Practical Demonkeeping

beatings.
    Rachel bore the abuse as if it were a penance sent down by God for the sin of being a woman. Her mother had endured the same sort of abuse from her father, with the same resignation. It was just the way things worked.
    Then, one day, while Rachel was waiting at the laundromat for Merle’s shirts to dry, a woman approached her. It was the day after a particularly vicious beating and Rachel’s face was bruised and swollen.
    “It’s none of my business,” the woman said. She was tall and stately and in her mid-forties. She had a way about her that frightened Rachel, a presence, but her voice was soft and strong. “But when you get some time, you might read this.” She held out a pamphlet to Rachel and Rachel took it. The title was The Wheel of Abuse .
    “There are some numbers in the back that you can call. Everything will be okay,” the woman said.
    Rachel thought it a strange thing to say. Everything was okay. But the woman had impressed her, so she read the pamphlet.
    It talked about human rights and dignity and personal power. It spoke to Rachel about her life in a way that she had never thought possible. The Wheel of Abuse was her life story. How did they know?
    Mostly it talked about courage to change. She kept the pamphlet and hid it away in a box of tampons under the bathroom sink. It stayed there for two weeks. Until the morning she ran out of coffee.
    She could hear the sound of Merle’s plane disappearing in the distance as she stared into the mirror at the bloody hole where her front teeth used to be. She dug out the pamphlet and called one of the numbers on the back.
    Within a half hour two women arrived at the trailer. They packed Rachel’s belongings and drove her to the shelter. Rachel wanted to leave a note for Merle, but the two women insisted that it was not a good idea.
    For the next three weeks Rachel lived at the shelter. The women at the shelter cared for her. They gave her food and understanding and affection, and in return they asked only that she acknowledge her own dignity. When she made the call to Merle to tell him where she was, they all stood by her.
    Merle promised that it would all change. He missed her. He needed her.
    She returned to the trailer.
    For a month Merle did not hit her. He did not touch her at all. He didn’t even speak to her.
    The women at the shelter had warned her about this type of abuse: the withdrawal of affection. When she brought it up to Merle one evening while he was eating, he threw a plate in her face. Then he proceeded to give her the worst beating of her life. Afterward he locked her outside the trailer for the night.
    The trailer was fifteen miles from the nearest neighbor, so Rachel was forced to cower under the front steps to escape the cold. She was not sure she could walk fifteen miles.
    In the middle of the night Merle opened the door and shouted, “By the way, I ripped the phone out, so don’t waste your time thinking about it.” He slammed and locked the door.
    When the sun broke in the east, Merle reappeared. Rachel had crawled under the trailer, where he could not reach her. He lifted the plastic skirting and shouted to her, “Listen, bitch, you’d better be here when I get home or you’ll get worse.”
    Rachel waited in the darkness under the trailer until she heard the biplane roar down the strip. She climbed out and watched the plane climb gradually into the distance. Although it hurt her face, and the cuts on her mouth split open, she couldn’t help smiling. She had discovered her personal power. It lay hidden under the trailer in a five-gallon asphalt can, now half full of aviation grade motor oil.
    A policeman came to the trailer that afternoon. His jaw was set with the stoic resolve of a man who knows he has an unpleasant task to perform and is determined to do it, but when he saw Rachel sitting on the steps of the trailer, the color drained from his face and he ran to her. “Are you all right?”
    Rachel could not speak. Garbled sounds bubbled from her broken mouth. The policeman drove her to the hospital in his cruiser. Later, after she had been cleaned up and bandaged, the policeman came to her room and told her about the crash.
    It seemed that Merle’s biplane lost power after a pass over a field. He was unable to climb fast enough to avoid a high-tension tower and flaming bits of Merle were scattered across a field of budding strawberries. Later, at the funeral, Rachel would comment, “It was how he would