Mitchell started to grow anxious. “Take it off! You have to take it off,” he said.
I looked down at my linen robe. The day before, I thought it was the most disgusting piece of clothing that I had ever seen. Now it was my shield. I wanted to keep it on more than anything I had ever worn before. I longed for my red pajamas with the high collar and wondered what Mitchell had done with them. (A few months later, I would learn that he had very weird plans for the clothing I had been wearing on the night that I was captured.)
Seeing that I was not responding, Mitchell started growing angry, his dark eyes darting here and there. He had a cool way about him. Evil. Calculating. He stroked his beard without thinking, as if he were … I don’t know, trying to calm himself. His lips curled back in agitation and I thought of his knife. Barzee was also getting anxious as she looked at me in anger.
“Take it off,” he sneered a final time.
I knew I couldn’t defy him any longer. Moving as if in slow motion, wanting to delay the moment for every fraction of a second that I could, I slipped out of the robe. Sitting in a corner of the tent, I grabbed a pillow and held it in front of me, grasping it as if it were a life preserver and I was drowning.
Mitchell and Barzee quickly took their clothes off too. Then Mitchell started the anatomy lesson. He was the instructor. Barzee was the object. I closed my eyes. “Look at this,” he commanded. I opened one eye and peeked. He went on. Barzee was utterly compliant. I could hardly keep my stomach from turning. I didn’t understand most of what he was saying. I shouldn’t have had to understand what he was saying. I was still so young. And I certainly should not have had to learn it this way! I closed my eyes again. “Look!” Mitchell commanded. “You have to look!”
Mitchell knew what he was doing. He understood my upbringing, my family, my religious and personal beliefs. He knew I had been taught about modesty (a quaint word, I know, old-fashioned and outdated, but that was who I was then and I still hold such values dear). Everything I had treasured was being robbed. And he was taking it from me with such pleasure.
He was the master. I was the slave. That was the real lesson of the day.
“You think you’re so perfect!” he would later say. “You’re so prideful. You’re so self-righteous! But you’re not perfect. Not at all! You’re no better than the prostitutes out on the street. You’re no better than the homeless people. That’s why I have to do this. That’s what I have to teach you. You’re no better than any trash on the street. And remember this: the Bible says that before you can rise above all these things, you have to descend below them all. You have to experience everything. That is why I am doing this. God commands me to show you all the low things of the world.”
I was soon to learn that was how he justified everything he did. And it didn’t matter what it was. Pornography. Drinking. Drugs. God wanted—no, God demanded—that all of us partake. Mitchell. Barzee. Me. Just like them, I had to descend below all things. It was a phrase that he would use all the time. Descend below. Get in the gutter. I had to sink to the lowest level before I could be cleansed. I had to experience all of the evil in the world before I could be worthy of being Mitchell’s chosen wife.
But in that moment, on that second morning in the tent, Mitchell wasn’t there to teach me about being humble. He wasn’t there to tell me God’s will. He wasn’t there to tell me about the path that they had taken or about the ways of the world. That morning in the tent was just for him. Just for his pleasure. It was about hurting me. Trying to destroy my beliefs. Cutting off all the ties to my family and my previous life, to my church and my values. It was about diminishing me as a person. That’s what this lesson was about. His love of power and control. All of it was terribly exciting to him. And Barzee was his willing partner. Later in the day, they would fight like cats and dogs, something they always did, but at that moment she wanted to reinforce the idea that they were a team, and that they were strong together.
This went on for an hour or so. After the demonstration, he raped me. Then I guess that he got hungry because he went out to get some food. By that time, the summer sun had started drying the ground from the rain and it was damp but not wet. We ate breakfast while still naked. We hung around all morning, Mitchell and Barzee walking around like a couple of wild animals.
We remained without clothing all day, Mitchell always the proud one. I sat crying on the bucket, the steel cable around my ankle.