Exposed: A Novel (20 page)

Chapter 47
Ally

Weeks upon weeks went by. September’s wind carried less humidity and the sound of locusts. I listened to them as I drove to work on a crisp Monday morning when Mom popped into my head. Only a small part of me wanted to talk to her, but after Jess and I experienced four straight days of romance like old times, I thought of calling her.

I struggled so much to stay joyful and loving with Jess, but I chose love anyway. And I thought of Dad every time I chose love over myself. If he still loves her, I thought, I should, too. And if I could love Jess through all my doubts and fears, I could love her. I would try to do practical things to keep myself in line. For every negative thought I had about Jessie or our marriage, I’d think of a reason I married him. It’s as though I allowed our past to marry our present and create a brighter future.

A few days before, I came out of the shower and saw Jessie hiding something in the closet. His eyes practically flopped out of his head when he saw me. I can’t express to you how much I wanted to run over to him and dig through the closet to reveal some great sin of his. But I didn’t.

I still don’t know what he hid. I left for work while he worked from home, as usual, so the only thing I could stand on was trust.

So, I did. Weak and wobbly as it can be sometimes, I stood on my trust for him. And although I’d barely be able to trust Mom, I thought I should at least try.

But for now, for now I needed to focus on Jessie.

At work, in between a counseling session with a teenage girl and Myra, an email from Jessie popped up in the bottom right corner of my computer screen.

Earlier last week he sent me all sorts of romantic messages, so I opened the email expecting the same.

It said:

Dear Ally,

I can barely write this. But I am writing you anyway. I don’t want to hide anything from you anymore.

Today as I was working I was hit with an advertisement that was nothing short of sexual :/ . . . One of those Internet ads in the side bar. To cut to the chase, I wasn’t strong and my mind went back to the thoughts and images stored in my mind.

I fell Ally, and I hate myself. I hate what I did to you . . . and I hate what pain this will cause you. I need help ... I need your forgiveness and grace. I need this stuff out of my life for good. I need it gone, so we can get back to life. I need it to be finished so my heart won’t be weighed down with fear every time I walk out the door or get online.

Please forgive me, sweet Ally. I’m sorry to have ruined that beautiful, free smile you had when we got married. I don’t deserve you ... but I need you.

And I love you. I am just so weak still.

Do you love me?

Jessie

Birds chirped in the background of my calm mind. Yes, calm. Guess it happened so many times that the trigger pulled my anger again, but nothing happened. No explosion this time.

Only a longing for strength so deep I had to grip the handles of my chair to keep from falling on the ground.

Why me
? ran through my head a time or two, but I didn’t care anymore.

More than that, I didn’t understand men and why it took so much effort to be devoted to their wives.

“Penises,” Verity’s voice buzzed in my mind. “Men aren’t much more than glorified penises.”

That girl tells you how it is. She’s the crassest Christian I know, but she loves Jesus so I do my best to overlook it. Although I’d rather not have her annoying words stored in my memory.

I typed,
Yes, I love you.
And hit send.

Then I spun my chair around and looked out the window. Tree branches trembled in the breeze, their leaves shaking like my heart.

Verity’s words weren’t true. Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn’t have married. Then again, maybe if I knew the truth I wouldn’t have married him.

Think a positive thought, I told myself, then remembered Jessie’s beautiful, servant-hearted spirit. All the times he brought me breakfast in bed. The mornings I woke up to his eyes on my face, his smile in my heart. All the massages he gave me after our evening walks, never once asking for me to return the favor.

Dad randomly interrupted my train of positivity. His faith echoed deep in my heart, begging me to reach for love and faithfulness and never let go, to bind it around my heart and love Jessie through it.

I twisted my chair and reached for the phone, dialed Dad’s number, and waited.

“Hey, Ally,” Dad said on the other end.

“Dad, I have a question.” I just called him Dad for the first time.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“I need to know how you’ve managed to go your entire life without looking at porn. If you really did.”

“Wow.”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I’m wondering if it’s even possible. And if you did, I need to know how.”

“Hm. Does Jessie have a problem with it?”

I clicked my pen. “You don’t need to answer my question if you don’t want to, but I do need to go in a few minutes so I can’t talk long.”

“I see.” He paused. “Well, I saw some as a boy, but not much. And believe me, I see enough driving down the road. A woman doesn’t need to be naked and having sex with another man for a man to create pornography in his head, you know?”

I didn’t want to know. “So how do you keep yourself from falling into it? Especially since you’re single and all.”

“Well, I don’t really consider myself single, but I keep from lusting by loving Jesus more than myself. Doesn’t get much plainer than that. It all flows fr—”

“Okay, okay, I know that. But what do you really do? I mean, practically?”

“Well, Ally.” His tone dropped. Still sweet, but more serious. “Not everything in life has an instruction sheet. Sometimes God leads you where He wants you without telling you exactly how to get there.” He paused. “But I can tell you this, cutting out my eye helped a great deal.”

Someone knocked on the door.

Lauren peeked her smile in the room. “Myra’s here.”

Nodding, Dad and I said our goodbyes.

I rubbed my eyes. Living without an instruction sheet made no sense to me. There’s always a solution to a problem, and therefore a method to solving every problem. Even with God’s help, still, there are solutions and answers and ways to make sure things never go wrong.

Myra walked in my office.

There had to be a method to rid lust, heal broken hearts, and fix

marriages that don’t always want to be fixed. Otherwise my job would be pointless.

Chapter 48
Taylor

Obviously, I didn’t die.

Instead, I dreamed of kissing Daddy’s feet. I couldn’t see his face, but I tried over and over. I looked up and his white robe blinded me. So sobbed at his feet as he told me that I’m not a whore. I cried harder. He held out a heart-shaped box and said, “Even if you were a whore, my daughter, you can be with me again if you accept this new heart.” I kept telling him I couldn’t reach the heart, I didn’t know how to accept it, but then I’d get more and more blind.

He never told me how to accept it.

Then his robe turned super bright. I squinted my eyes over and over until I saw a girl’s face hovering over me. Brown hair, dark eyes—Naomi?

Every few minutes I’d open my eyes wide and shut them, repeating until I finally saw her the furthest thing from Naomi. Gianna, sitting beside me, her smile whiter than Daddy’s robe.

“What in Jupiter did you do to yourself?” She leaned onto my hospital bed.

My lips parted and my breath shook when I exhaled.

Gianna twirled her hair with her fingers. “Hate to break the bad news to you, but you’re not dead.”

Some news.

“And I’ve got some more bad news.”

My wrist, wrapped in a plastic bandage, caught my attention.

“Do you want to know the news?”

“What is it?” My voice, raspy and dry, surprised me.

“You’re pregnant.” She huffed and rolled her eyes. “Can you believe that?”

“Um . . . what?”

Grasshoppers danced in my stomach. My stomach. A baby? A baby in my stomach? No, there had to be a mistake.

I looked at Gianna. “Why did they run a pregnancy test? How could they do that if I wasn’t awake? Was I awake? I don’t remember anything until now.”

The light from the window lit her almond eyes. “Beats me.” She shrugged. “Maybe an X-Ray?”

I sighed. “I would’ve known if they ran a test. You’re lying.”

“It’s okay.” Gianna patted my arm. “Zayta still wants you in Florida. She doesn’t know about the suicide and if she did she’d probably take care of you anyway. And I won’t tell anyone about the baby either.”

Grasshoppers stopped dancing. And my stomach fizzed like a glass of Sprite, bubbling over and heading for my mouth.

“I’ll even go with you to have an abortion.” Her teeth sparkled. “I’ve already had three. It’s not that bad, really.”

The room fogged over. My mind swung back and forth in a frenzy from wondering how I’d ever be able to have an abortion, to wondering how I’d be able to have a baby, to realizing I would’ve killed another person if my suicide attempt worked.

Tears built up behind my eyes.

In that moment, right then, I knew I couldn’t have an abortion. Adoption, maybe. But not an abortion.

Gianna’s voice punched holes in my head for an eternity, then the nurse ushered her out.

After lying so much at the hospital, I thought my tongue would fry up and turn to ashes, but I managed to walk out of the psych ward a few days later with my entire mouth in tact. Reminded me of the time Mom took me to the psych ward in Baltimore. I tried to kill myself by overdosing on her painkillers and then she forgot to pick me up when I was discharged.

Andy picked me up from the hospital and pretended like nothing happened. I wanted to pound his face into the earth until he reached China.

So much for loving him and playing heart doctor.

We got back to his house.

He opened the car door and actually let me sit in the passengers seat.

Expecting to see Zayta around, I was shocked to walk into Andy’s empty house.

“Do you want to rest upstairs?” His eyes never met my face for the first time in the history of his eyes meeting my face.

Without saying a word, I walked up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms for the “porn set.”

I reclined on the bed without moving my arms and propped them up on my stomach.

The ceiling blurred as I stared into space. Past memories flipped through my mind, one after another.

The rugged sound of a zipper as Mom’s boyfriends unzipped their pants and touched themselves. Warm tears running down my nose as I pretended to sleep.

The stale scent of a school hallway in September. My first crush begged me to have sex with him and yelled, “You’re a whore,” through the hallway when I denied. Heads turned, my heart ducked inside, and he laughed.

A desire to be adored when Rick, my prom date, forced his body against mine in the bathroom. The nauseating stench of alcohol filled the air between us as my tears landed on the floor. One look at my wet face and Rick kicked the bathroom stall and walked away. The bathroom door slammed my heart and I never saw him again.

Then there’s the day I thought life would change. Light sparkled in my heart and eyes as I pulled out of a Walgreens parking lot admiring my reflection in the rearview mirror.

Still, I can feel the sting of ripped skin, the ache in my thighs. I can see red stains on the couch and the lights of a camera filming my trembling lips, my cloaked fear.

I closed my eyes to rid the horrible memories and imagined the bright white robe I saw Daddy wear in my dreams.

My stomach muscles wrestled for food.

And I remembered the baby, the life forming inside of me.

One word entered my mind and lingered there, holding on for the slightest consideration.

Abortion.