This god was a man, who gave him an idea of why he was on earth. And Walter finally knew how he could put structure in his life. Then he had met a woman. And then he moved into her place. Shut your mouth. He screamed, and

DON

Was silent, and that made Walter even more upset for some reason. Walter screamed that he would show her what pain was. He grabbed her arm and twisted it out of its joint.

When Don came to, the television was on. Walter had made margarine sandwiches. There’s no punch line.

From that day on Walter had made it his mission to make Don into a believer. He locked her in the bathroom. He made her kneel on peas. Learn Bible passages by heart, and he was never happy with the result, which meant punishment. The most memorable punishment involved the toilet, into which Walter shoved Don’s head, under water, over and over again under, until Don became panicked and flailed around—and so forth.

If an uninvolved, mentally healthy adult had observed the situation, the person would be afflicted with a total absence of hope for the child. Don trembled, and she knew she was about to die. Die. The concept was pure terror, cold bottomlessness. Don lost control of her bladder. Urine ran down her legs. Walter stepped away from Don, lying on the floor, at the exact moment when Don’s mother came home. She pissed herself, said Walter, and Don’s mother slapped her face. Then she went into the bedroom with Walter and a bottle she’d brought home with her. Don’s brother never rose from the computer.

The next day Don waited for her mother at the bus stop. When she arrived after Don had been waiting there for an hour, when Don told her everything, her mother walked silently with her to their housing estate. She said to Walter, who was cooking something in a pot: “My daughter lied to me. She made up bad things about you.” Then Don’s mother began to cry and yell at Don that she begrudged her happiness in life, and to Walter she said: “You have to punish her.” Walter dragged Don into the bedroom, shoved her onto the bed and ordered her to take down her pants and not to piss herself again. Don heard Walter remove his belt from his pants. Then he hit her. For several minutes. One could withstand being hit, if one distracted oneself. By taking a vow, for instance. Don swore that nobody was going to harm her. Never again. She no longer felt the humiliation, she saw the pitifulness of Walter, of her mother. It was just a question of time until she would get out. Disappear. Walter, however, took care of himself. He met a new woman and moved with her to London.

That was the summer when everything went wrong.

Or something new began.