The Voice

3.

Dariden was wild to go to that place that was considered an unnatural city and something even more, even stranger. In the end, I was the one who went to Vision with Tahnee and her parents.

Despite my mother’s efforts to control what I could eat when I was in the house, and despite the bakery, in an effort to help me regain my maidenly figure, agreeing not to sell me anything unless I had a note from one of my parents (which I never was given), my body remained stubbornly plump. My father, in an effort to be helpful, had taken to whispering to me whenever he escorted me to visit The Voice, “If you don’t stop your foolish eating, you’ll end up looking like that.”

She was huge. When her mouth was forced open to receive an offering, her eyes disappeared within the folds of fat. It hurt me to see her and know I was adding to her pain. It hurt me to hear my father say something so cruel to the daughter he professed to love.

But on the particular day that led to my going to Vision, Chayne was the caretaker on duty when my father whispered his encouragement—and I had what the healers described as a mild emotional breakdown.

I screamed. I wailed. I wept. I sat on the floor and howled with a pain that filled the visitors’ room and frightened all the grumpy-faced children who wanted to feed a moody cake to The Voice so they could leave and be happy, happy, happy while she . . . while she . . . In the end, I went with Tahnee and her parents because they had already planned a week’s stay in Vision and I could share a room with Tahnee—and also because when my brother offered to escort me, I started screaming that he fornicated with barnyard animals and molested small children, and every time my father got near me I began making guttural noises that, my mother told me when I was calmer, sounded like they were coming from a savage animal.

My mother was correct about that. Something was building inside me, and I didn’t know why. All I truly knew was that I hated the village I lived in and hated participating in something that not only violated another person, but violated something in myself as well.

I needed to escape, but I didn’t know how.

Sometimes all it takes is a change of vision.