Page 46 of Gideon
“I wonder what happened to those other girls. I think about it far more than I care to admit,” she murmured so quietly I had to strain to even hear her.
“You don’t know?” I asked her, hopeful for an answer and yet dreading it all at the same time.
“Not definitively. I have my own theories, but no. I don’t know,” she shrugged. Everything inside of me yearned to pull her into my arms and take her as far from this fucking place as possible, but this was her story and she needed to tell it in her own time and in her own way. My job right now was to just listen. Listen and accept her truth for what it was. It wasn’t my place to judge or comment, not unless she wanted my thoughts. I would wait until she asked for them.
“Naomi,” I whispered, the question I needed to ask was burning on the tip of my tongue, insistent on getting out and yet my entire being begged me not to ask. “How long were you in the cabin?”
I braced myself for the answer, knowing that no matter what her answer was, it would kill me.
“I was there for two months,” she answered with a pain laced in her voice that ripped me down to the bones, shredding my soul into tattered pieces that lay discarded on the ground amongst the tears that spilled down my cheeks. I wept. For her. I heard the anguish in her words, and I fucking wept.
“They kept us there, preparing those of us deemed worthy of Zion to transition easily into life there,” she spoke through her own tears, her voice hitching repeatedly as she struggled to get her words out. “Most of the girls were young, and it wasn’t difficult to train them, but for me…” she trailed off with a hiccuping sob. My fingers dug so deeply into the skin of my arms as they wrapped around my torso, I could feel the skin break under the tips of my nails.
“But for me, I was eight. I remembered my family vividly, and I was stupid,” she nearly spat out.
“Stupid?” I scoffed in disbelief. “Naomi, you were eight!”
“I was eight, yes. Just old enough to know too much and still young enough to not know better. But I learned. I learned there in that cabin how to do what I needed to do,” she spoke through clenched teeth with a fierce determination that made my chest swell with an anguished pride for the woman before me.
“What do you mean?” I asked, huffing out a breath of my own exhausted determination. This was the most emotional conversation I had ever had in my entire life, and it was killing me. It was necessary, but it was killing me. The only thought keeping me grounded was that if she could live through it, I could listen to it.
“I mean, I had to learn to play their game. To think on my feet quickly. I had to learn to listen to their words and figure out what they wanted to hear as fast as possible. Faltering, showing any weakness would only bring more pain,” she answered, that pride in herself still lingering in the lilt of her voice.
“Pain? They hurt you?” I asked through a jaw clenched so tightly I swore my teeth might break.
“Yes. It’s what they did to the older girls. They would tell us what they expected. They kept it going, erasing our previous lives through repeated mantras, words, and then through torture when necessary. With the older girls, it proved necessary more often than not. With me… it was almost always necessary. Until I learned.” She ended her words with a sigh, a heavy sigh filled with a mixture of hurt, pain, and relief. I could only imagine how it must feel to tell a part of your story never before told; something she’d had to keep hidden for so fucking long.
“I can’t even…” I trailed off, my voice faltering as my throat choked up with emotion. I couldn’t even speak. My mind raced with the thought of what they did to these poor girls. Children! Fucking children, tortured and brainwashed into forgetting their own families, their own truths.
I was going to be sick. I could taste the bile rising in my throat at the thought of it; at the thought of my wife being subjected to such terrors. It was the stuff of nightmares. But for her, it wasn’t a nightmare. It was reality. A reality she had lived with, had livedin, for all these years. Alone.
“There is so much I could say, but I think you get the gist of it,” she said quietly, her voice a timid whisper as her story came to a close.
“You’re so incredibly brave for telling me at all,” I said with all the emotion I felt. I looked at her then, taking in her frame, the way she seemed to almost fold into herself. She was protecting herself from her own truth, from her own story, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Thank you for listening,” she answered softly. She stared at the floor, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to look at me. I couldn’t blame her.
“I don’t want to make life harder for you, Naomi. How can I make things easier?” I asked with such a genuine need to do just that for her. It nearly hurt. It ached so poignantly in my chest.
“I have no idea how to even answer that, Gideon,” she sighed with exasperation.
“I don’t either,” I agreed.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“I don’t know. All I want to do is come over there and wrap my arms around you. I want to leave this place tonight, but we can’t,” I answered honestly.
“Why not?” she asked, finally raising her head to look at me. I gave her the tiniest hint of a smile.
“Because it wasn’t just you,” I answered. “There were other girls, like Talia. For all we know, there are still other girls.”
“Adoptions aren’t uncommon here,” she agreed, the pain in her eyes only breaking me further.
“We have to stay. My brothers and I want to uncover whatever the fuck is going on with the Elders and stop it from happening ever again,” I admitted.
“That’s a big undertaking, Gideon.”
“You’re not wrong. But I don’t think any of us could leave, knowing what they are doing to these poor girls. And God only knows what’s happening to the girls that don’t come here,” I grumbled, that rage still rumbling low in my gut, ready to spill out at any moment.
