How to Escape From a Leper Colony (9 page)

Thomas held Jasmine’s hand as they walked back to his dorm. He didn’t let go even when he had to pull out his school ID to unlock the main entrance and then his keys to open his door. His was a suite with a common room and kitchen. The common room stunk of sweat and corn. Thomas only noticed it now that Jasmine was with him. The TV in this room belonged to one of the suitemates. Its light flashed onto the face of another suitemate, asleep on the university-issued couch. Thomas opened his door and hesitated before turning on the light. They had to wade through his T-shirts and jeans that lay on the floor. His bed was made, thank God. A habit his mother had instilled in him.

He poured Jasmine a Coke that had gone flat and offered her his cleanest T-shirt and a pair of boxers. They had undressed in front of each other only once, but that was in her parents’ station wagon at the beach and it had been a claustrophobic, platonic thing. Now he left the room.

In the room alone, Jasmine still felt as though she were being watched. She wanted to take a shower, actually, but she imagined the bathroom might not be very clean. She thought about removing her underwear. She took the panties off but then didn’t know where to put them. She hadn’t come with a purse. Only her books and her keys that she’d stuffed into her pockets. She put the underwear back on and felt a little dirty, but also less so in another way.

4.

Because Deirdre hasn’t moved or even acknowledged her presence, Violet begins to skitter around the church and call out, “Anyone inside? Anyone? Inside!” She knows this is ludicrous. If there was anyone they would be screaming or dead already. Violet cannot even get close. The heat is so heavy now that it seems to burn her. She waves the white pillow in the air slowly like a flag.

The church is a small two-story, surrounded on the sides by a wide clearing of gravel for cars to park. Beyond the clearing, endless trees. Behind the church, the edge of the mountain. In front, the small road that leads to the main road. At the main road is the sign
Christ’s Mission Evangelical
with an arrow pointing up the road less traveled. At the end of the road is the church. A simple structure. The bottom floor for worshipping and the second floor, with its outside staircase, for the offices and children’s classes. But now as Violet steps closer, the church makes a screeching noise and seems to implode, as the upstairs crashes down into the first floor. Violet runs back to where Deirdre stands sweating.

The women still do not trust each other. Now they never will.

Because Thomas had his own room he didn’t have to signal Jasmine’s presence with a scrunchy or a tie. His naked doorknob made her think of their sleeping in the same bed as an innocent act. They lay down in the extra-long twin bed and faced each other. She smiled to show him she was grateful, but he only looked at her, trying not to blink, until his eyes teared up. He touched her face. He kissed her forehead. And though that could have been just a brotherly gesture, they were, after all, in a bed together. And though they were clothed, though they had known each other for so long, they weren’t really siblings after all. And so they kissed, and Thomas, who had kissed a few girls, tried very hard to be sweet and gentle. Tried very hard to not be forceful, but his whole body was in it. To him it was the beginning.

To Jasmine the kiss was kind of nasty, but thrilling. It was her first real kiss. The first with tongue. She let him explore her mouth and press against her body. It was a curious thing to her and she imagined it would stop and then they would go to sleep and then never talk about it. But then he whimpered, “Oh shit,” and popped out of bed as though burned. She saw that something milky was seeping through the crotch of his boxers and had smeared on her thighs where they had been rubbing. “Oh shit,” he said again and seemed as though he would cry. She looked at him, fascinated and disgusted, as he bit his lip and pressed into a corner of the room.

“I made you do that,” she said without thinking. “I mean, I made you do that without us even doing it for real.” Thomas didn’t nod or address her observation in any way. He grabbed a towel. He turned his back to her when he took his shorts off.

“I’m sorry,” he said, when they were back in the bed, new boxers on them both. “That’s not how I wanted it to be.”

It wasn’t anything, Jasmine wanted to tell him, but couldn’t. For a long time she didn’t sleep, but finally her dreams were filled with images of her own feet climbing over walls of water.

Early in the morning, she edged out of the bed. She took her clothes into the common room and dressed there with the sleeping roommate and the blinking TV as an audience. She left and took the train. She felt bold and brave, and other things she had never felt before.

She rode the subway back to her dorm room and packed her backpack with things to read, things to eat, and clean underwear. She e-mailed her teachers to say that she had to go on a trip and would miss class and to please let her know what the homework was. She got on a train and then transferred to a bigger, sleeker train where the seats were soft and personal. She finished a luscious collection of short stories during the three hours the train took to get to the next city. When she arrived she caught a yellow cab. Only then, with the cab slamming through the city streets, did she marvel at herself again. She thought of her fast roommate and her loose sister and then of her own sluttish power over Thomas. “The new me,” she said to the audacious skyscrapers around her.

But when she arrived and knocked on the dorm room door, she thought that this was all very crazy. It had taken her almost half the day to get here, but only now did she really consider what she was attempting. She started to run back down the hallway, her one small bag like a hump on her back, but by then Moby had opened the door and called to her, “Jasmine? Jasmine de Flaubert, is that you?” And she had stopped running and turned to him. “Yes, Moby. It’s me—Jasmine.”

5.

Church ashes are not like any other. When this fire has cooled perhaps Deirdre will return and find a golden chalice that had refused to melt. Or the ruby from the preacher’s wife’s favorite ring. Deirdre will return and take the ashes in her palm. She might wonder if the New or Old Testament is sifting through her fingers. Perhaps it will be the Christmas story, there on her fingernail. Perhaps it will be Revelation settling on her shoe.

But now, facing the fire, Deirdre has thought of what to do. Finally, now that the church is doomed and her pew pins a certified waste of money, she pulls out her cell phone and calls the police, who connect her to the fire station. They have no idea where on island she is and now the church is shuddering with the growl of an earthquake. It is making such a racket that Deirdre has to walk farther away to give directions to the fire station operator. And now Deirdre notices the trees and wonders if they will catch and she says slowly into the phone that the church is close to Crossroads and to take the road to Fortuna. But they must look for the church sign. They must look … and as Deirdre says it she looks at Violet de Flaubert, who is crying in front of the fire as though she is about to become a sacrifice. Deirdre wonders whether perhaps Violet has pulled down the sign the fire trucks will need in order to find them.

Deirdre leaves the operator on the phone to back away from Violet and run to her car. Violet might be a madwoman, but she’s smart. Deirdre knows her. She knows that Violet keeps liquor in her fridge and jokes that Jesus drank wine. She knows that Violet lets her youngest daughter wear short skirts and calls it “finding oneself.” She watches as Violet’s face grows panicked but smaller as Deirdre reverses her car all the way down the long path to the main road.

Now Violet is there alone. Alone with the maniacal fire. She must pull herself together. Where is her armor? Her mind moves frantically to thoughts of her eldest daughter. She looks down at the sooty lace of the pillow in her hand. It is made of the same material as the dress. And then she is running, the gold rings loosening, loosening. Violet runs a wide arc behind the disappearing church. She runs to look for Jasmine.

When Thomas called home to his mother, he said that he had news. Difficult, but wonderful news. Deirdre knew, from the tension in his voice, that the news might be those things for him but a tragedy for her.

“Jasmine and I are getting married.”

As Deirdre’s hand stiffened around the phone, she noted that her son did not say, “I want to marry …” or even “I have asked to marry …” He said it as though it would happen any minute and without his mother’s say. Deirdre’s hearing became very sharp as she listened to her son breathe. Finally he said, “It will be okay, Mama. We’ll live in her school’s married dorms. Neither of us will have to quit college or anything. I mean, Jasmine might have to take a semester off, but …” and then Deirdre began to scream. She poured her muted Christian obscenities into the cavity of the receiver.

Thomas knew his mother. He knew she would get over this because she was tough. He rested the phone down quietly. He wasn’t scared at all about getting married to Jasmine. This was what he had always wanted, and now it had been granted. He couldn’t disparage it because it happened differently than he had hoped. It had happened. Now he would fast-track their future together.

Jasmine called her mother. She held her breath and listened to Violet say, “Hello. Hello? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Try again.” After a few minutes Jasmine called back and heard the same sweet voice say the same thing. It took the fourth call in a row for her mother to pronounce calmly into the silence, “Look here, you cow, stop calling my fucking house.” And finally Jasmine announced into the phone, “Mommy, I’m pregnant.”

The wedding was hastily planned for Christmas break. They were only freshmen in college. He was eighteen and she was still seventeen. The church folk would whisper, but Jasmine wouldn’t be three months gone when Thomas made her honest.

With money his father sent him, Thomas bought Jasmine a diamond ring. He told his roommates that he was moving out to be a father and a husband. He told his academic adviser he was getting married and so would have to speed up his coursework.

Jasmine only wore the ring when Thomas reminded her it was supposed to stay on her hand. She didn’t tell her roommate anything. She did not tell Moby anything. She only thought on the way Moby had said her name, Jasmine, again and again in the dusky light, as though it was something holy. The musk of their bodies had made her feel safe when she lay there with him afterward, but now she could not seem to wash it off. She feared people could smell it on her. That time with Moby was not something to tell a sister or a friend. It was not something to write in a diary. It was something to keep to herself, simply to know she was capable of it.

Thomas bought their tickets home on the same flight. They held hands in the airport as they window-shopped and as they sampled the camouflage of Lancôme and Chanel on her wrists. Jasmine thought, yes, I can do this. I can be this woman. I can love Thomas like a woman would. They still hadn’t had sex. But now he kissed her in a way that was all gentle—like he was calm now. And he whispered a little joke as the plane took off: “I can’t believe you’re so fertile. When we do it for real we’ll have to use the rhythm method so you won’t get pregnant again too quickly.” She gripped his hand and tried to smile as the plane lifted. She wondered if he really believed himself.

At home on the island Jasmine’s younger sisters were either embarrassed that their sister was pregnant or eager to ask her questions about sex. The violinist sister didn’t seem to care either way. She practiced and filled the house with her music—the same desperate song again and again. It was the song she would play for the wedding.

Jasmine sat on the bed that was still hers in the room she shared with Daisy. She clenched her stomach to see if she could feel something that was more than herself. I’m not ready, she said in her head and hoped the baby could hear. I want you, but not now. Not in seven months either. Come back another time. I’ll be good to you then. She lay back and pressed her fingertips into her stomach. Then she made two fists. But Daisy, the youngest, walked in. She sat on the bed at Jasmine’s feet.

“So, why didn’t you and Thomas use protection?” The violin screeched from the next room, but then resumed its melody.

“I didn’t have sex with Thomas.”

“Oh.” Daisy had been the first sister to do it and so knew a lot despite her age. “Well, then you’re the Virgin Mary. And when she got pregnant she got married.”

Jasmine touched her stomach with the flat of her hand. “I haven’t talked to the other guy since. I just wanted to do it. It was just a one-time thing. Just one brave thing that I did. And now it’s done. Okay?”

Daisy took Jasmine by the arm. She dragged her to face the bottom drawer of the bureau that they had always shared. Below the holey socks was a string of little square packets. Daisy pressed two condoms into Jasmine’s hand. “For the next time you contemplate bravery.”

The Thompson and de Flaubert houses became places of bustling activity. The wedding colors were purple at first, because that was Violet’s name and she was the mother of the bride, but Thomas’s mother insisted purple was a funeral color. So Deirdre picked out the pew dressings and the tablecloths and even the official color—a yellow that was almost gold. Deirdre’s husband tried to offer that the color might be gaudy, but she wouldn’t have it. “My son is a prince,” Deirdre spat, as if they hadn’t made Thomas together.

Anyone would have thought that Deirdre was the mother of the bride, what with the fuss she was making. The floor of her living room was strewn with invitation samples and yards of tulle. In the kitchen, stray Jordan almonds rolled around like tiny rotten Easter eggs.

Thomas stepped over things and tried to be patient when his mother asked his opinion. “We don’t need all this, Mama. The only reason we didn’t elope was that Jasmine wanted her mother to be there for the wedding.” Sometimes Deirdre would look at her son as though he were a stranger and then go back to her catering menu. Sometimes she would look at him and then pull him close, as though he were just born. Either way, he would leave her shaking his head and marveling at his mother’s passionate strength. Then he would call up his beloved to check on her, but often Jasmine was sleeping or out or sick. They had not seen each other since they’d arrived on island and their mothers had taken over.