Girl of Rage (20 page)

His bedroom door was cracked several inches. She walked toward the door, feeling a sense of dread. His open door might mean he was careless, which occasionally he was. Or it might mean he was preparing to assault her. He’d only done that a couple of times since he’d returned to the United States, though.

As she got closer to the door, though, she realized that it was carelessness. And something else. He was on the phone with someone, his words falling out in an uncharacteristic rush.

“Christ,” he said. “How was I supposed to know Karatygin was going to use it on civilians? I thought we were all done with this.”

Silence. What was he talking about? What was used on civilians?

“Bullshit, Leslie,” he said, his tone harsh.

Was he talking to his accountant friend? Leslie Collins?

Accountant, hell,
she thought. She didn’t know what Leslie Collins was, but he was most definitely not an accountant.

“Fine. I’ll go and calm down Prince Roshan and then we’ll move on, all right? I don’t ever want to talk about this subject again.”

He slammed the phone down, and Adelina’s heart suddenly lurched. What if he realized she’d been standing here? What if—

It was too late. He stood in the doorway, still wearing his suit and tie. One eye narrowed slightly more than the other one and he demanded, “How long have you been standing there listening?”

“I didn’t really hear anything—”

“Sure you did. I
know
you heard something. Tell me what.” His eyes were cold as he said the words, his expression calm. Calculated.

She swallowed then tried to speak. But she found herself stammering, the words colliding at her lips and unable to come out except in a jumble.

“Let me help,” he said, his open hand swinging at her.

She couldn’t move away fast enough. His slap hit her on the ear, staggering her.

“
Stop,”
she cried out.

“I’ll stop when you answer my god damn question.”

“All I heard was you say something about civilians, and that you need to calm down Prince Roshan. I don’t have a clue what it’s about.”

Another slap knocked her back against the wall.

Against her will, tears ran down her face. He placed his palms against the wall on either side of her head and pressed his face in close to hers.

She cringed, turning her face away from him.

“Let me be clear about one thing, Miss Adelina. Make no mistake that my daughter would be far better off with a white woman as her mother.”

She froze.

“You just remember that. You
never
talk to anyone about anything I say, do you hear me?”

She nodded, trying to suppress the tears.

He shouted. “Do you understand me? Answer me!”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Down the hallway, she heard the sound of Julia sputtering in her bed.
Damn it.

“Please don’t wake the baby,” Adelina whispered.

“I’ll do whatever the hell I want,” he whispered back.

“Mama?” The word rang out from down the hall. Julia stood in her doorway, a hand stretched out to steady her. “Mmmm wet.”

“Right here, Julia,” Adelina said, her voice shaking.

Richard grimaced, and then in a display of frightening calculation, he winked at Adelina. He broke into a broad smile and turned toward their daughter.

“There’s my little girl!” he nearly shouted in a cheerful, warm voice.

Julia broke into a smile, her cheeks puffing out.

Richard lifted Julia high in the air and she giggled.

“Da!” she said, a smile on her face.

Adelina. February 27, 1984.

When Adelina awoke the next morning, Richard was gone.

He’d scrawled a note on a small sheet of paper, torn off of a pad with the heading, “From the Desk of Richard Thompson.”

The note read:

Dearest Adelina, I must travel to Saudi Arabia and possibly Pakistan in the next few days. I’ll be in touch.

She sagged in relief when she read the note.

Dearest Adelina.
As if. He must have thought the nanny would see the note. Or he was truly a sociopath. She didn’t know which, and right now she didn’t care. What she knew was that his absence meant an unexpected reprieve from the daily grinding fear that she didn’t realize had overwhelmed her for the last month.

Month,
she thought. It had only been a month since he’d returned to the United States. Only a month since she’d left San Francisco to occupy this condominium on the edge of the nation’s capital.

As she stood there, tears running down her face, she tried to picture how she was possibly going to survive her marriage to Richard. During his assignment in Pakistan, it had seemed bearable. She’d been alone with her daughter in San Francisco. She’d made friends, gotten involved in the church. She’d begun to have a life again.

His return had swept all that away. Again. And he might be gone today, but she knew he’d return, tomorrow or next week or next month, and his return would spell the return of instability, of fear, of the lies and twisted behavior. As she thought about it, her breath sped up, and she could feel the tightening in her chest, the constricting threads of fear tugging at her neck.

She forced herself to breathe, but even her breathing became ragged.

As the wave of panic swept over her, she began to pray, head bowed, until she fell to her knees. She didn’t realize she had tears pouring down her cheeks. She didn’t realize her shoulders were shaking.

She didn’t realize that she was coming apart at the seams.

She sank down into her prayers, her fingers unconsciously running along the beads of her rosary, her lips moving silently, trying to calm the terror.

“Mama?”

Julia’s voice didn’t initially break into her consciousness.

“Mama? I’m hunngy.”

This time she heard Julia, the high-pitched whining voice breaking over her prayers.

“Hunngy. I’m hunngy.”

God damn it, couldn’t she see—

Adelina froze. Of course she couldn’t see the condition Adelina was in. Julia wasn’t even three yet.

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes and said in a shaking voice, “Okay, Julia. Want to come pray with me first?”

“I hunngy,” Julia said. Her eyes were huge.

Adelina let out a staggered, broken breath and stood up. The fear wasn’t gone. It felt like a huge welt on her chest. She furiously wiped at the tears that had fallen down her face and lifted Julia to the sit on the counter.

“I’ll make you some breakfast,” Adelina said.

“Some cereal?” she asked, words coming out automatically. Heart still thumping rapidly in her chest, she turned to get the cereal, but Julia said, “Wan’ ice cream.”

“No ice cream, Julia. You can have cereal or yogurt.”

“Ice cream!” Julia demanded. “Wan’ chocolate!”

Adelina closed her eyes. “I don’t have chocolate ice cream.”

She took down the cereal and poured it in a plastic bowl, then added milk. In three weeks she’d be twenty years old. The thought made tears run down her face again. She was twenty, and her father was dead, and her life was hopeless.

She set the bowl on the highchair tray then lifted Julia into the chair. Julia began to scream. “Ice cream! Ice cream!”

Adelina wanted to scream too. She readjusted the tray after bucking Julia in. Julia was full out crying now, and Adelina was desperate just to get her to
shut up.
The pain in her chest was getting worse, and all she could think of was the fact that she wasn’t even twenty years old yet and she wanted out. She wanted her mother. She wanted her father. She wanted her life back, and she couldn’t have it.

She sank back against the counter, the screaming from Julia unabated. Julia hit her bowl with a fist and it went flying, spattering milk and cereal on the wall.

For just a second Adelina felt rage flood her again. She turned away, walking into the living room and clenched her fists at the side of her head. She fought down the urge to scream, to yell at Julia, to throw something, to
break
something. She fought it down, but as she did so, she felt the tightening in her chest worsen.

The knock on the door startled her.

Oh, thank God!
That would be Jenny, the nanny. Adelina rushed to the door and opened it in a rush.

Jenny was twenty-two—three years older than her employer—and a student at University of the District of Columbia. She was smart and pretty.

Adelina was envious. Jenny might be dirt poor, taking on this job to help buy her books for her night courses, but she was making choices for her own life. Choices that had been taken from Adelina.

“Bless you,” Adelina whispered urgently. “She’s a terror this morning. Come in.”

Jenny’s eyes widened at the sight of the screaming Julia in her highchair and the mess of cereal and milk splattered on the wall.

At the sight of Jenny, Julia screamed even louder. “Mommy! Don’ go! Don’ go! Mommmmyyyyy!”

Adelina swallowed the pain in her chest. “It’s all right, Julia. I’ll be back soon.” She gave her daughter a kiss on the cheek and rushed back to her room to change. With luck, she’d have time to stop for a cup of coffee in relative peace, outside the house, before she went to the church.

Adelina. February 27, 1984.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Adelina whispered as she made the sign of the cross. Father Dennis waved his hand and muttered a blessing, and she felt a shudder as she said the next words. “Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. It has been three years since my last confession.”

Father Dennis shifted his position. Though the church had confessionals, Adelina had requested they meet in his office. She kneeled across from him, and occasionally her eyes darted to the purple stole he wore. On one level, it was calming, reminding her of the presence of God and of Father Dennis’s authority.

On another level, it terrified her. After all, it was the Parish priest in Calella, acting under the authority of God, who had ordered her to marry Richard. If only she hadn’t had to move to her mother’s home in Calella. If only her father hadn’t died.

If only she’d never met Richard Thompson
.

She took a deep breath, not knowing where to start.

“You may begin,” Father Dennis said.

Her voice tiny, her body full of shame, Adelina said, “I don’t know how to.”

He reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. “The Lord knows the story already, Adelina. If you’re penitent, then just tell it however you can.”

She nodded, and, horrified, choked back a sob. Sniffing, she said, “These are my sins.”

She squeezed her eyes closed, tightly, and whispered, “For three years I’ve lied to everyone around me to protect my brother.”

“What have you lied about?”

“My age. My husband.”

“Tell me the truth now.”

She choked on the words. Then she spit them out. “I was sixteen, and he raped me. I hate him. Father, I know he’s my husband, but I
hate
him. Sometimes I imagine him rotting in jail. Or in hell. I think of the most dreadful things.”

Father Dennis paled. “Your husband raped you? Before you were married?”

She nodded. The tears were streaming rapidly down her face now, and she shook, terrified.

“I’m so sorry, Adelina, I had no idea. Did you report it to the police? Wait, now you … how did you end up married?”

She struggled to get her mouth around the words. But then she told the story, of how her mother had dragged her to the parish priest in Calella.

He muttered to himself, then said, “I’m so sorry, Adelina.”

“That’s not the worst of it,” she said. She looked up, looking in his eyes, and she said, “Father, I’ve fantasized—about killing him. About … about running away. Sometimes I get so angry I’m afraid I’ll hurt my daughter.”

“You must learn to control your anger, Adelina.”

“I pray for that every day,” she whispered.

“Continue to do so. You mustn’t hurt your daughter. Or your husband. I believe—Adelina, I believe you should report this to the police. Or allow me to do so.”

Terror flooded Adelina. She jerked back, and said, “You wouldn’t!”

He smiled reassuringly. “I wouldn’t, unless you gave me permission. You remember the story of Saint John of Nepomuk?”

She shook her head. “I … no.”

“Saint John was the confessor to the Queen of Bohemia. It seemed that Wenceslaus, the King, thought the Queen was committing adultery, and ordered John to divulge the secrets of the confessional. When he refused, the King had him tortured and murdered, then thrown in the river.”

Adelina shivered, imagining with horror what it must have been like for the priest. “And he didn’t tell?”

“No, Adelina. He went to his death to protect the Seal of the Confessional.”

“My priest didn’t. He told my mother when I learned I was pregnant.”

Father Dennis closed his eyes. “He committed a grave crime in doing so. I assure you, God will deal with him. But I can promise you, no such thing will happen now.”

She looked at Father Dennis and said, “Is it a sin to hate my husband?”

He sighed. “Perhaps not so uncommon a sin, and given your circumstance—the fact is, if you are truly contrite, you shall be forgiven. I would urge you to consider what I’ve suggested to you. Your husband committed a crime, and against a child.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “He’ll hurt my brother. He’s threatened to before, and I believe him.”

Dennis sighed. “Then I suggest you pray. Perhaps you can be a moderating influence on Richard. And you can still raise your daughter. Do you intend to have any further children?”

Adelina shivered. Then she whispered, “I’d rather die.”

“I must advise you against artificial contraception.”

Adelina nodded. Birth control was the least of her worries.

“Finally—though I know this is hard given the circumstances of your marriage—you must remember that Richard is your husband. Cleave to him, and perhaps you can somehow bring him back into the path of God. Is he Catholic?”