Page 90 of Release

That God had, indeed, answered my prayers.

Four weeks after school started, Momma agreed to cover someone’s Friday night shift and pick up extra money. I forgot to lock and brace my bedroom door shut that night. She wasn’t there Saturday morning when my father awakened me when he opened my bedroom door before dawn.

I’ll never forget how he stank of cigarette smoke, or the evil smile he wore, the sound of him ripping open the condom wrapper, or how he ordered me to stop crying as he forced me to roll over onto my hands and knees and shoved my head into the pillow. I begged him not to, but he never listened.

“You’re lookin’ good there, Casey-Marie.” His speech sounded slurred, but I think he favored vodka, because I never smelled booze on him. “Lookin’ like a real lady now. Maybe I can make a little extra money letting guys take you on dates, you know. A little makeup, you’d look older. I know some guys who’d pay good money.”

He always fucked me from behind if he wasn’t forcing me to blow him. I guess he didn’t like to look me in the eyes when he assaulted me.

To this day, the smell of cigarette smoke still makes me violently gag. I don’t care how hot a guy is, if they’re a smoker, we barely get beyond exchanging first names. I tell them I’m violently allergic to it and leave it at that.

After my father finished that morning, and told me how much he’d missed it, and how much he’d be enjoying it now that I was getting older—and how he’d work on finding me “dates”—I lay in bed crying while I heard him in the bathroom cleaning up and flushing the condom and wrapper as he always did. Never any proof left behind. Then he went to bed and I heard him start snoring within a few minutes.

I went into the bathroom and was still scrubbing myself in the shower an hour later, even though the water was cold, when Momma returned home from work.

The next day, I went to church with her and numbly sat in our pew and listened to Pastor Dillman give his sermon. Ever since yesterday morning, it felt like I was in a fog, like nothing was real. Only as an adult did I come to understand this was a kind of fugue, a dissociative state. A way my mind was trying to protect me.

Except for the first time in several months, I thought about killing myself and started once again making plans to do exactly that. I couldn’t live through this again.

Here I’d thought God had finally answered my prayers and made my father stop.

But no. I’d had a cruelly happy summer, just to be dragged back into Hell.

Something resonated with me, though, as I listened to the preacher. I thought maybe there’d be some nugget of guidance, of what I could do to make my father stop. Pastor Dillman’s sermon had been about God helping those who took initiative with their lives, and keeping God at the center of their plans.

When we went home, I looked up one of the Bible verses he’d quoted in his sermon.

Proverbs 16:3-7 -Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished. By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil. When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

My father was still snoring behind their closed bedroom door as Momma started putting together lunch for us while softly talking to me.

I nodded as she talked, not really listening to her.

Meanwhile, as I stared at the kitchen counter, I started planning. Maybethiswas God speaking to me, the calm, dark voice in my head carefully explaining to me exactly what I needed to do, like the unseen narrator in one of the many mystery books I’d devoured over the summer.

Maybe it was a kind of trauma-induced psychosis or fugue, I don’t know.

That night, while my father was at “work,” and while Momma was in the bathroom taking her shower, I grabbed the largest carving knife from the butcher’s block on the counter and hid it under my pillow.