Andrew Vachss - False Allegations

"The Mormon prophet?"

"Do you know his work?" she asked, a faint look of surprise playing across her face.

"Only what I've read," I told her. I didn't know what Kite had told her about my background, so I didn't tell her where I read about religion—prisons get more missionaries than tropical islands. "You were raised in the church?" I asked.

"We both were, me and my brother. But we didn't shun others, Psalmists aren't a cult or anything."

"So they turned to the church for help with your…problems?"

"They said I needed lessons. Religious lessons. So they sent me to Brother Jacob. Psalmists believe you have to pay with your own labor for what you receive. So I had to clean Brother Jacob's house in exchange for the lessons."

"Tell me about the lessons," I said, leaning forward. Heather was a rock in the middle distance, the hologram winking behind her, shape–shifting in the morning light.

"The lessons were all about loving myself. Brother Jacob said if I didn't love myself, I would keep hurting myself. He said that's what people did when they were drunks, or drug addicts. Or even murderers. They hurt themselves. That's why I pulled my hair. And I had to stop or I would never be happy."

"Lessons from the Bible?"

"From Psalms. The Psalms are the truth, the real truth in the Bible. Brother Jacob said the Bible was written . By people, not God. But the Psalms were songs that had stood the test of time way before anyone knew how to write."

"So he taught you the Psalms?"

"The meaning of the Psalms."

"And how did he teach you, Jennifer."

"First with the ruler," she said, face tightened as her skin bleached slightly. "He said the ruler was for learning rules."

"A wooden ruler, like for measuring?"

"It was for correction, not measuring," she said in a mechanical voice. "First I would get it on my palm. He would ask me, every time, if I was pulling my hair out. If I told him yes, I would get the ruler. It stung at first, but I got used to it. After a while, he'd have to hit me really hard to make me cry."

"But he did that?"

"Yes. I always had to cry."

"When did he switch?"

"Switch?"

"To someplace else. Besides your palm?"

"How did you know that?" she asked, dry–washing her hands, looking at her lap. "How could you—?"

"Just a guess," I said. "Maybe an educated guess."

"One day, I didn't want to get hit. So I lied. I told him I wasn't pulling my hair out. I used to sleep with gloves on. Even with a ski mask on my head—so I couldn't get to my hair. It didn't work. But when he asked me, I lied."

"And then…?"

"He used it on my thighs. He made me lift my dress and he hit me on the back of my thighs with the ruler."

"And it hurt worse?"

"Yes! Not just my…legs. It made me feel all…crawly inside."

"So you stopped lying?"

"Yes. I mean, no. It didn't matter. He started asking me if I had learned to love myself. Every time I said I couldn't , he would hit me. Sometimes with my pants down. After a while, he made me take all my clothes off to be hit."

Heather had shifted her stance slightly, leaning forward with her back arched, like a ship's figurehead cutting the wind, mouth set and hard. "Did you ever tell your parents, Jennifer?" I asked her. "About what Brother Jacob was doing?"

"I…tried. But when I started, my mother told me I had to trust him. He was from the church, so I had to trust him. Whatever he was doing, whatever it was, it was for my own good. I never told her any more after that."

"What happened next?"

"How did you know there was a 'next,' Mr. Burke?" her voice hardening with suspicion.

"There's always a 'next,'" I told her. "The only question is what it was."

"Don't you know?" she leaned forward in her chair, a sly, challenging look on her face.

"You learned to love yourself."

She put her face in her hands and started to cry. Heather stepped close behind her, putting her hands on the woman's shoulders, unblinking orange eyes steady on mine.

Kite didn't move.

If I was a therapist, I would have stopped it then. We'd been going a long time, it was a natural place for a break. But if anything was going to break, it was going to be Jennifer Dalton. "Tell me about it," I said.

She looked up at me, her thin face framed by her hands, too–big eyes blurry from the tears. "It sounds like you could tell me ," she said. "How did you know? I need to know how you knew!"

"I didn't really know anything," I assured her. "But when you hear the same material over and over again from different people—"

"You think I'm lying? That I made this up?"

"No. I don't think that."

"Then you believe me?"

"Not that either. I'm just listening, okay?"

"When do you make up your mind?" she asked me, her hand twitching near her hair.

"When I'm done," I said, going along patiently, letting her take me wherever she wanted me to go.

"Could I have—?"

Heather was already in motion, her heels tapping a faster rhythm than usual. She was back in a few seconds with the heavy brass tray, this time loaded with two small bottles of Coke, a heavy–bottomed clear glass tumbler, and a chrome ice bucket. She used a pair of tongs to drop three precise ice cubes into the tumbler, screwed the top off one of the Coke bottles in one long twist, and poured carefully. She held the tumbler in her left hand, watching it closely, like measuring medicine. Satisfied, she handed it to Jennifer Dalton—a bartender serving a regular customer the usual.

Dalton took a long, deep drink, wrinkling her nose from the bubbles' tickle. She smiled up at Heather. "Thank you."

"Sure, baby," Heather replied, holding the brass tray in one hand, patting Jennifer on the shoulder with the other.

Jennifer cleared her throat, facing a task. When she spoke, her voice was flat, just–the–facts uninflected. "He told me to…touch myself," she said. "First my chest. I mean, I didn't really have a chest then, but it was…enough. So you could see it, I mean, enough. I had to smile while I did it. A real smile—he would always know. Then I had to do it…other places. Every other place."

"Were you still pulling your hair?"

"Yes. But mostly my eyebrows by then. He was giving me a drug—"

"Brother Jacob?"

"Yes."

"Was he a doctor?"

"No. He sent me to a doctor is what I should have said. A Psalmist doctor. Psalmists love the natural sciences—it's part of the teachings. The doctor prescribed the drug, but Brother Jacob gave it to me the first time."

"You only took it that one time."

"No, I took it every day. Once with each meal, and one more time before I went to bed."

"So you had to take them yourself, right? You weren't with Brother Jacob all day…"

"He told my mother," Jennifer said, as though that settled it. "He told her I had to take it. She made sure I took it."

"What was it, do you know?

"A capsule. Orange and white. That's all I remember."

"Do you think it helped? With the hair pulling?"

"In a way, I thought it did. But I thought the…other stuff did more."

"Touching yourself?"

"Yes. Like a good medicine that tastes bad, you know?"

"Were you still getting hit?"

"When I did something wrong, like lying. But not very much. I didn't touch myself…down there," she said, nodding toward her lap, "the right way. But Brother Jacob didn't hit me. He said he would show me. To help me."

"Did it help you?"

"Yes. Yes it did," she said earnestly. "He did it…better. It was…it made me feel…warm. And safe. When he did it, I mean. It was safe when he did it."

"Why was that so safe, Jennifer?"

"Because he was in charge . He was in control. When he was in control, he could make me do things. Things for my own good. I never pulled my hair in front of him. Never. He told me, once I got my period, I would never pull my hair again. Because he had prepared me. But he wasn't finished…"