I don’t follow Bill Miller home. Instead, I stay right here listening to the thunder roar and thinking about how Mama used to tell me that if Jack ever hurt me, we would leave. She always made a big deal of the fact that I didn’t need to be afraid of him. That he would never lay a hand on me. She failed to realize he was hurting me in other ways. With every punch of his fist, every jolt of his angry voice, every kick of his boot into Mama’s frail frame, I was damaged. Over and over again. Damaged.
Perhaps, if I had ever seen my mother say no, if I had ever seen her fight back, demand better treatment, or define her own worth, then I would have had it in me to do the same. But all I have ever known is to apologize, be quiet, and don’t make him mad. It’s the cowardly thing to do, and some might say, the crazy thing to do. But in that moment, when Bill Miller held me down, I crossed a line. The one Mama and Jack had crossed long before, and the one I had straddled for most of my life.
I sit here by myself in the silence. I am determined not to end up like Mama.
I make a promise to myself. I promise that Bill Miller will be the last person to take advantage of me. The last man to ever hear me beg.
It’s been hours since Bill Miller left, and all night I have sat and stared at the church bells, the stained-glass windows, my torn yellow dress. My sadness turns to anger. I’m tired of hiding.
Before the morning sun even peeks through the windows, I open the door to the steeple room and climb back down the stairs. The church is empty, and I notice that Bill Miller turned the lights off when he left. How proper.
No one will arrive for hours. I fill the baptismal pool with warm water and remove my Sunday clothes in the dark. Beams from the streetlight trickle through the stained-glass panels. My eyes strain in the dim expanse of the sanctuary.
Candles line the wall behind me, unlit. I step down the three slick steps into the deep basin. A Bible is open above me on the pulpit where the minister would stand. A wooden cross leans against the wall beneath the familiar verse, John 3:16.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For Mama, this cross was a reminder of God’s great sacrifice. Of grace and goodness. Of suffering. A symbol of faith in things unseen. Of love. And forgiveness.
But the cross reminds me of a different verse. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Mama told me that after being nailed to the cross and beaten barbarically, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Mama used that verse to help her understand Jack. “Please forgive him. He doesn’t know any better,” she’d tell me again and again. “People only know what they know, Millie.”
Did the same truth apply to people like Bill Miller? I don’t think so. I think Bill Miller knew better. He knew it wasn’t right to rape a girl in a steeple room. A girl of barely seventeen, who had befriended his daughter. A girl who called his house a home.
Bill Miller and Jack had to have known what they were doing was wrong. You can’t beat your wife into submission. And you can’t rape a person because she reminds you of your own regrets. The truth is they both knew exactly what they were doing. And they chose it anyway. They didn’t care whether it was right or wrong.
I don’t want to forgive him. It’s not that easy.
But here’s the truth. I also don’t want to feel afraid for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live around my scars. I don’t want to be a victim. Not one second more. I want control of my own life. I’m tired of the fear.
I wash myself in the water and hear Mama’s voice. I am ten years old again, and she is telling me the story of the crucifixion. “He asked for them to be forgiven, and then He ended His life with one more simple message,” Mama says. “It is finished.”
Can it be that clear? Can I put everything that has happened behind me and consider it finished?
Bill Miller took control of me yesterday, but I don’t want him to control the rest of me. I don’t want to end up like Mama, weak and submissive. I also don’t want to turn out like Diana, with a lack of trust due to secrets untold. I sure don’t want to follow Jack’s course, abusive and aggressive, fighting against love and loss even after the chance for a fresh new start. And I don’t want to spin out of control like Bill Miller, bitter and vicious because I didn’t get my way.
Maybe there’s another choice. I think of Mabel, and Sloth, and Bump. All the steady people I have ever known. I sink into the baptismal pool and let the warm water roll over me. Under the surface, sounds are amplified. My heart pumps, the blood beats within me, my ears roar. And suddenly all is clear, as if the voice of God is speaking directly to me. I hear it. I understand.
I am here. I am here for a reason. For something more than to just breathe, blink, swallow. I am worthy of happiness and love. Worthy of a good life filled with good people who love me in return. And no one, not Jack, not Bill Miller, no one has the right to rob me of that peace.
I think of Bump’s family. As sharecroppers and tenant farmers, they have so many reasons to be unhappy, angry, and bitter. But despite wealthy planters who keep them under their thumbs, the Anderson family still circles together to pray. Prayers so sweet and sincere, even I felt the presence of God in their home. No doubt they’ve had hard times. Unfair struggles. But they have chosen, one day at a time, to forgive and to love.
I think of Mabel, a woman so devoted to her faith that even the tragic deaths of her son and her husband have not made her cold. “How do you get through it?” I asked Mabel one day. “I do two things,” she told me. “I remind myself that it’s not all about me. And I focus on the good. There’s always a way to find some good.”
I turn again to the words on the wall just as morning breaks through and beams of sunlight reach the wooden cross. It may take a long time, but somehow I believe that the broken pieces of me will come back together. Someone, somewhere, is on my side.