Forgive Me

The Voice in the Shadows

What sort of torture does a woman have to go through for her to accept the dealings of the Devil?

-2/2/1920

The snow served only one purpose: freezing the ferocity of the monster boiling under my skin.

There was no present time in my frost-bitten mind, no present on the porch steps of our stranger apartment complex. No, my mind was racing through the events of the morning, three days after the coffee incident:

"Abigail, dear, I have attempted every restaurant, every mine, every barber in this entire city and I have yet to find employers who want me and are willing to pay me my work’s worth," I sighed, setting June inside her highchair and watching her shove the remains of my breakfast into her mouth. "I am denied day after day after day. Do you have any advice?"

"Have you tried losing the accent?" she said between chewed mouthfuls of soaked, buttery bread. "They may believe you're part of America if you do that."

"Even if I did, that would still leave my gender. And it seems that is rejected more than nationality. It’s unfair!”

"People are odd, Missy. That is how it has and always will be here. They believe we are below them, like cattle.”

"I don’t understand," I began, pulling June's hair back into a tight but dependable braid. “Are we expected to do something differently?”

“They want you to rely on your husband and worry about having children.”

“Lars doesn’t make enough, I’m afraid. At least, not enough to keep all of us fed and warm.”

Abigail shook her head, an incoherent sadness breathing in the crevice of her ear. Its looming shadow was always above her, I had noticed-- always standing the hair up on the back of her neck, always stretching her eyes in her sockets. She was not eager to say what she did next but it had to come from her lips. Despite the amount of pain it brought to me, there was no other way out.

"Missy," she whimpered, taking my pale hand in hers. It was shivering with such immensity I had to restrain her wrist against mine. "Missy," she tried again, "Peter sent me a letter today. He said him and the other three will not be sending me anything anymore—that I must find some way to provide on my own, because they have their own families to take care of. I have little-to-nothing saved.”

Her words were becoming salted as tears began to form beneath her eyes. Several of them broke free of her limited control and slid down her cheeks, racing against the despair that was already dropping lower and lower. "You and I skip meals for the sake of our children, and we are adequate doing so. Our lives have been so engrossed in the absence of food it could have no less of an effect. But it is the children who would not be able to survive the harshness of Boston without their two meals a day. And if I cannot provide that for them, then they will be sent away.”

Ice slipped down my throat and I couldn’t speak, no matter how hard I tried.

“Lars is doing the best he can, but we will lose the apartment soon enough. My children are not old enough to look after themselves and are not enrolled in school; in other words, I do not have time for a job unless it is late into the night. Taking care of June and my children is my career.

"What I am asking of you, Missy, is something I never wanted to have to say. I never wanted to have to put such a burden on top of the struggles you face daily. But it has come to that point." She stood, gazing into my shattered face. No, she musn’t look friendly; it wasn’t a friendly order. “You must have a job by the end of the week. Otherwise, we will fall under.”

Remembering it further sent my spine into a slither of jitters, one I could no longer control with the passing blizzard wind. It burned me with a flaming whip to imagine the cold stare she gave me, and even worse to feel the same tension building up inside me.

June would be taken away

Our lives would fall apart.

The pit in my stomach had not silenced its bawling for days, and nothing I could do would aid in the process. I sometimes watched June with her crystalline eyes, wishing to confess to her the pain searing down my lower abdomen. But how could I tell my daughter the food she ate was coming out of my meal and not some perfect, free marketplace she imagined? No, I could never break that ignorant bliss within her; it was too precious to take.

Oh, my dear June, I wish I could be the mother other daughters have. I wish I could give you the family you would never have to worry in. There should be food on your table every night and a prayer before we begin, just so you can remind yourself how grateful you are to be alive.

And most of all, my beautiful baby, you should have a father.

"Oh, my dear, gracious Lord," I spoke to the Heavens, slurring the cold, dead words, "she should have a father."

Lars already knew, from the moment he discovered the fleshy bonds binding my daughter and me, to never speak of the man. I never told him the story. He simply saw the absence of the father and told the humanity in his heart to let the matter be.

But I relived the father every night.

In the night terrors, there is never a moment his sweaty hands do not grope my breasts, licking up my screams with his throbbing, dripping tongue. He enjoys it-- oh yes, he enjoys watching me resist-- but enjoys it even further knowing I have no control. He is above me, smashing the taste of his breath inside me, growling with content as my screams turn into pleads. But he loves the begging even more than he loves the shrieks; he tastes me, pinches me, never tiring. Licking my salty tears from my cheeks, he takes one last look at my wide, terrified eyes. That is when it becomes something so utterly gruesome, I cannot even describe the event without feeling his searing breath where it hurt the most.

No, June, if you should have a father, pray to God it is not the one who made you.

I wrapped my arms around my shoulders, hoping to shield from me his face standing inches from mine. There is no breaking the image of his contorted, naked body; it sends a shock of pain running from my heart to my uterus. It is agonizing, not just in the brain but in every part of me he breached, to still feel him. He would have been pleased to know I still thrust my nose to the sky and scream his name.

"June!" I cried to the wind. "I don't want you to live like me! I don't want you to feel the stroke of a hungry man! I never want you to scavenge for your food! I never want you to become like me, June! Become someone else, someone better!" My neck slumped and my face plummeted to the snow, dripping from it tears. "Become someone I can never be . . ."

The silence met me, listening but never repeating the gurgling, soft wails drifting from my lips. How could it possibly give me an answer when it knew anything laced in my reality would bring me immediate distaste? It could do nothing more than watch with clever eyes and a sagging heart.

But, when the silence could not give me my answer, another did.

"Suffering never quite ends," the soft, almost inaudible voice careened into the silence. "Just about every action is accompanied with pain, not because we hold it upon ourselves to punish the brain but because others cannot let us be without agony."

Too weak to pull myself from the snow, my head whipped to the sound of the croak, eyes wide and ears alert. "Hello?" I-- no, she, the tormented monster crawling its way from my womb-- cried into the darkness, words choking on her own tears. "Who said that?"

But only silence met her.

And, this time, it would stay quiet.