“It’s complicated,” Eve said. “Because of their many sins, God commands that they must work hard.”
Happily, Tanya did not ask what sin was.
Not that Tanya had run out of questions. She never did. “Why are there bad people in the world at all?”
To disobey was sin, and Eve had been told to instruct the younger children on matters of faith. Even when she didn’t understand herself. She began, “Once, in a place far away—”
“The other world.”
“Right. Don’t interrupt if you want an answer.”
“Sorry,” Tanya said, eyes downcast.
“The other world was filled with bad people. God told Ms. Li that He would destroy the world to end the evil.” Eve wasn’t clear who God was, either. Someone very powerful, a friend of Ms. Li’s. Or what evil was, beyond not doing as God and His messenger decreed. “Ms. Li pleaded with God to spare the world, and He said He would if she could show Him ten good people. She could not find even ten, but God was so moved by her compassion—”
“Her what?” Tanya asked shyly.
“Her concern for all the others.” One by one, as children heard Eve retelling the Great Story, they stopped their play and sidled closer to listen. Raising her voice so that everyone could hear, Eve continued. “God commanded Ms. Li to build a special ship called the ark to save herself, the five good people she had found, and all the unborn children.”
“And you were the first to be born here.”
Which meant the others looked to her for answers, whether or not she had any. Being the oldest didn’t make her an adult! It didn’t impart the wisdom of the other world.
I’m a child, too! Every day—every hour!—she wanted to scream the words but did not dare. She had duties, however unwelcome, and the children’s trust, however undeserved. And a room of her own. A private room marked her as special, set her apart. She would so much rather sleep with the others, as she had when she was younger.
For so many reasons.
Tanya glanced to where the unloading continued. “But why are the bad people here?”
“I’m coming to that,” Eve said. “Most people Ms. Li brought on her ark had tricked her by pretending to be good. They prepared to bring sin to this world. But Ms. Li had foreseen their evil plan. Mr. Carlos made the devices that protect us—”
“And you and the other oldest ones helped,” one of the children interrupted.
“Right.” Eve still did not understand what they hid in the gravel that day, but she would never forget the tooth-rattling bang! one made soon after they finished. And again when—
No. She could not bear to remember that.
But the things in the gravel, whatever they were, scared the bad people, too. They kept their distance except when bringing food.
“…is that, Eve?” little Jorge asked.
She had allowed her attention to wander again. “What?”
“Why doesn’t God punish these bad people? Why do they get to have most of the world? Why did God allow them to steal the ark?”
The answer, when Eve had once made similar inquiries, involved rainbows, God’s mysterious ways, and the promise Ms. Li would someday soon lead the children into a promised land.
“I guess it is God’s will,” Eve told the children, wishing once more that she understood. “Now go play.”
From the corner of an eye, around the edge of a building, she resumed her study of Mr. Blake and Ms. Dana unloading the food.
Sometimes Eve watched Mr. Blake through the fence. He and a young girl, she about five and a half, would throw back and forth a striped ovoid ball, the girl as often as not dropping it or flinging it far beyond his reach. He called her Beth. She called him Daddy, and that Mr. Blake had a second name was yet another mystery to Eve.
She didn’t understand the activity’s purpose, or why Mr. Blake kept at it so patiently, ever calling out encouragement. She didn’t understand why she never saw but the one child outside. She didn’t understand why Mr. Blake prattled on about saints and bengals, cowboys and patriots, whatever those were, or the strange noises the girl sometimes broke into.
“Giggling,” Marvin called the noise when Eve had asked.
“Is she injured?”
“No, Beth is fine,” Marvin had said. “That is a happy sound.”
“I don’t understand,” Eve had told it. She still didn’t. Throwing and catching and shouting encouragement didn’t seem like the things a bad person would do.
“You will have to ask an adult,” Marvin had told her.
Eve knew better than that.
Had she ever giggled? Had she ever even played, like Tanya and Samir and the rest of her charges got to do? If so, it had happened so long ago that Eve no longer remembered.
Sometimes, watching man and child toss their ball, Eve had wondered if Mr. Blake slipped into the little girl’s room at night. If Mr. Blake…touched things, and made Beth—
No. Eve refused to think about that.
As the bad people, gasping with effort, continued to unload the food—and as Mr. Carlos stood watching—Eve found herself trying to imagine something strange.
What would it be like to giggle and be happy?
38
Frowning in concentration, tongue peeking from a corner of her mouth, Beth colored feverishly. Rikki thought she had never seen anything so adorable—and, at the same time, if she allowed herself to ponder what sort of future her little girl could have, so terrifying.
“What do you have there?” Rikki asked.
Beth looked up, and coal-black bangs flopped into her beautiful, incredulous eyes. “That’s us, Mommy.”
Two big and one little person standing in front of a box with windows: that, Rikki hadn’t needed help to decode. Six or more sketches like it adorned their kitchen at all times. It was the backdrop behind the house that puzzled her. Bunches of closely spaced vertical lines, with dots of color between.
Oh. The children of the settlement. Li’s…puppets.
Rikki’s heart sank. “Let’s put your pretty picture up on the
