Promise Me
the lush conference room on the first floor of the hotel. The three men who sat around the table with Winston were dressed casually but the watches on their wrists and the air of entitlement they exuded labeled them as men of some means. 
    Sitting in that chair, trying not to keel over, I was so consumed by my fog of pain I couldn’t make much sense of their tense conversation.  I gathered that the men were demanding some assurances from Winston, who spoke over them in a smooth, confident voice.  I did catch one puzzling phrase which was uttered repeatedly. 
    “The Faithful Cooperative.” 
    I stared at the other men.  They were not of the church, I was certain.  One of them, the youngest, glanced at me curiously a few times and seemed on the verge of saying something.  The man seated across from him caught the look and shook his head vehemently, glaring at the younger man.  I closed my eyes and summoned a hap py memory.   Of sunlight.  A green meadow.  And picking wildflowers with my sister. 
    I must have dozed off lightly because I was jerked awake by Winston’s rough grab of my elbow.  The other men had already departed the room. 
    “Come along, Promise.  I’ll feed you dinner now.” 
    I rose painfully.  “Winston,” I blushed.  “I need to use the restroom.”  Not only was my bladder in full scream mode, but a warm trickle between my legs warned me I was bleeding again. 
    Winston was impatient.  “You can wait until after our meal when we have returned to our room.” 
    I resisted the urge to slap his sweaty arm away and run like hell.  It was difficult.  Winston towed me along as if I were nothing more than a lavish accessory.  He ordered food for me and then scrutinized the fact that I didn’t eat to his satisfaction. 
    Winston wiped shrimp sauce from his mouth with a white napkin.  I stared at the smear of red on the clean linen.  “Promise,” he said sternly.  “You will need to learn to take care of your body if you are to bear a houseful of children.” 
    I dropped the soup spoon I’d been clutching and bit down on my tongue so hard I tasted blood.  But the words came out anyway.  “Take care of my body?  It would be a sight easier to ‘take care of my body’, dear husband, if you would refrain from using it as a punching bag to satisfy your perverse desires.” 
    I immediately realized what a mistake I had made.  Winston threw down his napkin, his face white with fury, and gave me a murderous look.  I stared back at him, knowing full well he couldn’t touch me in the middle of a crowded restaurant. 
    He knew it too.  Our waitress, a pretty, young Asian woman, returned and happily refilled our water glasses.   Winston didn’t take his eyes off my face. 
    “I would like the check now, please.”
    The waitress had a chirpy, cheerful voice. “Can I interest you in our dessert menu?”
    “No,” said Winston with a cold smile.   “We’ll be having dessert in our room, thank you.” 
    The only way I was able to force myself to accompany him back to the room was the silent assurance I kept giving myself.  This would not be my sister’s lot.  I would do what I had to in order to prevent that. 
    This time Winston Allred would not be satisfied with merely assaulting me physically.  He forced me to strip down to nothing and stand in front of the bathroom mirror.  The lighting cast a harsh radiance over the bruises which covered me from the neck down.  He stood beside me and ordered me to look at myself while saying the filthy things in his mind. 
    And all the while I thought, how could I have been so wrong?  I had supposed Winston to be a man merely like my father; domineering and enamored of himself, but never really violent.  But Winston was more than that.  He was a tyrant, a monster.  Maybe my father was a monster too. Maybe all men secretly were. 
    I did not allow myself the tears of humiliation which threatened.  But when he took off
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