Free Seed by Lisa Heathfield Page A

me.
    Then it begins.
    At first it is so quiet that I can barely hear it. But it gets louder. The sound of a woman crying. She’s asking someone to stop, but they don’t, because her cries are getting louder. And she’s begging them now, not to hurt her, don’t hurt her, but they don’t listen and she starts to scream. A sound from so deep within the core of her that I am shaking and even though I tell myself to breathe, she’s still screaming and they’re hurting her and it doesn’t stop. My hands are over my ears, but it doesn’t block out the noise. Nothing can block out the sound of her begging, the sound of her scream ripping through her body, her skin.
    Then, that silence.
    Nothing else.
    It was her, the same woman who has haunted my dreams since I was in this room when I was a child. The woman who screams in the darkness of my nightmares, as she beats on my heart and blocks out my breath.
    “Pearl,” Papa S. says. He is not here, but I hear his voice. “Did you hear those screams?”
    “Yes.”
    “These screams came from your bones. This time it was Nature calling to you, because you have displeased her.”
    What have I done that has made Nature crawl through my skin and scream within me? I have tried so hard to do everything right. To do all that I’m asked. But Nature is inside me and she knows my thoughts.
    I remember what comes next. The walls slowly begin to close in on me. Closer, closer. I stand with my feet on the ground, hold my arms out to the side, as if that will protect me. Slowly, they’re walking toward me, inch by inch.
    “You have done wrong, Pearl,” Papa S. says. “You must ask for forgiveness.”
    But I can’t speak. My voice is caught between the woman’s screams and the walls that are coming closer.
    “Pearl, admit that you have done wrong,” his voice says from beside me, above me, below me. “You are wicked. You must admit it to cleanse your soul.” But I don’t know what I have done wrong.
    The walls creep closer, touch my fingertips. But I don’t know what I have done.
    I hear his voice, I feel the walls, and I cannot escape. I push onto them, but they don’t move back. They force my arms down.
    And now it’s me screaming, but I know no one can hear. No one but Papa S., but he won’t help me and I don’t know why. I have been bad, but I don’t know how. I have been bad.
    “I have done wrong!” I scream, the walls pushing on my back, my front. “I have been bad!”
    “What have you done?” His voice fills my skin. The walls stop.
    “I don’t know,” I cry.
    “It is Nature moving these walls,” Papa S. shouts. “You must confess to Nature.” And so the walls begin to crush me again. I cannot move my head.
    “Try again,” he says. “Because I love you, Pearl, and wickedness will fester in you if you don’t release it in words.”
    “Ellis,” I manage to say, my voice barely my own. I remember Ellis’s body in the rain. The feeling when he touched me. “My bad thoughts are about Ellis.”
    The walls stop. They hold me there, just for a moment, before they begin to inch away, moving back to make the shape of the small room again.
    My legs can’t hold me and my lungs are still finding it hard to breathe. And lying on the floor, alone, I wonder at the words I said.
    Ellis? Are my thoughts really bad? Round and round, I wonder. I think of him talking to me, looking at me. It’s so different from Jack. Papa S. must have noticed and seen that somewhere deep within me, there were the roots of something he needed to drag out. Bad thoughts. He has helped me. He has wanted to cleanse me.
    I leave the Forgiveness Room and walk back to Papa S.’sstudy. He is here, waiting for me with his arms open and the warmth of the sunshine in his smile. I have pleased him and suddenly nothing else matters.
    “Pearl,” he says to me and I go to him and I am in the safety of his arms. His cloak smells of the lake. Gently, he strokes my hair. He kisses my head and then