Sarai
Viking looked at me like I had just slapped him back. Like I suddenly did not speak his language anymore.
It reminded me that he was an unbeliever. Judah had always said that unbelievers lacked the capacity to understand us and our way of life. Their minds were dulled to the voice of God and the voice of reason. They had imposed a false order on their lives, based on a misconceived perception of the world. Their hearts were willfully illiterate.
Still, I was overcome with the need to explain to this particular unbeliever, to make him see my reasoning. To make the loathing and revulsion flee from his face, so that we might go back to playing cards again.
"I was shown my place in the commune by brothers and elders after my awakening, but none of them ever explained what they expected of me, before or after. Their practical approach to teaching was often confusing to me, contradictory even, because my body and my mind were frequently at war with one another at the time of a joining in the first few years. It is, of course, not the brother's or the elder's duty to make allowance for this needless and unreasonable internal strife during a joining. Their objective is to reach spiritual elevation and to cleanse the vessel through divine will with their essence."
"'Awakening'?'Teaching'? 'Joining'? What the fuck are you even talking about?" He did not understand my meaning.
Of course he did not. Judah had been right.
"By joining with a woman, a man can become closer to God. It is a woman's holy duty and privilege to be the vessel for him. It is not her place to fight him and to complain about bodily discomfort. It will diminish the divine experience. It is not her place to deny him or to distract him with her complaints. It is shameful misbehavior."
I remembered these words from my mother. After two years of unsuccessful teaching, Brother Luke had finally consulted with her in regards to my dissatisfying comportment. My enduring obstinacy had led him and the other elders to the assumption that I might be a cursed woman of Eve.
Then, my mother had instructed me.
After that, my life had changed for the better, and I had mourned the two years that had been wasted. Two years my mother should not have hesitated.
Viking looked at me with his mouth slightly open and his eyes narrowed, disgust and confusion warring for supremacy over his face.
I needed to hurry and finish my explanation. His patience would not last.
I held my hands out over the reports before me, noticing that my fingers were trembling and my palms were wet with perspiration.
"These young women… They were so fearful all the time, cowering, sniffling and sullen. I couldn't understand how they didn't see that their obvious weakness frustrated the brothers, that it made the joinings less than they could be. Their behavior… it polluted the commune. So I pushed them. I instructed them, to prepare them for the men and to ease the joinings, and I led them by example. I wanted them to stand up taller and assert themselves and embrace their role in the community."
Viking took in my words. He sat down, very slowly, on his chair. "So… you think… you did them a favor?" he asked. His question dripped with revulsion.
"They had to learn!" I cried out. Why did he not understand? "When the brothers and the elders joined with them, my sisters disturbed them with their ceaseless crying and screaming no matter how often the men admonished them. No one else would instruct them, no one else was there to correct their detrimental mindsets! The men had never explained anything to them. Their mothers had been soft on them." That was the root of their misery. It had been the root of mine, to start with.
"They, just like I, were precious!" I reminded Vike. "Yet they thought of themselves as dirt, they comported themselves that way, and thus the brothers treated them as such. It made me so furious! Their pathetic whimpering..."
As I said it, the sound rose in my memory. It did not cease, no matter how hard I shook my head. They sniffled and spoke about wanting to go 'home', wanting their mothers and their fathers, their brothers and sisters, even their pets, anything or anyone to comfort them. They constantly whined about the pain though they barely even bled.
The old anger at them suddenly made me breathless. I clawed at my chest through the thin papery hospital gown I had been wearing constantly ever since I had arrived here.
"I did not whimper!" It had been a hard lesson to learn – that had been all my fault, all my fault – but I had learnt it. "So why did they? What did they have to cry about? Why could they not simply... rejoice? They... They were never thought to be cursed, after all!? Instead, they were cherished vessels of spiritual elevation, the most important part of the community. They had a teacher in me, someone to answer the questions they were too fearful and too embarrassed to ask! So...why the whimpering? So useless!"
I found that my heart was pounding madly in my chest. Why was I so agitated by this?
"Why are you crying?" Vike asked, catching me by surprise.
I reached up to find my cheeks wet and tears dripping off my chin.
"They are happy tears," I said hastily, because what else could they be? I roughly wiped them away with my palms. "Tears of remembrance and nostalgia. I miss those days, and my mother. I had a place and a purpose. Life was good."
He eyed me steadily, then sighed and shook his head slightly. "Yeah, you're so full o' shit," he said. "But it's not all your fault, is it."
His words made me angry at him. First he did not believe me, then he belittled me. "What do you know?!" I snapped, hating that I hiccupped with tears.
"You were 'instructed', right?" he asked. There was a dangerous calm in his voice. "I'm bettin' your mother was your instructor. She raped you like you raped those other girls, to prepare you for the men, didn't she?"
"No-"
"She teach you not to cry and scream when they fucked you?" he interrupted, more angry now. "To act like a proper hooker for them? Make them think you fucking like it? Or did she just fuck you so hard with whatever fucking item was at hand that the men didn't seem all that scary to you anymore?"
I did not understand why he kept using the word 'rape'. 'Rape' was when a man joined with a godly woman outside of wedlock or sharings, when he had intercourse with her for purely selfish purposes and thus displeased God. I shook the nonsensical questions away.
"My mo-" My breath hitched as a pain stabbed through my chest. It means I miss her. I had not seen her since the day Judah chose me to stand by his side. I wondered if she had perished in the Devil's men's ambush, or whether she had chosen to join the ancestors before. In my heart, I felt that she was not among the living any more.
"My mother loved me more than she loved life herself. She wanted Heaven for me!" I touched my forehead in the same spot where a fierce, stabbing ache was blossoming. It was always like this when I cried. It reminded me to not cry again.
Vike looked at me for a long time in silence, then moved to pull a sleek black device from his pocket, much like the one Doctor Gonzales had used. He fiddled with it for a second and then turned the screen toward me.
Moments later a small, grainy video started playing. At first, there were only blurred colors and squares, then a large painted canvas came into view: A bright blue sky dotted with clouds over a meadow with flowers, propped up against a dirty-looking wall. It looked washed-out and horribly cheap. The whole video was of poor quality.
Through the phone's small speakers came a male voice. His words were unintelligible. The camera zoomed in then out again, moved a little up and down before the picture became steady again. Then two people stepped into view from the right.
"Do you remember that?" Vike asked.
I could not answer. I stared.
Two females. One was older, maybe thirty years of age, dressed in a gray gown, her fair hair covered by a proper headdress. The other was a little girl, seven years old, in a flimsy, short-sleeved white dress, with flower garlands in her waist-long, dark blond hair. On her feet were high-heeled white patent leather shoes which twinkled and gleamed in the light from the spotlights that were turned her way.
The shoes had been too high and they had pinched her toes and heels. She had had blisters afterwards.
"Go ahead now, my princess. You remember what I told you, yes? What we practiced?" The woman could be heard saying as she moved out of the camera's view.
The girl nodded her little head dutifully.
"Be a good girl now," the woman said.
The girl was left standing there against the kitschy, fake-looking background. She looked into the camera then and her gaze went through the lens, through the phone's small screen, through me. Her blue eyes seemed unnaturally large. Her eyelashes were lengthened and thickened artificially, her eyelids painted a smoky grey-and-black that reached up to her plucked and modeled eyebrows and faded out to her temples. The apples of her cheeks glittered a little with a facial lotion her mother had told her to apply. Her lips, apparently blown up to twice their normal size and made to look constantly puckered in a kiss, were red and shiny, like a fresh, wet cherry, or like blood.
She was breathtakingly beautiful. A perfect little doll.
I remembered that girl. She had thought she was so ready, and that she looked perfect and beautiful and was about to embark on the one journey that mattered in her whole life.
Now that I looked at her and she looked at me, she was merely young. Naïve. Pathetic. Cheap like the canvas background behind her.
And afraid.
"What is your name, child?" a man's voice asked from behind the camera, boomingly loud because he was so close to the microphone.
The girl looked at the man, then turned her head to where her mother stood. "Sarai," she said. Her voice was high and girlishly shy. "I am called Sarai, honored Elder." She gave a wobbly little curtsey. Someone in the room coughed.
"How old are you, Sarai?"
"I am seven. Seven years and four months." A look to her mother, and a hasty addition. "Honored Elder."
"Sarai. That's a pretty name. You are a pretty girl. Very pretty. Come, let us see all of your beauty."
The girl looked at the speaker, then toward her mother again, and then unbuttoned her shift, starting at the collar.
I remembered how tiny and delicate those buttons were. They were round and smooth, like little pearls and needed to be threaded through little loops of cloth that had looked like rabbit ears. There had been six of them, going halfway down the chest. I remembered that the material of the dress had been cool to the touch and that every little gust of wind had gone through it.
After merely four buttons, the dress already gaped open far enough at the collar for the girl to slide it off both her shoulders simultaneously and let it fall down to the floor where it pooled in a sinuous white heap.
"Turn it off, please," I said, but my words were only breath, and the man in the video spoke over me.
"Very beautiful indeed, little princess. Turn around for me. Yes, just like that. Such a good girl."
As she did what he asked – stumbling a little in her ill-fitting shoes as she tread on the dress that was still pooled underfoot – her eyes kept snapping back toward the left where her mother was sitting.
I remembered her gestures. Slower. Move your hips like we practiced.
Suddenly, tinny music came on, blaring painfully from the phone's speakers.
"Dance for your prophet, Sarai. Show him all of you."
The girl with the grotesquely painted face and flowers in her styled hair began to shimmy her slim hips and lifted her arms above her head like an exotic veil dancer. She writhed and turned, bent over and stuck out her little backside to give her audience glimpses of her most private place.
The man in the video gave a laughing groan. He found her ridiculous and precocious and overdone, but her behavior also aroused him.
I remembered his legs, spread wide, and him massaging the straining crotch of his pants.
I remembered my mother mimicking a movement with her hands – laying them over her own breasts and pinching the nipples between thumb and forefinger – encouraging me to do the same even though my chest was flat and my nipples were tender-
"Turn it off, please!" This time, it came out as a yell.
Viking did as I asked.
We sat in silence for a long moment. My blood pulsed in my ears and the stabbing pain behind my forehead had intensified so much that I wanted to cry out. But I did not. I would not.
"Your loving mother pimped you out to a bunch of pedophiles when you were seven, Sarai," Vike said. His voice sounded strange.
I did not know those words, 'pimped' and 'pedophiles'. When Vike spoke, there were often words I did not know, and I rarely ever thought about it, but this one – 'pimped' – seemed to cut into me with its unknown blade.
"A mother must do right by her daughter, as commanded by the Holy Scripture." My mouth reflexively repeated these words I had heard my mother say so often. "As a father must do right by his son. The children must be guided to follow the path of the righteous so that they may attain eternal life as their forefathers have before them."
"Did watching this make you feel right, or righteous?" Vike barked, lifting his phone up, meaning the video the device had just played. "Gotta be honest with you, Sarai, it makes me want to fucking hack someone to pieces, starting with the grown-ups in this video."
"It is right! It is righteous! It is on the Holy Script!" I defended. There was cold sweat on my forehead and my stomach clenched hard enough to make my throat constrict. "Mother loved the Holy Script, and she loved me! She instructed me thusly because she loved me! She taught me everything she knew and led me to the Elders who pick out the special girls so that I might meet the Prophet! What is that, if not love?!"
Viking
I watched Sarai, pale and shaking like a leaf with angry confusion, and something occurred to me, something that should have been glaringly obvious. Something was missing entirely in that overworked brain of hers, leaving a yawning black hole there.
"You have no idea, do you? What a proper childhood should be like? What real children do and don't do, or what proper parents do and don't do to their kids?"
She looked stricken for a moment.
That, right there. That broke my fucking heart.
She caught herself, as if old coping mechanisms were kicking in. "Well, there are children on the outside, children of sinful parents who do not follow the way of-"
"Cut. This. Bullshit!" I bellowed. This brainwashed crap was making me spitting mad every time she opened her mouth and reminded me of how deep it went. It made me sick. "Children are the same everyfuckingwhere. They all want and need the same basic things, and cult bullshit and being 'picked out' by a jury of fucking pedoes to become America's Next Pre-teen Top-hoe is not one of those."
She gave me a stoic look that said she didn't want to listen. Fuck that.
"I know for a fact that you didn't want that." I tipped my chin downwards toward my phone. The picture of her, seven years and four months old and all dolled up like a pageant girl and moving like a high-end stripper, showing her hairless cunt to a bunch of perverts, would forever be seared into the part of my brain where The Psycho came from. "You didn't want to be that. No seven-year-old wants to be some old dude's fucktoy. You didn't even understand what fucking even was because you were too young for that shit when they forced it on you."
"I knew very well-"
More bullshit. I rolled my eyes and gritted my teeth. Enough of this.
"Tell me, were you a happy kid? Did you have a lot of toys and friends to play with? What did you want to be when you grew up, Sarai?" I asked her.
Her eyes went glassy for a moment before she looked away. I took a look at her posture, all regal-like on her rickety-looking wheelchair, and the delicate braid of her hair and the way her hands were folded in her lap, and took a wild guess.
"You wanted to be a princess, didn't you? With the tiara and the sparkly dresses and all that crap."
Sarai was silent, the muscles in her cheeks working as she ground her teeth.
Princess it was.
Even worse, to think that she hadn't started out as a hard-as-nails tomboy-valkyrie in training like Ky's little Harper who was bound to claim a spot in the MC in a couple of years, or possibly become the first female quarterback for the Patriots, or a SR-71 Blackbird pilot, or world's richest CEO and Elon Musk's sugar mommy, or whatever the fuck she wanted.
No, Sarai had been more like Grace and Sapphira, an actual delicate flower, a soft, gentle thing that liked daisies, the color pink and the idea of being courted by a charming prince.
They had done a number on her. A big, stinking, evil fucking number, and because she had been soft and all alone, it had soaked all the way through and turned her into a fanatic, a rapist and abuser. She hadn't stood a fucking chance against them, and she hadn't stood a chance when her precious Judah, Prophet Kiddiefucker, set his attentions on her and made her a tool.
Tanner was right, though. There was no excuse. And really, their brainwashing wouldn't have taken as thoroughly as it had if that monster hadn't been in her nature from the start.
Well. People in glass houses, Vike.
"That cult and your mother, they lied to you," I told her, knowing that this was probably way too little, way too late. "If you just spread your legs, said the right words, prayed really fucking hard and never complained, that's how you would become a princess – that's what they said, wasn't it?" She didn't confirm it. She didn't have to. "They fucking lied to you. The entire time. About everything. The Bible you learned by heart is a fucking sham, cooked up by a disgusting old dude who wanted to fuck little girls and keep women obedient. The prophecy you were working for is about even more disgusting old dudes getting to rape even more little girls, who would eventually get pregnant and pop out even more little girls to rape. That's what it was all about, the whole time. The pervert in your audition video knew. Your mother probably knew. Judah, that motherfucker, definitely knew."
Silent glaring. I sighed. Destroying someone's illusions about themselves, their lives and the people they looked up to was no fun, especially if they were the only thing they had left.
Sarai was holding on to them with splintering fingernails, even though they were pure poison, and wouldn't let go. Stubborn bitch.
"Let me show you something." I pulled out my phone again and went to the camera folder in which I had accumulated twenty-five gigabytes worth of pictures of videos over the years. Some I had taken myself, some were from others in the MC, many from Ash, Zane or Mae, Lilah and Madds.
I clicked on a video, pressed 'start' and turned the screen toward her. "This is what children and parents are supposed to be like."
The video showed a big blow-up kiddie pool full of MC munchkins, just last year. Charon, RJ, Jake, Harper, Griffin, Becky and Maya were crowded into the bright blue plastic pool, in swim trunks or madly adorable frilly polka-dotted bathing suits. They were splashing each other or shooting at Ky with their see-through plastic squirt guns. Bella sat in the background giving a giggling Lillian a ride on her thighs. Lilah, in a white summer dress, was carefully dipping baby Zeah into an empty area of water. She laughed at his stunned silence at the cool, wet feeling on his chubby legs that was followed by a spastic little full-body jerk and a delighted shriek that said "Fuck was that?! Let's do it again!" Ky suddenly turned toward the camera and lunged for it. "Vike, stop perving on my wife!" There was a shout and a booming laugh – mine – then the video shook and cut off.
I clicked "next". Charon's fifth birthday party. Cake, candles, sparkly cone hats, a whole room of people singing Happy Birthday To You – very loudly and very off-key.
I clicked "next". Ash's video of the kids at the park, all of them walking Trooper together like a reverse dogsled because they couldn't decide who would get to hold the leash first. Mae walked up front, smiling and taking pictures of the scene on her own phone.
Next - a short clip of Charon sleeping draped over Trooper, with an actual snot bubble that got bigger when he exhaled and smaller when he inhaled like in a cartoon, on his left nostril. Ash, who had made the video, reached out to pop the bubble. The boy and the dog didn't wake up. Ash was wheezing with laughter.
Next – a surreptitiously filmed video showing Styx, his two sons and Ky's twins Becky and Maya all sitting around the kitchen. Styx was singing and strumming the guitar to Toy Story's 'You've got a friend in me', as sung by Tom Waits, and the kids were all singing along.
Next – Phebe, Sapphira, Grace, Ky and Lilah all sitting in a circle, braiding and brushing one another's hair. The picture was shaking because I had been laughing so much when I made that video. "Piss off, Vike," Ky snarled and flicked Grace's hair around like he'd been born doing French braids. Lilah was knotting her husband's long blond hair into a precious little coronet, a cheeky grin on her face. "I want to- I want to-" a high, girly voice rang out from the off, then Harper jumped into view and pulled on my hands to get me down to her level and into braiding range. The video shook wildly. "Unky Vike, I want to braid your beard!" "Hell, yeah!" my voice answered. "Braided beards are kick-ass Norse warrior stuff, not all girly like-"
Next – Mae with Charon, RJ and a small Bump number 3 in an afternoon snooze, piled atop one another in a tangle of limbs, pillows and blankets. With a contented sigh, a small smile and her eyes still closed, Mae lifted the hand that was dangling off the couch and reached toward the phone, inviting her old man to her side. Styx quickly cut the video.
Next - Sapphira and the munchkins finger-painting windows at one of the cabins. Griffin reaching out toward the lens with a green-smudged finger - my voice yelling "oy! Keep your filthy paws off my-"
Next - Jake and Harper on tiny bicycles, with their training wheels still on, Ky and Lilah walking right behind them just in case, with Griffin perched on Ky's shoulders. Grandpa Stephen and his grandson Charon rode some way ahead on their own bicycles. Mae sat perched in a very lady-like side-saddle on her father's carrier, waving at the camera.
Next – Lilah with a blond, curly-haired cherub on her lap. "Rebeccah! Say 'I love you'!" she encouraged and gently shook Rebeccah's little hands. "I love you!" Baby Becky looked at her with huge blue eyes and parroted "Aya wah-woo!" Both Lilah and Ky behind the phone laughed, making Becky giggle as well. Suddenly, another baby voice rang out, clearly saying, "I love you!" The phone swung around to Maya who was sitting on Ky's lap, making eyes as big and blue as her sister's as she munched on a soggy cookie. "Whoa!" Ky exclaimed and laughed. "Who's this little show-off?!" "Did you get that?" Lilah asked, all excited, "Let me see!" before the video cut off.
Next – me, Bull and the munchkins playing baseball, or a game that involved running around and hitting balls with sticks, anyway. Trooper sped onto the pitch and plucked the ball out of the air with a ten-foot leap. From behind the camera, Ash laughed and hooted, "Attaboy, Troop!"
Next – Three year old RJ sitting at the kitchen table molding something out of brownish clay, me behind the camera asking with clear amusement in my loud voice "RJ, what'chu doin'? Where'd you get that stuff?" A muffled response, then me again, chuckling: "Oh, Trooper gave it to you?" and another booming laugh, followed by a stutter-free "Fuck!" from the Prez before the video cut off.
Next – Grace unpacking a Christmas present – a violin, small enough for her fingers to handle the fingerboard. The smile she aimed at the camera was so fucking bright. "Thank you, mom! Thank you, dad!" she wailed, on the brink of happy tears. "Merry Christmas, angel," Lilah's voice came from behind the camera. "I picked that," Ky added from beside her. "Made sure that you can totally hook it up to an amplifier and blow the roof off this cabin! D'you like it?" Grace nodded through her tears, gingerly put the instrument down and leapt towards her dad to hug him. Lilah's phone's microphone caught the "Aw, you know I love you, too, sweet pea" Ky had whispered into his daughter's hair.
Then, on to photos, each a stand-alone snapshot. The kids and their parents at get-togethers in McKinney state park, baking stick bread over a fire. Building tree houses near the cabins. Playing on their dad's stationary bikes. Watching Flame repair a bike with attentive faces. Eating ice cream with their feet in a dirt puddle. Pulling funny faces at the camera. Drinking brightly colored sugary shit through loopy straws with their moms. Pulling each other's hair. Fighting with balloon swords. Showing off lost teeth and gaps in their grins. Sleeping in someone's arms. Reading books upside down. Doodling on each other's plastered arms, their noses still bloody from whatever stupid idea they'd had. Exchanging doggy kisses with Trooper. Dressing up in their mom's dresses and their dad's cuts. Sitting on one of Sia's horses. Riding on their dads' shoulders. Building sandcastles at the beach.
Playing, smiling, laughing. Kids just being kids.
The reality wasn't all hugs and kisses, of course. Families were full of fussy, cranky monsters, to say nothing of the kids. These pictures were only small moments in between long periods in which Styx and Mae, Ky and Lilah and Flame and Madds navigated marriage, parenthood, and jobs that included being in charge of a notorious and very busy MC, but my brothers and their wives made these moments count every single time. Even if their dads and sometimes their moms were often "off to work", and things were difficult when the club was at war, there was always plenty of love to go around for the kids.
Sarai had gone very still.
"You were fucking robbed," I said quietly, then repeated it slowly. I needed to drive the point home. "You. Were. Robbed, Sarai. Your mother and the people at your commune, they took this from you and gave you a nightmare instead. They made you a nightmare."
She didn't acknowledge my words, but she didn't deny them either. Perhaps that was a start.
I suddenly realized that my thoughts and my pulse were racing like I was going for a kill. I needed to let off some steam soon. I wanted to avenge the seven-year-old that wanted to be a princess and got turned into a murdering, raping Vegas showgirl. Maybe Tanner had been right to ask. Was I letting this bitch get under my skin?
Or was she already there?
I took my phone back which had made it into her stiff hands halfway through the slideshow. Then, I got up from my chair and made for the door.
Honestly, I wasn't sure I would come back. This whole shit had shaken me. I thought I had known every square inch of the abyss of human fuckedup-ness, but as it turned out, there were dark spots still, and Sarai was living in them. Keeping the memory of her fiend of a mother and the human cesspool of a cult alive.
"My name means 'princess'", Sarai suddenly spoke up. "In Hebrew, in God's language, Sarai means 'my princess'."
If voices could have colors, then hers would be gray. I was surprised at how much it physically hurt to hear it like that, like my ribcage closed down on the organs in it.
I nodded – it had fit her. If I imagined the sweet girl in the white dress from the video without the hooker war paint, then the name was a perfect fit.
I left her sitting there in that room. I couldn't help her. No one could help her, really. It was entirely up to her to let everything sink in, all the way through to the bottom. If she refused and kept clinging to her cult-Bible-bullshit, I figured there wasn't anything anyone could do.
And I- I needed to stay the fuck away from her. I shouldn't have got involved in the first place. I was actively undermining what little hope of coping she had, and I was wasting my own time.
I almost ran toward the exit, barking "family emergency" at the Asian-looking nurse when she tried to hold me up. Mels also came at me on the corridor. I told her to piss off. I was not in the mood.
Standing in the parking lot next to my Fatboy, inhaling a cigarette and torching the roughly 30 pages of testimony with the help of my zippo until burning and singeing shreds of curled-up paper flew up into the sky, I was suddenly homesick as fuck. Looking at my phone's contact list, I debated calling someone – AK maybe, or Flame, or even Ky who might put me through to my favorite girl, Harper – but decided against it. It would only make it worse.
I buried the phone in my pocket, flicked the smoke onto the asphalt, got on my bike and rode.
Sarai
As she pushed me in my wheelchair back toward my room, Nurse Lee asked me again whether my' husband' had told me anything about the 'family emergency' that had caused him to leave the clinic in such a hurry, or when he was planning to come back.
I merely shrugged and shook my head. My throat was so tight that I would not have been able to relay the information to her even if I had had it.
When we arrived in my room, I declined when she offered food, water, analgesics against my obvious headache and a new shift to wear since the one I had one was dark with sweat under my arms and on my lower back. I asked for peace and quiet, and she thankfully left me.
Peace and quiet - something I knew I would now have plenty of.
He would not return.
I pulled the blanket over my head, burying myself in the stiff white material. When I closed my eyes, I saw pictures and videos of people that were not me and heard children's laughter, and my mother's voice saying "Be a good girl now".
I had been a good girl.
I had been… such a good girl.
/TBC
