LITMIR.BIZ

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up and up, concussive blasts of “Ah!” in my hair, smelling of hate and licorice.

      “Made for the—made for the man!” He ground against my body again and again until—cursing God—his body stiffened, shuddering upward. He arched in a savage swoon till I thought we’d both fall back. Then the arch reversed, and I fell to my knees. He bit the small of my back through the nightdress, cutting in, working his jaw on it, gorging and gouging with his hands on my hips until I sobbed into my hair for mercy.

      Then he slung me to the ground. Salt and dirt in my mouth. Snow under my hips. I watched him jump the flames he’d set and run down home. Little hips, spindly arms, his whole figure back-lit by fire. Inger Olsen, the Bishop’s oldest son.

      I knew a chill darker than fever, then. Body cold, crotch hot, I slapped my hips and buttocks, beat at them until I could feel nothing, scratching and slapping, spilling snow in a shower around my feet.

      When I stood, I said, “I have survived it,” but the whisper seemed a lie. Snow fell, and I was little as those words.

      Inger had delivered the cast iron tub. He, not the Bannock, had stolen my clothes from the line. He’d robbed me even of that.

      I doused the fire, weeping. A page of newspaper trembled in the scrub. The broom lay where he’d hurled it. I would not touch them, his kindling or his weapon.

      It snowed six inches that night. I barred the doors, wedged firewood across the windows, stoked the fire—nothing gave comfort. A hundred times I suffered his attack. A hundred times I asked myself, Am I still virgin? All the talk of it they passed at church, all the importance the Elders laid on it—a woman’s purity. At any and all costs she must preserve her virtue, even to the taking of her life.

      But what exactly had a woman to protect? Copulation was sacred, not secret, the Elders said, but they never told the particulars, those particulars which tormented me so now to hear. I didn’t know if I was ruined by him, or damned because I hadn’t killed myself. Had Inger had his way? He’d never kissed me. We had not lain down. He’d never touched my body under the nightdress. But he’d bitten me, he had profaned, I had not struggled to the death . . . nothing I knew answered the question, was I still virgin?

      And struck to silence as I was, nothing would.

      I could tell no one. It would have ended my days of freedom on the Bench. And whom would they have believed—Bishop Olsen’s son or a girl living alone in a cabin, her so high and mighty, putting on airs, making her way without husband or hope? I did not even go to Ada. She might have told the Brethren, demanding justice. Or taken my cabin. Or lost her fondness for me, in disgust.

      That Sunday, when the Sacrament was blessed and passed, I watched Bishop Dees take the bread with his clean hands, and knew that I could not. The Deacon with the plate of torn bread stopped before me. I shook my head. He didn’t pass. I looked him in the eyes and scowled. His ears turned red above the loose stalk of his father’s starched collar. I scowled again, and he retreated at last. In the silence that followed, everything I saw reversed into a photographic negative. The walls of the Wardhouse were burnt black. Small comfort, to refuse blessed bread. I was only doing what the damned must.

      Bishop Dees requested a second private meeting, this time at his house. I walked into his parlor that afternoon as God’s forsaken, with every intention of playing my part full on. But he called me a good girl, a “radiant example to us all of industry and unflagging resolve.” I never expected kindness. It drove into my heart, as did the green of his eyes. “You have taken what little your life offered and multiplied it to greatness. Sister, do you know the parable of the talents?”

      I nodded, my face hot.

      “Christ rewarded the man who used his talents. Christ praised and loved him. Set him as our example down through time.” The Bishop’s breathing was measured. I heard it mark the pause. Then he asked how I could bypass the Sacrament, a girl gifted and blessed as myself.

      I said nothing.

      “Have you sinned, Sister Martin? I would guess the Lord has already forgiven you. The important question is, will you forgive yourself?”

      So sweet, and so unfair. I shook my head. “I am unsuited.”

      He considered this. “For what? Can you say it?”

      The bristle on his horsehair sofa made my legs crawl. “For a woman’s calling.” I closed my eyes, caught my bitterness up and stuffed it into the space between us. I would not confess, or seek his comfort. I looked right into Bishop Dees’ eyes. “I am marked out different. No man will have me. It is God’s own curse no forgiving will erase.”

      “You think your marking means damnation?”

      “They’ve told it from the pulpit since I was six—‘the white and delightsome’ are the chosen of the Lord! The evil are marked to stay separate. That and the narrow gate of a woman’s call.”

      “It is the truth, what’s been told. It is truth—but not the whole truth. Motherhood is sacred, a divine calling, Clair. And there are other calls. I suggest you stop doubting the Lord and listen for yours. Have faith and let the Lord do the worrying. Will you think on these things?”

      He took my hand, his skin as smooth as sand-scoured pine. “The marking on your face may be a test and not a curse, Sister, both for you and those around you. There may yet be a man wants to take you for his wife.”

      I felt something pass into me, a strange power, piercing, deep, unpleasant. I put my hand in my pocket and tried to quiet my breathing.

      “Don’t toss that pearl before the swine, as yet. None of us know God’s whole truth. None could withstand it,” he said. “I will pray for you.” And that intimacy unsettled me more than all the rest, the thought of Bishop Dees holding me within the circle of his private prayers.

      CHAPTER 5

      On April 3rd, my dog arrived. I found him tied to the outhouse with a short length of wire, bawling like lost souls and outer darkness, maybe some inner darkness, too.

      I smeared a pan with chicken grease and broken corn bread and eased it forward with a stick. He licked it with his blunt pink tongue until the pan spun off into the brush. Then he smiled at me—no other way to say it—and rolled his back in the dirt. I longed to pat him, longed to invite him in and scratch his belly, but my grizzled, half-blind herd dog reeked of campfire and sheep dung.

      I cut his hair back to the skin with sewing scissors. He chased the clumps and rolled in them, jumped up and rolled again. I gave him his day to exult. Then I heated a tubful of water and plunged him into the suds. I braced one arm to keep the astounded dog in place, and scoured his back with oatmeal soap.

      Once he had suffered immersion at my hands, there was no question who the dog answered to, who he waited for, who he loved. He placed the delicate bodies of chewed rodents at my doorstep. He leaned against my legs, watching the sunsets, till we almost toppled. Dark of night, I heard his sides puff in and out, chasing some good dream at the foot of my bed.

       I was glad knowing someone slept, knowing someone still could dream.

      Swede’s hair grew in, reddish-brown mottled with gray. Swede the Lionhearted. I brushed him daily, as I had seen Lars do his beloved black horse, Loquacious.

      “You still have room in your life for an old acquaintance?” Ada Nuttall filled the doorway. A strip of sky the color of peach flesh showed beyond.

      “I’m fixing fritters,” I said. “Pull the rocker over for the sunset. I always do.”

      Swede bounded in. Ada raked her fingers down his back and rubbed his ears. “Nice home you got.”

      I didn’t trust my face, with Ada. Didn’t know how much it might reveal. I added flour and a dose of salt and said, “You’ve walked its halls. You are patting my life’s companion.”

      “He won’t go plural on you,” Ada shot back. “Size and simplicity do not alter the fact: you got a home.”

      I

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