I hadn’t washed my hair in weeks and it was a hot summer. However, Henrique had no standards. I wore a skirt and a corset that while despised by my aching lungs, did wonders for my fifteen year old figure. Therefore, I evidently looked nice. Nice to chop into small pieces and add to his rooster stew, I thought.
“Umm, thank you. I’m heading back now. Don’t want anyone to think I’ve choked to death!” I said, flippantly. I hesitated briefly seeing as how Henrique was in my way if I wish to end up back at the missionary’s house. I gathered my spunk and marched past him, head held high and the urge to cough still in my throat and lungs. He didn’t follow me back to the house but I knew he stood there watching as I left.
That next day was the day we met Israel. Matthias and Harry found him while they were out fishing. They knew straight away he was Lost: he had no horse with which to have brought him to our desolate spot, the boatman who typically brought us any visitors had been ill and bedridden, and the village nearby did not know him. He was a stranger with no logical story to excuse his manifestation in our location. That is something I learned later about Israel; he does not lie as readily as the rest of us do. Of course being so tall and intimidating and unapproachable as he is makes people question him less. He can glare or offer some noncommittal response or simply say nothing at all and very few men will press him for answers. He was tired and wounded (from what I still don’t know to this day) and so hungry he ate all of Prue’s rooster stew left over from the night before. He had next to no contact or conversation with me and though I found him interesting and curious and wanted to be near him, I was immersed in my studies and in my avoidance of Henrique and thus had little opportunity to get to know our resident stranger. Later, after we gotten over the discomfiture and awkwardness at being thrown together in life, we would begin to spend longer periods of time talking. He disregarded my questions about his life thus far, but of course, I talked and talked enough for the both of us. Molly was terrified of him and spent most of her time trying to repent of her fear, which she considered ungodly and un-evangelistic. By the time we left Portugal and traveled on, Molly and I had grown apart, Henrique had disappeared, and Israel was one of us.
I was so pleased to have left corsets behind.
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The sunlight which had peeked through the boards in my window so forcefully and cheerfully before had faded to the duskiness of twilight, then to the darkness of another night. I am alone in the dark once more. To the best of my knowledge without a watch to tell me differently, I have been locked in this room for nearly 24 hours. It has been nearly double that since I’ve slept. I am nauseous from the need to relieve my bladder but I refuse to give in and do the unthinkable on the floor, like an animal. The minute I do that I will know I am officially a prisoner.
My thoughts are jumbled and running together. Nothing makes sense. My memories are blended with my dreams, with my imaginings, with snippets of television and movies I’ve seen, books I’ve read, and nothing is rational or logical. I have gone from thinking and remembering to singing. Whatever comes into my frazzled brain: bawdy Irish drinking songs, Spanish love songs, Elvis Presley, children’s limericks set to tune, hymns, Christmas carols, The Supremes. I sing softly at first, then louder, no longer caring if someone sits on the other side of that door mocking me.
My throat begins to hurt from the singing and from the shouting I had done earlier. I had beaten my fists against the door until my knuckles were bruised. In a house that was falling apart how could one old door defeat me? I had kicked and pummeled and pushed the planks that boarded up the one window but the screws and nails used were long and the wood thick and heavy. There were splinters under my fingernails from digging at the wood and trying to pry them away from their fastenings.