Page 9 of Sanctuary

Misty couldn’t imagine being in this place for years. She understood why her friend planned to run. Paige was a mix of stubbornness and fresh air. Misty had never known anyone like her. The thing that stunned her most about Paige was she had no fear of damnation.

“I don’t believe that garbage, and many others don’t believe it either,” she’d told Misty several nights into kitchen cleanup duty.

Misty expected the roof to cave in and looked upward. Paige laughed. Misty had lived in a Christian home and she’d never heard anyone utter the things that Paige said. Fire and brimstone had been at the forefront of every church sermon she’d attended. The words were carried on through her father’s daily prayers and stern punishments. Misty feared damnation beyond anything else in her short life. Or at least she had. Paige’s assessment of life was sinking into Misty and untangling things she’d never thought about before.

Paige committed blasphemy on an hourly loop and sometimes minute by minute.

“You shouldn’t say those things,” Misty told her.

Paige shrugged and her eyes grew hard. “Do you ever think about all the crazy things your parents told you?” she demanded.

Misty’s back went up at the attack on her parents and then she realized defending them was ridiculous. So called loving mothers and fathers sent their girls here to be tortured. How could she defend that?

“I only know what my parents taught me. I don’t think it’s all crazy,” Misty replied, struggling to not fully defend them.

Paige’s hands went to her hips. “Did your mother ever say you would be punished when your father came home?”

It had happened when Misty did something wrong, usually stubbornness, and she nodded at her friend.

“Right there is a problem,” Paige pointed out. “Your father punished you. Is he a bad guy?”

“No, I guess not,” Misty said in thought. “It’s his job to take care of the family and that includes punishment.” Misty was unsure where Paige was going with this.

“There’s your answer,” Paige said with satisfaction.

Misty was totally lost. “I don’t get it.”

“Who does God use to punish us? He doesn’t seem to do it himself because no one blames him. I figured this out a long time ago. God is like your mother and he’s just saying, wait until your father comes home. If Satan does the punishing, he must be the father. Maybe that makes God the mother and wouldn’t that be hysterical?”

The thoughts Paige put in Misty’s head kept her awake long into the night. She reviewed everything she’d been taught by her parents since the day she was born. Like Santa Claus, was it all a lie? The thought that there was no God terrified Misty. There had to be. She liked Paige so much but she also disturbed Misty too. Simply having a friend was wonderful and she found Paige exciting. The real world fascinated Misty, especially the parts about living on the streets, finding food, and staying warm and dry. She couldn’t stop asking questions, and their nights on kitchen duty gave her the opportunity.

“I lived on the street for ten months,” Paige told Misty proudly. “It’s not as great as I thought it would be, but it was better than this place. The cops caught me stealing, and I ended up here because my parents consider me a bad influence on proper children,” she said in a deep voice that Misty figured had to be an imitation of Paige’s father.

The thought of sleeping in the open made Misty feel sick to her stomach. Paige said she worked, but she wouldn’t go into detail. It was how she paid for the ear tunnels, though she had put the first holes in herself. The tunnels made them larger. It was an entirely new world to Misty, and she loved hearing about all the things she’d never witnessed or done herself.

Misty had no television in her home, and her father only played the radio. The shows were men talking about politics or preachers preaching. Paige liked to dance and sing while she worked in the kitchen where Mrs. Turney and Sanders couldn’t see her. Dancing was a sin, and praising anyone with song other than the Lord was also a sin. But many things Paige talked about made Misty curious.

“How did you sleep without a bed? Did your ear hurt when you put the needle through? Does the tunnel hurt when you wear it?”

Paige answered with laughter most of the time. She considered Misty very naive.

“Before the pastor, didn’t you break any of the rules?” Paige asked the next night during cleanup.

“Sometimes, but I didn’t like being punished, and I wanted to spend time with my little brother.”

“When we get out of this place, I’ll show you some cool stuff, and you won’t ever want to go home,” Paige promised.

Misty missed her brother and, surprisingly, her parents, but if she had to marry the pastor, she never wanted to return home. If it weren’t for Paige, Misty didn’t think she would have survived her first days.

“You’re being overly dramatic,” Paige told her when she admitted to missing her parents. “Your mother and father think your brother is better off without you. Why do you think they were marrying you off? It’s illegal to marry in Florida until you're sixteen and that’s with your parents’ permission. No one can give permission at fifteen. They would have made a fake birth certificate or taken you out of state to marry. One way or another, they were getting rid of you.”

Could Paige be right? Her words stung, but they made Misty think. She had helped out a lot when Noah was a baby but he was older now and she wasn’t needed as much. Marriage to the pastor had been such a surprise.

“Do you know a way out of here?” Misty asked on the fifth night they worked together. She’d spent four hours on the wall that day because Mrs. Sanders found a wrinkle in her bedspread during room inspection.

“I have an idea,” Paige said. “I’ll know when it’s the right time.”

Paige thought for sure that Misty would go with her, but Misty wasn’t convinced yet. It sounded exciting, even if she had to sleep on the ground, but it also sounded scary. She really didn’t want holes in her ears or a tattoo. Paige said she had been saving for one, but the police took her money and it hadn’t been returned.

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