{"id":67246,"date":"2016-09-20T17:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T00:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=67246"},"modified":"2026-02-27T14:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:22:10","slug":"marceline","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=67246","title":{"rendered":"Marceline"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This story originally appeared in Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s collection of\u00a0short fiction,<\/em>\u00a0The Love of a Bad Man<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Our crops fail, but our babies grow strong and sweet, like the sweetest pea-snaps. Every colour imaginable, every mix of every colour. God never intended to keep the races separate. Such prejudice could only come from the hearts of men, their infinite fear and folly. Sometimes, wandering through the nursery, I think of those stories of babies found in bulrushes, cabbage patches, and it\u2019s a nice thought: that babies might truly crop up that way, from the pureness of the earth, free from the frailties of men.<\/p>\n

Thirty-three born right here in Jonestown. Did you ever see such healthy, happy babies? And not one of them who ever has to experience America\u2019s racism.<\/p>\n

Our cribs are reinforced with mesh to keep out creepy-crawlies. Our wall hangings and hand-braided rugs are made of red, green, yellow, black: the colours of our adoptive nation. On the verandah, picture books bloom in the laps of our women, who nurture our babies\u2019 minds with daily storytime. Many of our three-year-olds already know their ABCs. Of course this\u2019s the first they ever heard of NBC.<\/p>\n

Some of you men laugh. A tight, showy kinda laugh, but at a time like this that\u2019s to be expected.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t want media. We didn\u2019t want congressmen. We wanted to be left in peace. That you all couldn\u2019t give us that much is proof of the enormity of what we\u2019ve done: a thousand men, women, and children turning our backs on the United States for a simpler life down here in the jungle. But we\u2019re making the best of this intrusion. Last night when the congressman came onstage to praise our community, the applause was so loud it almost brought down the roof of the pavilion.<\/p>\n

We are nothing if not a proud people, an optimistic people.<\/p>\n

Here we have the kitchen, where Sister Liliana and her crew prepare three thousand nutritious meals each day. The woodshop, where Brother Ernie and his crew construct everything from bunk beds to pull-along toys. The piggery; see how good and fat our sows are, our beauteous Blissie who is mother to eighteen piglets. Each plank we walk along was measured, sawed, and laid by our construction crew. Each person treading these paths is brother or sister to the next. Such close-knit community you\u2019d be lucky to find nowadays even in the smallest Midwestern town, where people no longer feel safe leaving their doors unlocked.<\/p>\n

There is no crime here in Jonestown, no dispute that can\u2019t be resolved communally.<\/p>\n

That knot of people by the pavilion, drawing more in like a tornado; I wouldn\u2019t pay it any mind. There are fewer of you than when this tour began. Stay behind me, please; don\u2019t stray. I know the sun is hot, and these flies are a nuisance, but we have many more sights to see, people to meet, refreshments awaiting us at the end of the line.<\/p>\n

A pair of sisters whisk by. Another sister, our Esme who works so hard in the laundry, whispers in my ear, and what she says \u2014 well, that\u2019s not for you to know. Maybe you few who haven\u2019t yet snuck away notice my face tense; you newsmen are trained to notice every frown, tic, averted eye. But when I next speak, it\u2019s with a smile.<\/p>\n

A good first lady, in the face of crisis, always finds some way to smile.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

In the pavilion\u2019s shade, the afternoon looks hourless. I see my husband\u2019s face from afar, the broad slack lines of it, and want nothing more than to lay him down and cover him with a cool sheet, tell him to sleep away this defeat. Sleep, Jim, just sleep<\/em>. It\u2019s true what Sister Esme said; there\u2019s folks deserting, and the who and how many of it doesn\u2019t matter because it\u2019s plain he\u2019s taking it personally. Always, in the more than thirty years I\u2019ve known him, he\u2019s been the kind to take things personal: the sufferings of others, their individual pains, but most of all their betrayals.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t keep them all, Jim, I\u2019ve tried telling him. You can\u2019t hold them like cards to your chest.<\/p>\n

The Morrises, one of our oldest white families. With us since Indiana, those ugly pre-integration days when just the claim \u2018all men are equal\u2019 could have folks burning crosses on our lawns, painting swastikas on our church stairs. So many hard times lived through together: Sister Judy, surely you recall how you came to us weeping after the drowning of your little boy in \u201959? Brother Gerald, the years of alcoholism and the friends who got you through it, friends who are still here today? Will you truly leave behind all us here who love you? Will you truly turn your back on this life we\u2019ve made?<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t what we expected, Sister Judy says grimly. It isn\u2019t what we were told.<\/p>\n

Her eyes holding mine, glassy blue-green like mine, the skin around them cracked with wrinkles like mine. After a certain age, women like us \u2014 women who\u2019ve worked hard and suffered much \u2014 we all start looking the same.<\/p>\n

Brother Gerald can barely look at me, but when he does, his eyes are the sad brown of a dog with a broken leg. Then he lets them drop in my husband\u2019s direction, and without planning on it, I\u2019m seeing what they see: Jim, a dry-lipped ghost, hiding behind his dark glasses. He\u2019s trying to squeeze little Billy Barnhart\u2019s shoulder, frowning into his pimento-red shirt when Billy flinches. Nearby, his California college girls huddle with our lawyers, their slim legs crossed, lips working quick and snide. The big, bearish congressman whispers with his aide. Our security detail keep watch over the media, arms folded and faces gloomy as the gathering clouds.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no words for it. No happy words, anyways.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll always have a place here, Sister, Brother. That\u2019s what I tell them, and I open my weary arms. All traitors shall be forgiven. Come back anytime. We love you still.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

The weather turns as sudden as one of Jim\u2019s moods, and there\u2019s a part of me that wonders if he isn\u2019t to blame for the crashing rain, the sky whipping like a black sheet in the wind. An itty-bitty part, though I know he can\u2019t control the heavens, isn\u2019t even in control of what\u2019s going on down here.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll kill you! One of our sisters is screaming herself hoarse. Bring those kids back here! Don\u2019t take those kids!<\/p>\n

Then she\u2019s rushing her husband from behind, tugging her little boy from his arms till it seems they\u2019re gonna tear him limb from limb, and it takes both our lawyers and two brothers from security to separate them. After all that, the whole family turn back to the pavilion together, soaked through and grumbling. I make my way over, my voice low and sure as I try to soothe some right back into this wrongness.<\/p>\n

Shhh. How\u2019s about we take these babies to the TV room? I betcha they got some friends in there watching Willy Wonka.<\/p>\n

The media flank the remaining deserters, all huddled under clear plastic ponchos, as they track through orange mud to the truck that\u2019ll take them back to the airstrip and, from there, the capital. My own boys, full-grown and strong as warriors, are in the capital now. I feel a prick of yearning that they could be here restoring order, and it\u2019s selfish. I feel a prick of relief that they\u2019re far from this mayhem, and that\u2019s selfish too. I push all thoughts of them from my mind and focus on shushing, stroking.<\/p>\n

You hear? one sister says to another. Congressman wants to stay overnight \u2019case there\u2019s more traitors.<\/p>\n

Fucker\u2019s got a death-wish.<\/p>\n

Sisters, I cut in. Take these kids and their mama someplace quiet. Brother … we\u2019re real glad you decided to stay with us. Let\u2019s get you dried off, huh.<\/p>\n

Jim slumps muddy-legged in the playground, watching them board the truck. One of his college girls, the favourite who stole his heart ten years ago and pumped it full of political ambitions, shields his head with an umbrella. If it weren\u2019t for her, he\u2019d probably be crouched in the mud like a frog. So I guess that\u2019s something.<\/p>\n

A dozen outta one thousand isn\u2019t nothing to feel bad about, I say, coming up beside them, though I know well enough that\u2019s not how he sees it.<\/p>\n

Sixteen, Jim\u2019s favourite corrects, not looking at me.<\/p>\n

The truck grumbles. Jim\u2019s second-favourite stands in the mud beside it, blouse drenched see-through, cussing out the passengers. I sigh to myself and head for cover under the swingset, managing a thin smile for the nearest brother from security.<\/p>\n

Lord. This\u2019s some rain.<\/p>\n

I never saw it like this, the brother says. Not in all the time I been here.<\/p>\n

A shout sounds from the pavilion, and the gathering beneath its roof swells to one side. What the fuck? the brother mutters, breaking into a jog. A couple of newsmen leap down from the truck, cameras at the ready.<\/p>\n

Jim turns slowly, mouth agape, one college girl at either side.<\/p>\n

My hair\u2019s sticking to my face by the time I get in eyeshot. A pile of our brothers are holding down burly Brother Ujara, whose chest is heaving, eyes bull-mad and glazed. A little ways off, the congressman is rubbing at his Adam\u2019s apple, grumbling to the lawyers. I see the blood on his shirtfront.<\/p>\n

Mother\u2019s comin\u2019! one of our sisters hollers when she notices me bustling closer.<\/p>\n

Make way for Mother Marceline!<\/p>\n

Mother Marcie\u2019s here!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m within a foot of the congressman, close enough to see the little silver curls on his back, to smell the slick salt red of him. It hooks me the way the smell of blood has since nursing school, narrowing my field of vision and quieting the shouting to a hush.<\/p>\n

Congressman, I coo. Let me take a look at that.<\/p>\n

He flinches. Grimaces like I just suggested sticking my fingers right in his neck.<\/p>\n

Nothing more than a razor nick, he says. A little arrogant, but then you\u2019d have to be to come down here all guns blazing, quoting the constitution.<\/p>\n

Mother\u2019s a damn fine nurse, assures Brother Tim, our head of security, as he escorts us out of the crowd.<\/p>\n

On behalf of our entire community, I want to apologise, I go on. I hope you\u2019ll forgive folks for acting out of turn. Emotions are running high.<\/p>\n

The rain is ricocheting off the aluminium roof, off our cheeks as we wade into it, college girls chasing behind us with another couple umbrellas. The lawyers are saying it wouldn\u2019t be wise for the congressman to stay in Jonestown tonight, not with the mood of hostility, and he\u2019s agreeing, fumbling with his shirt buttons, and I\u2019m agreeing, too. My husband is coming to meet us with that same half-dead expression, and I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s just the muddle of his mind these days, but I wish he\u2019d look more surprised.<\/p>\n

Jim holds out his hand. Does this change things?<\/p>\n

It changes some things, the congressman says, shaking Jim\u2019s hand just the same.<\/p>\n

And of course every one of us knows it\u2019s true. Once blood is spilled, no matter how little, things are bound to get a whole lot more serious.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

EVERYONE. PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR COTTAGES TO REST. I REPEAT, PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR COTTAGES TO REST.<\/p>\n

The echo of my voice over the PA makes me prickle with its own thin jaggedness. Not a voice to soothe any more than the voices of the college girls muttering under their breath as they tap out Morse code to our people in the States. It\u2019s coming on dusk here; midday in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Did you get a hold of the boys in the capital? I ask Jim\u2019s favourite, the dark auburn bun at the back of her head.<\/p>\n

We spoke to Sister Sharon, she says with a lemon-suck of her lips. They\u2019ve been given the order for retaliation.<\/p>\n

Then she gets right back to fiddling with the radio.<\/p>\n

I turn away, stifle the sob in my chest like a yawn during one of Jim\u2019s all-night sermons. Could my boys kill? It\u2019s something we\u2019ve whispered about when their father is at his sickest; what it means to keep this community alive, to protect it from threats outside and in. I\u2019ve seen the rage in my boys, their potential for mutiny, and how it\u2019s always stopped just short of strangling Jim in his sleep. To kill a sick man would be too easy for our kind, so used to doing things the hard way, to weathering the sickest storms.<\/p>\n

To kill on a sick man\u2019s orders? Well. I hope not.<\/p>\n

Jim\u2019s second-favourite slams in, her dark eyes huge and with more rings than Saturn. So skinny it\u2019s hard to believe that wild wind didn\u2019t blow her in.<\/p>\n

Father wants everyone back at the pavilion, she declares. Lord, I sigh. It\u2019s like musical chairs here.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no time for rest, she says. She sticks out her chin, looking almost pleased with herself for knowing what I don\u2019t: Some of the brothers from security took the guns and went after the congressman\u2019s party.<\/p>\n

Oh. Good Lord. I close my eyes. When I open them she\u2019s looking at me like I\u2019m foolish to use the Lord\u2019s name, even in vain. I look away and go to the mic before any of those girls can.<\/p>\n

EVERYONE. PLEASE REPORT TO THE PAVILION. I REPEAT, PLEASE REPORT TO THE PAVILION.<\/p>\n

Jim\u2019s favourite hunches into her headphones, spine lizard-bumped, not looking at all like a woman who\u2019s borne him a child, though she has. His second-favourite tinkles the chain of keys around her neck, wrests open a filing cabinet, her elbows baubled with bones thicker than the arms above them. These are the women my husband likes best: thin, and tireless, and scornful of all other gods.<\/p>\n

I push outside.<\/p>\n

The rain has stopped, but the wind is still screaming and thrashing the fronds of our palms and plantains. Toward the heart of the pavilion, our people course, young brothers sprinting ahead, sisters trailing with the kids, old folks bringing up the rear.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re gonna commit revolutionary suicide! a brother booms, face dark and wet as he grins over his shoulder at a group of sisters. All brightly-dressed, long-necked, heavy-lidded, hair in cornrows or naturals or bandanas.<\/p>\n

Except for a blink, maybe an eye-roll, they don\u2019t react.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

The past and future are burning sunrise and sunset, and the day between them keeps getting smaller. It\u2019s swallowed up in shadow. THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT, reads the black-and-white sign above my husband\u2019s head, the same that hung over the congressman when he stood up and praised us not 24 hours ago.<\/p>\n

The congrethman\u2019s DEAD, Jim slurs into the mic, and he looks so slack, so heavy, rolling his shiny black-haired head. Pleaaathe get us some medication. It\u2019th thimple … No convulthions … Get movin\u2019, get movin\u2019, before it\u2019th too late …<\/p>\n

I remember the past, for what it\u2019s worth. That year of going steady, when he was just a moon-faced slum kid working nights as an orderly, unafraid to speak up about the injustices he saw, the failings of the church and government. That first year of marriage, how he so hated seeing me pray he threatened to throw himself out the window of our Indianapolis apartment. Those first infidelities in California, how he alternately wept and grinned telling me of those liberated college girls, ready to slit their wrists if they couldn\u2019t have him. The first time I tried to take the boys and leave him, how easily he blocked my path: told me he\u2019d sooner have us all dead than not by his side.<\/p>\n

I remember the past, but that doesn\u2019t keep the same old patterns from repeating.<\/p>\n

Our Dr Larry, who delivered all those beautiful babies now bundled at their mothers\u2019 breasts, oversees the other nurses at the wooden table as they squeeze purple liquid into the plastic syringes. All that\u2019s left of this day is a damp, moonish glow beyond the pavilion. The mothers are looking around with thousand-year-old eyes, looking as I do at the jungle and all its lurking violence. That congressman dead on the airstrip. Traitors and newsmen, dead. Authorities ready to storm our dorms, our schoolhouse, our nursery. America, coming back to claim us with a vengeance.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be afraid to die! If theeth people land out here, they\u2019ll torture our children! They\u2019ll torture our theniors! We cannot have thithh! Jim\u2019s voice, sputtery and drug-muddled as it is, still has some of that old music that first got me listening. Are you gonna theparate yourthelf from whoever shot the congrethman?<\/p>\n

Hell no! our people cry.<\/p>\n

No, no, no, no!<\/p>\n

That big metal vat with the purple drink inside is almost close enough for me to reach and touch. The leg of the table, to tap with my sandal. Someone elbows me, Sister Kathy sterilising a hypodermic needle, her cropped hair stringy with perspiration. She looks at me, apologetic. Surely as the night is coming I should be doing something. Something other than getting underfoot. Standing by him, assuring our people what\u2019s best, to leave this life of suffering together before they tear our babies from our arms.<\/p>\n

I drift around the front of the stage, my body moving tall, pale, and weary. It will be a blessing to cast this body aside, its private aches and indignities. It will be a blessing to be among those shiny faces, smiles twitching at their cheeks.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m ready, Father, a young sister whispers, sweet and hoarse, touching her heart.<\/p>\n

A hurrah rips through the pavilion as the brothers from security drive back in, jump off the tractor, and swagger over, guns high above their heads. Our toughest young men from the ghettoes of Watts, East Oakland, the Fillmore. They disperse to the edge of the pavilion and the crowd gets tighter, a few whimpers rising up from the back, a smothering of whoops and applause. I think again of my boys in the capital, the killing they\u2019re supposed to be doing, and the sting in my throat says: no, no more<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We kilt the congressman! an older sister calls out. We kilt him an\u2019 I\u2019m GLAD he\u2019s DEAD!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s his fault! cries another sister. He did it himself, comin\u2019 where he ain\u2019t wanted!<\/p>\n

An act of provocation … Jim agrees. We been provoked too much …<\/p>\n

Father, I appreciate you for everything! You are the only … the only.<\/p>\n

Jim? I murmur, coming up beside him. I don\u2019t mean to challenge him, only to put some quiet into the moment, maybe give us all pause to think.<\/p>\n

Hurry up! another sister shouts, and she\u2019s aiming her words at the table, the women herded closest to it hugging their babies. Our sweet, strong, beautiful babies.<\/p>\n

Jim? I\u2019m close enough now to smell the sweet heaviness of him.<\/p>\n

Pleathe, pleathe. Can we hathen? Hathen with that medication? Jim leans against me like he would a crutch, tilting his head at the newest flutter of applause. Pleathe. I\u2019ve tried. You know I\u2019ve TRIED. You\u2019ve got to move. Oh, hathen.<\/p>\n

Jim, I say, right in his ear. Small ears. Neat black sideburns. Those small neatnesses, what are they worth now?<\/p>\n

From over the table, Sister Tina calls, high and tinny: You\u2019ve got to move. Everybody get in line and don\u2019t push and shove. There\u2019s nothing to worry about, so long as you keep calm and keep your children calm.<\/p>\n

Jim.<\/p>\n

His shoulder under my freckled hand feels soft, like something boiled, but getting to him is harder than anything. After all those meetings we\u2019ve had on the subject, all the votes, all the suicide drills, all the times my voice has shrunk smaller in my throat, all the years of swallowing grief, why should he listen to me?<\/p>\n

Jim. Please.<\/p>\n

Our first sister in line is holding her baby out, her lovely young face taut and brave. Yellow blouse crocheted with little white daisies; surely her best blouse, as surely so many of us are dressed in our finest today. Her cloud of dark hair glows violet at the edges. She pinches that button nose.<\/p>\n

Jim. Don\u2019t do this.<\/p>\n

That little mouth that\u2019s only ever tasted mother\u2019s milk opens in a tight, angry O. The purple liquid shoots in. Others, not mothers, might mistake those few seconds before he wails for peace. But for us, the waiting is a clenched fist to our ovaries.<\/p>\n

Peace at latht, Jim drawls. Free at latht. They tried to take our freedom, but we won\u2019t let \u2019em. We won\u2019t be enthlaved again. Hell no!<\/p>\n

No, no, no!<\/p>\n

The sister accepts a paper cup of purple. She drinks of it deep, winces, rocks her squalling baby. To joyous cheers, she turns from the table and walks out to the darkening fields, her head high. The line inches forward, more mothers and babies.<\/p>\n

Jim. No more.<\/p>\n

Thirty-three born right here in Jonestown, and not one of them who\u2019s ever had to experience America\u2019s racism. My sob is tiny as a kitten\u2019s bell, but somehow it\u2019s enough to get people noticing: our mothers in line flinching, our security brothers closing in.<\/p>\n

Jim. JIM.<\/p>\n

For the first time in I don\u2019t know how long, he looks at me: through the shade of his glasses, from the sides of his eyes, and truth is, there\u2019s nothing going on behind them.<\/p>\n

Mother, he croons. Mother, Mother, quietly, pleathe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This story originally appeared in Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s collection of\u00a0short fiction,\u00a0The Love of a Bad Man.) Our crops fail, but our babies grow strong and sweet, like the sweetest pea-snaps. Every colour imaginable, every mix of every colour. God never intended to keep the races separate. Such prejudice could only come from the hearts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":67242,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-67246","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67246"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134219,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67246\/revisions\/134219"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}