Beyond Belief (16 page)

And what about Abe Lincoln? (And everyone else who ever lived? Except maybe . . . Jesus?)

Was he
really
still
living?

Nothing made much sense.

And what about concussions? What if I had one? Could I die from a concussion? Should Mom and Dad have taken me to the hospital?

The next morning at breakfast I felt perfectly fine. I sat at the kitchen table, eating my breakfast of Quisp cereal with one hand while the other hand gently twisted my earrings one rotation each. My ears were sore and unpleasantly crusty, but I
adored
my earrings. They made me look so much older than I had the day before.

Dad bounded down the stairs, singing, “Oh what a beautiful morning,” and then he was standing behind me, affectionately squeezing my shoulders.

“You’ve had a beautiful demonstration,” he said. “If you like, you can come with Mom and me to next Wednesday’s Testimony Meeting and share it.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I fiddled with one of my earrings.

“Would you like to?” Dad asked.

I knew it would mean a trip to Baskin-Robbins. I looked up at the ceiling, pondering the offer.

“And you know, now that you’re twelve,” Dad added, charmingly, “you can join the Mother Church.”

Touch

Elise Glassman

“
R
eady to go?” My mother stood between me and the library checkout counter.

Startled by her sudden appearance, I shifted my armload of books, moving the top book to the bottom of the stack I’d prepared for checkout. My sister and I were homeschooled and Mom had to approve everything we read, even books by Christian authors.

She picked up the top book. “Another detective novel? I sure hope there’s no swearing in this one.” Last week I’d had to return Agatha Christie’s
The Murder at the Vicarage
because she’d opened to a page where Hastings uttered “goddamn.” She moved on to a collection of Greek plays. Soon she’d get to the bottom of the pile, to The Book. I felt sick to my stomach. If she opened it, if she read what I’d just read—

My sister Maggie ran up. “Mom. The meter maid’s coming.”

Mom said, “Oh dear—well, go ahead and check out. We’ll see you at the car.”

That night, after Maggie turned out the lamp on her side of the bedroom, I stayed up reading The Book:
Deenie,
by Judy Blume. It was, without a doubt, a book my mother would never have allowed me to read. But it drew me right in, with its easygoing prose describing the nonchalant grittiness of growing up in a city, and Deenie getting dragged by her mom to modeling jobs. And then boom—here was Deenie, in the bathtub, touching herself. My hands went cold as I read. I felt my pulse pound in my ears. How did someone else know about this? I did this, too, I touched myself, but I had no idea other girls did it. Reading about Deenie and her “special place” made my face hot with shame. I read the passage again and again. Did touching myself make me a bad Christian? Would I go to hell? I hadn’t planned on searching out The Book at the library and sneaking it home, but here it was. Now, lying in bed, I held The Book with one hand and, with the other, I slipped my fingers into the waistband of my underpants and stroked the warm, liquid place between my legs.

M
Y FATHER WAS THE
pastor of an independent Baptist church, my mom the pastor’s wife, which meant she was like the First Lady, an unpaid figurehead who helped with her husband’s ministry—she picked up nursing home residents for church, coordinated potlucks, sewed costumes for Christmas plays, typed up the handouts for the occasional funeral. Our parents homeschooled Maggie and me and our little sister because they believed they were supposed to obey the Bible literally, to “train up a child in the way he should go.” They were certain they could do better than the godless Bellingham public
school system, not to mention the local Christian schools, with their Christian rock music and boys with hair down over their ears and girls in sweatpants during P.E.

So Monday through Friday, from eight to three-thirty, my sisters and I went to school right in our own living room. Homeschool was where I learned that the Earth was six thousand years old and the fossil record a secular tale aimed at eliminating the Lord from Creation; I learned that modern art and jazz encouraged promiscuity and drugs, that human emotions would always betray me, and that having high self-esteem meant that I was prideful and setting myself above the Lord. I learned that my body was a skin sac of wantonness and betrayal, and that doing what I felt like doing, what felt good, was the worst sin of all because our only goal as Christians was to do the Lord’s will. And while going to church and praying and reading the Bible and denying myself might not feel good, it pleased Him and so it was enough, it was the only thing; it was everything.

This isn’t to say that we didn’t get out of the house sometimes; we went on field trips to museums and the salmon hatchery, and once a week Dad conducted P.E. class at Cornwall Park. I was as much of a jock as any chunky four-eyes in a split skirt could be. I did have a decent jump shot and a solid right hook, and once in a while, dribbling down the cracked basketball court in my slick-soled Keds, I forgot about the slip hiking up around my waist and the teenagers smoking and watching from the picnic benches and lost myself in the game.

One time, after I sank a pair of free throws, a guy called, “Nice guns, Amish Baller,” and his friends laughed, smoke curling out of their pierced nostrils, and I realized how ridiculous I must seem. A part of me wished I could hang out with those kids and smoke and
casually make snotty remarks, but I knew that with my Sears glasses and zits and calf-length skirts, I’d only be a target for humiliation. Imaginary people—in my books, in my daydreams—were the only people I trusted. I knew their faults and follies and dreams and they could never say or do anything to hurt me.

“S
IS
. W
HAT’S THE
S
PANISH
word for
Bible
?”

I looked up from my American Lit test. Maggie and I were sitting at the dining room table. I could hear Mom in the other room, giving our little sister a spelling quiz: “
Bursar
.” “
B-u-r-s-a-r.
” “
Succumb
.” “
S-u-c-k-u-m.
”

“
Biblia
,” I said, watching her scribble. “You better pass your test. Dad said we can’t go to the youth rally in Prosser this weekend if we don’t all get As.”

She tossed her hair, silky and blonde, whereas mine was broom-handle brown and frizzy from a recent Toni home perm. “We’ll go. Sis, we
have
to. Rob and Aaron will be there.”

I agreed with her. We
had
to go. Every independent Baptist teenager in Western Washington would be there. But it was far from a done deal. Although Maggie was a decent student, Mom always graded her more severely than she did me. I wondered sometimes if it was because Maggie was so pretty and sunshiny, so unlike Mom and me—we were dark haired, serious, reserved. It was very possible that our parents had decided to teach her humility.

Anyway, we were going to have to partner up if we wanted to get to Prosser. “Concentrate,” I told her, seeing that she was staring off into space. I’d spent most of the past weekend lying on my bed and fantasizing about Aaron, even though I was afraid I’d be far too shy to talk to him. We’d met Rob and Aaron—best friends from
a church in Renton—at a rally last year. Rob was brash and dark haired, and most girls, including Maggie, thought he was cute, but I liked tall, skinny, funny Aaron.

“Girls, no talking in there,” my mother called from the other room.

I looked again at my test. I’d been counting on the usual true/false softballs, and now I was staring at a page of multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and essay questions.

“What’s the word for
church
?” my sister whispered.

I sighed. “Um—
iglesia?
” Why hadn’t I studied my American Lit harder? I’d started to buckle down last night, had settled on my bed with my notebooks and some pretzels. Then I’d gotten distracted—again—by The Book.

My parents had never said much about sex, except that God wanted us to remain virgins for our future husbands. I’d taken to examining encyclopedias and health textbooks at the library, looking at drawings and trying to imagine the mechanics of it. What did Aaron’s penis look like? Would he want to touch me with it? Last night I’d read The Book until Maggie fell asleep, and then I’d turned off the light and hugged my pillow, pretend-kissed it, imagined that I was a princess and Aaron a handsome prince. I’d reached into my panties and stroked my wet center and felt all my worries about tomorrow’s exams melt away in a wash of pleasure.

Deep in my fantasy, I hadn’t heard my mother come into the room for prayers. Suddenly she was standing over me, praying softly, “Dear Heavenly Father—” I froze, eyes squeezed closed, hoping she couldn’t see the mound of my hand tucked between my legs. Only after she said “Amen” and went away did I realize I’d been holding my breath. The warmth between my legs had cooled. I felt like
crying. Rolling onto my side, I tucked my hands under my pillow, my fingers stiff and smelling like myself.

Concentrate,
I told myself now, and looked again at my test. I took a deep breath. “In
Pilgrim’s Progress,
compare Christiana’s pilgrimage to Christian’s, and for extra credit, show where similarities may actually . . . ”
Blah blah blah.
I couldn’t concentrate. I was going to fail, and it was going to be God’s punishment for sneaking dirty books home, for not studying, for thinking bad thoughts about Aaron, for allowing my hands to roam and ravish my body.

“Mom!” Maggie called. “May I go to the bathroom?”

“You may be excused. Leave your test facedown on the table.”

As soon as Maggie left the dining room, I was up. I grabbed the American Lit Teacher’s Edition off Mom’s stack of books at the end of the table and flipped to the key in the back. On my wrist I wrote answers: ABBAD, DCABA, and so on. I scanned “What to look for” on the essay questions and quietly closed the book.

“What are you doing?” Maggie was back, frowning.

Startled, I sat down, my legs shaking. “Nothing. I had to get another pencil.”

“Can you help me with my quiz?” she whispered.

“Girls,” Mom said. “I thought I asked you not to talk.”

“Maggie’s talking,” I said loudly, and my sister’s eyes widened.

Mom called, “Come in here, please, Margaret Anne.”

Face flushed, Maggie hurried into the other room. She’d get demerits for sure. She might even get spanked. I grabbed her test. For crying out loud. I’d never taken Spanish and even I knew that
queso
was
cheese
. Picking up a pencil, I started to fill in her answers.

I
GOT GOOD GRADES
, but good wasn’t enough in homeschool. Anything less than perfection was evidence that I wasn’t trying sufficiently hard enough to obey the Lord, that homeschool was a waste of everybody’s time and I might as well go to a public school. If I got a 90, my father asked what happened with the other 10 points. Recently, I’d aced an algebra quiz, and as I sat basking in my accomplishment he’d handed me extra credit homework.

“But I got a hundred,” I’d said, incredulous.

“Does somebody have an attitude problem?” he snapped.

Across the table, Maggie stared down at her textbook. “No sir,” I said. “But—”

“Are you sure about that? Who gave you the ability to learn algebra? And who can take it away quicker than you can say ‘pride goeth before destruction’?”

“‘And a haughty spirit before a fall,’” Maggie quoted softly. I wanted to slap her.

And so, in a roundabout way, I concluded that the only way to succeed was to excel, to become so good—on paper, anyway—that my parents could find no fault with me. I learned to shut off my brain and fill in the correct answer and tell them what they wanted to hear. I dedicated myself to my studies, holing up at the library for hours, laboring over research papers that only my mother would ever read, helping my father type up prayer lists for Wednesday night church. I ratted out my sisters and kept a close eye on the kids in Junior Church, monitoring the girls to make certain their skirts covered their knees and the boys to be sure their hands weren’t dug deep in their pants pockets playing pocket pool. My whole world was studying and self-control and the Bible. Perfection was my obsession. I even cut back to just a few hundred calories a day until I could burn off my stomach pooch. I was
living a life of calculation and control: pleasing my parents, obeying the Lord, with a few exceptions, and growing into an obsequious, cringing ball of emptiness, holier-than-thou—especially if you didn’t count my nighttime secret.