The truth book : escaping a childhood of abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses : a memoir by Castro Joy

Author:Castro, Joy
Language: eng
Format: epub

On the trailer walls hang his enlarged toadstools and wildflowers, all framed in brown plastic molded to look like woodland branches. He’s made money, he tells us, on his photographs in the past. His butterflies, a foot wide, perch on milkweed pods, one drop of dew glimmering.

He shoots portraits of my brother and me against a black background. He gets out white umbrellas and sets up everything in the living room.

“Your girl’s photogenic,” he tells my mother.

He loves to photograph me.

At the park, the forest is quiet around us. There is only the crickets’ purr rising and falling in the hot afternoon, only the click and whir of his Nikon as he circles me, only his murmurs telling me how to shift my limbs. Somewhere close there is a lake, but I cannot see it. The park is deserted on weekdays during summer vacation, when he takes me there. No cars are in the parking lot when we arrive or leave.

He unties the little straps of my halter top and lets them fall, shooting my shoulders, collarbones, grunting approval.

“These are getting in the way,” he says, and I stare at the Nikon

on its strap, its closed eye resting on the upper crest of his gut, as his fingers stuff the fabric straps inside the upper edge of my shirt. He backs away again, tilts his head.

“Better.”

They are not my mother’s idea, these modeling sessions, but she approves, parroting his words: it’s a way for us to become better acquainted, so I won’t be so tense around him.

On the way to the park, that first time, he tells me to unbuckle my seatbelt and slide across next to him. When I hesitate, he reaches across my lap to cup my thigh and drags me sudden and tight against his huge body, his arm going hard around my shoulders, his fingers curled, his little finger resting at the top of my breast as though by accident or oversight.

“You’re my little girl, now, aren’t you? Daddy’s little girl. My little girly girl. All mine, all mine. You’re Daddy’s little girl now, aren’t you?”

I do not have to answer yes or no. His talk is an unbroken stream, guttural, breathless.

My mother has told me to be affectionate, that he just wants to learn to be a good father. I let him squeeze me, my shoulder, my thigh. In his grip, I stare out at the blurred scenery rushing past.

I am really that running dog on the side of the road. I am those children leaping from the porch, laughing. I am actually that evergreen tree. I am not speeding forward in this vehicle, clamped tight against a muttering stranger.

During another session, he looms in again, his lips curled, baring his small yellow teeth.

“Listen, I know what we can do to really get your mom. This will drive her crazy,” he says. Later, I will learn that he has married other women with pubescent daughters. They were blond. He will show us slides.

“I don’t want to drive her crazy.

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