Mr. Howard punched the preacher’s nose with a loud crunch. Mr. Jackson picked me up in his arms, cradled me close and rushed from the room as I heard shouting from several of the other men.
“Kellie June, I’m going to take you home. I think you’ve learned more than enough tonight. I think we’ve all learned something from this,” he said.
I nodded my head slowly, afraid to speak.
The sky was a dark lavender tinged blood red as he placed me on the rear seat of his car and drove me the three miles home. I was exhausted but not able to drift off and the words of the old hymn echoed once again in my head. Being washed in the blood would never make this feeling of shame and fear go away.
The kitchen light was on as he pulled up next to the back porch. Mama opened the door as he picked me up from the seat of his car. She let out a cry when she saw my swollen purple knees, the bruise on my cheek and the cut on my lip.
Papa came into the room and took me from Mr. Jackson who spoke. “I need to talk to you and Martha as soon as you get Kellie June settled,” he said. Papa carried me into the bathroom and set me down carefully on the toilet. I couldn’t look at him. Mama eased my dress off and helped me into the tub. She cried quietly as she bathed me, washed my hair, and dressed me in soft cotton pajamas. Mama tucked me into my bed, gave me an aspirin, and turned the oscillating fan so it blew a cool breeze across the sheets and ruffled my damp hair. As the grownups murmured in the kitchen, I lay there in my small bed and watched the sun bleed from red to gold and the sky brighten into day between the cracks of the blinds before my eyes would close.
It was three days before I could walk to the bathroom without help and that long before I could talk above a whisper. It was months before I agreed to even go near that church again.
When I finally did make my way there Preacher Manning and his cowed little wife had disappeared. As the days got shorter and the temperature cooled, I began to smile and then laugh again. Mama sewed all new clothes for me when school started that September. But the first time we had grits for breakfast, I left the table and vomited all over the wall.
“Kellie June, you’ve just got to let this go, honey.” Mama said as she wiped my face with a cold cloth. “God expects us to forgive those who hurt us and life has to go on. You need to spend more time in prayer.”
On the nights I woke screaming in my bed, covered in sweat, Papa would hold me and rock me back and forth in the dark. I could feel the tears wet my head as he silently wept.
My overalls appeared one Saturday morning on the foot of my bed, and Papa asked me to help him on the farm again. We even fished at our favorite pond on Saturday afternoons. But I have not eaten grits ever again, and on the evenings when the sky bleeds red, and I still dream of the night blood and redemption left me at the mercy of evil.
Connie Bull Stillinger is a 2014 graduate of Converse College with a BFA in Creative and Professional Writing. She does freelance writing for various non-profits and medical facilities and works as a Medical Technologist in a critical access hospital. Her creative work has been featured on The Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. She has been published by The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and Concept Literary Journal.