Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley

mother of a growing boy. How tall they were, suddenly, beside him. Young men. Not children. He looked each boy in the eye. ‘Which of you has been at my daughter? Your sister?’
    ‘There were harvester crews up,’ Wife Six, Dawn, said quickly.
    ‘And junkies, looking to buy – it could have been anyone!’ Wife Seven said.
    Each stepped before her son, her child, and Amaranth could remember the triumph each woman had showed when her child was pulled from within her, the tiny button that marked them out as first son, second son. What man didn’t want a son?
    Zachariah hauled both boys to the altar, mothers clutching and trailing, and bent them over the table. He ripped down Adam’s cotton britches – they were too old to wear skirts now – and then he pulled down Justice’s beside him. He shoved the tunics out of the way. Then he took hold of the cross and he whacked their buttocks, one after the other, until their mothers pulled at him, calling, ‘Hit me instead!’ and lifting their arms up to catch his cross.
    ‘I will hit you!’ he said, and he raised the cross above their heads.
    ‘Please, Father,’ Sorrow cried, clutching her mother.
    Zachariah stopped, breathing hard but gripping the cross. ‘You will tell me the truth,’ he said to both of the boys.
    Adam turned his head to him. ‘Really?’
    Zachariah hefted the cross higher and Sorrow went to catch his arm.
    Adam rose to his full height, taller now than Zachariah. Braver. ‘The truth is she is my sister and you are a dirty old man.’
    ‘Get out of my temple!’ Zachariah swung the cross as women and children leaped out of his way. Sorrow staggered back from him. ‘Get out of my church!’
    Adam would not look at Sorrow or his mother. He gave Zachariah a small nod, reached back for Justice, and the two of them strode out the temple door, mothers following, each howling and accusing the other.
    ‘Husband,’ Amaranth cautioned. ‘They are your sons.’
    ‘Who needs sons?’ He spoke childishly, rashly. ‘The first was never my son. Adam was a rotting seed in her when she came.’
    She remembered the girl then, young Dawn, black-eyed and enormous with her first child, product of her stepfather. ‘You said blood didn’t matter. You said families were made from love, and so they are. Look at us.’
    ‘You asked if I could see what came of a faith such as ours.’
    Amaranth looked at Sorrow, saw how desperately she searched the windows for Adam. ‘I meant a faith with too many women.’ And boys who grow up, she thought.
    ‘Was she with child?’ he asked her.
    Amaranth looked at her daughter. ‘No,’ she said.

    If your right hand offends you, cut it off. They had all heard him say it.
    The boys were driven into town, left, and banished. Their mothers clung to fence posts, forcing themselves to stay without their children. It was only a matter of time until they packed their meager possessions in the night and snuck off to follow them, to freedom, the sixth and seventh wives.
    Amaranth found Sorrow in the temple, searching her bowl for the sense in it. ‘I’m sorry I had to take you,’ she told her. ‘You didn’t know what you were doing. We have made your world too small and that is our fault.’
    Sorrow gripped the bowl. ‘It’s what these places are made for.’
    ‘What?’
    Sorrow placed a hand on her chest, then another on her crotch, pressing her skirt in. ‘It is what these places are made for.’ When Amaranth spoke, saying no, Sorrow, you’re wrong, Sorrow silenced her. ‘I have eyes, don’t I? Don’t I see how it works?’
    ‘Not with a brother. It’s not your fault but – it’s wrong, Sorrow. I didn’t know we had to teach you that.’
    ‘My brothers,’ she spat, ‘were trying to keep me safe.’
    ‘From what?’
    ‘From what will happen. You can’t see it.’
    Amaranth reached for Sorrow’s hand, but Sorrow put them both around her bowl. Her daughter wasn’t pregnant, but the gynecologist had confirmed