When I put the twins to bed, Steven was in the TV room, eating ice cream and watching part of a series of talks by Reverend Carl, who I now believe might be my son’s hero. The two of them make a pair, both so steadfast in their ideas of reversion to a former time, an age when men were men and women were women and glory glory fucking hallelujah, things were so much easier back when we all knew our places. I can’t hate Steven because he believes in something so wrong, even if I hate what he believes.

Other men, though, are different.

Not long after Sonia’s fifth birthday, after we were fitted with the counters, I phoned my doctor at home, ready with a precisely worded set of questions, a pidgin of sorts. I pared the phrases down, eliminating copulas and modifiers, getting to the meat as quickly as possible. The recorder would pick up every word, even a whisper.

Who knows what I expected from her, what my doctor of more than ten years could tell me? Maybe I wanted a partner in silence. Maybe I only wanted to hear how pissed off she was.

Dr. Claudia answered, listened; and a low moan escaped before her husband came on the line.

“Whose fault do you think it was?” he said.

I stood in my kitchen, wanting to explain, careful not to, while he told me we’d marched one too many times, written one too many letters, screamed one too many words.

“You women. You need to be taught a lesson,” he said, and hung up.

I didn’t call her again to ask how they had silenced her, whether they had stormed into her practice or whether they had invaded her kitchen, if they had loaded her into a van along with her daughters and spelled out the future inside a dim gray room before fixing shiny wristbands on each of them and sending them home to cook and clean and be supportive Pure Women. To learn our lesson.

Dr. Claudia would never have put on that collar pin, not without a fight, but I know she’s still wearing it. Probably, her daughters are, too, like Julia King next door. I knew Julia when she wore cutoff jeans and halter tops, when she raced her bike down the street with an MP3 player on full volume, singing along to the Dixie Chicks, when she caught me in the garden and told me another story about how weird her mother was acting, rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of all that Pure crap. When her father caught her talking to me—I guess it was about a year and a half ago, now—he took Julia by the arm and shuttled her through the screen back door.

I still remember what her crying sounded like when Evan beat her.