Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
When I judged that I had gotten as close as I could plausibly get to the front door, before I would have to turn a little to go toward the living room, I darted to the door and grabbed the handle, turning and pulling. I got the door open, and I started to move around it.
Then Mr. Carpenter had me by the arm, with the same grip just above the elbow that he had used when I had talked back to him in the New Modesty office.
I expected him to raise his voice when he spoke, but the calm severity of his words put more butterflies in my tummy than shouting could have.
“Well, Grace, I guess we’ll have to consider that you’ve made your choice. It got you a few extra lashes, but you’re definitely going to get it over with before bedtime.”
I whimpered, as much at the message Mr. Carpenter had just delivered as at the discomfort in my arm. As he turned me around and marched me into the living room, I could see it hanging there: the family strap, a strip of worn brown leather with a loop of braided string at the end to let it hang from the iron hook set into the old wood of the mantelpiece. It looked like it had hung there for a hundred years or more, coming down from the hook to serve its purpose and then returning there to await the next lesson in manners that the head of the family had to deliver.
You’ve made your choice. To my distress, I realized that he had spoken nothing but the truth. In a very real sense, by foolishly trying to get out the door I had actually accepted Shelly’s advice, though in the least helpful way possible.
We arrived in front of the fireplace. I blinked as I took it in fully. A word—a very old word, I knew—tugged at the back of my brain, from somewhere in one of my high school language arts books, maybe. Hearth. The family hearth. I had never seen one, just as I had never tasted chicken and dumplings. Here I was, standing on the Carpenters’ family hearth, where I could tell somehow, from the way the bricks were worn or the rug was frayed or the stones that made the chimney seemed to have come from the very first plowing of the fields, that this family had gathered for generations.
Where some patriarch of pioneer days had first hung the length of leather that would serve as a reminder, even when he wasn’t laying it across the bare backside of a naughty wife or daughter, that in this house proper behavior represented not an option but a requirement.
Mr. Carpenter let go of my arm.
“Fetch it down, honey,” he told me, “and bring it to the table, like I told you.”
I clenched my hands into fists in front of my midsection. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to follow his instructions, at this point. My new foster father had definitely conveyed the idea that I wanted to get the inevitable over with as quickly as possible. But my body had started to shake with fear, and I found I couldn’t reach out my hand to touch the horrid thing.
“If I have to fetch it for you,” Mr. Carpenter said, his voice growing more stern, “this little butt’s going to be a lot sorer.”
He put his hand there and squeezed. Startled, I let out a little cry, and jumped forward, trying to get away from that firm grasp. No one had ever done that to me before, and it sent a roiling mass of sensation and emotion through my system that I just didn’t want to think about.
The hand followed me, though, still holding my bottom through my jeans, as if making sure I understood that my foster father would do as he chose, when it came to disciplining me. I had brought myself much closer to the strap than I wanted to be. Partly to keep from having to look at it, I turned to look at Mr. Carpenter over my shoulder. I could see Shelly in the kitchen, too, watching us with a look of sympathy on her face, but no disapproval of what her husband did.
He for his part had a hard look in his eyes. Not angry, or even disappointed: Mr. Carpenter’s eyes seemed to say that he had undertaken the task of re-educating me—training me… bringing me up, even—and he meant to accomplish that task. In ‘fostering’ a nineteen-year-old shoplifter, it seemed, he had known what he was letting himself in for, and he intended to apply the old-fashioned methods that had raised generations of obedient young women to graceful adulthood.
“Go on, now,” he said. “It’s time to start learning how to behave like decent folks, honey.”