One Arm in the Sun

I’ve never felt sunshine so sweetly before. I never thought I’d feel it again after tonight. But after clawing blindly through the trees, branches swiping at what remained of my body, I felt an empowering release at the touch of sun on skin. I laughed, sobbed and fell to the soft grass where I stood. Maybe the dizziness was from the spinning I couldn’t stop myself from doing, or maybe it was from the blood loss, I couldn’t tell. But it didn’t matter. I felt happy and I hadn’t felt that way in years. I clutched at the numb stump of my right arm and only felt stringy wet. They didn’t even do a clean job taking it. Black dotted my vision, but before falling comfortably into it, I saw the night replayed in quick succession: the bonfire, the white dresses, the wreath placed on my head. What one hell of a way to celebrate your 18th birthday, right?

Waking in a hospital was jarring. Unexpected, even. I truly thought I died and if this was the heaven I was promised? I didn’t want its sterile walls. But it dawned on me soon enough that no, I was in fact still kicking it, which was both exhilarating and disappointing.

“Easy, easy,” a nurse with a kind face was speaking, but her words weren’t matching her lips pace, “Quick movements won’t do you any good, dear!” I’d failed to sit up, which had brought back a new dizzy spell. I was helped into a more comfortable position before my kind-face nurse nodded at a chair in the corner before leaving. It didn’t take long to realize it was a woman in a uniform who was rising and walking towards me slowly. I went to scratch at my arm, a nervous tic, remembering it wasn’t there anymore when my fingernails met nothing. I looked and was grateful to find bandages. I still couldn’t feel anything on that side, but I figured it had something to do with the IV bag I was hooked up to.

“You certainly had a rough evening. How are you feeling?”

The woman–police, detective?-didn’t look kind like the nurse, but the softness in her voice said otherwise. “Yeah,” my tongue was thick, “Things didn’t go how they were supposed to.” She smiled understandingly. “Why don’t you walk me through what happened? From the start?” I lolled my head up and down and took a deep breath. From the beginning, then?

…

I’d always thought my family was a bit eccentric. Even as a child, I saw the things they did and found it odd, but I accepted it wholeheartedly. This was my family, after all. This was supposed to be normal. Being homeschooled was fine, because so was everybody else within our tight-knit community. Going to our Church every evening for sermons and lectures was also normal. Denouncing the rest of the world because they weren’t like us, didn’t worship like us, was normal because they were all set to die at the end of the day anyways. That’s what made not going into the general public normal: they were all awful sinners who would corrupt our minds and drag us down into Hell by even associating with them.

Day-in-day-out we’d wake at sunrise, tend to our gardens, do our schooling, worship and repeat. For years, I knew this to be normal. An odd feeling normal, but normal nonetheless. I ignored the pit in my stomach year after year. But one year, I simply couldn’t anymore. Especially not after my parents sat me down to explain our community’s “right of passage”. I had just turned ten. Which gave me eight years to digest the information they told me that day. Digest I did, but never accepted it, not fully.

“It’s a tradition we’ve been doing for centuries,” my mother had claimed, holding both my hands, “It’s for our safety. For our guaranteed entry into Heaven! A sacrifice we must make.” She squeezed my hands in her single one, since that’s all she had. That’s all anyone here had. That evening, my parents took me to see my first ever ceremony. A young girl’s eighteenth birthday had arrived and it was time for her to make her sacrifice. Nobody had a choice, not even of which arm they’d rather have removed. It was always the dominant arm, right at the elbow. It was supposed to symbolize giving up an important part of yourself for our God, to prove you're worthy and dedicated enough to be saved. Of course, years later I learned it was just a submission tactic to keep everyone in line. It’s difficult to fight back with one arm.

I watched as that girl was taken to the front of our Church, dressed in white, a ring of dried flowers on her head. She was given a cup of what we were told was an “elixir of life”. Now I know it was laced with some hard drugs and painkillers, so she could have a “spiritual experience” and not feel the pain. It only worked so well. Kneeling next to the table, all of us watching, our Prophet with a bone saw in hand, she still screamed. Even as he shushed her like a child, she was still loud. I was traumatized. Her stump was cauterized and her arm held high into the air, dripping and limp. The pews cheered, dozens of single-armed adults thrusting their own remaining arm up in support. All of the arms were buried in a small shack behind our Church that held an elaborate altar and shrine. Our limbs were offerings. I only snuck into that shack once and the smell drove me right back out.

Speaking of our Prophet, Trevor, it was fitting that he was the only one of us who still had two arms intact. He told us all the story many times; that he was the chosen one because our God had told him to cut his arm off himself and he did! Only it grew back because he was oh-so special, destined to lead our community to salvation. We all believed him. Trusted him. Too brainwashed to disagree or think about it more than we wanted to or could. He was tall, demanding and would stroke his thick beard when thinking. Admittedly, he was a terrifying man to be around.

Things started to get messy when I turned fifteen. One person from the community had somehow managed to escape, a teenager like myself at the time, who was terrified of his eighteenth birthday that was peeking around the corner. And while I couldn’t say it out loud, I feared in secret with him. He didn’t get very far though; just the local town and police station, but when he got there, he didn’t know what to tell them. He froze. Said he was lost and scared and didn’t want to go home. When the cop car rolled onto the gravel by our community's little front gate, Trevor had spread the hissing word to everyone else to stay inside, especially those with a stump.

“Sinners cannot cast their gaze on those chosen to be saved,” I remember him spitting, standing at my front door, “Or the process will be reversed! I’ll take care of it.” And take care of it he did. He became buddy-buddy with the officer and they shared a cigarette while Trevor explained the young boy was his own who’d run off out of rebellion, nothing more. I remember peeking at them from my tiny bedroom window. But while the officer seemed content with the explanation, he didn’t seem all that satisfied with what he saw in his surroundings. He was sweet-talked out of knocking on people's doors, told we were simply a religious off-the-grid community that wanted as much space as possible from anything modern. That same police officer returned the next day with a partner, but Trevor scared them off soon enough with talks of trespassing and suing for no warrant. They left soon after, but not without a raised eyebrow. That afternoon, Trevor had rounded up in our little Church and declared it was our God’s divine will for us to move. It wasn’t safe for us where we were anymore. And with that, we were all packed by sundown and disappeared into the woods. We walked for a week. We left behind those who couldn’t keep up. Trevor would speak to those complaining individually and claim they decided to take a different path that he couldn’t stop. A loud cracking sound would suggest otherwise, but nobody said anything.

Eventually we stopped. Started fresh. Build new gardens and mini huts that did little against the rain and snow. We lost and we gained members. We buried our arms behind a flat boulder now used for ceremonies. We were starved and delirious. We believed every word Trevor told us. With each passing month, my parents would squeeze my right hand and remind me of the coming day I would truly become one of them. It made me want to throw up, but I’d smile and nod. I couldn’t run off like that boy had. We never saw him after that morning he was returned by the cop car. There had been plenty of times when my parents were out working the fields, hunting down deer, that I was left alone and testing out what life would be like with only my left arm. The answer was, it was nearly impossible. I hated it. I never made a true plan of what I’d do when my eighteenth birthday rolled around, but at that point I knew I couldn’t go through with it. I was plagued by this for my remaining three years until the day before, when all food was confiscated from me, my hair done in braids and I was dressed in white.

We started doing the ceremony out in the woods. The boulder wasn’t that far and we didn’t have the resources to build a proper Church. Trevor had turned to making a bonfire for the event to use as a cauterizer. The burn scars looked gnarly. Not everybody lived. Not that everyone did before the move, but the death rate took on a sharp incline after we left behind our structured homes and stoves. I’d managed to sneak some water in the dead of night before the day of and still wasn’t any closer to a way out. So tired, hungry and a little dizzy, I made the walk to the boulder the next evening with a blank mind. By the time we’d arrived, I already had the elixir cup in my hands. I could barely drink from it. The rest slipped from my fingers out of pure nerves. Trevor didn’t seem to notice or care that much. I was marched up to stone, made to kneel next to it and extend my right arm. All I could think or feel was blank. Nothing registered. I was moving mechanically.

That was until the saw bit my flesh and chewed. My nerves snapped and sung, my skin burned and my head exploded. I started screaming. And flailing, as it turned out. It was like I’d been freed from a fog and got my free-will back. Although I was weak, so was everybody else at this time. I remember kicking out my feet, swatting my left arm back and forth until I eventually hit someone who stumbled back and my feet made purchase with the dirt and I was gone. I ran as others behind me screamed, but I don’t know if any pursued. I imagine they thought I’d be dead within a matter of hours and wasn’t worth the energy. I ran throughout the night, never stopping. I was scared to stop. Stopping meant defeat. I had no plan. No end goal. Just keep moving. And I did until I reached a thinning of trees and was gifted with a clearing. I didn’t even register the carefully paved trail a little further past the grass I collapsed into. This clearing felt like my endpoint. My escape. My victory.

It was later explained to me by the detective in the hospital that I had been discovered by a rescue helicopter. Turns out I was close to a local hiking trail that a little boy had gone missing by. They were looking for him, but while searching, they found me first. I was told it was a horrific scene from above. From the amount of blood loss, I would have almost died if they hadn’t discovered my body laying in that big red circle. At least it made me obvious. They followed the trail I’d left behind in the woods until they found two things: my arm and the rest of my community. Turns out Trevor hadn’t finished sawing fully when I’d ran and my arm was discovered mostly cut, partially torn a little under half of the way I travelled. They found everybody else slumped by the flat boulder and a dead fire. I was aware that Trevor kept a gun on him, but never thought he’d have the guts to use it. I guess after I fled, he felt it was a better time than ever, especially with everyone who was left present for my ceremony.

Life after my escape wasn’t easy. I did end up learning how to live with just my left arm, got a prosthetic, got into therapy. Life is mostly good. I find myself thinking a lot about that night and the running I don’t fully remember doing. Sometimes I still go to scratch at an arm that isn’t there and shiver. But I always watch the sunrise. It still feels like victory, every morning I see it creep into the sky. That feeling alone made the rest of it worth it.