Design by Sabine Pentecost

Content warning: depictions of child abuse, religious trauma and violence.

The Devil was in her children. The Devil was in her children and when that happens all you can do is get Him out.

The mother was on the brink of tears. The father pursed his lips as his disappointments received their punishment.

The children had had one job: to attend church on their own while their parents were away. They were at that age when they should have known better. The eldest was sixteen and the youngest twelve, with two more in between. The mother was furious. Wasn’t there a single brain cell bouncing around those thick skulls? Too much good genetic material, food, and money wasted otherwise.

Now they were made to kneel in front of the rosewood shoe cabinet. On it stood a giant glow-in-the-dark statue of the Mother of Jesus, posing on a giant petri dish filled with plastic pebbles only slightly larger than grains of sand. In her hands she held the Saviour of Mankind. She was surrounded by three candles, always lit at night (a practice abandoned the moment word was received that their parents had touched down in Bali). The tiny flickering flames would light up the statue, as if the Holy Virgin herself was standing around a campfire. In front of the statue was a crucifix that came up to the waist of the Virgin. Not the plain cross of the Protestants, but one with an extra Jesus, half-naked and strewn across the cross’s horizontal arms, his miniature face contorted in agony.

The Devil needed to be beaten out.

The mother handled the cane like an expert swordsman. With every gush of fury she administered another blow, each one landing like a crack of thunder. The boys had gotten the worst of it. The youngest was shaking like a leaf in the wind. She sobbed hard tears that went uncomforted; the cane had only grazed her twice.

From the beginning it had been a massive gamble. All four had felt discomfort at the idea of skipping out. True, no one really wanted to go in the first place, but to skip out on church was sacrilegious. It’d been a little daring, a little dangerous, but in the end the minute hand had completed its swift march around the circumference of the clock, and nothing changed. The children had breathed a sigh of relief—one step closer to independence. This would be a secret the four of them would share, they decided. When they were older, they would meet and remember the time they’d skipped out on church, a brief reprieve from the shadow of their parents.

But somehow their parents knew. Maybe they could see it in their eyes, smell the lies on their breath. And then the cane would make its inevitable appearance.

“Stop crying!” the mother screamed at her daughter. “These are the consequences. If you didn’t want this y’all should’ve gone to church! What would Mother Mary say, huh? You think this is what Jesus wants? You wanna go to Hell?”

The youngest broke out into fresh sobs—dying echoes of the wails released when the canes had first unsheathed. Her two elder brothers stared into the middle distance, silent. Her youngest brother placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, but the father quickly told him to remove it.

“So much time to use your phones and your computers, but it's impossible to take one hour out of your busy lives to go to church and thank God,” scolded the mother, subconsciously tapping the rattan cane against her unmarked thigh.

The children said nothing while they were being struck. What could be said against an enemy whose mind was already set?

The mother began to cry, fresh tears rolling down her lined face—wrinkles she’d more than once attributed to her decision, long ago, to have children. “Y’all are a disgrace,” she sobbed. “All four of my children are disgraces. How could y’all do this to me?”

“My knees hurt,” the youngest cried.

“Don’t get up,” said the mother. The cane sliced through the air.

“Lead the rosary,” the father ordered the eldest, who was slumped over, drained.

“Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you,” he intoned, his delivery betraying contempt.

“Properly!” the parents chorused.

The second eldest clenched his fists together, locking his fingers and fixing the cross with a blank stare, his expression as lifeless as his Saviour’s.

“Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,” the eldest began.

“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death, Amen,” continued his siblings.

The youngest wiped the tears from her eyes with a chubby arm. “Amen,” she said, lip quivering.

“Y’all better pray you don’t go to Hell,” the mother said. “At your age and still you disobey your parents. I can't stand it.”

No one answered. The rosary went on, one slow death march of hail Marys after another. Their words were the same, but each prayed for different things.

“We do this because we care,” said the mother.

“We care more than other parents out there,” said the father.

The mother shook. She clenched the cane in her grip, seized by another episode of manic fury—a flurry of beatings about to begin.

“The Devil is in my children,” she said.