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Lucy's hand slipped into Selena's and squeezed. "Come on," she whispered.
Selena clung to the woman's hand, a lifeline in the shifting strangeness of this segregated, silent house. Together they marched down the stairs and around the corner, past the kitchen that was just beginning to waken amid the sound of clanging pots and splashing water and feminine voices.
Women streamed through the west door like a neat herd of cattle, emerging into the still-darkened world, where they scattered in a dozen differ
ent directions. Lucy led Selena down the quiet, tree-lined street toward a small white house, as unadorned and plain as the others. Pushing through the door, they entered a big, square room filled with long wooden tables. In the center, sitting on a huge square of hammered steel, was a conical stove filled with irons. Baskets heaped with laundry lay along the wall, and wooden trees were laden with drying white sheets and aprons and caps. Wooden stocking forms hung from pegs on the wall. Through the windows on the opposite wall, Selena could see a dozen women, bent over huge, black cauldrons.
Lucy flicked open a panel in the conical stove and started a fire. Within moments, waves of heat pumped from the stove and filled the room.
Then Lucy yanked up a big basket and spilled the contents out on the trestle table. "As soon as the irons are hot, we can begin."
Selena went to the table and stood across from Lucy. "Tell me about this place."
Lucy gave her a weak smile. "You have seen enough already to know what it's like. It's a religious community."
"What is this religion that requires bells and separation and silence?" "We practice celibacy." "I do not know this word, celibacy."
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"I wish I could forget it," Lucy said with a little laugh. "Sex. You know that word?"
Memories hurled themselves at Selena, sharp and sudden and sweet. "Yes. I know this word."
"Quite simply, we don't have sex."
"But the married people-"
"Marriage is 'contrary to order.' It is not considered proper for men and women to form such special relationships," Lucy said bitterly.
"I understand this emotion, bitterness. Why do you express it so?"
Lucy looked surprised for a second. Then she smiled. "I forget that you don't remember me. My husband, Blake-he lives in another dwelling house. And our son, Samuel, lives in a third."
"I misunderstand. You have a child and a husband, yet you do not live together?"
"You understand perfectly."
"But a child needs his mother."
"Not here." Lucy spread an apron out in front of her and sprinkled lavender water on it, then she reached for an iron and began pressing the linen. "Last year Sammy came down with the chicken pox. They wouldn't even let me see him until I threatened to burn the place down. Raising children is a 'community activity,' you see. It isn't proper for a mother to have a special bond with any one child."
Even Johann had never sounded so bitter. Selena copied Lucy's movements, drawing a wrinkled white apron from the basket at her feet and smoothing it across the table. Carefully she withdrew a hot iron from the stove and began pressing. "Why do you stay?"
Lucy sighed. "Where would I go? My husband made the decision to join without me. He donated all of our worldly belongings to the society and brought Sammy. He told me I could make my own choice, but I couldn't have our son on the outside. For the first few years, I
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tried to run away, but he always found us, always brought us back here. I'm a woman. I have no choices."
"But-"
"All I have is Sammy. I live for the moments when I see him across the yard." Tears gathered in her eyes, slipped down her cheeks. "Maybe when he's older ..."
"Are all of the women trapped here?"
