by Betsy Ashton
“Please let me know how I can help.”
My hand hurt from clenching my cell. I hoped I didn’t crack it. My next mission was to find out what the heck was going on. Emilie, Ducks, and I knew something was wrong. We didn’t have a name for it. Yet.
####
At mid-morning the next day, I presented myself at the manse. All fancied up in one of the three dresses I’d brought with me from New York and with some of Ducks’s scones on a plate, I went a callin’. The porch was unchanged. Still no sign of life, but someone had updated the church message board with information about the next service four weeks off. Outside of that, the place looked abandoned.
I steeled myself and rang the doorbell. I waited. And waited. And waited. The door opened a crack. Marianna’s frightened eyes widened as she peered around me. She wadded the hem of her T-shirt.
“I’m alone.”
She started to close the door but changed her mind and opened it wide enough to let me slip inside. She locked the dead bolt behind me.
I’d been in the living room once before, but much was different. A throw pillow lay on the floor, its innards strewn across the messed-up rug. A chair was tipped on its side next to a table. The contents of an ashtray had spilled across an end table and onto the floor. Drapes shut out most of the light, except for a three-inch sliver in which dust motes swirled and danced. Darkness failed to disguise the room’s disarray.
“Is—is Father Alvarado back?” Mrs. Sanchez called down the hall, her voice tight.
When she realized it was me, she stopped mid-step; her shoulders sagged. She walked into the living room, set the chair upright and slumped into it. Even though she ducked her head, I saw a fresh bruise on her cheek that stood out like an overripe plum. One eye was half-shut.
I handed Marianna the scones and nudged her toward the kitchen. She went without protest. I sat for several long silent minutes opposite Mrs. Sanchez.
“Do you trust me?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes.”
She turned toward the window. The sun didn’t penetrate the gloom indoors. Like the coverings on the window, Isabella had pulled drapes across her heart.
“He hit you, didn’t he?”
Isabella nodded.
“Why?”
“I refused to do something he wanted.”
“What?”
Isabella’s voice was so soft I almost missed what she said next. “He told me to send Marianna to his room. I couldn’t.”
I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. I reached out and held her trembling hands. She didn’t pull them back like Merry had after her accident. Deep finger prints on her upper arms left leopard-like spots on the delicate skin. She’d been restrained by someone much stronger than she was.
“I hoped he’d wait until Marianna was older, but he’s so insistent.” Tears filled Isabella’s eyes. “I don’t know if I can protect her much longer.”
“Wait for what?”
A specter from my past wavered in front of me. Junie. I tried to chase her back where she belonged, but she refused.
“I’m linked to what’s happening to Marianna,” the memory whispered before the image faded.
“Do you remember when you said Marianna needed a bra? That she was growing into a beautiful young lady?” Isabella stared at her stained, wrinkled skirt.
“I do. And she is.” I stroked the back of her right hand. Two knuckles displayed fresh scrapes. Had she fought Father Alvarado? “You said you didn’t want her to grow up. What did you mean?”
“Father Alvarado wants her. He came back early and caught us going through her clothes. I tried to make him think she wasn’t, um, ready.”
“Ready?”
“She’s a woman. She started her monthlies. That’s why I can’t protect her anymore.”
“He wants her? Sexually?” I tasted bile and swallowed hard. Heat burned my face.
“He was very angry. He tore the shirt off her back. She didn’t have a bra on. He could see how developed she is.”
“He has no right to look at your daughter, naked or not. He’s a priest, for God’s sake.” My voice rose. I released Isabella hands, afraid I’d hurt them. I tucked a lock of long, dark hair behind her ear. “No man has that right.”
“He does. It’s our way.”
Isabella’s family had long sent excess girls to the Church when there wasn’t enough food. Several generations back, they became nuns. Somewhere along the line, some girls became servants of the Church instead. Most were normal household servants, cooking and cleaning for the priests. Others, like Isabella, became sexual servants. Her mother and grandmother lived in the church, doing whatever they were told and bearing children. Boys were adopted out; girls weren’t. The priest wanted to initiate Marianna into the same kind of service.
“What he wants to do is illegal and immoral. He should go to prison for a long time.” I forced myself to sit still. My natural inclination was to pace and rant, but if I moved, I’d spook Isabella.
“It’s not a sin in our world.”
“It is in any world. He can’t touch you against your will. He can’t touch Marianna.”
Charlie was right about the priest keeping her hostage. Priests having sex wasn’t a shock. It had been going on since the beginning of time. But enslaving a woman? Weeks earlier, Ducks and Johnny speculated about the “de Jesus” extension of Isabella’s last name. Did the “child of Jesus” contain a darker connotation than illegitimacy?
“Are you free to leave? Go someplace where Father Alvarado can’t find you.”
Isabella shook her head. “I have no place to go.”
“If you did, would Father Alvarado let you leave?”
Isabella shook her head again.
Father Alvarado committed at least two major crimes: rape and slavery. Keeping a woman against her will was slavery. The mere fact Isabella wasn’t free to leave would keep the bastard in prison for a very long time. He’d struck the mother. He raped her. With the child now his target, who knew how many more crimes he’d commit? If the church hierarchy knew…
I wasn’t going down that rabbit hole.
“How long has this been going on?”
“With Father Alvarado?”
The question shocked me almost, but not quite, into silence. “Have other priests done this to you?”
“Marianna’s father is a priest.”
“This has to stop before anything happens to Marianna.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Do you want to move into the compound?”
“He’ll just find me. It would be worse than ever.”
“Well, he won’t be back for a month. I promise to find a way to protect both of you. I don’t know how, but I will.”
I hugged her at the door. When she looked up, a familiar pleading filled her eyes. I knew that look. I’d seen it too often. Years earlier when I was a child, I’d seen that same look in my younger sister’s eyes. I hadn’t been able to help Junie then, but I could help Isabella now. She leaned into me for support. She would trust me to stop the abuse. I was sick by the time I reached the car. How could this ice-cold man of the cloth keep a woman for sexual gratification? I gulped, stopped the car, and left my breakfast steaming in the dust beside the roadway.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Mississippi, week of January 9
I spent days in a whirlwind of activity. I worked out, rode my bike with Emilie, cooked and cleaned the dorms. I meditated for calmness and over-caffeinated myself to keep going. No matter how much energy I expended, I couldn’t shake the revolving images of Junie and Marianna. Like a spinning disco ball, two faces danced at the periphery of my vision. Three, if you counted Emilie, who never uttered a word.
Part of me wanted to beat the crap out of Father Alvarado. Part of me wanted to smuggle Isabella and Marianna out of the manse under the cover of night and get them out of Dodge. But where would they be safe? Not in the compound. Even with an armed guard, we weren
’t going to shoot a priest.
Had I made a promise I couldn’t keep? I was adrift. I needed a witness protection program.
I peeled an apple, took half to Emilie in the school bus and walked outside. Caws pierced the empty air. Not one had the answer. Ducks walked from the boys’ dorm to the bus. He raised an eyebrow in passing. I shook my head ever so slightly. The feather brushed my cheek.
During the following nights, I wrestled with nightmares and thrashed myself awake. Too often I awoke drenched in icy sweat. If this didn’t stop soon, I’d be washing sheets and pajamas every day.
I fussed with calling the highway patrol and turning Father Alvarado in, but I had no proof. I was fairly certain Isabella would deny she was raped and abused. No way would I turn to the church. Who knew if it hadn’t moved him from parish to parish like it had during the pedophile scandals? It could have known about his exploits but kept them quiet to avoid more notoriety.
I couldn’t take Isabella and Marianna to New York. The city alone would leave them quaking on the curb, the target of passing bicycle messengers and self-important pedestrians. Besides, they didn’t have two quarters to rub together.
I prayed the nightmares would end. They didn’t. One night after a particularly terrifying dream, I lay twisted in my sheets, panting as if I’d biked twenty miles uphill. A tiny tap sounded at my door.
“Yes?” I tried to keep my voice steady. I needn’t have bothered. If I’d woken Emilie, she would know I wasn’t normal.
“It’s me. May I come in?”
No matter how much I wanted to say “no,” I couldn’t. “Come on in, dear child.”
Emilie climbed into bed and pushed pillows around until she was comfortable. She rested her head on my shoulder, her arm across my stomach.
“Don’t you feel well?” I put a hand to her forehead. Cool.
“I’m fine. You’re not.”
Well, what did I expect? I lived with a sensitive. The stronger my emotions were, the more she felt. Why I thought I could hide from her, I’d never know. I wanted to protect her, but I must have been broadcasting at ear-splitting decibels to wake her.
“You’re right. I feel rotten.” Sometimes it was nice to have someone with her special gift to help make sense of the monsters under the bed. Other times it was downright spooky.
“You’ve been having nightmares since you talked with Mrs. Sanchez.”
Emilie picked at a speck of lint on the coverlet, rolled away from me and dropped it into a trash basket.
“I’m sorry I woke you. I try to be quiet.” I didn’t like depriving Emilie of sleep any more than I liked showing my weakness.
“As if you could keep me from knowing.” Emilie wiggled deeper into the pillows.
“I haven’t talked about it, because I don’t have a clue what to do.” I sighed.
“It’s about Marianna and Mrs. Sanchez, isn’t it?”
“Kinda.”
“So, it’s not totally about them.” Emilie had a tiny bead of sweat on her upper lip. She’d slipped into her secret place where I couldn’t follow. “Father Alvarado’s dangerous. He’s had sex with Mrs. Sanchez and Marianna.”
“Not yet. Not with Marianna. I have to get them away before he can touch her.”
“Can you?” Emilie’s muscles tensed. “Get them away?”
“I’m not sure how.”
“We can help.”
“Who’s we?”
“Mr. Ducks, Dad, Uncle Johnny, and me. That’s the ‘we.’ Oh, I almost forgot Charlie.”
“Not Alex?”
“Holy-crap boy-child would send Dad and Charlie in with guns blazing.”
My lips twisted in a grin I didn’t feel. “Might not be such a bad idea.”
“Might not work, either. Let us help. Please.”
I wanted to cry. My thirteen-year-old granddaughter was wise beyond her chronological age. After Merry’s funeral ended and the mourners departed, Eleanor reminded me I had a family and a community of friends to lean on. I didn’t have to do everything myself. I had the same family plus a new group of local supporters. I needed their help.
“Okay.”
“Pinky swear?” Emilie held up her little finger. Time for our age old unbreakable oath.
I hooked mine around hers. “Pinky swear.”
Emilie disentangled herself from the pillows. “I’ll go back to bed now.”
I kissed her.
She turned around in the doorway.
“Who’s Junie?”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Mississippi, week of January 9
No sooner had Emilie closed my bedroom door than the parade of monsters began. Marianna and Junie rolled over and over until one superimposed herself on the other. Father Alvarado high-fived Uncle Phil. Mother and Mrs. Sanchez wrung their hands and wept. Other observers, Pastors Washington and Taylor, my brothers Sam, Carl, and Dan, hovered in the periphery of my vision, neither acting nor reacting to the maelstrom at the foot of my bed.
For Emilie to get a good night’s rest anytime soon, I had to double-dog dare the monsters to leave us alone. The only way to do that was to face the truth. I’d buried what happened to us so deep it would take a magnitude-nine earthquake to shake my memories loose. Marianna’s terrified expression morphed into Junie’s silent pleas for help.
I turned on the reading lamp. Better confront what gave me nightmares in the light. Not that I couldn’t do it in the darkness, but light robbed the monsters of their ability to lie. I pushed myself up on the pillows Emilie had so thoughtfully plumped and reached for my pen and my journal. I began at the beginning with my baby sister, Junie, and the bad things that happened to her and to me.
####
Ours was a normal sized farm family, five brothers before me, two of whom died in infancy. I was four when Junie showed up. To say she surprised my parents was an understatement. Mother already had too much work to do with four children, a husband and a farm to help run. Much as she loved her last child, she’d rather not have had the responsibility.
As soon as the boys were old enough, they worked with Daddy around the farm. We all had chores. I gathered eggs from the hen house daily. I hated it because one old biddy was downright mean. She pecked the heck out of my hand when I reached in the nest. Wouldn’t you know it? She was the best layer of all.
Once we had a new baby in the house, my responsibility was to feed her. I loved my sister from the moment Mother and Daddy brought her home. She was so tiny.
“You’re a big sister.” Mother told me it was my job to protect Junie and keep her safe.
I took my new role as seriously as only a four-year-old could.
Junie delighted in life itself. Oh, sure, she did all the normal baby things. She cried when she was hungry or wet. She spit up on all of us, but she never fussed “just because.” Junie was born to be adored, and we were her willing fan club.
When I was ten and Junie six, Daddy was out plowing the upper pasture when his tractor hit a hidden root and flipped over backward. He landed on his head and was never normal again. At first, he couldn’t stand, walk, or talk. Mother made me feed him when he couldn’t even raise his arm.
“Why do I have to feed him?”
“Because I’m too busy.” Mother was a perpetual motion machine moving around the kitchen.
My oldest brother, Sam, tried to run the farm, but an eighteen year old couldn’t do all the work himself and stay in high school. Even with my other two brothers, Carl and Dan, he needed help in the fields. We faced selling our milk cows when Daddy’s sister, Helena, and her husband, Phil, moved into my grandparents’ house half a mile down the road. Grandpa worked the adjacent farm; Uncle Phil helped Sam, Carl, and Dan with ours.
After a year, things got better. With Uncle Phil’s hard work, we increased the size of our herd and sold milk and eggs for extra cash. Daddy improved a little and recognized his family, but he couldn’t walk from his bed in the living room to the front porch without help. He never spok
e, but I knew he understood what was going on around him. When I asked him a question, he blinked once for “yes” and twice for “no.” His facial muscles regained some movement, too, so he could change his expression a little.
“He’s getting better,” I told Mother one day.
“No, he’s not. He’s never going to get better. Stop fooling yourself.”
Mother had to be wrong, because sometimes he gave a flicker of interest when I tied his bib around his neck, fed him dinner, and chattered about my classes. Even though I was still a child, I knew he’d never be like he’d been, but inside he was still Daddy.
Once Uncle Phil handled the heavy work with Sam, Mother helped me care for Daddy. When she was old enough, Junie had her chores. She fetched the eggs and got pecked by one of the offspring of the original old biddy.
Junie and I shared a bedroom, like my three brothers. Right before the accident, I talked Daddy into painting the walls a buttercup yellow and the woodwork creamy white, the same color as our beds and chests of drawers. Wrapped up in flower petals, our bedroom was our private haven until one night when we had a big barbecue.
Uncle Phil and my brothers finished baling and stacking the last of the summer’s hay. We’d have enough to feed the herd all winter. My whole family came over to celebrate. Grandpa roasted a pig in a pit, and we ate until we were stuffed. The men drank too much beer.
Late that night, Uncle Phil staggered down the hall. I thought he was lost because he lived down the road with my grandparents. I started to ask him why he was in our room when he shushed me. He shut the door behind him, knelt beside my bed and put his hand under the covers. I shrank away, but when his hand touched me between my legs, I squealed and thrashed hard enough to throw the covers on the floor.
Uncle Phil tried to pin me down by putting his rough hand over my mouth and climbing on top. His breath stank of stale cigarettes and beer. I squirmed and tried to wiggle out from under him. He wouldn’t let me go, so I kicked as hard as I could between his legs. He gasped and slapped me. I kicked at him until he jumped off my bed and left the room, hands between his legs.
