Our task is to prepare for the second coming.

The world will be a universal family.

We are the spiritual children of the man I talked about from far away.

We are protected by the total power of our true father.

We are the total children.

All doubt will vanish in the arms of total control.

Omar Neeley was fourteen. She walked with him past the Ukrainian Jesus on the church facade. They walked past the AIDS hotel. She realized she didn't know where he lived or if he had parents or siblings. She used to think siblings were strictly white and middle-class due to something in the nature of the word. They walked past the black cube sculpture that was balanced on a point. It had ten men sleeping beneath it with their shopping bags and shopping carts alongside, with crutches lying beside some of them, some arms and legs in casts. Omar was supposed to help her carry plasterboard left at a demolition site. Take it to the park. But down one of the factory streets two men in undersized hats came up, those little fedora hats and muscle T-shirts. She felt the contact in the air, the streak of meaning that takes the blood out of your face. But all they did was talk. They talked to Omar in figures of speech she couldn't make out. Then they walked along with him and he never looked back, and they walked and he went with them. What about my plasterboard. One of them talked to him with a hand on his arm and he walked along with that jangling gait, big for his age.

People with supermarket carts. When did these things come out of the stores and into the streets? She saw these things everywhere, pushed, dragged, lived in, fought over, unwheeled, bent, rolling haywire, filled with living trivia, the holistic dregs of everything if that is correctly put. She talked to the woman in the plastic bag, offering to get a shopping cart for her, which is something I might be able to do. The woman spoke out at her from inside the bag, spoke in raven song, a throttled squawk that Karen tried to understand. She realized she understood almost no one here, no one spoke in ways she'd ever heard before. The whole rest of her life had been one way of hearing and now she needed to learn another. It was a different language completely, unwritable and interior, the rag-speak of shopping carts and plastic bags, the language of soot, and Karen had to listen carefully to the way the woman dragged a line of words out of her throat like hankies tied together and then she tried to go back and reconstruct.

The woman seemed to be saying, "They have buses in this city that they crouch for wheelchairs. Give us ramps for people living in the street. I want buses that they crouch for us."

She seemed to say, "I want my own blind dog that it's allowed in the movies."

But maybe it was something else completely.

There are people gathering in clusters everywhere, coming out of mud houses and tin-roof shanties and sprawling camps and meeting in some dusty square to march together to a central point, calling out a name, collecting many others on the way, some are running, some in bloodstained shirts, and they reach a vast open space that they fill with their pressed bodies, a word or name, calling out a name under the chalk sky, millions, chanting.

She said, "Let me into vibration" or "Get me annihilation," and when Karen brought her hot food on a pie plate she took it into her bag and disappeared.

Brita came home and they sat eating a meal that Karen carefully prepared. She had cleaned the place and packed her own small belongings in a tote bag she set by the door, to show she was ready to leave anytime the word was given.

Brita was impressive, she was frantically lagged and talkative, charged with a stark energy that had the center drained out and was all restless edges. She looked hollow-boned and beautiful like someone back from glaring tropic solitude.

"Do you like baths or showers?" Karen said.

"I take baths when there's time. I give myself up to my bath. It's the only place where I'm happy in the present moment."

"I'll run you a bath."

"Usually I'm happy only thinking about it later. About five years later. Except for my bath and except for my writers. I'm happy doing writers."

"I don't think I've ever said that before. 'I'll run a bath for you.' It sounds strange coming out."

"And what about Bill, so where is he, does anyone know, that foolish man?"

"There's no news or Scott would have called me."

"There is a tendency of men to disappear. What do you think? Although I guess you've done some disappearing yourself. I could never just disappear into the blue. I would have to make certain announcements. Let the bastards know why I'm leaving and let them know where to find me so they can tell me how sorry they are that I'm gone."

"Did your husband disappear?"

"He went on a business trip."

"When was this?"

"Eighteen years ago."

"It's like what's the name of that myth?"

"Exactly. And he has a series of adventures and performs legendary feats and comes back with a contract for a million spare parts."

"Tell me when you want me to run a bath."

"Did your husband disappear?" Brita said.

"They sent him to England to be a missionary. I don't know where he is now."

"And you were married in this church."

"There is a thing called a matching ceremony. This is before the wedding. They have mate selection."

"Do I really want to hear this?"

"Some members wear actual labels saying Infertile, like, or May Be Gay. Just so the surprises are kept in check."

"Listen, there are going to be surprises. I would be the tattooed lady if I had to list the full particulars."

"Taking Powerful Tranquilizers."

"And who selected your mate?"

"Reverend Moon."

"And how did you feel about this?"

"I thought it was perfectly lovely. I stood up when my name was called. I went to the front of this" ballroom-type place. Master was way over at the other end of the stage with many people standing between us, officials and members of the blessing committee and so forth. So then he just pointed to a man in the audience."

"And you looked at him and knew he was the right one."

"I thought I honestly loved him even before he finished rising to his full height. I thought how great he's Korean because many Koreans have been church members for a long time and this would give us a deeper foundation to build on. And I liked the darkness and sleekness of his hair."

"My husband was largely bald."

"But guess what I found out later. The day before the ceremony Master had looked at photographs of members and he actually matched us by photograph. So I thought how great, I have an Instamatic husband."

"Do you know how lucky you are to be out of there?"

"I don't like hearing that expressed, necessarily."

"You are extremely lucky."

"There are more potatoes," Karen said.

"There are always more potatoes. I'm talky by nature. Okay? I make a lot of noise, I see people, I see men, I like to talk to men, I have affairs but I never know I'm happy for five years minimum. Think about Scott."

"I think about him. But I think about Kim too. He was husband-for-eternity. He wore a dark blue suit and maroon tie. They all did. And all the brides wore Simplicity Pattern number eight three nine two with the neckline two inches higher."

"Go back to Scott and stay with him. You people belong together, all three of you. I think it's a strange and sad way to live in many respects but who am I to say that something is strange and anyway you desperately need each other. I don't like thinking of Bill being off alone somewhere."

"How do you know he's alone?"

"Of course he's alone. He wants to be so alone that he can forget how to live. He doesn't want it anymore. He wants to give it all back. I'm completely certain he's alone. I know that man for a hundred years."