Escape

Part 5

I spent the next several days wondering about our conversation and what Momma meant, but I didn't get the opportunity to ask her. Dad worked me harder than ever. It was harvesting season, so I spent every morning in our garden, picking corn and pulling up potatoes, and carrots, filling tubs and baskets with zucchini and cucumbers and the early crop of gourds. Then it was off to our orchard, a few dozen apple and pear trees, to do the same. I trudged back to the house every night at dusk, too exhausted and sweaty to do anything but take a shower and fall into bed.

In the past, I would help Momma with cleaning and slicing and canning, but this year Dad decided to keep me outside, where he could keep an eye on me. Once, I tried to broach the subject of my missing books, but Dad silenced me with a look and didn't answer.

After three days of this, I was tired and disheartened, but still very, very angry. Dad had taken every chance to lecture and criticize he could find. I knew it had been wrong to lie to him, to go behind his back, but he made it into so much more. Really, there is no one like my dad for putting the fear of, well, God in you.

So I was already half convinced I would be struck by lightning at the dinner table that night if I so much as sipped my glass of milk too loudly, when Dad announced he had a special surprise for after dinner. He was so cheerful, like his old self. It was a little bit frightening after watching him storm around the farm for three days. What could have caused the sudden change?

After we finished eating, Dad waited impatiently for Mom and I to clear the table and wash the dishes. He sat in the living room beside a big cardboard box, the flaps folded shut. He whistled along with the radio, occasionally calling for us to hurry up.

I bent to get the dish soap from under the kitchen sink, and paused. Tucked between the Dawn and the Borax was an envelope with my name on it.

I looked up at Momma, but she just shook her head once, very quickly.

I glanced back down at the envelope. Printed under my name were the words, "Keep this with you." When I looked back at Momma, she was scraping leftovers into plastic containers with her back to me. In the living room, Dad rustled in his chair. I stuffed the envelope under my shirt, into the waistband of my jeans.

There wasn't time to think about the envelope after that. Dad hurried us outside, carrying the big box. He told Momma to get ingredients for s'mores and the little radio we kept on the kitchen counter.

Dad turned on the radio, upbeat country music crackling through the softball-sized speaker. He had already started a small bonfire in the clearing near the orchard. At his direction, Momma and I sat down on the log benches and helped ourselves to marshmallows, spearing them on long twigs while Dad stood beaming over us.

"Tonight, we are celebrating," he said, clapping his hands.

"What's the occasion?" Momma asked, smiling back.

"Our little girl is a woman now. She is sixteen, all grown up, and done with her education."

My hand froze halfway to the end of my twig, a marshmallow still clutched between my fingers.

Momma's smile faltered, but Dad had already bent down to open the box. "I know that we had some nasty business last week, but that's all past now. God forgives us of our sins when we ask him to." That morning in church, he'd asked Pastor Thomas pray with us, and asked him to say a special blessing to keep me away from temptation.

Dad straightened. In his hands was one of my textbooks. "Tonight, we purify with flame the sins that have lead our girl astray in the past, and use that ash to create fertile ground for her future," he said, throwing the book into the flames.