The Night She Left
by Margaret Wight
by Margaret Wight
“You’re
leaving?” Her aunt’s eyes had been wide with disbelief. “Why?” The words echoed
in the girl’s head with a haunting that sent a chill down her spine. Six months
ago she would have never dreamed being where she was now. The stars glittered
high above the truck that sped north on the interstate through the crisp
December night. The three people inside were quiet, in their own little world,
listening to the early 90’s rock that blared through the stereo. The girl
smiled slightly, listening to the lyrics of the Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”.
The song was over twelve years old, but it was still a classic. She had only
recently been introduced to them and other bands that had started in the 80’s.
Music had been forbidden in her small religion based hometown, unless is was
made by the people and approved by the elders. After hearing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’
on a Prayer” on a smuggled cassette tape for the first time four years earlier,
she had found she loved rock and roll. The heavy beat pulsed through her,
lighting up her soul.
“Hush little baby and don’t say a word. Never mind that voice you heard, it’s the beasts under your bed, in the closet, in your head. Exit light…” She found herself quietly singing along to the words, thinking how there would be different beasts under her bed now. Before tonight it had been the church leaders and the fear of never being good enough. Now it was the fear of failing in her new life, the fear of having to go back. She leaned forward, the seat belt pulling gently across her chest, and rested her forehead on the window. The cool glass brought relief to the pounding in her head. The tears from earlier that night had washed away a little of the excitement of their destination and made her head throb. Her eyes felt puffy and her contacts irritated her eyes with how they dried out when she cried.
She hated crying; it made her feel weak. She took a deep breath filling her senses with the truck’s interior. The sweet musk of vanilla and clean car scent was laced with the smell of men and sweat. The truck felt oddly safe; a safe bubble where life was suspended during the four hour drive from what was now her past to her future. She stared out across the desert, winter having turned what little shrubbery there was into twisted skeletal beings. The moon was slowly rising to the east, casting its gentle glow through the valley they were traveling through. The hills rose and fell periodically beneath the moon, rising up in the distance to mountains. She had driven this route before, many times, and the familiarity of the rolling mountains was a comfort.
The girl wiped the fog from her breath away from the window and stared up at the stars in the clear night sky. The stars had always been one of her small delights in life. When she used to sleep over to her friend’s house, the two of them would climb up on the roof through the skylight and sit with their backs against the red brick chimney of the huge three story house. Huddled together under a giant quilt for warmth, they had eaten Starlight Mint ice cream straight from the carton and picked out the constellations they could see.
The Big Dipper was easily located, and she followed the points to the North Star. It shone with such a brilliant hope that her sadness began to ebb away. The decision had been made a few weeks back but now that it was actually happening, the weight of it lay heavily on her heart. The possibility of never seeing her family again felt like a wet heavy cloak that she couldn’t shake. It was a little hard to breathe. There was always the hope that they wouldn’t shun her like they had been taught to; she had seen that happen before for a few lucky friends that had left. Her family wasn’t the strictest when it came to following the Prophet’s teachings.
Growing up they had watched television, gone to the library and even listened to worldly music on occasion. When she was younger, it hadn’t been a big deal. In first grade, she remembered the other children in her class at the religion’s private school talking about watching Beauty and the Beast. She had wanted to watch it so bad. Her parents had refused saying it was inappropriate as Belle wore a low cut dress, revealing her chest. She remembered family nights though, when she was much younger, eating pizza and watching Home Alone and The Apple Dumpling Gang.
They had even held family reunions with their apostate family members- members who had been baptized in to the church and then had left on their own free will and choice or had been kicked out for various reasons. It was frowned upon to associate with them, but family was family and that had been long before the prophecy had been given to no longer speak to apostates.
This had all been before they left the city on their Prophet’s orders and moved to the small town filled solely with his religious followers. Living in the city had been easier; you didn’t have to worry about neighbors calling the bishop on you. As the years passed, things gradually became worse and worse.
The girl’s heart nearly broke when the library was closed. Too much worldly fiction and the prophecy about having too much time for “fun” had been the cause. She remembered the day that message had been given in Saturday Work Meeting. “We need to settle down, and stop having so much fun. We need to focus on working on our salvation.” The bishop had said it. Everyone had taken the prophecy so literally that some families stopped using the word fun. The girl on the other hand had begun to use the word every chance she got. “Enjoy Life” became her motto. She had always been a bit rebellious. Her parents blamed it on all the books she read. She thought of other prophecies that she had heard in church, many of which hadn’t come true. There was always a reason, always an excuse, when she asked why they hadn’t.
Women weren’t supposed to ask questions. They were supposed to be obedient. Have faith the strength of the grain of a mustard seed and never talk back or ask questions. Their duty was to learn how to become a good wife. Cooking, sewing, canning, and even skills of slaughtering chickens were taught to the young girls. Everything they could possibly learn to become better wives was drilled into their heads. The girl had learned so many of these seemingly useless traits. Why learn to slaughter chickens when you could just buy it from the store? She had become conveniently sick to her stomach that day and had to stay home from school.
Her mother could always be counted on to keep the children home if they weren’t feeling well. The girl had faked being sick many times because she was bored in school and would rather stay home and read her books than go and relearn a lesson she had taught herself weeks before when reading ahead. School had always been easy for her, but she hated the fact that they only taught certain subjects. Science and social studies books were passed out but the actual classes were never on the curriculum. She would often finish her work early and pull out her social studies book and read. It was there that she learned who George Washington was and all about American history.
They didn’t teach American history in the schools she went to, but she wished they had. It had been so interesting learning about the founders of the country. The only history they taught was the Priesthood history, the history of their church. Every year, without fail, they would learn the same thing that they had learned last year of the ancient prophets that they believed in, the right and proper timeline of the earth, and all about the real names of God and Jesus. She could recite from memory all the ages of the widely known prophet’s ages, what year they were born, when they died, and where they had lived. She couldn’t, however, name all of the capitols of each of the states. In fourth grade she remembered coloring maps of the different states and there had even been a test on them. As she got older though, the shift of what had been decided was more important had changed the school’s curriculum and she only learned what the prophet and his spokesmen had deemed worthy for the Lord’s people to learn.
“Are you ready to get married,” her father asked the day before her fourteenth birthday. When young girls were asked that question, it usually meant that the prophet had picked out the person for them to marry. She had asked her mother how he picked once and she had been told that God gave him dreams. It had always bothered her that someone else, prophet or not, would dream of who she was to marry. It just didn’t quite make sense to her, and now apparently there had been a dream about her. In shock, she had thought of her two older sisters who had both been married young; one at fifteen and one at seventeen. She wasn’t even fourteen yet. She had thought quickly, and had responded with a defiant, “Am I eighteen?”
Her father’s face contorted into a dumbfounded expression. His two older girls had never showed any defiance when asked. “Well, no.”
“Then there is your answer.” She had stormed away, angry and afraid. Could they force her to get married? It would seem that they could, and did, with other girls her age but they didn’t force her for whatever reason. Going to the private high school and keeping three jobs around the community kept her busy. She only stayed in high school for a year however, as the politics soon became unbearable. It seemed that every which way she turned there was a teacher looming over her, trying to tell her who to be friends with, who to talk to and even how to dress and comb her hair. The dress requirements were already strict enough. She didn’t need or care for the instructions of not wearing printed fabrics or whether her skirt was two or three inches off the floor.
Every six months for the next three years, the question came again. Every time, her answer was the same. She felt bad for being mouthy and disrespectful, but she didn’t want to get married yet. Oh, she loved the idea of a boy liking her for who she was and thinking she was pretty. The idea of having someone to hold her when she was sad or someone to cruise around town with was nice, but she didn’t want to be married. It almost seemed like a prison sentence to her. Also, the pressure of becoming a sister wife was suffocating. She secretly hated the idea of having to share her husband, whoever it ended up being. Deep down, she knew it wasn’t right. The jealousy that welled up inside her couldn’t just be the devil working. It was wrong. So was the idea of having to be completely obedient, to whomever they picked for her. What if he told her to do something bad? Or against the law? She was constantly getting into arguments about that with her mother and her friends.
“Why would God make women able to think if they needed to be told by their Priesthood Head what to do at all times?” Her argument, however, never gave her justified answers. It had always been vague “don’t ask questions,” and “take it up with God.” She hated answers like that. She preferred to know, to have solid proof of an answer.
She was brought back to the present when the truck hit the rumble strips along the high way when changing lanes to go around a big diesel truck. As they passed the truck, she noticed it was a red England truck with a big box trailer. Her uncle Matt drove for England. She hadn’t seen him in nearly four years. He was her favorite of her apostate uncles. He had a girl her age too. She wondered what her cousin was doing right now. Probably asleep or doing homework for school. She rubbed her temples, her cold fingers sending relief to her brain.
“Are you okay?” asked her boyfriend of about four months with concern in his voice. In the short time they had been dating, he hadn’t known her to be so quiet. Usually she was bubbling and talking constantly. She simply nodded, not trusting herself to talk. Her throat was still choked up and she knew her voice would crack and she might even start crying again. She continued to stare out the window. She shifted in the seat, the backs of her thighs hurting. Her bedroom window had been small, but it was the only way she had been able to leave in the night. The floors and doors of her home, an old dusty pink double wide trailer house, were too squeaky and if she had gotten caught there would have been hell to pay. It was an eight foot drop from her window onto the ground outside. Her meager belongings fit inside four small apple boxes. She had set each box carefully balanced, one at a time, half in and half out of the small window. Then, ever so carefully, she had crawled through the remaining empty space. Lowering herself slowly to the ground, she had reached up and pulled the box down. Stealthily, watching for cars, she carried each of the four boxes to the end of the street and hid them in the wooden trusses that littered the field along the neighborhood. It was there that the guys had met her. Crawling through that small twenty by seventeen inch space had been difficult. Taller than many girls, she felt like she had to fold herself up like a pretzel. She would definitely have bruises tomorrow.
Her heart was starting to hurt again, thinking of every one she had left behind; her niece and nephew she had practically raised, her younger brothers and sisters, and her friends. She hadn’t even gotten to really say goodbye. If she had acted any different someone would have noticed and suspected something.
Only hours before she had stopped at her sister’s house to say good bye to her niece and nephew. She had picked up a birthday present for her nephew. He had turned one a week before and she had been waiting for her paycheck. Birthdays were no longer supposed to be celebrated, but she didn’t care. Birthdays were always important. She loved a good excuse to buy stuff for the people she loved and used any chance or reason to do it.
It had been so hard leaving them that night. She had to keep choking back tears, trying desperately to talk normal. Her niece was telling her a story with her big blue eyes wide and her cute stutter of “and then, and…and then.” Her nephew was playing with his new toy, a small computer that had the alphabet and numbers on it. His big brown eyes were lit up with excitement as the toy played a nursery song. Her throat had tightened up, tears welled in her eyes. She had watched both grown up from the day they were born. When her sister had been bed ridden while pregnant with her nephew she had come down every day to help with her niece, do the laundry and clean the house. It was the hardest thing she had ever done to walk away from these two little children. She loved them so much….and to think she might never see them again was heart wrenching.
She desperately hoped they would forgive her and sneak out to see her sometimes. It was a small hope but she desperately clung to it. Everyone thinks they don’t need their family, until their family is no longer around. She had been one of those. Her family was irritating and embarrassing. She hated having her mother drive her to work, hated having her younger brothers and sisters in tow, and hated even being associated to them.
Her family was known as being eccentric. Her mom was always driving a new rattle trap her dad had picked up for a couple hundred bucks. He had even converted a few Mercedes Benz to run off of old fryer oil from the few restaurants in the area. Her mom was constantly driving somewhere and the gas bill had been out of this world. The result in having the cars run off fryer oil was that the gas bill was non-existent but the car smelled of rotten eggs and leaves as it puttered through town. That was embarrassing enough. The girl had ridden her bike everywhere possible. She hated being seen in that smelly car. Now, with the realization that she would probably never ride in that smelly car with her mom yelling at the other kids to sit down and buckle the hell up she felt sad and almost lost.
As the landscape flashed by, she thought back to the conversation she had had with her best friend, who was also her aunt. She was the daughter of her mom’s dad’s second wife. They had been born seventeen days apart and had always been close, until they had been old enough to go to school. Suddenly she had been in a different world. She had belonged to the nerdy group and her aunt to the popular group. Always trying to fit in, yet never quite there, she had been the girl that carried the books, the one that helped or did the homework for others, the one who was always pushing her glasses up her nose.
“You’re leaving?” The aunt’s blue eyes had been wide with disbelief. “Why?”
They were at work, during the slow time between lunch and dinner. The aunt was the waitress on duty and the girl was the chef. They had worked at the diner together for the past five months. The girl was doing prep work for the dinner crew. She had wanted to apply as a waitress but her father had refused to allow it, so she had settled for a chef’s position. The aunt’s husband didn’t care what she did, as long as she was around at night when he wanted her. She had been forced to marry her first cousin at fourteen, thus inspiring the girl to refuse to get married. She saw what it did to her aunt over the next three years of their friendship; the bruises, the chains on her freedom, the irritation of having to check in, of always being ready and willing to have sex whenever he wanted. Not to mention, her husband was an asshole. It terrified the girl into never wanting to get married.
“Because I want too. I want to wear whatever I want and marry whomever I want. I want to watch television until I go blind. I want to listen to music cranked up so loud it shatters the windows. I want to go to college and be whatever I want to be. I don’t want to be some nasty old man’s fifth or twentieth wife! I want to BE someone.”
“Is there any way I can talk you out of this?” Her aunt’s blue eyes were tear filled. Her older sister left a few years ago and it had hurt her deeply. She didn’t want to be left alone again.
“No. This is what I want. This is what will make me happy. I want my freedom.”
The words echoed in her head again and she reminded herself once again why she had made the choice she did. She wanted more out of life than what she would have been given. She would have never been content just being a plural wife to a “good” man and baring dozens of babies. Almost every one she knew had had at least fourteen children. That was the average number. She assumed it was because that was about all that could be fit into a woman’s child baring years with a few years between each child, if the woman are lucky. Children were cute; she loved her niece and nephew dearly, but she didn’t want a whole herd of her own. She didn’t want a husband that might love the other wife more or to have to share her husband with another woman. Gross. The idea alone of him having sex with someone besides her brought a foul taste to her mouth and a hot flash of anger coursed through her. She had only recently learned about sex, due to a conversation with one of her aunts that had ended with questions. Later she had asked her sister about it. Her cousin had been raped by her father and they didn’t know if she would ever have children. The girl hadn’t quite understood what rape meant, and asked. Her sister explained what it was in less than ten words. She had vowed to never have sex, consensual or not. The idea of it had terrified her. She shuddered at the thought and pulled her cheap trucker stop leather jacket closer to her.
She loved her jacket. She had wanted one mostly because all her friends that were married wore their husbands’ leather jackets and she loved the idea of wearing a man’s coat. Baggy as it would be the sleeves would actually fit her long arms too. Since she didn’t have a husband to steal his leather coat from, she had bought her own, or rather her brother in law had bought it and she paid him back for it. It had the secret inside pockets that she liked to hide her disc man in and listen to the worldly music she had procured in the last few years. She had kept all her cds under her bed in a hot pink case. P!nk, Avril, and Bon Jovi filled most of the slots, along with a few burned copies her friends had made her of A-Teens and some 80’s rock.
She took a sip of the Coke she had cradled in her lap. Coke reminded her of her little grandmother, who was never seen without one. As far back as she could remember Grandma always had a coke. She smiled at the memory. The cool sweetness burned slightly as the carbonation hit the back of her throat. Lights from a south bound car on the other side of the highway blinded her slightly as it whizzed by. It took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the darkness that was only broken by the blue dash and stereo lights on the inside of the truck. She looked out the dirty, bug streaked windshield at the glare the headlights made on the road as they cut through the darkness. North, to where freedom lay. The cost of her freedom was bittersweet. To walk away from everything she had ever known and leave it all behind for a life she had only recently dared to dream of. The excitement she felt was also laced with fear of the unknown. The many “what if’s” that kept popping in her head almost making her want to shout at the driver to turn the truck around, to go back to what she knew. But at the same moment of doubt, courage surged through her, warm and strengthening.
“I can do this,” She whispered to herself. She thought back once again to the conversation with her aunt. Taking a deep slightly shuddering breath, she began to chant over and over in her mind her new mantra. “This is what I want. This is what will make me happy. I want my freedom.”
“Hush little baby and don’t say a word. Never mind that voice you heard, it’s the beasts under your bed, in the closet, in your head. Exit light…” She found herself quietly singing along to the words, thinking how there would be different beasts under her bed now. Before tonight it had been the church leaders and the fear of never being good enough. Now it was the fear of failing in her new life, the fear of having to go back. She leaned forward, the seat belt pulling gently across her chest, and rested her forehead on the window. The cool glass brought relief to the pounding in her head. The tears from earlier that night had washed away a little of the excitement of their destination and made her head throb. Her eyes felt puffy and her contacts irritated her eyes with how they dried out when she cried.
She hated crying; it made her feel weak. She took a deep breath filling her senses with the truck’s interior. The sweet musk of vanilla and clean car scent was laced with the smell of men and sweat. The truck felt oddly safe; a safe bubble where life was suspended during the four hour drive from what was now her past to her future. She stared out across the desert, winter having turned what little shrubbery there was into twisted skeletal beings. The moon was slowly rising to the east, casting its gentle glow through the valley they were traveling through. The hills rose and fell periodically beneath the moon, rising up in the distance to mountains. She had driven this route before, many times, and the familiarity of the rolling mountains was a comfort.
The girl wiped the fog from her breath away from the window and stared up at the stars in the clear night sky. The stars had always been one of her small delights in life. When she used to sleep over to her friend’s house, the two of them would climb up on the roof through the skylight and sit with their backs against the red brick chimney of the huge three story house. Huddled together under a giant quilt for warmth, they had eaten Starlight Mint ice cream straight from the carton and picked out the constellations they could see.
The Big Dipper was easily located, and she followed the points to the North Star. It shone with such a brilliant hope that her sadness began to ebb away. The decision had been made a few weeks back but now that it was actually happening, the weight of it lay heavily on her heart. The possibility of never seeing her family again felt like a wet heavy cloak that she couldn’t shake. It was a little hard to breathe. There was always the hope that they wouldn’t shun her like they had been taught to; she had seen that happen before for a few lucky friends that had left. Her family wasn’t the strictest when it came to following the Prophet’s teachings.
Growing up they had watched television, gone to the library and even listened to worldly music on occasion. When she was younger, it hadn’t been a big deal. In first grade, she remembered the other children in her class at the religion’s private school talking about watching Beauty and the Beast. She had wanted to watch it so bad. Her parents had refused saying it was inappropriate as Belle wore a low cut dress, revealing her chest. She remembered family nights though, when she was much younger, eating pizza and watching Home Alone and The Apple Dumpling Gang.
They had even held family reunions with their apostate family members- members who had been baptized in to the church and then had left on their own free will and choice or had been kicked out for various reasons. It was frowned upon to associate with them, but family was family and that had been long before the prophecy had been given to no longer speak to apostates.
This had all been before they left the city on their Prophet’s orders and moved to the small town filled solely with his religious followers. Living in the city had been easier; you didn’t have to worry about neighbors calling the bishop on you. As the years passed, things gradually became worse and worse.
The girl’s heart nearly broke when the library was closed. Too much worldly fiction and the prophecy about having too much time for “fun” had been the cause. She remembered the day that message had been given in Saturday Work Meeting. “We need to settle down, and stop having so much fun. We need to focus on working on our salvation.” The bishop had said it. Everyone had taken the prophecy so literally that some families stopped using the word fun. The girl on the other hand had begun to use the word every chance she got. “Enjoy Life” became her motto. She had always been a bit rebellious. Her parents blamed it on all the books she read. She thought of other prophecies that she had heard in church, many of which hadn’t come true. There was always a reason, always an excuse, when she asked why they hadn’t.
Women weren’t supposed to ask questions. They were supposed to be obedient. Have faith the strength of the grain of a mustard seed and never talk back or ask questions. Their duty was to learn how to become a good wife. Cooking, sewing, canning, and even skills of slaughtering chickens were taught to the young girls. Everything they could possibly learn to become better wives was drilled into their heads. The girl had learned so many of these seemingly useless traits. Why learn to slaughter chickens when you could just buy it from the store? She had become conveniently sick to her stomach that day and had to stay home from school.
Her mother could always be counted on to keep the children home if they weren’t feeling well. The girl had faked being sick many times because she was bored in school and would rather stay home and read her books than go and relearn a lesson she had taught herself weeks before when reading ahead. School had always been easy for her, but she hated the fact that they only taught certain subjects. Science and social studies books were passed out but the actual classes were never on the curriculum. She would often finish her work early and pull out her social studies book and read. It was there that she learned who George Washington was and all about American history.
They didn’t teach American history in the schools she went to, but she wished they had. It had been so interesting learning about the founders of the country. The only history they taught was the Priesthood history, the history of their church. Every year, without fail, they would learn the same thing that they had learned last year of the ancient prophets that they believed in, the right and proper timeline of the earth, and all about the real names of God and Jesus. She could recite from memory all the ages of the widely known prophet’s ages, what year they were born, when they died, and where they had lived. She couldn’t, however, name all of the capitols of each of the states. In fourth grade she remembered coloring maps of the different states and there had even been a test on them. As she got older though, the shift of what had been decided was more important had changed the school’s curriculum and she only learned what the prophet and his spokesmen had deemed worthy for the Lord’s people to learn.
“Are you ready to get married,” her father asked the day before her fourteenth birthday. When young girls were asked that question, it usually meant that the prophet had picked out the person for them to marry. She had asked her mother how he picked once and she had been told that God gave him dreams. It had always bothered her that someone else, prophet or not, would dream of who she was to marry. It just didn’t quite make sense to her, and now apparently there had been a dream about her. In shock, she had thought of her two older sisters who had both been married young; one at fifteen and one at seventeen. She wasn’t even fourteen yet. She had thought quickly, and had responded with a defiant, “Am I eighteen?”
Her father’s face contorted into a dumbfounded expression. His two older girls had never showed any defiance when asked. “Well, no.”
“Then there is your answer.” She had stormed away, angry and afraid. Could they force her to get married? It would seem that they could, and did, with other girls her age but they didn’t force her for whatever reason. Going to the private high school and keeping three jobs around the community kept her busy. She only stayed in high school for a year however, as the politics soon became unbearable. It seemed that every which way she turned there was a teacher looming over her, trying to tell her who to be friends with, who to talk to and even how to dress and comb her hair. The dress requirements were already strict enough. She didn’t need or care for the instructions of not wearing printed fabrics or whether her skirt was two or three inches off the floor.
Every six months for the next three years, the question came again. Every time, her answer was the same. She felt bad for being mouthy and disrespectful, but she didn’t want to get married yet. Oh, she loved the idea of a boy liking her for who she was and thinking she was pretty. The idea of having someone to hold her when she was sad or someone to cruise around town with was nice, but she didn’t want to be married. It almost seemed like a prison sentence to her. Also, the pressure of becoming a sister wife was suffocating. She secretly hated the idea of having to share her husband, whoever it ended up being. Deep down, she knew it wasn’t right. The jealousy that welled up inside her couldn’t just be the devil working. It was wrong. So was the idea of having to be completely obedient, to whomever they picked for her. What if he told her to do something bad? Or against the law? She was constantly getting into arguments about that with her mother and her friends.
“Why would God make women able to think if they needed to be told by their Priesthood Head what to do at all times?” Her argument, however, never gave her justified answers. It had always been vague “don’t ask questions,” and “take it up with God.” She hated answers like that. She preferred to know, to have solid proof of an answer.
She was brought back to the present when the truck hit the rumble strips along the high way when changing lanes to go around a big diesel truck. As they passed the truck, she noticed it was a red England truck with a big box trailer. Her uncle Matt drove for England. She hadn’t seen him in nearly four years. He was her favorite of her apostate uncles. He had a girl her age too. She wondered what her cousin was doing right now. Probably asleep or doing homework for school. She rubbed her temples, her cold fingers sending relief to her brain.
“Are you okay?” asked her boyfriend of about four months with concern in his voice. In the short time they had been dating, he hadn’t known her to be so quiet. Usually she was bubbling and talking constantly. She simply nodded, not trusting herself to talk. Her throat was still choked up and she knew her voice would crack and she might even start crying again. She continued to stare out the window. She shifted in the seat, the backs of her thighs hurting. Her bedroom window had been small, but it was the only way she had been able to leave in the night. The floors and doors of her home, an old dusty pink double wide trailer house, were too squeaky and if she had gotten caught there would have been hell to pay. It was an eight foot drop from her window onto the ground outside. Her meager belongings fit inside four small apple boxes. She had set each box carefully balanced, one at a time, half in and half out of the small window. Then, ever so carefully, she had crawled through the remaining empty space. Lowering herself slowly to the ground, she had reached up and pulled the box down. Stealthily, watching for cars, she carried each of the four boxes to the end of the street and hid them in the wooden trusses that littered the field along the neighborhood. It was there that the guys had met her. Crawling through that small twenty by seventeen inch space had been difficult. Taller than many girls, she felt like she had to fold herself up like a pretzel. She would definitely have bruises tomorrow.
Her heart was starting to hurt again, thinking of every one she had left behind; her niece and nephew she had practically raised, her younger brothers and sisters, and her friends. She hadn’t even gotten to really say goodbye. If she had acted any different someone would have noticed and suspected something.
Only hours before she had stopped at her sister’s house to say good bye to her niece and nephew. She had picked up a birthday present for her nephew. He had turned one a week before and she had been waiting for her paycheck. Birthdays were no longer supposed to be celebrated, but she didn’t care. Birthdays were always important. She loved a good excuse to buy stuff for the people she loved and used any chance or reason to do it.
It had been so hard leaving them that night. She had to keep choking back tears, trying desperately to talk normal. Her niece was telling her a story with her big blue eyes wide and her cute stutter of “and then, and…and then.” Her nephew was playing with his new toy, a small computer that had the alphabet and numbers on it. His big brown eyes were lit up with excitement as the toy played a nursery song. Her throat had tightened up, tears welled in her eyes. She had watched both grown up from the day they were born. When her sister had been bed ridden while pregnant with her nephew she had come down every day to help with her niece, do the laundry and clean the house. It was the hardest thing she had ever done to walk away from these two little children. She loved them so much….and to think she might never see them again was heart wrenching.
She desperately hoped they would forgive her and sneak out to see her sometimes. It was a small hope but she desperately clung to it. Everyone thinks they don’t need their family, until their family is no longer around. She had been one of those. Her family was irritating and embarrassing. She hated having her mother drive her to work, hated having her younger brothers and sisters in tow, and hated even being associated to them.
Her family was known as being eccentric. Her mom was always driving a new rattle trap her dad had picked up for a couple hundred bucks. He had even converted a few Mercedes Benz to run off of old fryer oil from the few restaurants in the area. Her mom was constantly driving somewhere and the gas bill had been out of this world. The result in having the cars run off fryer oil was that the gas bill was non-existent but the car smelled of rotten eggs and leaves as it puttered through town. That was embarrassing enough. The girl had ridden her bike everywhere possible. She hated being seen in that smelly car. Now, with the realization that she would probably never ride in that smelly car with her mom yelling at the other kids to sit down and buckle the hell up she felt sad and almost lost.
As the landscape flashed by, she thought back to the conversation she had had with her best friend, who was also her aunt. She was the daughter of her mom’s dad’s second wife. They had been born seventeen days apart and had always been close, until they had been old enough to go to school. Suddenly she had been in a different world. She had belonged to the nerdy group and her aunt to the popular group. Always trying to fit in, yet never quite there, she had been the girl that carried the books, the one that helped or did the homework for others, the one who was always pushing her glasses up her nose.
“You’re leaving?” The aunt’s blue eyes had been wide with disbelief. “Why?”
They were at work, during the slow time between lunch and dinner. The aunt was the waitress on duty and the girl was the chef. They had worked at the diner together for the past five months. The girl was doing prep work for the dinner crew. She had wanted to apply as a waitress but her father had refused to allow it, so she had settled for a chef’s position. The aunt’s husband didn’t care what she did, as long as she was around at night when he wanted her. She had been forced to marry her first cousin at fourteen, thus inspiring the girl to refuse to get married. She saw what it did to her aunt over the next three years of their friendship; the bruises, the chains on her freedom, the irritation of having to check in, of always being ready and willing to have sex whenever he wanted. Not to mention, her husband was an asshole. It terrified the girl into never wanting to get married.
“Because I want too. I want to wear whatever I want and marry whomever I want. I want to watch television until I go blind. I want to listen to music cranked up so loud it shatters the windows. I want to go to college and be whatever I want to be. I don’t want to be some nasty old man’s fifth or twentieth wife! I want to BE someone.”
“Is there any way I can talk you out of this?” Her aunt’s blue eyes were tear filled. Her older sister left a few years ago and it had hurt her deeply. She didn’t want to be left alone again.
“No. This is what I want. This is what will make me happy. I want my freedom.”
The words echoed in her head again and she reminded herself once again why she had made the choice she did. She wanted more out of life than what she would have been given. She would have never been content just being a plural wife to a “good” man and baring dozens of babies. Almost every one she knew had had at least fourteen children. That was the average number. She assumed it was because that was about all that could be fit into a woman’s child baring years with a few years between each child, if the woman are lucky. Children were cute; she loved her niece and nephew dearly, but she didn’t want a whole herd of her own. She didn’t want a husband that might love the other wife more or to have to share her husband with another woman. Gross. The idea alone of him having sex with someone besides her brought a foul taste to her mouth and a hot flash of anger coursed through her. She had only recently learned about sex, due to a conversation with one of her aunts that had ended with questions. Later she had asked her sister about it. Her cousin had been raped by her father and they didn’t know if she would ever have children. The girl hadn’t quite understood what rape meant, and asked. Her sister explained what it was in less than ten words. She had vowed to never have sex, consensual or not. The idea of it had terrified her. She shuddered at the thought and pulled her cheap trucker stop leather jacket closer to her.
She loved her jacket. She had wanted one mostly because all her friends that were married wore their husbands’ leather jackets and she loved the idea of wearing a man’s coat. Baggy as it would be the sleeves would actually fit her long arms too. Since she didn’t have a husband to steal his leather coat from, she had bought her own, or rather her brother in law had bought it and she paid him back for it. It had the secret inside pockets that she liked to hide her disc man in and listen to the worldly music she had procured in the last few years. She had kept all her cds under her bed in a hot pink case. P!nk, Avril, and Bon Jovi filled most of the slots, along with a few burned copies her friends had made her of A-Teens and some 80’s rock.
She took a sip of the Coke she had cradled in her lap. Coke reminded her of her little grandmother, who was never seen without one. As far back as she could remember Grandma always had a coke. She smiled at the memory. The cool sweetness burned slightly as the carbonation hit the back of her throat. Lights from a south bound car on the other side of the highway blinded her slightly as it whizzed by. It took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the darkness that was only broken by the blue dash and stereo lights on the inside of the truck. She looked out the dirty, bug streaked windshield at the glare the headlights made on the road as they cut through the darkness. North, to where freedom lay. The cost of her freedom was bittersweet. To walk away from everything she had ever known and leave it all behind for a life she had only recently dared to dream of. The excitement she felt was also laced with fear of the unknown. The many “what if’s” that kept popping in her head almost making her want to shout at the driver to turn the truck around, to go back to what she knew. But at the same moment of doubt, courage surged through her, warm and strengthening.
“I can do this,” She whispered to herself. She thought back once again to the conversation with her aunt. Taking a deep slightly shuddering breath, she began to chant over and over in her mind her new mantra. “This is what I want. This is what will make me happy. I want my freedom.”