Prologue

Penance was born as penance, but also as Lois Anne Steele. Her mother had been Mary Ruth, and after twenty-five years of maternal oppression she earned enough money from her tips to move into a slummy, run-down apartment. But she didn't spend much time in the apartment, at all, for she was dead within a year.

Upon discovering her new apartment, Mary Ruth Steele hit the town with a new-found rebellious nature, much too late for it to do her any good. Finally free from the oppressive tyrant she called Momma, Mary ("Mare" for the long, long night) hit the town for a night full of drugs, sex, and booze. Three drinks and six men later, Mary stumbled into her apartment and collapsed on the mattress, to sleep under the peeling ceiling.

Nine months later, Momma had tied the hands of her now large, naked daughter down to the bed and refused to let her leave.

She sat in the corner, perched on her stool with a red bible in one hand, a finger marking her place in the Gospels, and she sighed. "Fornication, Mary Ruth? We taught you better than that."

Mary cried and groaned, tears ran down her cheeks, and then her round stomach shot into the air as she arched her back, her whole body tensing and sweating, and she screamed loud and long and shrill enough to hurt you ears. It sounded as if she was dying, and Momma wouldn't care when she discovered how accurate that was, but nobody responded to the screams. In a neighborhood like hers, those shrill cries are heard daily, and ignored hourly.

Momma opened up her Bible, thumbed through the pages, and waited for Mary Ruth to stop screaming and struggling against the bonds that kept her to the bed, waited for her sweating, naked body to rest with her chest heaving, her tongue lolling, and her breath escaping Momma's grasp in dull rasping pants.

But when it became obvious that the swelling, growing, dilating cervix wouldn't stop bring Mary Ruth the pain, Momma cleared her throat, waited for a brief pause in the terrified, pained screams, and began to read.

"So much better than this, baby Ruth, oh so much better. Your Momma and your Pappa, we taught you so much, so much, so much better than this. "‘Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,'" she read. "Have you, Mary Ruth, little Mary Ruth? Chastity is the noblest of all causes, my girl, and your body shalt not be given unto another man lest ye be married, for the gift of intercourse is God's greatest gift and should be reserved only for those deserving."

Mary Ruth Steele wasn't made of steel, something her daughter would not inherit. She was made of wax, and wax melts easy. The tears would have flown no matter what, but the birth pains were minor compared to her mother's gaze. When she read, it was easy. When she paused and stared, it was like she was looking into Mary Ruth's heart and hissing.

"Honour thy father. Honour thy mother. Mary, have you honoured us as we taught you?"

She screamed and arched her back again.

Momma, interrupted, sighed and repeated the question.

The scream that came back was harsh and full of a desperate, pleading hatred. But the young voice that had wanted rebellion so bad when she was out of Momma's sight but was ready and willing to submit in Momma's presence didn't say a thing.

"You have not honoured us, and if you Poppa was with us now, he'd be givin' you the penance you deserve, girl. But he isn't, the priest he says he needs Poppa too much tonight. So it's you and me, daughter, you and me." She set down the Bible, ignoring the rest of the commandments, for the fornication laws were elsewhere, and walked over to the bed. She put a hand on either side of her daughter's head and leaned down until their faces were inches away, and her daughter's body heat flowed through the air and into her momma like blood in a pool, slowly rising to greater and greater sizes and staining more and more. And Momma grinned a nasty grin, wiped the sweat and tears off her daughter's face, and then slapped her. The wedding band on one finger carried upon it a jeweled cross, a cross the split Mary Ruth's cheek in two. She hardly noticed the pain, but another contraction sent her jaw open, spittle flying, she was screaming and wailing, and she lifted her head to struggle but only brought it into Momma's head instead.

Momma stumbled back, stunned, and then stopped.

"I hope you know how much pain one can feel, now," she said. "But your penance is far from over."

And the naked girl, never a woman to her angry Momma unless she was prim and proper in a Church that demanded she wore nice dresses she could no longer fit into, screamed and kicked her bound legs angrily and painfully, sobbing and wailing and sputtering gibberish about the pain and the child and the possible fathers who's names she didn't know and the pain and her Momma and the Bible and her pain.

The baby was born hours later, but it felt like years.

And every time Mary Ruth screamed, Momma would sigh, resist the urge to slap her, and then restart the current chapter of her Bible.

But soon, Lois Anne Steele squirmed in Momma's arms and wailed and cried, and Momma wiped her clean and cut the placenta and looked at her bloody, sweaty, tear-stained daughter before her. For once, she was happy. Shivers wracked her body as the adrenaline lingers, and she was still in pain, but the joy of seeing the baby girl before her took it all away. Her baby girl.

"Six men? And you don't know who the father is."

Momma cooed at the child, Gramma now, and rocked her gently.

Mary Ruth looked at her mother, her arms extended, her legs crossed to smear the blood but try and suppress the pain. She watched the baby expectantly.

"You want it?" Gramma asked.

Mary Ruth nodded.

Gramma shook her head. No. "You can't have her."

Mary Ruth paled, the adrenaline shivers took her again, and as she cried into the darkness her body began to lose control. The blood leaking from her vagina refused to stop.

"You think this is your baby?" she asked.

Mary Ruth tried to nod, tried to nod fervently.

"Well, it's not," said Gramma. "This is a stranger. You don't know who the father is, that makes this baby half unknown to you, maybe it's six men's baby." Gramma shivered, and the baby felt it, and the calm it had almost lapsed into was shattered and it began to wail again. "You're no daughter of mine and you're no daughter of Christ. You don't deserve this stranger."

"No!"

The pain took her again, and she screamed. The baby screamed back.

Gramma playfully poked the baby with long, shriveled fingers. One long, yellowed nail cut the baby's skin, right over the eye, and Gramma pretended like nothing had happened. The baby cried more. "Now look what you've done. She's crying."

Mary Ruth cried.

"What's her name?" Gramma asked.

"L... L... Lois... Lois A-A-Anne."

"Lois Anne Steele?" Gramma laughed. "This child, my child, is no Lois Anne. I will raise her, that is your punishment, that is your penance. This is your penance. Her name will be Penance."

Mary Ruth screamed, but Gramma ignored her and walked away, out of the room, into the bathroom, where she rocked the baby with the bleeding wound over one eye, the right eye. Gramma looked at the straight line curiously, and then pulled Penance's eyelid shut. She pulled her nail back across the face.

And over her right eye was a bloody cross destined to scar.

Mary Ruth didn't stop bleeding. She never saw her baby again. Gramma left her alone in the apartment, and after the unpaid bills and the rotten stench her twisted, naked corpse was found lying in the blood soaked bed.

And Penance grew up with her Gramma.