We were chosen young. So young, my mother was only a swear of a stern mouth and a ruddy forehead. An oiled curl escaped the crisp white of her bonnet, but I do remember that because it was the same rusty red as my own. Her voice, nothing, I hear nothing if I try to pull back thoughts of those days when I was only a chubby-legged toddler. She is only a fevered dream, opaque memory.

I have no remembrance of my father, although I have been told I must have had one, or else I would have never been chosen to be taken to Theses.

My new family would be elected over the years. At first, there were hundred of us, clad from elbow to shin in ebony rompers. My first friend was a boy with curly black hair and smooth brown skin, Luther. He was very quiet and very kind and I liked that in comparison to my mouth that would never stay shut when I needed it to. We would practice cursive on our backs during playtime, and his form was always more elegant, more patient, and gentler than my own, which I did with half-moons of dirt under my nails. Luther was my better in every way and so I was only shock still when the next election determined that he would need to go and I was still elected to stay.

My tears were bitter as he left, and I told Deacon Lydia that they have made a mistake, that I was very naughty and should be the one sent away, not Luther.

Deacon Lydia was grizzled, sinewy, a woman who seemed to have sprouted from the stony ground of Theses. But at that moment, she laid a firm but tender grip onto my wrist.

“Now, you know better than that, Corinth,” she said and it was supposed to be a chide, but the tone was too gentle to rise to that specific occasion. “The Election has nothing to do with being naughty or good or any of that. We are all creatures of grace, after all.”

I did know, it was the main lesson they drilled in our heads next to the Old Language. But I pulled at my tears before sputtering out a question of where Luther would go, what would happen to him now?

At that, Deacon Lydia chuckled as if she had heard something quite ridiculous. “Why, he will go where every child goes: back to his mother.”

My gaze was glazed with broiling tears when I stared up at her and asked her about my mother, what about her.

This time she smiled, but the crinkles of her eyes were hesitant, “You are part of the elect, my girl. Your mother is the Almighty.”

I blinked. And my father?

She gave me a pocket square ironed neatly into four folds. “Well, he is the Almighty, too.”

And that was when I decided that the Almighty must really be something, to be both at the same time, to be the one to keep my stay even when I was sure I was the naughtiest, clumsiest, dirtiest child to ever stumble across the halls and fields of Theses. And so, I believed, then at least.