Hold Fast (17 page)

Jimmy stares at me, waiting for me to say something. I stare back, silent. He shakes his head and continues.

“Your brain, Sean? If it gets worse, if it starts swelling out of control? You jostle your head around too much, it could happen. And it won’t end well. Persistent vegetative state. Coma. Bed sores. Nurses changing your diaper twice a day, need it or not, and maybe wiping a layer of dust off you every couple months.”

“I’ll take it easy, then. Scout’s honor.”

I will, too. At least, until I figure out my next course of action. Courtney doesn’t have much time. She may be out of time already.

* * *

S
leep is my solace
, but there is little solace to be found here in the penance box.

When I can sleep, I can dream, and my dreams are a refuge from this waking nightmare, but I don’t think I managed more than an hour or two last night, at most. My grief is still too fresh, my pain too raw.

I haven’t eaten or drank anything since yesterday morning, the bottle of water and an energy bar while I watched Sean sleep, but somehow I still have to pee. So kind of them to leave me a bucket in the corner of the box, at least.
Once I’ve relieved myself I sit back in the opposite corner, tightly hugging my knees to my chest, and close my eyes.

Even if I can’t sleep, though, there are other kinds of dreams that can take me away from this waking nightmare. I was an accomplished daydreamer even as a little girl, but in the years since my mother brought us to this little corner of Hell on Earth, I have achieved absolute mastery. Huddled in the corner of the outhouse-sized penance box, my supply of tears is exhausted for the moment.

I escape into happier worlds of my own making, wonderful worlds where Sean and I escape, get married, and live happily ever after. Worlds where he never left. Even worlds where he left, but never came to find me would be happier, because he’d still be alive. It’s a way to pass the time until I have more tears ready.

I’d been shattered, destroyed when Sean left eight years ago. It broke my heart. The day he left for boot camp I told him I loved him.

I thought he knew. How could he have missed it?

It wasn’t enough to make him stay. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, kissing him fiercely under the chipped paint of the Greyhound station’s sign. A real kiss, one that burned my lips, fueled by the all my years of unspoken feelings and wants and desires for him. All the love that I’d felt, but of which I’d never dared be the first to speak.

“I love you, Sean,” I told him, when I let go of him. “Don’t leave.”

Sean looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time, as if he’d never even seen me before. His eyes were opened, finally, and I watched a whole lifetime’s worth of feelings cross his face: confusion, joy, grief, lust, and each change was a hot needle, burning the memory of that moment into my soul.

He glanced over his shoulder at the bus, ready to leave, and when Sean turned back to me there was sorrow written in his eyes and I knew I’d waited too long to tell him. I’d lost him.

I couldn’t bear to hear him speak, to apologize. I burst into tears and then I did my own running, up the long, gentle slope of Congress Street, stopping in front of the hospital where Sean’s mother worked. I couldn’t make out their figures standing there, but I imagined him giving his mother one last hug before he got on the bus and left. Even the bus itself was an indistinct blur of red, blue, and silver as it pulled out of the station, carrying the boy I loved from me.

Melissa Pearse came for me. She left the car parked at the bus station and walked, giving me time for the worst of the tears to fall and fade, and found me sitting on the sidewalk, face buried against knees hugged tightly to my chest.

“Is this what it was like for my mother?” I asked her. “For you? With Sean’s dad?”

“Yes,” she answered, eyes bright with her own tears. “Always. But you can’t stop them. You just—all you can do is wait, honey. And you pray for them to come back.”

No prayers can bring him back to me. Not this time.

A full day passes without anyone coming to check on me.

There are no clocks in here, but there are cracks in the high, sloped roof of the small shed where sinners are sent to contemplate and repent. Pale, misty light filters through the cracks in the morning, with blinding spears that highlight every floating mote of dust at noon. The light dims slowly toward evening until the floodlights come on, striping the walls with the yellowish fire of the halogen bulbs.

My stomach growls but I’m too numb to feel hunger or pain in my body. The only pain that matters are the gaping, ragged-edged holes in my heart where Sean and Daniel were both ripped away from me in one bloody afternoon. I turn my back to the light and will myself to go to sleep on the dirt floor, in spite of the filth and blood. My blood. It hadn’t saved me from Jeremiah, but only granted me a few days’ delay of my fate.

I’ve almost faded out when the noise of pebbles bouncing off the wall draws me back to reality, denying me the solace of sleep and the refuge of dreams that I’ve been futilely seeking for… thirty hours? Thirty-six? I don’t even know anymore. I don’t even care. What’s the point?

“Courtney?” A small voice intrudes softly into my misery. “Courtney? Are you okay?” It’s Jennie. Rising to my hands and knees, I crawl to the side closest to her voice and sit slumped against it. Through the cracks in the wall, I can barely make out her silhouette in the penumbra.

“Yes, honey,” I whisper back to her. “I’m fine, don’t you worry about me.”

“You’re sure? ‘Cuz Matthew, he told me your Mama, she locked you up. And he said no one came to see you since last night.” Oh, you sweet baby. You could be a spy or a detective out there. You could be any damn thing you wanted to be. But you’re here instead.

“I’m okay, Jennie. I promise,” I tell her. It hurts to lie to her, but it’s hardly any extra burden on top of everything else.

“Have you been bad?” Jennie’s voice is plaintive, mixing equal parts of suspicion and disbelief. I can’t help but chuckle at her question: this is a little girl’s logic at work. If my mother is punishing me, it means I must have been bad. It doesn’t matter that I’m an adult.

“I don’t even know anymore, Jennie,” I say. An adult? Physically and legally perhaps, but I’ve been acting like a clingy child, hoping my mother would someday snap out of it. Though now that I think of it, I didn’t behave like one. I was a clingy kid who wouldn’t let go of her mother.

“Well, I don’t know what you did, but I don’t think you can have been bad enough to not have water,” she adds. Her tone is dead serious. “Come on, take it.”

There’s the smallest gap imaginable underneath the wall of the box, and with a moment’s effort I’ve enlarged it and my tiny angel slips a plastic bottle through the hole. My heart swells with gratitude as I unscrew the cap. The whole bottle is gone in three long swallows. I hadn’t realized how parched I was.

“Thank you, honey,” I tell her, returning the bottle to her. “I really needed that.” I wish I could hug you, Jennie. “You need to go, Jennie. Get back to the dorm, into your bed, before you get into trouble.”

“Goodnight Courtney,” she says.

“Goodnight, my sweet, be careful now!”

The soft crunching sounds of her bare feet in the gravel fades as she runs away, and I have a sudden new reason to cry. I may not have carried her, given birth to her, but I couldn’t love Jennie any more if I had. My baby girl, my small angel of mercy, gives me back some of my faith in humanity. What if she was mine, though? What if she were mine, though? What if Sean were your father, Jennie?

A new little world builds in my mind, full of bright lights and pain, and I’m screaming because it hurts, but I’m so happy too, and Sean’s voice is telling me to push but he’s so calm and quiet, even when I yell
THIS IS YOUR FAULT!
YOU DID THIS TO ME!
and my mom is holding my hand and I love her so much, we’re so close, and I’m so glad she’s here with me today it means so much but she laughs at me because she did the same thing yelling at my dad when I was born, and then my dad and Sean’s father too, they’re at the door, and the nurses are yelling at them to get those filthy cigars out of the building, but they’re smiling anyway, and then it’s over and one of the nurses is my mother-in-law and she gives me my baby and it’s a girl and her name’s Jennie, and Sean and I take her to her first day of school and there’s birthday parties and oh, my God, how did our daughter get to be sixteen already? You’re growing up so fast and your father and I love you so much and—

“Courtney! Courtney, wake
up!
I have to talk to you!” A shrill voice jolts me out of my sleep, jerking me away from my too-short rest and my too-fragile refuge.

My eyes come open slowly, crusts in my eyelashes sticking them together, and my beautiful dream turns into the living hell I thought I’d left behind forever. My mother stands in the doorway, backlit by bright sunlight. Still groggy from too long awake and not long enough asleep, I’m too slow at getting up for my moth-
Heather
, dammit!
Heather
’s tastes, and she prods me with a toe.

“Wake up you lazy whore!” she hisses.

“Mom!” I protest, sitting up and leaning against the corner of the box.

Quicker than I thought possible, my mother’s hand flies at my face. Her strength is incredible. My cheek is on fire, and I don’t need to touch my mouth to know my lower lip is split. Again. I try to remain as still as I can. When she’s like this, absolutely anything can send her deeper into her madness. Eyes riveted on her hands, ready to parry the next blow, I listen to her ranting.

“Don’t you call me that! You are no daughter of mine. You’re a disgrace, you’re a filthy sinner, Courtney. You turned away from The Lord!” She clasps her hands and looks heavenward, as if she could talk directly to Him through the crack-filled roof. “What did I do to deserve this?”

Oh, I have a few answers for you, Heather. Let me count your sins! You abandoned your husband when he most needed your support. You stole me away from my father and never gave us a chance to see each other again. You lied to me and made me believe my father was dead. You gave the order to mutilate my body, and you held me down while it happened!

I keep my answers to myself. Silence is safer, and besides, the way she stands with her head cocked to the side, I’m not sure she isn’t already getting answers from someone else. Her head tilts occasionally, in the barest hint of a nod, and once in a while her lips move but no sound comes out. On Saturday night when I visited her in Rebecca’s infirmary, she’d talked about
His
voice, and the more I watch her, the less I think she meant Father Emmanuel. How did I never notice before?

After a moment, her eyes open and mouth curves in a smile that would be sweet and loving, but the ecstatic fire lighting her eyes turns it terrifying instead. I brace for the worst.

“You don’t realize how lucky you are,” she purrs, and her words push me to the very brink of laughter. If I were even a little stronger, a tiny bit braver, I’d be wetting myself over how stupid that idea is. If I were even the least fraction weaker, it would be nervous laughter, the escaping squeals of my brain gibbering in fear. It’s a delicate balancing act, and I’m barely keeping it all together.

“
You
have been chosen!
”
Heather says, and her voice rises a full octave while she says it. “
He
has chosen
you
to carry out the prophet’s bloodline. It’s your sacred duty, Courtney. Your
duty
in this life is to bring new heirs of Father Emmanuel’s bloodline, so that
His Work
may continue!” I stay quiet, but that doesn’t matter. The woman that bore me waves her hand to chase away the excuses that I’m not even making.

“Father Emmanuel has accepted it was not entirely your fault. He knows you’re weak, that you could not resist the temptation, and The Lord has inspired him to mercy!” Her voice is calmer now, more rational, and the fires burning in her eyes are only glowing embers of madness. “And in that mercy, Courtney,
He
has commanded forgiveness. Do you realize how fortunate you are? You’re going to marry his son! Once Father Emmanuel is called to glory,
Brother
Jeremiah will be
Father
Jeremiah.” Her voice is pleading. She’s begging me to understand, and the start of a tear glistens in the corner of one eye. “Just submit.
Please
, Courtney. For me,” she finishes.

“Mom?” I cringe away from the blow that doesn’t come. “I’m sorry, you told me not to… What do you want me to call you?”

“Oh, honey!” She falls to her knees in the bloody dirt, wrapping her arms around me. “I’ll always be your mother. I’ll always love you. No matter the sin.”

“You, you…” I’m at a loss for words. The constantly changing mental state of the woman that kneels here before me, telling me how much she loves me, is too much for me to process. “Mom, they
crippled
me. You
let
them drive a tractor over my leg.”

“It was the only way,” she tells me, tears running freely down her cheeks. “Courtney, it was the
only
way. You were so close to sin. I couldn’t let you backslide; I couldn’t let you go back to
that
life.”

“What life, Mom?” I yell, but my voice is hoarse already. My grief for Sean and Daniel has ravaged my vocal cords. “
What
life? Back then, I went to school, I came home, I did my homework. I didn’t do
anything
!”

“Honey, you are not
submitting.
He has
revealed
His Plan to Father Emmanuel. You
must
submit!”

“Mom,” I say, taking a deep breath, drawing up all the dignity I can manage while smeared with dirt and my blood. “I will
never
submit to that sick bastard.”

“‘Rebelliousness,’” my mother says, softly and earnestly, “‘is as the sin of witchcraft.’ The prophet Samuel tells us this. It is the Word of The Lord. And Samuel
also
teaches us that ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’ Courtney, I
love
you. I
love
you enough to
disobey Him.
This is
mercy
, Courtney. Because I
love
you. I’m endangering
myself
by disobeying
Him.
Why can’t you just be grateful
?
” Tears fall freely from her eyes, and the fires of madness are empty, sad, and broken. “But there will come a time when I can’t disobey
Him
anymore. No matter how much I love you. And it’s going to come soon.” My mother sighs, mopping at the tears on her cheeks.

“All I’ve ever wanted was to be
free,
Mom.” She flinches when I say it.