Dinner is a vise on my chest. It is a gore-less horror show wrapped in a homey burlap ribbon, with a thin veneer of Good Christian Values like restraint and patience slapped over the top of it. Neither of those virtues will fix anything, but we like to pretend they do.

I don't like sitting here with a napkin unfolded on my lap, dressed in a church dress despite the fact that I didn't go today. I don't like sitting at the end of the table, across from my father, staring down at the food on my plate. I don't like any of it, but I go along with it because it's what I'm supposed to do. 

Pork and corn again. What a non-surprise. 

It's like this every week.

Mother always has me help prepare our Sunday meals. I used to love cooking with her, to hear her singing the hymns for children while shredding meat with forks and a smile. I would make the corn. I would knead the bread. 

She let me do that today, and I felt the dough swell around my fists. It stuck, un-floured, to my fingers when I braided it. I let that calm me as the voice of my mother gnawed on that sensitive nerve deep down inside of my torso. 

I have been more antsy lately. The things I used to love and cherish have been making me unimaginably morose and angry. I am here, I am meat, I am a bundle of exposed nerves, I am terrible. 

That's okay, though. The table is set. It's time for dinner. 

I sit in my designated seat, looking at the yellow kernels of corn and tan pork on my plate. I look back up at my father, who is standing, leaning over the crock pot on the table.

When it comes to cooking, he tends to leave that to my mother. When we eat, meat suddenly becomes a man's domain. He serves each of us in an odd order that I can never quite decipher. 

All six of us are here. Not one of us is missing. We look at each other, sitting in the simultaneous comfort and discomfort of Sunday night.  

I have six siblings and not one of them has said anything this entire time. I have six siblings, and I forget how many people that is until I look at them across the dinner table. 

I could never leave this place. I have six siblings. John and Mary and Ruth need me the most, out of anyone in this town. 

Except Maryanne. Maryanne kind of needs me a lot right now. 

Father looks at Mother, then takes her hand. There is no love in his eyes. There is just routine motion and the facade of adoration. "Let us pray. Jackie, would you?"

I don't have the option of saying no. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I nod and fold my arms. I bow my head. I put my feet flat on the ground in front of me. I am reverent in the way I was taught to be-- because reverence is love and I am supposed to love a deity who would despise me if he knew what I was. 

And what am I? There is something wrong with me. On the one hand, there is all the hair and the fact that something about me is changing on a physical level. On the other, I have been broken and wrong this entire time. You would think that someone as connected to the divine as Bishop Stern would have seen it, would have kept me from being the Hare, but that isn't the case. He didn't look into my heart and see my discomfort with being seen as a girl or expected to marry like my mother and her mother before her. He didn't see the warped void where my soul should be. 

I gulp down the smallest drop of spit at the back of my tongue. It sticks on the way down. "Oh God, the Eternal Father, the Sun above, we ask thee to bless this food and our souls. We thank thee for protecting us throughout the day. Please bless Maryanne and those who are searching for her, that they will find her and bring her home safely. Bless Mary and Ruth, that their upcoming choir performance will bring honor to thee. In the name of Jesus Christ, under the light of thy sun, Amen."

Quiet amens bounce around the room in five other voices until it comes to rest in the middle of the table where my braided loaf of bread sits untouched, uncut. Mother cuts it open with a long, serrated blade. Steam spirals to the ceiling under the suffocating yellow light. 

Bringing up Maryanne was a bad idea. It was a risky move. I'm glad that nobody has objected to it, though. I'm glad that they have not started to yell, that I am untouched at the moment. I raise my glass of water to my lips, all too jittery but secretly a little pleased with myself. Relief is a coward's emotion, and I feel it in spades. 

Father clears his throat to make sure that we are all looking at him. Father is only imposing because I know him. If I didn't, I would think him clean, bland, unassuming, and entirely average. A bit of a paunch has started to grow in his stomach as he has grown older. It's just a side effect of aging, like how his hair has started to gray and recede. He takes pride in the severe widow's peak. 

"Children," he says. He looks at my mother, smiles, whispers her name then continues, "I have an announcement."

I hate him. I hate being around him. I hate everything. He makes me want to scream. He makes me want to throw knives at my feet. He makes me want to throw myself off a cliff.

I am afraid, for a moment, that he is going to say something about me. I don't know what he would talk about, but I'm convinced that he knows something I did wrong, even if I don't. Maybe he read my diary-- not the one I know he reads, but the secret one I keep under my floorboards in the closet, the one I know I should have gotten rid of a long time ago. It is wrong to disobey them, after all; anything that happens to me because of it is my fault. 

We all look at him. I don't want to, but I do. I shove down everything rising inside me. I stick mental hands on the ringing alarms in the back of my skull. My blood is cold from dread. But I swallow it. I swallow it and listen to what he has to say.

He smiles at us. "I have been called to serve on the Council."

John cheers, jumps up from his seat, and wraps his arms around Father. Ruth smiles. Mary claps like a little seal. Mother beams, nothing but pride and joy. I have to react accordingly, so I put on a fake smile. I am very good at pretending.

Father ruffles John's hair and directs him back to his chair. Then he turns back to the rest of us. "This will mean that some changes will be happening. John, Ruth, Mary-- you will have to go to school earlier if I am going to drive you. Your mother will tend to more of the chores around my house, but so will the three of you. Each of you will have an extra chore to do. You too, Jacqueline."

When he says my full name, my blood runs cold again. I forget that I have a name, sometimes. I tend to just exist in my head, and not in the meat-space. Still, I nod, like I understand and want to obey. 

He continues, "Jacqueline, you will also have new responsibilities. I have begun speaking with some men in town, looking for a husband for you. I expect you to begin preparations for courting and marriage. You and I will also be spending more time together as a result. I will drive you to and from the church in the mornings when I go into town for my meetings. You will walk home in the evenings. You will begin dressing correctly. Do you understand?"

I nod, knowing I have no choice.

"It will be hard, to find a young man who is not intimidated by you and your... talents. We will put in the work, though." He says it with only slight disgust, like this is something people just say to each other. I guess they do. He's saying it, after all. He puts a hand on my shoulder over the table. "This family has been blessed by the Lord and we will repay him in turn." 

"Good." As if there were any question. As if seething resentment didn't live just behind his teeth. "I expect you all to keep things whipped into shape. This place will fall apart without your cooperation."

Mother makes a noise as if she wants to say something, but Father cuts her off by speaking over her. She does not object, not when her very voice is stolen from her.

"We will all have to pitch in." Like so many things, the except for me part goes unsaid. "You will all reap the benefits of this. God will offer us blessings as a result of our diligence to Him, His plan, and His prophet."

We nod. Mary gives me a look full of optimism and pure gladness. I smile back at her because I love my little sister (my sweet, wonderful Mary), and I want to protect her from the storm of doubt rolling in me.

"This is so wonderful." Mother smiles sweetly, genuine. She really believes in all this, she really does. "First my oldest daughter is chosen as the Spring Hare, then my wonderful and righteous husband is called to the Council of Twelve. I couldn't be prouder. I couldn't be more grateful." When she clears the table, she takes special care to kiss me on the top of the head. She whispers in my ear, "I love you, my sweet Jackie."

I smile, too. It's genuine. There's a bit of light in all this darkness. She may lash out in anger, but I think she really does love me. It's easier to believe that when my ears aren't ringing, and her hands aren't leaving marks and blood behind like forgotten souvenirs.

I help her clear the table. That's my duty, isn't it? 

The leftovers go in big glass bowls covered by plastic wrap. We will eat them in the days to come. We will eat corn until there is nothing left but us and the kernels filling every crack in our very beings. We will glut on it until there is nothing left. There has only ever been corn. There will only ever be corn. 

For now, though, it will sit in the fridge and the rest of us will retreat to our rooms for personal scripture study before going to bed early. That's how Sundays go. 

I climb the stairs to my bedroom. Near shaking, I close my door behind me and let out the long, quivering sigh I have been holding in all afternoon. It's easy to let myself go out. It's easy to feel numb, even though I'm not sure why. It's like I am swimming in gelatin, drowning in aspic-- I can't breathe.

I don't take out my scriptures. I don't want to. For the first time in my life, I have decided to spend my Sunday evening doing what I want instead of dreading every moment and gloomily marching along to complete the tasks someone else set out for me. I brush my teeth, floss out all the corn and pork, and immediately go to bed. 

My dreams confuse me. 

In one, I only seem to partially be myself. I see myself from outside my body at first, before I am inside it. I am myself, but I'm also not. I don't look like myself. I am covered in; I have giant ears that flop and twitch. Looking down at my hands and my thighs beyond them confirmed the suspicion that I was, in fact, in the body of a giant anthropomorphic hare. 

The scene changes. I am wearing a long white dress with a train. My vision is obscured by lace; I hold a bouquet in shaking hands. There is no groom to be seen, just heard. Then the fire starts, burning toward me. It doesn't burn the landscape. The mountain is fine. I am the only one consumed.

I wake, tangled in my sheets and covered with a sheen of sweat. It's near nightfall; the evening is bleeding from pale blues to darkness. Groggy and unsure, I lay there for a moment. It's hard to think when your brain is nothing but soup. 

When I come to my senses, it all makes a little more sense. It was just a nightmare. It doesn't matter. 

I smile and stretch out like a cat in the little sunlight preserved in the jewel-toned sky. My dress, which I went to sleep in, is wrapped around me and hiked up past my hips by the twisting of sleep. My stockings are soaked through with sweat. It's no wonder that I woke up just a few hours later. It's no wonder that I slept so poorly. It is hotter than it should be in here. 

I lay there, knowing full well that this is the prime time for going out, for looking for Maryanne. A plan starts to form in my mind. I know what I have to do.

Who cares if I'm putting myself in danger? Not even the impending night can't hold me back. I'm eighteen. I'm old enough to make some decisions for myself.

So I do.