“WHAT
are you doing?”
The yell made Elizabeth jump to her feet and face her
husband, eyes on the floor. The list and
pen were both still in her hands and the bag lay opened and half-packed on the
bed. She hadn’t heard him come home, but
she hadn’t been doing anything wrong. He
had never once forbidden her to put clothes in a bag.
“I’m…getting ready to go to
Drighton. I have to move in a little
over two weeks,” Elizabeth
explained in a whisper.
“Excuse me?” Benjamin hissed,
approaching her.
She felt him standing close and
tried to keep her voice even.
“Drighton…the college I’m going to.
I have to move there in two weeks.”
He grabbed the list out of her hand
and pushed her so she was sitting on the bed again. “Did I ever say you could go off to college?”
“I’ve already been accepted. My Rose Angel and everyone else wanted me to
go there. I…I thought this is what I’m
supposed to do,” she stuttered.
Benjamin studied the list that
detailed everything Elizabeth
needed to remember to take to school with her.
Even though she wasn’t holding it anymore, she could still picture it in
her head—her bookbag, enough clothes to get through a week or two, bedding, her
Bible and notebook, her other Rose memorabilia.
While she was still staring at her lap, she heard Benjamin spit on the
paper. She winced as he ripped it into
dozens of tiny pieces and threw it at her.
He then pushed her bag and clothes off the bed so they were in a disgruntled
pile on the floor.
“I don’t think so, wife,” he said,
grabbing her by her wrists and pulling her to her feet.
“What?” Elizabeth gasped, trying to wiggle out of his
grasp.
Benjamin leaned closer to her, so
his nose was almost touching hers. “You
heard me. You’re not going to
Drighton. You don’t need college. Your job is to be a wife and have
babies…although, you’re not doing very well at that either.”
“But…but my parents already paid for
first semester’s tuition…” she said, still struggling in her husband’s hands.
The slap was painfully loud. It echoed off the walls and resounded in
every corner of the small cottage.
Elizabeth crumpled as much as she could while Benjamin was still clinging
to her wrist, but the wrist he had let go of to smack her was merely dangling
hopelessly. She sobbed, tears dripping
down her cheeks. She knew his hand had
left an imprint on her face, as it usually did, but she didn’t touch it in
defense.
“I have no family on the outside,”
she whispered finally.
“And are you going to Drighton?” he
growled, lifting her one arm higher, her body following it up.
“No, husband,” Elizabeth gasped in both pain and tears. “I will stay here as commanded and work to
please you.”
“Good choice.” Benjamin then grabbed the wrist he had
dropped, spun Elizabeth
around, and pushed her face-first into the pile of clothes on the bedroom
floor. “Clean up that mess you made and
then kneel in the corner and pray until I tell you to stop.”
“Y-yes, husband,” she mumbled from
the floor.
When she finally heard him stomping
around the kitchen, that was the moment she allowed herself to fully sob. But she only cried for a moment before she
stopped and began cleaning up her clothes.
Her nose was bleeding, but she didn’t do anything about it. She let it bleed as she retreated to the
corner of the bedroom, knelt down, and began to pray for however long Benjamin
decided was necessary.
~*~*~*~
For the first time since she was
wedded to Benjamin, he let her leave the colony. He told her she could leave with Jacqueline
and Morgan for only an hour, and then she had better come back or else. She didn’t ask what the “or else” was, but
she knew it would be painful. As she
walked out of the colony, she reflected that it was her eighteenth birthday
today. No one had said a single word
about this, not that she had expected much from Benjamin, but even Sandra
hadn’t remembered. In wake of this,
however, not a single tear or feeling of frustration crept into Elizabeth’s system. She was completely emotionless and the fact
that her birthday had gone unrecognized was barely of any importance to her
anymore.
Elizabeth met the other two on the very park
bench that she and Morgan had sat on all those months ago when they had decided
joining the Children had been a good thing.
She could feel both of them staring at her face, which was bruised and
scarred from the Drighton argument the night before, but she didn’t look up at
their faces.
“What did he do to you?” Jacqueline
whispered.
“Slapped me,” Elizabeth said into her lap after she had sat
down on the bench. “I won’t be attending
Drighton. Benjamin has determined that I
do not need college, that I need to be focusing on my duties as a wife.”
“Is that dried blood?” Morgan
whispered, pointing to Elizabeth’s
nose.
“It’s nothing,” Elizabeth said, covering her nose with her
hand. She had known she hadn’t gotten
the blood cleaned up as well as she should have, but she decided she no longer
cared. It wasn’t worth caring.
“So things are going well with Benjamin,
are they?” Jacqueline asked, a sarcastic bite in her voice.
“Things are going fine. I just need to learn to stop making him
mad. I should have known he wouldn’t
approve of my going to Drighton. I mean,
maybe if I had already gotten pregnant, but I’ve shirked my obligations to him
and the Children. This is what I
deserve.”
Morgan and Jacqueline exchanged a
glance, but didn’t argue. Instead,
Morgan said, “Have you heard from Aimee?”
“Not since she left two weeks ago,” Elizabeth answered,
shaking her head. “I mean, you should
have heard what she said to me. She
doesn’t realize how…good…we’ve got it here, with Pastor Simon and the husbands
and everyone. She doesn’t realize that
she gave up her spot in Heaven. I could
never do that.”
“You’ve got it good?” Morgan asked.
“Maybe Aimee had the right idea,”
Jacqueline whispered. “I can’t bear to
see you like this, Elizabeth. Husband or not, I can’t believe you just let
Benjamin hit you.”
“It’s my duty, Jacqueline!” Elizabeth
cried. “Don’t you get that? I made a vow.
Nowhere in that vow did I say I would talk back to him. I vowed to obey. If I haven’t obeyed him, then he has every
right to hit me, to make me pray in a corner for ten hours. He has every right to try to get me pregnant
and he has every right to get mad if I don’t uphold my end of the process. He’s doing his job.”
“No man should hit his wife, don’t
you get that?” Jacqueline mumbled.
“In the outside, that may be
true. But in the Children, that’s not
the case. The wives have a duty and made
a vow. We all get that. We don’t fight the rules.”
“Maybe that’s the problem! Fight the rules, for crying out loud! You’re stronger than this, Elizabeth.
Not once before now have you let someone treat you like this. If Gregory hit you, you’d hit back!” Jacqueline
yelled.
Elizabeth finally looked up at her
sister. “It’s not the same and you know
it! Gregory is not my husband. And, besides, I have no family on the outside. It’s…it’s not the same.”
“Did Benjamin tell you that? That you have no family on the outside?”
Morgan asked, for Jacqueline had fallen silent at these words.
“It’s
true. Benjamin is my family now. My duty is to him and him alone. Don’t you two get it? I have no choice.”
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