Sara tries to make no sound as she enters her father’s office. Where would he hide her doll, Louisa? So busy figuring out her plan to escape, she almost forgot the one thing she loves most. Blue-black shadows hover in parts of the room where the luminescent fingers of streetlamps do not reach.
Light suddenly floods the office and Sara racks her brain of any and all plausible lies to tell her father why she’s in his office. Turning around she finds only Naomi.
If she’s here, King Saul can’t be far behind; she’s already taken up too much time. Seeing her panic, Naomi tries to put her friend at ease. “He was in the back of the church locking up. He didn’t see you.”
Sara exhales, but that doesn’t stop the nausea making waves in her belly. “How didn’t he see you?”
“I’m small. No one ever sees me. It’s a blessing now, I guess. You’re supposed to be gone already,” scolds Naomi.
“I left Louisa. I have to get her.” She walks to the bookshelf across from his desk. There’s a wooden box on the second row where King Saul hides a small bottle of whiskey among the books. Sometimes Sara takes a small sip or two of the whiskey. It helps her with memories, making them less defined and sharp.
“It’s just a doll. This is your life. Please let’s just go. He hasn’t locked the back door yet.” Naomi’s voice barely whispering, afraid of her words, afraid they might somehow reach King Saul.
“It’s all I have from my mom, the only thing he can’t touch, the only thing that’s truly mine.”
The stark brown-black of Sara’s eyes betray her desperation and pierce Naomi. Naomi knows she will help her friend. She always has. She always will.
Forever and to the end.
God will give them the strength to get through this. God will protect them.
Sara blindly grabs at the air under her father’s desk and her hands grasp a few strands of yarn and smiling she grabs Louisa. If she concentrates, she can smell her mom, Sophia, remember her pretty golden-brown eyes, and find a small bit of happiness. Rising, Sara’s shoulder bumps the leg of the desk and a key taped underneath falls to the floor.
“We gotta go, now!” Naomi pleads.
Sara picks up the key, staring at the locked drawer right in her line of sight. Unlocking the drawer, she finds an envelope, thick with what is no doubt money, neatly tucked, lying on top of papers and pens and other junk. The proceeds of the offerings taken earlier that evening. King Saul wasn’t good at hiding things from her. You can’t hide things from someone who knows all the ugly of you. She can’t hide things from Violet and Naomi, and King Saul can’t hide things from her.
Naomi widens her eyes as Sara removes the money from the envelope, a little more than $380, enough to at least get a better footing in Tennessee, but not enough to pay for those nights and her tears and her fear, not enough to sweep away the detritus or mend her life until this point.
Sara steadies herself and carefully steps from behind the desk to grab her purse on the worn emerald green couch against the opposite wall next to a cheap pine table, a pane of glass sporting a crack which spreads diagonally from one end to the other.
Sara hears the creak of the old door before watching her father walk through it.
Full lips in a tight straight line, his husky voice behind clenched teeth. “What the fuck you think you doing, little girl?”
People look so hard on Saul’s appearance, no one sees the monster underneath. She thinks her mother, Sophia, saw the monster, and protected her even when she was dying. Sophia was the prettiest woman Sara had ever seen even when she was sick. Sara swore her Mom had golden eyes, such a bright brown they shined and shimmered when happy. Sophia kept Sara close, read books in funny voices, until she was so weak, Sara began reading to her. If Sara didn’t know how to pronounce the complicated syllables, she’d make it up as she went along, sometimes creating a whole new story. Those were the best books, where you came up with your own ending, no matter what the words on the pages said. Eventually the adults didn’t let Sara read to her mom anymore. They spoke in hushed whispers about the illness, though no one said cancer out loud, as if the disease would spread if they spoke its name.
Naomi steps forward. “Reverend, Sara and I just wanted...”
“Shut the hell up!” he says.
He turns to Sara. “I say again, whatchu doing, little girl?” His tone is suddenly calmer, more sinister, a rhythm to the question.
Clutching Louisa and the envelope tight to her chest, Sara fibs, “I just needed my doll to make me feel better. That’s all, Daddy. That’s all.”
“You needed my money to do that?”
“I was going to put it back. I just wanted to double-count it to make sure it was all there for you.”
“So sick as you supposed to be, you felt the need to find that key and count my money?”
It was a stupid lie. Stupid. Stupid. She shouldn’t have lied.
King Saul looms over Sara who stands only two inches shorter, but her lithe frame seems diminished compared to his strong stature.
“Daddy,” she begins.
“What do we say about liars, Sara?”
Sara’s eyes dart behind King Saul and find Naomi. She motions her friend to leave, but Naomi stays.
His finger sharply snapping her chin to meet his eyes, King Saul says again, “What do we say about liars?”
“All liars shall have their part in the Lake of Fire,” Sara whispers.
Sara knows this verse. It’s in Revelation. It’s about the End Times. Saul makes her repeat it often. The way he makes her say this verse isn’t word for word like the Bible. He whittled it down to a simple action and a compelling consequence.
Sara steps back until she feels the desk behind her.
“Please, Reverend Saul, we didn’t mean any harm...” Naomi says, trying to diffuse a situation over which they have no control.
Sara moves slightly aside and tries to dodge Saul’s hand, but it quickly grabs her and throws her across the floor near Naomi’s feet.
Reaching for her friend, Naomi meets Sara’s gaze, a trickle of blood ornamenting her full lips as she mouths the word “No.”
Viciously hauling Sara up by her shoulders, Saul shakes her. “You leavin’ me girl? You leavin’ me?”
There’s a low moan from Sara, somewhere deep within, an unfixable place. Naomi listens for footsteps, voices, any sign of deliverance, but she hears only the thud of her friend’s body hitting the floor and the smack of hand across skin as Saul strikes Sara again.
Naomi feels her fists hitting Saul’s back before her brain tells her she can’t help her friend like this. They do no more damage than a mosquito does with an elephant; Saul tosses her off just as easily as the insect. Naomi crashes to the ground, toppling over the pine table, the air in her lungs hovering somewhere above her body for the moment. Sharp knives of glass from the overturned table glisten in her blurred vision.
It always amazes Sara how soft Saul’s fingers are, even as they are squeezing her throat, ten velvety light brown digits bruising and crushing her fragile windpipe. He shouldn’t have beautiful hands.
Sara stops struggling. What good does fighting do anyone? Let go. She’d see her mom, Sophia. She misses her mom. She misses looking at her calming, golden-brown eyes. She misses reading to someone she loves.
But she’s not dying. She’s breathing, easier. King Saul’s grip loosens. His eyes, green as spring grass, go wide, close and he falls forward. A heap of dead muscle and bone that she pushes off her.
Behind him, Sara sees Naomi, a large shard of glass in her hands baptized in blood.