“
If you’re going to give me the third degree,” she tells him, “let’s get it over with. Best to withhold food or water; water is probably best. I’ll get thirsty before I get hungry.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “Do you really think I’m like that? Why would you think that?”
“I was taken by force, and you’re keeping me here against my will,” she says, leaning across the table toward him. She considers spitting in his face, but decides to save that gesture as punctuation for a more appropriate moment. “Imprisonment is still imprisonment, no matter how many layers of cotton you wrap it in.” That makes him lean farther away, and she knows she’s pushed a button. She remembers seeing those pictures of him back when he was all over the news, wrapped in cotton and kept in a bombproof cell.
“I really don’t get you,” he says, a bit of anger in his voice this time. “We saved your life. You could at least be a little grateful.”
“You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That’s not salvation, that’s damnation.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Now it’s her turn to get angry. “Yes, you’re sorry I feel that way, everyone’s sorry I feel that way. Are you going to keep this up until I don’t feel that way anymore?”
He stands up suddenly, pushing his chair back, and paces, fern leaves brushing his clothes. She knows she’s gotten to him. He seems like he’s about to storm out, but instead takes a deep breath and turns back to her.
“I know what you’re going through,” he says. “I was brainwashed by my family to actually want to be unwound—and not just by my family, but by my friends, my church, everyone I looked up to. The only voice who spoke sense was my brother Marcus, but I was too blind to hear him until the day I got kidnapped.”
“You mean see,” she says, putting a nice speed bump in his way.
“Huh?”
“Too blind to see him, too deaf to hear him. Get your senses straight. Or maybe you can’t, because you’re senseless.”
He smiles. “You’re good.”
“And anyway, I don’t need to hear your life story. I already know it. You got caught in a freeway pileup, and the Akron AWOL used you as a human shield—very noble. Then he turned you, like cheese gone bad.”
“He didn’t turn me. It was getting away from my tithing, and seeing unwinding for what it is. That’s what turned me.”
“Because being a murderer is better than being a tithe, isn’t that right, clapper?”
He sits back down again, calmer, and it frustrates her that he is becoming immune to her snipes.
“When you live a life without questions, you’re unprepared for the questions when they come,” he says. “You get angry and you totally lack the skills to deal with the anger. So yes, I became a clapper, but only because I was too innocent to know how guilty I was becoming.”
...
“You think I’m like you, but I’m not,” Miracolina says. “I’m not part of a religious order that tithes. My parents did it in spite of our beliefs, not because of ii.”
“But you were still raised to believe it was your purpose, weren’t you?”
“My purpose was to save my brother’s life by being a marrow donor, so my purpose was served before I was six months old.”
“And doesn’t that make you angry that the only reason you’re here was to help someone else?”
“Not at all,” she says a little too quickly. She purses her lips and leans back in her chair, squirming a bit. The chair feels a little too hard beneath her. “All right, so maybe I do feel angry once in a while, but I understand why they did it. If I were them, I would have done the same thing.”
“Agreed,” he says. “But once your purpose was served, shouldn’t your life be your own?”
“Miracles are the property of God,” she answers.
“No,” he says, “miracles are gifts from God. To calthem his property insults the spirit in which they are given.”
She opens her mouth to reply but finds she has no response, because he’s right. Damn him for being right—nothing about him should be right!
“We’ll talk again when you’re over yourself,” he says.
”
”