Esther

Dinner had of course ended in a fight, just like it always did. In a lot of ways, I felt lucky. My father did not drink, did not use drugs, he did not rape or molest his daughters, but he did hit us, all of us. Well, all the girls anyway, his precious sons were safe. For my mother, my sister Eliza, and I, life was a constant stream of beatings. Only the two youngest girls, Elana and Rachael were safe. The boys were treated like princes and encouraged to learn from our father that women needed to be kept in line. I was not sure how much longer it would be before the boys started hitting us as well.

And that was when I started to cry. Tears were off-limits for me: I was not allowed to feel, not important enough to have emotions. My job was to take care of the little ones, to clean up after my brothers, to help my mother, to go to church every Sunday and remain quiet. No opinions, no life, no nothing until God, the Bishop, and my father saw fit to give me to a husband.

The thought of marriage made me cry harder. My father and the Bishop Ethern already had someone picked out for me. His name was Mark Smithson, the older brother of a girl, Susan, who I had been friends with since kindergarten. On the surface, he was nice, but I knew just like everyone else that he drank and got violent. If there were ever proof that my father did not care about me, it was this proposed marriage.

I suddenly longed for my older brother Gabriel, but if anything was certain, it was that he would never come back. Four years ago, just a few days shy of his 17th birthday, Gabriel had come out. My father beat him so badly that Gabriel had to crawl out of the house and hide in the bushes just under the front window until we could get help. That had been the first and last time my mother had done anything to help us. She had stepped in my father’s way that night, distracted him, got his rage turned on her so that Eliza and I could help him get outside and hide. Later I found out that he had been in the two towns away under an assumed name for almost two months. My father had brought him within an inch of death, but Gabriel had lived.

His face was filling my mind, making the tears fall faster when a voice came out of the darkness to my left and it took everything I had not to scream. I looked around, my eyes straining in the darkness. My eyes picked out a small dot of light through the trees and as I focused on it, a picture formed in front of me. It was Belladonna Coldcrow, smoking a cigarette in a tree, speaking to me as if we had always done so.

“What did you say?” I asked, forcing tears out of my voice. I tried to make it cold, make her stay away, but all I could do was make it flat.

“I asked if you were okay,” she replied. There was a flicker of light on her eyes and I knew that she had just looked at my house, taking in the fighting. “You want me to call someone?” she asked when I did not respond. “The cops? A friend? Your priest or whatever you call it?”

“Bishop,” I corrected without thinking. “And no, we don’t need you to call anyone.”

The girl nodded slowly. “You thirsty?” Belladonna asked suddenly. “I’ve got some peppermint tea over here.”

I stared at her incredulously. Was I, Esther Helen Owens, good little Mormon girl, really sitting in a tree being invited to drink tea with Belladonna Coldcrow, the oldest daughter in a family of Satanic witches and warlocks? Dizziness stole over me and throbbing pain from the injuries my father had given me the night before was making an appearance. Everything blurred and I rocked slightly.

“Woah, watch it there, Esther.” I shook my head slowly, trying to clear away the blurriness, but when my vision cleared, I almost fell out of the tree. Belladonna was sitting inches from me, looking shocked and a little offended. “Jesus,” she hissed. “You almost fall out of the tree so I catch you and you still run away like I’ve got the Plague.” She made a disgusted noise in her throat and shot me a contemptuous look before she moved lithely across what seemed like thin air between the trees.

“Wait,” I said, stretching my hand towards her, but the pull on sore muscles made me gasp with pain. In what seemed like an instant, she was at my side again.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly, pulling me closer. “Where does it hurt?”

She smelled like cloves and something sweet, like incense. “My back and shoulders,” I answered, not sure why I even bothered to tell her.

“Okay, hold still . . .” but before she could do anything, I pulled away again. “Do not do any magic on me!” I demanded quietly. “Don’t you dare!”

She rolled her eyes and snorted. “I wasn’t planning too,” she muttered. “I was actually going to use acupressure, so just sit still damnit, and let me help you.”

In the darkness, I felt her long fingers slip across my skin, pinching some places, prodding others, and then suddenly the pain was gone and my muscles relaxed. “Thank you,” I said sincerely as she pulled away from me.

She merely nodded and turned to cross back to her yard. Now that my eyes were more used to the darkness, I could see the massive coil of branches that made a walkway between the treetops that was invisible from the ground. When she reached her platform, Belladonna dropped down and draped a leg on either side of the bridge and lit another cigarette, her eyes locked on the stars above us.

For the first time in years, I really looked at this strange girl who had lived next door to us since I was four. She was beautiful, there was no denying that. Curly red hair that looked like something out of a shampoo commercial fell in glorious disarray down her back. Piercing, almond-shaped blue eyes looked out from a pale, angular face that was almost Elvin in appearance and had never been seen with even one pimple. Belladonna was tall for a girl, but not so tall that she towered above the boys, she was thin, but not like the stick figures in celebrity magazines, she was athletically thin, compacted muscle.

My heart sank as I imagined myself next to her. Long, painfully straight black hair, long, oval face, generic brown eyes and skin that always had a blotchy red look, like acne was about to explode out of me. Add the fact that I am slightly overweight and tried to stay invisible as much as possible (with 50-50 success), next to her, I was not even The Girl Next Door, I was the stinky bag lady on the freeway off-ramp.

“What are you staring at?” Belladonna’s voice broke through my reverie.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “My mind was just wandering.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but before she or I could make a sound, voices sounded from our back porches. “Bells, come inside,” Mrs. Coldcrow called. “It’s time for devotions and the others have homework so we can’t wait much longer.

“Esther, get your ass in this house and do the dishes!” my father bellowed.

I looked over and started. Belladonna was giving me a sad, but encouraging little smile. “It’s okay,” she whispered in the darkness. “He’ll pass out soon, I promise. I can hear it in his voice.”

And with that, she was gone. As I dropped down from my tree, I could not help but glance at the fence that separated her from me. Part of me yearned to run back to the tree, to follow the magical bridge into the next yard and walk with people who were totally different from me. Satanists or not, from their house all you heard was laughter, from ours, only yelling and screams of pain, so who was really doing the right thing?

After I finished the dishes, I went up to my room, my mind buzzing with thought. Belladonna had been right: my father had passed out just after I came inside. Flying into a rage always tired him out. I stood in my dark bedroom staring across the side yard at her window. Shadows were dancing across the fabric, two of them, as if Belladonna’s sister was pacing around the room while she cleaned.

For as long as I can remember, I have been being confronted with Belladonna and all her bemusing habits. All through school, we were in the same classes. There is only one class that we do not have together now, the extra period before school. I have my seminary classes, and she takes something Web Design, which I only know because she was used in a sermon during one of my seminary classes, an example of what we should stay as far away from as possible.

I heard someone yell across the way and I hurried to my window and inched it open. “For the love of God, Scathach!” Belladonna was yelling. “Just go away, I don’t give a damn! I have more important things to be dealing with these days besides your Infatuation of the Week!”

A door slammed and suddenly the curtains in the window facing me were pulled aside. I blushed as surprise registered on Belladonna’s smooth face. A smile twitched across her lips and she mouthed the five words that forever changed my life:

We’ll talk tomorrow at school.

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