AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I have to do this. I have to make sure I'm suitable for the ceremony.
Slowly I allow myself to press further, inching my fingertips over my seam, gingerly stroking back and forth, a little deeper and a little deeper yet. Was he here? Is this how deep he went?
No. It was further than this. This can't be all there is. This slippery wetness. This hot seam. I have to see. I hold three fingers together, then four. Is that the right size? Certainly it had to be something like this. That's absurd. How would anything like this ever fit inside me?
I place my heels further apart, trying to visualize my flower unfurling, opening for him. Can I do it? I wiggle against my fingers, and the sensation is different than I expected. It's so moist, so tender. It feels good when I touch myself just at the top, where there are bumps and protrusions that I can't quite identify. This didn't really appear in any of the picture books we were given during our education. But I can feel how it really is like the petals of a flower, how there's a feeling of opening, of becoming more ripe with each second.
I imagine Father Daddy over me, with that intense glare. His eyes boring into mine as his form covers me, blocking out the light. His weight bearing against my hips, pushing my legs open. I need to move a little more, press myself against him a little harder.
We would rock together, nudging our secret parts closer and closer together until they could interlock, until they could join. I could do that for him, and the desire to do that swells inside me like the bursting of a white firework in the sky. It trembles, glittering faintly until suddenly filling the space behind my eyes with lights, a rushing sound in my ears... sparkling, flaming trails that slide down the sky and become cool, watery, silvery bits of bliss rocking me back and forth.
My whole body trembles. My hand is wet and sticky and I realize I've just been to a place I've never been before. It's as though I left my body. It's as though I walked through a portal to another place.
Probably an evil place. Exactly the somewhere my mother explicitly told me not to go, and I did it anyway.
Shame rushes through me. What have I done? Oh my God, what have I done?
I leave my bed, throwing out an arm to balance myself on legs that are wobbly and uncertain. I've just done something I know I'm not supposed to do.
I just touched the evil that lives inside of me.
I have to repent.
* * *
“What's wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I say and stare down into my bowl of oatmeal. The cream swirls around the top, like a river flowing over some foreign landscape.
“Are you sick?”
“I'm not sick,” I tell her. “Really I’m just worried I’m going to be late for the sermon.”
“Then you should be eating instead of pretending you’re sick,” she observes. She scrapes the remaining porridge out of the bowl and then washes it in the sink. I hurry
behind her, careful not to make eye contact.
As we leave our house, we join everyone else on the path, heading toward the service barn. As soon as we're in line with our Family members, I feel the heat go off me immediately. Mama is looking at everyone around her, one by one, as though trying to sniff out their imperfections. But at least she isn't looking at me anymore.
The last couple of days, it's been so hard to stay out of her way. She’s come home after her duties tired and cranky, on edge for no apparent reason. It’s as though she resented me for being there all the time, even though she is the one who grounded me to the house.
Finally, now I'm back outside, back among regular people. Not hiding inside like some kind of shameful beast. I'm back out where have a chance to reach out, to join with my brothers and sisters and get back in the groove of things.
And to confess. Most of all, I remember sharply, I need to confess what I did.
“Oh, I think I see Tulip over there… do you mind?”
Mama just nods impatiently. She's trying to push her way up a few rows in the crowd and get alongside her pal Annie. They love to sit next to each other during the service with the other aunties and pretend nobody can hear them whispering.
I watch her disappear behind a couple people in front of me and don't bother hurrying up. She’ll find Annie, Agatha, or somebody else to talk to. This is okay. It's nice just to be outside, among everybody. So much nicer than being quarantined for reasons I didn't even fully understand. Was it because of the bruises from the whipping? Or was it really because I disobeyed her?
“You'll want to sit next to me at the service,” comes a voice close to my left ear. I automatically flinch away, twisting to see Seth’s spotty face. I have to look up because he's grown five inches in the last year, which is a new thing. He was always much smaller to me when we were kids. Still mean as a snake, though. Being close to the ground has that advantage I guess.
“I'm going to sit with Tulip,” I mutter. “Is that Matthew over there? Why don’t you cuddle up with him?”
He bumps against me and then again, on purpose, I'm sure of it. His hip juts hard against mine and nearly pushes me off the path.
“Quit it, Seth,” I hiss through my teeth. I don't want to draw attention to us, but I don't want to fall over into the dirt either.
