After a moment, she added, “I will give him this much, Stephen never shamed me about the pregnancy. He said that all children are welcomed by God. I think that was part of the attraction. My parents could barely look at me or my stomach. But Stephen thought it was beautiful.”
Because it was proof she could bear him more children, proof she would stay bound to him, I thought furiously. He had taken advantage of a vulnerable young woman and shackled her to a life of isolation and servitude. If she had killed him, did she really deserve punishment?
“And you haven’t seen your parents since then?” I asked, wondering if she was planning to take Talitha and live with them now.
She shook her head. “They cut Rebecca off when Stephen began practicing polygamy. It’s been the same for me. The only grandchildren who’ve ever met them are the older ones, and that was years ago.” She had a tight hold on one of the paintings and I was worried that she might rip it with her own grip.
Judge your children and if they don’t come up to your standard, cut them off? That was what Jesus said, wasn’t it?
“Were you never happy with Stephen?” I asked.
“Not for a moment,” Sarah said, finding a ripped piece of canvas on the floor and tearing it in a vicious gesture, then flinging it at the pile nearby. “It was better at first. Then Stephen acted like all his rules were just suggestions. But after Talitha was born, he became very rigid. Punitive.”
“Did he hurt you?” I asked.
Sarah rubbed at a visibly twitching muscle in her neck. “Oh, he never harmed me physically. He didn’t have to. He had a thousand other ways to make my life miserable. When he said the word, the other wives would refuse to speak to me, actually turn their backs on me. Car privileges would be suspended for months on end, and he would take away my key so that I couldn’t get out of the compound at all. I’d be put on constant laundry and kitchen duty, never even allowed to go outside and breathe fresh air, my hands getting so dried that my skin would crack and bleed. He wouldn’t even let me put any cream on them.”
And this was the man whose home I had decided to stay in, while Kurt left in protest. I quailed at the idea that anyone might think that I approved of him.
“Sometimes, if I had done something truly heinous, like speak back to Stephen, they would send Talitha away to one of the other houses and I wouldn’t see her for weeks at a time. My milk dried up when she was only a few weeks old because I kept speaking back to him. I just couldn’t keep my damned mouth shut.” She looked down at her chest, pressing gently against her left breast as if she remembered how it had felt bursting with milk that no child would drink.
My God, if even half of what she said was true, this was a true horror story. And I’d let Stephen Carter blather on to me about “the Principle.” I’d thought of Sarah as cold and unpleasant, as bitter. I’d thought of Rebecca as the “good” sister. But how could she have allowed this?
“Did you ever try to leave?” I asked. I knew that abused women sometimes had been so messed up mentally they couldn’t see a way out. And this young woman had been betrayed by everyone around her.
“Well, by the time my milk had dried up, I was pregnant again.”
“So soon?” I asked. It wasn’t impossible, but it was unusual.
She shrugged. “Then I was in an even worse situation than before. Stephen was on Talitha’s birth certificate as the father and he told me he would seek custody of both children if I left, and that the state would give it to him because I had no means of support for them. And that I was crazy. He said that enough that I started to believe him.” She spoke flatly, as if she had become separated from her own feelings.
“You’re not crazy,” I said then. Just angry, I thought. With good cause.
“My art was the one indulgence he allowed me. Maybe because he knew that without that, I’d have killed myself.” Her mouth twisted with a weird half-smile. “He would tell me how lucky I was that he was willing to pay for the expensive canvases and the oil paints. He’d tell me how unlikely it was that I’d ever get a job that could pay for such a hobby, considering I didn’t even have a college degree.”
“Had he ruined your paintings before?” I asked.
Sarah hesitated. “No,” she said, as if surprised at her own words. “He actually let me keep a lock on the door, though he must have had a key. I’d locked it last night before I went to bed, and it was locked when I came in again this morning, so whoever did this had a key. If it wasn’t Stephen, it was someone who had a spare I didn’t know existed until now.”
“Did he like your paintings?” I asked.
“He said I was gifted, but that I needed more discipline.” She laughed harshly. “I do need more discipline. I need more time, too. But I’ve done what I could and I am proud of myself. The only thing I’m truly proud of, I think. You don’t give birth to paintings whether you want to or not. You have to try to grow them.”