In the Wilderness (10 page)

The best we could do was to let her go and maybe she would forget we were there, waiting for our lessons. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brian’s hand shoot up. He was the class nosepicker, and I groaned inwardly at his foolishness.

“Mrs. Nichols, what about itches?”

She studied him intently for a moment, then walked slowly to the side of his desk. “Itches,” she echoed flatly. “Itches are
slow
pain. Each and every feeling you have is the
man-i-fe-sta-tion
of pleasure or pain.” She turned her back on us and once again focused her attention on the air outside the window.

Wasn’t what I felt when I thought of Luke a kind of pain? I ached to be with him, yet suffered no less in his presence than I did in his absence. Sometimes I thought pleasure inseparable from pain and wondered if I’d ever know when one became the other. It all seemed a riddle to me, a world in which things were not as they appeared, as though our emotions were reflected back on us, reversed, warped. What gave me worldly pleasure was the very thing that caused me spiritual pain.

But what did I know of suffering, of the makeup of souls? I must not think that the teachers of the mind such as Mrs. Nichols might have insight into the ways of the Lord. I opened my Bible to Corinthians, to the words of Paul: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through the glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

It had been three years since my mother stood at the kitchen window, pointing up and out into the haze of August sky.

“How many, Kim? How many birds on the wire?”

I looked from her to the square of light and back. The clues lay in the words—
bird, wire
—just as they did in my father’s riddles: If a plane crashes on the border between the U.S. and Canada, where do they bury the survivors? If a rooster lays an egg on the peak of a roof, which way will the
egg roll? Kits, cats, sacks and wives, how many were going to St. Ives?

I could no more find the true meaning in my mothers question than I could see the birds and wire. The distance from the window to the table where I sat, nose rubbing the pages of my reading book, was no more than ten feet, but even that distance would have been enough to fade her features to an airbrushed silhouette.

Some weeks afterward, I sat in the optometrist’s office, surrounded by cases of heavy frames, trying on pair after pair. I could not see myself in the mirror the assistant held out for me: the dark plastic lines faded into the peachy canvas of my face, which I obediently studied for a weighty minute before reaching for the next pair. Days later, when the doctor slid them over my ears, the glasses settled onto my nose with surprising heaviness. Even more startling was my mothers face peering into my own, so close I could see gray flecks in her pale blue eyes. Behind her, the doctor and assistant leaned toward me as though I had just been given the power of speech and were about to utter my first word.

What had I seen before? The birds on the wire I had imagined as leaves on a branch; now, when I saw them from the window, I could count their feathers, watch the small beaks preen for dust, see them tense for flight before rising into the air and disappearing. I described for my mother the colors of grass, the movement of shadows, the ever-changing shade of my aunt’s hair.

The language of vision had always been with me—pale, clear, bright, deep—but my sense of the words had been tactile, palpable, something I felt rather than saw. I remember the smell of smoke, the auroral glow of my father’s cigarette as we drove the dark road to town or back to camp. The trees
and river flew by, miles I knew by heart but could not describe any differently in daylight than at night, although I never doubted their existence any more than I doubted the presence of angels, whose wings I imagined the cloudiest white, softly downed without quills or striation, large enough to carry me aloft in huge breathy beats.

In the parsonage stairway I came to believe the absence of light a blessing. I prayed for the counterfeit night and the sound of Luke’s voice husky with desire. I prayed we not be found out, knowing God’s grace covered a multitude of transgressions, knowing my wickedness lay in the very prayer I offered—the prayer of a sinner jealous of her sin.

It was Luke I thought of one Sunday night as I waited for my parents to finish their good-byes. Brother Lang’s sermon had been a long one, and everyone seemed ready to file from the pews and head home. No one had a special need or pressing confession to present to the congregation—not even Sister Paxson, a large, dark woman given to fits of lumbago, who normally went forward to have her swollen knees anointed with the thick green olive oil kept pushed to the back of the lectern. People had already begun pulling on their coats and shaking hands with their neighbors when Brother Lang stepped from the stage and clapped his hands together.

“Our work here tonight is not done,” he announced loudly. Everyone stopped still, eyes widening with sudden interest. “There is one among us who has a weakness, a need.” He released one of his hands and held it out, fingers together, pointed at me like a hatchet. “Sister Kim, will you come forward?”

My parents looked from Brother Lang to me, then shuffled
back to let me pass, their hands lifted in prayer, palms up, as if to catch rain. Those who had left their seats, thinking the evening’s worship closed, settled back into their rows.

What was it I needed? My throat wasn’t sore. The pain in my shins had stopped, healed by the woman revivalist in Orofino who told me I lacked calcium, pressed her thumbs into my temples until my head pounded, then released me with her encouragement to drink more milk. As I walked down the aisle, mentally checking my stomach for pain, the balance of my shoulders and hips, I passed Luke. He sat in the front, leaned casually into the pew’s hard corner. Even the backs of his ears were beautiful.

Brother Lang grasped my shoulders, then gently pivoted me to the congregation. I looked out over the room, into the upturned faces and moving mouths of God’s people. Luke, only a few feet away, met my eyes with such intensity I felt suddenly paralyzed. He was seeing something in me no one else could see, something that threaded through the soles of my feet and into my leg bones like the ancient canes of berries, piercing my bowels and lungs, twining its tendrils around my throat so that I labored to breathe. The intimacy of his vision was not holy. The way his mouth, lips slightly parted, drew me in with all the air in the room made me reel. The hands gripped my shoulders tighter. I felt each finger and thumb press into my flesh—I counted them under my breath, eyes closed.

“Sister Kim,” the voice spoke to the back of my head, “how long have you been burdened with poor sight?”

I opened my eyes slowly, blinking for a moment to force the room into focus. My mother stood with her hands clasped in front of her breasts.

I thought back to that August afternoon, to the birds on
the wire. How old had I been? That girl was another lifetime ago. Was I eight?

“At least three years,” I whispered.

“These glasses are a heavy burden. The Lord can heal these eyes, and will,” Brother Lang turned me back to face him, “if you will only have faith.”

I looked into his own eyes, so dark the pupil and iris bled together. Like the eyes of an animal, I thought.

Until that moment, I had seldom considered my vision. The glasses were a part of me, an extension of my body. Because of them I could see my way from one room to another without holding to the walls and shuffling my feet. Now, their presence seemed less a gift than a flaw, a mark of weakness.

I felt a sudden growing shame, the same shame I felt at the new roundness of my breasts, the hair in hidden places. I lowered my head. I remembered my hand cupping Sister Baxter’s fevered ear. The image reviled me. How foolish to believe that I held in my power the gift to discern the infirmity of another: I could not even see the reflection of my own face in the mirror without the grotesque magnification of glass.

“Sister Kim. Do you have faith?”

I nodded slowly.

“Do you believe God can heal your eyes?”

I nodded again. I had never before been afraid of prayer. Many times I had felt the laying-on of hands. Now the preacher’s fingers seemed locked, digging into the soft pockets of flesh between my neck and shoulders.

I did not want to be there, my ears filled with moans and high singing building into the staccato rhythm of tongues. I did not want others to see my disgrace: my pride had blinded me to the blemishes of my own body. In believing that I, a silly, stammering girl, could work miracles, I had drawn attention
to myself. My spiritual vision had clouded to match my eyesight. I thought of Luke, the cloistered stairway. Had I really believed God could not see through such blackness?

I waited, eyes closed, for the touch of pungent oil, Brother Lang’s finger sliding twice across my forehead in the shape of a cross. Instead, I felt my glasses lifted from my face. I opened my eyes to see the blur of his hand tucking the dark frames into the pocket of his white shirt.

I lost my balance and grabbed for his arm. He steadied me, then pressed his thumbs against my eyelids. The prayers rose higher, a loud thrum of joined voices, yet each voice distinct and recognizable: Brother Story’s
b’s
and
p’s
popped from his lips in little explosions; his wife’s language was a monotone string of
m’s, ah’s
and long
e’s
, sustained, it seemed, without her ever having to take a breath. The combined chant surrounded me like the amplified murmurings of bees.

“Hear us now, Jesus. We come to Thee to ask that these eyes be
healed. Heal
these eyes, Dear Lord, so that our sister might see clearly all you have created.”

He made short, sharp jerks with his hands. I strained with the effort to keep rigid.

“She knows, Lord, that if she has enough faith, if she will only believe,
she will be healed!”

Others were shouting now. Their feet stomped the wooden floor as they called on the Spirit,
Jesus. Sweet Jesus
.

Then the hands pulled away, the voices quieted, and I opened my eyes.

“Sister Kim, how many fingers am I holding up?”

I blinked, my vision still dark with the print of his thumbs. His hand floated so close I could see the half-circle of his wedding band.

“Three,” I answered. Somewhere behind me, Sister Johnson called out, “Praise the Lord!”

“Can you see your parents?” The hand was at my arm, turning me once again to the room. I looked to where I left my family. Browns and blues washed together as though I were looking through water. I peered harder. Sister Johnson twirled in the aisle—I recognized her high-pitched voice, the characteristic trilling of her glossolalia. But I could not see my mother and father, only the arms raised to heaven, undulating like meadow grass. I shook my head. No one seemed to notice. The room vibrated with the loud praise of men and women given over to the Spirit. Sister Lang pounded out a hymn on the upright, and I knew the meeting would last long into the night.

“You must believe and you will be healed. Go home tonight and pray for faith to accept this truth.” Brother Lang released me, and I felt my way up the aisle until my father caught my wrist.

Three days passed before I regained my sight. Three days of not seeing the blackboard, of being unable to find the swings at recess. I told my teachers and friends my glasses were broken and let them lead me like a pet dog. I clutched my mother’s sleeve when we walked to and from the car, and even though I had never needed it before, I began to leave a light on at bedtime: If I woke, I could not see beyond the lamp’s dim silhouette. I was no longer a child secure in my parents’ bed, their closeness giving boundaries to my nighttime world.

Did my mother feel her own faith waiver, watching from the window as I stumbled up the driveway to catch the bus, holding to my brother’s coattail, clutching the books I could not read? Did she long to take from that preacher the glasses he had pocketed and lay them beside my bed as I slept? I’d wake and find them there, my prayers answered, the prayers of
a child wandering scared, lost in the waters, waiting for a hand to reach from the bank and pull her to safety.

I imagine my mother kissing my eyes when she believed I was deep into dreams, as I now kiss the fluttering and delicate lids of my own children. I hear her whispering,
believe
. I open my eyes and see her disappear into a rectangle of light.

At the next Wednesday night prayer meeting, Brother Lang slipped the glasses into my hand, as though he himself were embarrassed by my failure. I waited until the singing began before I put them on and reached for the hymnal, thrilled to see the black letters distinct against white pages. It seemed miracle enough. With the book held straight out before me, I began to sing.

Later, in the stairway, air damp with close breathing, Luke reached to slide the glasses from my face. I caught his hand.

“You’re so much prettier,” he whispered.

I folded the hard frames in my palm and clasped them tightly. I closed my eyes and waited in darkness for his kiss.

The company town of Headquarters, just over the hill from the hollow at Dogpatch, consisted of two groups of houses separated by the railroad tracks and large shop buildings belonging to Potlatch. The small dwellings south of the tracks housed company workers—those who felled, hauled, scaled and processed the timber. North of the tracks, behind the Headquarters store, a wooden stairway led up to the Circle, where the road threaded between the shop buildings and store before looping back on itself at the top of the hill.

The Circle was where the supervisors lived—men who, by skill or inheritance, held positions above the other workers. The homes facing one another across the Circle were larger and better appointed than most I had seen. Real grass rather than wild clover and timothy grew to the doors of the houses.
The children who departed the Circle to catch the school bus, taking the wooden steps two at a time, wore store-bought clothes. The boys had cartoon lunch pails; the older girls shimmered in nylons and red leather shoes.