Page 16 of Silas

Anotherman for me to serve.

“Thank you, sir,” I manage.

“That’s more like it.” He nudges my chin up so I have to look at him. “Get yourself cleaned up and find something to eat. I got a few things to take care of, then I’ll be back to settle you in for the night.”

“Yes sir.”

He hesitates, however. “I expect you to be a good wife to him, Naomi. Adamngood wife. You understand what I’m saying?”

Nausea rifles up my gut and into my throat. “Yes sir.”

“You better.” He pivots on his heel and clomps back outside, already on his phone. “Derek. Send Lucy to my quarters at the barracks. Tell her I expect her to be ready for me. I’ll be there in five.”

The militia has female members, but they serve in a domestic capacity, rather than training for combat the way the men do. They’re also expected to beavailableto my father at any time. I know what that means, even if I am a virgin. The men have never been very tactful about their conversations in front of me.

I go to the bathroom and wipe the blood off my nose and lips—my lip is puffy and split, and my left eye has a faint shadow under it. I’ll be expected to hide it with makeup.

I scavenge for something to eat—I always keep a few leftovers tucked in the back of the fridge, for exactly this kind of situation. I eat leftover meatloaf and veggies and then wash my dishes and put away the dishes from dinner.

Now that I’ve finished everything I’m expected to do, I have that rarest of luxuries: free time, alone.

I hurry into my room and dig under the bare steel frame of my little cot and pull out Mama’s guitar. It’s old, and always out of tune, and it’s missing a string, but it’s mine and I love it. It’s scratched and battered, and it was cheap even new. But it’s mine. The one thing I can call my own, something that brings me joy.

I have some old sheet music, saved from before Mama died. They’re all old hymns and worship music—Mama was a Christian, and while she was alive, Papa pretended to be, too. But after she died, that part of him died with her.

Now, I play her songs and I try to feel her.

I hear Papa’s truck approaching, after an hour. I hear the engine shut off, the door squeak open and slam closed. Breath lodging in my throat behind a ball of panic, I hurriedly shove the guitar and sheet music back in the case, latch it, and shove it under the bed, all the way against the wall.

I lay on the bed facing the wall. Above me, there are bars on the window. I force my breathing to be slow and steady, even as I hear his tread enter the house and approach my room. Pause. He shuts the lights off.

Closes the door.

And locks it…

From the outside.

* * *

I fightthe urge to fidget with my dress.

It’s porcelain, rather than white. Long flowing train, with a sweetheart neckline and long sleeves. My bouquet is daises and wildflowers picked from the field behind the houses.

I’m barefoot—it’s part of the ceremony, Papa says. Symbolic.

Symbolic of my place in his world: barefoot, in the kitchen. Literally.

I’m facing Jerry. Papa is beside us, holding a Bible open in both hands.

My hands are engulfed in Jerry’s. His hands are huge, like dinner plates. His fingers are fat and hard. Where his wedding ring used to be, his skin is pale white, in contrast with the sun-tanned skin of the rest of his hand.

Papa is talking, but my pulse pounds in my ears, rushing and pounding.

Jerry is an enormous man. Taller than my father, even, who’s six-two. But where Papa is lean and hard, Jerry reminds me of nothing so much as a walrus, right down to the huge mustache hanging over his lips and draping down to his chin in dangling, curlicue points. He’s not just fat, though. There’s muscle under the fat, and a lot of it. His hair is cropped short, buzzed close to the scalp, brown shot through with gray. His suit doesn’t fit, the jacket not even close to closing, the slacks belted under his belly, his shirt straining at the buttons.

“Naomi.” My father’s voice snaps through my thoughts. “Do you take this man to be your husband, before God and in the presence of our community?”

Jerry’s beady brown eyes bore into mine, daring me to so much as hesitate.