Mail Order Annie
Copyright© 2025 by DFL Runner
Chapter 6
Annie withdrew into her mind over the next several days. Word had passed through the house what the minister had done, and while the women made sure that she ate, they otherwise left her in peace, not even asking for their accustomed time for reading and writing lessons.
In the silence and the darkness of her curtained room, He who had called the women of His time called out to Annie. She bumped into her bedside table and knocked her Bible to the floor. As it landed, it opened to the words of the prophet Jeremiah and the promise of grace and loving-kindness found even in the wilderness, of renewal, of mourning turned to joy.
She went to church that Sunday morning, hating the fact that it would require her to sit and listen to Reverend Sexton preach. She reminded herself that she wasn’t there to meet with him, but with the One to whom he would one day answer.
Even there, in front of the entire town, the man found a way to violate her again – not her body this time, but her soul.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy!” the reverend cried out to the congregation.
For more than half an hour, he preached on this message, of the need to extend care and concern and kindness to others. Whether deliberate or coincidental, at one point his eyes met hers as he said, “Even the women of that awful house just beyond the mill, even they must be shown mercy. Our Lord consorted even with the likes of them! We ought to show His mercy and His compassion to them, that they might turn and be saved!”
Annie gripped the pew in front of her until her knuckles turned white. Only her remaining sense of pride and propriety prevented her from standing and screaming at him, demanding for herself the consideration he publicly requested for her compatriots.
As Annie turned her eyes away from him, they fell on the stained-glass rendering of Christ extending His hand in fellowship and invitation, and she thought of the verse she had read after picking the Good Book up off the floor the other day: “I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.”
Annie remembered the way Hattie had found out of the town’s clutches: the notice in the magazine. She wondered now if those outstretched hands might be reaching out to her, inviting her to seek a way out of this madness, inviting her to a new beginning, perhaps even ... did she dare hope? ... inviting her back to her place at the front of the classroom.
Abruptly, she noticed the sanctuary was empty, and she saw the Reverend outside the building, bidding farewell to the last of his congregants. As she walked out the door and past him, the jovial tone of his voice – so different from the oily tone he had used to demand her humanity – greeted her.
“Sister Halsey! This is the day the Lord hath made! I am glad you came to rejoice in it with us!”
Contemptuously, she spat on the ground at his feet and walked away.
Her determination as she turned her back on him, she knew, was false bravado. Leaving him behind ... leaving Scranton behind ... required money. What she earned teaching the women of the house would not be enough.
Annie reluctantly acknowledged her only other viable option: offering her services to the men who came to the house.
Scarcely able to believe she was doing so, she spoke to Lydia about it that very afternoon. Annie approached the dispassionate conversation that followed with equal parts amazement and repulsion. She had never imagined she would learn how to be a businesswoman in the business of selling herself.
Later, Annie would often reflect on that Sunday afternoon and the following Monday evening ... and not with fondness.
She would remember how Lydia had found a dress her size in the attic. It was very utilitarian for its purpose – it looked fancy, but could be removed with very little difficulty.
She would remember feeling as if she were one of her own students in the classroom, except instead of learning the steps for solving a long-division problem, she learned the steps of her evening: dress, come to the parlor, negotiate, go to her room, do what was necessary, wash afterward, repeat.
That Monday night, she put on a tight corset, then the dress. Lydia put her makeup on her – as a farm girl, it would have been silly to wear makeup, and her dress code as a teacher forbade it, so she had never learned how to fix her own makeup.
Her first client had been almost sympathetic. He was a visiting executive in town to negotiate a business deal at the steel mill. Soft-spoken and gray-haired, he came to her room and spoke briefly of his wife, who he said had died two years prior.
But, sympathetic or not, he was still a man. And a customer. As she swayed slightly and let him see her hands trace the fabric over her body, she looked at a point just behind his left shoulder, giving the appearance of looking at him but not actually doing so. Even so, she could not fail to see the lust beginning to form in his eyes and on his face.
She subtly undid all but one of the buttons on her dress. Still looking just over his shoulder, she whispered to him, “Would you like to help with the last one?”
Lydia’s words echoed in her mind as she felt his hand on her body: “Remember he is not touching you. He is touching a product. Your body is the product. But remember that you are not.”
The man tried – and failed – to be subtle about brushing his fingers over her breasts as he undid the last button near her collarbone and slid the dress off her. Annie bit back the protest that instinctively rose from within her. She thought of Reverend Sexton and his arrogance, and reminded herself that this was her means of escaping it.
The smile Annie gave the man was tight and insincere as she pulled the laces that held the corset closed. She removed it, exposing her breasts to him. She closed her eyes and sighed as he touched them.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.