Instrument of Evil

Chapter One

Well, I guess I should start at the beginning, where most great stories start. Except for Finnegan’s Wake, which starts in the middle of a sentence that begins on the last page of the book. Anyway, my name is Rebekah Johnson, and I was born in Tampa, Florida, at Tampa General Hospital, weighing in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces. I was supposedly an exceptionally pretty baby. I’ve seen the pictures, and to me, I look just like my great-uncle Floyd: bald, red, wrinkly, and making terrible faces. Actually, to me, all newborns look just like my great-uncle Floyd. There must be something that happens to new parents that makes them love their hideous whelps, I don’t know.

Eventually I became cuter, though I did have an unfortunate lazy eye for a while. I grew in some light hair and turned a more human color, quite fair. My mother was obsessive about documenting my every move, so there are albums after albums to look through. She also filled out my baby book completely, so I can tell you that I sat at six months, started crawling at nine months, spoke my first word (bye) at ten months, and was walking at a year. Nothing too remarkable there. At one year, I could speak about thirty words, and put some words together in rudimentary sentences, perhaps indicating some future verbal precocity.

My earliest memory is being in the backyard of the blue house, and seeing something red and appealing through the chain-link fence. I stuck my arm through one of the holes and plucked it off a plant, and brought it immediately to my mouth. I think that I thought it was a strawberry, which it wasn’t. My mouth was filled with searing pain as I bit down on the pepper, and I spat it out and ran to the house, saying hot over and over again.

What’s hot, honey? my mother asked, squatting down to be at eye level with me. What is it?

Hot, I said. I remember a sense of frustration at not being able to explain what had happened, though perhaps my adult recreation of this memory is adding that part. In fact, all of the memories in this narrative are suspect, being as they are colored by my feelings and ideas. What I am trying to relay is at least the sense of how things were.

My mother gave me a cup of water, which I drank down, and asked for more. I don’t know how many cups of water I drank before the burning subsided. When I asked my mother how old I was when this happened, she had no memory of the event, and insisted I couldn’t possibly remember anything from when we lived in Tampa. But I do remember things: the big blue house we lived in, my Barbie birthday cake when I turned three, trying to learn how to hold my fingers to indicate how old I was, playing with a little girl my age in the backyard, both of us basically digging in the sandy dirt. I found it interesting in, what I thought was my earliest memory, I had taken something that didn’t belong to me, and suffered the consequences.

Chapter Two

After I turned three, though I don’t know how long after, my father got a big promotion at work and we would be moving to a new city, the city where I still live. The move was chaotic, as all moves are. Our belongings got moved ahead of us, and we followed along in our car. I was very excited that we were going to stay in a motel.

We settled into our new house, which was grey, and my father started his very-important-promotion job. I later learned that my father was a vice president at the bank. After a few weeks, my mother started meeting the neighbors, or at least the stay-at-home moms, and she met a few nannies.

Some time later, my mother was talking on the telephone, and I was frantically trying to get her attention. I wanted her to read me a story, something that hadn’t happened very much since the revelation that I could read. She talked for a while longer, then turned to me.

What do you want, Rebekah? I could barely hear myself talk over all your noise.

Will you please read me a story? I held out the book.

Go read it yourself. You know how to read now. Being read to is for babies.

I realized when I was older that my mother must have been really frustrated and just wanted some peace and quiet, but at the time I was filled with intense rage at her. It wasn’t that she had never said no to me before, but it had usually been when I was doing something that needed correcting. But this time, I was asking for nurturing, and to be rebuffed like that hurt. I tried to think of something bad enough to do in retaliation.

"I hope you die, mama!"

She was shocked. I had never said anything like that to her before. She sent me to my room immediately, her lips pursed. I was unrepentant, however. My rage was still there. I slowly and deliberately tore the pages out of the book I had wanted read to me, and then tore each one in half. I’m not sure who I was punishing by doing that, but that’s what I did.

We got through that episode, my mother and I, but there were many more yet to come. I continued to be as frenetically active all day long as I had been. Around the time I was four, I discovered a somewhat ancient set of encyclopedias, and I would pick a volume, open it at random, and read whatever it was talking about. I especially liked the section on puppets and puppet making, and the section on anatomy, which had these clear overlay pages with the blood vessels and muscles on them. When I was reading in the encyclopedias, I was at least quiet. At first my mother would come to check on me, sure I was up to some mischief, but when she found me reading every time, she came to appreciate the respite she got from my otherwise constant activity and noise.

Finally the time had come for me to start school, which I had been eagerly awaiting. My mother took me in to meet the teacher, and they talked for a little while, and then the teacher squatted down to me and said, Your mother says you know how to read.

I nodded, suddenly shy.

Will you show me? She selected a book from a shelf and sat me down in a little chair. I read the book. She picked out another book and handed it to me. I read it as well.

She looked at my mother and said, Will you excuse me for a second?

She came back in with another woman who she said was one of the first grade teachers. That lady had another book, which she handed to me. Will you try this one, dear?

This book was harder, and I stumbled a little over a few of the words, but was able to read the whole thing. The teachers and my mother conferred, and it was decided that I would leave my class for reading, and go to the first grade class and have reading there. The first grade teacher told my mother that she didn’t think even that would be much of a challenge to me, but it was at least a start. They talked for a few minutes more about the possibility of my skipping kindergarten altogether, but they all felt that the socialization process was very important, especially since I was an only child.

My mother squeezed my hand as we were leaving. I’m so proud of you!

She took me for ice cream on the way home. As soon as we got home, she called my father at work to tell him the news. I went to my room, thinking. I liked the attention that I was getting for something that came so easily to me. When I had stumbled in reading the book the first grade teacher brought, I had been faking having difficulty with it. I’m not sure why. Maybe I didn’t want them to really challenge me.

On the first day of school, I rode the school bus, although my mother had offered to drive me. She insisted on walking me to the bus stop, and I was angry, because I didn’t want the other kids to think I was a baby who needed my mother with me. At the bus stop, there were some big kids, and some little kids like me, some with their mothers. At least I wasn’t the only one. When I got on the bus, I made right for the back seat, and the bus driver called me back and made me sit up front, near him, with all the other little kids.

The first day went by without incident. I rode the bus home and took off the hated dress that my mother had made me wear, and put on shorts and a t-shirt. My mother saw me and said, I was hoping you would try to look nice so your father could see you in your new dress.

I hate that dress! I hate all dresses!

Rebekah, nice girls don’t shout at their mothers. She sent me to my room for shouting. Little did she know, being sent to my room was no punishment. All of my toys and books were in my room, and I realized early that as long as I was quiet, she didn’t come check to make sure I wasn’t playing with my toys.

I picked up volume D of the encyclopedias and opened it at random. Hmm, what did we have here? A statue of a naked man named David, made by some artist with a long name I couldn’t say. Boys looked different down there. I had never been made aware of this fact. Maybe I’d be able to get a look at what was different up close. Very interesting. I closed the encyclopedia quickly, certain that I would somehow get in trouble for having seen the picture.

My mother called me for dinner. I ate at the dining table with my parents, and was frequently reminded about my table manners (Nice girls don’t eat spaghetti with their hands.) We sat at the table and had conversation about our days. My father usually talked about his day first, saying lots of things about banking and finance I didn’t understand. Today my mother said that she had signed me up for gymnastics lessons, on the advice of her friend, Marjorie, to burn off some of that extra energy you have. Besides, it will be fun! My first lesson would be that Wednesday.

And what did you learn at school today, Rebekah?

I learned not to wipe my nose on my sleeve, the counting numbers, and that boys look different down there. Technically, I didn’t learn this last bit at school, but I did learn it today.

Rebekah Marie! Where did you learn that?

From a book.

A book at school?

I nodded, and continued eating my peas, seemingly oblivious to the chaos I had just caused. That would teach them to withhold important information from me.

Well, I am calling your teacher tomorrow, young lady, and asking her just what you were up to today!

I nodded again. I couldn’t think of a response to that. It seemed that somehow I did get into trouble for learning something new. I’m not sure how my mother’s conversation with the teacher went the next day, but her pinched expression indicated that it was not well.

I saw my first real life penis that year. I had been playing with a boy named Tyler, who lived a few houses down for several months. We played with trucks and his army men, and I found it more fun than playing house with the girls. One day he said he had to pee, so I prepared to wait for him while he went inside to go to the bathroom.

No, silly, I’m going to pee outside, he said.

You can do that? I asked, fascinated. I had peed outside once, when we were on a hike, but I was assured by my mother that this was an anomaly, and nice girls didn’t go outside.

Yeah, I go behind the shed.

Can I watch? I asked.

No, ‘cuz then you’ll see my wiener. Unless I get to see you too. That’s fair. We were very big on being fair. I agreed, because I was really curious.

He peed behind his shed, and I stood on the other side and watched, but I really couldn’t see anything.

No fair! I couldn’t see it!

We decided to go into his room and look at each other up close. We went in, said hi to his mom, who was watching a soap opera, and went up to his room, where he locked the door.

I’m not s’posed to lock my door, he whispered, but we were pretty sure we would get in trouble for what we were about to do.

We turned around and took off our pants and underwear, then turned back to face each other. We got closer and sat down on the floor, and just looked at each other. I guess it looked how I expected it to look.

Can I touch it? I asked.

Only if I get to touch you. I agreed, and reached out and tentatively touched his penis, then held it in my hand. It felt very soft and smooth. Meanwhile he was touching me gently, working his fingers around my folds. It felt nice to be touched like that. After a few minutes we decided we were done and got dressed again, unlocked the door, and took a few trucks out of Tyler’s room to play with outside. We had been playing that his army men were sinking in quicksand that we had made out of mud, and we were both filthy. We went right back to our games as if this interlude had never happened.

Come on, we’re going to be late, my mother said.

I’m not wearing this! I shouted.

My mother walked into my room and smiled at me. You look fine. That’s what all the girls will be wearing in your gymnastics class.

I’m NOT going! I was in a short-sleeved leotard. I felt ridiculous.

Rebekah, I have told you that nice girls don’t shout at their mothers. Come on, we’re going. She grabbed the back of my upper arm and marched me to the car. I complained for the entire ride, and I’m sure my mother was ready to be rid of me for a time. When we got to the gymnasium, I refused to get out of the car, and she had to carry me into the building. Once inside, she put me down, and I hid behind her, peeking around her side.

See, look. All the little girls are wearing leotards, just like you. Look.

I slowly walked over to the little cluster of girls standing on a mat. Soon the instructor arrived, a short, fit young woman with an authoritative voice. She led us with some stretching exercises first, then had us doing somersaults and backward spins. I was having a blast.

I talked nonstop in the car on the way back, telling my mother how much fun I had and how I wanted to do gymnastics forever. She was kind enough not to point out my behavior on the ride over. I took gymnastics for several years, through high school. My mother later would tell the story of how I refused to go on the first day, and now look at me, competing in tournaments.

Chapter Three

All of my education in elementary school went smoothly. I excelled academically, and had many friends. I was bored during some of my instruction, and daydreamed through things I already knew. In fourth grade, I was taken with some other children to a large room, where we were administered a test full of puzzles and vocabulary words. I knew enough from my readings that I was being given an I.Q. test, and I wondered how I did on it. My parents got the results, but they hid them away somewhere, and I never found them. I did hear them talking, through the duct work in our house, which transmitted everything they said in the living room to my room upstairs. I never let them know about this little quirk of our house. Anyway, when they were talking about this, they were discussing things like skipping me ahead a grade or enrichment classes. In the end they decided not to advance me a grade, so I was put in some classes where we made complicated models and had free reading.

By this time, I was reading everything that I could get my hands on, going through my parents’ bookshelves, looking for things that might be interesting. I found a small book by a writer named George Orwell, called 1984. I started reading it standing by the bookcase, and found it interesting enough, so I took it to my room to read. It was full of complicated ideas that I really had to think about, and it wasn’t like anything I had read before. Recently I had been reading young adult literature, which sometimes had rather mature topics for a ten year old, but my parents had long since stopped monitoring what I was reading. I found in 1984 a concept that changed my life: the idea that if you kept the small rules, you could break the big rules. I realized that as long as I kept my grades good, and didn’t talk back to my parents, and used my good table manners at dinner, I could get away with anything.

I had stopped going to bed at my bedtime at night, instead staying up reading by a flashlight I had smuggled into my room. After my parents went to bed, I would get up and roam around the house, just looking at things, looking for new books to read, rearranging my mother’s knick knacks on their shelves. I started going outside too, at first just in our backyard to look at the stars, but then I started climbing the fence and going through the neighbors’ backyards. I knew which neighbors had outside dogs and avoided those yards. I was going in and out of the house through the downstairs bathroom window, which was just big enough for me to fit through. My gymnastics training made it very easy for me to get in and out of the window. My parents caught me one morning at 3:00 am, sitting on the couch eating butter pecan ice cream, which was not my favorite, right out of the carton, and watching a Clint Eastwood movie. I don’t remember which movie it was, but it had a lot of shooting. I was forbidden to watch television at night, or to eat ice cream in the middle of the night. My parents sent me off to my room, where I stayed up reading The Catcher in the Rye by flashlight. The next day my parents sat me down and asked me why I was staying up so late. I told them that I just couldn’t sleep, a partial truth. I did have trouble falling asleep, but I really liked to stay up late and have the house to myself. They told me that after talking it over, they had decided that I could stay up in my room with the light on, as long as I was quiet and didn’t come out of my room and wander around the house. And I had to get up on time in the morning. I agreed, thinking I was making out with a pretty good deal. They didn’t say anything about not using my computer at night. I vowed to never get caught out of my room.

On the corner of our street, there was a vacant house. It didn’t have a for sale sign in front of it, so the neighbors speculated about it. My mother had said to one of her friends that she heard it was in foreclosure, a word which I had to look up. One day I was walking around the neighborhood, and I passed the empty house. I wanted to get a closer look at it.

I walked around back, looking in the windows. It was a nice house. I found the downstairs bathroom that corresponded to ours at home. I wiggled the screen and was able to dislodge it. The bathroom window wasn’t locked and I eased it open.

I hoisted myself into the house. There was a layer of dust over everything, but it was a pretty good house. I liked mine better though. I decided to leave. I would come back one night and look around some more. A few nights later, I slipped out of my bathroom window with a flashlight, determined to go look in the empty house again. Maybe it was haunted! I was big on hauntings and out-of-body experiences and recording ghost voices on tape then. I went through the backyards to the corner, being fortunate in that there were no outside dogs in any of these yards. I took the screen off the window and went in through the downstairs bathroom. This time I went upstairs and looked at the three bedrooms and two bathrooms, checking to see if the water was still running. It was, so I tried turning on a light, to see if there was still power. Nothing. I went back downstairs to the living room, and sat down. I took a box of matches from the pocket of my shorts. I had been fascinated by fire for quite some time, and whenever I got my hands on some matches, I took them. I had been caught by my mother on at least two occasions burning a small fire in the backyard (Nice girls don’t play with matches.), and had burnt countless others. I looked around for something to burn here, and found a few cardboard boxes, which I supposed were left over from the people moving out. I tore the cardboard with great difficulty and got it into several pieces, which I put in the corner, like I was making a fire out of wood. I struck a match and held it for a few seconds, watching the flame dance toward my fingers, entranced, then shook my head and threw the match onto the cardboard, where it promptly went out. I lit another match, this time holding the corner of one of the torn pieces of cardboard into the flame. This piece caught, and I held it for a moment like a torch, then dropped it onto the pile of cardboard on the floor. Soon more caught, and I had a pretty good fire going. It was very pretty, and I was enjoying watching it, when I noticed that the wall behind the cardboard had caught fire. I was torn then; I wanted to see how big the fire would get, but I knew I needed to get out. I watched for a few more minutes, then took my flashlight and went back out through the window, placing the screen back on. I quickly got home and in my bed, lights off. After about thirty minutes I heard the sound of sirens, so I got out of bed and walked into the hallway. My parents were up, too, and they told me not to worry, that our house was fine, but the house on the corner seemed to be on fire. They showed me out of their bedroom window, which had a view down that side of the street. I was thrilled. The fire had grown quite large and I could easily see flames at the roof as the firemen worked to put it out. We watched for a while, then my parents sent me back to bed. I couldn’t sleep with excitement. The next day on the way to gymnastics practice, my mother drove to that corner, so we could see the house. Most of the structure was still standing, but several of the walls were burnt away. It was definitely the best fire I had set.

Every summer since I had been in school, I had gone to my grandparents’ farm in the country for two weeks while my parents went on a fabulous vacation. I was jealous, but I liked my grandparents. My grandfather had retired early from his job doing something in business that I didn’t know about, and he had bought the farm and moved out of the city with my grandmother. It was not a very big farm, but my grandfather grew vegetables and raised some chickens and rabbits to stay busy. I used to go and pet the rabbits, stroking their soft fur. My favorite was a female rabbit called Flame that was a beautiful reddish color, with grey ears. There was a big old rabbit, sandy in color, in a cage on the end, that would make a growling noise and stomp his feet if you got near him. If you opened his cage, he would rush at you, still growling. I stayed away from him. My grandfather took me to the little bait and tackle store nearby to buy sodas, which he always told me not to tell my grandmother about. My cousin Bud, really my second cousin, lived on a much bigger farm a few miles away that grew crops to sell, and had cattle. They also had horses, which I was always very excited to see. Bud was three years older than I was, but he graciously allowed me to tag along with him as he played. He taught me how to make a slingshot that actually worked, and showed me all the ins and outs of the farm. He gave me my first ride on a horse, a gentle pony that he walked around the yard a few times before helping me down. Some years I happened to be at my grandparents’ house when the corn was ready to be harvested, and my grandfather would bring back truckfuls of it from his brother’s farm. Any kids around got put to use shucking corn. My grandmother was busy in the kitchen, cutting corn off the cob and blanching it, before putting it in zip top bags to go in the big chest freezer. We had corn with almost every meal at these times. Fortunately, I liked it, so it was no problem to me to help out or help eat it. My grandparents wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible, even though they had plenty of money from my grandfather’s retirement. I enjoyed my summer vacations on the farm every year when I was younger, but as I grew older I thought my grandparents were hopelessly out of date. I still had fun with Bud, who could drive and talked about teenage things. We talked about music a lot. Bud was into death metal, which was surprising, since most of the boys that lived around town liked country music. I still liked pop music and was a big fan of Britney Spears, which made Bud roll his eyes. But we enjoyed talking about music just the same. We used to drive to the town square, where all the teens from the area would congregate, usually listening to some of Bud’s music (his car, his rules), and hanging out with some of his friends. They all treated me like a little sister, and none of them would dare bother me when I was out with Bud.

Things all changed when Bud started seeing his girlfriend more than casually. She didn’t like his younger city cousin in the way, so he started doing things alone with her. Now, of course, I don’t blame him, but at the time I was hurt. And I was bored, since I no longer had anything to do at night but sit with my grandparents and read. My grandmother would read a passage from the Bible to me every night, and I tolerated it, although by my high school years I was no longer a believer, if I ever had been. Then she would make me hot cocoa and send me off to bed, at eight-thirty! I would read in my room until I was tired enough to go to sleep. As a teenager, I was always glad to get back home, where I had more to do, even if I fought with my mother constantly.

Chapter Four

The summer I was thirteen, during part of the summer I wasn’t staying at my grandparents’, I had a particularly rocky time with my mother. My gymnastics practices had been increased to five afternoons a week by my coach, so I was constantly in the car with my mother, her nagging me about something, and me becoming increasingly sullen. I had won at Regionals the year before, getting the gold medal in the uneven bars and the balance beam, and there was a lot of pressure on me, from both my coach and my mother. There was talk about me trying out for the national team, which I really didn’t want to do. I was content going to local and regional tournaments, and having a life. I didn’t want to go to the Olympics, which I think was the dream of both my coach and my mother. My father didn’t seem to have an opinion, although I entreated him to talk my mother down.

That summer I was breaking into houses, just to keep my skills sharp. I never stole anything from any of the neighbors, but I would sneak into their houses while they were out and just look around. I especially liked looking in bedroom nightstands, which always held interesting things. I found a lot of porn, a gun one time, a few Bibles, and sometimes people’s medicine. I always carried a small notebook and pen with me, and I would make note of the things I found, for future reference. I wasn’t sure what for, but I thought maybe it would have a purpose.

One afternoon when I wasn’t at practice, I was walking around some woods that were near our house, just looking at trees and birds and animals, and thinking about how much I didn’t want to advance in gymnastics. I stumbled upon a man sitting on a fallen log with his eyes shut. He was wearing an olive green military uniform, with his name stenciled over the left breast: Shepherd.

Hi, stranger, do you want to sit down?

Why are your eyes shut? I asked.

I was listening to the sounds of nature. He opened his eyes. I ship out to basic training tomorrow, and I think it’s in the desert somewhere.

He looked harmless enough, and very young to be a soldier.

How old are you? I asked.

Nineteen. How old are you?

I lied. Sixteen. Not sure why I lied, force of habit, I guessed.

We talked for a while, the soldier doing most of the talking, although I reasoned that he wasn’t really a soldier yet. He told me his name was Thomas, and that he was very