It was early afternoon in Lucent Rising. The sun was bright, the music was loud, and Raina Reed danced like moves were money and she was set on getting rich. Her body, lithe and compact, twisted and turned to the beat of the hip-hop magic pouring out of the Bluetooth Jam speaker, one of several pieces of contraband not allowed in the home, stuff she kept tucked away and hidden from view until rare moments like this when she was alone, could take off the mask, and let the real Raina come out and play.
This is how we do it!
Raina pointed to her reflection in the mirror while trying to twerk, an attempt she’d be the first to admit was pitiful at best. She continued, undaunted. Arms flailed. Shoulders popped. Booty moved to the beat—pushed on the one, pulled on the two. Clapping her hands, she changed the rhythm. Her head went one way, hips another—Bam! Pow!—from side to side, paying respectable homage to the first dance her mother, Jennifer, taught her, the classic cabbage patch. Shoulder-length curls freed from the band that usually held them tame now bounced to the beat, shaken into a sort of drunken afro, a halo of black hair around her shoulders. Energetic, wild, fully defiant—just like her.
Leaving the space in front of the mirror, she danced around the room with abandon. The Montell Jordan anthem gave way to Destiny’s Child, Will got jiggy with it, and the Fugees’ Lauryn Hill talked about “that thang.” The music made her happy, transporting Raina back to a time when it was just her and Jennifer living in Kansas City with a variety of music a constant backdrop to their lives. Mornings, hip-hop or R & B. Evenings, jazz or pop. Saturday cleaning, definitely old-school, the stuff Raina’s grandmother had played when Jennifer was little—Motown, Stax, the sounds of Philly. On Sunday a little food for the soul, courtesy of Kirk or Fred or a sister named Clark. They had a small, two-bedroom apartment near the historic Eighteenth and Vine district where sometimes on sultry summer nights, when the windows were up and nearby club doors were open, and her mother was supplementing her income as an administrative assistant by waiting tables at the Riff, jazz notes pierced the air, poured into Raina’s small bedroom and bounced on the sheets. On those nights she imagined the musician to be her father, a sax man who’d left when she was five years old and whom she barely remembered, the one who, until Jennifer married her stepdad, Raina hoped would swoop in as swiftly as he flew out, and rescue them from a humdrum life, take her and Jennifer to live in California, where she’d heard he resided, next door to the prince of Bel Air. There was little extra money but lots of love and even more laughter, when the only light she thought about came from a bulb or the sun. Back then, the word illumination meant lighting up a room or gaining a new understanding, not being a part of an insular organization with conservative, even controversial views that made most of that which used to bring joy to her life, stuff she should no longer do. Like watching certain TV shows. Wearing jewelry, makeup, and fly clothes. Letting her hair hang loose and free. And, of course, dancing. Secular music was forbidden not only in the Reed home, but in the entire subdivision, hundreds of acres owned by the church. To Raina’s benefit, the cultlike religious organization, of which her parents were staunch members and supporters, had a private school that only went up to the sixth grade. Those older were either homeschooled or went to the town’s public school, Chippewa High. An angel in the form of her grandmother Lorraine, for whom she was named, made sure Raina was a part of the latter crowd. Going to a regular school allowed Raina the chance to hear and enjoy today’s contemporary music and be more like a “normal” teen. She liked the new sounds well enough. Had a few favorites. But her mother’s old-school? That stuff from the nineties? It was the total feel-good formula to brighten any mood, including the one Raina had felt just before coming home. She bopped over to the stereo, increased the volume, danced in front of a full-length mirror, and imagined herself a video queen.
“Sister!”
Raina jumped. Not a dance move, but the kind that preceded having her epidermis appear on the floor, which, if jumping out of one’s skin was literally possible, would have just occurred. A layer of cocoa cuteness would be on the carpet, next to the heart that threatened to jump from Raina’s chest. In one fluid movement she crossed the room and tapped a key on the laptop. The music stopped, replaced by a silence that reverberated around the room.
“Shadow! You scared the crap out of me!”
To almost everyone else Abigail Denise Reed was Abby, but to Raina, when the two were alone, she was Shadow, the baby who’d followed her every movement since learning to crawl. The day she was born, then ten-year-old Raina dumped her favorite career Barbie for a live, half-sister doll. Two years later for Raina, and occasionally Jennifer, Abby became Shadow. Despite the ten-year age difference between the siblings, the love ran deep and created a close, impenetrable bond.
“Stop cursing, sister.”
“Crap isn’t cursing,” Raina patiently explained. “Now if I’d said shi . . .”
Abby gasped. Raina laughed.
“What do you mean sneaking up on me like that?”
“I knocked, but . . .” Abby’s eyes slid pointedly from Raina to the now silent laptop and back, wordlessly conveying why her taps hadn’t been heard.
Raina missed the message. Her eyes weren’t fixed on Abby but on the hallway behind her, even as she strained to listen for an opening door. Her parents had a knack for smelling trouble long after the aroma of action had happened. For more than one reason, seeing either her mom or stepdad right now would not be good.
“Are they here?” Raina mouthed, while knowing that if they were her stepdad would have already barged into the room, made like a thundercloud and rained on her private party of one.
Abby shook her head. “Why are you dancing? You know it’s forbidden. Where are your clothes? And look at your hair!”
“Um, where is my mama because you aren’t her?” Raina offered up major attitude but, knowing one or both of her parents would be home soon, walked into the closet and retrieved the more Illumination-appropriate baby-blue maxi dress she’d worn to school. She slipped it over the renegade tee and booty shorts. “How’d you get home?”
“Ms. Stone brought me.”
At the mention of Abby’s third grade teacher, Raina’s brow furrowed of its own accord. At twenty-five, Lucy was only seven years older than Raina but lived and breathed the organization’s teachings with the judgment and fervor of someone three times her age. She’d snitched on Raina three years ago when Raina had seen her at the high school, mistaken her as “one of the girls” and showed her a social media post about the Kardashians. Reality TV was considered unsanctioned viewing, and muted—not allowed—as was much of popular culture phenomena. Lucy snitched. Raina got grounded and was made to “go deep,” a multi-week deprogramming process that had cost her parents almost two thousand dollars. During those sessions the religion’s rules, tenets, and values were reinforced. Anyone suspected of being “dimmed” by exposure to negative influences outside their church culture—unsanctioned music, television, movies, video games, books, and the like—was moved into a property owned by the church and run by licensed clergy, isolated from family and friends, and reilluminated. There were dozens of common activities that were forbidden, against the rules. Raina had broken half a dozen in less than ten minutes, just by being herself.
“Mother and Father aren’t here, Shadow. Why are you over there looking terrified?” Raina walked over to the window, tilted the blinds to take in the driveway and the street beyond it, then hit a set of keys on the computer. The room felt happy once again, this time courtesy of a guy named Pharell. “Come on, Shadow! Let’s move!”
Raina began to dance again while Abby stayed glued to the doorjamb. Her thick blondish-brown braids waved stoically with each adamant shake of her head. “We’re not supposed to do that, sister. Dancing makes us dim. Jamie got caught watching TV and has to go deep for a month.”
Raina took in her sister’s worried expression and turned off the music once again. There was no easy winning-over that level of fear, the kind instilled in organization members, especially younger ones like Abby and her grade-school classmates, who’d been taught privately at the local organization’s Illumination Academy since their preschool years. In the past, listening and dancing to their mother’s music was one of many secrets the two sisters had shared. Raina sadly realized that as her sister got older, there would probably be fewer secrets between them.
After turning off the music, Raina returned the forbidden Bluetooth to its shoebox hiding place in the closet. She retrieved a brush and hair tie from their Jack and Jill bathroom, plopped onto her bed, and began subduing her wild mane, returning it to the coiled ponytail the world saw.
“Come here, kiddo, and tell me about your day.”
Abby pushed off the doorjamb to join her on the bed. Only then did Raina notice her sluggish movements and slightly flushed skin. She reached out and placed a hand on her forehead.
“Shadow, you’re burning up!”
“Ms. Stone says I’m hot because I got mad at Jamie for getting his parents in trouble. She said that glow children controlled their emotions and that I’d feel better after appealing for healing.”
As far as Raina was concerned, Lucy Stone could take her prescription for feeling better and go straight to hell. Abby had claimed being tired the night before and had gone to bed early. And now on top of being tired she felt warm to the touch? Raina wasn’t buying what Lucy was selling. Something else was going on. Raina doubted reciting mantras would fix it.
“I don’t think you’re hot because you’re angry, Shadow. I think you have a fever because you’re sick.”
“Glows don’t get that way, Raina. Stop saying that word!”
Raina fought back a side-eye. Like if one didn’t say the word sick then it would never happen. It was just another ice cube of bullshit that she increasingly found floating in the organization’s philosophical Kool-Aid. It wasn’t Abby’s fault that she drank from the only cup of knowledge she’d ever been offered. But after four years of interacting with people taught to be dim, germy, and unsanctioned, Raina no longer sipped out of that glass.
“Teacher gave me some vitamin juice.”
“Did it help?”
“A little.”
“Are you really feeling better? Seriously, Shadow, you can tell me the truth.”
“I’m getting better,” Abby repeated, though the opposite message came through her eyes. “In knowing, I’m glowing, like the sun.”
Raina maintained a look that belied the chagrin she often felt toward her family’s religion. Along with their conservative views on personal appearance, the arts, and roles in marriage, the church required upwards of thirty percent of a member’s income through tithes and mandatory, ongoing illumination and enlightenment courses. They believed anyone outside of the religion was obscure, literally a dimwit, and that interacting with such would lessen one’s own light. They considered stars to be angels, communicated with extraterrestrials, and held to the teachings that after an end-time explosion they’d be the foundation for a new earth. For this reason, they kept to themselves as much as possible and forbade personal relationships or marriage, intermixing, with the outside. Only after Raina’s mother Jennifer joined the Nation did her stepfather Ken ask her out. They shunned modern medicine and its procedures, believing all sickness was mental and could be cured through their trained specialists with herbs, vitamins, stardust, mantras, or an energy machine designed by the church’s founder. Raina was all for positive thinking and believed in the power of words. But she also trusted the power of Advil and remembered how quickly she and her mom used to get better before joining a group where even over-the-counter cures were banned.
Turning onto her stomach, Raina looked at her sister, then reached out for the person she loved more than her own life.
“Come here, sister,” she whispered, enveloping Abby into a giant bear hug. “Let’s glow together, okay?”
Raina began reciting the healing-mind mantra. “I see you better.”
“I see me better,” Abby repeated.
“Good health you know.”
“Good health I know.”
“Mind over matter. My body glows.”
Abby repeated the words after her sister half a dozen times. Raina checked Abby’s forehead again and was sure she had a fever of at least a hundred degrees. Hoping to will some life into her sister’s lethargic presence, she began the mantra again, this time with a snap of her fingers and in a funky, singsong style.
“Raina!” Abby’s giggle lit up Raina’s heart. “We can’t say it like that!”
“Why not? Music isn’t bad, Shadow. Only the words placed in rhythms that are not what we believe.”
Abby looked doubtful.
“Okay, I’ve got an idea. What about to the tune of . . . hmm, I dunno . . . ‘Old McDonald,’ maybe?”
Abby laughed again. “No! It’ll sound stupid!”
“I agree. But it’s a melody that’s sanctioned. Plus, it will be fun. Come on.”
Raina began the chant again, drumming on the bedspread as their voices grew louder.
“Mind over matter. My body G-L-Ohs!”
Soon they were both off the bed and on the floor, clapping, foot-tapping, and half singing, half rapping to the beat. Within minutes anyone watching wouldn’t have known whether Abby actually began to feel better or was having so much fun she forgot to be sick. Either way, when they heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, Raina ran to turn off the music. Abby’s shoulders fell, along with her smile. There was no written rule that happiness was forbidden. But most times when their father, Ken, was present, it was not allowed.
By the time the sound of a closing garage door drifted upstairs, the Reed girls presented the perfect glow tableau. Abby was in her bedroom indulging in an approved children’s pastime, putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Raina was seated at her study desk, working on a science assignment. Jennifer greeted each of them as she passed their rooms on her way to the master suite. Raina’s stepfather and Abby’s father, Ken, had gone directly into his study, as usual, leaving communication for the dining room, where forty-five minutes later they were called down to dinner.
“Good evening again, Mother,” Raina said, using the formal language encouraged by the religion. “May I help?”
“You may bring in the salad,” Jennifer replied. “There are two types of dressing in matching carafes. Abby, did you wash your hands?”
“Yes, Mother,” Abby replied.
She coughed into circled fingers and earned a stern look from her dad, who walked in at that moment.
“Sorry, Father,” Abby said softly.
“Hello, Father,” Raina said on her way to the kitchen. Even eight years later she was struck with the difference in households she’d occupied, the pre- and post–Ken Reed eras. Reaching for the colorful salad in a crystal bowl, she recalled the good old days when it was okay, natural even, to cough, sneeze, belch, fart, without apology. They excused themselves. There were manners in place after all. But Raina would never get used to the appeasing silence, the formal existence that Ken preferred, or the deference this new mother, the one Jennifer had become over the past eight years, chose to pay him.
Conversation was limited as plates were filled and drinks were poured. Once done, and only after Ken had taken the first bite of a medium-rare steak being served with a baker and fresh green beans, did the rest of the table begin eating.
“I saw you working on the puzzle, Abby,” Jennifer said. “How is it coming along?”
“I almost have the whole frame put together,” Abby responded. “Now I’m separating the pieces for the rainbow, fish, and flowers. The water is going to be the hardest part. So much blue.”
“What is the name of this puzzle, honey?” Ken asked.
The question had been posed to Abby, but Jennifer answered. “Amazing nature, and it truly is. It was one of several new puzzles being sold in the bookstore. This one has five hundred pieces. Abby’s most challenging yet!”
“What are you working on, Raina?”
“A science project for school.”
A slight frown creased Ken’s handsome brow. At fifty years old his looks had matured like a fine wine. Hints of silver now painted his chestnut temples, making his uniquely gray eyes even more outstanding. He reached for the cloth napkin before him, then sat back as he patted his mouth.
“What rubbish theory are they teaching you now, that we’ll have to deprogram.”
It was what Raina’s friend’s mother Valarie would call a soapbox set up. Her answer would give her father the chance to rail against the obscure, the unsanctioned, something he did as often as he could.
“You don’t want to know,” she answered, buying a few extra seconds.
“Let me guess, climate change.”
As they’d been studying its effects for most of the semester, this was an easy get. Raina nodded.
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Yes, Father.”
He snorted. “Thank the Light that the plans for an expanded educational building were approved.” He looked warmly at Jennifer. “The middle school will be finished in two years, the high school a year later. We won’t have to worry about Abby being dimmed by those lies.”
Jennifer returned a warm smile. “The education received at Lucent Rising Elementary Institute is absolutely top-notch. Abby is testing out two grades above those of the same age in public school. While it is a more challenging environment, and she must sometimes submit materials against her personal beliefs, I am proud that Raina has maintained a near perfect grade average at Chippewa High.”
She looked at Raina. “It can’t be easy, having to constantly shield yourself and your mind, to keep glowing in such a place.”
“I agree,” Ken said. He resumed eating. “Which is even more of a reason she should consider forgoing college, get claimed by an upstanding Beam of Light and join one of the women’s ministries. We’ve got an aggressive agenda for bringing in more members, more funding, spreading more radiance. I don’t see where four more years in a blind educational system will benefit either her or the Nation.”
“It’s necessary for her to be a teacher, darling,” Jennifer said, discussing Raina as though she were not in the room.
It was just as well, because any plans they discussed were theirs, not Raina’s. She played the role of the dutiful daughter and had even switched the degree she planned to pursue from business to English when her father had balked at her studying a curriculum “more suited for men.” But Raina didn’t see herself teaching, especially within the Illumination educational system. More and more, she didn’t see herself in the religion at all. But those who chose to leave lost their families, too. So Raina hadn’t shared those feelings with anyone. She hadn’t even fully admitted them to herself.
“Raina, did you hear me?”
Jennifer’s question brought Raina out of her own thoughts. “Sorry, Mother, my mind wandered.”
“Your father has some exciting news.”
In spite of his stoic nature, Raina watched her dad’s face color a bit. A gleam came into his eyes. Add the aquiline nose, full lips, and tall, lean frame and anyone seeing him would have no questions as to why, when he’d popped the question, Jennifer had said yes.
“It’s not yet official,” he said, reaching for his napkin once again.
“Mere formalities remain,” Jennifer said, with a wave of her hand. She looked adoringly at her husband. With her shoulder-length black hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail, emphasizing deeply bronzed skin, a long sleek neck, high cheekbones, big doe eyes and a dazzling smile, she was Ken’s exact opposite and perfect complement at once. His real-life Barbie, and second chance at love.
“What is it?” Raina asked. “She speared a piece of broccoli from the casserole and shoved it into her mouth. At Jennifer’s frown, she took the next bite more daintily.
“Babe?” Jennifer looked. . .
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