By Ashleigh Adams

Mama only dances when Daddy isn’t home. Just this morning, she spun me around in big, dizzy twirls while we gathered eggs from the chicken coop. We put them in Mama’s special apron, the one that has separate pockets for each egg so they won’t crack on the walk back.

Today, Mama’s teaching me how to make Daddy’s favorite bread. It has raisins in it, and sugary swirls of cinnamon that look like earthworms. “This is a real treat,” Daddy says every time he eats a slice, spreading it with thick globs of butter Mama and I churn on Mondays. I always laugh when he says it because it’s funny to think about someone as big and strong as Daddy eating bread with earthworms in it and calling it a real treat.

Daddy deserves good things because he is a great man; everyone says so. “A visionary,” they say, bowing their heads when he walks through the town square. Or the men do, at least, because women don’t speak to anyone except their husbands. Or their daddies, if they’re little like me. 

“Pay attention, Ella,” Mama says when I get lazy kneading the dough. “This is something you need to learn.”

I haven’t figured out the difference between good learning and bad learning yet. Maybe I’ll understand when I’m older. Daddy talks about bad learning a lot, especially when he’s up at the pulpit in his fancy Sunday suit.

“Knowledge is a scourge,” he said last week in the big tent, in front of the whole town. “Some of you remember how it was, back then.” 

Heads nodded and the men all said “mmmhmmm” in a chorus like they were singing a hymn.

“Women rotted their brains with books. They left their babies with strangers to chase godless pursuits. What did that get us? Pain. Suffering.” Daddy paused then, and the “mmmhmmms” got louder. “Knowledge fed us lies masquerading as truth.” 

He held up the book he wrote, the thick one with the leather cover, and pointed to it. “The only truth you need is right here.” 

Then all the men in the big tent stood on their feet and clapped their hands, and it was real loud—so loud I tried to cover my ears, but Mama made me put my hands in my lap and sit pretty.

“I used to be one of those women Daddy talks about,” Mama told me later that night, with that faraway look she sometimes gets. “But Daddy brought me here. He changed me, made me new. Now we’re safe. Protected from the heathens and the murderers, and all the evils of the world.”

I like being safe. I don’t have to worry about heathens or murderers, or reading books that rot my brain. Daddy will protect me until I turn fourteen, and then he’ll pick me a husband, and I’ll get married. We’ll have babies, and then my husband will protect me and take care of our family like Daddy takes care of Mama and me. 

I put the dough in a bowl and Mama lays a tea towel over it. It’s hot in the kitchen, so she opens the little window over the sink and pulls off her sweater. She has big purple splotches all over her arms again. 

“You’re so clumsy.” I giggle and poke her with a floury finger. “Daddy will be sad you hurt yourself.”

She smiles, but her eyes are sad and watery. She wipes at them with the back of her hand. I like it better when she dances. I never understand it when she cries.