Читать книгу Tears of the Silenced - Misty Griffin - Страница 33

On a sunny mid-April day, I was outside with Fanny thawing out a water faucet that had frozen overnight. When finished, I went into the house for a hammer, so I could nail the wood and insulation back around the faucet. As I went back to the house to return the hammer, I saw Mamma and Brian walking around and watching me. They had started something new with me: instead of telling me to bend over as they once had, now they would just take the flyswatter or the big leather belt and start beating me with it—as if my compliance were not necessary.

When I reached the house, I saw Samantha was mopping, Not wanting to track mud all over her floor, I set the hammer down inside the door and took Fanny with me to finish our other morning work. About ten minutes later, I felt Samantha tap me on the back. I jumped and then looked at her, perplexed.

“What?” I asked, a little anxiously.

Samantha shrugged. “I have no idea. Brian said to come and get you.”

I motioned for Fanny to follow us, and we all went into the house. The three of us stood in the middle of the living room, looking from Brian to Mamma inquisitively.

“What do you want?” I asked Brian impatiently. I was tired and still had a lot of work to do.

Brian pointed to the door. “Did you put that hammer there?”

I looked at the hammer and nodded. “Uh, yeah,” I answered, confused. “I was going to put it away at dinner time.”

“Why did you not put it away when you were done like you were supposed to?” Brian’s teeth were clenched.

“Well,” I stammered, “I didn’t want to track up Samantha’s floor while she was mopping, and I did not think it would hurt anything.”

“Why did you not come and ask our permission?” Mamma asked with a hand on her hip.

“What?” I queried with a look of astonishment. “It seemed kind of unimportant, I guess.”

“Oh, asking our permission is unimportant to you?” Mamma fumed.

I lifted my hands in exasperation. “It’s just a hammer. I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

“The big deal is that you think just because you are eighteen, you can do whatever you want without running it past us first. And at the same time, you assume we should feed you and clothe you with your arrogant and evil attitude,” Mamma shot back at me.

“Now, to teach you a lesson,” Brian walked toward me. “You will bend over and touch your toes like a good little girl while I beat the h**l out of your butt.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Samantha shaking her head and mouthing, “Don’t do it, don’t do it.”

I was trembling and very scared. Despite the fact that Brian had had surgery four months earlier, he was stronger and much bigger than I was.

“I told you to bend over,” Brian snapped as he pointed to the floor.

I straightened my small frame and clenched my fists at my side while whispering, “Please, Lord, help me. Please, Lord.”

“Excuse me?” Mamma asked sarcastically.

“No, I will not do it,” I said emphatically. “I am a grown woman, and you have no right to tell me what to do or to beat me.” I took a deep breath to keep my voice from shaking. “That much I know about the law. And if I go to the police station right now, they’re going to haul you both off to jail where you belong.” I stamped my foot for good measure and for a split second enjoyed the looks of shock on their faces.

“You are going to do none of those things,” Brian barked at me. “And you know why? Because we did not give you permission, that’s why.”

“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t need your permission. I am an adult now, and I will do what I think is right.”

“Bend over and touch your toes—NOW!” Brian growled, pushing me.

“No,” I protested.

“NOW!” he repeated

“NO!” I shouted back.

“I said touch your toes, da**it.” He grabbed me and tried to make me bend over.

I pushed back at him, yelling, “NO! And you can’t make me.”

Suddenly, Brian snapped and he began twisting my head as if trying to snap my neck. I felt the pressure growing in my head, and I thought I was going to die. “No,” I cried inwardly, just as I was on the verge of blacking out. “This is not how it was supposed to end.” As if in slow motion, I felt my neck twisting further and further, and I was waiting, wondering if I would be able to hear the crunching sound or if I would die first. I was unable to move, although I was resisting as much as possible with my neck. I figured if Brian was going to kill me, I would make it as hard as possible for him.

Suddenly, I heard Samantha scream, “You are killing her, NO! NO!” Her voice came to me as if through a tunnel.

I heard Mamma’s voice, “Samantha, don’t; leave him alone. She deserves it.”

But Samantha ran at Brian and jumped on his back, wrapping her arms around his throat and trying to choke him. The sheer force of her weight threw him off balance enough that he lost his grip on my neck seconds before everything went black. As I fell to the floor, Brian threw Samantha across the room and over the table, where there were some canning jars. I heard Samantha hit the floor with a tinkling of broken glass. Brian ran over to her angrily calling her a “meddling little bi*ch.”

Mamma stood calmly watching us being beaten. Samantha’s screams were ear-shattering. I struggled to my feet, dizzy. I could not believe I was still alive.

In a sudden panic, terrified of what Brian might do to her, I tried to divert Brian’s attention away from Samantha by racing up the stairs and yelling down, “I am leaving now. I am going to the police, and they are going to enjoy all the evidence you guys are leaving for them.”

I knew I had trapped myself upstairs, but I did not know how else to get them off of Samantha. Her screams suddenly stopped and I heard running. The whole house seemed to shake as Mamma and Brian both ran up the stairs. I looked around frantically for a way to escape, but of course there was none, so I jumped up on my bed and backed into the corner, hoping that I was out of their reach. I balled myself up, putting my head between my legs in an attempt to protect myself, to no avail. Brian grabbed me by the feet and pulled me to the edge of the bed. I kicked at him, catching him in the forehead; it stunned him for half a second and I took advantage of the situation and scrambled back into my corner. He reached for me again and this time managed to yank me off the bed. Brian shoved me into the wall, and I saw Mamma standing there again with her arms folded. “Mamma,” I screamed. “Help me get this j**k off of me.”

“Why should I protect you when you want to betray us?” Mamma shot back.

“I am your daughter,” I shouted as I fell to the floor, trying to shield myself from Brian’s open-handed slaps.

Suddenly I saw a way to escape. I quickly rolled onto my stomach and slithered my small frame past Mamma’s and Brian’s legs and made a dash for the stairs. I flew down the stairs. Mamma tried to grab me, but I slipped past her. When I got to the bottom, I heard Samantha yelling for me to run. I raced out the door and down the drive.

I heard Mamma yell at Brian to get the truck, but I just kept running as fast as I could. I was scared, and I did not know if there was a rifle pointed at my back or not.

I did not get far when I heard the truck barreling down the road. I did not know how I was going to get past them to get into town; it was six and a half miles to the pavement in the back of the orchards, and another mile to the tiny police station. How was I going to get into town without them spotting me and taking me back? As the truck came up behind me, I dove off the road and into the sagebrush and continued walking toward town. I heard Brian’s voice floating to me on the spring air.

“Get in the truck right now.”

I did not answer and just kept walking.

“Misty, get your a*s up here and get in the truck before I come down there and make you!”

I kept struggling through the brush and shouting back defiantly. But after a while I began losing my drive to try to get into town. My head was pounding so badly I could not think. I felt nauseous and could not go another step. I decided I would go back with them and try to make a run for it in the night or some other time when I could get a head start.

I climbed up the embankment and into the truck. Although I am sure it is hard for you, the reader, to believe any girl would return to these people, you must understand that I was not a normal girl. I was clothed from head to foot in plain clothing; I did not have any knowledge or experience with carrying on a conversation with outside people; I did not understand anything, except our daily life on the mountain. And I needed to get back to check on Samantha.

When we returned, Samantha seemed disappointed that I had come back with them. Brian told everyone to get in the house.

“You know he was for real trying to kill you, right? He was just about ready to snap your neck when I jumped him,” Samantha whispered.

“Yeah, thanks for that, Sam.” I rubbed my now swollen neck.

I scanned Samantha from head to toe. My heart sank as I saw a dark bruise on her cheekbone and the many tiny cuts on her arms from where she had fallen on the glass. I felt so sick from the headache, I could not think clearly. I kept blinking my eyes, trying to clear my head—this was not the time to have a foggy brain, I told myself. But my thoughts didn’t help, and with every step the pain got worse.

“All right, sit down,” Brian ordered as we walked through the door.

Mamma was standing there, arms crossed again, with a frown on her face. I looked her directly in the eyes, and she looked back at me for a moment, and then looked away, her frown getting deeper, if that were possible.

“All right,” Brian said again. “I knew this day was coming, so I have been writing to the Bishop. A few weeks ago, he sent me the address of one of their Amish communities in Minnesota, which is closer to us than Pennsylvania would be. He knows the bishop there and the community would be willing to take you girls in so you can join the church. They are in desperate need of new bloodlines, so you would be an asset to them,” Brian stated as if we were livestock.

Samantha and I looked at each other in shock. This was the first we had heard of this. Mamma snorted in contempt and Brian stared at us as if we were bad little girls whom he was shipping off to boarding school.

The news was amazing to us; we could not believe we were actually going to get out of this horrible place. Even more shocking was the fact that Brian was thinking of letting us go. I often wondered why Brian agreed to give us, their two slaves, to the Amish community.

The only explanation I could come up with at that time was that they were really afraid that I would make good on my promise to turn them in to the police. In the Amish community, we would be trapped and would not be able to bring any harm to Mamma and Brian. The Amish did not usually allow their people to contact the police.

I would later learn that Brian and Mamma expected Samantha and me to fail at joining the Amish. They expected us to fail and to realize we could not survive without them.

A few days later, it was decided that Brian would drive us to the Amish community. The plan Brian had made with the Bishop was that Brian would bring Samantha and me to their church service once every two months. Then in September, I would move to the community. Samantha would follow a few months later. I was nervous about leaving Samantha on the mountain without me at first, but Samantha scolded me, saying, “If we don’t go along with the plan, we are not going to get out of here alive, ever.”

“All right,” I finally agreed. “But if you don’t show up when you are supposed to, rest assured this time I will go to the police and report them.”

Samantha agreed to this idea, and I believe Mamma and Brian were already thinking I might do such a thing; at least I hoped so.

When we first approached the Amish community after a long drive, I heard the clip-clop of a horse pulling a buggy. As we approached it from behind, Samantha grabbed my hand.

“That’s going to be us; can you believe it, Misty?” she whispered ecstatically.

I smiled at her, wondering if she had ever been this happy.

As we pulled in, Samantha and I brought our coverings forward so hardly a hair was showing. We straightened the new, dark blue dresses and black aprons that I had made for the occasion.

I opened the truck door so Samantha and I could hop out. We stood frozen for a second. A man with a long brown and gray beard wearing a large black hat waved us inside.

“Come in, come in. You must be Brian,” he said with a thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent.

“Yes, and you must be the Bishop,” Brian replied, pulling his hat down further as if to appear more Amish.

“Oh, no…” The man shook his head and smiled. “I am Uriah Hostetler, the minister, but we thought it best if you came here since our family has daughters close to the age of your daughters. The Bishop is a younger man and only has small children, so we thought you would all be more comfortable staying here for the night.”

I thought he seemed like a nice person as he guided us into the main area of the large farm house. I looked around and smiled. This house had centuries of tradition screaming from every beam. There were light blue walls and plain, dark blue curtains at the windows. In front of one of the windows was a large quilting frame, and not far from the quilting frame were two treadle sewing machines with small, unfinished clothes hanging from them.

As we stood in the middle of the room, the man yelled, “Alma, children, come here!”

Out of the kitchen and through the side door tumbled twelve children, ranging from nineteen to one-and-a-half years old. Samantha and I were in shock as they stood there looking at us. The mother seemed to be a kind lady with gray hair popping out from under her stiff white Kapp.

“Nice to meet you! Nice to meet you!” she said in the same heavy accent as her husband.

Samantha and I just stood there. We had been exposed to so few social interactions, we did not know what to do or say.

“Okay,” the mother turned to two of her teenage daughters, “Matty and Laura, you can help the girls take their things upstairs and then come back down to help with dinner. Uriah, you can take Brian to finish choring, Ja?” She turned back to her husband.

As Brian and the Hostetler menfolk went out choring, Samantha and I followed Matty and Laura upstairs, where there seemed to be an ocean of bedrooms.

“Hey, they are really nice, huh?” Samantha whispered in my ear.

I nodded, pleasantly surprised by the family’s welcoming manner.

Matty, who was nineteen, stopped at one of the doors. “This is my room. You will be sleeping with me,” she said pointing at me.

I smiled. They seemed a little awkward too, which was a relief.

“Matty and Edward are the only ones who have their own rooms,” Laura said, walking down the hall. “I share this room with Eliza, and Samantha can sleep with us in here.”

I smiled at Laura, who was intently studying my face whenever she thought I was not looking at her.

“Oh yes,” seventeen-year-old Laura continued, “you will be wearing some of our extra clothes to church so you blend in and look more like us.” She looked at our dresses and aprons.

I had noticed that, although to any outsider we would all look Amish, our clothes were very different. Among the Amish, there are many subgroups, and among the subgroups are even more subgroups, all with their own strictly enforced dress codes. Here, the girls’ clothes were much neater than ours, I thought, and instead of zippers, the girls over eleven years old wore straight pins all the way from their high collars to the apron belts at the waist. They did not have black aprons, either, but matching aprons.

I was very excited to wear clothes just like theirs, to finally belong to something.

“Let’s see,” Matty said, pulling me from my thoughts. She looked us over, trying to determine what family member’s clothes would fit us best. Cocking her head sideways, she looked at my short stature.

“You are just a couple of inches shorter than Eliza, so you should fit into her extra church dress and apron.” Matty walked to the closet in Laura and Eliza’s room and pulled out a dark gray dress and held it up to me. It nearly hit the floor, but they seemed to think it looked fine. She rummaged around, looking for Eliza’s old white organdy church apron that was saved for emergencies. Laura went to her side of the closet and pulled out one of her church dresses for Samantha. It was a nice teal color and seemed like it would fit Samantha quite well. Amish dresses are made with long belts and a lot of material in the front that you just pin under, so that if you gain weight you can simply unpin some extra folds of the material rather than spending money on making a whole new dress and aprons.

As we made our way downstairs, I heard chattering and small children laughing in the kitchen. Dishes were clanging as two small girls who could barely reach the table slammed metal plates and spoons on the table. There was no Mamma or Brian beating anyone; these children looked comfortable as they raced around the kitchen. They were obviously not deathly afraid of their mother who playfully swatted their behinds, hurrying them to get the dinner on the table.

We sat at the table in order of our ages. There were so many customs to learn, I thought, but one thing I did know was that Samantha and me would pass any behavior test with flying colors. We were both quite rigid and used to doing what we were told immediately. I had noticed that the mother had to yell several times for everyone else to get to the table, whereas Samantha and I sat down as soon as the words came out of her mouth. Oddly, she did not seem at all put out as the children sat down, one by one. The girls sat on the right of the table next to their mother, and the boys on the left with their father. The line tapered down until the oldest boy and oldest girl were sitting at the end opposite each other, and then there was Brian.

“Let us bow our heads for a moment of silent prayer,” Uriah said and we all bowed our heads. I opened my eyes and peeked around the room. The kerosene lamp in the middle of the table was casting a soft glow as it flickered in the late spring air. I could hear the horses nickering to each other in the barn, and as I looked around I saw one of the little boys staring at me. I smiled and he grinned back. He was cute, his grin missing a few teeth. I can do this. These are nice people. And this is the only way to avoid going to hell.

After dinner, Samantha and I helped clean the kitchen while the men and boys sat on the long benches at the table. The boys played a game of checkers while Brian and Uriah talked and stroked their long beards. Brian was copying Uriah’s movements. He was actually a pretty good actor and could appear kind and sincere on a whim. But if you knew him and could look into his dark and evil eyes, you could tell it was all an act and he was laughing inside at the person who was dumb enough to believe it.

After the dishes were finished, Uriah clapped his hands. “All off to bed; tomorrow is church Sunday and we must get up early.” By church Sunday, he meant the church services the Amish held every other week.

We all hurried off to our beds. The parents slept downstairs while the children slept upstairs. Brian slept in eighteen-year-old Edward’s room while Edward bunked with his younger brothers

“I don’t know what time you stand up at home,” Matty said in her Amish-accented English, “but we stand up at 4:30 a.m. here.”

I looked at the alarm clock that was ticking on the dresser. It read 9:30 p.m.

“That’s about what time we get up too,” I nodded, “but we usually go to bed much later.”

“Oh, really?” Matty cocked her brow. “Well, when it gets high summer, we do too, but not now; it is not necessary.”