SOC 101 (SUBJECT 2)✓

9

- THE COUNTY -

Through the drive, my mother had kept mute, not mute really, she had spoken to the cabbie driver but not me. I didn't need to see her face to know what she had on her mind. I wasn't anticipating the ride back; I wasn't ready for the mockery that came with coming back to the County. It wasn't a secret, and it was all we kids, thought of when we were younger. Whenever someone came back home from the outside, we knew immediately that they had seen and done wrong. We knew they were never going back out.

I spared my mother a glance, she spoke freely but her form was rigid and her fingers had turned pale white as she clenched them harder. She looked up to see me staring in time and smiled warmly and I nervously smiled back, gripping the handle of my bag closer to my body.

"Get down." Her soft voice said suddenly as she bent to look at me still seated in the car and I gulped.

I got down from the car, feeling the last strings tying my dignity together cut into pieces as they stared at me. I knew what was going through their heads because some years ago I had those same thoughts. Some years ago, I promised myself that I'd never be brought back in shame like every other person before had. I promised my friends that I'd stay out for them, for their sakes, when I saw them come back home. I didn't realize how confining our world was or how we must have seemed to every person in the outer world.

I kept my head down as I watched the children stop their playing to stare and whisper. Two turned to four and I blinked furiously to stop the tears when the toddler I use to take care of in church ran to me to hug me with a smile.

"Sister Theresa." She smiled, "You're back?"

"Yes, I am," I answered quietly, keeping my gaze on the little girl that seemed way too happy to see me.

"Oh, yay. You'll play with me again." The innocence in her childlike comment had me sobbing inwardly, I wondered how blissful ignorance was for them.

The older we got, the harder life seemed to get. It was simple logic that we were all too familiar with. We knew and we didn't bother to deny it or hide it.

I also knew how everyone was secretly happy each time this happened, history repeated itself every time with each person who left the County. They always came back in shame, they always found the outer world inviting. It wasn't inevitable, and they knew that which was why they never tried to stop us from leaving. We don't know anywhere out there, so why risk it?

"Yes." I finally whispered back to Susan as her mother quickly called her back to their yard and she stared at me.

The judgment in her eyes as she stared at the bag in my hands and at my body as if she could see the sin all over my body. The headshake that showed just how disappointed she was in me before she turned around and walked back into her house, making sure to drag her daughter along with her. Probably to cleanse her and rid her of the sin she had probably gotten from hugging me.

It was a tradition in the County. Avoid lost sisters and brothers until they are cleansed. We had had it stuck in our heads since we were little children. Children were prone to getting the sin more than adults, children are vulnerable. Now that I had gone out to the world, I knew that wasn't how sin was, sin wasn't something that could be passed from one body to the other through physical contact, but I knew no one was ready to hear that.

"Won't you come inside?" My mother's voice broke through my thoughts as she glanced at me over her shoulder before neatly placing her shoes at the entrance.

"Sorry, mother." I apologized, hitting my leg on the pavement to prevent the sand from following me in. I took off my shoes and neatly placed them at the entrance as my mother had done.

I held on to my bag even tighter as we walked into the dimly lit living room. I shut the door and I heard chanting, the chanting was coming from my mother and I knew I wasn't ready, I wasn't ready to get the demon beaten out of me. I wasn't ready for the incisions I was bound to get to keep the demon out of my body as well.

I wanted to yell at my mother as I saw the things on the table; I wondered if she knew this was what would have happened today. My mother had prepared everything, and I wasn't too surprised when she beckoned me to her, making me drop my bag with a thud as I walked towards her. I knew what was about to happen, Mary had done it, Phillips had done it and I had promised that I wasn't going to. That I was going to be different. That it would break starting from me, the vicious expectations of our parents over our lives.

Guess I was wrong after all. Not only had I failed, but my mother had seen me. She had walked in to see me in clothes from the outside. Her anger was flowing out in waves as I sat between her legs.

The sound of my sweater getting ripped off my body had me wincing. I felt the cool substance getting rubbed across my back as my mother chanted even louder. It was time, this was the time everyone knew what had happened. That I, Theresa Smith, had just turned to another x on the chart. That I had failed my mother, the amazing leader she was, that I had dragged her name in the mud of sin along with mine.

I felt her hot tears hit my back and slide down as she whispered, "Why did you have to be like this? Why couldn't you be a good daughter?"

I didn't know why I was the way I was. There was no sane reply to her question, and I knew she knew. I felt the first line get drawn across my back and her chanting got louder. My skirt was bunched up, and I had bitten on it to prevent me from screaming from the pain. Too many thoughts ran through my mind as she went on.

Line after line, tear after tear, chant after chant. Repeat.

I cried till I couldn't anymore, screamed into the fabric of the skirt till I felt my throat sore. Was this the only way? How would this prevent me from sinning? How would this stop me from being bad if I wanted to be?

The cool substance met my back once more, and I winced, feeling the blood drip down my back till my mother started wiping at it. She cleaned off the mess I had caused before tapping my shoulder.

"To your room and you're not allowed to leave for the next two weeks. No service for you either. I must not hear a sound from your room today either and you must come down the second I call you for dinner. You're not leaving this County ever again. Never again in your life, Theresa."

I nodded as I stood to my feet, not knowing what to say at all, my head was empty. From the torture I had gotten earlier that day and the incisions I had just gotten on my back. It was like my day changed its course so fast that it threw me into the water and left me to drown.

I picked up my bag from the floor, not bothering to cover or hide my breasts. It was just my mother after all. I winced with each step I took on the stairs to my room; I knew she had asked me not to make a single sound, but it couldn't be helped. I opened the door to my room and walked into the plain-looking room that barely showed that I even stayed in it. I immediately went into the bathroom to have a shower. That was the tradition, this was my punishment.

'After the incision to kill the demon, the cleansing is next, to wash off the blood of the demon.'

Stepping into the shower though, my eyes greedily found the showerhead.

~

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