Deliver Me From Evil by Alloma Gilbert Read Free Book Online Page A

kill him. For years I believed this, feeling bad about myself and guilty about him. The idea that blood carries not only bad character traits but also germs was central to Eunice’s whole mindset. She truly believed that I was the Devil’s child, rotten and evil through and through, because of my heritage, which she drummed into my brain over and over and over again. Therefore, my blood was dirty, evil, contaminated.
    Eunice’s own parents, Katie and John, were also devout Jehovah’s Witnesses and she’d grown up in the faith. However, given that extramarital and premarital sex was forbidden, I did find something strange in a drawer in Eunice’s house once: a picture of her wearing skimpy underwear, with two men on a bed, obviously engaged in some type of sexual activity, doing a V-sign at the camera. I never asked her about it, as I couldn’t ask her about anything, and, anyway, I could hardly own up to having poked about in a drawer, or to having found such a picture. I certainly would have been punished. Nevertheless, it registered in my mind as being extremely out of character. Or was it? I later found out that she had been thrown out of the Jehovah’s Witnesses at one time – ‘disfellowshipped’ as they call it – for something or other, but that she had somehow wormed her way back in. Eunice could be very persuasive, very seductive. She had, after all, managed to seduce two husbands successfully before I met her.
    Grandiosely, Eunice would tell me that she was the best Jehovah’s Witness around, the most devoted follower, as she did not spare the rod with children. She was often quite disparaging about the other Jehovah’s Witnesses we came into contact with, telling us they weren’t true believers, because they were too soft. Indeed, I would later find out that there were very good Jehovah’s Witnesses around, who didn’t advocate beating and abusing children. They believed in being firm, but not horribly violent and ritualistic, like Eunice was. But I would learn that only much later, once the damage was done. Ironically, I would ultimately be grateful to those Jehovah’s Witnesses that Eunice thought were ‘soft’.
    I’m still trying to understand whether Eunice’s behaviour was born of a religious belief that she needed to ‘teach us a lesson or whether she sincerely felt that what she made us do, or what she did to us, was ‘improving’ to our characters, our health and was saving our evil souls. Either way, her outlook was punitive and extreme, with everything divided into black and white, good and evil. With Eunice as the judge. Most of the time we were in a no-win situation: if we owned up to a ‘Sin’, we’d get punished, but if we didn’t own up (also a Sin), we’d also get punished. We were damned if we did, and damned if we didn’t.

 
    CHAPTER 7:
     
    When I look back on living with Eunice’s regime I think of it as going down a flight of steps to a basement. On the first few steps, I had to get acclimatized to the drop in light and temperature. As I went on, it began to feel damp and uncomfortable, until finally, I descended into a cold, rat-infested, stinking cellar where I was tortured sadistically until I screamed for mercy. But no mercy came.
    The first eighteen months in Eunices house gave me an idea of what life with her would be like: full of rules, bizarre rituals, a weird and idiosyncratic routine, with endless things we had to remember on pain of punishment.
    Every morning we were subjected to a ritual toilet check We were made to eat All-Bran with a couple of tablespoons of linseeds sprinkled on top. I didn’t like it particularly, but as we were told, ‘You’ll eat what you’re given,’ there was no choice. There was no fruit or toast or other cereal and you simply couldn’t refuse. We were meant to feel grateful that we were getting food at all, given what we’d come from.
    Eunice was particularly hard on Sarah. Every morning she would make Sarah go to