Chapter Twenty-three
For the next few days I found myself falling asleep and having dreamless nights. It wasn't a big issue, since I had gone a lot longer without being in Psitharis and, let's face it, things weren't exactly a picnic for me when I was there. But I desperately missed it. More to the point, I desperately missed him. It was strange. I barely knew the guy, actually kind of despised him, yet I had saved his life and gotten to care about him in the span of just a few hours of being anywhere near him. Roland had quickly become the only reason I wanted to sleep, the only reason I wanted to dream of despair and devastation. If I had told one of my "lovely" counselors that they would have had more than sufficient grounds to have me committed or, as Mr. Daniels hoped and prayed for on a daily basis, more than sufficient grounds to have me kicked out and put into one of the alternative schools in the area. Delusional troublemaker, that's what they would call me.
Only I never gave them that sort of ammunition. During my weekly sessions with Dr. Tonsch and Ms. Martin I played the model student. When they asked me to tell them about why I made up stories to garner attention, I would tell them about my bruised psyche, what with coming from an abusive mother and all, and how I wanted so much to fit in with my classmates and to make my teachers proud of me and blah, blah, blah. I studied sites on what answers to give to fake out a psychiatrist so you could avoid a negative report and I spilled just enough guts to give Ms. Martin limitless hope and Dr. Tonsch no end of disappointment. He was hoping I'd be put under just enough duress to blow up, to lose it under the strain of being called a liar, a manipulator and a fraud, and hearing my mother be called an abuser and an enabler. I never did, and I'm sure every time he went to Mr. Daniels with his findings it was always, to their chagrin, bad news for the district. You could never have found a more willing subject for change. I even rubbed salt in the wound by talking about how much I loved the new class, and how I was learning fascinating new things every single day! I felt badly for lying to Ms. Martin, who saw my progress as nothing short of miraculous, but she helped them railroad me in the first place, so as far as I was concerned, screw her.
Besides, I actually was learning some very fascinating new things in that boring, awful class every day. Not from Coach Jones and his stellar fifteen minutes of looking up to teach us the proper way to balance a checkbook or boil a pot of water, but from my new friend Jordan. The day after I talked to Jordan in the lunch room, I took the vacant seat behind her in class. Coach Jones didn't even notice I had moved, which made me thankful for the clueless lout for once. We began writing notes back and forth during class; little things like are you as bored as I am? Or a movie about not doing drugs? In high school? Is he for real? Turned out Jordan wasn't as withdrawn as she appeared on the outside. She just never had anyone to really talk to before me. Lunch had become the best part of the day for us, and the reject table became our safe haven. Every now and then Jordan scanned the lunch crowd regularly to see who was staring at us. "Do you think they're talking about us?" She wondered.
I looked for a moment, but I honestly didn't care much if they were. "Maybe." I responded. "But if they are, they honestly need to go out and get a life! What's worse, the two rejects or the people who are overly fascinated by them?"
Jordan giggled nervously. "My dad is always telling me I need to make more friends. Then he's always telling me how sinful most of the people here are and how I should shun their behavior and continue to look to God for solace. It gets really confusing sometimes."
Jordan had told me a little about her dad over our lunch breaks. Her dad was one of the most notorious, fire-and-brimstone, hard-ass Pentecostal preachers in the area. He was just one step down from those crazy people in Kansas who protested military funerals. The only people Jordan was allowed to hate were gays and feminists; oh, and people who didn't believe the same way they did, which from what I could tell was everyone not associated with the Marshdale Church of the Pentecost.
However, for as much as her father preached fire and brimstone, he was also the biggest hypocrite the world had ever seen. He loved being friends with the high and mighty, saving his long lectures and damning speeches for the scared shitless members of his congregation. He was on the PTA and voiced his concerns on a weekly basis about the equality of all students, no matter what religion or sexual orientation or fitness level, because it made him outwardly appear to be a friend to all. But on the weekends he made it clear to those who followed him that fairness would never apply to those who flouted their differences with regular indecency. The weak deserved what they got, because the weak were the very people he preached against. Gays were weak, feminists were wrong, and kids who could not stand up for their beliefs and defend themselves were unworthy of the kingdom of God because they were not strong enough to fight for it.
Everyone knew his true colors but they turned a blind eye to it. He put on such a nice face to everyday society it was difficult for them to believe the rumors of his hate-filled rants and nausea-inducing sermons. And even if he was truly such a venomous preacher, it must mean he was a caring pastor, not to mention a very good father. Right?
The truth was Earl Gowens was a horrible father. When he was at his best he was an absentee father, the matters of church and his social standing taking up far too much of his time for him to even notice he had a family, and that's just the way his family liked it. For some strange reason he had a rather sizable congregation for what I considered a terrormonger, two hundred strong and climbing. He prayed over the sick at hospitals, he visited the old and infirm on a daily basis, he even witnessed to the family of his worried congregation members. And he was a strong force in the community, fighting for the causes of the downtrodden, all the while presenting himself as their shepherd when he really had no love or care for them at all.
When he was at home he ruled his household like a maximum security prison. His daughters, Jordan, Esther and Miriam, were the main contributors to the household chores, their mother far too gone in a secret world of depression to take notice of the state of affairs in her own household. Her only pastime these days was spending all her time in "quiet reflection with her Bible" which translated to "lying in bed, cuddled up with her woes of her mental affliction." The boys were all younger than the girls; Jacob was fourteen and already looking forward to his future career as a preacher. The twins, Noah and Solomon, were nine and a constant source of trouble for the family with their antics. But, as the good reverend always noted, boys will be boys.
Since their mother's landslide into depression Jesse, the youngest at age three, was under the complete care of his eldest sister Miriam, who basically became mother to all after she finished high school. Miriam was twenty-three, well past due to leave the nest and fly on her own. Yet, of all the boys and men that pursued her, and there were many because Miriam was uncommonly beautiful, none could ever break the stone wall that was her father's disapproval, and Miriam was too brainwashed to question her father's judgment. The truth of the matter was, Earl Gowens needed her far more than she needed him, which is why he never allowed her to marry. So she spent her long days caring for a toddler, making sure her mother's needs were met, cooking for the large brood and chauffeuring children to and from school, except on rare occasions like doctor's appointments or school meetings, like the first time I saw a shy and defeated Jordan riding the bus. And if she minded any of it at all she never voiced her displeasure. Such a thing was not allowed.
Don't get me wrong. I would never question a man's faith for anything in the world. They have no business in my life; I have no business in theirs. But I did have a tendency to get angry at the man for what he was doing to his children. And after that day in the cafeteria, Jordan opened up to me like the waters behind a crumbling dam. I think she needed to talk to someone, anyone. She obviously had nobody at home to confide in, and as for school she and I were basically in the same boat. The only difference was she had managed to be invisible throughout her high school career. I couldn't keep my big mouth shut long enough to avoid detection. For the next week I felt the stares and the glares of the students around me, heard the chuckles coming from the royal table echoing as if they were permeating every wall of the lunchroom, and the more I hung around Jordan, the less I cared.
Throughout the days after that moment when we discovered our mutual loathing of the bitches two, she began to trust me, something I don't think she had done with another human soul. She had brothers and sisters galore, and thanks to her dad she couldn't trust any of them. But she trusted me. And I, for the first time in forever, began to trust her. She told me about her family life, about how her mom used to fight the good fight for her children against her husband until he made it clear to her, in no uncertain terms, that HE was the man and she was the sinner, the product of Eve the treacherous, and her entire existence should be dedicated to making him happy and keeping him happy, because they all live by God's will and his graces, and apparently his God tended to show immense favoritism to the man. Her mom, unemployed with no skills whatsoever, accepted this as fact, and reverted into herself to avoid the painful truth, that this was her life, forever and ever, until death did they part. And nothing, not even Jordan's stubborn, abusive father, could remove his wife from the mental prison he had put her in.
It was around the time Mrs. Gowens gave up her fight with life in general that Miriam had found Mister Right, a young, upcoming Baptist youth minister who had just finished seminary and was eager to begin both a church and a family. He and Miriam met at a youth conference and they instantly clicked. When they looked into each other's eyes they knew they were meant for each other, created for each other. They spent hours upon hours talking on the phone, sitting on the porch discussing their future together. It was only a matter of time before they made it official, in the sight of God and all of their friends and family.
Needless to say old Earl had a little to say on that matter, including how they were both too young to be married, how Mister Right's beliefs were far too different from their beliefs and on and on. He ranted and raved every chance he got, always telling her he was only looking out for her best interests, even threatening her with expulsion from the family and the ever-looming certainty of Hellfire if she pursued this relationship. The truth of the matter was Pastor Gowens was in a bind, and losing his oldest daughter meant losing the one person who could help him out of that bind. He didn't want to raise a screaming baby, his wife wasn't coming out of that bedroom anytime soon and Miriam at that point had just finished her second year of community college, only three courses away from her Associates degree in business management. She had plans to go on to a four-year school and get a Bachelor's degree, but Mr. Gowens blocked that move as well.
And so Miriam lost the love of her life and the chance to begin her life on her own terms by reluctantly submitting to the will of her father, and Pastor Gowens went on as if nothing had ever happened to disrupt his perfectly happy family. Sure, his wife cried at all hours of the day and never came out of the house to make her social calls anymore, and Miriam kept all of her sinful thoughts and fantasies of killing her father in the dead of night to herself, but it wasn't a bother to him. Both Jordan AND Esther had attempted suicide and Esther was still cutting to survive the stress, but that didn't matter because the girls had to be covered from head to foot in ridiculous pioneer-type dresses and long jean skirts, so no one ever saw the scars anyway. The twins had already been busted twice for shoplifting, which automatically became Miriam's fault because she wasn't doing a good enough job raising her brothers, and the baby had no idea who the sad woman in the back bedroom was, because the uncommonly beautiful woman with the long blonde hair and the perpetually sad eyes was Mama now.
Yes indeed, Earl Gowens led a blessed life. And he paraded his future pastor son Jacob around town, proud as a peacock that his religious teachings had produced such a fine son worthy of his love. And Jacob for his part took the part of father's favorite seriously, already disavowing all knowledge of any problems at home and going through life with the one ever-present goal of making his father happy. Because deep down he knew if his father was happy, maybe all those problems at home he wasn't supposed to publicly accept would somehow get better. It was the best he could do for his sisters, and even though his father had no idea of his true intentions, Jacob tried his best to make peace in his troubled family.
In return for her confidence in my ability to keep her family secrets, I told Jordan the secrets I've kept in for my entire life. I told her about my mother's hatred of me, about how she adored my sister Aurora and how I was so very lucky to never have been named Portia. I told her about how I missed my dad and how I didn't know what he looked like, which scared the hell out of me, and what scared me more was I missed him a little more with every passing year he didn't acknowledge me. I gave her the entire scoop on what happened between Jennifer, Sasha and me before Christmas break, how Mr. Daniels had mistreated me and why I was such a social outcast with such a popular sister. We realized how we were both manipulated into being these sad girls who were relegated to the reject table, and we also realized we brought some of that upon ourselves by not taking a stand for our own dignity. Jordan wished she could tell her dad to shove off; I wished I could tell a long list of people the same. It was the best therapy I could have ever received, talking to and listening to an honest-to-goodness friend.
In the end both of us agreed that we would never allow another human being to define who we were anymore. She vowed to get out of her house and away from her father's tyranny as soon as she graduated, even if it meant living on the streets and eating from dumpsters, because it had to be better than what she saw happening to her older sisters. After all, Esther had dropped out of high school altogether and gotten her GED because life had just gotten too heavy for her, and at age eighteen she literally had nowhere to go. And poor Miriam...that possible future terrified Jordan, the very thought of spending the rest of her days chained to her dad. I decided to move out with her, because I had learned a long time ago that my mother was never going to truly love me the way she should and eighteen was going to be the very longest I could take my chances with my mother's less-than-charitable nature, so why bother with familial loyalties once I was the age where she would more than likely kick me out?
We made plans at those lunchroom meetings; we got our own form of one-on-one therapy there. And in a moderate degree, it made us happy to confide in each other. We had hope again, even if it was only for thirty minutes at a small lunch table. It was a lot better than before. The only thing I was still reluctant to share with my new best friend was my dream land Psitharis. After all, she was still very religious despite her denunciations about her father and I was quite certain a land of make believe and daydreams was a little too much for her to handle at this point.
Both of us paid a pretty high price for our newfound friendship. We became the reverse of the "it" couple, nasty rumors circulated of how we enjoyed each other's company far too much, were just way too friendly with one another. Even though there were hundreds of friendships formed in the high school with one or two friends, even though there were openly gay couples walking the halls on the daily, because we were the pariahs of the school our friendship was twisted and perverted somehow. If we had ever had a chance of redeeming ourselves in the eyes of the student body of Ross Alexander Memorial High School that chance had been completely dashed by our recent change in reputation. Jordan in her long skirts and long sleeves, looking for the sexual adventure that having such a hard-nosed father would not allow her otherwise. Me, already having those tendencies, hoping to exploit a girl with the self-esteem of a turnip. What a pair we made. It still didn't matter. Each of us had a friend, and no one could change that no matter how hard they tried. And they tried as hard as they could.
I guess it was the discovery of this new friendship that delayed my return to the fun park graveyard. As a matter of fact, Psitharis was the only thing I had chosen not to share with Jordan. It was still a sticking point with me and my distrustful nature always won out on the internal argument of whether or not to tell her. I could only imagine how a strictly religious girl like Jordan would handle the information that her new best friend would spend her off time living in a make believe land to escape the harshness of reality. I figured she would take it just as badly as I figured the shrinks would take it. So I kept it to myself. Instead, I wrote about my adventures in Psitharis in a journal that I kept in my nightstand. I started with the very first image of Roland's shadowy figure standing above me, sword in hand and wrote all the way to Anastasia's death and my very close contact with the man determined to see me face justice. I read over it sometimes, reliving the more pleasant moments and putting the traumatic moments, like the blade of a sword bursting through the front of a girl's chest, swiftly out of my mind, exorcising it to the pages of my little notebook.
It was nearing the end of April when I next entered Psitharis. Easter had come and gone, Grandma had come over for Easter church service (one of the very few services my mother and sister would attend) and dinner, which was cooked by Grandma herself, such a welcome change to Mom's ordinary meal of boiled noodles and some sort of sauce, the best she could usually manage. The assistant pastor of the small Baptist church we attended was so very friendly, and very handsome. So handsome in fact Mom actually considered becoming a permanent member of that church...until she found out he was fifteen years her junior and engaged. We were sitting at the dinner table, talking about the service and the handsome pastor when Aurora suddenly injected a little gossip into the conversation. "You know that girl you're always hanging out with Mer? That preacher guy was almost her brother-in-law."
I froze, fork held halfway between the plate and my mouth. "What are you talking about?" I asked.
"I was talking to another girl in the back of the sanctuary..." Aurora began.
"You mean during church?" my grandmother asked incredulously.
Aurora rolled her eyes a little. "What else was I going to do there? Anyway, we were talking and I asked her about just how single he was and she told me he was engaged. When I asked about who he was marrying and everything and she told me the girl was his second choice. Said he was engaged to one of that creepy Earl Gowens' daughters a couple of years ago but she broke it off because she was madly in love with her daddy or something like that. Anyway, she was supposedly a lot prettier than the girl he's marrying now, but she picked her dad over him, so he found somebody else. They've been engaged forever; guess he never got over the Gowens girl. Sucks for him she's into incest. That family is a bunch of weirdoes. I don't know why you hang out with that girl. She's probably in love with her dad too."
I got angry. "If you must know they all pretty much hate the guy. He's a total jerk! He made Miriam stay home so she could babysit for him and do all the chores, that's it. She hates him as much as Jordan does, which is a lot."
Aurora rolled her eyes again. "Sheesh, get over yourself! I was just telling you what I heard. I don't care about those people. Just thought it was interesting some stupid girl would give up such a good looking guy for her daddy. Sounds pretty sick to me."
"Would you just shut up?" I said, raising my voice. "Don't talk about things you don't know anything about."
"Calm down Mer. I won't say anything else about your girlfriend."
I threw my fork down on the plate, making a loud clinking noise. "She's not my girlfriend! She's my friend! What the hell is wrong with you and your dumbass friends to believe that crap?"
"Mer!" my mom rose to her feet, shushing me. "Your grandmother is here. Do you think you can control your outbursts for five minutes while we have a nice dinner?"
"Well then, tell Aurora to shut up too." I replied. My grandmother looked uneasy, but I wasn't going to allow them to bad mouth me or Jordan. I got enough of that at school.
"All Aurora did was tell us what she heard. She didn't say it was factual. Now you've got to stop losing control of yourself at this table, do you understand me?"
Aurora nodded. "Yeah, you gotta stop getting so hyper when somebody talks about your girlfriend or her family."
"SHE'S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" I shouted.
"Well it's not like you're interested in any guys, is it?" Aurora yelled back. "All you ever do is hang around that girl, and she's worse than you! It's not like you've got a boyfriend!"
"For your information, I DO have a boy I am interested in!" I regretted saying it the moment it came out of my mouth. I would have given anything to reverse that moment and do exactly what my mother told me to do, to keep my big mouth shut. I felt like I had somehow betrayed Roland, betrayed myself, with that stupid outburst. How was I going to wiggle out of this one?
Both my mom and my sister sat down shocked, looking at me as if I just told them I was running for head cheerleader. "Who is it?" my sister asked, genuinely interested.
I had to come up with a lie very quickly. "It's a guy I met on the internet." I lied. "His name is Roland and he goes to a private school in Darrington. We met in a cosplay forum and became friends."
"He didn't see those awful pictures of you on-line, did he?" My mom looked like she was going to pass out. She remembered all too well the pictures Sasha and Jennifer put up of me and she was still nervous about people finding them.
"No, of course not! Besides, he's a really good guy who likes me for me, and that's all that matters." I honestly hoped that last remark was true. I wanted Roland to like me, to think that night we cuddled up together meant something. "Look, can we drop the subject please? I'll behave myself if you do." Reluctantly, and for my grandmother's sake and for the sake of saving the day from my hysterics, they stopped talking about my prospective romance and anything to do with the church gossip. And we spent the rest of the dinner in idle chitchat, though I spoke very little after that. If they ever found out the truth about Roland, they'd really lose it.
It didn't stop my sister from scouring my internet history, trying to find a picture of my "boyfriend" during spring break. To cover for the lack of tangible evidence of his existence, I told her I had all that information hidden from her, because I knew what kind of nosy person she was. It didn't make her happy, but it was a believable excuse. Instead she harassed me, trying to get me to show her a picture, a note, anything that pertained to my budding romance. I didn't budge, and I had no real forums on-line, since the incidents from December had taken any desire to be sociable on-line and destroyed it for me, so she didn't know who to bug to get any information on him. After a while she just gave up, and Roland became my "imaginary" boyfriend, because if Aurora couldn't see him or talk to him, he didn't exist. And that was fine with me.
