The Flock by Virginia Archer

(Trigger warning for readers: This piece contains depictions of clerical sexual abuse.)

SUNDAY, JUNE 13

At Living Hope Baptist Church, everybody has their secrets. Nobody except Pastor knows that I don’t have people on the outside, and I like it that way because pity never did me any good. People say Natasha, my bunkmate, is the prettiest applicant ever to come through the girls’ house. And I guess pretty girls have more secrets than anyone. 

For one, she keeps an axe in the woods behind the church. At night, when it’s lights-out and everyone else is asleep, I see her sneak and walk down the dirt road in her bare feet and pajamas. The glowing cherry of her cigarette swings back and forth just above the moonlit rows of cotton. I watch as she crosses the fields, until finally she disappears into the humid pine woods. Sometimes I find her out there hacking away at some tree like she’s fighting for her life. I can only guess she’s battling some dark feelings from when Social Services took the kids. Other times, I’ll catch Natasha out in those woods with her sweetheart Jimmy. No axe. Just them laying on the soft earth, half-naked and panting. We’re not allowed to leave without the house leader knowing, but I never rat her out since she’s the closest thing I have to a sister. 

Natasha’s been through Living Hope twice now. She told me the first time she got sober was harder. That starting life fresh at the girls’ house was a shock and that not having contact with the outside, not even family, was scary at first. But then after a while, she said, the program changes you. Breaks the old you down and makes you brand new. Until you’re wearing the glory of the Lord like some heavy armor. Which is why all we new girls do during Phase One is memorize important Bible verses. Phase One, or the first three months of biblical rehab, is when most people quit the program, because the Bible exams at the end are brutal. Natasha’s got dyslexia and was never any good in school, but she passed the Bible exams twice, and she says I can too if I work and pray hard enough. 

That’s assuming I stick around that long. It’s true that I’ve been making a place for myself here at Living Hope since I arrived. I’ve taken to Natasha for real. I even kind of enjoy the routine around the church—Bible study in the mornings with gospel music playing from the scratchy plug-in stereo, kitchen duty at lunch, cleaning houses in town with the other applicants. For once, I have three square meals a day if I want. The problem is I’ve never stayed longer than two months anywhere since I was kid. One of the Bible verses they drill here is “Be still and know that I am God” from Psalms. I write it over and over in my notebook. Be still. Be still. Be still. But I just don’t feel the words sticking to me like they should. 

My deal is I tend to get out while I’m still on top. I may be young, but I’ve been through enough shit to know that life, just when you get comfortable, tends to up and go sour. That’s why I like to stay on the move. It’s easier that way, not getting attached, not letting people box you in. The syrupy-eyed concern folks have for you here is unnerving and foreign to me. My own mother hasn’t looked for me since I was eleven. Sometimes the smothering charity of Living Hope is enough to wake me up in the middle of the night claustrophobic and drenched in a cold sweat, slick as one of those little shimmering kippers tucked in a gold tin and ready to be devoured on top of a salted cracker. On nights like that, when the wild feelings of not wanting to belong anywhere come on loud, I get to where I can see myself hitchhiking down the river, bussing my own tables and counting my tips in a new city, totally invisible and unknown to anyone. And not one person asking me about my take on Corinthians or Galatians or any of the books that nobody reads but church people.

*

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16

About life at the girls’ house, Natasha says getting clean is the easy part. On the outside is where you run into trouble, which is why Pastor teaches us to separate. From old friends, from family that don’t know the Lord. From any of our old stomping grounds where we can get pills or crystal or whatever else a girl could be fiending for. When the newer applicants complain about not being able to make outside calls until Phase Three, the house leader repeats the same line as always. 

“We are in the world, not of it. We are called to…” she begins, intending for the girls to finish. “…sep-ar-ate,” they sing back in unison.

That’s why the church won’t let Jimmy join the men’s house and get clean. Pastor and the church elders feel it could upset Natasha’s walk in the Lord, since they were using together before. I guess the elders think it wouldn’t be separate enough if Natasha’s sweetheart came too. What nobody knows but me, because I found her diary under the mattress, is that her and Jimmy aren’t just sweet on each other. Jimmy proposed before she came to Living Hope the first time but didn’t have any savings for a ring. Natasha must have her reasons for keeping the engagement hush-hush, because nobody at the girls’ house suspects such a thing. And by the looks of her diary, nobody in her family knows either, least of all that rich aunt of hers that pays for her girls’ house tuition, for the cute haircuts and highlights and who sends a new purse every season. 

I know it’s not normally above board to go reading somebody else’s diary. But I’ve just never known anyone like her. I’ve never had a sister, but if I did I imagine it would feel like being friends with Natasha. Something in me wonders what it’s like to be her. Lovely and swan-like. I guess that’s why I’ve started keeping a diary too. 

One day over a smoke break, she told me she couldn’t understand the church elders not letting Jimmy come get the Lord’s help. She was smoking fast and nervous like she does, explaining how it was pretty common for couples to come and work the program together. Couples don’t get to live together of course, since there’s no mixing of the sexes at Living Hope. Not out in the open anyway. We’re only to see the men at church service Wednesdays and Sundays. I haven’t been here too long, but even I can recall at least one couple who finished all three phases together. Pastor called them up to the altar at the monthly graduation, and they got to renew their vows in front of the whole congregation. I even heard that the elders let the wife pick out a white dress for free from Living Hope Goods, the church-run thrift store, before the ceremony. 

That’s what Natasha wanted for her and Jimmy. But no one else is having it. It’s not only the church elders that don’t want Natasha to have Jimmy. It’s Jimmy’s mama and the law too. With so many folks against two people being in love, makes you wonder if the heart isn’t something dangerous. Some trap set for us when we’re born, like a rabbit snare splayed open in the dark. 

Jimmy’s mama didn’t like Natasha even a little. Said she wasn’t good for her son, so she called the police on them, knowing full well two people on parole can’t be legally living together in the same home. 

“What kind of hateful law is that anyway?” I asked, interrupting her. Well, it certainly did the job. They both got arrested that day. Natasha’s car, a gift from the aunt, is still sitting on the side of Hwy. 141 from when she got pulled over. 

Natasha likes to end hateful stories like this with her hard-knock motto. 

“The devil don’t want anyone to be happy,” she’ll scowl, looking at me like she’s doing me a favor letting me in on this unhappy fact. Even when she’s talking sad like this, chain-smoking and cursing Jimmy’s mean mama, she still can’t help but be beautiful. Come to think of it, having that kind of beauty is mostly a problem in a place like this. Men trouble seems to follow Natasha around like something out of a sad country song.

When she went before the judge, he gave Natasha a choice. She could do her time for breaking parole terms or work the program at Living Hope. That was the nice judge that liked to give girls like us a second chance. Of course, Living Hope costs money, $600 a month for rent and meals, which is plenty if you have yourself a couple felony charges and are barred from working places that offer decent pay. It all had to be arranged with that rich aunt up in Memphis, who was apparently all too happy to help. 

Natasha told me she’d already done plenty of time in Texas from when she was arrested at seventeen, when she was just a year younger than me. She was in the car with some older guys who were cooking up some meth. Knew how to make the cleanest crystal around, which is probably why she doesn’t have that ragged using look. Says the key is drinking buckets of water, more than you think you need, because the crystal will dry you to bone if you let it. Well, she must’ve found her some real fools, cooking in a moving car like that. They got her on interstate laws and charged her as an adult on manufacturing, which is a sure-fire way to end up with a felony and a handful of years in a Texas women’s prison. She told me that almost all the charges in that place were for prostitution or drugs. They made the girls there do laundry non-stop. Ran it as a business called Prison Enterprises. The warden paid the inmates pennies and considered it “vocational training”, like the state was doing those locked-up women a favor. None of the women ever earned enough to do anything more than buy cigarettes for trading and bribes. Natasha said working the laundry had all their hands looking something deathly. The skin on their fingers was constantly peeling off from all that steam and detergent. Not only that, but the prison never stocked tampons. Just pads, and only the cheap, embarrassing kind thick as diapers with weak adhesive so they never stayed where they should. She said if you stayed long enough in a place like that you ended up either mean as a stray cat or lesbian. Natasha said she’d had enough of that backwardness, so she chose Living Hope that day in court.

Sometimes when Natasha’s reducing whole trees to stumps with that axe, I can hear her breathing loud and athletic like she’s battling something mean. Mostly she sounds angry and powerful, like she’s a bear trapped in a woman’s body. Sometimes the heaving grunts that help her swing that blade with some kind of vengeance soften into sobs, and she’ll sink to the ground in a weeping mess, back to her swan-self, the axe still in her hands. When she falls apart like that, when whatever she’s hacking away at seems too big and dark, I wish I could throw my arms around her, all that grief in one body, and tell her she’s the prettiest one in the girls’ house. Tell her about my get-away plan and that she can come too if she wants and how I’d keep the devil from stealing her happiness if I could. 

*

SATURDAY, JUNE 26

Unlike Natasha who favors oxy, I tended to stick to uppers on the outside. Before Living Hope, my poison of choice was Ritalin. The high was more manageable than crystal. It gave me a sense of control and a feeling that my mind was clear and moving, which at the end of the day is my deep-down fix. That in-motion feeling. Plenty of folks take the stuff without getting in a bad way. And it could’ve been that way for me too, except I figured out I could play three or four different doctors in town and get them all to fill separate prescriptions. Was I living lit as a Christmas tree then. Probably would’ve gone on like that for a while, but for the small-town factor. A know-it-all pharmacist sniffed me out by making a couple of calls one day when I was in his store. He took my prescription and asked for my parents’ names. When I said I had none, he picked up the phone and dialed Pastor. He threatened if I didn’t go get straight at Living Hope, he’d be turning me in for medical fraud. Didn’t take too much to convince me. I knew I was caught, fair and square. So, off I went to a country church two hours east. 

Pastor was good enough to pick me up himself in the church pick-up truck. I was glad not to be leaving in a police car, but more than that, Pastor was well-dressed and charming, with handsome salt and pepper hair. I immediately recognized the way his smiling eyes seemed to say we were the same. That we both had secrets and knew how to get away with things. That feeling made me nervous about him somehow. Like he already knew everything I was hiding. But more than anything the sly warmth in his eyes was strangely comforting, because it meant we were kindred. I never had anyone ask more about me and my life ever, not even the social worker at school, much less an older, respectable man who tucked in his shirt and wore expensive shoes. As I told Pastor my story of drifting and surviving in the only ways I knew how, he just listened and flashed me that winning smile I’ve come to know so well. He said he admired my strength and that if I channeled my energy right, I could be a real instrument of the Lord. He told me he and the church elders would wave tuition as long as I promised to let the girls’ house mold me into a godly woman, and to one day give back to the church when I was able. He even offered to let me help him in the office sometimes, so I’d be getting real work experience and could eventually find a desk job and support myself. Thanks to that nosy pharmacist my life was turning all the way around that day.

Since then, I’ve been making a place for myself here at Living Hope. Although I’m still wrestling with my usual vague desire to get moving, every day that I stay I belong a little bit more to these people. Especially Pastor, who has this uncanny ability to make me feel like I could be someone. 

Sometimes after supper, Pastor asks me to come by his office for one-on-one work during quiet time. At first, what I expected to be doing was filing papers maybe, recording voicemails or other office work. But Pastor came out one day and said he was seeing something special in me that he hadn’t in the other applicants. It was hard to ignore Pastor anyway, with his quick charm and his well-mannered authority. But up in his office, surrounded by his framed seminary degree, his wall-length library of books that he uses to write sermons, the several stuffed mallards with iridescent, aquamarine heads and unmoving black eyes mounted on the wall, it seemed there was nothing he couldn’t conquer. He sat me on his lap, and he told me how God promises to guide women through the men in their lives.

“It’s all right there in the Book of Ephesians,” he said, stroking my hair and running his hand down the arch of my back. That first night, from some place in me where admiration and fear were all mixed up, I knew not to challenge Pastor. I made myself a silk ribbon in his hands, pliable and soothing. When I said that I was grateful to be staying awhile in one place for once and that I’d come to respect him and how he ran the church, Pastor came to life, quick as a catching fire, and put all his wanting on me. His passion was agitated and forceful. And even though the look on his face when he took me was one of affliction, I felt chosen. It was the first time I’d felt for myself both the power and risk of being a woman. Like I was the star of one of Natasha’s stories.

Now we meet all the time for one-on-ones. When he’s over top of me, another side of Pastor starts groaning real low like a wolf kept too long in a cage. I may not be the most beautiful girl at Living Hope, but I do know what I have to offer. If there’s anything I can do well for a man, it’s keep his secrets. I’ll lay myself across that great big desk of his and try and heal that wanting in his body. I let him tuck his desperate fingers in my mouth and between my vanilla-white thighs he seems so hungry for. I watch as his shining animal eyes, two orbs of crude oil, look on me as long as they dare. Until their desperation is covered over by the reflection of my bare-skinned body. I can feel it, him growing more powerful every time I undress and crawl into his lap, chipper as a lamb. The more he has me, the taller he grows. And, Lord, if we keep on like this, pretty soon that man will be a perfect giant towering over the acres of cotton that surround Living Hope Baptist Church. I’ll fit neatly in the palm of his hand, naked and full-up with all his secrets, content to live solely in the mirror of his colossal, impatient eyes. 

Us carrying on like this is how I spotted the key to Pastor’s safe. It’s right there in the top drawer of his desk. And I happen to know that’s where they take the collections every Wednesday and Sunday service, so there’s bound to be enough money in that little vault to get myself safely out of town should I need to make an exit. Still, if it came down to that, I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t feel guilty about making off with these people’s money, which is new for me. It’s like all this closeness with Pastor, and Natasha too, is growing like roots from me into these church grounds. I’m starting to wonder if that’s what belonging to a place must feel like. 

*

MONDAY, JUNE 28

Tonight was family night, which means most of the women were writing letters to siblings or parents, or if they’re far enough along in the program making calls to people back home. I always struggle to know what to do on family night but so far have managed to maintain the appearance of having people on the outside. I mostly stay in my bunk and write in this diary or imagine various stories about Pastor and me. 

Just when I was dreaming up a scene where Pastor finds me a devout woman praying and mourning in one of those old Gothic cathedrals, I heard a few of the girls talking about how word is spreading that Natasha’s man on the outside has bad blood. 

“It’s called Hep C, fool,” someone corrected. 

“No shit,” another snorted back. The girls talked awhile about how Jimmy got some experimental medicine that the state was giving out for free, but that it pickled your brain at first. Nobody knew on good authority if Jimmy’s brain got pickled, but maybe bad blood’s why the elders wouldn’t let him come. 

“That can’t be it,” someone argued, “because just about everybody who used a needle in their life, which is nearly all of us in this house, has been exposed to bad blood. Half you bitches probably got it yourself. You’re ignorant if you don’t know that.”

“The state don’t care nothing about us, but they care about how bad it looks for half the state to live hooked and sharing needles while on Medicaid,” one of them went on. “They’re giving that medicine Jimmy got out like candy. And sending it all through the prisons as we speak, knowing those sorry bastards can’t rightly say ‘No.’ If you can keep your mind while it’s curing your busted liver, good on you. But I wouldn’t chance it.”

Then the pot stirring got going something serious. The girls lowered their voices so the house leader wouldn’t overhear. 

“I happen to think Pastor won’t allow Jimmy to come try the program because he’s workin’ some heavy feelings for Natasha,” said the ringleader. Everyone spat their unique disbelief and egged her on to tell more. 

“Well, I hear he’s askin’ her up for one-on-ones like he does with the favorites,” she continued. “Speaking to the elders real sweet about her, like he’s got his eye on her as the next girls’ house leader. Poor darlin’ has no idea how thirsty that man is. He ain’t worried about Jimmy interfering with her recovery. Pastor’s only worried about keeping her all to himself,” she said. They all rocked back and forth in veiled laughter, hissing at the thought.

I laid in my bunk, silent and frozen while I figured out how to respond. They surely didn’t know I was so near and could hear every word. The most infuriating thing about their talk was how likely it all sounded. The one-on-ones. The promises of important roles in the church one day. I looked hard over at the current house leader, trying to decide if she’d been with Pastor too in her younger years. I felt a tightness in my chest, realizing I let the badmouthing get under my skin. Realizing I believed what they said. I needed some air and to get the hell away from the girls’ bunk. 

“Where’s she going?” I heard someone say behind me as I walked out the door. 

“Hit a nerve is all,” someone said, and the rest giggled. So, they thought they knew about me and Pastor. Well, that pit of snakes could go on thinking as much, but they wouldn’t hear so much as a sneeze from me on it. That way, all they could do is go on guessing. 

*

THURSDAY, JULY 1

Tonight, I heard Natasha leaving the girls’ house like she does in the middle of the night. I kept my eyes closed except for the slightest bit of seeing so I could make out what she was doing. After she dressed, she went to the kitchenette and grabbed a few items from that night’s dinner. A few yeast rolls. A couple pieces of cold fried chicken she had wrapped up to-go in the mess hall. I saw her pour some lemonade in a jar and grab her pack of smokes. She was quiet as a leopard leaving all of us to our dreaming. The door didn’t squeak even a little when she closed it behind her. I waited awhile before I followed. 

By the time I left the girls’ house, she was already in the woods out past the plowed fields. My habit of following was usually about wanting to keep an eye out for her, but this time, I’ll admit, I was fueled by something else too. It was something like jealousy over Pastor I reckon, and a feeling that I needed to know it wasn’t him she was meeting. I’d never felt anything like that before, because on the outside I’d never had anything or anyone to lose. But damn if all that talk about Pastor’s one-on-one ways with other girls didn’t have me paranoid. I prayed I didn’t find him out there being hand-fed chicken by the prettiest girl at Living Hope. I figured the badmouths were just milling rumors, but still I had to wonder—what didn’t I know about Natasha? 

The glittering, blue moonlight cast on those country fields made it seem almost like a strange daytime. While I found the usual trail through the fields, my shadow made a playful companion at my feet. The further I got from the church grounds and the girls’ house, the more I realized how weary I was of all the sneaking around. Of making a teacher of Natasha without her knowing. Of being one of Pastor’s favorites. Of having only secrets but no trust. My mind churned fast and clear like this the closer I got to the pine woods.

I was walking soft now, careful not to step on dry branches that would alert anyone of my entering at the tree line. I stood there for a minute, one foot in the woods and one in the fields. I could already hear Natasha’s voice and the faint sound of a man’s laughter. I felt mostly relieved it was Jimmy’s gentle laugh and not Pastor’s. And that it wasn’t the axe and weeping this time. Natasha’s voice alone gave away her beauty. Its strong, seductive honeycomb tones were a magnet in the darkness. I trusted what I heard in it. The sound of a woman who knew things, of all she’d survived. Of passion and birthing life. Blood and loss and love. Somehow all that suffering hadn’t destroyed Natasha. She was still holding out for love, in her way. I followed the sound of her, while my eyes adjusted to the blackness of the woods, holding skinny, adolescent trees for balance so I didn’t stumble. 

With the help of the moon, a silver pumpkin peeking through the canopy, I watched as Natasha and Jimmy made wordless promises with their embracing bodies. As Jimmy kissed her like I had never seen a man kiss anyone. The slow, patient way he moved, like he had all the time in the world, caught up all the restlessness inside me and held it there in a bewildering suspension. Be still, I remembered from bible study. He gently took her wavy, long hair and moved it to expose her bare collar bone. In Jimmy’s hands, Natasha was fine crystal. Something precious and hallowed. Be still, I whispered, hoping the hush that had fallen over me would stay for just a while. 

For a moment, I leaned back against a tree and recalled my sense of Pastor. His force. The gravity of his secrets. His desire. How good it was to be wanted. How terrible it was to be wanted. I stared up at the clouds moving slow across the blanket of stars above, wondering at all that love and brokenness mixing up, strange and soup-like.

Dear Natasha, sorry to leave without saying goodbye. You’ve given me so much, maybe without realizing. Here’s my diary. I know it’s not much and may be hard to read, but it’s all of me I have to give. 

Here’s hoping we outsmart that devil at last.

Virginia Archer is a native of Louisiana with a degree in anthropology, through which she discovered her passion for folklore and story. As a writer, Virginia is interested in the space where religious folkways, mysticism, mental illness and poverty intersect in rural America. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon with her husband and golden retriever. Her writing has appeared in Country Roads Magazine, 225 Magazine, TheyCallUs, and her poetry is forthcoming in SoulLit.