CHAPTER EIGHT
Mom was sitting in a chair on the verandah looking out at her garden, when Lucy got home. She sat down beside her and poured herself a glass of lemonade from the pitcher on the table.
“Feeling better?” Mom asked cheerfully. Lucy didn’t know whether to hit her or kiss her. She was so useless at this desperate moment and yet if she got Daniel to drive her out and she ran away, what were the odds of ever seeing mom alive again? You cannot stay here any more, Lucy reminded herself.
Not only could she not confide in the Mom she had always known, she had to lie to her. Some goodbye. “Mom,” Lucy said in as level a tone as she could muster, “Daniel goes every week to get the medicine for you. It’s a long, sad drive for him. I thought next time I might go with him for company. Maybe we’ll even have dinner in Baltimore together. I never have any time alone with him since the baby came. I’d ask him myself but I have to go to marriage training class this evening. When he comes, will you tell him I’m going to come with him Saturday?”
“Why not?” Clarissa said. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted.” Maybe not delighted, Lucy admitted to herself as she carefully set her lemonade down. Mom wasn’t so sharp since she started needing the morphine for the pain. Maybe Mom didn’t know that if they got stopped, Daniel would be under the gun to explain why he was driving out of state with a single girl. Lucy didn’t even feel bad. She didn’t even feel anything actually. They probably wouldn’t get stopped, and their papers would show he was her brother. How much trouble could they get into?
“Thank you, Mom.” Joanna would swoop her up into the car and she’d be gone before he left the place where he picked up the drugs. That would actually be better for him -- that she ran away when his back was turned. She’d leave a note. She didn’t want to get him in unnecessary trouble. Mom still needed him to fetch her medicine. She slung on her back pack over the stupid ruffly blouse they made the girls wear and set off to the school where the marriage classes were going to be.
Knowing it would be her first and only marriage class made it a little easier to bear, but having an old white man lecture a classroom full of girls about the History of Marriage was pretty funny. Especially since there were so many female counselors there that night. They were all married, Lucy knew. Why not ask them how it was going?
“So,” Professor Blankensop told them, God had ordained that Adam and Eve bond with one another for the purpose of reproducing the Jewish people. And ever since then marriage had been a sacred relationship between a man and a woman.
Lucy raised her hand. Funny how she’d stopped caring whether she caused trouble. She’d been stuffing it down since she saw she’d have to stay more than a few months. Once she said goodbye in her heart to her mom, she felt positively reckless. It was like an ocean surge.
“What about all those other women Abraham and the others married?” she asked. “Isn’t polygamy a big part of the history of marriage?” Staring down the “Professor,” she didn’t even notice a couple of the counselors moving toward where she sat.
Blankensop explained how Jesus had set the Jews straight on matters of married life and carried on with his lecture without breaking a sweat. They were almost done with the Biblical teachings on obedience when the bell rang. When Lucy got up, the counselors cut her out of the herd of her classmates as deftly as dogs with a sheep.
“What is it?” she asked in surprise and indignation. The computer, she thought. I can’t let them search my backpack.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” one of the women said in a sweet voice. “Just wait here a minute, Lucy. I’ll be right back.” The classroom was emptying rapidly.
“It’s going to get dark,” she said imploringly. “I need to go.”
They said nothing.
Then the door to the now empty classroom opened and the school nurse walked in. Almost before she realized what was going on, the counselors grabbed Lucy and bent her over her desk. She struggled to get free, but there were three of them, and they had obviously done this before. She felt a sharp stab in her neck and smelled the familiar scent of rubbing alcohol.
“OK,” the nurse said, placing a bandaid over the wound. “Take this off tomorrow and you will be fine.”
“What did you do to me? “Lucy screamed. “What is this?”
“It’s just a little chip,” one of the counselors said. “It won’t hurt you at all. In case you get lost or something, it will be so much easier to find you. Where in the world did you get that idea about polygamy?”
“I’m going to rip this out of my neck right now!” Lucy shouted at them, tearing off the band aid and feeling around.
“Forget it,” her captor answered. “It’s so tiny it goes deep into your flesh the minute they inject it. You wouldn’t even know where to look for it. We’ve been having some of you youngsters go missing lately,” she continued. “Can’t have that. Next week we’re going to start chipping all the girls in the Leah project. It makes the scanning at the airport go so much faster. And there’ll be scanners on all the roads out of state. All part of the new program. Keep the Red States Red,” she said with satisfaction.
Lucy talked to herself all the way home. Tagged like a dog at the vet! Scanning at the airport! If only she’d listened to Meck. The other red states had done it, why would Virginia be different? But, she comforted herself, she and Daniel would not be going through the airport. Daniel would just drive her out. If they don’t stop the car, she should be out by Saturday. It was going to be okay. She was going to be okay.
She went up to her bedroom.
“Hello Lucy,” Arthur said from his perch on her bed. “I thought I’d come see you before you locked yourself in for the night. “Thinking of going to Baltimore? What did you tell Clarissa to get her to be your intermediary? I told you not to talk to her. What did you say to her? I told you I would see her die, if you said a word.” He began to rise from his seat.
She started to turn around.
“Don’t waste your time,” he said. “I thought she could use a little extra morphine today; that coughing is so hard on her. She couldn’t hear you if you were in bed with her. You’ve gotten awfully independent lately. I’d like to keep her out of this. I bet you don’t want me to involve her either.”
“I just told her I wanted to go keep Daniel company on his trip this week,” Lucy answered. How did he find out? Did mom blab, thinking it was harmless? She was so unpredictable these days. Did she even get a chance to talk to Daniel? “I don’t get any time with him now that the baby has come.”
“I guess you still don’t get it, Lucy. You’re going nowhere,” he answered. “Virginia isn’t letting its girls move away any more. Normally you’d be married off soon and have your husband for company. But it just happens that I need you here.” He paused. “To take care of your mother. I don’t think you understand what you owe her yet. Maybe a lesson will make it clearer.” He reached into his jacket pocket and picked up a roll of duct tape.
She whirled back to the door. Now she’d just have to make a run for it.
“Ah, Evan,” Arthur said, tossing the duct tape to his chauffeur. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to tape her up. Can’t have her waking my sick wife.” He reached behind him and pulled out a riding crop. “You can wait outside,” Arthur instructed his bodyguards, who had walked up behind Evan to block Lucy’s door.
The tape muffled her screaming, but, after he stopped, she wasn’t sure what hurt more, the whipping or Evan’s betrayal. Well at least she knew now how Arthur had found her out about Baltimore. It wasn’t mom. It was Evan. She thought she’d found an ally even in Arthur’s household. Now she just knew she had to run. He threatened mom to keep her in line. But if she was gone and didn’t say anything, she figured, he’d have no reason to hurt mom to bring her to heel. He wouldn’t even know where to find her to threaten her. She was so done. She would just drop off the face of the earth.