Out of Heaven's Grasp

by V. J. Chambers

  I shuddered. Bob might stick his penis inside my body, but I was well aware of the other thing that he used it for, and I didn’t want that anywhere near my mouth. “No, I don’t think so. You can’t make a baby with my mouth, and that’s why we have to do this, so, no.” No, no, no.

  “Oh, shh…” He stroked my hair. “It won’t be so bad. And you’ll make me very happy. And you know that you’re supposed to do whatever you can to please your husband, don’t you, honey?”

  I cringed. I was shaking all over again. Every time I was with Bob, I seemed to shake.

  “You have to obey me,” he said. “It’s the will of God.”

  Everyone said so. Even my own mother. I wondered if she’d tell me that I should obey Bob in this, in putting my mouth on this filthy part of his body.

  “I’m your husband,” Bob said in a soft voice. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Now open your mouth.”

  Shutting my eyes, I did, and he pushed his penis between my lips.

  He grunted. “That’s good, honey. Suck my cock. Suck my big hard cock.”

  He began to thrust, and he jammed me in the back of my throat.

  I gagged.

  He chuckled.

  He made me bob my head back and forth on him, and it hurt my jaw. Several times, he gagged me again, once so bad that I almost threw up for real.

  And when he was done, he made me swallow the stuff that came out of his penis, which tasted horrible, but had an even worse sort of consistency, like snot from another person’s body.

  Afterward, he was happy. “See?” he said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Yes it was. I don’t ever want to do that again. But I said nothing, trying to remain obedient to him.

  He went to sleep almost immediately afterward.

  He lay there snoring, and I went into the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and tongue over and over again, until the taste of him was gone.

  I looked at myself in the mirror, and there was something wan and hollow about my expression.

  I didn’t want to do that again. I didn’t think it was right. We were supposed to be fruitful and multiply, and I didn’t see how that was ever going to help us make babies.

  I went back to the bedroom and lay down in the bed.

  “I won’t do it again,” I whispered into the darkness.

  Bob stirred. “What was that?”

  I froze.

  His voice was a quiet, wheedling whisper. “Now, Abigail, all women do that with their husbands.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Not me,” I breathed. I didn’t know where this resistance was coming from, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was as if Bob had pushed me too far, and now I couldn’t keep being the sweet, obedient wife. There were limits. This was mine.

  He sighed heavily and rolled over.

  But he didn’t ask for it again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Abby

  “Before we begin the gospel meeting tonight, I have some joyous announcements,” said Gideon from the pulpit in the meeting hall. I sat with Bob’s family a few rows back from the front, my hands folded in my lap.

  Joyous announcements usually meant marriages, but it wasn’t Gideon who usually announced things like that. It was generally one of the elders. Gideon was taking on more and more of the elders duties, and no one seemed to be saying anything about it.

  Gideon smiled out at the congregation. “First, I want to say that God has smiled on all of the elders, and he has seen fit to give each of them another wife. These godly men have shown themselves to be worthy of a fourth wife. It is their reward for their tireless service for the community and for their righteousness.”

  No one said anything, but I could sense that everyone in the meeting house was surprised. Now all the elders would have four wives, setting them apart from the rest of the men in the community, who could only have three. And, of course, some of those men still only had one or two wives.

  Gideon went on, assigning all the elders with a young wife of eighteen or nineteen.

  I recognized the other girls’ names and looked at them when they were called. I knew too well the shock and disappointment that they were desperately trying to hide, because I had felt it too. And even though I’d been married for weeks now, it really hadn’t faded.

  “And I have one other joyous announcement,” Gideon concluded. “The elders have seen fit to bless me with another wife as well.”

  Gideon had come to the community with no wives at all, since he’d been disciplined by the Kentucky community. How he’d gone from a man who was considered ungodly and in need of discipline to the leader of our elders was something I didn’t quite understand. But right before he’d taken the leadership of the elders, he’d been given his first wife. Now, he was getting another one.

  “That woman, who I am blessed to be given to cherish, is Susannah Davis.” Gideon smiled, training his gaze on her.

  I turned to look at my best friend, shocked. She was going to be married to Gideon?

  From the look on Susannah’s face, she was just as surprised as I was. The color drained from her face.

  Gideon was still smiling at her.

  She tried to smile back.

  The gospel meeting began after that, but I could hardly pay attention. I’d hoped that Susannah would have a better match than me. I didn’t want her to have to marry someone old, someone who already had a lot of children. I wanted her to be a first wife with a young man in the community. I supposed I wanted for her what I had wanted for myself.

  At least Gideon wasn’t incredibly aged. He was in his thirties, and he wasn’t exactly bad looking. He had an average height and build—maybe a little on the short side. He had curly hair and a curly beard. He could be very charming and personable. But I remembered the way he’d contradicted my father when I’d been brought in after being caught with Jesse. There was something cold in Gideon. He wasn’t my first choice for Susannah.

  I sat through the sermon that night—it was one of the elders preaching about the fire and misery of Hell, which was one of the typical sermon topics. He went on and on about gnashing of teeth and brimstone and other things, but I tuned him out, even when he was screaming about being separated from God for all eternity.

  I’d heard it all before.

  And besides, I felt separated from God now. When I prayed, all I did was ask for strength to endure. I felt as if I was only surviving. I had two joys in life. One was getting to play guitar in the worship meetings on Sunday mornings. The other was any time I got to be away from Bob and his family for any reason. I knew that I should think of them as my family, but I simply couldn’t. I was separate from them. I was separate from my parents’ family. And I didn’t feel like God particularly cared how I felt. Why should he? I was only a woman. Only a fourth wife. He certainly didn’t want anything from me other than my silence and obedience.

  After the meeting was over, I managed to get a moment to talk to Susannah before I got herded into one of Bob’s cars to go back home. He always liked me to ride with him, up front in the passenger seat. He made May and Fern sit in the back with May’s children. I thought it was wrong of him. The seat in the car should have belonged to Fern, near as I could figure it. She was the first wife, and they’d been together for the longest. But Bob wanted to show me off, because that’s all I was to him. A trophy. And the funny thing about it was that I didn’t want to be anywhere near him.

  Susannah still didn’t seem to have recovered color in her face. “Gideon,” she murmured.

  “At least he’s not old,” I said.

  She nodded. But she still looked nervous.

  I gave her a hug. “I’d hoped for something better for you,” I whispered in her ear.

  She clung to me. “Abby, you have to tell me now.”

  I pulled back a little. “Tell you what?”

  Her voice was low and urgent. “About the… relations stuff. I need to know.”

  I bit down on my lip. “It’s bad.�
��

  If it was possible, even more color drained out of her face.

  “Just do what he says and try not to pay attention while it’s happening,” I said.

  Bob was standing by his car across the parking area. “Abigail!” he called.

  I turned to look at him and then back to Susannah. “I have to go.”

  “Wait,” she said. “What happens, Abby?”

  “Abigail!” Bob’s voice was more forceful now.

  I backed away. “I’ll see if I can get permission to come by to help with your wedding dress, okay? We’ll talk then?”

  She looked terrified. “Please come.”

  * * *

  Jesse

  A huge bonfire spat flames into the night sky. We were out in the desert, and the fire was ringed with at least twenty or thirty people. I sat, staring into its depths. Anthony lounged next to me, holding a bottle of tequila. We were both quiet, awed by the fire, by its orange and red hues, by the way that it danced and moved.

  This was one thing that wasn’t different out here. Fire was the same. Back in the community, we would have bonfires occasionally. The people would all come with food and drink. They’d play guitars and we’d all sing. We’d all stare into the fire.

  It was the same here. This group of people was drinking alcohol, and they were more raucous. Swear words rent the air, and the music they belted out of their guitars wasn’t the same kind of music we played in the community. Still, it was people and fellowship and fire.

  It made me feel better, grounded. Human beings were the same in some ways, no matter what crazy beliefs they had.

  “Hey, there.”

  I looked up to see a man with long, dark hair and tan skin standing over me. He was flanked by another man, who also had long hair.

  “Hi,” I said.

  The man knelt down next to Anthony and me. “I’m River Sanchez, and I’m here to welcome you guys.”

  Anthony sat up. “Oh, uh, thanks.”

  I offered the guy my hand. “Jesse Wallace.”

  River stared into my eyes. “Jesse, you have a troubled soul.”

  The guy behind River smacked him. “You are so full of shit, dude.” To me, “Don’t listen to him.”

  River ignored his friend. “I see things. It’s a gift from my ancestors, the Pueblo Indians. I inherited the ability to have a keen sight. So, trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  I gave the guy a wry smile. “Who doesn’t have a troubled soul?”

  River considered. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m full of shit, like Tom says.” He grinned. He pulled out a small plastic bag. “You want to buy some mushrooms?”

  I had to laugh. “Mushrooms?”

  Anthony leaned forward. “Not like that, man. They’re magic mushrooms. They make you hallucinate. They’re drugs.”

  I looked back at Anthony and then back to River. “Do you eat them?”

  River placed a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t know about magic mushrooms?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Just tell him no,” said Anthony. “You know that Ephraim will kick you out of the house if you’re on drugs.”

  “These aren’t really drugs,” said River. “They’re natural. They come out of the earth. If they weren’t meant to be eaten, the Great Spirit wouldn’t have put them here.”

  Tim shook his head. “Would you stop it with that Great Spirit stuff?”

  “My people used to use these mushrooms to go on great vision quests,” said River. “Take them, and it will give you insight into what troubles your soul, Jesse.”

  “That is so much shit!” said Tim. “You don’t know anything about Indians, man. Just because your mother got knocked up by some dude who lived on the reservation doesn’t mean you’re some kind of expert.”

  River smiled up at him. “Chill out, Tom, I’m just having fun.” He shook the bag at me. “You want to buy ‘em or not?”

  “How much?” I said.

  “You can’t actually be considering this,” said Anthony.

  I shrugged at him. “What do you care?”

  “Man, you know why I care,” he said. “I don’t want you to get kicked out of the house.”

  River told me how much.

  “Don’t do it,” said Anthony. “If you buy those, I’m going to tell Ephraim. He’s going to boot you out.” He glared at River. “Just go away, okay?”

  River spread his hands. “Hey, no need to get hostile. I happen to live on this land, though, so I don’t think I’m going to go away. This is my home.”

  Anthony folded his arms over his chest.

  River went over to Anthony and picked up his bottle of tequila. “You think this is much different than the mushrooms?”

  “It’s not about what I think,” said Anthony. “It’s about the fact that the guy we live with won’t let us stay there if we’re doing drugs. It’s about what Ephraim thinks.”

  I stood up. “Man, fuck that.”

  Anthony stood up too. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’ve spent too much of my life listening to other people telling me what to think. Ephraim doesn’t control me. And if he’s going to kick me out of the street if I break his rules, then he’s no better than the elders in the Life.”

  “No way, man,” said Anthony. “It’s not the same.”

  I dug the money out of my pocket and gave it to River. “Give me the mushrooms.”

  River handed them over. “Have a good trip.”

  Anthony shook his head at me. “You’re so fucking stupid, you know that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t need anyone telling me what to do.”

  Anthony picked up his tequila and stormed off. I was the one who’d driven us out there, so I figured he’d come back eventually, but I didn’t see him again the rest of the night.

  * * *

  At first the mushrooms made me feel sick, and I thought I was going to throw up. I had a sharp feeling of terror, because everything seemed strange. It wasn’t so much that I was seeing things that weren’t there, but that the color and the… the feel of things had changed. It looked okay, but it felt wrong. I backed away from the fire, because it was too bright, and I began to feel as if taking these things had been a really bad idea.

  For one thing, they tasted terrible, but I was beginning to think that was typical of anything wicked and wordly. After all, beer tasted pretty gross too.

  But being drunk came on pleasantly. It made me loose-lipped and stumbling and happy. If I drank too much of it, it got bad, but at first, it was very nice.

  At first, the mushrooms were not nice at all.

  I was about ready to go back to my truck and try to drive away, go somewhere to wait it out, since it wasn’t feeling good, but River found me.

  He was making rounds of the bonfire, and he stopped to ask me if I was doing okay.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  He laughed. “Did you eat the shrooms?” His voice sounded strange and distorted, and I was afraid of it—or at least, I would have been if it hadn’t been for something else. A feeling. River felt friendly. I don’t know how to explain this, but I knew it was true. Everything around me seemed like it was breaking up and falling apart, but River was a friendly face. The more I looked at him, the more he seemed to glow.

  Then I realized it was just the fire behind him.

  But no… the fire was definitely… moving. It was twisting slowly, coming around his face and wrapping him in glowing tendrils.

  I stared at him, my eyes wide.

  His grin widened. “You definitely ate them.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We sat down in front of the fire, and we talked for a long time. Our conversation flitted from one topic to the next, and as we spoke, the world around me came alive with strange, twisting visions. I’d expected hallucinating to mean that I saw things that weren’t there, but it wasn’t exactly like that. It was more that I saw things that were actually there, but that they were
different. There were patterns in the night sky, patterns in the fire. River’s face moved and undulated. I was deep inside a thrumming wide system of movement, the whole of the world squirming together in time to some ancient and earthy rhythm.

  I interrupted our conversation frequently to comment on the hallucinations, but they weren’t the point of the experience.

  It was almost frustrating. I wanted to be able to slow down and look at all the things that I was seeing, but something within me pushed me forward, urging me instead to follow whatever train of thought that I was pursuing.

  “I think,” said River, his voice soft and wise in the darkness, “that the world is all just one thing. It’s like everything’s just a piece of that big one thing. And the reason that I think that is because everything turns into each other. When we die, we go back into the earth, and everything eats everything else. But you don’t have to look at it like eating if you don’t want. If you want to, you can simply see it as everything flowing through each other. The water flows into the ground and the plants grow and the animals eat the plants, so the plants flow into them, and then the people eat the animals, and the animals flow into them. But it’s bigger than that too. Things are sluffing off of us at every minute. Right now, you’re losing skin cells, and they’re floating into the air. And I’m breathing the air. I’m breathing in you. You’re breathing in me. The wood in that fire is burning, and we’re taking in the heat and breathing in the smoke. So, it’s all really just the same thing.”

  I reached out to the fire, letting it warm my fingertips. There were patterns of flowers crawling over my fingernails. “Why are we always putting up boundaries, then? Why are we always trying to keep everything out?”

  “Fear,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Everyone’s afraid.”

  “But there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “No,” I said. “Because if we’re all part of the same thing, then nothing can really happen to any of us. Even if we die, we’re still part of it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then there’s no evil, is there? Because if everything’s part of one big thing, then there’s no way you can really hurt anything.”