ANNIE
Luke,
You made me cry this morning. That’s not easy, so I’ll give you credit—what you said gave me a lot to think about. You’re right—I do carry a lot of shame. In fact, even writing that made me angry—because for me, shame and anger are always entwined. If I’m angry, you can bet your ass that something made me feel ashamed first. It’s just how it works. I’m easily embarrassed, I’m self-conscious—I’m well aware of the catastrophic disaster my life has become. And it’s heavy. Shame is heavy on me...it’s crushing...suffocating.
That doesn’t mean I don’t deserve it.
I’m still crying. Fuck, I hate this. Well, while I’m already a mess, I may as well tell you about Robert. I hate writing his name, you know. I hate saying it, too. There was a period of a few years when I was estranged altogether from Mom when I just refused to say that name aloud—it would stick in my throat, and I’d almost gag if I tried.
I digress, so let me pick up where I left off in the last entry.
We learned more about him over the weeks before the wedding. He was a widower; his first wife had died in childbirth along with his infant son. He spoke about his first wife and lost child freely, but with an odd sense of distance from the loss.
“It was the Lord’s will, just like your father’s passing. Who am I to question it? It was their time.”
Lexie and I found this sense of acceptance to be maddening, particularly when he started to expect it from us. Any time we complained about the forthcoming move, he responded with rapidly increasing impatience, as if we were being completely unreasonable. Mom wasn’t much better—she was excited about the move and renewed contact with her family, and she couldn’t seem to understand why we weren’t.
“But you’ll see your grandmothers and aunts and uncles every day, girls. It’s going to be so much easier on us all.”
“So much easier on you, you mean,” I snapped at her a few times, and each time, I was promptly punished with time in my room alone. This gave me time to think about all of the ways that this move was going to ruin my life—and time to panic about moving away from the house that contained all of my memories of my father. I’d lie on the floor and sob, but if I thought really hard about Dad, I’d always catch a sense of him in the room with me. It was a tiny glimmer—just a hint of his presence—but it was generally enough to calm me. I’d think about Lexie’s words the day of his funeral, and I’d remind myself again and again that Dad would never leave us—he just wouldn’t. I took some comfort in the idea that whatever was coming, Dad would somehow be watching over me.
And I was certainly seeing his family—and Mom’s—more than I ever had before. Mom kept taking us to Winterton to visit with them, trying to help us adjust, I think. Winterton was a quiet little village, with ordinary-looking houses and a main street with average businesses. I suppose if you looked closely enough, you’d realize something is “off” about it—it’s perhaps a little too neat, a little too tidy. All of the residents are sect families, all of the businesses are run by its members, and the church runs the only school in the village.
And so, all of the men you see in Winterton are clean-shaven with very short, neat hair—and almost all of the women look similar, too, with long hair beneath head scarves, and extremely modest clothing. There are no run-down homes, and almost everyone has a new car, and there’s virtually no unemployment—the church offers interest-free loans to its members to establish or develop their own businesses, so the main street of Winterton has a surprisingly wide variety of stores and there’s even an industrial area.
It’s not exactly a closed community. There are no gates at the town entrance, and the regional city of Collinsville, where we’d grown up, was only five miles away. Some Winterton residents run businesses in Collinsville, and I’d eventually realize that Collinsville residents liked to visit Winterton for the stores. It’s a nice place, and its residents are for the most part good-hearted, well-meaning people with close ties to their community and a fierce dedication to their faith.
Even so, Winterton is not a welcoming place. Members of the sect are never allowed to eat with nonbelievers, so while there are restaurants, only community members can utilize them. Exclusions like this exist all around. Even if an outsider wanted to move in to the village, they’d find it almost impossible to be employed there or find housing. And while the men took turns participating in “street preaching” over in Collinsville to share their faith, this generally amounted to a group of them standing on the steps of the post office shouting Bible verses at passersby on a Saturday morning. If evangelism was the goal, this activity was an endless failure. I never saw them actually convert to the faith, and visitors were not welcome in the services. The congregation was totally stable, with the periodic exception of new children born or members forced out.
But those on the inside of the sect are cared for in a way that most people in the outside world never experience—it’s a restrictive lifestyle, but for those who comply perfectly, Winterton offers a tight-knit community. I’m convinced that’s what Mom was seeking—after she lost Dad, she wanted to return to the close embrace of the somewhat sheltered world she’d grown up in.
I can still remember the shock I felt the first time Robert took us to his house. By then, we’d heard him speak from the pulpit quite a few times, so I’d wrapped my head around his seniority in the sect. His uncle had once been the head of the sect for all of its assemblies worldwide, and the closest thing to clergy the church had, because there were no pastors or priests. All ministry was done by the men in the church, and where decisions needed to be made, the board of elders took responsibility collectively.
At some point during Mom and Dad’s exile, Robert’s once-illustrious uncle had also been withdrawn from. That rejection is considered to be the worst fate that can befall a member of the sect. All ties are cut with a member who is withdrawn from—prohibitive clauses in their “interest-free loans” are called in and access to their own family is restricted, and then intense intimidation is used to drive them from their homes and the village.
But Robert had escaped his uncle’s controversy unscathed and was now on the board of elders. All of the women in the assembly seemed to think Mom was quite lucky to be marrying him. His house was enormous—but it was sterile. Like all other community homes, there was no television or radio, but in Robert’s house, there was also no sense at all that this was a home. Mom had decorated our real home so beautifully—with soft furnishings and photographs and artwork, and throw blankets on the couches and cushions and knickknacks. The sterile, whitewashed walls of Robert’s home disturbed me almost as much as the idea of living in the community did.
“It needs a feminine touch,” Mom admitted to Lexie and me as we slowly packed the life we’d shared with Dad into moving boxes. “But...give me a few months, and I’ll make that place feel like home for you. It’s a beautiful house, so much potential...”
But as the wedding day neared, Robert was at our real home more and more, and he became increasingly involved in our decisions about what to take and what to throw out.
He deemed the most innocent of possessions “worldly”—and showing any sign of attachment to something was a surefire way to have him declare it as an idol and insist that it make its way into the trash. Even Lexie, who was so good at flying under Robert’s radar, got into a few teary arguments with him about what she was or wasn’t to take. In the end, he insisted that we whittle our entire house of possessions down to only a handful of boxes. By moving day, all that followed me from my old life to my new one was a box of clothing, a few teddy bears and a handful of books—including, thankfully, my precious journal.
When the truck pulled up to his house, one final shock was in store. When Lexie asked where our room was, Robert shook his head.
“In my home, you’ll have separate rooms.”
“The girls have always shared a room, Robert,” Mom said hesitantly.
“I’m the head of this house, Deborah. The girls will have their own rooms.”
“Maybe they could share just for a while, until they get used to—”
“No!” Robert said flatly, and then he turned on his heel and went back outside to the truck. Lexie and I looked to Mom, who stared back at us helplessly.
“I’m sorry, girls. We need to respect Robert’s wishes.”
I sobbed as I set up my new bedroom. In the house we grew up in, Lexie and I had beds side by side in a big bedroom with pink walls and beautiful lace curtains that Mom had sewn herself. In the new house, our rooms were at separate ends of a long hall. The walls in our rooms were white, and the few belongings I had been allowed to keep did nothing at all to make my room feel mine. I felt utter disconnection from everything I had ever known, from the very first moments in that place. Like a plant torn from the earth, the roots of my soul were exposed.
At dinner that night, Robert fired one final prewedding missive.
“From tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll both call me Father.”
“I’m so sorry, Robert, but we can’t do that,” Lexie said automatically. It was the first time I’d heard her defy Robert—but in typical Lexie fashion, she did it with the utmost respect.
“This is my home. Your mother will be my wife. You will be my children, and you’ll address me appropriately,” Robert said.
Lexie took a careful breath, and she said quietly, “Dad is, and always will be, my father.”
“I can’t call you it, either,” I said, and I glanced at Mom to find she was pleading with us with her eyes.
“Well, you won’t eat my food unless you give me the respect I deserve,” Robert snapped. “Go to your rooms.”
“Mom?” I whispered, but Mom was staring at her plate. The smile was gone—Mom was back to being fragile, and she withheld herself from us again—just as she had during that awful year of near silence after Dad’s death.
“Fine!” Lexie snapped, and she ran from the table, so I followed her. We lay together on her bed, and she wrapped her arms around me.
“We’ll find a way to get out of here,” she promised me. “Mom will come to her senses. You’ll see.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find a way.”
It wasn’t long before Robert threw the door open and insisted that I go to my own room. Lexie held on to me, her fingers digging into my waist, her body shaking against mine. I cowered in her arms as he shouted at us.
“This is my home. You are children—female children. You will learn your place here—this filthy, worldly disrespect has no place in this house—”
Until that night, I’d never really heard an adult scream at a child in fury. Robert’s thundering voice was violence to my ears, and I eventually released my hold on Lexie to cover them to block the sound out. As I did so, Robert tried to drag me out of Lexie’s arms, and Mom appeared in the doorway.
“Please, Robert,” she begged, and we all fell silent. When I looked to her, I was surprised to see Mom was crying, too. “Please, let them share a room—just until they settle in. This is such a change for them—and they have so much to adjust to. I’m sure the girls will agree to call you Father if you let them share a room. Right, girls?”
I looked to Lexie next. We held a conversation with our tear-filled eyes. I simply could not bear the thought of walking down that corridor on my own and climbing into a cold bed without Lexie nearby to comfort me. Everything might be wrong with our lives now, but as long as Lexie and I stuck together, I was sure I’d be okay. And for her part, I could see determination in Lexie’s eyes. Either she needed me close, too, or she truly understood just how much I needed her. When the silent conversation came to an end, Lexie nodded toward me, and I echoed the movement with a nod toward Mom. Lexie spoke for both of us. She whispered, “Right. We will.”
Robert refused to help us move the bed, so Lexie, Mom and I struggled to get it down the hallway, but it was worth it. We pressed the two twin beds right up close to one another so I could hold her hand as we went to sleep.
He didn’t raise the issue of our shared bedroom again. That decision to let us stay together was one of many Robert made over the years that made no sense to me. I loathe him—I hate him—but even I can see that Robert is no one-dimensional villain. Allowing Lexie and me to share a room was a surprising concession on a night that was otherwise full of fear and pain and loss. There would be other times over the years that followed when he would catch me off guard with a completely unexpected kindness—like when he gave Lexie money for my rehab one time, and the fact that he has allowed Mom to speak to us via the phone even though it breaks one of the community’s most sacred rules; the separation between those “in” and those of us who are “out” is supposed to be absolute. But from the beginning of our life with Robert, he was not only our evil stepfather—he was also Mom’s husband, and regardless of all of the awful things that he’s done to me and to Lexie, on some level I do believe that Mom loves him. Her life is not one I could bear myself, but her marriage to Robert seems to have made my mother happy.
I hate him anyway. Small acts of kindness do not cancel out the many ways he damaged me.