Excerpt from A Bend in the River by Libby Fischer Hellmann
The morning Eden finally made up her mind dawned with a thick coating of snow that made her think it could be a signal from the Lord. If she was a Believer. Which she wasn’t. Anymore. She played it out anyway. He must know how much she’d been suffering. He was signaling that the suffering wouldn’t stop until she did something about it. And if her decision was the right one, the sun would reappear, warm, bright, and cheerful, and melt all the snow. Metaphorically at least. The thought surprised her and almost made her chuckle. Perhaps she had absorbed more of a spiritual mindset than she’d realized since her marriage to Porter. The Mormon religion, not so much.
She brought herself back to the day at hand and bit her lip. Porter hadn’t spent the night with her last night; he only came for sex once —sometimes twice—a week now. And those nights were rife with trauma. Porter would demand that Eden be a more submissive Mormon wife. Their marriage had been sealed in the Church. Didn’t she know what that meant? That it would last forever? At first she would remind him that they’d married so quickly she hadn’t known what was expected of her. She didn’t know what she was signing up for, and he hadn’t prepared her. Inevitably, though, he would lose patience and hit her when he was displeased with something she did or didn’t do. The children would cry, and he’d stomp out, spitting self- righteous indignation and venom.
Eden had learned to remain silent when he was verbally abusing her. She hoped it would stop the physical abuse. It didn’t. Porter’s temper always simmered, but given the slightest pretext, it would boil over. She could tell from the tone of his voice when he was building up to an explosion. His attacks made her feel lost and alone, the same way she’d felt when she lost Tony, her fiancé before meeting Porter. Now she’d come to hate Porter and their marriage.
But her decision to leave, to actually run away from the intolerable, materialized slowly, weighted by her love for the children. How could she leave them? She was terrified about what Porter might do to them in her absence. But how could she stay, take care of them, and permit him to continually violate her, in bed and out?
Elijah, six years old, had always been a handful, and he’d just started school. The teacher, herself a teenager, said he wasn’t able to focus for more than a few minutes. Although the teacher didn’t say it, Eden gathered that he was becoming volatile like his father and was mimicking Porter’s worst qualities. Like Porter, she was sure Elijah had ADHD, and his frustration with learning was turning violent.
Sariah, at eight, was curious, smart, and stubborn. Eden’s efforts to bond with Sariah were ruined by Porter’s insistent demands for respect and obedience. She was waiting for Sariah to explode with anger, and yet of all three children, Sariah seemed to share a special relationship with her father and often sided with him against Eden.
Then there was her oldest son, flaxen-haired Teagan, ten, docile, and quiet, who would do anything Eden asked. She would have to figure out a way to spirit them away in the middle of the night after she was settled somewhere new. Her eyes filled as she thought about being without them, however briefly.
After the past few months, though, she feared for her life. Porter’s only way to solve problems was through violence. It started one night when he’d slammed a slice of hot pizza in her face, after complaining that she forgot to order mushrooms. Another time he poured a bottle of beer over her head for buying Michelob, not Corona. The violence escalated with a black eye here, a swollen cheek there. What would be next? She couldn’t afford to find out. She hid the bruises and cuts with makeup, hats, and high-necked clothing.
The verbal abuse was crueler since the children were there to hear it. She could do nothing right. Cook, clean, care for the children. And don’t get him started on the way she made love. Listless, no desire. Everything she did or didn’t do was fair game. She didn’t understand the basic Mormon principles of marriage.
The real problems came when she could no longer stay silent and argued back. She tried to use truth and facts. She reminded him of the time he’d forced her head under the tub water until she choked and sputtered. And the time he beat her when she was pregnant with Elijah. She threatened to leave him if anything like that happened again.
He laughed. Actually laughed, saying he knew she’d never leave her kids. If she did, she would be shunned by the entire community and would never see them again. Then he beat her for daring to argue.
Over time something inside her split apart. Eden’s capacity to love and laugh seemed to disappear, leaving a shell of a woman whose only goal was to save herself and her children. But when? And how?
Now, Elijah yelled from another room. Sariah yelled back, and soon the two were embroiled in a bitter argument about who would be first in the bathroom. Eden sighed, threw off the covers, and got out of bed.
Excerpted from DoubleBlind Copyright © 2022 by Libby Fischer Hellmann. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
No comments yet.