The Riddles of Kate Andrews
Kate knows that Marion had always known and felt her inside. That girl that loved things like bonbons or running through the fields. That girl that was curious and daring. Whose eyes strayed from the Bible's pages to follow a butterfly or any other excuse. That girl that she now has identified as herself and not the devil that her father was telling her was trying to pursue her.
Marion has learned that there is more than her mind telling her what to do – more than the rules that she had been taught. There are feelings – a lot of feelings and no feeling is ever bad, because every feeling belongs to and is her. Marion has learned a lot over the long time after she became free and is aware of herself now more than she ever was before.
As a matter of fact, as Betty's lips touched her own for the first time after the first time, she had felt herself so plain and raw like she rarely had before. It's actually scary, because the moments she remembers feeling herself so much like she had at that particular moment, she always had thought she was going to die. But now she was not - though she felt she might be. Now she could be on the edge of fully living and funnily enough that was just as scary, because who said that that was right?
"I don't want to die", she had thought as her father had dunked her under the water of their hotel to cleanse her from conversing with a boy in the streets as it was getting dark outside.
"Don't let me die", she thinks when Betty lies beneath her, her blood rushing up, overtaking her head while it's tingling and overwhelming her at other places, making her heart race in her chest.
The street boy had thrown an eye on her for a few days and most of the time she had not even known what to say. She had cried for being punished, even though she hadn't even looked at him - for too long. But her father had a stern talk with her, accusing her of filthy thoughts and things that she did not even know, but now was explicitly experiencing – with a woman. She had cried for being yelled at for things she didn't do, for the world being cruel and to spite her father she had written that boy a letter to come and meet her.
"I don't want to die", her body had screamed at her as she was struggling under the water.
She never had done that again.
Though, when her father had dunked her under she could not say that she was particularly sorry for having experienced that boy's roguish hands in hers for just that moment – his breath warm and smelling of a poor meal as he brushed her cheek.
She could see no wrong in it. He was just a shaggy, shy young boy, daring to express, just like Betty was now – like she herself was. An innocent touch.
For the moments she was beneath the water, it was rather that her insides told her she did everything right and now was all wrong.
It was only when she got up to breath air again and her father asked her if she had learned her lesson, that she agreed and her body, too, because she wanted to live and that girl got pushed away, damned to cower in the deepest corner.
She was 17 and never looked at a boy for too long again. (When her father was around).
Something that was more save, though not completely, was looking at girls and women. If she looked for too long there, she merely was chastised for staring and got a stern talk about envy and treasuring what she had. But she remembers, she loved to watch women and tried to hide her curious-side as much as possible, while her eyes strayed beneath her bowed head and through her down-turned eyelashes.
She had always thought she wanted to be like them...
She had studied what they possessed and how they carried themselves, what they wore and how they laughed - she especially liked when they laughed, and she was always fascinated about how some of these women seemed to lead their lives so … carefree.
She had envied them on some days, and more each day she got older, even though she wasn't supposed to and would have never admitted it back then. She had a good family who stood together and cared, while the rest of the world was just frivolous and revelled in their indecency, never even giving a thought to what God would want them to do. It was impudent how they exploited the life given to them and spat in God's face with it. They were all damned. But still they laughed and Marion seldom was allowed to.
It was a riddle.
A riddle she slowly got rid off.
Marion has a job now – a job she deserved, a room she calls her own, a home with friends and a completely different life from the one that had been set out for her. She had struggled – like still being under that water, but she is here now free to express and experience, because she simply is and she has understood that wanting to be happy can never be a sin.
Today Marion is able to laugh, because Marion is Kate and Kate is Marion - just to fuse them together was the hardest work she had ever done.
When Betty moves, lying spent and asleep next to her, Marion carefully reaches out and touches the blonde's shoulder just to assure herself that she is really there - and she is, whereupon Kate turns her body more confidently into Betty's side, placing a chaste kiss on her chin before closing her eyes with a soft content smile breaking through at the corner of her lips. Kate sighs. She is not sure if she has solved all her riddles yet, but what she knows is that she is done living someone else's life. She will finally start living her own - and Marion agrees.