Sister of Silence Read Online Free PDF Page B

school. I packed a pair in my gym bag and changed into them from jeans once I got to the girls’ restroom. I soon realized most of them had backed out, so in the end only one other girl and I took a stand against the school’s dress code.
    Attending school in a rural area where rule breaking wasn’t tolerated, and where students were expected to show more than the usual amount of respect for teachers, was never a problem for me before that day. And on top of that, my mother had been, in a way, part of the educational establishment. She wasn’t a teacher, but when money was in short supply, she’d worked part-time throughout the years as a substitute cook and janitor. Nonetheless, even her sporadic role as an employee in the school system meant more was expected from her children. Until then that’s all I’d ever given—and then some—in both my academic studies and my attitude toward my teachers and classmates.
    But not so that day. The rebel within me fought to break loose, to fight back, and to make a statement about people in positions of authority. The first teacher I passed did a double-take when he saw me, and ordered me straight to the office. Once there, the principal, Mr. Woodrow, wasted no time in ordering me to the locker room to change my clothes. He wanted to know why I would do something so unlike me, but I just glared past him out the window, refusing to speak. When I got up to leave, he tried to say something else, but I brushed right past him.
    As I left the office, Mr. Woodrow called out after me, “Do you hear me, Miss Berry?” I continued walking. I felt an arm reach out from behind and grab me, and I wheeled on him like a wild animal. Screaming. Kicking. Saying words I’d never thought, much less spoken.
    “Mr. Hess, come here!” Mr. Woodrow yelled to a nearby teacher, and they both tried to restrain me.
    “Let me go! Let me go!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “You bastard! How dare you touch me? I hate you, you son -of-a-bitch!”
    The entire scene occurred within moments, but it felt like a lifetime, and I vaguely became aware that teachers were peering from their classrooms to see where all the commotion was coming from. Together, Mr. Woodrow and Mr. Hess finally managed to subdue me, and I found myself sitting in a chair in Mr. Woodrow’s office, four strong arms making sure I couldn’t move. They needn’t have bothered, for all the fight had gone out of me and I sat there, unseeing, refusing to give way to the tears behind my eyes.
    An hour later I sat in the car with my mother, and felt her disbelieving stare on me.
    “Daleen what’s wrong with you? I hope you realize how much reproach this brings on God and your family. I would never have expected something like this from you.”
    I said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Not when I didn’t even understand what had happened. Nor would I three months later when summer ended, school resumed, and the rebel within would escape once again.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    I like to think I survived a nightmare that lasted thirteen years because I was surrounded by love and tenderness as a young child, sheltered by parents with reasonable expectations and moderate discipline. Their love stayed with me when I began to question the world and my own place in it, giving me a warm cocoon to curl up in. At the same time, with alcohol being such a strong force in our lives, that cocoon was bound to crack and wither away, just as the fragile remnants of a shell provide no protection once a newly hatched moth is free to roam on its own.
    I loved hearing my parents tell the story about how we came to be a family. In 1961 my college dropout father was fifteen years her senior when he met the “California girl” who would become my mother. She wasn’t tall, standing almost eye level with my father, but at fourteen, Eileen Freeman had a full figure. Her large, deep-set blue eyes matched Dad’s, and she had pulled up her thick, brown hair into a