I only have to sleep with you half of the time now! I thought. It was the greatest thing I had heard since the night I had been taken.
And that’s what we did. For about two days. Then, to my utter disgust and disappointment, our schedule quickly migrated to where Barzee was “his” in the daytime, and I was “his” at night. But Mitchell was gone most of the day. Then, after a long day of plundering, ministering, and drinking in San Diego, he’d come home just in time to lead me to his altar, leaving Barzee simmering outside.
After a few weeks of this, Barzee demanded another change in the schedule. Mitchell promised to do better. But nothing ever changed. One way or the other, I was always in the altar, and Barzee was always left outside.
A day or two after arriving in Lakeside, we went to the local Walmart. Barzee and I were wrapped up in our robes and covered with our veils. Mitchell bought a few things and stole a few others: bedding, cheap pale green comforters and flannel sheets that were decorated with the image of a moose.
Across the highway from our new home was a small park where people would come to fly their model airplanes. Between the park and our hideout was an open patch of dirt with tons of cacti. One day Mitchell came back from his wanderings with a few prickly pears he had picked in the open field. Vicious little things, with tiny sliver needles that would stick painfully in your skin, they ranged in color from deep purple to yellowy-orange. None of us had ever eaten one before, so it took a little bit of careful prodding before we figured out how to cut them open and extract the fruit. The meat was slimy and filled with tiny seeds. I watched as Mitchell took the first bite, hoping it was poison. He chewed and swallowed without falling over. Bummer. But at least we had something to eat. He cut a piece for me and I ate it. It wasn’t really good, but it wasn’t terrible. For a long time, I tried to extract all of the tiny seeds and spit them out, but there were so many of them I eventually gave up and just ate them.
I turned to look at the field. It was full of prickly pears. But we didn’t know how long the season would last, so Mitchell went out and picked as many as he could. Once I became accustomed to the slimy fruit and got over my objection to eating the seeds, I actually came to like them. We ate them a plateful at a time and, over the next few months, they turned out to be the main staple of our diet. The only problem was, no matter how careful I was not to touch the outer skin, it seemed like I spent half the day picking tiny slivers out of my hands.
Once we got set up in our new home, Mitchell really hunkered down. It became obvious that even though we were a long way from my home, and it appeared that no one was looking for me in California, the episode at the library had changed him. He was cautious to the point of being paranoid. Because of this, Barzee and I were only allowed out of our hideaway once a week. One day a week to leave my hot and dusty prison. One day a week to get away from the smell of blue plastic and warm water. One day a week to see someone besides my prison guards. My routine was very simple. Boredom. Hunger. Rape.
Sometimes Mitchell would bring us food, but it was sporadic and unpredictable. Soon, I was living with the pangs of hunger all the time.
*
I loved going out, not because I had any hope of being rescued but because I was desperately bored. Day after day, I sat and dreamed of getting out of the blue tent. I dreamed of getting out of the fire swamp, of seeing anyone besides Mitchell and Barzee. I desperately needed to be reminded that there was a real world out there. And even if I couldn’t be a part of it, even if I couldn’t do anything more than pass through it like a white-robed ghost that no one was willing to acknowledge, anything was better than sitting underneath the blue tarp day after day.
On some of the days that I was allowed out of the fire swamp, we would sit and watch the high school kids out on the sports fields. That should be me, I thought as I watched in misery.
But even though it was hard to watch the other kids, being in the world seemed to make me feel better. It reminded me that it was still there. And it rekindled the hope that one day I might actually be a part of it, not just someone who had to watch it from behind a veil.
Shortly after we arrived in California, Mitchell announced that our drinking days were over. Not a chance, I thought. And I was right. I don’t think he went more than a day without drinking. It turned out that what he really meant to announce was that Barzee’s drinking days were over. Every day he would go out and come back with a bottle of vodka, gin, or rum, but he always drank it by himself. Barzee felt this was ridiculously unfair. So she confronted him.