A Perfect SEAL

Taking a long time to answer, she continues rummaging through the bag before she figures out what she's going to say to me.

“No, I never saw her again. I live with Mary now. She had a debt and… it wouldn't be fair for her to take the Family's resources like that. She had to pay it back. That was all she had.”

“What was all she had?”

Tulip rolls her eyes in disgust. “Her… flower. You know. Men will pay for that.”

I shake my head and drag a folded bathrobe out of the bag. It smells like soap and something else. Vomit. I don't even need to make sure. I just stuff it into another black bag.

“I'm so sorry,” I mumble. It seems like sort of a pathetic thing to say, since I started this argument.

She glances up at me, her eyes flashing. “Yeah, well, thanks, I guess. I mean, she had to, right? Shouldn't everybody pay their debts?”

“What do you mean?” I stammer, sensing that she has much more she wants to say.

She points a finger at me, poking the air viciously. “You know your mother has the same kind of debt, right? She's never repaid it. So why do some people just get to live off of all of us? Can you tell me that?”

I shake my head. I wish I never said anything. “I don't know, Tulip,” I admit. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

She breathes through her nose for a few seconds, then forces herself to shrug and looks down.

“Forget it. Just forget it.”

But how can I forget it? Mama has a debt? Is this like… is this what Brother Owen was talking about? Is this what Father Daddy has been concerned about?

Suddenly I want to be out of here. I want to escape from the room. I want to run, keep running. Sold? Is that possibility?

But if I kept running, where can I go? I don't know how to live outside of the Kingdom Come. What would I do?

But it’s a debt, and it must be settled. It can’t continue like that. Can it?

“Excuse me, I don’t feel good,” I mumble as I push myself back from the table and walk across the room.

“I'll be back in a little while,” I tell Mary, but this is a lie.

Hopefully that’s the last lie I will have to tell. I just let the door close behind me. I believe it was a necessary thing.

Mama isn't home, so I rush into my room begin pulling my few things out of my drawers. I stack them all up on the bed, trying to imagine where I'll go, what I'll do. The pile looks so meager compared to what I just pulled out of trash bags, things people didn't even want anymore. How can I consider it? What does it take to live out there?

I realize I have no idea.

Slowly I shove my undergarments and dresses and woolen socks back into my dresser drawers. Desolation. I feel desolate. It was sort of pointless to think that I could run away. Who runs away? Children run away.

And I'm a woman now. I need to stand up and take my place.

But what Tulip said rattles around my brain. Am I going to be sold? Like her mother? Like Brother Owen implied? The words didn’t make sense to me at the time, but since my training I think I have some idea what that would really mean now.

Then again, if that's what makes it all right… That maybe that's what I have to do.

The front door slams shut and I hear my mother's footsteps bang across the living room.

“What do you think you're doing?” she barks at me as she barges into my room. Her eyes flicker around the room, looking for anything out of place.

I just stand here stupidly. There's no trace of what I was considering, but it must look pretty suspicious.

“I'm not doing anything,” I say truthfully. Not anymore.

She jams her fists on her hips. “Mary said you left the reclamation duty. Is this true?”