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Clyde and Billy. It must have been them.
“Mama, don’t worry about those men. They won’t hurt you again, I promise.”
I help her to the couch, and she’s fine to sit on her own. Mama acts like she’s older than she is, but that is only because she drinks so much and smokes. Her muscles are weak, her belly protrudes. I stroke her face right where her gash is.
“Here, I brought you some food, and I brought home that tea you like.” I pass the box to her, but she won’t take it. She stares out into the darkness, clutching her cross.
“When I was a little girl, I had a dream…something I wanted more than anything else…” Her head hangs low, her voice barely a whisper. She’s talking to me like she used to…before this all happened. When she loved me.
“What?” I whisper, clutching her hand, trying to understand.
She squeezes my fingers, intertwining them with hers, and pulls me down. I kneel beside her. It’s painfully obvious now how desperate I am to be loved by anyone. How much I crave companionship.
“I wanted to be the closest girl to God. I was the prettiest, you know, out of all the girls in town. That’s why your father wanted me, chose me. God had a special place for me; He made me pretty for a reason. I got to be the preacher’s wife and because of that, I was closer to Him.”
I rub my thumb on her hand, worried that she hit her head. She reaches over to her pack of cigarettes and lights the last one, blowing the smoke right in my face, leaning back on the couch.
I crinkle my nose. “What are you saying, Mama?”
“God blessed me with gifts, girl. He spoke to me, allowing me to communicate with others. Because of this, the devil despised me, and he tested me with temptations.”
Mama’s babble…
She’s never told me the whole story, but I suspect the man I grew up believing was my father wasn’t actually my father.
“Mama, what do you need right now? I can go get you some water from the well?” Although, the well’s been somewhat dried up the last couple of days.
She finally looks at me, and in the last of the candle’s light, her eyes flicker. “You were with him, weren’t you?”
“Who, Mama?”
“That boy with the devil face who broke in here and did this to me.”
I shift away from her, and my skin crawls. “No. I was at work. I didn’t do this.”
“Show me your belt, Diana.” My stomach curls in on itself, the shame of what I let Remy and Tommy do to me manifesting as heat on my face and chest. So hot, I think I might actually be in hell. My blood thickens as it struggles to pump through my tortured heart.
“Mama, please don’t do this.”
Her eyes grow dark as she rises, and I back away from her. “Show me,” she whispers.
I wipe the tears from my eyes. “Mama, please. I’m an adult now. You can’t act like this.”
I freeze, waiting for the sting of her slap, but it doesn’t come. “What did he do to you?”
I cup my hand over my mouth. “Nothing. I promise, he was trying to help me. No one’s ever touched me.”
“Turn around.”
“Mama…”
“Turn around, Diana.” She reaches under the coffee table for the belt she has hidden there. Three times, Mama’s had to use it on me. Each time I got a scar worse than before.
“You know what you need to do.”
Repentance.
I sob, knowing it’s pointless. Most churches accept prayer, most accept confession, but in the book of Mama, the belt is divine enforcement.
