Cult Child excerpt: I work in the kitchen now that we live upstairs in the Tab. I don’t get to just stay with Leis and read books. After breakfast, I have to work with Mama for the rest of the summer. I peel potatoes until my hands have blisters from holding the peeler. I learn to churn butter until my arms ache from moving the stick furiously in and out of the butter churn. I have to go fast so the cream will make the butter. I peel hundreds of boiled eggs to make egg salad, or to make deviled eggs. The shells poke me in my hands leaving little sharp cuts at the end of the day. Preparing meals for almost two hundred people takes a lot of work, and we younger girls are usually stuck doing the most tedious of all the tasks. One day Mama hands me a big white bucket that used to be a paint bucket. It has a metal handle. “Go down to the potato dugout and fill this up with potatoes. And get back pronto, Sila!” She barks orders at me, and I hate it. I don’t know how I’m going to carry the bucket back full of potatoes. I can barely lift one of the big pots, half full of potatoes. But I obey because there’s no arguing; there’s only doing what you’re told so you don’t get smacked or spanked by someone. I take the bucket handle in both hands and head towards the dugout door. Mama says there’ll be one of the older boys there with a lantern, to walk to the potato bin and help fill it. I’m wondering if I can get him to carry the filled bucket of potatoes back to the kitchen for me. The door to the potato dugout is dark, and dimly lit by a kerosene lantern hanging in the middle of the entrance. I peek around into the dark womb of the dugout and call out to see if anyone is there. No answer. My heart is beating fast, and I can feel my breath shorten. I don’t like the dark shadows at all. That is where the demons are. Brother Sam says that demons love the darkness the most. I don’t want to go in. I stand there, but I have to go. I have to bring back the bucket of potatoes or I’ll get a paddling for sure. I step inside the entrance of the potato dugout, breathing deep, and I peer into the dark depths that go back too far than the outside light can reach. I see big, wooden bins on both sides. In the front, one is heaped with potatoes. I sigh with relief. I won’t have to go in far. I move swiftly towards the first bin, piling potatoes into the bucket as fast as I can. I hate the darkness to my left, deeper into the dugout. I won’t even look. I am sure as the wind that there are demons watching me, just waiting to come out of the darkness. I am close to panic as I furiously pile potatoes into the bucket. I heap it full to make sure Mama is happy, and I grab the handle to try and lug it to the front. I can only move the bucket about a foot at a time as I lug it back towards the entrance. I won’t look back. I won’t look at the darkness. My eyebrows are furrowed and my heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my whole body. A shadow falls across the entrance, and I look up. It is Manny Fernandez. He is the same age as Jeremy; and once I watched them in the woods hitting squirrels with slingshots they’d made out of small branches and big rubber bands. Manny is chunky and mean spirited. He has flat eyes so black they feel like the hell Brother Coblin preaches about. He always has a mean thing to say when he sees me, and I usually try to avoid him if he’s with Jeremy, hoping he doesn’t notice I’m around to make fun of or bump against or call me “Pig Face” for my turned up nose. Now here I am standing trapped between the demons in the shadows at my back, and the meanest boy on the compound. “Bet you’d like some help, huh, Sila?” he says, laughing. Get your copy of Cult Child at: amazon/Cult-Child-Vennie-Kocsis/dp/0692235647/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&qid=1408098109&sr=8-1&keywords=Cult+Child+by+Vennie+Kocsis (also available on Kindle and free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers)
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 04:00:02 +0000
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