After years in Dallas, I appreciated how different Alber truly was from the outside world. The homes sprawled, large by the standards of most middle-class neighborhoods.
My memory unearthed a family dinner. I must have been six. Father at the head of the table, glowing with pride. “Today it’s been revealed to me through the prophet that I am to be given a third wife,” he’d announced. There were only eight of us children at that time, and we looked one to the other, questioning. My mother and Mother Constance rose and ran to our father, circling arms around him and shouting praise to the Lord for such good news. He undoubtedly saw the confusion on our young faces. “The prophet has chosen a new mother for our family, a woman named Naomi.”
Too young at the time to understand, years later I learned the grave importance of that announcement. Elijah’s People held that a man needed at least three wives to cross into heaven’s highest spheres. When Mother Naomi joined us, Father and his wives entered a blessed circle, the elite eligible to enjoy the afterlife’s greatest rewards.
So many wives. So many children.
Years passed. As a child of my father’s first wife, I lived in our six-bedroom house with my parents, Mother Constance, and my many brothers and sisters. Moments of solitude were rare and quiet a luxury. The house rang with the constant chaos of children, crying babies our jarring background music. At night I slept with my three oldest sisters.
When Mother Naomi arrived, our father purchased a used but well-kept double-wide and moved it onto the back property. Six years later, Mother Sariah joined her, and soon the trailer overflowed with their combined children. Most afternoons, our backyard resembled a schoolyard playground, children everywhere.
That was the setting of my last memory of Delilah. While the others played tag and ball, we had a book opened between us. Delilah and I shared a deep love of fanciful stories—tales of clever bunny rabbits, spider villains and silly pigs.
“Clara, when I’m growed, will you read to me?” she asked.
“Sis, you won’t need me. You’ll read yourself.” Her lower lip formed a heart-twisting shelf. “But I’ll always be with you. Sisters are forever friends.”
Two tender young arms encircled my neck, and Delilah rewarded me with a peck on my cheek.
A week later, I abandoned Delilah along with the rest of my family.
Where was she now?
Max drove past what had been the home of Emil Barstow, the president of Elijah’s People, the religion’s greatest living prophet. He’d wielded incredible authority in Alber. Based on his revelations, he gave men wives and property. And he took them away. If the prophet judged a man unfit, not a true practitioner of the faith, he had the power to reassign the man’s entire family, wives and children, to another. The town elders had families that made ours look small.
A red-brick colonial that marked the center of town, Barstow’s mansion had a command spelled in white brick on the side visible from the street: OBEY AND BE REDEEMED.
“What happened to old man Barstow?”
“In prison,” Max said. “Since he’s in his eighties, my guess is he’ll die there.”
That’s when I noticed a sign nailed onto the wall beside the Barstow mansion’s front gate.
HEAVEN’S MERCY SHELTER
A HOME FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN
“It’s hard to believe that Hannah stayed through it all,” I said.
“She did go into hiding for a while,” Max said. “Clara, things got tense for Hannah after she helped you leave. Those in charge weren’t happy.”
“How tense?” I’d always wondered what consequences Hannah had suffered. I knew there were influential forces in Alber who wouldn’t ignore what we had done. There were so many times I’d wanted to contact Hannah, but I worried that would bring her more trouble. Instead, I cut all ties.
“I don’t know. And I don’t know that she’d tell even you. Hannah’s never been one to cower. At the same time, she understands what she has to do to live here, who she can piss off and who she can’t,” Max said, shooting me a sideways glance. “Things have changed in Alber, Clara, but not completely. Too many hold onto the past. Some hope to reclaim it. It’s good to keep that in mind. Hannah has to be careful. We all do.”
Max’s words weighed heavy.
We drove past the old meeting place, where religious ceremonies and weddings took place, and town affairs had been discussed. Now a sign hung over the door that read “Danny’s Diner.”
“The town has a restaurant?” I remarked.
“The food’s not bad,” Max said. “The Lawler house is a bed and breakfast.”
A restaurant. A B&B. For more than a hundred years, those were unheard of. The women cooked. No one ate out. Visitors weren’t offered a bed because they weren’t welcome to stay overnight. At dusk, the local police made it known to outsiders that they had to be on their way.
Some would have seen such circumstances as inhospitable, but for much of my life, I’d viewed Alber simply as home. The town was all I knew, and I was part of it.
On the surface, we were a community. Neighbors banded together and helped one another raise homes, build their spreads. At summer picnics, the children played while our parents relaxed on lawn chairs and talked of the prospects for the year’s crops. Yet at times I felt or saw signs that all wasn’t as I wanted to believe. Scratch the surface, and there’d always been a hidden tension
