He got close to my face. I felt his hot breath on my cheek, smelling of stale tobacco and coffee. I thought he was going to kiss me… or kill me. I didn’t know which.
My heart was beating so hard against my ribs I was sure he was going to hear it thumping in the silence.
But he didn’t do anything. He just stayed there, inches from my face, breathing. Then, finally, he got up and went back to bed.
That night, I didn’t sleep another wink. I lay awake until dawn broke, trembling, sweating cold, feeling like I was going to have a stroke right there in the sheets.
The next day, the toll of it all hit me. I was so tired I almost fainted while making lunch. I had to sit on the kitchen floor, the room spinning around me, dizzy and nauseous.
Ruth found me like that and got desperate. “Mama! Mama, what happened?”
“Nothing, child,” I gasped. “Just a dizzy spell.”
“I’m going to call Daddy!”
“No!” I grabbed her arm. “No need. It passed already.”
She helped me up, her little arms straining, and took me to the bedroom. She laid me down, brought me a glass of sugar water, and sat holding my hand, looking at me with those big, worried eyes.
In that moment, I almost told her. I almost said, “Child, your Daddy is doing something very strange.”
But I didn’t. She was a child. I couldn’t put that poison in her head.
I was getting sick, truly sick. I couldn’t eat. My stomach turned at the sight of food. I lost nearly eighteen pounds in two months.
Eighteen pounds. I, who was always a thin woman, was down to skin and bones. My clothes were literally falling off my body.
Miss Idella found me at the store one day and her eyes went wide with shock. “Hattie, for the love of God, what happened to you?” she whispered. “Are you sick?”
“No, Miss Idella, just tired.”
“Tired nothing,” she snapped. “You’re skin and bones, girl. Go to the doctor.”
But I didn’t go. The doctor was expensive, and he was far away in town. And what was the doctor going to do? He was going to give me pills to sleep. It wasn’t going to solve the problem. The problem was Otis, and I didn’t know what to do with him.
There was one night, it was already deep into July, when I decided I was going to beat him at his own game. I was going to stay awake. I brewed a pot of coffee so strong and black it could have floated a horseshoe, and I drank it all day long. I didn’t lie down for a second.
I stayed in the living room, sewing until the grandfather clock chimed midnight. When I finally went to bed, I forced my eyes open, pinching the soft skin of my arm every time my eyelids started to droop.
I managed to stay awake until 2:30. I was waiting, tense as a coiled spring.
I wanted to see exactly when he was going to get up. I wanted to catch him red-handed while I was fully awake and ask him, “What in God’s name are you doing, Otis?”
But child, it didn’t work.
I fell asleep. I don’t know if it was for two minutes or five, but exhaustion took me under. And when I woke up, with that same violent startle as always, he was already there. Standing by the bed. Watching me.
I got so mad at myself I wanted to cry right then and there. How had I fallen asleep?
I started thinking darker thoughts—did he know? Did he know when I was awake? Did he lie there in the dark, listening to my breathing, waiting for the rhythm to change so he could get up? Was that it?
That scared me even more because if he waited for me to sleep, it meant he didn’t want me to know. It meant he was hiding something.
I started watching him like a hawk during the day. I watched how he looked at me, how he talked to the girls, looking for some sign, some crack in the armor. But he was always the same—quiet, serious, working in the fields until his back was soaked with sweat.
There was a Sunday we went to church. We went every Sunday; it was mandatory in our house.
I was praying hard, gripping the pew in front of me, asking the Lord for help, asking for protection from this shadow over my home.
The reverend was preaching a fire-and-brimstone sermon about demons that tempt people, about the evil spirits that crawl into men’s heads and make them do wicked things.
I left that service shaking. I thought, Could it be that? Could it be the devil tempting Otis?
It seems silly now to say it out loud, but that’s how I was raised, believing in the spiritual war. And when you are desperate, truly desperate, you will believe in anything that offers an answer.
I put a Bible under my pillow that night. I prayed every night before sleeping, reciting the 23rd Psalm until my lips were numb. I asked for protection, but it didn’t work.
2:47 AM. There he was.
The girls were getting quieter and quieter. The house, usually full of laughter and running feet, had become a tomb.
Ruby especially was acting very strange. I realized with a shock that she had lost weight too. Her little face was thinner, her cheekbones sharp. Her clothes, usually snug from her growing, were hanging loose.
I asked her one morning, “Ruby, are you eating well at school?”
“Yes, Mama,” she said, not meeting my eyes.
“Are you sure? You’re looking very thin, child.”
“Yes, I’m eating, Mama. I just… I don’t have much appetite.”
It seemed odd for a growing girl, but I didn’t insist. I had so many demons in my own head, I couldn’t carry everyone else’s too.
Until one day, it must have been late July, maybe early August. Ruby came home from school and went straight to the bedroom without a word. She didn’t want to eat her supper. She said her stomach hurt.
I went to check on her. She was lying down, curled up in a ball on the bed, her hand pressed against her stomach.
“What did you eat, Ruby?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the mattress.
“Nothing, Mama. I didn’t eat anything different.”
“Do you have a fever?” I touched her forehead. It was cool. No fever.
“No, Mama. It’s just a stomach ache.”
“I’m going to make you some tea,” I said gently.
I went to the kitchen and brewed her some strong peppermint tea. I brought it to her, and she sipped it in silence. I left the room, but a knot formed in my stomach.
Later, when I went to bring her a plate of dinner, I walked into the room and stopped dead. She had been crying. Her eyes were red and swollen, her face blotchy.
“Ruby,” I whispered, “are you crying? What happened?”
“Nothing, Mama,” she choked out. “It’s the pain.”
But I knew. A mother knows. It wasn’t just the physical pain. There was something else.
I stood there looking at her, and for the first time in months, I stopped thinking about Otis and really paid attention to my daughter. She was different. Very different.
It wasn’t just the weight loss. It was her manner, her way of looking at the door, her jumpiness.
There was fear in her eyes.
Fear of what? I tried to talk to her, to coax it out, but she clamped her mouth shut. She said she was sleepy, that she just wanted to sleep. I left the room, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that my family was crumbling around me.
That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about my daughters. Ruth, worried sick about me. Ruby, strange, skinny, and terrified. Pearl, clinging to my leg all the time. What was happening to us?
2:47 AM.
He got up like always. He went to my side like always. He stood there like always.
But this time, I wasn’t afraid of him. I felt a surge of courage, a fire in my belly so big I felt like sitting up and screaming, “What are you doing? Why are you destroying this family?”
But I didn’t scream. I stayed quiet, pretending to sleep like always. When he went back to bed, I lay there thinking.
I needed to discover the truth. I needed to hear what he was doing while he stood there, because he was doing something. He was thinking something, and I needed to know what it was before it killed us all.
That was when I had the idea.
I was going to pretend I was asleep, but I was going to do it right this time. I was going to breathe deep and slow, like folks do in the dead of sleep.
I was going to lie completely still, not moving a muscle. I was going to make him believe I was in a coma-deep slumber, and I was going to stay quiet, very quiet, to hear if he whispered, if he sighed, if he made any noise at all.
I marked the date in my head. Monday, August 12, 1968.
