Whit

'But by the next Festival the pressure will be even worse!' I cried.

'Well then-' Yolanda began, then glanced at me, frowning. 'Wait a minute; you sure 2000 is a leap year?'

'Yes, of course.'

'I thought if the year's divisible by four it's a leap year, unless it's divisible by four hundred, when it isn't a leap year.'

'No,' I said wearily (we had all this drummed into us preschool at the Community). 'It's not a leap year if it's divisible by one hundred.  But if it's divisible by four hundred, it is a leap year.'

'Oh.'

'Anyway,' I said. 'I don't think Salvador believes he'll see 2000.'

'Let's cut to the chase here, Is.  The question is, are you ready to be a mother or not?  That's what they expect of you, isn't it?'

'Yes,' I said, miserably.  That's what they want.'

'Well, are you ready?'

'I don't know!' I said, louder than I meant, and looked away, chewing on a knuckle.

We drove on in silence for a while.  The smokes and steams of Grangemouth oil refinery swung past to our right.

'You seeing anybody, Isis?' Yolanda asked gently. 'You got anybody special?'

I swallowed, then shook my head. 'No.  Not really.'

'You had any boyfriends yet?'

'No,' I confessed.

'Isis, I know you seem to develop slower out here, but shit, you're nineteen; don't you like boys?'

'I like them fine, I just don't…' My voice trailed off as I wondered how to put it.

'You don't want to fuck them?'

'Well,' I said, blushing, 'I don't think so.'

'What about girls?' Yolanda sounded a little surprised but mostly just very interested.

'No, not really.' I leaned forward, elbows on thighs, chin in hands, staring glumly at the cars and trucks ahead of us on the motorway.  'I don't know what I want.  I don't know who I want.  I don't know that I want.'

'Well then, God's sakes, Isis!' Yolanda said, waving one hand around. 'All the more reason to tell Salvador to take a hike!  Christ almighty; get yourself sorted out first.  No one who loves you is going to give a damn if you're gay or want to stay celibate, but don't get pregnant on the off chance you'll drop on the twenty-ninth of February just to keep that old letch happy!'

'Grandmother!' I said, genuinely shocked. 'You mean Salvador?'

'Who the hell else?'

'He is our Founder!  You can't talk about him like that!'

'Isis, child,' Yolanda said, shaking her head. 'You know I love you, and God help me I even have a lot of time for that old rogue because I think basically he's a good man, but he is a man; I mean, he's human and he's very male, you know what I'm saying?  I don't really know that he's anything holy at all; I'm sorry to say that because I know it hurts you, but-'

'Grandmother!'

'Now!  Just hear me out, child.  I've seen just about every damn cult and faith and sect and religion and pseudo-religion the world has to offer in my time, and it seems to me maybe in some sense your Grandfather is right about one thing: they are all searching for the truth, but they never find it, not all of it, not any of them, and that includes you people; you're no more right than anybody else.'

I was sitting with my mouth hanging open, appalled by what I was hearing.  I'd always known Grandmother Yolanda wasn't the strictest adherent of our Order, but I'd like to think that somewhere underneath all this restless, rootless, wasteful consumerism there was still a core of Faith.

'And you know what I think?  I think it's all a load of crap.  I don't doubt there is a God, although maybe even that's more habit than true faith, God knows, but I don't think anybody in any religion has ever said one damn useful thing about Him or Her or It.  You never noticed religions always seem to get invented by men?  When you ever hear of a cult or a sect started by a woman?  Hardly ever.  Women have the power of creation in them; men have to fantasise about it, create Creation itself, just to compensate; ovary envy.  That's all it is.' Yolanda nodded with self-certitude while I looked on. 'Know what decided me on all this?'

She looked at me.  I shrugged, too choked to speak. 'Koresh,' she said. 'Remember him?'

'I don't think so.'

'What?  WACO:  We Ain't Comin' Out?  Were you on the moon or something?  You must have seen…' Yolanda rolled her eyes. 'No, I guess you didn't.'

'Wait,' I said. 'Yes; I think my friend Mr Warriston might have told me something about it.  Wasn't that in Texas?'

'Town called Waco,' my grandmother confirmed. 'About a hundred miles south from Dallas.  Drove down there the day it happened.  Day it ended.  Saw the embers.  Made me mad as hell, goddamn government doing that… not that it was right to bomb Oklahoma City, mind… But the point was Koresh,' she said, wagging one finger at me. 'They showed film of him from before, holding a Bible and leading his followers in some marathon worship session and said he wanted to be a rock star; tried to be one, in fact, but didn't get anywhere.  Became a prophet instead.  And how did he end up living?  Worshipped, that's how, in a place where he could have any woman he wanted and smoke dope and drink all night with his buddies.  Hog heaven.  He got the rock-star life without having to become one; he got what he really wanted: sex and drugs and worship.  He was no more holy than, I don't know, Frank Zappa or somebody, but he got to pretend he was, got his own farm, all the guns he could play with and at the end he even got to become some sort of dumb martyr, thanks to the Feds and that fat dick Clinton.  Frankly I didn't care Koresh died, or care very much that his followers did, though I probably should; you like to think they knew the choice they were making and were just plain stupid, and if you'd somehow gotten into the same situation you'd have been smarter… No, it was the children that made me cry, Isis; it was knowing they died, knowing they suffered, and weren't old enough to have made up their own minds about whatever insane fucking power-trip that egotistical asshole Koresh was taking his people on.'

I stared at my grandmother.  She nodded as she looked ahead. 'That's my thoughts on the subject, Grand-daughter.  Seems to me women have been falling for this holy-man shit down through all the centuries and we ain't stopped falling for it yet.  Jesus.  The KKK:  Koresh, Khomeini, Kahane; well, to hell with the lot of them, all the fundamentalists, and that Aum Shitface gang from Japan, too.' Yolanda shook her head angrily. 'World's more like a goddamn comic-book every fuckin' day.'

I nodded, and thought the better of asking my grandmother exactly what she was talking about.  She took a deep breath and seemed to calm herself somewhat.  She smiled briefly at me. 'All I'm saying is, Isis, don't be in too big a hurry to join up too.  You get your head sorted out, but remember: men are a bit crazy and a bit dangerous, and they're jealous as hell, too.  Don't sacrifice yourself for them, because they sure as shit won't do it for you; fact is they'll try and sacrifice you.'

I watched her drive for a while.  Eventually I said, 'So, are you apostate too, Grandmother?'

'Hell,' Yolanda said, looking annoyed. 'I was never really part of your Order in the first place, Is.  I just went along with it.  Jerome was interested in trying to save his soul.  I found Salvador… charismatic at first, then later I just got to know all the people at the farm, and then Alice married Christopher; that tied me in tight.' She glanced over at me again. 'Then you came along.' She shrugged, looked back at the road. 'I'd have taken you from them if I could, Is.' She looked at me again, and for the first time ever, I thought, she looked uncertain. 'If you hadn't been born the day you were… well, I might have been allowed to take you; they might have let me, after the fire.  However.' She shrugged once more and concentrated on the road again.