Sometimes when I had to stay up into the night rubbing Eliyah's smelly feet , massaging his calves, tiring, resting for a moment (at which point he would nudge/kick me to resume my work), I would make the task more bearable by pretending that I had a husband that I really loved, and I was rubbing his feet and legs. I told myself that even though I was taking care of Eliyah right now, one day it would be the man Yahweh had chosen for me from the day of my conception, my beshert. Then I didn't mind it so much, and Eliyah would sigh contentedly, "That's it, Bucky (his nickname for me), why can't you do it like that more often"? And I would wish he would shut up so that I could go back to imagining what sort of husband I might get, and how well I would take care of him.

Splitting wood gave me a lot more time outdoors and away from the drama indoors. Things were just...weird in there. I still had to come in at night, but I was perfectly content to split wood all day long and do the outdoor stuff, even dumping the pot. When I did come inside, Mom was mad at me for "being lazy and rebellious" and "not doing my chores". Which is to say, she wanted me to do as much housework as the other girls did, as though I were one of them, even though I'd already put in hours of work and was now tired. It felt acutely unjust that she called me lazy when all the other girls did was basic housework and making cookies. So, sure, frying cookies in a frying pan because you have no oven is a little more time consuming than baking them, but still, they were making cookies, which seemed recreational to me.

Also, I wanted to have faith and to be righteous in Yahweh's eyes, but the constantly changing nature of the daily prophecies and dream interpretations made me uneasy. Every single detail in a dream meant something. You dreamt that you picked up three red apples from the ground? That was bad, because the Evil One, Satan, was commonly depicted as red, and 3 was an evil number, so such a dream would indicate that you were willingly partaking of Satan's fruit, and repentence and a multitude of prayers were in order. They might even have whole-family prayers with the offending dreamer sitting in the center as everyone else laid hands on him or her and prayed for them to resist Satan's temptation and to open their heart to Yahweh once more. I tended to think that the dream should be thought of as a whole rather than picking it down to the tiniest details and drawing conclusions based on those.

And there was other stuff that I found unnerving, too, like the time Mom said she saw an alien looking through the glass of the front door at her. We were all standing right there with her, and none of us saw an alien even though we'd also been looking at the door. But the more we looked at the front door and the window overlooking the sink, the more apprehensive we were of seeing that alien. She said it'd been an evil spirit sent to make her ill, and ill she became, immediately. She was bedridden for a couple of days. Occasionally Raphah and I would question this stuff together when we were outside, but we were terribly afraid Yahweh might hear us doubting. My eyes weren't getting any better. Mom was almost due to deliver Baby Eliyah, but she wasn't any plumper than one might expect of any woman who was eating for two. More and more words were forbidden in our daily speech, including some that were in the Scriptures. We had spent hour after hour writing the sacred names down on plain white address labels in teeny, tiny print, and cutting them out and sticking them over the words, "God", "Lord", and "Jesus" in our bibles, only to find that words such as "wonderful" were also evil, and there was often no adequate substitution to paste over them.

We'd all been sewing baby clothes and mentally preparing for Baby Eliyah. We couldn't wait to meet our new baby brother, and the thought of the great prophet Eliyah made small and coming to live in our family was humbling and awe inspiring. Mom's due date came. She announced one evening that she was going to have the baby that night, and calmly strode into her room with clean rags and gallons of water. We all listened expectantly throughout the night, but we knew that we had to have faith. Maybe since it was the prophet Eliyah, his birth wouldn't be painful at all. In the morning, Mom emerged from her room as we met her eagerly. She proclaimed that the prophecy regarding Baby Eliyah was false, it had been sent to us by Satan to deceive us. She would still give birth to Baby Eliyah, but the timing was totally off. We looked at one another questioningly, but we knew- we must not doubt.

The tension in our family was always as unrelenting as it had always been, except that over time, it went from being just Eliyah to Mom as well. The house was dim and dark, which didn't help her frequently depressed mood at all. Still, it was Eliyah who we had to watch out for. No one wanted to sit next to him at meals. We actually fought and bickered over who would get to sit at Mom's end of the table until she came up with a rotating turn system. If we got stuck sitting next to Eliyah, the meal turned into an ordeal, which is to say, even more of an ordeal than meals already were with him at the table. If you had a dessert or anything nice, you had to eat it first, before he finished his. Otherwise, he'd take it right off of your plate. If you betrayed an aversion to food, he'd force you to eat it. And even if what you were eating was plain and basic, such as lentil soup, he might suddenly dump a lot of hot sauce into your bowl and then force you to eat it. Or maybe he would seem to have forgotten the victims sitting next to him, and they'd be lulled into an uneasy sense of almost-safety, right before he jabbed a toothpick into them. And of course, he consistently got two or three times as much food as anyone else, and special foods we didn't get, despite the high-grading of what meager niceties were on our plates.

Sabbaths were a mixed blessing. On one hand, we didn't have to do any work other than what was necessary to get through the day. On the other hand, Dad was bored and we were more or less confined to the house, a bad combination. Of course, even on Sabbaths, we weren't exempt from rubbing his back, feet, legs, hands, etc. The usual Sabbath routine was to get up and dressed, empty the pot and wash water buckets, eat breakfast, and start our service. To begin with, Mom or Dad would pray. Then we would play a song on a tape from one of the Assemblies of Yahweh in the midwest. The radio worked because it was wired to a car battery. The song was a direct quote of one of the psalms, "Make a joyful noise unto Yahweh, all ye, all ye lands...". Usually Mom played it more than once, and we would all sing along. Often she played it four times, because 4 was a good number, unlike 3 or 5. Once she played it 7 or 8 times in a row, and we had to sing along each time, until I thought I would scream if I ever had to sing that song again! We sang other songs, too, but we always sang that one first, and often ended with it, too. Then she would read prophecies and she would lay out which scriptures Yahweh had told her to have us read that week, and we would take turns reading the verses. She would give her interpretations. Dad would lecture. He always liked Malachi and Isaiah and doom and gloom readings from the prophets that cursed Egypt and Babylon. Whenever a verse talked about Jerusalem, it was understood that this was talking about Mom. She was the physical embodiment of Jerusalem. She would be humbled and cry in the places where it said Jerusalem was an unfaithful wife. After an hour or two or more of this, or however long it took to read and discuss the readings, we would sing more songs and then eat lunch. Then, if we were lucky, we would get to retreat to our rooms and read our bibles or write prayers. If we were very, very lucky, we might get to take a nap. Usually, though, Dad wanted a nap, and it was our job to massage him and lull him to sleep. If we were unlucky, Mom would have "words" from Yahweh regarding the spiritual weaknesses of each (or specific) member of the family and everyone would sit and discuss this person's poor character and exhort them to be more righteous, and Dad would lecture and insult and preach at them about their failings.

I was rebellious because I thought my own thoughts, and "did my own thing" and everyone knew Yahweh frowned on that. I needed to open my heart to Yahweh's thoughts. Sarah was worldly because she cared too much about the outside world and her appearances. She should heed the example of Dinah, who was interested in the ways of the world and got raped and defiled by gentiles as a result. I should be more like my sister, feminine and interested in being a good wife someday. She should be more like me, hard working and not afraid to get her hands dirty, not so dainty. And so on, for each and every one of us. Dad often had Sarah sit on his lap as he made these comparisons. She was "his princess Sarah". I see now that she was being groomed, but at the time, I felt only a deep sense of shame for being who I was, a helplessness at not being able to be just like her, and a simmering resentment. Against her, because she was almost perfect and was constantly held before me as what I should be like, and against them for successfully driving a wedge between my sister and I, and for not loving me for who I really was.

The Fridays (we called it the sixth day) were always highly stressful. Mom had us run around in a frenzy of cleaning and preparation for Sabbath. It didn't end until the sun went down, and then we all breathed a sigh of relief.