I started by trying to tickle it awake. It lay there, drool streaming in a gelatinous rope from the corner of its mouth, eyes open. It did not seem to see me. I turned its head toward me, and the body rolled, stiffly. This wasn’t a baby. It was a child, seven or eight years old, perhaps.
I smelled it then. Dirty diapers. Making a face, I drew the covers back. “What’s the matter with . . . her, Is she sick?”
Rejoice shook her head, an expression of disapproval on her face. “Of course not. She’s perfectly all right.”
“If she isn’t sick, she seems a little old to be dirtying her pants.”
“A little slow to be toilet-trained. That’s all. Otherwise, perfectly fine. See, she’s smiling at you.”I looked at the child. Its mouth was twisted in a grimace of pain. I started to say something, then stopped. The source of the pain was all too evident. Sores. Sores on its buttocks and between its legs. “It has sores,” I said, carefully neutral. “Do you have medicine or a Healer for those?”
She shuddered, whispered, “Do not say ‘Healer.’ Father would not have a Healer here. As bad as midwives, Healers. There’s powder on the shelf. Clean linen on the shelf. Washcloths on the shelf.” She herself was busy with another, even older. It seemed to be a boy—man, really a man, with hair on his face. Lying in his own excrement, on a soaked bed, his face turned upward without expression.
I went back to my work. I had done worse. Not often, but on occasion. Burying was cleaner. Corpses were cleaner, even those half-decayed. When we were through, the six bodies in the beds were clean, too, and the filthy linens were piled high in a basket by the door. I leaned against a sill and thrust a window wide.
“What are you doing!”
“Airing out, Sister Servant. Getting rid of a little of the smell.”
“It’s the smell of service. Nothing to repudiate. Revel in it, Jinny, for it is a holy smell.”
Holy shit, I thought to myself, wondering what madhouse Ganver had brought me to. Holy pee!
“How old is he?” I asked, pointing at the man she had worked on first.
“Bobby? Why, Bobby’s just a wee baby.”
“He’s large for a baby.”
“Oh, in years perhaps he is. Thirty or forty, I suppose. But he’s just a wee baby nonetheless. Slow. A tiny bit slow.”
“When will he grow up, this Bobby?”
“Oh, every day and every day. The therapist says he’s growing up all the time.”
“The therapist says that?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll have to meet Sister Servant Therapist. We’ll see her over breakfast. Now that the babies are all clean, we’ll feed them, then we can have our own breakfast.”
We could have our breakfast. When we had carried out the dirty linens, rinsed them in a stream, put them in kettles to be boiled over the fire, and spent an endless time spooning gruel into mouths or into gaping tubes that led into stomachs, we could have our breakfast. We assembled in the kitchen, all the Sister Servants and me. The smell of the dirty linens in the kettles was overwhelming. I could not eat. They did. I was introduced. I nodded at them over my teacup, pretending I had eaten earlier. Well, I had, sometime earlier.
“Sister Servant says you’re interested in Bobby.” This Sister was a little older, deep lines graven from nose to the corners of her lips, lips curved in a constant, meaningless smile. Habit held her face in that expression. She did not know how her face looked.
I nodded, noncommittal. She took it for assent. “He’s making such progress.” She made enthusiastic noises. “We’re working on toilet training.
“Ah,” I said.
“Teaching him to make a noise when he needs to. I sit by him, and then when he does, I make a noise. Eventually, he will learn to mimic the noise, then he’ll associate it with doing it, don’t you know, and that will be a help. If we have a little warning, we can get a pan under him.”
“How long have you been working at this?”
“On, only about ten years—isn’t it about ten, Sister Servant Rejoice? Ten years. Bobby hasn’t quite got the hang of it, but he will.”
“Do you really feel there is sufficient intelligence there? To . . . ah, get the hang of it?” I had seen only a shell, a body without a mind. I wondered if my eyes had tricked me.
“He makes progress,” she said stiffly. “Every day. It doesn’t matter that he’s a little slow. He’s a unique, valuable fruit of St. Phallus. Father says it doesn’t matter whether it takes one year or a hundred. Every fruit of St. Phallus is sacred.”
I smiled, nodded. They were all looking at me intently, too intently. Sister Servant Rejoice was holding a bread knife, turning it and turning it in her hands as she looked at me, something deep and violent in her eyes. “Of course,” I said. “That’s very true.” Sister Servant Rejoice laid down the knife. I breathed a silent sigh. “I’d love to hear Father talk. He sounds very eloquent.”
This was the right thing to have said. They told me about Father, about the several Fathers. A few of whom were present in the priory. The rest of whom were out in the world, seeking out special fruits of St. Phallus to bring them to the Sanctuary. “And more Sister Servants,” sighed Rejoice. “We need more of us.”
“Don’t presume,” said Sister Therapist. “Father says don’t presume. We don’t need any more of us than there are, Father says. ‘Sufficient unto the duty are the Sisters thereof.’ That’s what Father says.”
“I suppose the Fathers could always help,” I said innocently.
“That would not be fitting,” said Sister Therapist. “They have higher duties than ours.”
I went again with Sister Rejoice, from room to room, place to place. I talked with Sister Therapist.
“It is my
