’s sermons on the radio, their driver nodding her head along, sometimes uttering an enthralled mm-HMM. One of the local stations plays her husband’s sermons twice a day. This is one of the older ones — the cult leader’s wife can tell by the pitch of her husband’s voice, the way he hasn’t quite mastered the mountains (he calls them) and the valleys.

Her husband gives the most wonderful sermons. When he was first calling on her — and her mother said that, he had come calling, he was her gentleman caller — they would sit together in his car at the end of their dates. She knew this was when her friends would kiss their boyfriends, even the ones that didn’t kiss and tell, she could see from the flush of their faces and the way they touched their fingertips to their mouths from time to time, marveling at the softness of their own lips. The cult leader’s wife and her husband didn’t kiss until their wedding, and she remembers being surprised at his teeth bumping up against her mouth, the sharp, hard jut of them. Instead of kissing in his car in the dark, he spoke and she listened, his words sweeping over her. She floated in his language; she was awash in it.

The cult leader’s wife sat in the back seat with the youngest on the ride over, looking out the window at the grey town passing by. The other woman kept turning back and looking at them. The cult leader’s wife was always having to smile when the woman turned back and looked, isn’t this fun, aren’t you lucky, a happy, happy smile. Buckled in beside her, the youngest smiled too.

The youngest daughter hasn’t been walking long, does a kind of clutch-and-stumble as she goes. The cult leader’s wife still thinks of the youngest as the baby, calls her the baby, when people ask her how the children are doing, she always says and the baby.

The woman who drove them left them at the front door of the department store. She waved and smiled and said she’d be back for them in an hour or so, she added or so with a narrowing of her eyes, and the cult leader’s wife nodded and said of course, knowing that meant it could be any time at all, and held the baby up so she could wave, bye, bye, bye.

The cult leader’s wife has an oversized purse with her. There is a nearly empty tube of lipstick from when the cult leader’s wife was young in an outside pocket and a wallet that only holds receipt slips in it. Some of the receipt slips are very old, older than the baby, older than the car they were driven in. The cult leader’s wife thinks she should throw them out, surely she should throw them out, but she never does. Sometimes she looks at them and tries to remember the places they came from, tries to remember walking in and out of them all on her own.

Beside her bed at home (she knows the media calls it the compound, but she thinks of it as home), there is an antique tin with a twenty-dollar bill inside it. Her parents used to call it her mad money. It is only a single twenty-dollar bill. It won’t go far, as her parents used to say, but the cult leader’s wife likes having it in the tin beside her bed. She likes knowing it will be there if she opens the tin and checks, knowing it will be there if she doesn’t.

It is hers, it is her own, one of the few things that belongs to her only. She used to have things, used to have belongings. She remembers, especially, a little cross on a gold chain that had been a present from her parents, before she met her husband. There was something in the middle of the cross, a little shiny something, that sparkled when the sunlight hit it just right. She remembers she loved the feel of it at her throat. The cross is gone now, like her other things.

What would they think, her husband says. What would they think if we had things they don’t have?

But still, she has the twenty-dollar bill and the antique tin. They are safe at home, and the cult leader’s wife with her empty wallet and the baby are looking at bedding.

The baby isn’t looking, obviously, the baby is toddling around on her unsteady little legs, making chirping noises that aren’t quite human language at all.

The cult leader’s wife is touching duvets and thousand-thread count sheets and saying what do you think of this one? as if the baby will answer, and then the baby is gone.

It takes a moment for the cult leader’s wife to realize. At home, there are always other women around — aunties, they are called, darling aunties — collecting the children, picking them up in their loving auntie arms. The woman who drove the cult leader’s wife and the baby to the department store is one of the aunties too.

The aunties call the cult leader’s wife mother, they say to her how are you doing today, mother?, they tell the children go on and give mother a hug. Nobody calls the cult leader’s wife by her name, except when she calls her parents, if she gets a moment alone with one of the phones at home, she will dial the number she still has memorized since her childhood, and a voice on the other end will call out her name.

A voice on the other end will say: come home, come home.

The cult leader’s wife sometimes sits up in her bed in the middle of the night, clutching her bedding in her hands, thinking her own name like a drumbeat, thinking the sound of my own name is like a drumbeat.

She has lost her name. It is a forgotten thing, a gone thing. Even her husband only calls her mother those soft nights he comes into her room, the creak of the opening door, the flush of light against her face, and his crawl into her bed, mouth against her throat.

Oh, mother, he says, oh, mother.

The cult leader’s wife has used the same bedding for years. For years and years and years. It is stiff and musty and makes her think of grandparents and attics. She sleeps alone in her bed in her old, old bedding; she hears voices from the room next door. Her husband, maybe, and one of the aunties or someone from the staff.

The voices are always quiet; the cult leader’s wife can never make out words or phrases, only the hum of voices through her wall. They might be praying or planning, and the cult leader’s wife whispers her own name in the air amongst their humming, like a drumbeat.

The department store is big and white and the overhead lights buzz. There are smiling women standing at counters; they remind the cult leader’s wife of the aunties, especially the one who dropped her and the baby off at the store, something false and bright and shining in their smiles, something in the way they hold their hands in front of them. If the cult leader’s wife gets too close, they say with their bright smiles are you looking for anything in particular, they say can I help you with something?

The cult leader’s wife takes care to not get too close.

The youngest, the baby, followed the cult leader’s wife through the bedding, bird-chirping and wobbling on her little baby legs, and then the cult leader’s wife was touching a pretty duvet on a display bed, white with big red roses and thornless green vines. It reminded her of something from when she was a child, something sunshine and freshly-mown lawn, something birdsong and speckled gravel. The cult leader’s wife was saying, look, baby, pretty, and the baby was gone.

The cult leader’s wife rarely speaks to the baby directly, doesn’t know what to call to get the baby to come out from hiding. There are always aunties holding the baby, always aunties taking the baby away.

The cult leader’s wife, after a first trembling brush of fear, isn’t too worried. She remembers, as a child herself, ducking behind rows of clothing, crouching under table legs, laughing when her mother and father found her there, her mother calling her name the way she calls it now, over the crackling phone line, hesitant and hopeful; the cult leader’s wife remembers running into her mother’s waiting arms.

She thinks it will be like that when she finds the baby, she thinks she will smile like that, call the baby by name. She thinks what she will remember, after the baby is found, is the hummingbird-wing thrumble of the baby’s fluttering heart, when she picks her up. She thinks she will feel that raging beat against her own quiet chest.

The cult leader’s wife looks behind displays and uneven stacks of bedding. Her search is a series of looping circles, small at first — how far could the baby have gotten, after all — then wider, wider, wider. The cult leader’s wife’s hands are plucking at the air. Her heart is a cowering animal in her chest.

The other children are at home with the aunties, the other children were being led to the nursery when the cult leader’s wife left with the baby.

The nursery is one of the prettiest places in the compound — home, the cult leader’s wife thinks, at home — all primary colors and soft pillows and children with their sing-song little voices. The nursery always smells of baby powder and dried flowers. The aunties wear aprons there, with crayons and tissues in their pockets. The aunties tell the children God loves you, mother loves you, Father loves you. The aunties tell the children you must love Father and God.

You must, they tell the children, you must, must, must.

The cult leader’s wife stays so busy with all of her responsibilities, but sometimes she stands outside the nursery door, sometimes she listens to the sound of the children’s voices within, sometimes she presses her hand to her fluttering heart and thanks God for them, thank you, she whispers, oh, thank you.

Her circles get wider and wider, but she comes back, always, to that same display bed with the roses and vines, thinking, hoping that she will find the baby there, find the baby somehow tucked into the display bed, her little cheeks flushed red with sleep, her little eyes flutter-flutter-closed.

One of the saleswomen is watching the cult leader’s wife now, with her empty oversized purse and her loop-loop-loops. The saleswoman puts on that same bright smile when the cult leader’s wife nears, says can I help you with something? and the cult leader’s wife says no, thank you, no, I’m fine, and the saleswoman keeps an eye on her as her loop takes her circling away.

The cult leader’s wife worries that the baby has gone off with someone else, such a trusting baby, such a pretty baby, everyone says, so easily passed into the aunties’ arms.

The cult leader’s wife thinks of asking the suspicious saleswoman for help, but her husband wouldn’t approve. The aunties wouldn’t approve. She should have kept a better eye on the baby. She’ll be scolded when they get back home: the aunties will tut at her and shake their heads, her husband will send her to her room without dinner to think about what she’s done.

The other day, her husband had her clean one of the bathrooms at home with a toothbrush over every surface, just a toothbrush and a bucket of soapy water, on her hands and knees, and she remembers how her arms ached the next day and he told her gently you should be grateful for this lesson.

She remembers, after the bathroom was clean, running hot water down the sink, remembers the way it steamed, remembers the way her reflection in the mirror vanished into fog, remembers how her face blurred and distorted. Remembers how her hands were held under that scalding water, remembers them reddening, remembers them shaking.

And her husband’s soft voice in her ear: what have these hands done?

She remembers her mother had a pair of delicate white gloves that she would wear for Easter Sunday services at their church, and a bonnet with a pink bow. She had her own matching bonnet that tied under her chin (and how she hated that strap under her chin!), and she remembers how her mother’s hands were so different in those white gloves, crisp and clean and covered. They were like a pair of pretty white birds, the cult leader’s wife thought. Like doves. She never wears gloves herself, not now, not since she was a child. Her bare, weathered hands. She never wears bonnets, never gloves, never touches the tube of lipstick in her purse to her mouth.

I’d like to look at bedding, she told her husband in the morning. My sheets are so old.

She had her hands folded the way he liked, she looked up at him the way he liked. His eyes went from her to the antique tin at her bedside; she touched his forearm with her fingertips.

Please, she said.

If you must go, he said. If you must go, take the baby.

In her room at home, there are dark corners and quiet places. Here at the department store, it is all shine and fluorescent light, and the cult leader’s wife blinks stinging tears from her eyes at the sheer whiteness of it all.

She sits down on the display bed with its duvet that reminds her of childhood. She closes her eyes and gathers up the duvet in fistfuls, prays for the baby to return. She thinks of the antique tin beside her bed, the way she pulled the twenty-dollar bill from it this morning, still so crisp and fine, just like when her mother gave it to her — use this for mad money, she said. You might need it someday, she said.

The cult leaders wife thinks of the way she considered putting that bill in her wallet with all her receipts, the way, instead, she slipped it back in its place, and when she had done that, there was an auntie at her bedroom door, holding the baby in her arms.

Are you ready to go then, said the auntie, and handed the baby over to the cult leader’s wife to hold, that sweet, heavy bundle.