Devoted (10 page)

As we begin to pass around platters of sliced ham and turkey, of buttered bread and fresh fruit, Paul clears his throat loudly. “Dear family,” he says, “may I have your attention?” His smile is so broad I can see his gums.

He waits until he has all our eyes on him, and then he makes us wait a beat longer before he finally speaks.

“The Lord God has given us many blessings,” he begins. Faith has Caleb in her lap, and she kisses him on the head, smiling like she has a secret she can't hold in.

“Yes, God is so good,” Dad says, nodding, not understanding Faith's expression or Paul's words.

“We have one special blessing we are very grateful for,” Paul continues. My mother stops and gasps. My eyes meet Ruth's across the table. She's guessed, too.

“The Lord has blessed us with another child,” Paul announces, proudly. “Faith is due just after Christmas.”

“Praise God!” my father says, beaming. He jumps up from the head of the table to shake hands with Paul and give Faith a kiss on the cheek. My brothers do the same, and the younger children immediately begin guessing if it's a girl or a boy.

Mom breaks out into a huge smile.

“Yes, praise God!” she says, clasping her hands together, tears finally sparked by joy instead of sadness. “This is God's work. This is His hand helping us recover from the loss of Joshua.”

Everyone nods and smiles and hugs and praises the Lord, but I just sit there like a lump.

“You haven't said anything, Rachel,” Faith says, her eyes searching mine, bemused. “Did you even hear what Paul said, little sister?”

I smile carefully. “I'm so happy for you both,” I say. To my own ears, I sound like I did when I thanked Mrs. Garrett after church. Practiced and robotic. An expert faker.

“Soon, little sister, you will know the joy of being a mother,” Faith says, tickling baby Caleb's chin. “Even as we sit here, our Lord is preparing your future husband. And He is preparing you to be his future wife and mother of his children.”

I blush hard as my family turns to look at me. Only Ruth looks away. She knows I hate having everyone's eyes on me like this. But what she can't know is that Faith's news sends me into a panic as I picture myself in just a few years delivering a similar announcement at this very table.

Suddenly, my throat starts to close up, and I can't breathe very well. I try to focus on the drops of condensation forming on the pitcher of orange juice.

“Excuse me, just for a moment,” I say, pushing my chair back and heading to the hall bathroom.

“Rachel, are you all right?” someone calls out after me.

Please don't let anyone follow me.

I shut the door behind me and force myself to take deep breaths. I count the tiles on the floor and then I count the rings on the shower curtain. I flush the toilet and make the water run in case anyone is listening out for me. Last night I gave Ruth the answer I knew she wanted when she asked about Mom getting better. I told her everything we asked for in prayer we would receive. Now I want to pray, but as usual I can't find the right words. And what would I pray for?
Please, Father God, don't find my future husband, not now. Please, Father God, don't give me so many babies I can't find a moment's peace to read or think or watch the sunset.
But even as I pray the words I know they're the wrong things to pray for.

I struggle to take a breath but manage it. Then I take another one, inhaling more deeply this time.
Breathe, Rachel. Breathe.

It helps, and when I come back out to the table, I get a collective worried look.

“I'm fine, just not … feeling one hundred percent,” I say. My family members glance at one another quizzically, but soon we're acting as if nothing ever happened.

I'm not the only one in my family good at faking.

*   *   *

Even though I was worried that Faith's news would make Mom sad, she seems anything but. During nightly prayers and Bible time, she keeps smiling and talking about how good God is to send a new baby to the family when we desperately needed such a blessing. Dad keeps smiling and nodding and saying, “Amen” to everything Mom says. Instead of his usual half grin, he's wearing a smile so full I think his cheeks must be hurting.

No one says anything to me about running to the bathroom.

That night when I get on the computer, I work on the Walker Family Landscaping and Tree Trimming site while Dad reads his Bible in the living room. When he turns off his reading light, he stops by the computer desk and puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Almost done, Rachel?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Good. Make sure you turn in early.”

“Of course, Dad.”

I wait until his bedroom light is off and I hear his light snoring before I pull up Lauren's blog.

It's still there. Her picture is still smiling at me.

I don't even pause. I just do it. I click on
The Great Escape
.

My eyes swallow up the words, greedy for them.

Some of my friends tell me my life before I met them sounds like I made it up. Like it's something from a bad fairy tale where a princess is held kidnapped in a tower until she's rescued. Like Rapunzel.

Only, no knight in shining armor saved me. I saved myself.

From birth I was part of an extreme religious community—some might call it a cult … when I'm having a bad day, I call it a cult—where women were marginalized, shamed, humiliated, and not given one ounce of autonomy. And why? Because the Lord dictates this is how it should be.

I never went to regular school until I was old enough to go to vet tech school as a legal adult. I didn't cut my hair or wear pants until I was 18 and I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 19 and for a long time I didn't even think it was possible to exist outside of this weird, tightly-controlled world with my dad in charge of everything I did. When I say my dad was in charge of everything, I don't mean everything like where I went and who I hung out with, although he was in charge of that for sure. I mean he was in charge of what I wore, what I read, what I said, and even what I thought.

I hate my dad for so much, but do you know what I hate him for the most? I can't even pray to God anymore without hearing my father's voice in my head.

I was told that my only possible future was acting the way my future husband would want me to act, and I was told that my dreams of becoming a vet were just that. Dreams. That I had to maintain a cheerful countenance and practice to be a good helpmeet. Mother and wife. My only options.

When I was a teenager, I started rebelling. I met some kids hanging out near the local gas station when I went to fill up my dad's car—one of the few things I was allowed to do outside my house. The rest sounds like a bad teen movie (note:—I didn't even get to WATCH bad teen movies until I wasn't a teenager anymore, but anyway…). I started sneaking out of the house, meeting (jerky) guys, drinking cheap vodka in the backs of trucks. Yes, cheap vodka in the backs of trucks. I told you. Teen movie.

The cult didn't like it. They prayed over me, they preached about me. They threatened to send me away to this camp where they force you to do hard labor and barely let you sleep and brainwash you.

One day I just literally walked out. I'd made some friends from the outside by then, and when I thought the preacher was talking about me during one of the Sunday services, I'd had enough. I just got up and walked out. No one came after me, not even my parents. I didn't have a car. I hitchhiked into town and called one of my new friends from the only pay phone still standing. She said I could come move with her to the city where she was going to start taking classes at a community college.

That night, I went back home to my parents' house to get a few things. My ID, a few of my clothes, the little bit of money I'd saved from taking care of our neighbor's dog. And I really wanted to say goodbye to my two cats, Fluff and Stuff. I knew I wouldn't be able to take them with me even though I desperately wanted to. I'd bottle-fed them from birth after their mom abandoned them in the flower garden outside the house.

So I walked in and my friend was waiting for me in the car outside the house. I walked in and my mom was on her knees praying out loud in the living room. She had to have heard me come in but she just kept praying. It hurt my heart, it's true. But my mom hadn't defended me or herself in so long I wasn't surprised.

I was sobbing at this point, and I ran upstairs with a paper bag for my things when my dad came down the hall and stopped me when I got down to the foot of the stairs. He was so furious I thought he was going to explode right there in the middle of the kitchen. His face was so red.

“Dad, I'm leaving,” I said. It was like I was watching myself from someplace else. Now that I've seen movies, I can say it was like I was a character in a movie, but the movie was real. The movie was my life. But at the time I just knew it was like I was outside of my body somehow.

That's when my dad hit me hard. Right across the face. It stung like a million fire ants bit my face all at once.

My dad had beaten me and my mom in the name of God many times before, but never like this. He was pummeling me. Hard. I was down on the ground crouching into a little ball and my dad even kicked me while I was down there. I was screaming, trying to protect my head with my hands. I heard my mom crying and praying, but it was like she was doing it in some other language, not English. My dad was screaming something but I couldn't understand him either.

I crawled far enough away that I was able to scramble up to my feet and dart out the front door. I raced to my friend's car.

When I got to my friend's car she screamed that I was bleeding from my nose. I said my dad did it.

I never saw my parents again after that.

There's more to the story. How I moved to the city and how I transformed my life and why I left the city after some pretty dumb stuff and how I moved back to my hometown even though I run the risk of running into my mom and dad again.

But I'm dead to them, I think. My mom and dad, I mean. I'm dead to them and I don't exist. I'm dead to everyone else that I knew before. All of them. It's like I don't exist to them. My salvation, if ever I really earned it, I've given up through my bad behavior. I'm a nothing. A mistake. But it's taken me six years to know that if salvation means giving up every human thing about myself and becoming some robot with no real emotions, then I don't want it anymore.

I want to write more about what happened after that day I ran away, but as I type this, my eyes are full of tears. I need to take a break from this.

If anyone is reading this, thank you. I'm still here. It feels so good to type that.

I'm still here.

I stopped breathing halfway through the post and only after I've read the last word can I exhale. I'm scared someone will hear me, the breath is so loud. I picture Mr. Sullivan at church after the laying of hands on my father, telling me the Lord's steadfast love always endures. Telling me about his babies waiting for him and Mrs. Sullivan in Heaven when his living daughter hasn't seen him in years. I think of Lauren bleeding from the nose, crouched helpless like a wounded animal on the floor. Yes, the Lord has granted parents the right to discipline their children, but that isn't what God intended.

I'm squeezing my fists so hard my arms are vibrating. I want to scream, yell, shout. A flash of Scripture flies through my mind, trying to correct me.

The discretion of a man deferreth his anger, and it is his glory to pass over a transgression.

But if that were true, then why did God let Mr. Sullivan get so mad?

For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

Then that means that Mr. Sullivan isn't a real man of God, right?

A fool uttereth all his mind, but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards.

Then am I a fool to be so angry right now? Am I as bad as Mr. Sullivan?

Nervous energy charges through my veins. So many missing pieces of Lauren's story are a part of my mind, fixed there forever. After all these years, I know the truth about what happened to her, and it makes me so sad, even though I'm shocked that she was able to get away with so much forbidden behavior while still part of our community.

When Lauren Sullivan was younger, around Ruth's age, she sang in the Calvary Christian Church choir, belting out the songs so loud it was like she thought the words could float up to Heaven itself. She set up games in the parking lot after services to see which of us kids could run around the church building the fastest. She could memorize Bible verses faster than some of the adults, and she read them confidently, her voice booming, almost like a little pastor.

And this Lauren with the dyed hair and the strange tattoos seems different, even frightening, but isn't the Lauren of my childhood still this Lauren? And isn't this Lauren still someone we should love? Someone who should know we haven't forgotten her?

I want to tell her somehow. Tell her I think about her. I care about her.

But if I get caught.

I remember Dad's warnings about mixing with those who've abandoned Christ.

I remember my punishment for getting caught with
A Wrinkle in Time
. Copying Scripture.

If I get caught doing this, the punishment will be so great, copying Scripture for bad behavior will seem like a laughable consequence. I picture James Fulton paraded in front of us after being sent away to Journey of Faith. I consider Lauren's words about what happened to him and to everyone who is sent there. Brainwashed. I'm not one hundred percent sure what that means, but the word makes me shiver.

And then I think about sitting at my parents' dining room table in a few years, responsible for a baby in my belly and a baby in my arms.