Before
By age fourteen, Kestrel still hadn’t told her mother about the Confession Room box. Every time she was with Jill, the memory expanded till she feared it would come bubbling out of her like she was a lidded pot on high boil. But Kestrel was determined to protect her mom. And herself.
She learned to keep small rocks in her pocket to fidget with and help her sit still during lectures. She stopped confiding her worries to the other children. Soon she discovered she could get into Teacher’s good graces through flattery.
“Teacher, your wonderful lecture this morning has been on my mind all day,” she said.
“Kestrel, you are a beacon of light,” he said.
His gracious smile never failed to make her heart glow.
She wished it would last, but she was constantly aware of how hard she had to work to be like those who seemed to flow naturally through the rules and customs of Farm Home.
How happy Kestrel would feel—how free—if she could only cut off the parts of herself that didn’t fit.
If she could take a spiritual hacksaw to her essence.
Before Farm Home, little Kestrel had once overhead her mother say, “I don’t know what to do with that girl. I can’t control her.”
When Jill found Farm Home, maybe she’d been looking for a solution to the problem that was Kestrel. Maybe everything wrong in Kestrel’s life was a result of her own wildness.
To avoid such contemplations, Kestrel busied her mind with fantasies of a different life.
Farm Home had a few old and worn novels, and when she was reading, Kestrel could exist inside them.
Mostly she loved The Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables, stories about girls finding the family they yearned for.
But eventually she discovered Jane Austen, and thoughts of romance tickled inside her rib cage.
Teacher had decreed that the only way to peace and harmony was to relinquish all intimate relationships. When married couples joined Farm Home, they agreed to separate. The adults parented the children equally. Even the small children were instructed: Friend to all, best friend to none.
When she was younger, Kestrel hadn’t worried about the no-dating rule. But then . . . Tallon.
He was about her age, and she’d been working beside him for years, but it was as if she only now noticed him.
The hairs on his forearms. The way light caught his eyelashes.
Sitting beside him, she could smell him.
It was an intriguing smell. She imagined him touching her hand.
Her waist. Her cheek. Maybe he would say to her, as Captain Wentworth from Persuasion said to Anne Elliot, You pierce my soul.
I am half agony, half hope . . . I have loved none but you.
In Persuasion, Jane Austen didn’t describe what Wentworth and Anne did when alone, but Kestrel spent time around farm animals, and her mind filled in some of the blanks.
One day as she and Tallon harvested spring peas, she whispered, “What if we kissed? Just for fun? I won’t tell.”
They started to meet in the smokehouse, concealed in the strange aromatic atmosphere of campfire, fat drippings, and salt.
At first they exchanged tepid pecks, lips to lips.
And then more. A pressing together. A flick of a tongue.
Hands touching hands, touching backs, stroking limbs.
They laughed. It was a game, an adventure.
But her insides prickled, her legs felt soft.
Her body wanted more. That feeling conflicted with the belief that what she wanted was bad and wrong and very against the rules.
Her longing was so fierce, she was frightened that if she indulged it, she could lose herself so completely she might become another girl entirely.
Someone her mother would no longer recognize.
She spent a few agitated days ignoring Tallon.
He spoke her name with sad eyes, and she didn’t respond.
She avoided night games with the other teens because of how much she longed to chase him under the cover of dark, an excuse to touch him.
Then one afternoon they found themselves alone in the smokehouse, both sent there on separate errands.
Just a whiff of the smoke sparked in her a yearning that seemed bigger than any fear.
She reached out for him, and he held her, kissing her, running his hands over her as if they were desperately searching for something.
It wasn’t a game anymore—it felt urgent.
He kissed her bare shoulder. She stroked his abdomen.
His hand explored under her shirt. Her heart pounded; her breath caught.
She pulled him deeper into the darkness, pressing her body against his, wanting things she didn’t fully understand but so captivated by feeling desired that she’d do anything to keep his attention.
“What are you doing?”
Kestrel and Tallon leaped back from each other. Jill was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide.
“Go see Teacher,” said Jill. “Confess to him before I do, and it’ll go better for you.”
Tallon ran off, but Kestrel hesitated. She was alone with her mother, standing close enough that if she lifted her arm, she could touch her. She took in Jill’s sunburned cheeks, some gray hairs at her temples, the two wrinkles between her eyebrows deepening.
“Are you disappointed in me?” Kestrel’s legs felt soft, but there was no pleasure in it now. The salty air seemed to compress, pushing against her, boxing her in.
“Teacher says we don’t have to be perfect,” said Jill. “But we do need to learn from our mistakes. You should go to him—”
“He’ll do something terrible to me.”
Jill shook her head. “Teacher knows best.”
“I want to leave Farm Home,” Kestrel said, almost meaning it.
“You don’t remember how it was before.” Jill’s voice tightened in her throat. “You didn’t have to figure out how to make money and pay rent and barely get by. The best parts of the world aren’t even as good as the worst parts of Farm Home.”
That last line was a quote from Teacher.
Kestrel sometimes paid attention to his lectures.
He talked a lot about peace and harmony, but she never heard him mention joy.
Or fun. Or passion. Or mercy. Her legs trembled harder, and she began to feel the inevitability of the wood box closing around her.
Her chest tightened, air seemed scarce, and her heart clanged like an alarm. She wondered if she was dying.
“Jill,” said Kestrel. And then, “Mother.” Finally she tried “Mom.”
Saying it gave her more courage to speak. Maybe her mom didn’t need Kestrel to protect her from Teacher after all. The idea of telling the truth at last made her throat close off. She took a shallow breath and forced out the words.
“Mom, when I was eleven, Teacher locked me in a box. All day and all night.” Something deep in her core started to shake, spreading down her limbs till she shook everywhere as if freezing cold.
She made herself keep speaking. “I was so thirsty. And I had to pee myself. And I begged to be let out but he wouldn’t.
I thought I’d be in there forever. And he said if I told you, then he’d do the same to you. ”
Every part of her shook with fear but also relief, and the sobs rising up in her crashed like waves on a shore. For years Kestrel had been squashing a yearning for this very moment, when surely her mother would hop into the blue convertible and yell, Let’s go, Kestrel! Just you and me!
She lifted her arms, in case her mom wanted to hold her.
Jill stayed still, her gaze pinned to the dirt floor. Eventually she said, “I think I remember when that happened. Well, you must have done something very bad to deserve the box.”
The whole world cracked into pieces. Or perhaps it was Kestrel who was in pieces, and she only now noticed.
“Where’s the blue convertible?” Kestrel asked, surprising herself with the question.
Jill looked distracted. “It’s gone.”
“What do you mean? How can a car just be gone? Where did it go?”
“I gave it to Teacher to sell, for the benefit of Farm Home. All who come here donate everything they have. Listen, Kestrel, if you won’t go to Teacher on your own, I’ll have to go find another adult. I’m not supposed to discipline my own daughter. Stay here.”
Kestrel stayed as she was told. Why? she asked herself.
Why don’t I run? Because it felt impossible.
Besides, she didn’t really want to. Farm Home was home.
She loved her friends and her goats, the smell of the soil, the rain on the cottage roof, the safety of belonging.
The hope that her mother still loved her.
She was safe, wasn’t she? Even though, constantly running underneath every other feeling in her body was a subterranean ocean of fear.
Unbidden, into her mind crashed an image—Teacher opening up the box, ordering her inside. And Kestrel felt in her whole body the surety that she would obey him. When he lifted the lid, she would climb in.
That realization woke her like fingers snapping beside her ears. Something inside her said NO!
Still, for a few moments more, she hesitated. Making the decision to leave felt like taking a firm hold of her shoulders and slowly ripping herself in half. Only once she felt already destroyed could she bear to take that first step.
Night had fallen outside the smokehouse. Kestrel sneaked into the teens’ cottage to grab a few items: a plastic jug of water, an extra pair of socks and underwear, and an envelope she’d kept from one of her grandmother’s letters.
Kestrel didn’t know where she was going, but once she climbed over the gate and ran down the dirt road far enough that Farm Home was out of sight, she didn’t know how to stop. Now that she was finally moving, she needed to keep moving. So she did. All night and all day.
Twenty-two hours later, her body told her that was enough. She was on a sidewalk, so she sat down, her back leaning against a wall. She might have cried if she hadn’t been dehydrated.
The good news was that the wall belonged to a library. A librarian took her inside, gave her water and the most delicious turkey sandwich she’d ever consumed, and sat with her in the back office until social services arrived.
A couple of days later, Grandma drove up in her old brown Buick. It wasn’t a convertible, and Grandma didn’t honk or wave, but Kestrel was still grateful to climb into that safe atmosphere of diesel fuel and leatherette.
“You left that place all by yourself, huh?” said Grandma.
There was admiration in Grandma’s voice, which made Kestrel feel a little proud of herself.
That helped, because the rest of her was convinced she had failed.
She had been too wild. She wasn’t capable of becoming the person Teacher had tried to form her into.
She couldn’t be the kind of girl her mother wanted.
And the perceived failure was so heavy, her spine curled under that weight as if it would never straighten again.