“I will not do it!” I screamed as the members of the Colony walked away, the piece of paper my father held in his hands staring at me like it was a death sentence. “Please, Father! Please.”
I clawed at my father’s hands as he held me tightly against his chest, trying to tear the paper from his hands, determined to destroy it. I kicked, I cried, I fought against him, but there was no point. My father was much stronger than I was. Fighting was futile, there was no way I could escape his grasp.
“You will stop now, Sapphire!” he snapped, squeezing my body tight enough to force the air from my lungs and have me gasping for breath. I didn’t care though, I knew what this meant.
Thiswasthe letter to tell my family who I would marry, who I would bare my children for and spend the rest of my life in complete obedience to.
Girls did not get to choose their husband, he was selected for us by the prophets who ran the Colony.
It was not what I wanted.
How could it be what anyone wanted?
As I stopped struggling, my body becoming lightheaded as I struggled to breathe, my father tossed me forward onto the wet grass. The morning dew soaked through my dress instantly and froze my fingertips as I lay there, my lungs heaving for air.
“Get up,” Father ordered, his tone sharp like the blade of a knife.
I forced myself onto my knees and pushed my body up from the ground before spinning around to face the man who had both given me life and stolen it from me too. “How could you let this happen?” I cried, pointing at him accusingly.
He took a menacing step forward, but I refused to retreat.
My mother stood on the small porch of our broken down trailer, her hand covering her mouth as she shook her head in disappointment. My father’s wives stood at the doors of their own trailers, watching avidly to see what would come of this massive betrayal. Some looked on with glee, others more with worry.
Each of his wives had their own trailer—six in total—which formed a semi-circle, allowing my father to easily move from one to the other while still supporting each of them equally.
I could see the rustle of curtains behind them, my brothers and sisters watching on as I stood toe-to-toe with our father. This was the man who was meant to protect us, to raise us and show us the way to a beautiful faith together, but who in my mind had done nothing but make himself into some superior being.
I knew I was different.
I knew I saw the world through a different lens than other people within the Colony.
My father blames it on my grandmother.
Before she died, she gave me all her belongings. There were books and old newspapers she had brought with her from the outside world before she joined the Colony. She told me stories of her as a child and a teenager. Stories about the love of a man and how it should be, not how the Colony and the leaders portrayed it.
We were taught here that a man was all powerful, that we should be grateful to be taken as a wife and are blessed to carry a man’s child in our stomachs. But that the act of creating children was purely to reproduce and please our husbands.
My grandmother’s words of love regularly played over and over in my mind.A man who would cherish me, who would encourage me to pursue my passions, who would send tingles through my body when he touched me.
That was what I wanted.
I didnotwant to be owned like a piece of property.
“Get inside and finish your chores,” Father ordered, turning his back on me.
“No,” I fired back, causing him to freeze before he could even take a step.
My mother’s eyes widened, and she started to shake her head. “Please,” she pleaded, taking a step down the porch and reaching out for him. “She is but a child, she does not know what she’s saying.”
I opened my mouth, ready to contradict her, to tell the both of them that I knew exactly what I was doing and saying. But before I could, Father swung around, his fist connecting with my jaw and throwing me sideways back onto the damp grass.
Tears streamed from my eyes and I cradled the side of my face, pain radiating through my head and making me feel as though I was going to be sick and pass out.
One would think I would be used to it by now, but I swore the pain of being struck never got any easier.
I laid there for a few moments, my mother’s sobs and my father’s heaving breath surrounding me. No one came to my aid.
I heard their footsteps walking away, my father stomping angrily as he pulled my mother with him, soon disappearing over the hill toward the compound. The other wives took their cue as I lay there, my head pounding and blood seeping from my lip, ushering their children in the same direction my parents had gone.
I closed my eyes, lying back in the grass, wishing the ground would break open in that moment and swallow me whole. Any other fate would be much less painful than living in this place for one more moment of my life.