A Car Ride
The next morning, Zorah took a deep breath as she picked up her phone and dialed her mother’s number.
After several rings, she finally answered. “Hello?”
“Hi Mom.” she cleared her throat. “It’s me. Zorah.”
“Zorah! I haven’t heard from you in weeks. Are you still in Sicily?”
“No. Actually, I’m here, I mean in Providence.”
She was sitting in a car outside the small apartment complex which housed the nuns and Zipporah. Her hands felt clammy, and her stomach was doing flips. The need to throw up was making Zorah salivate excessively and gulp the air around her. She felt Chester’s hand on her shoulder reassuringly.
“You’re here? Did you leave him? Zorah if he finds out you left him, he’ll come for us, and we’ll be killed.”
“Mom, I really need to talk to you about something. Can I come in?”
“Zorah.”
“Unless you don’t want the nuns to hear what I have to say. Then you can come out and we can go for a coffee at the shop across the street. If this isn’t an option, then you can come and sit in the car, and we can talk here.”
“I should call your uncle.”
“Do not call him, Mom. I’m going to go to the police and if you tell him I’m here, I’m going to tell them you’re an accessory to the abuse he put me through.” She felt her heart race as she used the phrasing Orlando and Keturah helped her with earlier. “If you tell him I’m here, I’m going to tell them you’re aiding and abetting a man who abused his niece.”
“Zorah, he never –”
“He put me over his lap while my panties were down. You have three minutes to come to the black SUV sitting in the parking lot and get into the back seat with me to discuss this. If you choose not to come out, then so be it. However, if you tell him I am here in the city, my family will know, and you will be implicated.”
She hung up on her mother and exhaled a shaky breath.
“You did so well, sweetheart,” Chester pulled her sideways as he plugged a device into his ear and began listening to whatever was happening in the room.
“She’s looking out the window.” Keturah’s voice called out from wherever her vantage point was.
“She’s putting clothes on,” Chester commented quietly. “Door is opening. Footsteps on the stairs.”
Zorah’s hands were shaking as Chester relayed her mother’s path to her. One of Orlando’s men were driving the car, and he got out to pull the door open to guide Zipporah into the right space of the vehicle and then closed it firmly with a click behind her.
Zorah looked at her mother and despite her own trembling took a moment of delight in seeing the stunned surprise on her mother’s face when she came face to face with Zorah sitting next to Chester.
Her mother’s mouth opened and closed multiple times before she cleared her throat noisily, “what is going on?” She tried to tug on the door handle, but the car started moving.
“It’s like a police car, Zipporah,” Chester said bluntly, “you’ve been in them before so you know the door will only open from the outside. I suggest you sit there and shut the fuck up while my daughter says what she needs to say. When we’re done with you, we’ll drop you back off to the church and you can go confess your sins to your big brother before we do.”
“She is not your daughter.” Zipporah squeaked out. “She is my daughter.”
“I am not your daughter.” Zorah cut her off angrily. “A mother protects her child. Even a wild animal would do better protecting their child than you ever did. You used me as a shield against his abuse. If you offered me up as tribute to his violence you knew he’d give you less.”
“No.”
“You tased me mom, at his encouragement, so you could beat me with paddles and stick pins between my toes because when you caused me pain and I cried, he liked it. If he was satisfied, then he wasn’t humiliating you in front of the entire congregation.”
“Zorah, discipline was important.”
“Your version of discipline is the equivalent of what is used when torturing prisoners,” Chester growled furiously.
“I was a single mother.”
“By choice,” Chester’s fists tightened on his lap. “You passed my daughter off as the offspring of a piece of shit and then refused to tell the truth after he was killed. Why? Why not tell the truth?”
“Because my family thought he was the only one I had sex with!” Zipporah yelled at Chester. “My brother already thinks I’m a whore and punishes me all the time for having sex with one boy in school! If he knew there was another,” she wiped tears off her face, “he would destroy me. You don’t understand.”
“I understand you kept a little girl from a daddy who would have loved her more than anything in the world, despite who her mother is,” Zorah said seriously as she leaned against her father for support. “You robbed us. You took me from my truth, and you kept me in the hands of a man who lusted after me like I was born to serve him.”
“Your uncle would never be inappropriate with you. You are his blood.”
“He is not my uncle.” Zorah cut her off. “Did you know he was adopted?” she lifted her chin at Zipporah’s surprise. “Funny story. His biological mother was also a teen mother. She gave him up for adoption and your parents adopted him. His sister found him many years ago. Oddly enough, she’s spent the last twenty or so years watching his every move.”
“His sister? He has another sister?”
“He does. Her name is Shay.”
Zipporah gripped the edge of the seat and looked at Chester, “no.”
“Yes. My sister Shay. You remember her, right?”
Zipporah nodded, “your stepsister.”
“Yes. My father married her mother. Shay’s mother is Ippocrate’s biological mother. She doesn’t like to dwell on it though. It causes her pain, especially now she knows how cold and cruel he was to Zorah.”
“There is proof?” Zipporah asked reeling from the information.
“Yes. DNA evidence confirms my sister and Ippocrate are blood relatives.”
“Does he know?” Zipporah whispered softly. “Does he know he’s not related to Zorah?”
“Yes.”
Zorah watched her mother’s eyes close as Zipporah covered her mouth as if unable to put thoughts to words.
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