Page 24

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Peter’s parents arrived without him. His part in this drama was done, after all, and his sin was so much less than mine. They came to the door. Grim faces, low voices. I watched from the top of the stairs. Emily Frey turned her pale moon face up toward me and I swear she looked afraid.

The Scotts’ church didn’t have a name. Preferred to call itself a fellowship or a group rather than a church most of the time. They came from a stew of fundamentalist backgrounds crossed heavily and perhaps inevitably with a strong anti-government, anti-establishment ethos. They did things their own way, and so there was no official name for what happened to me next: prayers for deliverance—from evil, from wicked forces. I’d been brought up before the congregation for prayers like these more times than I could count, but this time was different. This time was going to be private and it was meant to be permanent, because someone had to step in, and it was clear that there were evil forces resident within my soul.

Years ago, Joseph had turned the attic into a play space for me. I’d outgrown it long since, and now between the dollhouse and the toy chest, cardboard boxes were stacked, and dust had infiltrated every surface. It was there that Pastor Frey and Joseph brought me. Beth stood in the middle of the room, hands clasped together so tightly her fingers were white. The expression on her face terrified me.

It looked like triumph.

I turned to flee, but the stairway was full, Pastor Frey and Joseph blocking my way.

“This is for your own good,” Pastor Frey said in the baritone voice that filled the room of the meeting hall where we held our services. He didn’t touch me, but pointed, and it was like a punch to the solar plexus. It took the breath out of me entirely.

Pastor Frey had good intentions, I think; his faith was genuine, as was his belief that there was something in me that could be corrected with prayer and with divine mercy. He never intended violence.

They sat and prayed and put their hands on me. They asked me to explain the things I’d done. To confess to them and to the influences that I had allowed to creep into my life and my heart.

I clamped my lips shut and refused to speak. I stared at Beth the whole time, hate burning in my gut. I thought of every time she’d struck me, called me a little demon, told me it was no wonder my parents had wanted to get rid of me.

And as far as she was concerned, I was a demon. What else do you call a child who flies into rages, who steals, who lies, who tempts good young boys into sin? That’s not a normal girl. That’s something else.

Something that has to be gotten rid of.

I could feel their frustration building as I refused to speak, refused to cooperate, refused to fight. Beth stalked back and forth in front of me, reciting a litany of the horrible things I’d done. The bite marks I’d left on their arms when I was four years old, the closet door I’d broken trying to get out when she had to lock me in there to protect her from my wild rages.

The sun set and I hadn’t spoken a word. I thought they would give up.

Instead, they left me there. Locked in that attic room, alone, with nothing to sleep on but the hard floor.

And in the morning, we started again.

The hours blurred together. As their frustration grew, so did their ardor—Pastor Frey’s and Beth’s, most of all. While Joseph and Emily Frey lingered at the edges, the other two gripped my shoulders and spoke directly to the evil inside me, as if it was a thing that might be ordered to leave.

I kept my mouth shut. I said nothing.

I don’t remember every detail of how it ended. It was like something came over me. Like maybe I was truly possessed. I couldn’t stand the feeling of their hands on me, the sound of their voices. It was too loud, too hot, too much . And then they were leaving—Pastor Frey and Joseph. Emily had left by then, had gone home to her poor misled boy, and this left me alone with Beth, who lingered after the men had gone downstairs.

Beth grabbed me by the face. Tenderness in her eyes and enough force in her grip to hurt.

“This is for your own good,” she said, and I spoke my first words since I’d stepped foot in that attic.

I called her a cunt.

I don’t even know where I’d heard that word, only that I knew it was the worst thing I could think of. I stepped toward her and maybe I did mean to hit her, to hurt her, I don’t know, but she reached out and hit me hard across the face before I could.

Beth called me a demon. A slut. She called me a curse sent to taunt her. And something broke in me, too. I threw back every abuse. Bared my teeth at her. And each time, she slapped me across the face, until that whole side was lit up with throbbing pain, until her hand was bright red.

It was a kind of frenzy, a kind of ecstasy. Holy words wound their way through it, but it was pure punishment. It was like something had been set on fire in Beth’s soul and decades of being a demure and submissive wife became nothing but kindling for her rage.

I hadn’t eaten more than the smallest portion of food, had hardly had any water to drink in that sweltering attic, and when she brought her fist into my stomach I folded over, fell to the ground. It didn’t stop her. The fire was still raging inside of Beth Scott. Her foot lashed out. Again and again as I curled over on myself, twisting to try to get out of her way. Her hard-soled shoes connected with my stomach, my back, clipped my temple, and then all of a sudden Pastor Frey and Joseph were there, pulling her away.

Enough. That’s enough for now.

They left me there on the floor, curled around my middle. There was a sharp, strange pain somewhere deep inside me.

The bleeding started a few hours later.

Beth returned in the evening, carrying a tray of food. I think she may have felt guilty, or maybe she only wanted to spit more venom at me. I remember the rattle of the doorknob. The way my skirt clung to my thighs as I forced myself upright, swaying and lightheaded.

The laugh that bubbled out of me when she screamed.

The tray dropped. She fled. And she didn’t close the door behind her.

As soon as I heard the front door slam, I hurried downstairs, lifting my sodden skirts, to find the house empty. I peeled the fabric from my wet skin and threw the dress in the fireplace. I washed my legs with cold water and dressed in fresh clothing. The bleeding was still coming, and I thought I might be dying, but I wasn’t going to die there.

I packed a bag. Clothing. What little money I had. The treasures hidden in the back of my closet—a silver dollar, a pink shell, a tiny crystal dolphin.

Joseph Scott’s hunting knife.

I was on my way to the door when Joseph came home.

I begged him to help me. I begged him to let me go, take me away from there, do something.

He hadn’t seen the blood upstairs; I wasn’t making any sense. Give him that much grace, at least. Allow him the fear of a man whose world is collapsing, whose wife has babbled a tale that is half confession and half accusation; remember that his daughter is a liar and a thief, that her teeth have left scars on his wrist before, that she is a wicked child. And yet. The cut at my hairline, the bruise I could already feel on my cheek, the tender way I moved, bent inward as if to protect myself ( too late for that ). He saw enough. He should have known.

He should have helped.

I think he said, I’m sorry . I think he said, I can’t let you go. I know that he stood in the doorway. I know that he reached for me, that he grabbed my arm, that he was going to take me back to that place.

The only other thing I remember clearly is the panic—blind fear that gave way swiftly to rage.

Elemental anger crashed through me and over me and drove me against the back of my own skull because there was no room for anything but fury.

I remember, too, the sensation of the knife punching through skin, though I don’t remember how it got to be in my hand. I remember it scraping across bone. I hit his sternum with that one. I must have been aiming for his heart. Three times I raised the knife and three times I swung it wildly, and I swear, I swear he didn’t even try to stop me.

The thing that’s clearest in my memory, though, is the sounds after. His cry of pain and shock. The thump as he fell, scrabbling backward away from me. The clatter of the knife falling from my numb fingers.

I remember that I ran.