Divine by Karen Kingsbury Page B

living room. She could only guess about the money Jimbo had locked away somewhere.
    When she was old enough to have a woman's body, sometime around her fourteenth birthday, Jimbo sent more of his customers down to her. Ten or fifteen of them were regulars. Lots of the visits were from men who came over and over again. They would tell her all sorts of things. "No one's like you, baby. . . . You're the prettiest girl in the whole world."
    That's when she began lying.
    Not just an occasional lie here and there, but lying about everything she said. She'd tell the men nice things about themselves, and when one of them would talk about setting her free, taking her for himself, she'd correct him.
    "I'm not here because of Jimbo." She'd give the man a practiced smile. "I'm here because I want to be."
    Lying that way gave her a sort of false control over her life, and it made her less frightened—at least in the daytime. After a while, her lies seemed to make life easier for her, less of a fight all the time. And as the years passed, the things Jimbo's friends said to her began to feel like love. Because real love—the way Grandma Peggy and her mama had loved her—was so long ago in her past that she couldn't remember what it was like.
    So maybe love was only a physical thing. That was all anyone ever really liked about her, so maybe it was okay if it felt like love. Though no one ever explained it to her, she figured a lot of it out on her own. She had power over men. Even Jimbo. If she treated him nice when he came down for a session or lied to him about her feelings for him, then he might let her upstairs for dinner or a walk outside. Even then, he stayed close beside her.
    "Can't have you runnin' away on me." He'd chuckle, and the sound would send chills down Mary's spine.
    When she wasn't lying, she rarely talked. Anything she might say would come across as rude, and rude meant Jimbo would pay her a different sort of visit. One where he'd throw her across the room and hit her. She hated the beatings, so she stopped being rude. And that meant she stopped talking.
    Except for the lies.
    ***
    Mary stood and went to the coffeemaker in the corner of her office. "It went on that way until one night when I was fifteen. The nightmares, the lying." She held up her hands and looked at them. "Sometimes Jimbo would handcuff me to the bed, and I'd smash my wrist against the metal. Over and over until it bled."
    She poured a cup of coffee for Emma and another one for herself. She crossed the room and handed Emma her cup, then sat down and closed her eyes. The story was so hard to tell. Every time she told it she felt the same way, as if all of it had happened only the day before. The pain of the beatings, the cool handcuffs against her wrist, the emptiness of the lies, and the dreaded fear of nighttime—all of it came rushing back at her. God, give me the strength. You know how hard this is for me. . . .
    I am with you, daughter. My Spirit is in you, leading you even now.
    Mary opened her eyes and took a sip of coffee. The warmth felt good. "Sometimes if I hurt my wrist on purpose, the pain would give me a distraction. A reason not to feel the pain of my life, I guess."
    Emma ran her hands over her forearms. "I've . . . felt that way before."
    That's when Mary noticed something she hadn't before. Along Emma's arms were tiny scars and a few scabs. Classic signs that she, too, had found a way of manifesting the pain into something tangible. Emma hadn't tried to free herself of handcuffs, but clearly she had an issue. "What's that, Emma?" she asked gently. "What happened to your arms?"
    Tears filled her eyes. "Sometimes . . . after Charlie hits me, I ... I cut myself." Emma shrugged. "It takes away the other pain for a few minutes."
    Mary could feel her heart breaking. No wonder God had brought Emma to her. They had even more in common than she'd thought. "I understand."
    "Sometimes I'll be cutting my arm, and all of a sudden I'll realize what