by Dekker, Ted
“Until you repent and change your behavior, no food will touch your lips. You will have only water and the bread of God’s discipline.”
A second cut. The hair drifted to the floor.
“You will not be allowed to bathe or wash as a reminder that the stench of sin clings to you as long as you are rebellious.”
Snip.
“You will not have the comfort of your mother, neither my tender words, nor my gentle guidance.”
Snip.
“You will be outcast. No one will speak to you and neither will you speak to anyone.”
Snip.
“You are confined to your closet for the next seven days, from the time the sun rises until it sets. You will not leave your room for the next twenty-one days.”
Snip.
“You will not lay eyes on or speak to any boy for a year.”
The scissors made the final cut and the last, thick strands of hair fell loose to the ground and scattered.
“So be it.”
Kathryn leaned close until her lips were next to Eden’s ear. “Your beauty is taken from you, Eden. You have whored yourself out to sin and you will be a vile thing in my sight until you repent. You will not be my angel because you cannot be. You will be my demon, a twisted thorn in my flesh sent to torment me until the day you turn from your sin.”
Kathryn set the scissors on the bed and rose to her feet. “Rise,” she said.
Eden pushed to her feet.
“Turn around so I can see you.”
Eden turned slowly and met Kathryn’s gaze. Tears pooled in Eden’s eyes. Seeing her daughter like this, stripped of her innocence and beauty, Kathryn’s own heart cracked. However hard this was, it was the only way.
“This is what a fall from grace feels like,” Kathryn said. “This is the price of your sin. Ask yourself if it was worth it. Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked and neither can I. You’re only reaping what you’ve sown, Eden. You brought this on yourself. You did this, no one else.”
Kathryn took a step back. “From this moment forward, you will be cut off from life until you repent. When you’re ready, you let me know. And so you know, the phone is no longer functional. There will be no contact to or from the house by anyone until you’ve come to your repentance.”
Eden wasn’t permitted to use the phone, even when it was working, but Zeke had been very clear: any sign that Eden could not be trusted and the phone had to be cut.
Kathryn walked toward the dresser that sat against the wall and gathered Eden’s collection of straw dolls.
“My dolls?” Eden said.
“Not anymore. It’s time to set aside childish ways. You want to be an adult and so I’m helping you become one. We have to sever all of your old ties to this world so you can be free.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“The same thing we’re going to do with your hair. Burn them,” Kathryn said. “Now gather up those clippings and place them by the door. I’ll be back to get them in an hour.”
20
I CAN’T rightly describe the darkness that swallowed me in the day and a half following Kathryn’s punishment.
A small voice somewhere in the back of my mind kept telling me to repent. Kathryn had endlessly drilled the idea into me over the years. I needed to change my behavior and be more pure.
Repent, Eden. Repent.
Change your behavior. Breathe and let it go. Just do what’s expected of you and all would be fine. After all, weren’t you reasonably content when you didn’t rock the boat?
Wasn’t life bearable before you decided to step out of the boat?
But the voices of offense screaming through my head made that tiny whisper nothing more than an absurdity. And hadn’t my dreams of Outlaw shown me that I was my own person who didn’t need to suffer my fears?
A shift had occurred in my psyche. I know what had happened—I’d run through it a hundred times as I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling with a fixed jaw. I was finally seeing the light. The dam that had held back a lake of dark waters had finally collapsed and truth was pouring out, like a torrential waterfall. Why walk on the waters of that lake? Better to drain it. Why?
Because I was being abused, that’s why.
Because I was the victim of a monster, that’s why.
Because I was a prisoner in my own room, but Kathryn might as well have put me in a dungeon deep under the house, hidden away from the rest of the world. I was nothing more than her slave, her precious lamb, her sacrificial offering to be used for her gain.
Five years of being abused had secretly filled me with an ocean of bitterness and anger and it was all gushing out, fueled by the realization that I was right.
She’d walked in shortly after I’d stood up to her on Monday and she’d announced her rules as only Mother could, with complete sincerity and conviction, fully embracing her own delusion. Odd, how it was all so plain to me after so many years of living in deception. Someone had turned on the light and I could see everything clearly for the first time. I’d been blind, but now I could see.
Kathryn was insane, if not naturally, then in Zeke’s manipulative grasp. I knew it as she hacked off my hair. As she laid down her list of rules: No eating, no speaking, no washing, ho hair, no leaving my room. No boys, ever. A year, she’d said, and to me that was forever.
True to her word, Kathryn had delivered only water to my room, three times in a large pitcher since issuing my new sentence. I hadn’t seen Wyatt or Bobby, and I hadn’t bothered to face my mother when she’d come in with the water, which she left on the floor by the door next to a pot in which I relieved myself.
I was in prison forever. My room was my eternal hell and I hated it as much as I hated my mother. I hated her for hacking off my hair and making me ugly. I hated her for kidnapping me five years earlier. I hated her for being so weak. I hated her for burning my dolls.
You don’t hate her, Eden.
But I did. And that hatred only seemed to grow with each passing hour. I even gave up praying. Had God ever heard me before? I had said the sinner’s prayer and begged his forgiveness and sworn my allegiance over and over, thousands of times over the years. I had made myself pure and followed his servant’s every rule, and committed myself fully to being pure and where had it put me?
In hell. God, my Father in heaven, was either angry with me or didn’t care, or he was deaf. This after I’d done everything asked of me.
Everything!
If she thought I would cave in and play her insane game, she had another thing coming. Her punishment had backfired.
By Tuesday evening, my grievance toward her was so great, I thought I might die of anger, lying right there on my bed. She wanted to starve me, right? Well I would do one better. I would just die of rage. Her perfect, sacrificial lamb would pay the ultimate price to save them all from their miserable hells.
That’s when I decided I would run away. Yes, I know that I’d decided the same thing five years earlier and then rejected it for Bobby’s sake, but I decided it again, and this time I knew how I would do it.
By the time Kathryn came in with my pitcher of night water Tuesday night, it was all I could think about.
“Good night, sweetheart,” she said.
They were her first words to me in a day and a half, spoken with empathy, as if trying to seduce me into feeling guilty. She wasn’t going to succeed. But I wanted to give her some hope so she would sleep while I escaped.
“Good night,” I said, not bothering to turn to her.
A moment later I heard the door close.
I was an adult now and I was going to be free. And I was going to be free that very night. Nothing else mattered to me anymore. I was going, I was going, I was going, and that was that.
But I had to be smart or I was going nowhere. And I had to take Bobby with me.
The next six hours crawled by like a snail inching across my wall. Only after the house had been completely quiet for two hours did I
slowly crawl out of bed and stand up.
Even then I waited for several long minutes, listening for any sound. The house remained silent.
Desperately hoping that I was the only one awake, I crept to the door, still dressed in my bed clothes. I didn’t want to risk any more movement than I needed, and proper dress wasn’t important. Only getting away was. Once I reached the police, I could worry about clothes.
I cracked the door open, listened for another second. If Kathryn woke up and caught me now, I would tell her that I was going to get her to beg her forgiveness—that’s what I’d worked out. Once outside that excuse wouldn’t work.
Heart thumping in my ears, I sneaked into the hall on my tiptoes, then crossed to Bobby’s room.
His door creaked when I opened it, but only one squeak, and no one called out. I eased the door shut and listened again.
Okay . . . Okay, you can do this, Eden. You have to do this.
Bobby snored softly in his bed, mouth ajar, neck stretched at an odd angle. I bent over and gently tapped his shoulder.
He snored on, lost in his dreams. So I shook him and this time his eyes snapped wide.
“Sh . . .” I held a finger to my mouth.
“Eden?”
He’d said it aloud, albeit in a soft voice. I clamped my hand over his mouth, twisting toward the closed door. No sign he’d been heard.
I spun back to Bobby. “Sh, sh, sh . . . Don’t say anything.”
His round eyes stared up at me, but he remained silent.
“Come with me outside,” I whispered. “But don’t make any sound, okay?”
“Outside?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going outside?”
“Yes. But we have to sneak out or the alligators will hear us coming.”
“We’re going to hunt alligators?” His eyes brightened.
“Sh . . . You have to whisper. It’s a special mission. Just come with me. Walk on your tiptoes, okay?”
He jerked up enthusiastically—this was Bobby’s way, throwing himself into any adventure with all of his heart.
“Sh . . . Slowly, Bobby. We can’t make a sound.”
He looked at the door, the floor, then up into my eyes. “I can walk like a ghost,” he said.
“Good. Like a ghost. Come on.”
I crossed to the door, eased it ever so slowly open, poked my head out into the hall, and, seeing no one, waved Bobby forward.
He crept past me, walking on his tiptoes, bent over and intent. Glanced back at me once out in the hall. I nodded and motioned him on. Then followed him out into the living room, to the front door, where I stopped him.
We were making it! There was no sound, no sign at all that Kathryn had woken up.
But it was there that the first hitch presented itself. Next to the door, the nail from which Wyatt’s truck keys typically hung was bare. My heart lurched.
I spun toward the kitchen counter. Nothing. The table, the coffee table—there was no sign of the keys that I could see by the dim moonlight. And I didn’t dare turn on any lights.
My pulse was racing and I couldn’t think straight. I’d been sure that Kathryn wouldn’t feel the need to hide the keys—I didn’t know how to drive. Maybe Wyatt had inadvertently left them somewhere else. Or maybe Kathryn had thought ahead of me.
“Do you need a gun?” Bobby whispered, leaning close.
“No. I need the keys to Wyatt’s truck.”
He looked around. “Wyatt’s going with—”
I put a finger on his lips and hushed him, hopes dashed. “We have to find the keys!”
The thought of remaining in that house even one more minute was too much for me to bear. I had to get out.
I pulled Bobby forward, carefully unlocked and opened the front door, and quietly stepped out onto the front porch. Bobby followed me, down the steps and out onto the driveway. We were out.
But we didn’t have the keys.
“Is Wyatt hunting alligators too?” Bobby said.
“Sh! No one can hear us.”
“Sorry, Eden.”
“No . . . No, Wyatt’s not coming. We have to go into town.”
“Into town?” His eyes were as round as the moon. “How are we going into town?”
“With the truck.”
“You know how to drive the truck?”
“No. But you do, Bobby.”
Bobby had bragged on numerous occasions that Wyatt was giving him lessons on how to drive. I knew that these lessons consisted of nothing more than talking as they drove around, but that was far more instruction than I had. Our trip to sign the papers at the lawyer’s office had been my first drive in any vehicle since coming.
“I do?” Bobby said.
“I’ve never watched Wyatt, but you have. You’re going to tell me how.”
“I am?”
“Yes. But we need the keys.”
“I don’t have the keys.”
My mind raced. Where could he have put the keys? In the bedroom? If so, I would be hard pressed to get to them. Maybe he had an extra one somewhere.
“Does he keep a key in the truck?”
Bobby looked in the direction of the old truck, fifty yards from us, near the shack. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“How about in the shed? Or in the still house?”
He shrugged, doing that flicking thing he did with his thumb and forefinger. “We can ask Wyatt,” he said.
“No. Wyatt can’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is a surprise.”
My mind was racing. Trying to drive the truck was going to be hard enough, but walking out would be nearly impossible. The dogs would give us away or attack us. If Kathryn discovered me now things would get even worse.
“We have to find the keys!” I snapped, now near a panic.
A plop at my feet startled and I spun, immediately thinking: frog or snake. But it wasn’t a reptile. It was Wyatt’s truck keys. Right there, on the ground a yard from me. How . . .
I spun back to the porch and saw how. Wyatt stood on the porch, watching us. A chill washed over me. We were caught! At any moment Kathryn would fill the open doorway behind him, wearing a scowl.
Only then did I realize that Wyatt didn’t appear to be upset. He stared at me, wearing a sad face, arms loose at his sides. For several long seconds, neither of us moved.
He wasn’t trying to stop me. And he’d just thrown us the keys.
With a single nod, he suddenly turned, stepped back into the house, and closed the door behind him.
I stared up at the porch, stunned by what I’d just seen. He was helping me. In his own way, he was telling me to leave. He didn’t have the courage to actually drive me away and he had to get back to bed before Kathryn woke up, but he was doing his best to help me, even if it meant that everything might go badly for him. At least this way, he could say I must have found the keys and gone on my own. That would be harder if he got caught helping us.
Either way he was helping me and that froze me up. How could I do this to Wyatt? If I went to the police, they might send him to prison—that’s what Mother had said.
Run, Eden. Run now!
I bent down, scooped up the keys, and ran. “Hurry!” I whispered.
Bobby tore after me, stumbling with an uneasy gait.
I reached the truck, threw the door open and jumped into the front seat, with Bobby panting by my left side, staring in through the open door. Now what?
“Get in, Bobby! The other side.”
I glanced back at the house as he hurried around the front of the truck. The porch was empty. But if Kathryn had woken, she would be out any moment.
Bobby slid into the front seat next to me.
I searched eagerly for the key hole in the darkness. “Where does it go?”
“There!” Bobby pointed a stubby finger at the column under the steering wheel.
Now . . . I wasn’t totally clueless as to how vehicles worked, naturally. I
had six months of memory before being taken by Wyatt—but I was too young and too busy learning other things to have paid much attention to the precise mechanics of driving. And trucks weren’t the same as cars.
But I had some general ideas. Like inserting a key and twisting it to start the engine.
So that’s what I did.
The motor cranked and the truck lurched forward and I let out a little yelp.
“You have to push the clutch in,” Bobby said excitedly, pointing to the floor.
I stared at the three pedals at my feet, all within fairly easy reach.
“The clutch? Which one?”
“That one,” he fairly yelled.
“Not so loud, Bobby!” I whispered.
“Sorry. That one.”
I put my left foot on “that one” and pressed it to the floor.
“Now start it?”
“Yes.”
This time the engine cranked over a couple times and rumbled to life. Beside me, Bobby beamed, as if he himself had brought the truck to life. Ahead of me, the gravel driveway stretched into the night like a long gray snake.
“Now what?”
“Now you press the gas and go.”
“Which one?”
He hopped off the seat and reached down by my feet as if to do it by hand for himself. “This one!”
“Okay, get up, Bobby. You can’t help me down there!”
“That one!” he said, pointing and climbing up.
“Just press it? What about my left foot?”
“You have to let the clutch out. If you let it out too quick, it will stop.”
“That’s how you stop?”
“Yes. But you have to use the other brake to stop.”
I stared at him, deciphering his speech. Then at my feet. The third pedal was clearly the brake. I thought I had the general gist of it.
“Okay. Hold on.”
The truck did exactly what Bobby said it would on my first try. It jerked to a stop.
“You did it too quick,” Bobby said, smiling wide. To him, our night ride was only another grand adventure.
I tried again, and this time we started rolling forward and gained speed. Too much speed, I thought, and we were pointed at an angle that would take us into the swamp fifty yards ahead.
