ANNIE
Luke,
Even as a nine-year-old, I knew I should have been figuring out ways to stay under the radar. Unlike Lexie, I just couldn’t bring myself to blend in. Her instinct was to survive long enough to escape, mine was always to fight.
I was never malicious or spiteful. I just wanted to go home, and so I fought constantly against any sign that I might be assimilating into that place. In the first few years, they were relatively small rebellions—skipping lessons at the schoolhouse, talking during the worship services, refusing to say “amen.” The punishments started small, too—those spankings with the leather strap barely penetrated the fierceness of my rebellion. And initially, they really were just light strikes against my skin—and Mom sat silently as he administered them over his lap, right there at the dinner table. I’d stare at Lexie while he hit me, and she’d stare right back—her eyes wet with tears, her nostrils flared. One night, when she tried to intervene, he hit her, too, and we both ended up in bed hungry.
“Just leave it, Lexie,” I told her. “I don’t even care if he hits me.”
“Can’t you just say it? Just say ‘amen’ and be done with it. It’s just a stupid word,” she whispered to me in the darkness.
“I can’t let him win.”
And even when the beatings grew fiercer, the pain didn’t bother me—I actually found a measure of satisfaction in the frustration I could see on Robert’s face as he reached for the belt night after night. But I hated that he’d hit Lexie, too, and so eventually I did learn to say the word at the end of the blessing, just to keep the peace for her.
Robert won that battle, but I still felt like we were at war, and the conflict soon shifted to my clothing. All women in the community were required to wear long skirts year-round, but in the summer, I tripped on one of my outings to the woods with Lexie and ripped my skirt. Inspired, I tore the bottom half of the skirt off, and I came to breakfast the next morning with it falling only as far as my knees.
Robert rose silently, lifted the belt from the hook beside the table and dragged me by the neck of my shirt back to the bedroom I shared with Lexie. He threw me onto the bed, and for the first time ever, he lifted the skirt and pulled away my underwear and he brought the belt down onto my bare skin.
“Keep your mouth shut,” he hissed, when I cried out. I heard a hesitant knock at the door. I knew it was Lexie, and so did Robert—he turned toward the door and he thundered, “Leave us, Alexis!”
Her footsteps did not retreat as I bit the insides of my cheeks to stop myself from crying out. Robert brought the belt onto my bare skin again and again. For the first time, he hit me until his rage subsided—and when he was finished, I was bruised and barely able to move. I crawled stiffly along the bed to press my face into my pillow as Robert hissed, “You are a filthy, sinful little girl, Anne, and I swear to you that I’ll beat the sin out of you if I have to.”
Robert told Mom and Lexie that I was not allowed to go to school that day, and he prohibited Lexie from seeing me. From the bedroom I heard Lexie’s wild protests.
“Mom, you can’t let him do this to her!” Lexie had wept, and my mother spoke firmly to her.
“Robert is the head of this household, Lexie. We have to trust him to discipline Annie as he needs to. You’ll see. Sooner or later, she’ll respect him for his correction.”
When her lessons finished, Lexie ran home from school and she burst into the room.
“What did he do to you?” she asked me, her face red with rage. “I’ll get the police. He can’t hit you like that. It’s not right.”
“I don’t even care,” I said to her, and I went back to staring at the ceiling, as I’d been doing all morning since they left. I’d been in some kind of shocked trance, more numb than stoic—I hadn’t shed a single tear. “He can hit me, but he can’t hurt me.”
“Annie, you have to stop provoking him. Please.”
“I’m just getting started.”
I had all morning to think about the incident with the skirt, and I’d come up with a plan. It was against the rules for girls in the community to cut their hair—the sect adhered strictly to a biblical teaching that long hair was a woman’s crowning glory. But the girls at school were encouraged to do “feminine activities” like cross-stitch and other crafts, so I had easy access to scissors.
When the bruising on my thighs had gone down enough for me to go back to school, I slipped a pair of scissors into the pocket of my skirt. I waited until everyone else was asleep, then I went to the bathroom and gave myself a jagged bob and even a fringe.
When I arrived at breakfast the next day, Robert was so angry that I thought he was going to kill me. As he dragged me back to the bedroom, I could hear the way his breathing caught in his throat and I started to worry—what would happen if he did actually kill me? Would anyone even care, other than Lexie? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to die, and for a few moments I really wondered if I’d gone too far. The belt against the still-fresh bruises on my thighs was agonizing that day, and I couldn’t help but cry. I heard Mom and Lexie arguing on the other side of the door, and Robert must have, too—because after only a moment or two he stopped. He lifted me with two tight fists against my upper arms, until I was dangling in front of him at eye level. His breath on my face was hot, and I wanted to cower away from him—but I wouldn’t. Instead, I stared right back and I clenched my teeth so that they couldn’t chatter.
“Filthy, sinful little whore,” he hissed, then he threw me onto the bed. When he left the bedroom, he slammed the door so hard that the hinge broke.
Robert made Mom drag me before the entire women’s assembly that week to apologize for dishonoring the community and the Lord. Lexie begged me to do as they asked—just so that the fuss would die down. I was all set to, until I found myself sitting on a stool on the stage of the worship hall, staring out at that sea of judgmental faces.
Two hundred women and girls stared back at me. Their gazes were sharp, and in pockets all around the room, women and girls whispered to one another. I could feel their condemnation and the odd hum of excitement in the air. I was a living, breathing scandal, and the drama of my haircut was the most exciting thing that had happened in Winterton in forever. This was as close to a frenzy as the women were generally allowed to experience, and all of that energy was focused on me. The butterflies in my stomach disappeared and all I felt was sick and terrified. My skin was clammy, my heart was racing and the expansive hall seemed to sway before me.
They were enjoying this. They all thought I was a monster—a child of the devil.
Over a haircut.
The absurdity of the moment struck me, and I started to laugh. It was a nervous response, nothing more than anxiety manifesting itself physically, but to the crowd, it seemed a further rebellion, and I heard the audible gasp that rippled through the assembly. This was fuel to the fire of my nerves, and the laughter grew louder.
Mom was on the stage, too, wringing her hands and pacing around me as she waited for me to say the magic words that would make all of this go away, but my laughter confused and then infuriated her—the pleading in her eyes faded, until she was simply staring at me with that same disgusted look in her eyes that the crowd wore.
“Stop it, Annie! You need to say sorry,” she pleaded, but I could only shake my head. I was petrified—in physical shock at the public shaming—and although I’d had the best of intentions to apologize and put the whole thing to rest, I couldn’t stop the giggles.
And when she realized I wasn’t going to apologize, my mom burst into tears and for the very first time during all of this, I actually felt a little guilty. When Mom ran away, one of her sisters stormed up the stairs onto the stage and took over the process of facilitating my confession.
“Admit your sin to the congregation!” my aunt roared. My nervous laughter faded and finally disappeared. I stared up at her, at the sharpness of her stare and the red that stained her cheeks. Even now, twenty-one years later, I can still remember how small I felt under that scornful gaze.
That’s when I decided that I wouldn’t apologize. Until that moment, I had the best of intentions, and the only reason I hadn’t said the words they wanted to hear was that my nerves had gotten the better of me. I was still nervous and still terrified, but suddenly I was also determined. That same sense of indignation that saw me defy Robert almost daily in our house rose within me, and I met my aunt’s gaze and I said, “No.”
I barely croaked the word because my throat felt so tight. I’m not even sure if she heard me, because my aunt circled around me and then bent close to hiss right in my face.
“Tell them about the darkness in your heart, Anne. Confess your sin and repent.”
“No,” I said again. My voice was just a little louder this time—more steel within the word. Another woman joined us on the stage, and she pressed an accusing forefinger into my face and thundered, “Elder Robert told us you cut your skirt last week and tried to go to school with your knees exposed. And now this—cutting your crowning glory, dishonoring the Lord. These are the lustful acts of a slut, Anne Herbert. You are trying to distract the men of this community with your appearance, aren’t you? You want their desire, don’t you? Whore!”
I was nine years old. I had no idea what any of that meant, only that the other women in the room were still staring at me, nodding their approval at the accusations. I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to do or say—so I stood and tried to run away. The aunts cornered me and pushed me back onto the chair and the questions continued. I have no idea how long it went on—only that eventually, I slipped away from them altogether. Maybe my body was still there on the stage, but my mind was somewhere else—somewhere safe.
But still... I didn’t apologize.
Later that night, Robert sat me on the couch and lectured me—pacing the length of the room as if he was too charged up to sit still.
“The devil is in you, Anne Herbert,” he thundered, and I snapped out of the strange half sleep I’d been in since the women’s meeting as I shot to my feet and hissed back at him,
“My name is Annie Vidler.”
Mom burst into tears, and I froze. Robert raised his hand and slapped me. I slammed my eyes shut instinctively, and when I opened them, I saw that Mom was holding her hand over her mouth, her knuckles white. She watched in silence as Robert dragged me into the bedroom for another beating.
“You just have to stop, Annie,” Lexie whispered to me in the woods in the days after the incident. “I know you’re trying to make a point, but this isn’t the way to go about it.”
“I have to,” I said stubbornly. “I’m not like you. I can’t just make myself fit in here. I hate these people.”
“I do, too. But we have to survive until we can leave, and you’re just making things harder for yourself.”
“I’m going to convince Mom to take me home.”
“Home? Annie—this is home now. There’s nowhere else for us to go—she sold the house, and her family is all here. She couldn’t take us away even if she wanted to.”
“But she could work at the old school, she could—”
“Annie!” Lexie grew impatient with me, and she raised her voice—something she’d do a lot in the years that followed, but it was rare enough then that I fell silent. “You’re making life even more awful than it already is, not just for yourself, but for all of us—for me and Mom, too. Please—can you please try a little harder to just go along with all of their nonsense?”
“But Lexie...” I started to protest again, but I fell silent when Lexie’s expression softened and she pulled me into her arms for a hug. Her arms were the safest place in the world, and when she embraced me, the sick tension in my belly unfurled...at least for a little while. Her arms were a fortress, confining my anger and keeping the demons away. Just for a few moments while she hugged me, I was actually just fine.
“I know it’s hard, Annie,” she whispered against my hair. “I hate it here, too. But we have each other, don’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“And as long as we have each other, we can get through anything, right?”
“Okay,” I said, and when she released me I looked right into her eyes and I promised, “I’ll try harder, Lexie. I’ll try to fit in.”
And I did try for a while, but I’d gotten into such a habit of being the bad girl, it seemed I couldn’t stop even when I wanted to. I tried to make friends in school, but everyone knew who I was by then—if not by reputation, then certainly by my haircut. Lexie and I had never fit into the community, but now we were completely ostracized, and I found myself acting out to simply deal with the intense loneliness I felt.
No one smiled at me. No one was kind to me. When I walked down the street, the other kids crossed the road to get away from me. If I tried to hug Mom, she’d pull away. I craved contact and acceptance—and I started to wonder if there wasn’t something more to the way the community rejected me after all.
Maybe I really was the bad girl.
I argued with my teachers and the elders, and I antagonized Robert, and I smashed a window in the kitchen just because, and I tore Robert’s precious family Bible then refused to admit it was me—even after he beat me until I bled. If there was a way to anger him, I found it. It became a game to me—a form of entertainment—but it was a game that increased the isolation that made me miserable in the first place and a game I couldn’t seem to stop.
Three and a half years after we arrived at the community, Lexie turned sixteen. She had a farewell party at the school the day before her birthday, and Mom lined a job up for her at the general store. The smartest kid in the community was going to be doing the filing for a purchasing clerk.
I woke up before dawn on her birthday and found Lexie sitting on the edge of my bed.
“What’s going on?” I asked her. I was groggy, and while I noticed immediately that she looked different, it took me a while to realize why. “Where did you get pants from?”
“I stole them from Robert,” she whispered, and she lifted her shirt to reveal a belt fashioned out of twine. “You have no idea how amazing it feels.”
I was amused by this odd turn of events, until I realized how serious Lexie’s behavior actually was. Robert would lose his mind when he saw her—this was the kind of stunt I’d pull, not Lexie. I sat up and stared at her. The pace of my thoughts slowed to a standstill.
Something bad was about to happen.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Annie... I’m leaving today.”
“Leaving?”
“I’m going to go. Now.”
“You can’t leave me, Lexie. You can’t leave me alone here.” I started to cry, and she took my hands in hers and she squeezed hard.
“I can’t stay here, Annie—I have to get out and find a way to go to college. It’s for you, too. By the time you’re sixteen and you can leave, I’ll have a house and a job, and I’ll be able to take care of you.”
I begged her not to, but Lexie left that day.
I was never sure why she didn’t warn me...maybe she assumed that I already knew she was planning to leave. If she did, she might have overestimated my intelligence, because I never saw it coming.