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Birmingham, 1916
Isabella wasn't one to cry, not anymore, not after she had sobbed her heart out over her mothers corpse as she left her, and definitely not since she had sobbed after her brothers. But if she did still cry, she would have cried by now, no she would have sobbed, weeped and screamed. She would have cried and cried and cried, sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, until she collapsed. She would have screamed and howled, for everyone and anyone to hear.
She knew what was happening was wrong. She knew everything that had happened was wrong. She knew the words she was reading were wrong. She knew the hands wandering her body were wrong. She knew the pain she was feeling, and going to undoubtedly feel, was bad.
But Isabella also knew how powerless she was to make it stop.
She knew exactly what was happening. She knew exactly what the wandering hands were going to do. How they were violating, and going to violate, her thirteen-year-old body. She was a genius after all, she knew exactly what was about to happen.
All she was able to focus on were the words, the sentences she had read over and over again. She wasn't able to remember them, she usually remembered everything, yet she wasn't remembering the words she had read hundreds – probably thousands – of times. She was seeing the words, and she was reading them, but she couldn't for the life of her remember the words she had just read, and it was driving her mad.
Isabella knew that the church her aunt visited daily, sometimes multiple times a day, couldn't be capable of wrongdoings. Her beloved aunt who spent as much time as possible in this house of god, her beloved aunt who had spent years helping raise her, her beloved aunt who was beyond loving towards her family. She knew that this could not have been what her beloved aunt put all her faith in. There was just no possible way.
Isabella was certain that when aunt Polly told them to get on their knees and pray this hadn't been what she meant, she was sure of it. This couldn't have been what she meant. There was just no way this was what her aunt had wanted.
She couldn't possibly have meant this.
Because Isabella was on her knees, and she was reading from the bible, but she didn't feel closer to god. In fact she had never felt further away, she never believed in god but at this moment she wished she had, just so the passages she was reading would have led to something, anything. Just so she wouldn't have felt so alone and lost, without anyone by her side.
