My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss)

by Carmen Richter

  But still, God would forgive me for lying. My dad? He wouldn’t forgive me if he knew the truth.

  His folded belt connected with my thigh.

  “Didn’t do anything wrong?!” he roared. “You fucking disobeyed me!”

  “I got sick,” I pleaded as I swallowed down the bile in my throat. “Brendan was just trying to help.”

  “You allowed yourself to be alone with a boy!” he growled, hitting my other thigh, this time higher up. “What was going to stop him from taking advantage of you? What was going to stop him from forcing himself on you? From fucking violating you and making you unclean?! This is nothing compared to what that boy could have done!”

  What? My dad had known Brendan almost since the day he was born. How could he think that someone I’d been friends with for my whole life would ever do anything to hurt me?

  “He’d never do that,” I sobbed. “He’d never hurt me. He—”

  He loves me.

  Even while I was terrified, while my father was in the middle of beating me, I felt the truth of those words down to my bones. Brendan hadn’t just been saying that. He’d shown me tonight, in every way possible.

  The way he’d talked to me and the agony in his voice. How real and honest every single word that came out of his mouth was.

  The way his first priority was still making sure I was okay, even though I knew I’d broken his heart tonight.

  The way he’d kissed me. Gosh, the way he’d kissed me. I swear, I’d thought I was having an out-of-body experience. Feeling him hold me tighter than he ever had before, like he was telling me without words that he wasn’t going to let me go. That first moment when our lips connected, and the moment it deepened and turned into something bigger and more intense than I’d ever imagined…

  No. I couldn’t think about it anymore. Because it was never going to happen again, and thinking about what could have been would only make it that much harder.

  Another swat with the belt, this time across my stomach, pulled me from the thought.

  “You rebellious, disobedient, disloyal child! You are not to fucking talk back to me!”

  I couldn’t help the tears that started to stream down my cheeks. I hadn’t thought I had any tears left to cry tonight, but apparently, I was wrong.

  This time, a blow landed on my arm.

  “Selfish!”

  Another swat, this time right across my chest.

  “Sinner!”

  He yanked me forward and turned me around, throwing me against the door. I cried out in agony as my torso rammed into the doorknob, and I thought I heard a crack, but I couldn’t be positive. Because it might have just been the snap of the belt as it swatted between my shoulder blades. I cried out again from the sting, and he swatted me again.

  “This is for your own good, so you will learn to obey my directives and stay on the path of righteousness!”

  Another swat landed on my back, and with the intense pain in my abdomen where I’d hit the doorknob, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to stumble away, but before I could even take five steps, my father grabbed my arm, yanking me backward.

  I heard a loud pop, and I let out a wail of complete, absolute agony as searing pain radiated from my shoulder all the way down my arm and up to my neck. The bile that had been churning in my stomach rose again, and this time there was no stopping it from making an appearance. I threw up right there on the welcome mat, not even six inches in front of me. Another swat with the belt landed on my back as I fell to my knees, and I cried out again. I honestly didn’t know how I was still conscious right now, because the pain was actually making me dizzy and lightheaded, and I felt like I was going to pass out.

  What had gotten into him tonight? He’d always been strict, and he’d always…um, taken the Bible’s directives on how parents should punish their children more literally than he should have, but he’d never been cruel like this before.

  “Dad, stop! I can’t move my arm!” I sobbed.

  “Oh, you can’t move your arm?” he taunted. “Well, I guess you should have thought of that before you got into a fucking car with a boy! Maybe you’ll fucking remember whose you are next time!”

  “Mom!” I cried. “Mom! Help me!”

  In all the times my father had used physical punishment to discipline me, I’d never called to my mother for help. I’d always just accepted the consequences of my disobedience and known that my father wasn’t going to give me a punishment that wasn’t fair.

  But this? This was just like Marie had talked about at church last month. It wasn’t discipline anymore. This was abuse. I was hurt. Really hurt. And I was terrified. I had no idea what was wrong with my arm, but I knew it was bad.

  “Mom!” I called again, yelling at the top of my lungs. “Please!”

  “Your mother can’t save you,” he scoffed.

  Another swat landed on my back, and I cried out again from the pain, using my good arm to steady myself against the door so I didn’t fall on the floor into my own puke.

  “Abraham! What are you doing?!” my mom yelled.

  “This fucking deceitful harlot wasn’t at that dance tonight! She was with a boy, fornicating!” he bellowed.

  “No, I wasn’t,” I sobbed. “I wasn’t. I was sick. He just brought me home.”

  “Abraham, stop it before I call the police!” my mom screamed. “I don’t care if she was drawing a pentagram on the ground and using black magic to summon Beelzebub! Look at your daughter! Look what you’re doing!”

  “I’m saving her immortal soul!”

  “While damaging her mortal body! How are you going to explain this at church tomorrow, Abraham? I can see from here that you’ve done serious damage to her shoulder, so other people are going to notice too. What are you going to tell them when they ask about it?”

  Something that sounded like a tiger’s growl ripped from my dad’s mouth, and then, with a harsh glare at my mother, he turned and stomped off toward the bedroom like a petulant child who’d just been told he couldn’t play with his favorite toy anymore.

  Oh, thank God. He was walking away.

  Thank you, Jesus, I prayed. Thank you. It’s over.

  “We’ll deal with this later,” he snarled before he slammed the door.

  The dread returned tenfold. Hadn’t we already dealt with it? What else was there to say? What else was there to do?

  I wanted to call the police, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. All my dad would have to say was that I was a pathological liar and made stories up for attention, and they wouldn’t believe anything I told them. It had worked for him with countless teachers and friends in the past. Why wouldn’t it work with the authorities too?

  And if I called an ambulance, they would just ask questions I couldn’t answer. Even if I did answer, my dad would make sure that anyone who asked him anything about this knew that it wasn’t their place to question how he raised his daughter. And then I’d be punished more for talking.

  But at the same time, I could tell that whatever was wrong with my arm wasn’t just going to go away on its own. I was caught between a rock and a hard place, left with nowhere to turn.

  “Darla,” my mom murmured as she rushed to my side. “What did you do? Why did you set him off like that?”

  What? My dad had just rendered one of my arms useless, hit me with his belt, and thrown me into the doorknob, and the first words out of her mouth were to ask me what I had done?

  The reality was, nothing I could possibly have done warranted this.

  “I got sick at the dance,” I sobbed. “Brendan was there and he offered to take me home, so I let him. I swear, Mom, that’s all. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

  I’d only told that lie a couple of times, but I was already starting to believe it myself. What did that say about me? How awful was it that I was actually starting to believe the stories I was telling my parents as a form of self-preservation?

  “Okay. It’s okay,” she whispered. “You�
��re not in any more trouble. I’ll talk to your dad and make sure of it. Now, let me take a look at that shoulder.”

  “I can’t move my arm,” I sniffled. “I need to go to the hospital, Mom.”

  She took one look at my bad arm and a gasp left her lips. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Sweetheart, this is going to hurt, but I have to set your shoulder. It’s dislocated.”

  A sob tore out of my throat in anticipation of the pain, but I knew I didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t like I could leave my shoulder out of its socket. And my mom used to be a charge nurse in the local emergency room before she had to go on disability. She knew how to set a shoulder.

  She took hold of my hand, and even the light touch sent a wave of pain through me. “Okay, I’m going to do this on the count of three. One—”

  Without warning, she brought my arm straight out in front of me. I screamed in pain as my shoulder loudly popped back into place. It did feel much better immediately, but it still hurt so badly that my vision was blurring.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, giving me a hint of a smile. “It’s worse if you know exactly when it’s coming and tense up. Old nurse’s trick. Let me help you get into your room and out of this dress, and then I’m going to go get you a sling I have in the linen closet.”

  Slowly, she helped me stand, and now that the pain in my shoulder wasn’t quite as intense, I realized that where I’d hit the doorknob was throbbing and it hurt to breathe. Maybe once I got out of this dress, I could see why.

  “I…I puked on the floor,” I sniffled. “It hurt so bad when he yanked on my arm.”

  “Shh. Don’t worry. I’ll get it cleaned up. Let’s just get you into some PJs and get that shoulder stabilized,” she murmured.

  I nodded and let her lead me into my bedroom. After grabbing me a pair of pajama pants and an old t-shirt, she unzipped my dress and slid it down my body, then unfastened the strapless bra I was wearing and did the same thing.

  As I glanced down at my abdomen, I could see the beginning of a huge bruise there, and it looked like it was kind of swollen too. No wonder it hurt so much. Between that and my shoulder, I barely managed to pick the shirt up off my bed and pull it over my head, and my mom had to help me get my pants on because I couldn’t bend over.

  “Okay. Just sit down on the bed and keep your arm as still as you can for a few minutes. I’ll be back,” she said.

  I obeyed, and she disappeared from the room. I heard some scuffling in the hallway and the door to the linen closet opening and closing, and then I heard her going into the kitchen for a minute, and then into the hall bathroom. Finally, after a few minutes, she came back into the room with a shoulder sling, an ice pack, a bottle of Tylenol, and a glass of water.

  After she stabilized my shoulder and put the ice pack on it, she gave me twice the normal amount of Tylenol. But…was I wrong in thinking that there was a lot more that went into treating a dislocated shoulder than this?

  “Mom, not that I’m not grateful that you helped, but I still think I need to see a doctor. Don’t I need to get scans and stuff? And get treatment?” I asked quietly.

  She looked at me and gave me a heartbroken smile. “I can help with all of that. Keeping it stabilized and doing mobility exercises to get your strength back.”

  “But don’t they usually do scans to make sure there’s no other damage?”

  She sighed, and it sounded like she was choking down a sob. “Sweetheart, I know you might not understand, but I’m doing what’s best for you. Hospitals have to ask you questions when you’re brought in with an injury like this one, and there’s a chance that they could arrest your father for losing control this one time. We can’t risk that happening. I can’t afford to support us on just my disability check alone, not even for a little while until we could get it straightened out.”

  A fresh round of tears spilled over my cheeks as I processed what she was saying to me. She was refusing to get me medical treatment because we couldn’t afford to live on our own if my father was arrested.

  How was that fair? How was it okay that we were essentially stuck here and subject to his mood swings because money was a thing that we needed to survive, and he was the one who provided said money?

  “I’ll make you a promise, though,” she whispered, sniffling, as she wiped a few tears from my cheeks. “If I think you’re not healing well enough, I’ll bring you to an orthopedic doctor in a few weeks. Okay?”

  I nodded, because I didn’t have any other choice. It wasn’t like I could demand that she take me to a hospital right now. I was fourteen years old.

  “Let me go grab you some more pillows so you can prop your arm up while you’re sleeping,” she murmured.

  She disappeared again, and I heard the linen closet in the hallway open. She muttered some G-rated curses under her breath, and then I heard their bedroom door opening. My heart seized in anticipation of another confrontation with my father.

  Eventually, my mom did come back into the room with four more pillows…followed by my dad. I instinctively shrank away from him, curling in on myself, despite the pain in my abdomen and my shoulder. He let out a sigh that sounded…annoyed? Was that right?

  “Darla, I’ve prayed to the Lord for forgiveness for allowing Satan to poison my thoughts and make me lash out in anger. I didn’t mean to injure you so badly, but if anyone asks you about it at church tomorrow or at school, tell them that you fell out of bed and hurt your shoulder in your sleep,” he said, looking everywhere but at me.

  For the millionth time tonight, my heart felt like it had been physically ripped in two. I was glad that my father had realized he went overboard tonight, and I was glad that he’d asked God for forgiveness, but why couldn’t he apologize to me too? I was the one who’d ended up having to endure the consequences of Satan poisoning his thoughts. But I wasn’t about to say that to him.

  “Yes, sir,” I mumbled.

  “Good,” he said, then turned and walked out of the room.

  My mom quickly helped me get situated so I could semi-comfortably lie down, and then she shut my light off and left the room.

  As I laid there in the darkness, beyond exhausted but in too much pain to be able to sleep, I kept replaying tonight’s events over and over again in my head. Not the nightmare I’d been subjected to when I got home, but what had happened at the dance. How I’d misread everything about the situation with Brendan and Heather, and how desperate he was for me to understand the truth.

  I wished so much that things were different. I wished my father wasn’t so strict – or at least that he would understand that not all boys were out to take advantage of me. I wished I was free to choose my own path and decide my own future. I wished I had known what to say to Brendan tonight instead of just standing there like a deer in headlights. And, more than anything, I wished that I was in his arms right now.

  I can’t do this anymore, Jesus, I prayed as the tears continued to stream down my face. I’m trying to keep my faith in You, but I’m scared and I’m so tired. I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of my dad perverting Your Word to justify hurting me. I know You have plans for my life, Lord. You’ve promised that You have a plan for everyone. A plan for prosperity and hope and a future. Can You show me a glimpse of my plan? Please? Show me that something good will come out of all this pain and suffering. And give me the strength to keep fighting, because I don’t have any left.

  Chapter 12

  Darla

  Dare You to Move

  Wheezing and trying to breathe through the searing pain in my side, I carried my backpack by my side with the straps in a death grip so I wouldn’t drop it. I couldn’t carry it on my back because of my shoulder, and even slinging it over the opposite shoulder put too much pressure on the bad shoulder. So, instead, I was carrying it in my hand, which just exacerbated the pain in my side more.

  I’d taken a double dose of Tylenol before I went to school today, but my parents would have had to send any pain medication, even over-the-counter, to the
school for the nurse to dole out to me. And if the nurse was administering pain meds to me, then she’d see what they were for and start asking questions. So, because keeping the secret of how I’d gotten hurt was obviously more important than making it so I could possibly get through school today without passing out from pain, I wasn’t allowed to have any more pain meds until I got home.

  By the time I got in the gate that the school bus let us off at, my stomach was turning and I was about to throw up from the sheer amount of pain I was in. I didn’t know how I was supposed to keep this up all day. If I hadn’t had my backpack, that might have been one thing, but I did.

  Making my way toward the wall so I wasn’t in anyone’s way, I dropped my backpack on the ground and slid down onto the hard concrete ground as I attempted to catch my breath. Why did breathing hurt so bad? This couldn’t have been normal for a bruise, could it?

  “Darla?” I heard Kate ask as she came to kneel next to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, my God, honey!” Ashton gasped as they crouched on my other side, touching my bad arm gently. “What happened to you?”

  I didn’t know why, but the genuine concern in their voices was all it took to make the dam break. All of the pain, heartache, and confusion that I’d been keeping buried inside since Saturday night burst forth at once as I broke down in tears.

  “It’s okay, hon,” Kate murmured as she started to pull me into her arms.

  Another sob caught in my throat, and I cried out as a sharp pain shot up my side. She let go of me, and I slowly shifted so I could let her hug me.

  “You’re okay, Darla,” she whispered. “We’ve got you.”

  Ashton wrapped their arms around me from the other side, and both of my friends just let me cry for a few minutes. They didn’t ask questions and they didn’t judge me. They just let me get what I was feeling out. Maybe that was why I decided that I couldn’t keep skirting the truth with them like I’d been doing. They’d been such amazing friends to me, and they deserved to know everything.