'What are you doing?' Dulcie asked her. Amazing, thought Carla. Three times in a matter of minutes.
'Well,' said Ana, 'my old friend here sometimes has things go wrong with her. Today it's her heater, which is not very convenient, considering how cold it is. So I thought I should try to patch it together before I turn into an icicle. Can you get that end loose for me?' She held out the roll of silvery tape to Dulcie, who put her bag down between her feet, pulled off her mittens, and worked at the end of the thick tape until she had a half-inch or so of corner free.
'That's great,' said Ana. 'I can get it from there.'.
Dulcie gave her back the roll, and frowned as she saw Ana take the loose corner between her right front teeth and tug free a length of tape with a loud, ripping sound.
'You shouldn't do that,' the little girl said to Ana in disapproval. 'Your teeth will fall out.'
'Will they?' asked Ana. 'You mean like this?' She worked her tongue across the roof of her mouth and then reached up with her black fingers to pop loose the small plastic plate that held her other front teeth, the two false ones on the left. She then grinned at the child with her jaws clenched, poking the tip of her tongue through the hole left by the missing bridge.
Dulcie stared openmouthed at the gap in Ana's teeth, and at the thin device of pink plastic and wire with the two neat white teeth attached that lay in the palm of the greasy woolen glove, and then burst into a paroxysm of giggles. Tears came to her eyes at the absurdity of the lady with no teeth, and she bent over and laughed so hard, she probably would have wet herself if Carla hadn't made her use the toilet just before they left the shop.
There is nothing more contagious than a child's giggles, and Ana's mouth twitched, then she started to laugh, and soon she was reduced to a weak-kneed collapse onto the wet street and rather needing a toilet herself. Even Carla, who had little sense of humor at the best of times and who was moreover distracted by the unexpected descent of the problematic, enigmatic Dulcie into an ordinary silly five-year-old, even Carla began to grin at the two of them.
It took a long time for the storm to pass, because every time Ana looked at Dulcie, one or the other of them would snort and set off the laughter, and when Ana put her bridge back in, Dulcie couldn't bear it, and demanded— in words—to be taken back to the shop to use the toilet again.
While they were inside, Ana brushed herself off and tore away (with her fingers) the now-crumpled and stuck-together length of tape, bringing on a fresh piece, which she wrapped tightly around the worn tubing and cut off with her pocketknife. She bent to replace it, deep in Rocinante's guts, and heard the tinkle of the shop bell behind her.
As the child's footsteps came to a halt behind her, Ana whirled around with her finger out and started to growl 'Don't you
'Whoa, it's okay, Dulcie. I was just pretending. I'm not angry, not a bit, I was just acting fierce so you wouldn't laugh at my wet bottom.' She turned and bent to point her forty-eight-year-old rear end at the child, a rear end with a perfect circle of dark denim where she had sat down on the wet street. She looked over her shoulder at the child. 'It looks pretty dumb to have a wet butt.'
The admission of adult frailty combined with the mildly rude word brought the beginnings of a smile to the child's face. Ana straightened up to look at her.
'I'm sorry, Dulcie. I didn't mean to surprise you like that.'
Carla, who had lagged behind to fight with the lock and had missed the exchange, joined them with a puzzled look, knowing something had happened to change the mood so radically, but uncertain about asking. Instead, she gestured to the bus.
'Did you get it fixed, then?'
'Not really. It'll last for a bit and then die when I need it most. She's an old car, and parts are hard to get.'
'Is that your only heater? I mean, don't you have a stove or something?'
'That's not very safe. I have some good warm blankets; I just crawl in and go to bed early.'
Although Ana was prepared to go much further than that in laying hints, she did not have to say any more. Carla had been thinking hard about Dulcie's strange openness, and although she wanted to believe that she had been responsible for freeing the child, wanted Steven to look at her with respect and a word of praise, she had to admit that it wasn't her, but this woman who had somehow, unknowingly, pried Dulcie out of her shell. Five times Dulcie had spoken—and laughed! There was nothing to do but bring this odd woman with the ugly haircut and try to hang on to her until Steven returned home. He would want that.
'Why don't you come back with us?' Carla said. 'We live in a community about forty-five minutes away. There's plenty of room. And lots of fireplaces,' she added.
Dulcie did not say anything; she didn't need to, the way she stood gripping the lumpy bag, waiting for this lady to say yes.
Strangely enough, Ana was the one to hesitate. She had been prepared to spend days working her way into the community. Instead, she was slipping in after bare hours, but still she hesitated—for a brief moment, true, but a concentrated one..
She could only wish the child didn't look so much like Abby.
Chapter Nine
Cults Among Us 87
leads to the macho confrontational approach to resolving a standoff—what I think of as the 'create-a-crisis' or 'Look you little bastards, you can't mess with me' point of view. There is no denying the appeal of having a clear goal and definite action, following in the footsteps of the Israelis at Entebbe and performing a deft and forceful coup, rescuing the hostages and crushing the hostage takers.
However, frustrating as it may be to men hedged around by boredom, testosterone, and the pressures of media and their own higher ranks to DO SOMETHING, the coup de guerre does not work when there is no one to rescue, and one must always bear in mind that in a strong religious community, whether one calls it a cult or a sect or just a group of believers, there are no hostages; I repeat, there are no hostages wanting rescue. Typically the men, women and children of the community love and believe in what they are doing, and will die-willingly, freely die—before submitting to the perceived enemy, the hands of Babylon, the government representatives. This is as true now as it was in first century Palestine when the Jewish rebels at Masada committed themselves to their own blades rather than surrender their children to the Romans, or when the Russian Old Believers, who were
From Cults Among Us by Anne Waverly, Ph.D., Oxford University Press, 1996
As soon as Ana opened Rocinante's door, she knew that Carla had not misled her about the fireplaces. The air was sweet with pinon smoke, that incense of the high country, and the night moved across her face, smooth and cold and clear. It was a sort of night to make even a middle-aged woman with a bad knee want to do something mad, throw off her clothes and raise her arms to the stars, perhaps, or lift her face and howl at the young moon.
Reluctantly, she came back to earth and looked around to see what had happened to Carla. The woman was standing at the passenger door of her pickup truck, laden down with parcels and a bulging grocery bag, exhorting Dulcie to get down and come on. Ana closed Rocinante's door, thought about locking it and decided not to, and buttoned up her jacket while she walked over to see if she could help.
The child had been sleeping, she saw, and was still more than half asleep, fisting her eyes against the thin brightness of the pickup's cabin light and whining the inarticulate protest of the very young.
'Can I carry something?' Ana asked. To her dismay, Carla stepped back from the truck and nodded at Dulcie.
'Why don't you just carry her in?' she said with thinly concealed annoyance. 'Otherwise we're all going to freeze to death out here.' Carla turned and walked away.
Ana swallowed and stood where she was. Dulcie's arms came up in the natural, trusting gesture of a child waiting to be lifted up, her normally guarded expression rendered soft and vulnerable by sleep; it was all Ana could do to keep herself from bolting for the safety of Rocinante.
'Is something wrong?' Carla called.
