Lenny snatched the hat quickly and cleanly. When Russell rushed at him to grab it back, Lenny began backpedaling, waving it in the air just out of the smaller boy’s reach. It broke Rose’s heart to see her son jumping for his precious hat like a dog being taunted with a stick. Lenny tossed the hat to another boy, who tossed it to another, causing Russell to careen madly in pursuit, always reaching his target a second too late.
Rose closed her eyes and reminded herself that it was all harmless play, but it was no use. When she opened them again, the game had gotten worse. Some girls were in on it now, and she could hear their squealing laughter rising above the mocking chatter of the boys. Russell was exhausted, stumbling and flailing, and when she saw him go down — it was hard to say if he’d fallen or been tripped — Rose had finally had enough. She was out the door and halfway across the street before she realized that she was only wearing a nightgown and slippers, but by then it was too late.
“Stop it!” she shouted, her voice sounding shrill and hysterical in her own ears. “Just stop it right now!”
The whole bus stop froze at the sight of her, a grown woman standing by the curb in a flimsy peach nightgown, her hands raised as if for a fistfight. Rose looked at the faces of her son’s tormentors as they traded glances and fought off smirks. Already she knew that she’d made a terrible mistake. Before she could say anything, the hat came fluttering out of the crowd — she hadn’t seen who threw it — and landed near her feet. Rose bent down to pick it up, pressing one hand against the collar of her nightgown to conceal her breasts, which felt huge and pendulous and all but naked in the cool morning air. It wasn’t until she straightened up that she dared look at Russell.
“Here’s your hat,” she said, slapping it against her leg a couple of times to dust it off.
He was standing about ten feet away, close enough to Lenny Barton that you might have mistaken them for friends. Rose was in her late thirties then and still considered herself an attractive woman, but something in her son’s eyes made her wonder if she’d gotten old and ugly without realizing it.
“Go inside,” he snapped, as if commanding a dog. It was a voice she’d never heard from him before, though she’d become quite familiar with it in later years. “Go inside and put some clothes on.”
SHE FINDS the skirt in the attic, tucked away in a cardboard box. It’s only calf length, and plaid to boot, but it’s the longest one she owns. It still fits, more or less, just as long as she leaves it unzipped.
It’s harder to find a kerchief. Rose hasn’t worn one in years, though she remembers a time when they were not at all uncommon. On rainy days you’d see women all over town using them to protect their hairdos. Women had hairdos then. They wore curlers. Now even the words sound funny: hairdos, curlers. Rose once had beautiful hair, chestnut with auburn highlights. Pat used to love watching her brush it when they were first married. It’s cut short these days, and she’s stopped coloring it now that he’s not around to tease her about looking like an old lady.
On the way out she examines herself in the hall mirror. The outfit looks awful, even worse than she imagined. The brown and tan of the skirt clash with the peculiar maroon of Pat’s bulky pullover, and the thing on her head — it’s a torn vinyl rain bonnet, decorated with a print of faded purple daisies — barely even qualifies as a kerchief.
Oh my, she thinks, laughing softly as she slips out of the mirror’s grasp. Am I really going to do this?
The cold attacks her the instant she steps out the door, stabbing through her sweater, swarming under her skirt, doing its best to drive her back inside. She hesitates for a second or two on the stoop, mustering courage, reminding herself that it’s only a five-minute walk to the supermarket.
The sidewalks are empty. Nobody around here walks anymore, not even when it’s nice out. Rose leans into the heartless wind, thinking how nice it would have been to invite the girl inside for a cup of tea, to get to know her a little better.
I watch you, she would confess. Through the windows.
I know, the girl might reply, sniffing suspiciously at the tea. I don’t mind.
Go ahead and drink, Rose would say. It’ll warm you up.
We’re not supposed to. It’s a sin.
A sin? Rose starts to laugh, then stops herself. I don’t think it’s a sin to drink something warm on a cold day.
The girl thinks it over, then brings the cup slowly to her lips, allowing herself only the tiniest of sips. She looks up at Rose.
It’s good, she says, the blankness of her face giving way to shy pleasure. Thank you very much.
ROSE DOESN’T know if the Chosen girl is forbidden to drink tea. The idea just popped into her head, and she’s not sure if she’s confusing the Chosen with some other strange religion. She’s heard so many rumors since they began moving into town four or five years ago, she doesn’t know what to believe: they’re Mormons, they’re Quakers, they’re ex-hippies making it up as they go along, the men have multiple wives, the women aren’t allowed to speak in public, they don’t own televisions, they keep large sums of money hidden in their mattresses, and so on. All she really knows is what she’s seen with her own eyes and read in the paper about their zoning dispute with the town two years ago.
The Chosen bought a house on Spring Street, in a nice residential area, and applied for a permit to turn it into a place of worship. After a lot of angry debate and letters to the editor — some of the neighbors were concerned about traffic and noise and parking problems — a compromise was finally arrived at in which the Chosen agreed to sell the property and use the proceeds to buy a house in a mixed commercial/residential zone, where they wouldn’t cause so much of a disturbance. Since then a lot of the tension has died down, and the Chosen seem to have been accepted as a more or less permanent part of the community, both of it and apart from it at the same time.
Rose didn’t realize how accustomed she had become to their presence until Russell’s last visit, when he stopped by for a day at the tail end of a conference in New York City. Driving back from Home Depot, they pulled up at a red light in the center of town, right in front of a teenaged Chosen boy who was standing on the corner in a business suit, shouting at the top of his lungs the way they sometimes did, testifying to the passing traffic. Rose barely gave him a second thought, but Russell lowered the driver’s-side window and began gesturing to the boy, asking him what was wrong, did he need any help? The boy stepped closer — he was tall and good-looking, like most of the Chosen boys (the girls, for some reason, were another story) — and bent forward until his face was almost inside their car.
“They betrayed him!” the boy was screaming. There was a note of genuine outrage in his voice, as if the betrayal had happened just a second ago, and he wanted someone to call the police. “They betrayed him!”
“What?” demanded Russell. “Who?”
“The son!” the boy wailed. “They betrayed the son!”
By the time Russell figured out what was going on, the light had changed, and some of the drivers behind them had started honking. Russell stepped on the gas, glancing in bewilderment at his rearview.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What was that all about?”
“The Chosen,” she replied, enjoying his confusion more than she would have liked to admit. “They do that sometimes.”