by B S Steele
Volunteering to help with Jr. camp gave me an extra week away from home. Danielle and I were assigned kitchen duty with the rest of the teen volunteers. After we baked a total of thirty pies and cleaned all the equipment until it sparkled, our small group of volunteers sat playing cards. We decided on spoons, we started to tell a story.
“Did you guys hear that the prison is literally up the road?” Danielle started. “That’s why there are signs on the highway that say not to pick up hitchhikers.”
I nodded, saying, “Yep, and one of the youth leaders told us to walk in pairs tonight, because one of them escaped.”
“Really?” our friend Nicole asked, looking frightened.
“Yes, really, and the worst part is, he’s a serial killer.”
Nicole’s eyes widened. “No, you guys are lying,” she hesitated.
Shiloh joined in, giving me my cue to leave. I grabbed my cup and acted as if I was going to the kitchen to fill it while they continued to convince Nicole and the others that there was a real serial killer escaped and loose.
Once in the kitchen, I grabbed a long chopping knife and a mask we’d found earlier. It was a scary twisted Halloween face, and perfect for pretending to be a madman. I stole outside and began scratching just beneath the windows.
“Did you hear that?” someone whispered. I paused as they listened.
When they started talking again, I banged loudly on the window, making a few of them jump and look my way.
“AHHHRRRRRRR!” I growled, jumping up with the knife in full view, my mask pressed against the window.
Nicole shrieked and ran for the back door, the others busting out laughing as I came running through the door, chasing her. She bolted out through the kitchen, and I doubled over laughing, taking off my mask and gulping in fresh air.
I had to make the most of my time at camp, because my parents were discussing taking us out of school. It was getting too expensive for them, and with the new baby coming, and R.J. leaving for college, my Mother wouldn’t be able to take us the seventeen miles back and forth every day. I worried about going to public school. Things were so different there, and I knew I would face a lot of challenges related to my Faith. At least that’s what I’d been told. Public school was full of worldly boys and girls. Sex, drugs, homosexuality, and all kinds of immorality were rampant there.
Nobody prayed in school anymore, and the kids didn’t have the threat of corporal punishment like our school did. It was a cesspool of watered-down academics and full of lost souls. I’d be lucky if I wasn’t shot, raped or pressured into drinking alcohol. What I didn’t know, was that although I would be spared the raping and bullet holes, I was about to be isolated beyond my imagination.
Chapter 16: Count Your Blessings
The line of yellow masking tape across the carpet of our room spoke volumes. I was sixteen, and Mother had instructed Emma and me to clean our shared bedroom. My side of the room was plain and ridiculously tidy, just like I’d been taught in Sunday school.
I was reading a book titled, Character by Jeff Owens. I remember him telling a story about how when he had started courting his future wife, he had come to call while she was away and he had wandered into her bedroom, noting the neatness of it. I figured I should be prepared, just in case the same were to ever happen to me. If I was to be a good and submissive wife, I needed to learn a lot of things.
Cleanliness, cooking, sewing, ironing and a sweet and mild spirit were second only to a Godly soul. Women in our church were not going to be doctors or lawyers, but supporters of their husbands, and eventually Mothers to their children, charged with the responsibility of raising future servants of God.
Emma hadn’t yet begun to really care about cleanliness, but she feared our Mother enough to hide her piles of laundry in every nook and cranny she could find. I watched her from my side of the room as I watered the spider plant on my nightstand, being careful not to spill the water onto the rickety cardboard that held it together.
She was gathering papers and forgotten socks and stuffing them under her mattress. I smoothed the faded floral comforter on my bed, looking at her.
“What?” she said, looking annoyed.
“You know you are going to get into trouble, doing that,” I replied.
I wanted her to get into trouble. I was tired of her messes. She was such a slob, and it irritated me that she didn’t seem to care. She shrugged, taking another pile into her closet. Our room was large. The drywall was crumbling in places, and the carpet was a faded dark purple, flat and barely covering to the edges of the tile underneath. We had three closets in all. One for Emma, with shelves we used for dolls and books, and my closet, an oddly beautiful cedar room with one long pole for hanging my clothes, which I hung by length and color.
The third closet was used for storage, full of cobwebs and creepy noises in the night. Our furniture consisted of thrift store odds and ends, but I loved my antique dresser with its faded mirror and skeleton key drawers. My stepdad had found a key to fit the lock among discards from his shop. My window overlooked the fields and an abandoned neighboring barn.
Suddenly, Mother appeared in the doorway. Her hair was frazzled from too many at home bleaching’s and a long restless day of sleep. Her puffy eyes looked around our room, her face expressionless. She walked to my closet and looked in. I waited for her to say something about how nice it looked. I’d even used lemon oil on the cedar. She said nothing, but instead, turned and went into Emma’s closet. We heard the hangers scrape across their metal bar, our eyes locking, anticipating what she was about to find.
“Mom, I’m. . .” Emma started.
The hangers groaned together as our Mom yanked them all to the side, revealing piles of clothes and toys jumbled together with garbage. Things started flying out of the closet, one piece at a time. Emma stood frozen in the middle of the room.
“Mom! I’m not done yet!” she tried, her voice cracking with defeat.
Mother came barreling out of the closet, kicking the mess under her feet, her eyes wild.
“You aren’t done!? You live like a PIG! You think I’m stupid?! You think you can hide all this junk, and I just won’t notice?” she demanded, her cheeks shaking with rage. “I’m so sick and tired of you, Emma. You never learn. No matter how many times I tell you. Now you’re stuffing things and hiding crap like some little ANIMAL. I can’t believe you would take all that effort, hiding your shit, instead of just putting it away where it belongs!” She made a disgusted noise. “Look at this! Dirty underwear?! Towels?! Now I know where they all went! I guess you guys just think I’m fucking stupid! DUH! MOM’S A FUCKING IDIOT!”
She moved closer, her lips inches from Emma’s face.
“You know what you are? You’re a little sneak, that’s what you are,” she spat. Emma flinched, tears welling in her eyes.
“I-I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Mother ignored her, ripping the blanket off her bed, revealing the arm of a shirt from between the mattress. She shot Emma a withering look.
“What the HELL is this?!”
Emma glued her eyes to the ground as Mother flipped the mattress over, dolls flew head over heels into the air. She turned to Emma, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her.
“I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you! You little sneak! You think I’m retarded? Is that it?” She screamed.
Her eyes were bulging from their sockets, as Emma began to sob, which only made Mother angrier. She gritted her teeth, slamming Emma up against the closet door.
“You think you’re fucking so sneaky, don’t you? Always the one who lives like a damn slob! You don’t give a shit about what I say! None of you give a damn, just always doing whatever the FUCK you want!”
SLAM! Emma’s head knocked into the wall. She wailed in pain and began to hyperventilate. Mother began to lift her off her feet by her neck. Emma gasped for air, her feet kicking, absolute terror in her eyes. I bolted across the room, wrenching on my Mother’s arm with
all my weight.
“Don’t touch her!” I screamed, digging my nails into her arm.
She dropped Emma, breathing heavily. She turned to face me, her eyes dripping with rage. I stood there, my fury matching her own. I had wanted Emma to get in trouble. I had wanted her to get grounded. She needed to learn to be tidy. She’d never learn if she didn’t now. But I hadn’t wanted this. My Mother was completely out of control.
Mother’s eyes dodged to the side, her body becoming more relaxed. Emma’s face was stained with tears, her little body still shaking.
“Now clean this shit up, and do it right this time,” Mother growled in her direction. After she was gone, I slowly helped Emma pick up the mess, listening to her sob softly, letting out long breaths to calm herself. I glanced over at my immaculately clean half of our bedroom, divided by that ugly piece of masking tape. My stomach turned, releasing a few knots as I slowly began to peel up the tape, rolling it into a sticky ball and throwing it into the trash where it belonged. Emma and I would never survive in this house if we were ever divided again.
Chapter 17: Hope
As the weeks passed, we became more isolated through home-schooling. My stepdad bought a house in the country, and my parents decided to rejoin the small congregation at the Little Church in the Wildwood. The church was even smaller since our kindly Parson had given it over to a new Pastor.
I was now not only without Danielle and my church friends; I was with my Mother every moment she chose to be awake. I began to feel all of us caving under the pressure. My Mother’s depression and rages caused my brothers to whisper things children should never wish.
I decided I needed to do something drastic and convinced our new Pastor to come for a home visit. Maybe the man of God would coax my Mother back into society. We didn’t have many visitors, and I knew during happy times my Mom did enjoy company. I felt like maybe she was just lonely and overwhelmed by the tasks at home. I was nervous, wondering if she would simply refuse to come out of her room or suddenly fall ill and tell Pastor Pharris she was not up for a house call.
The one thing I had on my side was that my stepdad was already at his limit with my Mother’s excuses for avoiding church. My stepdad had either the patience of a Saint, or the indifference of a goat. I couldn’t be sure which it was, but either way I could see a restless annoyance in his eyes. He had this habit of sucking in his cheeks as he chewed the soft inner flesh, literally eating tiny bits of himself in his silent anger.
I paced between the entranceway and the kitchen, fidgeting with the washer and checking for laundry, making sure Emma had switched it over like our Mom had asked. The dishes were all cleared, and there were no crumbs on the table, but I washed it a second time. I folded the washcloth in half, then in fourths, just the way my Mom liked it done, ensuring that no crumbs tumbled to the floor below. I glanced anxiously at her bedroom door. No sound was coming from behind it. I knew she hadn’t showered today, but I imagined that the silence could mean she was doing her makeup. Brushing on the lovely pink palette she’d bought from the Avon lady.
The front door slammed, and I heard my stepdad’s heavy work boots shake the thin floor, its plywood peeking through the peeling linoleum.
“Hi Dad,” I smiled, pushing my glasses up on my nose.
“Hey, Anna!” He said in an unusually cheerful tone. “Where’s your Mom?” Perhaps like me, he thought that the impending guest would prompt her to get out of bed today.
“She’s in her room,” I said dryly.
He tilted his head back, looking down his nose at me, and began biting his cheek.
“I see.” He said, his mood plummeting.
I turned back to the table, scrubbing at a knot in the wood. There was never much said between me and my stepdad. Nothing bad, nothing good, just an uncomfortable silence that spoke volumes. I felt he loved me, given that he paid for my schooling, my clothes, and that he put food on our table every day.
He wasn’t unkind, and sometimes he could even be fun. Occasionally, he’d encourage a game of baseball in the yard, or teach us how to plant and harvest from our garden. But there was an invisible wall between us that constantly reminded me that I wasn’t truly his daughter.
I belonged to my Mother, and at the end of the day, she controlled everyone’s fate. Mostly, he seemed to just go along with whatever she wanted to avoid fighting. In this battle, he was as helpless as I was.
Emma came into the kitchen, her flowered sun dress hanging just below her knees. Her bare feet were dirty from playing outside.
“You better go put some socks on,” I warned. “You know they don’t like feet.”
She rolled her eyes at me, but turned up the stairs to our bedroom, knowing I was right. I thought about my own appearance for a second. My khaki skirt was ironed smooth, its large ugly buttons sewn neatly in a row. I checked that my hair was “out of my face,” as my Mom would say. She hated it when I didn’t look presentable, and sometimes even mocked my pale appearance.
We’d been dying my hair blonde since I was twelve, because my naturally darker hair washed out my complexion, according to Mother. I heard my parent’s door catch on the carpet the way it always did when the door opened. I swore I could hear that sound from two mailboxes away. My shoulders tensed, waiting to see if my Mother would emerge, but it was just my stepdad coming from inside the room.
His eyes had a sunken appearance that made him look very tired.
“Should we make coffee or something?” I asked, remembering my etiquette class from Sunday School.
We didn’t have pretty coffee cups or a serving plate, but we at least had coffee. I felt I should have made muffins or cakes, but that would have required waking Mom up. Waking her was much worse than not having muffins to offer Pastor Pharris.
“Um, yeah, I guess we should,” my stepdad replied, looking a little surprised.
It was easy to forget things like that in our house, since we didn’t have many guests.
Pastor Pharris drove up in a rattletrap rusty Buick, it’s shocks failing to navigate the potholes of our gravel driveway. His fifteen-year-old son autistic Darren was next to him in the front seat. His simple gaze looking faraway, lost in his muddled thoughts. I imagined that it must be a strange sort of beautiful to be handicapped. The world probably seemed very innocent and wide to Darren, like a rolling reel of film that kept repeating, fading in and out. Like a kaleidoscope of unending images and raw emotion.
He looked towards our house, his deadpan gaze catching me looking out from behind the window. I groaned inside, wishing he hadn’t seen me. I wanted to duck under the house to the basement, but it was too late. I waved at him through the glass, dreading being forced to entertain him.
He liked to stare at me, his pointy cowboy boots and oversized belt buckle making him look like an overgrown nine-year-old stuck in a John Wayne re-run. Once I’d overheard his Mother talking about the struggles of raising a teenage boy with ever-climbing hormone levels. I shuddered inside, thinking about his scraggly mustache.
Nearly every Sunday, I’d feel the hairs on the back of my neck start to prickle and turn around to see him standing there. His thumbs in his belt loops, unaware of his own fish-eyed gawking. A pang of guilt washed over me. Judging him was unkind, no matter how bad he made my skin crawl. It was my duty to be gracious, and to submit to the will of God.
“Oh, look Anna,” my stepdad joked from behind me. “It’s your boyfriend.”
I jumped, startled by his voice, then scrunched up my nose in disgust.
“Ew! Dad!” I protested.
Parents always had a way of knowing just how to make an already awkward situation worse. He smiled playfully at me and then opened the door to greet the Pastor.
My siblings flocked in from whatever hovels they had been hiding in, excited to have a guest. Pastor Pharris greeted each one of us with a warm handshake, his floppy leather Bible tucked under his arm. He hadn’t been Pastor of our church long, but my stepdad seemed to genuinely
like him. I wasn’t as quick to trust him, with his bad suits and sweaty comb-over, but I felt like he’d listened to me the day I went into his office and told him we needed his help.
Ever since our church split my stepdad had climbed the short ladder of importance in our small congregation. I’d felt supported and cared for when he’d agreed to drive the thirty-five miles to our home. I’d told him how bad things were getting, how lonely I was, and how sick I felt my Mother was getting. I told him how she barely moved from one room to the next. I was worried about her, not quite understanding her depression, only knowing that it was getting unbearable. I didn’t tell him that I’d seen her walking around the house as if in another world, dried blood staining the back of her pajama pants, not caring that she’d messed herself. I didn’t tell him how I’d begun to mark the inside of the crumbling drywall on the stairs, every time I thought I might light the house on fire while she slept, putting an end to the home that had become our prison.
I hid the scratches on my wrists, from the times I’d scraped at my skin, tears rolling down my face after a particularly long day of her torment. The worst part, the absolute hardest part, was how much I loved her. There were days she would scream so long she’d have flecks of white spittle on her lips. I’d feel myself die inside, wishing I knew how to make her happy again.
I had not told the Pastor everything, but I had told him enough. I’d told him that I was concerned about our education. Homeschooling was putting me behind in math, and my brothers and sister were all suffering from lack of proper instruction. My stepdad was doing his best to keep us up on our tests, and some days my Mother did try. In fact, some days, she was the model Mother, up in the morning making breakfast with our schoolbooks set out and ready.