Chapter 19
It’s not the first time I’ve been kissed.
Despite what we witnessed in the community right before we ran away, I knew, even as a child, that what the elders did to those young girls wasn’t anything close to a normal relationship between men and women. So later, as an adult, having a man hug me or kiss me never frightened me.
What I’ve never experienced, though, is the feeling of having my entire body and every one of my senses overtaken by a man.
Kissing Gianni feels like drowning, only it’s by choice. Like diving into an ocean whose depths seem endless and still wanting to go deeper and deeper.
His tongue, experienced and deliberate, pulls me quickly into his wet heat, making me moan into his mouth.
Those large hands on me don’t scare me. What terrifies me is wanting more, so much more than he’s giving.
Wanting him to strip me out of the dress and lingerie right there on that terrace at sunset and make me forget every nightmare I’ve lived through in the past days.
Craving the promise that the world isn’t only filled with monsters.
The desire to hear him tell me that everything will be all right scares me so badly, I have to push him away.
I don’t know what I expect. Maybe for him to force me to keep kissing him, sparing me the burden of choosing. Maybe for him to look just as shaken as I feel.
But when I see his calm composure, I feel cut open, like he, who is every bit as responsible as I am, has thrown me into that storm of sensuality and abandoned me there alone.
“I won’t judge you if you tell me your story,” he says, maybe misinterpreting my silence.
“Why would you? I didn’t do anything wrong.” I lift my chin.
“Tell me, Elodie.”
I take a sip of water before I continue.
“My father was an American missionary, my mother was Calé Roma I don’t remember everything she told us, we were so young when she died.
They fell in love, and he took her to the U.S.
She never saw her relatives again. I can’t give you many details; I don’t know their story well.
But at some point, after they returned, my father started behaving very differently from the man she’d fallen in love with.
At least, that’s what my mother told us. ”
“Or maybe he just showed her what he wanted her to see in the beginning.”
“What do you mean?”
“People don’t change that much overnight, Elodie. Go on.”
“He founded a fundamentalist cult. My father called himself and the other patriarchs ‘elders.’ In it, we women were raised to be obedient. We had no voice.” He looks at me, confused, and I can guess what he’s thinking.
“Amber and I had a little more freedom, in a way, because of my mother. She secretly taught us about Romani culture and dances. At first, I think he still loved her. That’s why he tolerated some of her actions. But then everything changed.”
“What changed?”
I press my lips tightly, fighting back tears. “I was born with a twin brother.”
“You have a brother?”
“Had. . .I think he’s dead. I really don’t like talking about this, Gianni. . .”
“I want to hear everything about you.”
I pretend to be thirsty and take another sip before continuing.
“When my father saw his wife had given birth to twins, one of them a boy, something inside him snapped. It was the first male child ever born in the community. From that moment, he decreed that every boy born there had to be ‘sent away,’ supposedly put up for adoption. We only found out later they were all killed.”
“Why?”
“I can only guess. Around the same time, he made a law that every girl, once she turned fifteen, had to become a wife to the elders. To all of them, like some grotesque form of polygamy. I think he and the other elders didn’t want future competition.”
“Jesus Christ! And no one protested?”
“I don’t remember, I was too young. What I do know is that by the time I was old enough to understand, everyone treated it as ‘normal.’”
“Even your mother?”
“Not completely. I remember them fighting a lot. He’d say terrible things to her, that the three of us were daughters of the Devil and that the proof was in our yellow eyes. One day, he told us she had died. Just like that. I think that was the moment he began his true reign of cruelty.”
“He’s still alive?”
“Yes. I’ll get to that. I’ll tell you everything. From the moment she died, we were locked inside the house. There was a separate wing we were allowed in, and we were never permitted to leave.”
“So they were protecting you? I mean, by keeping you somewhat away from the community, you were spared from the worst of that toxic environment?”
“Knowing what I know now? No. I think he just didn’t want us to see what was going on. . .not yet. The ‘sharing’ of those girls among the elders, I mean. He could call it whatever he wanted, but those weren’t marriages. They were systematic rapes.”
“I don’t understand. If it was such a closed community, how could they do that? Weren’t they all related?”
I nod. “Yes, they were related. Daughters. Nieces. Those monsters weren’t just pedophiles. They were incestuous, too.”
He stands up, his whole body tense. I feel the same, because it has been so long since I’ve been forced to put this into words.
No matter how much time passes, whenever I touch my past, I feel sick.
“And the mothers of those girls?”
“They’d been brainwashed. They went through the same thing themselves, even though they hadn’t been born there. It’s a vicious cycle. If you went to the compound today, you’d see. They refuse to leave.”
“Even the young ones who were abused?”
“Yes. The mothers are convinced that allowing their daughters to serve the elders, especially the supreme leader, my father, is the greatest honor.”
I can see the disgust on his face, and shame washes through me for sharing even a trace of blood with the monster who fathered me.
“Why doesn’t the government intervene?”
“Amber and I tried reporting it anonymously several times after we escaped, and even when we were older, we kept insisting. Nothing ever happened. They say there’s no probable cause to enter the compound, no grounds for a search warrant.
No one besides us has ever come forward with a formal complaint. ”