hile sunbeams danced through the windows of my parent’s bedroom and onto the bureau mirror, another spring morning greeted me with a shimmering stance.  I was an infant resting in my mother’s arms as she breast-fed me.  My sister Julia, who was six years old, was standing behind us and brushing the cape of sienna curls that caressed Mom’s shoulders.  She set the brush down on top of the mahogany bureau and attempted to measure the length of her own hair.  She pulled some of her tawny tresses down around her face and asked,  “Mommy, when is my hair going to be long like yours?”     
     Mom looked up and into Julia’s hazel eyes that were reflected in the mirror.  “Soon enough,”  she answered.  Then her blue eyes looked down to return my gaze. 
     As my hand became like a paintbrush and she the canvas, a mural to depict the special bond between us began.  I outlined her satin shoulders and graceful neck with long strokes, and I shaded her porcelain cheeks with tiny grasps.  Then I sketched her narrow chin and dainty nose with delicate and featherlike touches.  When I painted her tender smile, my precious portrait was complete.  She drew me near, and her lips that were laced in rose met my forehead.  She kissed and nibbled her way around my face and hands.          
     When I was finished nursing, she carried me over to the  rocking  chair  that  was  in  a  corner  of  the  room  and next to the four poster bed.  While Mom and I swayed back and forth, Julia sat on the edge of the bed and waited for me to let out a belch.  Once I did, she asked,  “Can I hold Peaches?”     
     “Maybe when she wakes up from her nap.  If you sing to her, she’ll fall asleep faster.”  When Julia began to sing a nursery rhyme, Mom winced and rubbed her head.       
     “Do you have a headache again?”  
     “It must be another migraine because my head feels like it’s going to explode.”  Mom had a history of high blood pressure and suffered from migraines often.
     “Do you want me to get your pills?”    
     “Okay, sweetie.  I think I left them on the kitchen counter next to the stove.  And please bring me a glass of water and some crackers.  I’m getting sick to my stomach.”     
     Julia dashed out of the room and down the hall.  My sister, Rachel, who was nine years old; Jay, who was eight years old; and Joshua, who was four years old, were in the living room watching television. This distracted Julia, so she joined them.  Meanwhile, I fell asleep to the irregular beat of Mom’s troubled heart, and she laid me to rest in the bassinet.  When my siblings heard Mom scream for help several minutes later, they rushed into the bedroom.  She had been in the master bathroom vomiting and had staggered over to the bed.  Julia and Rachel rushed over to her with a look of terror on their faces, and Jay and Joshua stood in the doorway in a state of bewilderment.  “Call Daddy . . . something bad is happening to me,”  Mom said in between moans.       
     They reached Father at work, and he called his mother, Opal (Nana), who lived nearby.  When Nana arrived, Mom was incoherent. Nana contacted Mom’s cardiologist right away. By the time the doctor arrived, however, Mom was already slipping into a coma. Due to a cerebral hemorrhage, she had suffered a stroke.  As the paramedics strapped her to the stretcher and placed her inside the ambulance, Julia hit one of them with her fists repeatedly and cried out,  “Don’t take our mommy away!”  Rachel, Jay, and Joshua latched onto Nana, unwilling to let her go.  While the ambulance disappeared from view, its siren echoed her farewell lullaby.   
     My siblings and I took shelter in Nana’s warm embrace, and she took turns holding and rocking us throughout the next few nights.  All the while, Mom’s shadow followed us into the storm, and the scent of her lingered throughout the house.  Our teardrops fell into torrential downpours until dazzling prisms of sunlight peaked through the mourning pains.  Her luminous silhouette faded with the rain, and her spirit went into the light.  She passed away exactly three weeks after her twenty-seventh birthday.  I attempted to follow her, but I didn’t make it beyond the valley.  And that’s when my climb up a mountain of adversity began.   
 

 2

o there was Father, left to raise four children and an infant without a wife.  Nana and Pop virtually moved in to help him.  The grief and strain took their toll, especially on Pop, since Mom had become like the daughter he never had.  Sadly, five weeks later Pop had a heart attack, and the angel of death showed up on our doorstep once more.  Shortly after Mom’s unexpected and sudden departure, the blood running through Father’s veins had already begun to chill.  Thus, the second shock of losing his father merely solidified the sheets of isolation that were covering his heart.    
     Mom and Pop’s memorial services were held at the same funeral parlor.  Father didn’t take home Mom’s ashes after her service, and he told the funeral director to dispose of them.  The director retained the ashes, assuming that when Father was no longer distraught, he would be back to get them.  But then when Pop died not long after and they still hadn’t heard from Father, they gave Mom’s ashes to Nana.  She took the ashes of Nicholas and Casandra Riann and had them buried next to each other in the family cemetery on Riann Avenue in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.  Nana’s act of kindness and respect was kept a secret from Father for awhile.  When he finally did discover what she had done, it was the beginning of a major rift between the two of them.  The dragon emerged thereafter, and we discovered the dark side of our daddy.      By July, when we were visiting relatives during our summer vacation, Father was already busy planning his future with another woman, Helen, sending her love letters from Michigan.  Helen was no stranger.  Besides being our previous baby sitter, she was also a member of the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, where Father served as the presiding elder.  Though Nana was opposed to the idea, he married Helen on what would’ve been his and Mom’s eleventh wedding anniversary.  No one blamed him for wanting to find us a permanent caretaker as soon as possible.  Or at least that was the rationale he used to satisfy his desires to be sexually intimate again.  In other words, as a Witness, if he had sex and wasn’t married, it was grounds for him to lose his position as an elder.  And he would seriously run the risk of being excommunicated.  He was a good provider.  He didn’t abuse alcohol or drugs, and he didn’t gamble.  Nevertheless, because he wed a nineteen-year-old within five months of losing his first wife, his ability to use discernment came into question.  
     Suspicion stirred as to whether the selfish side of his manhood had tempted him to stray.  What raised doubtful eyebrows even higher, though, was that we weren’t allowed to display any pictures of Mom or mention her name.  Doing so caused us grief, and we were caught in between Father and Helen’s crossfire.  Helen displayed her distemper by slamming doors or giving Father the cold shoulder.  Questions arose as to why she was so threatened over a dead woman.  When he dismissed the idea that the covetous weeds had taken root while Mom was alive and Helen’s jealousy toward her had lingered, these were quieted.  Instead, he praised the outstanding courage that Helen showed by taking on a man with five children.  And as a result, she was awarded the immediate respect and title as “Mother” or “Mom.”  Failing to address her appropriately resulted in some kind of punishment—usually a spanking.  
     Prior to Helen’s rule, spankings usually entailed being swatted a few times on the backside.  We were introduced to Father’s belt only if we behaved badly.  Since her reign, though, we became better acquainted with the tail of the dragon.  In fact, we met the entire collection.  There were wide tails, skinny tails, leather tails, and vinyl tails.  Helen’s favorite was the bare tail.  Father never questioned if it was right or wrong—it just was.
     Even though the childhood fairy tales Father had been told had duped him, he was determined to fulfill the fantasy to walk on water.  In his attempt to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, he set out to father twelve children.  Helen was happy to oblige by giving birth to their first child, Jack, right before my second birthday.  Kara was born two years later, and Beth was born the year after.  Before long, we grew out of the house we were living in, so we moved to a larger one in the neighborhood. 
     After Nana’s early attempt to undermine Helen’s maternal nature and expose her shortcomings to Father failed, she was not allowed to see us without their supervision.  We often found her hiding out in her Cadillac somewhere near our school.  As we started to walk home, she would find us.  Then once we were safely inside her car, she would take us to an ice cream parlor or convenience store for a treat.  Thereafter, she would drop us off at the end of our street, where we promised to keep our rendezvous a secret.  An impromptu meeting that she had with the vice-principal of my school, Mrs. Dees, one afternoon when I was in first grade, is what pushed her over the edge enough to intervene again.  
     The school day had ended, and Joshua and I were leaving the grounds when I saw Nana standing at the front loading zone.  I ran to greet her.  She held out her arms and shouted, “Peaches!  How’s my baby doing today?” 
     As she leaned down to kiss me on the cheek, I inhaled her sweet fragrance.  “Nana, you smell good!”
     “I’m so hungry I could eat a peach.”  She nibbled playfully on my shoulder.  “You don’t mind if I take a little bite, do you?”  
     After I giggled, I said,  “I save all my peaches just for you.”
     “That’s my girl.  You know I can’t make my favorite pie in the whole world if you’re sharing them with everyone else.”  A bolt of lightning illuminated a gray blanket of clouds that were closing in on us.  Joshua was straggling behind and looking over his shoulder periodically.  “Hurry, Josh!”  Nana said.  “It’s going to pour.” 
     The scream of thunder startled him, and he collided with Mrs. Dees.  “Pay attention, Josh, and watch where you’re going,” Mrs. Dees said.  She placed an arm around his shoulder and escorted him to the car.  Nana was holding the car door open, and I was sitting on the front seat.  Joshua got in and sat on the backseat.  Mrs. Dees asked Nana,  “Are you Josh’s grandmother?” 
     “Yes.”
     “Can I have a few minutes of your time?”  Mrs. Dees asked.  
     “Okay.  Is something wrong?”  
     “It’s better if we go back inside to my office . . . where it’s private.”    
     Nana  said  to  Joshua  and  I,  “Stay  in  the  car.   I’ll  be back soon.”
     When they were out of sight, Joshua said,  “I hope Mrs. Dees doesn’t tell on me.”
     “For what?”  I asked.  
     “I know that she saw me saluting the flag when she came into my class this morning.”
     I put my hands up to my mouth.  “Um!  You’re going to get destroyed at Armageddon with all the wicked people.”  Then I shoved a few jellybeans into my mouth.   
     He leaned forward and opened my lunch bag and noticed that it was full of forbidden-fruited candy and other goodies.  “I guess you will, too.  But first Mother’s going to whip you when she finds out that you’ve been eating Easter candy.”  He noticed that I was becoming slightly anxious.  He smiled and took out a wrapped chocolate bunny and shoved it into his lunch bag.  “Well, I guess this could be our secret.”    
     “I won’t tell if you won’t.”  I counted the remaining pieces of candy that were in my bag before I asked,  “How come you salute the flag?”
     “There are these three punks in my class.  They’re threatening to beat me up if they catch me not saluting the flag again.  Now half the class is calling me a commie.” 
     “What’s a commie?”  
     “Beats me . . . Johnny Pinko said his father didn’t get half his leg blown off in Vietnam for people like us who don’t vote and fight for our freedom.”    
     “Ew yuk!  He doesn’t have a leg?”    
     “Nope.”  
     “Did you tell Daddy they want to beat you up?” 
     “Yes.  But he told me to give them the Watchtower and invite them to a Sunday meeting.  I swear I get so sick of going to the meetings three times a week.”  
     “Me, too,” I said.  “All the good shows are always on a meeting night.”  Once I finished chewing another mouthful of jellybeans, I asked,  “What’s that smell?”
     “I don’t smell anything . . . maybe it’s your breath.”
     “You’re the one who never brushes your teeth,” I said. 
     After we were done teasing each other, we resorted to playing tic-tac-toe until Nana came back to the car. 

     We attended meetings at the kingdom hall three times a week; two hours on Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings; and one hour on Tuesday evenings.  If we didn’t verbally participate in the question-and-answer period at the meetings, we feared getting a spanking or losing a privilege.  In addition to preparing for those meetings, my brothers had to give an oral report on an article out of the latest Watchtower magazine on Tuesdays and Thursdays during dinner.  Likewise, on Mondays and Wednesdays my sisters and I had to give an oral report on an article out of the Awake magazine.  Finally, while other children were at home Saturday mornings catching up on their sleep or watching cartoons, we were like little soldiers, getting doors closed on us as we spread the “good news.”   
     Witnesses attract outsiders with their message of the wicked being cleansed from the earth during Armageddon, and faithful servants who dedicate their lives to preaching their gospel will be rewarded with eternal life on a paradise earth.  After a kind and friendly reception, followers are encouraged to give up their worldly pursuits, for the end of the world is always just around the corner.  All the while, a whole life span has passed and they have nothing more than regrets to show for the relationships and unrequited hopes and dreams that they’ve sacrificed. Regrettably, anyone in their life who doesn’t accept their message or tries to encourage them to exercise independent thinking is cut off from further association.  Any friend or family member who isn’t interested in converting is either cut off entirely or kept at a distance.  Though many aren’t familiar with their ideologies and regard them as a harmless religious organization, their isolation and alienation tactics put them into the cult category.  An example of this fanaticism and control is that they discourage getting a college education.  Even if they’re athletically inclined or their abilities could earn them a scholarship, Witnesses are prohibited from engaging in sports unless it’s an academic requirement.  So although I often wanted to join the swim or track team, it was out of the question.  Holding office in any school clubs or outside organizations is also forbidden.  And perhaps the well-known restriction, which sets them apart from most of the other organized religions, is that they’re not allowed to celebrate birthdays or national holidays.  Some Witnesses rigidly adhere to these doctrines; some draw the lines when it comes to family; and some make up their own rules as they go along.  
     “Bad association spoils useful habits.”  This was a scripture that was quoted in my house from their Bible like a chant.  Any contact with the world outside was basically forbidden, and it was very difficult keeping friends in school.  If I was invited to spend the night with classmates or go to a birthday party, it always ended embarrassingly because I had to refuse the invitation.  As a result, I felt like I never fit in.    
     When Nana returned to the car, she barely spoke two words on the drive over to the ice cream parlor.  When I finished eating my banana split, she persuaded me to entertain myself and gave me several quarters so that I could play pinball.  She and Joshua stayed inside the booth, talking.  I don’t know what they discussed.  I only noticed that he lost his appetite, and Nana was getting madder by the moment.  But her anger wasn’t directed at him. 
     By the time we headed home and were approaching the end of our street, the worst of the thunderstorm had passed.  When Nana saw Helen’s van parked in the driveway, she said,  “Don’t get out yet.  I’m coming home with you.  I want to talk to Helen.”  Joshua and I looked at each other.  “Don’t worry.  Someone had to make sure that you didn’t walk home in this storm—since Queen Helen could care less.” 
     When Nana walked inside the house, two laundry baskets full of clean linens were sitting on the floor in the family room.  Jay was on the couch doing homework.  She kissed him on the cheek and then went into the kitchen, where Rachel was browning meat in a pot on the stove.  Julia was filling baby bottles at the bar in the kitchen.  After she kissed them both, she took the receiver off the telephone that was hanging on the wall and listened for a dial tone.  “Is Helen taking a nap?”  Nana asked.  “The line’s been busy all afternoon.”  
     “Yes,”  Rachel answered.  “She probably took the phone off the hook.”  
     “I need to speak to her,”  Nana said.      
     “She told us not to bother her when she’s taking a nap,”  Julia said. 
     “That’s too bad,” Nana said sarcastically.  “Looks like I’ll just have to wake up sleeping beauty.”  She walked through the kitchen and into the nursery.  Father and Helen’s bedroom was directly off the nursery.  After Nana knocked on the door twice, Helen opened it and Nana went inside.
     Nana came out of the room about ten minutes later and Helen yelled,  “Joshua, get your butt in here now!”  
     “Don’t punish him, Helen,”  Nana said.  “It was probably an accident.”
     “I don’t care what his excuse is,”  Helen responded.  “He’s too old to be crapping in his pants!  We didn’t tolerate it from Jay, and we’re certainly not going to tolerate it from him.” 
     When Joshua came out of the bedroom moments later, he was whimpering.  He went into the family room, sat on the floor, and began folding laundry with Nana and I.  “Did she spank you?”  Nana asked softly.      
     Helen walked into the kitchen with a foul look.  “I’m leaving that for his father.”  She lifted the top off the pot and stirred the simmering beef.  Then she slammed the metal spoon down on top of the stove.  “Thank you, Opal, for bringing them home.  Now go.”       
     “I’m waiting for Harry to come home,”  Nana said.
     “As soon as he gets home, we’re eating dinner quickly because it’s a meeting night,”  Helen said.  “And he’s giving the talk tonight, so he has to look over his notes.”
     “What I have to say won’t take long,”  Nana said.
     “Suit yourself.”  Helen replied, then she directed her attention toward Joshua and I.  “When you two are done putting the clothes away, there’s another load in the washer that needs to be hung out on the line.  Then set the table for dinner.”  She walked through the  nursery and turned around before she went into her bedroom and spoke to me.  “Shoshanah, since you didn’t do a satisfactory job cleaning the bathroom before you left for school this morning, you’ll be clearing off the table after dinner-not Joshua.”  All the commotion awoke Kara, who was two years old, and Beth, who was one. Their  cries sent Julia and Rachel  into  the nursery.  When Helen heard Jack’s cries moments later, she opened her bedroom door.  “Did my little goober wake up from his nap?”  He grinned widely and ran over to her.  “Hurry,”  she stated, “before all the cool air disappears.”  When he crossed the threshold, she shut the door. 
     By five o’clock, Father was home.  As soon as Nana saw him parking his truck in the driveway, she went outside to meet him.  Helen was putting the stew and biscuits on the dining room table while Rachel was filling the glasses with ice.  Jay, Julia, and I were in the front yard playing with Jack, Kara, and Beth.  Father, exasperated and tired, listened to Nana briefly.  Then he responded, shook his head, and walked away.  When she continued to badger him, he shouted, “That’s enough! You’ve had it in for Helen from the beginning.  If you don’t mind your own business and let us raise our children as we see fit, you won’t see them again.  I don’t care how much they beg me.”
     “Casandra’s children haven’t known a happy day since you married that Jezebel,”  Nana said.  “And I’m not going to stand by and watch the rest of their childhoods wasted on doing the things that she should be doing.  I won’t hesitate to fight to get custody of them if I have to.  Someone has to protect them.”  She went inside only long enough to get her purse and say good-bye to Rachel and Joshua.  When she came back outside, Father met her at the front door.  She leaned down and whispered in my ear,  “Don’t worry, Nana’s not going to leave you.”     
     “Quit poisoning her mind and go home,”  Father said.    

     The next time we saw Nana was a few days later at the Memorial.  (The Memorial holds the same significance to Witnesses as Easter does to Christians. It represents Jesus’ death and resurrection.)  We sat silently throughout the entire ceremony.  We were forbidden from sampling a piece of heaven, the bread that represented Jesus’ body.  And stealing a sip of wine and indulging in the cup of freedom that symbolized his blood was also off limits to us.  We weren’t of the chosen few-the one hundred and forty-four thousand.  According to their beliefs, these are the only mortals who are granted a pass into heaven.  Our lowly merit allowed us only to reside in the servant’s quarters, where our master anointed us with oils of guilt.  As Father led the congregation to celebrate this event, it was another one of his golden moments to shine in glory.       
     Once the celebration ended, he drooled over the praise that the congregation sprinkled his ego with.  With power and control being his drug of choice, his charisma intoxicated some into idolatry.  When he flashed them his human side, they drew the shades and closed the shutters.  The upstanding image in his organization was the delusive backdrop to preserve the perfect picture and deter outsiders from seeing what went on behind the scenes.  However, as Nana stood in the background while family snapshots were taken, she was realizing how dangerous his addiction had become.  She couldn’t take the insidious invasion anymore.  She was torn between seeing her grandchildren being neglected and abused versus being forbidden to see them at all.  Thus, by the end of the school year she went into cardiac arrest.   
     Nana’s treating Helen as though she wasn’t fit to break bread with made Father’s jowls salivate with an angry appetite for revenge.  When Nana lay dying in the trenches, he couldn’t resist striking her with another fatal blow. He denied Julia’s request to say good-bye, telling her that hospital policy didn’t allow her in the room because of her age.  My siblings and I lost our greatest ally later that evening.  She died of a broken heart while serving in combat.  Nevertheless, being the matriarch that she always was, she fired the last round and had the last word by bequeathing her two homes to her oldest son and not to Father.
     When I saw her lifeless body lying in the casket and touched her cold hand, I was old enough to comprehend that she wasn’t coming home.  Yet I was too young to comprehend that she was never going to hug, kiss, or sing to me again.  I soon realized that it would be years before I ever felt cared for or heard the words of love uttered to me again.  The dreadfulness of being abandoned snuck into the back door of my childhood dreams when I wasn’t looking, and the spirited little girl known as “Peaches” vanished.    
     Like Nana, I tried to give Helen a chance.  After all, she was the only mother I knew.  She was nice and fun to be around as long as you followed orders and kept your mouth shut.  But even when I did, I tried to figure out what was wrong with me and why at times she could be so cruel—like the time she took me home from the hospital following my tonsillectomy.  Even though I could tolerate only smooth foods, I was thrilled that we were going to a restaurant for lunch and not directly home.  I was content nibbling on my ice cream.  Nonetheless, she ordered a cola for me and insisted that I drink it to soothe my fresh incision.  
     Living without Mom was hard.  But being the last souvenir of her desertion and the sharpest thorn remaining in Helen’s rose garden was even worse.  Whenever Helen was out of earshot and relatives were visiting us, they often mentioned   that my expressions and characteristics were eerily similar to Mom’s.  So being the one out of all her children who physically resembled her the most was to my misfortune.  I was a constant reminder of her betrayal and a past that Father couldn’t run from.
     Having younger siblings made me happy most of the time, especially when Helen bore her last child, Kate.  By the time she came along, I was ten.  Everyone doted on her because she was the youngest and only child in our family who had blue eyes.  I enjoyed dressing her for meetings, and her cries, which often sent me to the lobby of the kingdom hall, were a good excuse to get out of what I considered to be brainwashing sessions.  Caring for her distracted me from the moments of malevolence that I had toward my other younger siblings.  This wasn’t because I wanted to be the center of the universe.  Rather, it was because I craved the love and affection that I thought Helen and Father were giving to them and not to me.  This aggravated me to the bottom of my belly, for I knew that there was no way that I could compete with them, though I tried.   
      As a teenager, Helen knew that I was saving for a car.  So in exchange for doing the laundry on the weekends, she paid me five dollars a week.  By then, we had two washers and two dryers to keep up with the demands of a large household.  If the laundry wasn’t done on a daily basis, by the time the weekend approached the two plastic trashcans that were used as hampers were overflowing.  As Father was getting dressed for a meeting one night, he came to me and asked,  “Why don’t I have any clean dress shirts?”  I didn’t bother defending myself, explaining that Helen didn’t do the laundry all week and was letting it pile up for me on  the  weekends.  Instead, I changed  my routine and did a few loads of laundry every day after school.  
     Finally, one night during dinner, when Father was complaining about the high grocery bill, I added,  “If Kara, Beth, and Kate put their clothes into their dressers instead of throwing them on the floor when they go to bed at night, then I wouldn’t have to do as much laundry.  It would save some of the money that you spend on electric and laundry detergent.”  
     “Why aren’t you putting them in the drawers for them?”  Father asked me.  From then on I knew it was pointless.  I didn’t even bother asking why it was that whenever one of Helen’s children got sick and couldn’t do the dishes, I had to do them.  But then, whenever I became ill and it was my night to do the dishes, the dishes sat there until the following night when I had to do all of them.
     These trivial injustices and blatant acts of favoritism couldn’t compare to the cold-hearted detachment that I experienced when I took a desperate measure to reach out to Father and Helen.  
     I was fourteen when I thought that ingesting twenty diet pills would spark the reaction I was dying for.  It was early one Sunday morning when I decided to take the pills.  I was in the midst of getting dressed when they took effect.  Because I was focused only on getting the result I wanted, I wasn’t prepared for the consequences, so I panicked.  My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest.  I sent Kara to ask Helen to come to my room.  
     When several minutes passed and Helen didn’t come to see me, I went to her.  When I knocked on their bedroom door, she came to the door but didn’t open it.  “What is it?”  she asked.
     “I don’t know what to do.  I’m scared.  I don’t know what made me do it, but I took a bunch of diet pills.”  I heard her say something to Father, but I couldn’t make out what it was.  When I heard him responding to her, I added,  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to do it.”
     “Try to vomit as much of the pills up as you can,” Helen said.  “Then I want you to get dressed.  You’re going to the meeting!” 
     I did what I was told.  I managed to finish dressing with the exception of fixing my hair.  In the meantime, my heart felt like an accelerator, speeding up and then slowing down to a crawl.  While the rest of the family was getting in the van, I was still in my bedroom, laying on the bed.  After Father blew the horn and I didn’t come out, Helen went back into the house.  She stood in the doorway of my bedroom and said,  “Quit being a hypochondriac and get your butt in the van.”
     When I climbed into the van, I immediately went back and laid across the rear seat.  My heart fluttered faster with every turn.  Everything was spinning, sweat coated my clammy skin, and my limbs were numb with fear.  Once Father drove into the parking lot of the kingdom hall, I waited for everyone else to get out of the van.  He waited for me to come out, but I stayed on the seat.  “I can’t go in.  I feel very sick.  Please let me stay out here.”  
     He took off his belt and threatened to hit me.  However, being in the parking lot with spectators from the congregation walking by made it difficult for him to carry out his threat.  So he left me there in the sweltering heat while he went inside.
    Ten minutes later, Ted, another elder and the father of a daughter whom I often baby-sat, came out to see me.  “I noticed that you weren’t inside, so I asked Kara where you were,”  he said.   “I  hope  you  don’t  mind.”  I continued to lay there silently.  “You don’t look so good.  Are you okay?”  
     “I tried to tell them that I don’t feel well, but they won’t listen to me.” 
     “What’s wrong?”   
     “I know it was stupid.  But I took a bunch of diet pills early this morning.  I’ve already vomited up everything that was in my stomach.  I feel dizzy, hot, and have the chills—all at the same time.”  
     He touched my face.  “It’s going to be okay.  Do you want me to take you to the emergency room?”  
     “Whatever you think.”  
     “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. 
     Ted went back inside, but my disgruntled father returned.  He was unhappy that his parental authority was questioned and that he was forced to put on a caring facade.  His position in the congregation made most Witnesses quake with fear at the mere thought of questioning his actions.  Apparently, the opinions of his congregation held greater significance than his daughter’s feelings.  
     Father didn’t take me to the emergency room to make sure that I was out of physical danger.  Instead, he took me home, where I laid on his and Helen’s bed.  As far as he was concerned, I was lucky to escape a session with the tail of the dragon and the tropical heat and to be recovering in the only air-conditioned bedroom in the house.  But I knew this was for his benefit and not mine.  He didn’t want the sweat rolling down his cheeks while he was reading the Sunday newspaper.      
     His ears went deaf as he ignored my cries for attention.  “Mommy, help me, please.”  He knew it was my mother I was crying for and not Helen because I never referred to Helen as anything but  “Mother.”  I wanted to shake him out of his oblivion.  
     Come here my precious Peaches and sit on Daddy’s lap.  What made you go to such lengths to capture my attention? Tell me where it hurts.  What can I do to make you know that I do love you and your feelings do count?  I never meant to hurt my precious Peaches.
     Fantasy.
     Father pulled the newspaper down a couple of inches, just barely enough to look over at me.  The only condolence he offered was this:  “You should have known better than to be so stupid and take all those diet pills.  If you really want to kill yourself, you don’t do it with diet pills.  It serves you right for getting sick.  Maybe this will teach you a lesson.”  Then he returned to reading the comic section, laughing periodically at the material that entertained him.  His neglect branded me with one of the most damaging messages a father could ever send to his child:  Your feelings don’t count because you’re nothing.  I had to realize that it didn’t matter what my needs or wants were because the only feelings that counted were his.  My hopes were dashed, and I had to accept, you were never Daddy’s little girl, nor will you ever be. 
     I did learn a powerful lesson that day when Ted—not Father or Helen—called me later that evening to see how I was doing.  Though Father and Helen were having dinner with Ted and his wife, neither of them got on the telephone to talk to me.  My physical, emotional, and mental condition didn’t even enter their thoughts.  They were too wrapped up in themselves and having a good time.  Their total disregard that I was an individual and not just one of their religious servants or house slaves made me feel like I was already dead.  I thought that experiencing the physical pain, if I would’ve carried out my death wish, would not have hurt half as much as the emotional agony I had to endure by staying alive.  From that day forward, it was as if a corpse became my epitome and I was forced to live inside a morgue with parents who were already emotionally dead themselves.  My trust started to wane, or it seemed like everyone who ever meant anything to me had let me down.
     No one could have imagined what was truly behind my cry for help and the modus operandi I was forced to use to keep myself physically alive.  Nor would they have fathomed that when the fourth of September passed each year—and Father and Helen had parties to celebrate their anniversary—a silent killer was rejoicing.  The assassin was filled with a guilty pleasure in assuming that they had gotten away with murder.  Hence, the day they wed was the last day of my child-hood innocence; and from then on I was forced to grow up sooner than my years allowed.
     While Father was busy building his delusional dynasty, I took refuge in a realm of fantasy.  Writing in my diary became my sanctuary, where I kept my thoughts hidden under lock and key.  I was too young to realize that my soul was searching for an antidote to cure my aching heart.  I discovered a resource that temporarily patched the holes inside me.  The Bible verse Father quoted many times from his pulpit,  “The truth shall set you free,” did anything but. The grim reality of what my childhood was turning into imprisoned my thoughts and shaded my soul black. My words liberated me, and I waited for my prince to come and rescue me.