Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

There was a laundry area where women stirred clothes in huge vats of cloudy water. There were rows and rows of kaysev pods drying on cotton sheets in the sun. There were twisted electric cables snaking along the walls, connecting strings of lightbulbs to generators.

Lily led her back and forth along the vast field, showing Cass the inventions and activities and products of the Order, and though they passed the large tent-roofed enclosure several times, it was the one thing she never mentioned, even though a muffled grunting and snuffling came from behind the wooden walls.

When a bell clanged from the kitchen area, Lily made a tsking sound and put a hand to Cass’s back, giving her a gentle push. “We’d best hurry,” she said. “It won’t do to be late to dinner on your first day, will it? And you’ll feel so much better once you’ve eaten something.”

Cass had grown accustomed to Lily’s soft, soothing voice, and as they walked back toward the tables, it was lost in the sound of dozens of other conversations as women appeared from the entrances in the stands and swarmed the field. Fifty, a hundred, they kept coming, the old and the young, the tall and the short, the strong and the stooped. Most wore the bland shades of tan and gray and brown that Lily said signified they were acolytes, accepted into the congregation, but here and there was a woman in bright shades of pink and purple. The ordained, like Lily. The leaders, the teachers.

Lily led her to a long table near the edge of the gathering where twenty or so women were gathered, all of them dressed in white blouses and skirts.

“These are the neophytes,” Lily said. “Like you. All of you are new. You will live together and study and pray together.”

She guided Cass to an open seat near one end of the table, next to a young, pretty woman with wavy brown hair that fell in her eyes, and a solidly built blonde woman in her late forties.

“This is Cassandra,” Lily announced as the women gathered at the table fell silent. Cass lowered herself to a straight-backed chair with a webbed-plastic seat and folded her hands on her lap. “She arrived today, and she’s still a little weary from traveling. Please make her feel welcome.”

Lily crouched down between Cass and the young woman on her left. “I just know you’re going to do fine,” she said softly in a tone that implied she wasn’t entirely sure.

Cass wanted to reassure her, to thank her for her kindness, but her collapse in Lily’s office had left her unfocused as well as drained of energy, and her head still throbbed with a spiking pain above her eye where she struck the table, and she managed only a weak smile.

“This is Monica. She’s been here a week now. And Adele. You’ll help Cass, won’t you? Show her around…? Explain things?”

“Sure.” The younger woman gave Cass a crooked smile. Especially if it means I don’t have to be the newbie any more.”

“I need to go to my table,” Lily said, giving Cass a final pat on her shoulder. “It’s almost time for prayer. I know you’re still…finding your way, Cassandra. But just have faith and open your heart. Can you do that?”

Lily’s smile was so encouraging, her touch so welcome, that Cass found herself nodding along. It wasn’t so different from the third drink, or the fourth-the one that untethered her anxious mind from the dark place that was built of anxiety and worry and fear. When she used to drink, she pursued that moment when the lashings fell free and she drifted, when the numbness swirled in and the memories softened into vague shadows and it seemed possible that she might feel nothing at all, at least for a while.

She watched Lily go, weaving her way back between the tables filling up with women, and tried to hold on to the stillness. But when she turned back, all of the others at the table were watching her, and the momentary peace evaporated.

THE NEOPHYTES WERE YOUNG, SUNTANNED, wholesome girls and skinny, hollow-eyed beauties, nails chewed to the quick, their colored and highlighted hair giving way to several inches of natural-colored roots.

But there were a few older women, some her mother’s age, and at least one who looked like she was pushing seventy. They fussed over the younger women, passing them dishes and refilling their water, chiding them to eat, to relax, to rest. Cass wondered how many of them had been separated from their own children, had lost them to disease or to the Beaters.

“Welcome, Cassandra,” Adele said with a smile, lifting her glass in a toast. Monica clinked it with her own and winked. Before she could lift her own glass to the others, there was the squeal of feedback from a loudspeaker, and a tall, slender, silver-haired woman dressed in scarlet approached the platform. Silence fell quickly. The servers paused in their tasks, and heads were bowed and hands folded in supplication.

“That’s Mother Cora,” Monica whispered.

Mother Cora closed her eyes and tilted up her chin, smiling faintly. “Let us pray,” she said, and the sound system picked up her well-modulated voice and carried it with surprising clarity through the stadium. All around her the women joined hands; Monica and Adele held hers and reached across the empty seats to the others. Mother Cora raised her hands slowly above her head in an elegant arc, inhaled deeply and began to speak, women’s soft voices falling in with hers in a low susurration that filled the stadium and echoed back upon itself.

“Lord our Savior,” her prayer began, “we, your Chosen, commend this and every day to Thee.”

What followed was not so different from the prayers Cass remembered from her occasional forays into church, and she stopped paying attention to the words and instead sneaked glances at all the other women who were praying over clasped hands. She thought she would see at least a few others who, like her, were not able to lose themselves in prayer, who were not moved. Those who lacked faith, or who had been lost, or had turned away from God. Those whose suffering had changed them at the core, stealing pieces of the soul and leaving carved-out shadows in their place.

But as she searched the neat rows of women, they became indistinguishable from one another, their variations in shape and size and hair and skin color insignificant, forming a whole that was more than the sum of the individuals, pulsing with a life of its own. All the voices made one voice; all the clasped hands formed a chain that stretched from the old to the young, the weak to the strong. In that moment Cass felt the tug of the Order, the desire to lose herself, to become nothing more than another voice sharing in the prayer, if only she knew the words.

You have sent Your forsaken, that we may forgive

You have sent Your tainted, that we may heal

In Your glory we celebrate the body and the blood

In Your name we consecrate ourselves to Your holy task

Amen

The echoes of Amen rebounded around the vast space, now nearly dark except for candles on the tables and a few strings of electric lights. Mother Cora descended the stairs and the spotlight shut off, and conversation picked up again.

“Hope you’re not expecting much,” Monica said, as servers placed steaming plates in front of each of them and poured water from pitchers.

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Well that’s good, since everything around here’s pretty much inedible.”

“Don’t complain so much,” Adele chided. “ You didn’t have to cook it.”

“I’d rather be cooking than suffering through Purity lectures,” Monica said. “Seriously, Cassandra, if you haven’t sworn off sex already, listening to Sister Linda talk about your vessel of virtue will knock the urge right out of you.”