Chapter 17
seventeen
Avonna
Nine Months Later
I sit with my knees pressed together.
My fingers are laced so tight they’ve gone cold.
Dr. Camille Lane waits for me to speak. She’s used to it by now. How I talk in pieces. Like my voice still needs permission.
“I saw something today, Dr. Lane,” I manage finally. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Please call me Camille.” Her face stays soft. “Tell me.”
“I was seating a couple. At Delgado Cocina, where I work.” I try to relay like it’s just another story.
“They were maybe in their twenties. Not much older than me. He touched the small of her back when she walked through the door. Not in a creepy way. More like he was used to touching her.” I breathe through the discomfort.
“She smiled when he did it. Like she was safe. His touch meant something good.”
Dr. Lane nods. “How did it make you feel?”
“Like I was going to cry,” I whisper.
She waits. No questions. Always lets me unspool it first.
“I’m not sure why,” I continue. “I’ve seen a million couples touch each other the same way. It wasn’t even sexual. Not really. But it was the look she gave him. So intimate. Familiar. I realized I don’t know what it feels like to be touched. It made me sad.”
Camille leans forward slightly. “Tell me more about what touch meant in your upbringing.”
I hesitate. My mouth tastes metallic, like I’ve bitten down on something old. I should be used to this, the unraveling of my old way of thinking.
I’m not. It’s meticulous, painstaking work.
Ten months ago, when I first sat in her office, I could barely make eye contact. I’d already endured months of religious reprogramming with Megan and her team, but fear still lived in my body.
Camille took things up a notch. Introduced me to somatic therapy.
Breath work. Grounding exercises. Taught me through psychoeducation how language can be a tool to reclaim autonomy.
I didn’t believe her. Not at first. Eventually, through EMDR and narrative work, I was able to tease apart which beliefs belonged to me and what had been forced on me.
The first time she asked me to say the word “pussy” in this room, I whispered it through tears. I grew up believing my pussy was a source of sin. A site of male dominion. I was taught if a man entered me, I belonged to him permanently. Nudity was forbidden. Avoided at all costs.
Even after I left, I changed in the dark. Closed my eyes when I washed myself. Perfected the art of vanishing from my own gaze.
I’m still learning. Still unwinding shame from my skin like barbed wire. Still reminding myself this body belongs to me. I can speak about the past while staying in the present. I don’t look away from my history. It’s part of me.
“There were rules. A woman couldn’t touch a man unless she was married to him.
But men could…indicate interest. By handling the women.
Wherever…” Her next words feel like blood under my tongue.
“The first time I bled, I was thirteen. Mother told me I was ready for the preparation. God was watching me now.”
Camille says nothing for a moment before asking gently, “What do you mean, Avonna?”
“It’s when men stopped treating us like children and started looking at us like…
prospects.” I stare at the seam of the couch cushion between us.
“They’d have us stand in the chapel after devotion.
The men would come in. The Elders, husbands, young male members.
They’d touch our faces. Pluck our breasts.
See how we responded.” My hands fidget. “They wanted to know if we were obedient. Modest. If we knew how to listen. Obey. Sometimes they’d observe us walking or speaking.
Sometimes they’d correct us if we didn’t do it right. ”
I glance up. Camille’s expression doesn’t change. She’s listening with her whole body.
“This went on until you were chosen. When I was sixteen, I still hadn’t been married, which was unusual.
I thought maybe they’d forgotten me, but they hadn’t.
The Elders were waiting.” My voice is smaller now.
“I was promised to a man who was sixty-two years old. He already had four wives. None able to bear more children, so I was chosen to be the new breeder.”
Dr. Lane doesn’t speak, but I can see the grief in her eyes. It’s not pity. It’s witness.
“When I found out, I planned to escape. I ran the day I was to be married.” I recount my story vividly. When I’m done, the silence is heavy but not suffocating. “I was lucky. Nothing happened to me. My only regret is I’ll never know what became of my sisters.”
“Avonna, what happened to you wasn’t nothing.” Camille leans in slightly. “You were molested. Brainwashed. You’ve been shaped by it, conditioned in it. A superior insisting you belong to someone other than yourself is abuse.”
I nod, grateful for the confirmation. “I’m scared I’ll never be normal.”
“There is no normal.” She smiles. “You survived. Now we continue the work of healing you.”
She always makes me believe in myself and the possibility of a future. “I saw what happened to the girls who said no. Or cried too loudly on their wedding nights. They were forced into submission and they changed. Became robots. I didn’t want to live if I was dead inside.”
Silence folds around us.
“Sometimes I feel guilty.” Tears stream down my face. “Maybe escaping and knowing what these women endure is worse. My sisters won’t ever know better.”
Camille’s voice is like soft cloth wrapping around a wound. “You carry what’s called survivor’s guilt.”
My body is wracked with sobs. I can’t speak.
“Now,” she says carefully, “you’re noticing the stirrings of desire for companionship. Love. But you don’t trust it.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t know if it’s what I want. Or if I deserve it. I see a man and I feel…dirty. Am I ruined?”
“Tell me what you mean.”
I shift in the chair. “I think about things a lot. About…sex. About being touched. I’ll be folding napkins at the hostess stand and suddenly I’ll picture something.
A flash. Someone kissing me. My thighs parting.
My breasts tingling. I don’t know if I actually want to feel things or if I’m fantasizing about stuff I shouldn’t be.
” I breathe shallowly, afraid of my own honesty.
“I’ve never even touched myself. Not really.
Not the way I hear my roommates talk about.
I tried a couple weeks ago and then felt sick. I cried for an entire day.”
Camille doesn’t interrupt.
“Part of me thinks, maybe I don’t need to figure it out. I can wait until I meet a man, get married and then my husband will show me what to do. Then I remember what marriage means where I came from and I panic. I don’t know…”
“What don’t you know?” she encourages.
I look at her. “I don’t want to be someone’s property.”
“Good.”
“I want to feel safe when someone touches me.”
“Yes.”
I blink, my throat closing again.
“Sometimes,” I choke out, “I think about letting someone see me. All of me. Instead of fear, I feel warmth. Hunger. It’s faint. But it’s there. It makes me afraid.”
“Why?”
I stare at the carpet. It reminds me of pressed leaves.
“Avonna?”
I look up at her “Those feelings mean I’m not pure anymore.”
“You were never impure, Avonna.” Camille’s voice is firm. “You were controlled. There’s a difference.”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“Of course you don’t.” She nods. “You were taught to see your body as made for sin and your thoughts of sex as impure. None of this is your fault.”
I don’t realize I’m still crying until I feel the heat of the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“I don’t know how to move forward,” I admit. “Not without shame crawling into my soul.”
“You’re already wanting,” she says. “Imagining touch without hurt or humiliation. Your body is speaking for itself.”
I go still.
“I’m scared to ever have sex.” I wring my hands until they’re sore. “I’m afraid I’ll freeze. Or disappear. Or say yes in a weak moment and then want to take it back.”
“All of these feelings,” Camille assures me, “are common for survivors. We’ll take it step by step. You’re learning how to trust yourself, and for now, trusting yourself is the only thing you should focus on.”
I peer up at her. It’s not exactly a breakthrough. But it’s something.
A crack in the wall. A small, flickering light under my skin.
I don’t know if I’ll ever feel normal. I don’t even know what normal means.
Maybe I’ll settle for safe.
Camille turns to me carefully. She knows I’m basically a cornered little kitten. “You were never allowed to be touched, right?”
“No. Not even as a child.” I wince at how many physical interactions I’ve shied away from out here in the real world. “Hugs were discouraged. I was taught touch was a gateway to sin.”
“Even if you didn’t initiate?”
“Didn’t matter. It meant you’d provoked it.”
“So you learned accepting comfort was dangerous.” She taps her pen on her chin.
“I remember once, I was five or six. I reached for my mother’s hand in a prayer circle.
She pulled away so fast it was like I’d burned her.
” I swallow. “She told me only men touch women, and only in marriage. Everything else leads to wickedness.” My voice falters.
“I didn’t understand. I wanted comfort.”
Camille shifts in her seat. “Would you like to be touched now? A hug?”
I flinch—then freeze.
She adds, “Only if it would help.”
I don’t answer right away. Then I nod.
She gets up and sits beside me. Opens her arms.
I lean in. I’m starving for human touch.
When she holds me, I feel it.
The grief.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Deep.
Like a well inside me, finally touched by the sun.
Her hands are gentle. Not moving, resting. One on my back. One behind my shoulder. No pressure. No agenda.
I don’t know what to do with it.
So I bawl. Silent. Breathless. Like my bones are exhaling for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“You have nothing to apologize for.” She pats my shoulder lightly.
When she lets me go, it’s measured.
My skin doesn’t recoil in shame, which feels like a miracle.
I believe her. A little.