Book Three

From that day on, I was a different girl. Mama’s switch had beaten so much more out of me than the blood running down my legs. I never saw Ben again but the desire to please her and fit into the mold she had made for me was gone. I felt raw and rebellious. Me being the good girl with test scores as high as Mama’s unending expectations had not been enough. She had never planned to loosen the chains she had around me. I would have to free myself. I was beaten and made to look like a harlot who had displeased her master. I decided to live up to the new reputation Mama had given me. By the time mine and Billie Kay’s sixteenth birthdays finally arrived, we had become experts at sneaking out of the house, lying to cover up, where we had been, and who we had been with.

Mama didn’t like the new me, but her power was diminished, and she knew it. Her house and dominion over my father remained the same but her bragging rights of being a perfect mother with a perfect daughter were gone. She destroyed them that day by her own hand and a willow switch.