Promise Me

by Brent, Cora

  Spitting on my uncle was the boldest thing I had ever done. He grabbed me by the hair and I fought the urge to cry out. The gray eyes of the Bishop were bottomless pools of evil. His breath was fetid as he hissed at me. “I would whip you like a dog if it weren’t disrespectful to your husband to be burdened with a marked bride on his joyous night.”

  He released me so suddenly I staggered backwards. “Your choice, Promise,” he finally said before walking away and leaving me with no real choice at all.

  My resolved disappeared. I trudged back to my mother’s house, knowing that the day would proceed. Knowing that my refusal would sacrifice my sister.

  Chapter Two

  The friends I’d made at Hale had known that I came from a polygamous community. Some of them did as well, although none were as strict and tyrannical as the Faithful. Others were disdainful, calling our way of life cruelly paternalistic and backwards. I’d never spoken of my planned marriage. My father had made it clear enough that I was not to talk to outsiders of such things, smoothly telling me the damned wouldn’t understand.

  We were the true Faithful. The rest of them who claimed to follow the word had adapted it to suit their own needs and evolve with a modern time. They would suffer on the Day of Judgment.

  Or so I’d always been told.

  But after spending time in Salt Lake City I realized something; the world wasn’t wrapped up one correct way of thinking. It was complex. It was diverse. And moreover, the things I’d been taught may not be right. It meant people deserved to be judged on their merit. It meant I was under no celestial orders to marry Winston Allred.

  Still, I realized how badly I was needed in Jericho Valley. Alba Thayne was unlikely to live more than a few additional years. Since the hospitals of the common, the nonbelievers, were not places the Faithful were willing to go, the tiredly breeding women of Jericho Valley would be endangered with no one to care for them.

  And there was something else. Those who have fallen out of favor with the Faithful elders were banished. If I had failed to return and perform my duty, I would never have seen my sister again. Such was the fate of three of my own brothers. They were run off before they were even men. Gideon for watching an internet video and kissing a daughter of Emory Thayne. Thomas for listening to unapproved music and refusing to cut his hair. Daniel for a verbal altercation with our uncle, Aston Talbot. Sometimes I would look at my younger brothers and feel a welling sadness as I realized more than half of them would likely be excommunicated, dead to their families, thrown into a world they didn’t know.

  All to stack the odds.

  Male and female birthrates were essentially equal. There were not enough women to allow each man born to the Faithful to take the three or more wives required. So my brothers, and uncounted boys like them, were dropped off on the side of the road like unwanted pets for the crime of being competition.

  The temple was plain but it was the largest building in Jericho Valley. As I entered it beneath my veil and on my father’s arm I feared I would vomit.

  “Promise,” he said, giving me a satisfied grin, “I am very pleased with you.”

  “Thank you, Father,” I said dutifully, though really I wanted to scream at this man and pound on his chest with my inadequate fists. He was giving me away as he’d given daughters away before. As he’d give them away again.

  Not Jenny.

  I’d made up my mind on that count the moment I realized my lot was set. I couldn’t escape this. But I would make damn sure that my little sister could.

  Winston Allred waited for me at the end of the aisle and I tried to smile weakly. As men went he’d never seemed too terrible. He was in his mid-forties, thick-chested and balding. He had already taken four wives. I hoped this would mean an easier time for me.

  My stomach lurched at the thought of what would come later as Winston firmly took my arm from my father’s grasp.

  I didn’t remember the vows. I figured they didn’t matter anyway as their legality only existed in Jericho Valley and places similar to it. I no longer believed these men were ordered by God. When the words ended Winston kissed me chastely on the lips and he settled his arm definitively about my waist.

  The law of the world outside wasn’t pertinent. I was his all the same.

  I faced the temple full of people as the fifth wife of Winston Allred. My mother, standing beside my father, smiled at me nervously. Behind them were John Talbot’s other three wives and a mix of my fourteen siblings. In that moment I longed for my older brothers. My father wouldn’t protect me, but they might have.

  My head kept sinking and I kept trying to raise it and smile wanly at the wedding guests. This was what I had agreed to. This was my lot. Aston Talbot nodded at me with stern approval as we exited the temple and walked the short distance to my mother’s house where a meal would have been laid out.

  My mother kept trying to coax food into me but I could not even fake an interest in my stomach. I closed my eyes and thought about the happy years I’d spent at school. During the course of the four year curriculum, I had been fascinated by the brief introduction to psychology. There were so many unanswered questions about why people did what they did. I had looked at the happy bustle of students surrounding me and felt lost in the mercurial world of people. You could try to sort them out. Apply names to them. Propose to make them neat and orderly. But in the end they still might shock you and behave completely differently than how you’d predicted.

  So many times I had told myself that I would not come back. My cousin Rachel had left one desperate night, a penniless and unworldly seventeen year old girl but with more gall in her small finger than I had in my whole body. I certainly should have the gumption to leave too. But I knew what the penalty would be. My parents would never be permitted to see me again. Jenny would be alone. No. I told myself I had to come back.

  As I stared into my lap at my primly folded hands, I wondered about Rachel. At school I had been required to use the internet in order to complete coursework. I was shocked to Google ‘Rachel Talbot’ and find her smiling profile on Facebook. My cousin was still beautiful. I knew how any interaction with a disobedient daughter would be condemned if discovered, so we corresponded via private messages. Rachel was living with a man in the desert on the border between California and Arizona. She was free. She was happy. I said nothing to anyone about having heard from her. Not even Jenny. I searched for my brothers as well in the vast online world. I did not find them.

  I remembered the last message Rachel had sent me. It was a week before the completion of my studies, a week before I would be returning to Jericho Valley. She’d been trying for some time to persuade me not to go back.

  “Promise, they’ll always lie. They’ll always tell you it’s your duty to be whatever sick role they have imagined for you. It’s all bullshit, sweetheart. I knew that. You know it. Leave them. Today, next week, next year. You can always come to me. I love ya hon, Rachel.”

  They’ll always lie.

  On my wedding day those words kept ringing in my ears as if Rachel herself were standing by my side insistently whispering them. And then the first syllables fell away and became only one, repeated over and over.

  Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie.

  My gaze fell on the open window where I could see the handful of men huddled together on the other side. Aston Talbot. Emory Thayne. Winston Allred. John Talbot. Four men. Twenty two wives between them. Twenty three including me.

  They were old, unattractive. They pushed out their chests and practically preened over their imaginary piety. I’d watched them my entire life, accepted the things they’d taught me before I knew better. And as I sat quietly watching them in my wedding dress I realized that I hated them. I close my eyes to blot them out.

  Soft arms hugged me from behind.

  “Jenny,” I sighed, the word too much like a sob.

  My sister understood and held me more tightly.

  I pushed back a little, trying to weakly laugh. “At le
ast I’ll be nearby now,” I said. The tiny manufactured house had already been assembled for me within the boundaries of Jericho Valley, close to where Winston’s other wives lived so that he would not be required to travel far between homes.

  Jenny didn’t smile. She smoothed my long braid and sat quietly by my side. “At least until they make plans for me.” My little sister looked at me mournfully. “There’s been talk. From Father and Bishop Talbot when they don’t realize I can hear.” She frowned. “Or perhaps they don’t care if I can hear.”

  A cold feeling started to grow in my chest. “What sort of talk?”

  “About marrying me to one of the elders of Delta City.”

  “What?” I gasped, rising out of my chair. Several of my father’s wives turned and looked at me sharply. Delta City was our sister city on the other side of the state line, but was an even stricter community than Jericho Valley. The town was under the thumb of a man named Josiah Bastian who was purported to keep at least fifteen wives. Despite attempts at intervention by the state of Utah and the sound condemnation from Salt Lake City, they still married their daughters off long before the legal age of consent. Unions were not infrequent among first cousins. And worse.

  My hands clenched into fists so tightly my fingernails gouged my palms. My sister would not suffer such a fate. Winston Allred did not seem to be an unreasonable man. He might be eager to please the new bride he’d waited years for. I knew if he wanted to he could influence my uncle to discard this plan.

  And Jenny would be safe, for a little while. Until I could think of something else.

  Chapter Three

  I tried to smile when my husband came for me. Winston’s face was open and pleasant as he firmly put an arm around my shoulders. The four women who were now my sister wives stood nearby, watching us with mixed expressions.

  Delia was the first wife. She was a vague, amiable sort who seemed rather like my mother in her quiet acceptance of the events of her life.

  Leah, the second wife, had a soft look about her and a habit of keeping her eyes trained to the ground as she spoke in a scarcely audible tone.

  Mary only looked weary from the enormous burden of yet another pregnancy.

  But Deborah was only two years older than me, though she had been fourth wife to Winston for six years. It was her expression which troubled me. Her eyes darted between my face and the man we all called husband now. At one point in the afternoon she had approached me anxiously and seemed on the verge of saying something when she was sharply called away by some of the older ladies of the congregation. As she reluctantly left, she had thrown me a long look of despair which shot through my soul.

  Before I began my first night as a wife my parents bid me farewell. The lovely wedding gown had been hung away and I was clad plainly in a long calico dress sewn by my mother.

  As the two of them reached for me for a final embrace, I found it was with some difficulty that I suppressed my boiling loathing for them. My father had for so long behaved as a god among men that he no longer knew his own cruelty. He smiled at me, likely believing he had done right by his faith. And right by me, permitting me to live a short while in the world before demanding that I keep my vow to return to Jericho Valley and marry. I allowed him to kiss me on the cheek and then I hardened my heart to him forever.

  And my mother? She had been a teenage bride. This was the life she knew. The only possibility she saw for her daughters. With a sick feeling I realized one day years from now I might stand in her shoes. Giving away a daughter.

  No! Lie. Lie. Lie. No.

  As I walked into the early summer evening with my husband, I silently swore it would be different. I would make it different. Winston Allred couldn’t be all bad. He had waited patiently while I finished my schooling. In the frequent times he had called on me when I was home on break, he seemed interested in my studies and in hearing my opinions. He would help me. He would help Jenny.

  We were out of sight of the wedding guests, walking up the hill which led to the Allred family’s sprawling collection of living quarters. My new home was at the far end of the road.

  Winston’s arm still had not left my shoulders during the walk. He spoke to me casually, pointing out odd comforts; a family of sparrows or the lovely way the descending sun caused the light to dapple through the trees. I thought he was trying to put me at ease and was a little grateful.

  When he reached the door of the home I was to keep, he sighed and turned the knob. People didn’t lock doors in Jericho Valley. There was no need.

  As he opened the door I stepped inside cautiously, looking around at the comfortable setting. The click of the door closing at my back reminded me that he would be waiting. That he would be expecting.

  Winston Allred walked toward me slowly with a small smile on his face. The summer heat had created a steady stream of perspiration on his brow and he wiped at it absently.

  “Promise,” he said an agreeable voice. “Your uncle tells me you did not wish to go through with the wedding.”

  I blushed angrily. I should have known the Bishop wouldn’t keep a thing like that to himself. I looked at my husband. We needed to begin this new journey on a happy note. “Winston, I know how long you waited for me. I am sorry that I doubted.”

  He nodded, seeming pleased with my words. He took another step closer.

  “Nonetheless,” he said cheerfully, “you will need to be chastised for your disbelief, however fleeting it may have been.”

  And then Winston Allred punched me in the stomach.

  I fell to the floor, the wind knocked clean out of me. I had never been purposely struck before and my mind screamed with shock as my lungs begged to draw a breath.

  As I managed a gasping inhale Winston reached a beefy hand toward me and ripped my dress down the front. My head cracked against the hardwood floor painfully when he pushed me down with force, already tearing my underclothes from my body with one hand. While he loosened his pants with the other.

  I stared with alarm at the thing which hung between his legs. I had never seen a man fully unclothed before. The reddened shaft was stiff and ugly and seemed to reach for me like a talon. I tried to shrink away, however I still couldn’t breathe properly and the room began to spin as I suffered from lack of oxygen. I didn’t even have the strength to fight back. Not that it would have made a difference. There was no one for miles who would have stopped Winston Allred from doing what he wanted with me.

  But as my lungs finally filled with air I screamed anyway. In pain, in rage, in humiliation. I hadn’t given much thought to the act. It bore a brutality I hadn’t counted on. Winston grunted and held me down easily as he violated parts of me I had never touched. All the while his hands ravaged the soft flesh of my breasts so viciously I didn’t know what to cry about first. Afterwards, when I lay on the floor broken and bloodied, my husband fastened his pants and spoke in a casual voice.

  “Promise, you ought to repair your dress now.”

  And only then, as I struggled to rise, holding the ruined fabric of my simple dress together with shaking hands, did I understand the meaning behind Deborah’s pitying glance.

  ***

  Winston Allred had no mercy. I was appalled when he came for me again not half an hour after the first brutal coupling. It seemed impossible. The part of me he wanted was a raw, open wound. And that time I did fight back. It didn’t matter. He hit me purposely in places which could be well buried under modest clothes. Here a blow to the ribs. There a sharp knuckle in the kidneys. And as I saw the way his eyes glowed and the tip of his tongue hung out, I realized he enjoyed it this way. The more I struggled, and the more he struck me, the more aroused he grew.

  The only way to end it was to stop fighting.

  Winston finally exhausted himself and fell into a loudly snoring slumber. I lay naked under the thin bed sheet, afraid to touch my own body. My breasts throbbed, a piercing pain ran through my ribs when I breathed too deeply, and I still felt the blood leaking from the
abused core between my legs.

  I stared at the ceiling and Rachel’s words flashed before my eyes.

  “Leave them. You can always come to me.”

  A flash of hope lit up my soul. I could dress, find the main road and get to Harper, a common town twenty five miles down the road. If I traveled in the trees at the shoulder I might make it there before the men of Jericho Valley discovered I was gone and began looking. I had friends from Hale I could call. I knew there were plenty of people outside the boundaries of Jericho Valley who would be willing to help me.

  But I would never be able to get Jenny out. If I escaped they would know to keep her hidden. The only thing worse than the memory of what I had endured since Winston Allred closed the door to our home was the idea that my gentle little sister would suffer the same fate.

  I turned my face to the cool linen pillowcase and tried to keep my sobs quiet.

  Chapter Four

  In the morning I bathed quickly and kept my head trained up, purposely avoiding looking at the horrors which were sure to show on my pale skin.

  I had fixed my dress as Winston ordered. Several more handmade versions already hung in the cedar bedroom closet. While at Hale I had been permitted to dress in common, though modest, clothes since they provoked fewer questions. But since I’d been back in Jericho Valley the demands of the long sleeved, ankle length dresses necessitated by the church had been required. Now that I knew better I understood the oppression of such clothing.

  Someone, likely one of the sister wives, had stocked the fridge. Fresh eggs from one of the family chicken coops lay in a basket on the counter. There were a few cast iron skillets already in the cabinet. I removed one and prepared the eggs, my shoulders tightening as I heard Winston stirring in the next room.