But as soon as the police were gone and they were alone with Rose, they told her that she must admit all the bad things she'd done or Amazing Grace wasn't going to be able to help her. "You know the things you've done with boys," Mrs. Hays said. "You know what drugs you've used, the kind of music you've been listening to."
Rose was frantic. She'd never done anything bad with boys, and her favorite music was classical. Sure she did listen to rock music but--. Mrs. Hays shook her head. Denying who and what she had done was bad, said Mrs. Hays. She did not want to see Rose again until Rose had had a change of attitude.
Rose was given ugly shapeless clothes to wear, and escorted everywhere around the grim sterile buildings by two older students who stood guard over her even when she had to use the bathroom. They would not give her a minute of privacy. They watched her when she performed the most delicate of bodily functions.
The food was unbearable, and lessons were reading and copying Bible verses. Rose was slapped for making eye contact with other girls, or with teachers, or for trying to "talk," or for asking questions, and made to scrub the dining room on her hands and knees for failing to show a "good attitude."
When Rose demanded to call home, to talk to her aunts about where she was, she was taken to "a time-out room," a small closet with one high window, and there she was beaten with a leather belt by an older woman who told her that she had better show a change of attitude now, and that if she didn't she'd never be allowed a phone call to her "family."
"Do you want to be a bad girl?" asked the woman sorrowfully. "Don't you understand what your parents are trying to do for you here? Your parents don't want you now. You rebelled, you disappointed them."
Rose lay on the floor of that room for two days, crying. There was a bucket and a pallet there and nothing else. The floor smelled of chemical cleaners and urine. Twice people came in with food for her. An older girl crouched down and whispered, "Just go along with it. You can't win against these people. And please, eat. If you don't eat, they'll keep giving you the same plate over and over until you do eat the food, even if it's rotting."
Rose was furious. Where were Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge? Where was Uncle Lestan? What if Uncle Lestan knew what had happened and he was angry and disgusted with her? She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe he'd turn his back on her like that, not without talking to her. But she was consumed with shame for what she'd done. And she was ashamed of herself now in the shapeless clothes, her body unwashed, her hair unwashed, her skin itching and feverish.
She felt feverish all over and her system had locked up. In the bathroom, before the watchful eyes of her guardians, she could not move her bowels. Her body ached and her head ached. In fact, she was feeling the worst pain she'd ever known in her stomach and in her head.
Rose was surely running a temperature by the time she was taken to the first group session. Without a shower or bath, she felt filthy.
They put a paper sign on her that said I AM A SLUT and told her to admit that she had used drugs, that she'd listened to satanic music, that she'd slept with boys.
Over and over Rose said that she had not slept with anyone, that she had not done drugs.
Again and again, other girls stood before her screaming at her: "Admit, admit."
"Say it: 'I am a slut.' "
"Say it: 'I am an addict.' "
Rose refused. She started screaming. She'd never done drugs in her life. No one at the Willmont School did drugs. She'd never been with a boy except to kiss at a dance.
She found herself down on the floor with other girls sitting on her legs and her arms. She couldn't stop screaming until her mouth filled with vomit. She almost choked on it. With all her soul, she struggled, screaming louder and louder, spitting vomit everywhere.
When Rose awoke, she was alone in a room and she knew she was more than just a little sick. She was hot all over and the pain in her stomach was unbearable. Her head was on fire. Over and over when she heard another person passing she asked for water.
The answer came back, "Faker."
How long did she lie there? It seemed like days, but soon she was half dreaming. Over and over she prayed to Uncle Lestan. "Come get me, please, come get me. I didn't mean to do it, please, please forgive me." She couldn't imagine that he would want her to suffer like this. Surely Aunt Julie and Aunt Marge had told him what was happening. Aunt Marge had been hysterical by the time they took Rose away.
At some point, Rose realized something. She was dying. All she could think of now was water. And every time she drifted off, it was a dream that someone was giving her water; then she'd wake and there was no water; and there was no one there; no one passing; no one saying "faker," and no one saying "admit."
A strange calm came over Rose. So this is how her life would end, she thought. And maybe Uncle Lestan just didn't know or didn't understand how bad it was. What would it matter?
She slept and she dreamed but she kept shivering and waking with a jolt. Her lips were cracked. And there was so much pain in her stomach and chest and her head that she could feel nothing else.
Sliding in and out, dreaming of cold clear water in glasses from which she could drink, she heard sirens go off. They were loud screeching sirens far away but coming closer, and then alarms within this place itself went off, blasting with horrific volume. Rose could smell smoke. She could see the flicker of flames. She heard the girls screaming.
Right before her, the wall broke apart and so did the ceiling. The whole room blew apart with chunks of plaster and wood flying in all directions.
Wind swept through the room. The screams around her grew louder and louder.
A man came towards Rose. He looked like Uncle Lestan, but it wasn't Uncle Lestan. It was a dark-haired man and a beautiful man with the same bright eyes that Uncle Lestan had, except this man's eyes were green. He scooped Rose up from her pallet and wrapped her in something warm and close, and then they went upwards.
Rose saw flames all around as they rose. The entire compound was burning.
The man carried her up and up into the sky just as it had happened long years ago above the little island.
The air was marvelously cold and fresh. "Yes, the stars ...," she whispered.
When she saw the great sweep of diamond-bright stars, she was that little child again in Uncle Lestan's arms.
A gentle voice spoke in her ear, "Sleep, Rose, you're safe now. I'm taking you to your uncle Lestan."
Rose woke in a hospital room. She was surrounded by people in white coats and masks. A kindly female voice said, "You're going to be all right, darling. I'm giving you something to make you sleep."
Behind the nurse stood that man, that dark-haired man with the green eyes, who'd brought Rose here. He had the same darkly tanned skin as Uncle Lestan had, and his fingers felt like silk as he stroked Rose's cheek now.
"I'm your uncle's friend, Rose," he said. "My name is Louis." He pronounced it the French way, Louie. "Believe me, Rose, your uncle will be here soon. He's on his way. He'll take care of you, and I'll be here until he comes."
Next time she opened her eyes, she felt completely different. All the pain and pressure were gone from her stomach and chest. They'd evacuated all the waste from her body, she realized that. And when she thought of how revolting that must have been, fingers prying into her unwashed flesh, removing all that filth, she felt ashamed again and sobbed against the pillow. She felt to blame and miserable. The tall dark-haired man stroked her hair and told her not to worry anymore. "Your aunt Julie is on the way. Your uncle is on the way. Go back to sleep, Rose."
Though she was groggy and confused, she could see she was being given fluids and something white, some sort of IV nourishment. The doctor came. She said it would be about a week before Rose could leave, but the "danger" was past. It had been touch and go there for a while, all right. But Rose would be fine. The infection was under control; Rose was hydrated now. The man named Louis thanked the doctor and the nurse.
Rose
blinked through her tears. The room was filled with flowers. "He's sent you lilies," said Louis. He had a soft deep voice. "He's sent you roses, too, all colors of roses. Your flower, Rose."
When Rose started to apologize for what she'd done, Louis wouldn't hear of it. He told her the people who'd taken her were "evil." The judge had gotten kickbacks from the Christian home to send perfectly decent teenagers there for incarceration. The school bilked the parents of the children and the state for exorbitant payments. He said that the judge would soon be in jail. As for the home, it was gone, burned down, shut up, and lawyers would see that it never opened again.
"It was wrong what they did to you," he whispered.
In his soft unhurried voice, he said there would be many lawsuits against the home. And the remains of two bodies had been found buried on the grounds. He wanted Rose to know these people would be punished.
Rose was amazed. She wanted to explain about the car, that she had never meant to hurt anybody.
"I know," he said. "It was a little thing. It was nothing. Your uncle is not angry with you. He would never be angry with you over such a thing. Sleep now."
By the time Uncle Lestan came Rose was home with Aunt Marge in a Miami Beach apartment. She had lost weight and felt frail and jumped at the slightest noise. But she was much better. Uncle Lestan took her into his arms, and they went out to walk along the beach together.
"I want you to go to New York," said Uncle Lestan. "New York is the capital of the world. And I want you to go to school there. Aunt Marge is going to take you. Aunt Julie will stay behind. Florida is her home and she can't adjust to the big city. But Aunt Marge will take care of you, and you're to have other companions now, good, decent security guards who'll keep you both safe. I want you to have the finest education." He went on, "Remember, Rose, whatever you've suffered, no matter how bad it's been, you can use that, use that to be a stronger person."
For hours they talked, not about the horrid Christian home but about other things, Rose's love of books, her dreams of writing poetry and stories someday, and her enthusiasm about New York, and how she so wanted to go to a great university like Harvard or Stanford or who knows where?
Those were wonderful hours. They'd stopped at a cafe on South Beach, and Uncle Lestan sat there quietly, leaning on his elbows, beaming at her as she poured out all her thoughts and dreams and questions.
The new apartment in New York was on the Upper East Side, about two blocks from the park in a venerable old building with spacious rooms and high ceilings. Aunt Marge and Rose were both overjoyed to be there.
Rose went to a marvelous day school which had a curriculum far superior to that of the Willmont School. With the help of several tutors, mostly college students, Rose soon caught up and was deep into her school work preparing to go to college.
Though Rose missed the beautiful beach in Florida and the lovely warm sweet rural nights, she was ecstatic to be in New York, loved her schoolmates, and was secretly happy that Aunt Marge was with her and not Aunt Julie, as Aunt Marge had always been the adventurous one, the mischievous one, and they had more fun together.
Their household soon included a permanent housekeeper and cook, and the security-guard drivers who took them everywhere.
There were times when Rose wanted to strike out on her own, meet kids on her own, take the subway, be independent.
But Uncle Lestan was adamant. Rose's drivers went where Rose went. Embarrassed as Rose was by the big stretch Lincoln limousine that dropped her off at school, she came to depend on this. And these drivers were all past masters of double parking anywhere in Midtown while Rose shopped, and thought nothing of carrying twenty and thirty bundles and even braving the checkout lines for Rose, or running errands for her. They were young mostly, cheerful guys, and kind of like guardian angels.
Aunt Marge was frank about enjoying all this completely.
It was a new way of life, and it had its charms, but the real lure of course was New York itself. She and Aunt Marge had subscription tickets to the symphony, the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera. They attended the latest musicals on Broadway, and plenty of off-Broadway plays. They shopped at Bergdorf Goodman and Saks; they roamed the Metropolitan Museum for hours on Saturdays and often spent weekends visiting the galleries in the Village and SoHo. This was life!
Over the phone, Rose talked endlessly to Uncle Lestan about this or that play she'd seen, or concert, or what was happening with Shakespeare in the Park, and how they wanted to go to Boston this weekend, just to see it, and perhaps visit Harvard.
The summer before Rose's senior year, she and Aunt Marge met Uncle Lestan in London for a marvelous week of visiting the most wonderful sites after hours and with private guides. Then Aunt Marge and Rose went on to Rome, and to Florence and to a whole string of other cities before returning to New York just in time for school to start.
It was sometime just before her eighteenth birthday that Rose turned to the internet to research the ghastly Amazing Grace Home for Girls where she'd been imprisoned. She had never told anyone she knew about what actually happened to her there.
The news reports confirmed everything Louis had told her long ago. The judge who'd sent Rose there had gone to prison. And two lawyers had gone with him.
On Rose's last night there, apparently, a boiler had exploded, setting fire to the entire establishment. Two other explosions had destroyed outbuildings and stables. Rose had never known there were stables. Local firefighters and police had converged on the school to find girls wandering the grounds dazed and incoherent from the shock of the blast, and many had had visible welts and bruises from being beaten. One or two had shaved heads; and two had been taken to local emergency rooms due to malnutrition and dehydration. Some girls had the words SLUT and ADDICT written on them with felt-tip pen. Newspaper stories reflected contempt and outrage. They railed against the school as a racket, part of the unregulated religious Troubled Teen Industry in which parents were bilked out of thousands of dollars to pay for "reformation" of teen girls they feared were in danger of becoming druggies or dropouts or suicides.
Everybody connected with the place had been indicted for something, it seemed; but charges eventually were dropped. There was no law requiring regulation of religious schools in Florida, and the owners and "faculty" of the place dropped out of the record.
But it was easy to trace Dr. Hays and Mrs. Hays. They had both died within months in a fiery home invasion. One of the other more notorious teachers had drowned off Miami Beach. And yet another had been killed in a car wreck.
Rose hated to admit it but this gave her a great deal of satisfaction. At the same time, something about it bothered Rose. A terrible feeling crept over her. Had someone punished these people for what they'd done, done to Rose and to others? But that was absurd. Who would do such a thing? Who could do such a thing? She put it out of her mind, and it was dreadful, she told herself, to be glad these people were dead. Rose did a little more reading on the Troubled Teen Industry and other scandals besetting these unregulated Christian schools and homes, but then she couldn't endure another moment of thinking of it all. It made her too angry, and when she became angry, she became ashamed, ashamed that she'd ever--. There was no end to it. She closed the book on that brief and horrid chapter of her life. The present beckoned.
Uncle Lestan wanted Rose to follow her own star when it came to college. He assured her nothing was off-limits.
She and Marge flew to California to visit Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley.
Stanford, near beautiful Palo Alto, California, was Rose's final choice, and Rose and Marge moved the July before school started.
Uncle Lestan met Rose in San Francisco for a brief holiday in August. Rose fell in love with the city, and had half a mind to live there and commute. Uncle Lestan had another suggestion. Why not live near campus as planned, and have an apartment in San Francisco? It was soon arranged, and Rose and Marge moved into a spacious modern condo wa
lking distance from Davies Symphony Hall and the San Francisco Opera House.
Their small house on a tree-lined street in Palo Alto was charming. And though the change of coasts meant a new housekeeper, and two new drivers, Rose was soon settled in and loving the California sunshine.
After her first week of classes, Rose was in love with her literature professor, a tall, wiry, and introspective man who spoke with the affectation of an actor. Gardner Paleston was his name; he'd been a prodigy of sorts, publishing four volumes of poetry as well as two books on the work of William Carlos Williams before he was thirty. At thirty-five, he was brooding, intense, bombastic, and utterly seductive. He flirted openly with Rose, and told her over coffee after class that she was the most beautiful young woman he'd ever seen. He e-mailed her poems about her "raven hair" and "inquisitive eyes." He took her to dinner at expensive restaurants and showed her his large, old Georgian-style home in old Palo Alto. His mother and father were dead, he said. His brother had died in Afghanistan. And so he haunted the house, now, what a waste, but he couldn't bear to give it up, filled as it was with the "rag-and-bone shop of my childhood."
When Uncle Lestan came to visit, he took Rose walking through the quiet leafy streets of Palo Alto. He remarked on the magnolia trees and their hard, rustling green leaves, and how he loved them from his time "in the South."
He was mussed and dusty all over and Rose realized that she'd often seen Uncle Lestan this way, exquisitely dressed, but dusty.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tease him about flying about in the stars, but she didn't. His skin was more darkly tanned than usual and looked almost burned, and his beautiful thick hair was almost white.
He wore a dark blue blazer and khaki pants and black shoes shined to look like glass, and he talked in a low, gentle voice telling her that she must always remember: she could do absolutely anything in this world that she wanted. She could be a writer, a poet, a musician, an architect, a doctor, a lawyer, whatever it was, that she wanted. And if she wanted to marry and make a home for her husband and her children that was fine, too. "If money can't buy you the freedom to do anything you want, well, what is the good of it?" he asked. He sounded almost sad. "And money you have, Rose. Plenty of it. And time. And if time can't give us freedom to do what we want, what good is time?"