Page 2 of Through the Water

I hadn’t meant to say the words aloud.

“Do you remember when that man came to the gate seeking help? I think you were five—maybe six? He came right in the middle of a tropical storm. The streets were starting to flood, and then, there he was, under one of the lights. You could smell the booze on him from a mile away as he hollered to see Pastor James…” Mama’s words had tapered off, and I’d rolled over, expecting to find her asleep again.

Instead, she was mashing her trembling lips together as if to keep from crying. “The man needed help—at the very least, he needed a place to dry out and sober up. Your daddy turned him away and went back inside.

“I waited until everyone disappeared before slipping out to find him. I handed him an old coat and a sack of—goodness, I don’t even remember what was in it. I just grabbed whatever I could from the fridge and pantry. Do you know what he said to me?”

“W-w-what?” I’d whispered, far too invested to not hear every last detail. Thoughts of life outside our community made the hair on my arms and neck stand tall, yet sparked my curiosity in ways that no other topic could.

Mama’s lips had stretched into a thin smile as she’d brushed the hair back off my forehead. “Told me about how all he wanted to do was get back home to his boy and be a good man. Said he must have prayed the right way to be sent an angel. Do you see what’s wrong with that?”

I’d shaken my head, completely puzzled.

“I’m no angel, Ari. But that man mistook my kindness for something otherworldly. And that was when I knew that your daddy didn’t want to help people… not really. He wants to lock himself away behind the walls, turning a blind eye to their suffering. No matter what he tells you, we’re no better than they are, little dove. We’re all the same.”

I’d scooted toward the edge of the bed when Mama closed her eyes, only to be tugged right back. She’d crushed my small body to her chest, making it hard to draw a breath. As I didn’t know the next time she’d be lucid, I let her hold me just as tightly as she wanted.

“Need you to promise me something, Ari,” Mama had whispered urgently before cupping my cheek with her palm. “Promise me that when you’re old enough, you’ll get out. You and your sisters will run and never come back here.”

Whatever hold she had on reality loosened, and she began mumbling nonsense about the house listening in on our conversation before slipping back into a state of silence. Her mouth had gone slack, and the tears she’d cried clung to her lashes as she stared unseeingly toward the wall.

It was as if she were dead. I knew better, but my mind dredged up a ghost story my sister, Ashlynn, had once told me. Behaving like the entirely rational child I was, I’d scooped up my book and bolted from the room faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind.

Perhaps it wasn’t how Mama had wanted, but I’d run… right to my hiding spot in the hedges where I was determined to stay until her desperate warning made a lick of sense.

My skin was hot and sticky, and my bladder had suddenly become uncomfortably full. Still, I wasn’t stepping one foot inside that house until Papa and my sisters got back.

As the youngest of six girls, I had a tendency to get stuck with the most tedious of tasks. Sister Sarai oversaw the community library but had fallen ill over the past year. When I wasn’t reading to Mama, I helped out, sorting through the book donations for appropriate additions.

Papa preferred that we only keep books that reinforced our faith in some way. Otherwise, it was as if we were giving our brains junk food.

Trash in, trash out.

Instead of burning the rejects, as was customary, I hid them in the folds of my dress and smuggled them back to my room. I’d always been a voracious reader, and these books were no exception. I kept them hidden in the wooden slats of the box spring beneath my mattress, devouring the words by the soft glow of my nightlight while the rest of the house slept.

I fell in love with Mr. Darcy alongside Elizabeth, wept with Jane over Mr. Rochester’s deceitfulness, and learned about courage and compassion through the eyes of Scout Finch. The one constant in every book was that the world was a flawed, but ultimately beautiful place in which to live.

There’s nothing beyond the wall that doesn’t exist here.

I freed a particularly worn copy from the bodice of my dress and lay back against the earth with a shake of my head. Grandmother had warned us that we weren’t to trust anything Mama said while she was sick, yet here I was, doing just that.

Mama also thinks the house is alive… just like you.

“J-j-just a c-c-coincidence,” I said under my breath. “A s-silly little c-c-coincidence.”

“Ariana!”

At the sound of Brother Bradley’s voice, my shoulders rolled forward, and I dropped my book before tucking myself into a tight ball. Beads of sweat ran down my arms, stinging the cuts left behind from the thick bushes, but I didn’t dare move.

For the most part, the church followers left me alone. Not Brother Bradley. It was as though the man had a radar that alerted him to my presence. He always needed me to hug him or sit on his lap, things I’d grown too big for years ago.

I would have preferred to sit with Mama while she stared blankly over being alone in the house with Brother Bradley. He made my skin feel prickly, but he and Papa had been friends since they were children, so I was forced to be polite.

“Come on, sweetheart. Your mama is wondering where you ran off to.”

I hurriedly tucked the book back into my dress. Keeping my body close to the wall, I crawled away from the sound of his voice. Had I stayed put, I would never have known the hole existed.

It had clearly been used by animals as they made their way in and out of the neighborhood, yet had somehow remained undiscovered by the security guards.

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