Jane of the Shadows: Chapter 3--The Learning

I don’t know how long I slept afterwards. The room was soaked in the smell of blood, hot as an oven, when I next opened my eyes. My body felt heavy, like it’s been ripped apart—and maybe it has been. My eyes kept closing as I didn’t have enough strength to keep them open. My mouth opened and closed—unable to articulate the pain that still lingered in my body.

Squeaks and growls. I was vaguely aware that they were coming from me.

My Mayor was still outside, just as I wanted.

Oh, God. I needed to move. But it…was so…hard.

Suddenly, the image of Grey flashed beneath my eyelids and I remembered his request—Kill my stepfather. It was obvious that he hated the man.

I understood hate. Hate helped  me live through the hell which was my life.

But his stepfather…what could he have done? Was he like her? She’s the demon incarnate in my life. My stepfather was the shield. I doubt if I would have lived this long if not for his half-hearted caring for his wife’s bastard child.

I remember my first memory of him… He was covering me with a scratchy blanket as he talked in his soothing voice and told me he would give me bread and stew if I stopped crying over the bruises she left on my back. I was so small. Barely four. And I saw him as my bearded savior even though he didn’t stop her from hitting me again and again and again until I passed out on the wood bench. But he was there when I woke up—and that was enough.

When I reached out to him, he hesitated for a moment before he took my small hand in his. Then I felt his large, rough hands smoothing my tangled dark hair from my tear-soaked face. I heard the humming. He had a low-pitch hum which always calmed me. In the background, I could hear her muttering and cursing me—the cursed, evil child. During that time, I still had no idea why she hated me so. All I thought was that I must have done something wrong.

I thought, maybe it was because I couldn’t push my thoughts through my mouth? Everytime I opened the offending member, only unintelligible croaks and groans came out. It was my fault, I reasoned. It was my fault.

From then on, I started believing everything she screamed at me. I was stupid, she would usually tell me. A dumb, evil child. I was dumb because I was the daughter of the devil. I didn’t deserve to live. I should just die. I ruined her life. And I was still ruining her family.

She said that if it wasn’t for me, she and my father would have had the children that they wanted. That they prayed for so many years. I was cursed. And I made them cursed.

The only refuge I had was the small church in the middle of the town. Everyday, I would walk barefoot in the middle of the afternoon and come to the cold stone church. I would sit in the farthest and darkest corner as I listened to the intoned Latin that I did not understand but still soothed my broken spirit. Sometimes, I would fall asleep on the pew and the old vicar would shake me awake after the all other parishioners have left.

He knew who I was. Everybody in the town did. I heard them say that I’m the spitting image of my birth father. Some women said he was a handsome devil. That he seduced women indiscriminately and they always fell for his tricks. Did she fall for it? Or did he forced her to lie with him? I never did know. All I knew was that sometime during those visits, I understood the main reason why she hated me so.

I looked like him. And she hated him. So she hated me, too.

Everyone knew it except for me.

With pity in his eyes, the priest approached me and talked to me in hand signals. Every word he accompanied with a motion of his hand that I did not understand. I just followed his vocal instructions. Sometimes, he pointed at things and I answered by nodding or shaking my head.

One afternoon, while he was talking to me, he forgot to sign and instead only spoke his instructions which I answered with a nod. At first he wasn’t aware of it. Then suddenly, in the middle of a question, he stopped and asked me, “Did you understand what I said, child?”

I nodded.

His eyes widened and he said, “Did you, perhaps, read my lips?”

I shook my head.

“You heard my voice?”

I nodded.

He surprised me with what he did next. He clasped his hand together, looked up and said, “You have given this child a miracle, our merciful Father! Oh! Truly Your work is an amazing thing!”

I was confused by his words. What miracle? Which merciful Father? The man crucified and bleeding by the altar? The statue?

But then I didn’t have time to contemplate because the priest grabbed my shoulder and told me in a surprised voiced that he was ecstatic to know that I could hear. He—along with everyone else—just assumed that I was both dumb and deaf because my parents always talked to me by pointing. Or at least my father did. She…she just ignored me whenever I haven’t done enough to earn her beating.

As the days passed, the priest experimented more with me. He told me he had read a book of signs for people like me written by a deaf man a hundred years ago so that we could communicate to other people. He taught me some of the signs and I took to them very fast which delighted him a lot.

Soon he was telling me that more than hearing words and learning hand signs, I could do more. I could read, he said. And I could write. He said it was another form of communication that I could use. That way I could talk even to people who did not understand the signs. I just kept nodding my head. When he said he wanted to teach me—that I would be his dedicated “good work”—and he would let me stay in the rectory during the days if I wanted to, I could not nod head more vigorously than I did.

I had no idea what he wanted to do with me, but if it meant I could stay away from her during the time when she was awake, then I wanted it.

He motioned the large Bible by the chancel and said, “I’ll teach you how to read that. Would you like that?”

I had no idea how that could happen but I nodded my head.

He nodded, too. “Tomorrow, I will talk to your ‘pa. But I’m warning you, I do not like undisciplined students. Do you understand my meaning, child?”

I nodded yes once again.

I never knew what urged the old vicar to offer to teach me. Surely it was more than the thought that I was a “miracle”—hah! God knows nobody even cared to know that I wasn’t stupid like they assumed. Nevertheless, he did and I learned under him until he was forced to retire or else have his affair opened to the public.

Not that it was a secret. Everyone knew. But he was a good, sympathetic priest and he listened every week to confessions of adultery and debauchery without pious judgment. I had heard one matron say to another that she liked that he could “sympathize well.”

But an ambitious and young priest changed all that a year ago. The parish loss a very good reverend. In exchange, they had a handsome one who liked to call down lightning and God’s judgment on the people of our town for the smallest misconduct.

I took care of him before I left.

That was how Grey found me, I assume.

Grey. Kill my stepfather.

I told my Mayor that we might need to do it. I didn’t like what he did earlier, but I can forgive arrogance. He was afraid, I realized. Afraid that his efforts on finding me would be for naught.

I should move. When my tired fingers encountered the linen blanket that I had kicked aside earlier, I slowly bunched it and placed it in between my thighs to staunch the dripping blood. I refused to acknowledge the clumps of blood I felt on the sheets.

In a few hours, my Mayor would return to me and we would discuss what to do with Grey’s stepfather. Before then, I have to look like my normal self.

##

RM

JANE OF THE SHADOWS will return on Friday. Please stay tuned and enjoy!

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