IFFY FICTION

Polly sat on the bench, her clasped hands tucked between her knees. Her mother, Rhonda, sat beside her, encircling her with her arms.

“What do you think they’re going to say?” Polly asked.

Rhonda thought of Sister Sabrina’s situation a few years earlier, and shook her head. “Whatever they say, we’ll abide by. They’re given the insight. It’s the way it must be.”

Polly’s shoulders began to shake. She wiped her tears on the sleeve of her dress.

The Elders emerged from the council room moments later, in a solemn, paternal procession.

“Sister Rhonda, please bring your daughter to the hall for the announcement.”

With over a hundred bodies packed inside, the windowless meeting hall was stuffy and close. All chatter ceased as the Elders entered from behind the speaker’s platform, followed by Polly and her mother. Polly’s father sat in the back of the hall, refusing to look at her.

Father Elder Olman stood at the dais, the remaining four taking their seats on the platform behind him. Rhonda joined the flock, and Polly took her seat in the penitent’s chair.

“The Council of Elders has been given an insight.”

A unanimous, murmured “amen” erupted.

“For the sin of fornication, Polly Bridges is to pay penance with a year of invisibility. From this moment until one year hence, she is not to be acknowledged in sight, sound or touch. She may take nourishment and shelter, but not be given it. Thus say the Lord.”

The flock gave another “amen,” and bowed their heads in a prayer of thanks for the Lord’s loving forgiveness.

---

Polly followed her mother and father to the family quarters in silence. When they were inside, the door safely shut to the rest of the flock behind them, she approached her parents with her head down.

“Father. Mother. I am so sorry for what I did. I can’t believe they gave me a whole year.”

Silence.

Polly looked up at her parents. Rhonda had taken up her mending, and her father sat at the table, looking through her.

“I said I’m sorry. He was just so forceful.” She looked back and forth between each of their faces. “But I know that’s no excuse.”

Polly’s mother pushed and pulled her needle through the hem of an old dress. Her father took the thumb-worn bible from the center of the table and began to read.

“Oh,” she said, realizing.

In her sixteen years, Polly could only remember two other shunnings, but she hadn’t dreamed that rules applied to her own family, inside their own quarters.

When Polly began to cry and fled from the common area, neither of her parents followed.  The air in the room shifted, a ghost passing through, as each of them kept at their occupations. Rhonda surreptitiously swept a single tear from her cheek, and resumed mending before her husband was any the wiser.

---

Spring passed into summer. Polly was a phantom. Each morning she performed her ablutions with the women, unwatched. Her days were filled with the women’s work. They chattered and tittered around her, but she was merely an obstacle around which they would crane their necks to speak to one another. Each evening, she kneeled with the flock for the long hours of worship, as each forehead was anointed by the Father Elder’s kiss. Her own went unblessed. She received not a word, not a look, not a touch.

August came. The 30th Remembrance fell on the second Sunday, and preparations had been underway for a week. The meeting hall was cleared out, and decorated with banners and streamers. The day of, every member of the flock was dressed in his and her finest, and the tables were packed with dishes for the Feast of the Flock after the ceremony.

When the prayers had risen, louder and louder, ascending to the heavens, and the unidentifiable remnants of the effigy lay smoldering in its own ashes, it was time. The men took their ceremonial smoke, while the women pulled the folding tables to the center of the hall, and arranged the chairs around them.

Polly helped, then stood by the wall, out of the way, until everyone had found a spot. Once everyone was seated, she noticed an empty chair, and started to walk toward it, relieved that even if she was invisible, she would be allowed to partake of the Feast.

Without a glance in her direction, Sister Agnes stood up, walked to the empty chair, folded it, and leaned it against the wall. She took her seat again and joined hands with the flock members to either side of her, bowing her head to give thanks.

After the “amen,” Polly slunk to the serving table, scraped some of the scraps onto a plate for herself, and found a spot to sit on the floor. She found it hard to remember anything during this Remembrance, especially what it was like to be seen.

---

Polly sulked for a week after, lingering alone by the fence surrounding the compound any time she wasn’t involved in her spiritual obligations. Then one morning, during her mindlessly performed ablutions, her dejection began to shift into something else. The anger began as a small thing, a “pebble in the shoe” as the Elders liked to say. And just as they had warned, the more Polly focused on it, the more she noticed it, until it was as though she stood on a boulder. 

As she rubbed the sodden rag against her body, careful not to wet the bathing dress that covered her, Polly’s boulder began to roll. And rather than be whipped around and crushed under its weight, she began to move her feet along with it. 

First, she broke her silence. It hadn’t occurred to her before that invisible didn’t mean silent, and if they couldn’t hear her, then it wouldn’t matter. As the flock went about its day, Polly talked. She told stories to the women as they scrubbed the floors of the meeting hall. She mocked the men’s meal time conversations as they waited to be served.

Everyone carried on as if she wasn’t there.

Growing bolder the following day, she stood directly in people’s paths as they walked, pulled faces and leaned in close, and made strange noises in their ears. They merely turned the other way and went about their business. 

By Sunday, Polly had grown reckless. Or desperate.

Elder Bannon’s voice droned through the closed door of the meeting hall. He was difficult enough to understand from inside the room. From the outside, Polly couldn’t decipher a word.

She stood with her hand on the door, working up her nerve. Her stomach roiled, her skin bunched into gooseflesh, and she could feel her blood pumping in her neck. 

“What am I doing?” she whispered to herself, then took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

The linoleum was cold beneath her bare feet, and her nipples hardened into little diamonds, despite the stuffiness of the air that moved against them. 

Her legs may have moved quickly, but the walk to the speaker’s platform took an eternity.

Polly could feel the burn of over a hundred sets of eyes on her naked body as she stepped onto the forbidden platform, and stood by Elder Bannon, who kept speaking. 

She smiled, and looked out into the faces of the flock, expecting to see eyes enlarged, mouths agog, faces reddened in outrage. But not a soul looked her way. 

Panicking, she began to flail her arms around, and make unintelligible sounds. But the eyes of the flock remained on the man at the dais, whose litany wouldn’t be stopped.

In a final effort, Polly did the unthinkable, and began to dance. Though forbidden, she’d imagined it a thousand times, and relished the feeling of her body moving. She undulated, jerked, and gyrated in what she imagined to be a display of lurid sensuality. 

Still, Elder Brannon spoke. One Brother of the flock cleared his throat. No one looked at her.

Polly stopped her dance abruptly, and stared out at the unaffected faces. A moment later, she realized the truth of her situation, and began to wail. 

“No, no, no, no…” again and again Polly said the words, running from the meeting hall, as the awful truth became clear. The daylight was dazzling as she flew through the door into the outside world, and flung herself onto the ground.

Puffs of dust ballooned up and disappeared with every labored breath as Polly wept into the dirt. They can’t see me, she thought. The Elders had the power. They had made her a ghost to the world, and a ghost she would remain until she had completed the penance for her sin.

Polly lay sobbing until her ears caught the sound of a motor from the unpaved road just outside the fence, followed by the crunching of tires over gravel. Then the motor sound stopped, and was followed by the sounds of a slamming door.

She looked up to see a figure walking from the green truck toward the fence.

“Hey!”

Alarmed at the direct address, Polly pushed herself up to a sitting position, pulling her knees into her chest to hide her nakedness.

“Hey,” the voice called again. “Are you okay?”

Polly stiffened, looking around for anyone else, not invisible, who might be nearby.

A woman stood against the fence, her fingers pushed through the chain links above her head, arms dangling. She’d parked her truck in the little turnout where spectators came to try and catch a glimpse of the Flock, a practice that had fallen off over the years.

Polly rose and started walking toward the woman, unconcerned with her nudity or the rocks and sticks digging into her tender feet. She stood before the woman and looked up at her disbelievingly.

“Can you really see me?”

The woman made a face. “Jesus, kid, what are they doing to you in there?” She looked around Polly into the compound.

“I’m not invisible?” Polly asked.

“Of course you’re not invisible. Are you okay? Where are your clothes?”

Polly continued to stare at her, wide-eyed and disbelieving.

“I promise, I can see you.” The woman reached her fingers through the fence. “I can touch you, see?”

Polly lifted a trembling hand, and touched her fingertip to the woman’s. The contact shocked Polly. She could feel the tears welling up again.

“Do you need help?”

Realizing something, Polly suddenly withdrew her hand. “But you’re part of the World.”

The woman looked at Polly, and smiled mirthlessly. “We’re all part of the world.” 

She turned and walked to her truck, returning a moment later with a flannel shirt, which she tossed over the fence. 

Polly pulled it around her shoulders and buttoned it, staring at the dirt beneath her feet. “I have lain with a boy.”

“And?”

She hesitated, drawing her bottom lip into her mouth. “Can you take me from here?” Polly asked, chancing a furtive glance back at the meeting hall.

“Of course! Hold on,” the woman said. She collected the floor mats from her truck, laid them over the barbed wire at the top of the fence, and helped Polly climb over.

Inside the cab, Polly looked at everything in wonder, touching every surface, adjusting the air conditioner and the radio.

“I’ve never been inside of one before.”

The woman smiled at her, and pulled the stick shift into first gear. Polly looked back and caught a glimpse of her mother standing at the door of the meeting hall, watching as they drove away. She realized then that although the Elders had no magic to make her invisible, they still had all the power.

“I’m Polly,” she said, looking at the woman.

“Veronica.”

Polly pulled the flannel in tight around her, and leaned back into her seat. “I never want to go back there.”

Veronica adjusted her rear view, fixing the shrinking compound in the mirror. “Don’t worry, Polly. You never have to.”

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