"Deborah! Deborah!"

Deborah sat and stared at the little girl – probably five years old, maybe six – looking up to her mother to ask for guidance. Her eyes locked on an ink line in the centre of the canvas. What was supposed to be a petite nose to complete the girl's facial features was now a crooked monstrosity that blurred out her identity.

"Deborah!"

It was an ugly thing, that line. An entropic island in a sea of order and perfection. It almost didn't matter that a combination of buttons on a keyboard would make it so it had never been there. It was as much a part of the drawing as the sketch underneath, and the colours that would be added later.

"Deborah! Where are you, now...? Deborah?!"

Deborah groaned. The week's cartoon was to go into print the next day, and she hadn't even finished the first panel. She could barely draw a line, it seemed, without her name on somebody's lips. Most of the time it was her father, the rest of the time it was her mother.

"Deborah!"

It was her father this time. His harsh baritone voice rang in her ears with each bellow. Deborah's eyes stayed affixed to the screen; her hands poised over a keyboard waiting for instructions.

I've swept the room, haven't I?

I've pumped water already.

I've dried all his clothes. They're even ironed, sef.

We've just eaten. Seth has done his homework...

What could he possibly want now?!

The little girl. A testament to the lack of progress on what should have been a week's work. There was no point, she knew. The girl couldn't answer her questions, especially not with her face blotted out the way it was.

Deborah was tired.

"Deborah!"

Continuing to ignore him was far from an option. She had learnt that the hard way when she was seven. The scar on her arm was a constant reminder of that one lesson; for her, her brothers, and the neighbour children. And she didn't believe he'd do anything as bad as that to her ever again. But if he did decide to revise that lesson with her, no one would complain. In a few months she would officially be an adult, but that mattered very little in this world of theirs.

"Deborah!"

That was the eighth time.

There was an old friend of hers; Silence was his name – for the most important virtue a child of God was to have according to Papa. They hadn't seen in close to a decade now – Silence's family had moved to the State of Judah to be closer to the Senate, where his father had found employment. Deborah was not sure she could call him her best friend – every child was taught from birth that his best friend was Jesus, the Son; no mere man could take higher priority than that. But they saw each other every day at school and during devotions. And they saw each other outside of those times a lot, too. It was one of those things Deborah looked back on with a nostalgic longing - and there were few of those. And like other things that she remembered fondly about her childhood, their friendship seemed to bother her parents - her father especially. And anything that bothered her father was not permitted to continue in any space under the sun.

It was law.

"Deborah!"

Deborah - her hands suspended over her keyboard and drawing tablet, still wrought with indecision – was reminded of a time when Silence's company was still approved of. When she had divulged how burdened she felt by her father – attending to his every whim with little time to concentrate on assignments. She had been caned by her class teacher that day – she remembered – because she'd neglected an essay to help her mother cook dinner for her father's study group.

Silence, carefree as he was, had simply hissed and taken a bite out of an apple. He chewed for a long and obnoxious amount of time, leaving Deborah convinced she was being ignored. So it felt out of nowhere when he gulped and asked a simple question. "Have you tried counting to ten?"

She didn't say yes or no. She'd only been confused. So Silence explained, between bites and chews. Anytime his parents – mostly his mother – called on him when he was busy with an assignment, he would count the number of times that his name was called, and would only answer on the tenth call. "After the fifth time they usually get tired." He said, before running off to throw away the apple core.

That night, Deborah followed his advice, but all she had learnt was that her father was much more persistent than his parents.

"Seth! Go and call your sister for me!"

Her brother Seth seemed to materialize out of thin air before she could turn her head. His rounded cheeks reminded Deborah of a stuffed-bear, or a pig whenever she was in a mood. The word "pig" circled her mind at the moment, and Deborah had to scold herself for those thoughts.

"Deborah. Daddy is calling you. He's in his room." He added before running off to do whatever their mother was making him do with his afternoon. Memorizing the rules, probably. Deborah thought, sourly.

I haven't heard from Silence since Silent Night. She remembered. I wonder how his family's doing.

*****

The parents' room was closed off from the rest of the home. This was a conscious architectural decision. Every residence in the country had the parents' bedroom in some sort of isolation from the rest of the house. Unlike the other rooms, the parent's room never had any indoor windows, where one could look in from the corridor. The only way into the room was through a single door at the end of the corridor, just off the living room, where it could be covered in a regal darkness. Deborah always felt a twinge of dread whenever she was called to her parent's bedroom, even on occasions as benign as a simple birthday or Christmas greeting.

All by design, she was sure.

Deborah knocked. The door was a sturdy, hard wood. Not quite soundproof. She pressed her ear to the door and listened. She didn't hear a reply, so she knocked again, louder. Then she listened again, and she heard a gruff whisper through the hard wood.

"Come in." Her father said. And Deborah obeyed. She made sure to take off her rubber slippers before entering.

The cold air was the first thing to hit her when she stepped into the room, the second being the soft carpet brushing against her toes. The carpet covered the entire bedroom floor; the largest room in what was a rather small dwelling (she had once stepped in the carpet with her shoes on and had been forced to brush the entire thing as punishment).

Deborah lazily pushed the door close when she walked in. She heard the slight creak it made as it sailed through the air, but she didn't hear it slam, and she didn't hear the lock catch.

Damn it...

...Lord forgive me.

"Don't leave my door open, now!" Her father barked. The heavyset man of about forty-years of age – and twice that in experience according to him – sat up in the bed. "Close the door, jare!"

Deborah had closed it before the words crossed his lips.

Her father had been reading the Bible, it seemed. He held the leather-bound thing in his hand as tightly as if it were an extension of himself. He stared at her, with an expression of stern nothingness on his face – it was hard to tell what mood he was in through his facial features alone, but you could feel the rage seep out of him like an invisible, yet viscous gas. She wondered if he had called her to look up a random phrase in the Bible for him – he would do that spontaneously from time to time. The last time it was "The Snare of the Fowler", which Deborah had found, after an inordinate amount of study, in the book of Psalms. She supposed the Holy Spirit brought the phrases to him when he was in prayer, but oddly enough never the verses.

"Deborah, how many times did I call you?"

"Nine times." She said, before she could stop herself. She hated to lie, but it would have been a simple one to tell. And now she had nothing else to say to defend herself.

Her father's eyes widened. "So, you heard me since." It was not a question.

"Daddy, I..."

"So you heard when I called you and you ignored me!" His voice rose. And that was when she saw the rage. "Do I look like your mate?"

Deborah didn't know what to say. She knew she was in the wrong, but she felt unfairly treated all the same. "I was working, Daddy..."

"I am your father! I hope you haven't forgotten that!" He was yelling now.

"I...I'm sorry, Daddy." She stuttered.

"Don't ever insult me like this again!" Deborah nearly jumped at this. "You can try that rubbish with your friends outside if you like. You can even try it with your mother if you like, see where it takes you. But the next time I call your name, you better answer me if you don't want me to seriously deal with you!"

Deborah scratched at the scar on her arm. "I'm sorry, Daddy." She said, contrite.

He hissed in response. "Clear off. Go and boil water for tea." He wasn't yelling anymore, but the edge was still in his voice. He seemed quite unshaken from his outburst.

Deborah sniffed. "Okay, daddy...." Deborah mumbled, turning to leave.

"Come back."

Deborah turned again. The Bible was in his hands once again – he had recently had it bound at the local library, so it looked even better than new. He took great care of the good book, and kept it near to his heart, along with the laws of the land.

"Always say 'Yes, Daddy' or 'Yes, Sir' when I speak to you, you hear?" he said. "Don't only say 'Okay' or 'Yes'. I'm not your mate."

Deborah didn't bother to correct him. She just said "Yes, Daddy", and left the room.

*****

A watched pot takes forever to boil, the proverb makers would say. It doesn't help when the cooker itself is slow, Deborah Temperance would like to add.

A small green tray. A plastic jug. A white mug – clean, with no markings, chips, or blemish. Two spoons of sugar. A tin of Jireh branded evaporated milk. A single bag of Jireh black tea – occasionally two, but not unless he asked.

Her father drank a lot of tea. He would take a cup with breakfast, lunch, and dinner; with a few in between. He took it to calm down, her mother would say - for all the good it did. And Deborah, from an early age, had been taught to prepare tea for him whenever he asked for it. It was routine for her – one that she could never be comfortable breaking.

The water had not even begun to bubble the third time she checked it. She thrust a finger into the pot, confident in what she would not be able to feel. She hissed and replaced the lid. It seemed that all the heat was inside of her. She could barely even concentrate; all she could think of was the time that was being wasted.

Could she not just go to work then, instead of waiting around to watch a pot that would seemingly rather spite her than boil and let her be rid of it?

No.

She could not.

If she wasn't there, the water would boil over. Then it would become steam and evaporate into the atmosphere and then become nothing. That would be waste. And her father would be furious. And he would be right to show his fury, because our Lord and Savior – who multiplied the loaves and fishes and made sure his disciples gathered the surplus – hated wastage, no matter how trivial.

A child of Sinai did not waste water. A child of Sinai would never make her father furious for any reason. Only the wayward children did things to upset their parents. And she was not a wayward child. She could not be one.

She checked the water once again. Still no bubbles to be seen, but at least it was warm.

She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a loaf of sliced bread – also Jireh branded. The seal had been broken, and the bread pack was tied up at the top with a crude knot to keep out air and other unwanted things. Satisfied, she untied the knot and pulled out two slices, stuffing one of them into her mouth.

The bread was dry and tough to chew. It went down her throat like cold sandpaper. There was a time when she didn't mind, or even notice – a time when Jireh sliced bread was all she ever knew. Then when she was thirteen years old, a bakery opened just down the road from her house. Five Loaves, they called themselves. Two young men who everyone had known from the Chapel's communion unit, who seemed to have developed an affinity for baking out of nowhere.

The Five Loaves had been a huge success, from the days it opened, up until it was shut down a year later, under the orders of Beth Jireh – the Sinai Ministry of Food and Drugs – for reasons unknown and unquestioned. Deborah had never tasted Jireh bread the same way since. She wasn't sure she would ever enjoy bread as good as Five Loaves again – she highly doubted another bakery would try to compete with the Jireh brand, blessed by Papa himself.

She swallowed and took a bite out of the second slice. Dry. Tough to chew. But still something. And for that she had to thank God. She pulled out a third slice.

"Stop right there!"

Deborah jumped and turned around on the spot. Binging food was considered gluttony and greed; and punished as such. She barely even registered the tone of voice as her heart raced. The loaf slipped out of her hand and tumbled to the ground. Two slices flew in different directions. The food in her mouth creeped down her throat. She started to gag.

Standing at door, a vaguely tickled expression on his otherwise unsmiling face, was a plump-ish boy who looked quite like Mr. Temperance. His finger was pointed straight at her hand and its contents. Deborah coughed twice and swallowed.

"You almost killed me."

"Is that not bread you have in your hand?" The boy asked, his gaze and finger fixed on what was in her hands. She glanced at her hand, the one still clutching the half-eaten bread slice. Crumbs were already falling to the floor she had swept that morning. She wasn't too bothered as she'd sweep it the next day anyway.

"What of it?" she asked, putting the rest of it in her mouth. Then she raised the hand that held the other, untouched slice.

"You're pilfering food again." The boy said, a small smile creeping. "You are wayward. I'm going to tell Daddy."

Deborah took her time chewing the bread, making a show of savoring the dry and hard thing in front of her brother, before swallowing with a feigned satisfaction. "You can tell him, now. I'm waiting here."

He didn't move or say anything, though his smile was showing itself more and more.

"You're free, now. I'm not stopping you." She taunted, waving the bread slice like it was a hand fan. "Look, the evidence is in my hand. And all over the floor. Call him quickly before I remove everything."

The smile broke through the cracks, and young Cain Temperance – because that was her brother's name – started to laugh. Not enough to split sides or produce tears. It was a small, subdued sound that one could recognize as representing mirth. Seeing him made Deborah crack a smile as well.

"You want?" she asked, holding out the bread in her hand. Crumbs spilled on the floor. Cain smiled back and took it from her.

"What do we say?" Deborah drawled, as her brother ate up the bread greedily.

"Thank you." Cain said, through a full mouth. Then a few chews, a large gulp and a hard swallow. Then another, more audible "Thank you, Deborah."

Cain offered to help her replace the bread slices on the floor, while she went to get some brooms from the closet to sweep up the crumbs. By the time she returned with the broom and dustpan, he had tied up the bread pack and placed it back in the fridge. As she swept up the crumbs and other dirt around, she noted that Cain was wearing a T-shirt – white, with the verse "Prov 3: 5 – 6" on the chest; she couldn't remember what verse that was in the Bible – and a pair of shorts. An unusually casual choice.

"Aren't you going to register again?" She asked. She got to her feet, careful not to spill the contents of the dustpan. Cain shook his head.

"They're having network issues. Mummy's friend said the server isn't working." "Mummy's friend" Philomena – a jolly old woman that ran the local – and only approved – cybercafé. Mrs. Temperance knew Philomena the same way Deborah had known Silence and most of her other "friends" from the local youth groups – or Fellowship of Kings as they were called officially. "We'll go tomorrow, after school." He continued.

The lid of the pot clinked as it hopped about, and steam burst out from the sides. Cain had turned off the cooker just as Deborah dumped the dustpan and broom on the kitchen table. But it was too late. The water had already been wasted in the air. It was fortunate that only God and her brother could bear witness.

"How far, now? How does it feel to be thirteen?" Deborah asked. She emptied the contents of the dustpan – crumbs and all – in the dustbin under the sink. It was nearly full – she would need to empty it before she went to bed. She could just glimpse him shrugging out of the corner of her eye.

He shrugged. "Normal. Thirteen feels a lot like twelve."

He was right. Before the form-filling and the finger scanning and the identification number assignment that held her down the way no chains ever would. For just a day or two after her thirteenth birthday, thirteen didn't feel much different from twelve.

"I guess you have to register to feel the difference." She said, as casually as she could manage.

Cain watched as she emptied the boiled water pot into the jug and placed the mug, sugar and other things among it in the tray. "Is it hard to have a perfect record?" he asked. And of course, he would ask her, as she would know all about it. "I heard you can get strikes for anything. Thomas said his brother got a strike when he reported some guys that were getting drunk."

Deborah had heard that too. That kind of thing spread quickly in the Academy. All by design. "I can't really talk about it now. I'm kind of busy." The tray was already in her hands as she said this. "It's all about being at the right place at the right time. That's all I can say now."

She hurried away before he could ask her anymore questions. She would explain more to him later, and as time went on, he would learn for himself, and hopefully pass their collective knowledge to little Seth when the time came.

Fortunately, by then she would be gone. It would be about seven months till her own birthday, but the waiting made it seem longer.