The Feathered Bone (16 page)

I allow myself a little time before responding. Then I ask, “Do you believe God kept you safe?” I try not to sound snide.

“Yes.” She says this without the slightest sign of disbelief.

I, on the other hand, have enough doubt for us both. No telling how many times a woman has prayed for God to save her, just before her head gets bashed in. I've seen these abusive relationships play out, and it's all I can do not to tell her it takes a whole lot more
than prayer to survive them. I try to get us back to something real. “So how do you feel about what happened?”

“I feel scared. I'm scared he'll do it again, only next time I might not live to tell about it. It seems like he's getting worse.”

“That's very serious,” I tell her. “Most people don't feel afraid of their husbands. They aren't afraid for their lives. You should listen to that voice, Mrs. Evans. Maybe that's God's voice. Telling you to protect yourself. To protect your children.”

She listens, stays quiet.

“What your husband is doing to you is wrong. You've told me this kind of explosion has happened more than once. That's not okay. It's abusive.”

The word
abusive
seems to set her off. “I'm probably making it sound worse than it is.” She defends him. “He's never touched me. I don't have a mark on me. See?” She lifts her arms, proving she has no bruises or scars.

“He threw things at you. He scared you. He yelled at you. And it sounds like he said some pretty awful things too.”

She shrugs.

“What did he say to you?” I am taking notes. I've learned to document when a client tells me about violent episodes.

“Oh, I don't remember.” She isn't comfortable with my pen. She leans and pulls another Kleenex from the carton. Then she wipes her eyes, collecting herself.

“Do you remember anything he said? Anything at all?”

With reluctance, she fills in the blanks. “I don't know. The kind of stuff he always says, how I'm lazy and stupid and insane. All that. It's mostly a blur now.”

“You know, Mrs. Evans, it's not unusual for an abuser to manipulate his victim into thinking she's crazy. That's part of the
emotional abuse.” The word still draws resistance, so I lean closer. “Or it could be that he doesn't understand how you feel. And so he says you're crazy.”

She gives me a pensive look, as if she's truly processing what I'm saying to her.

“But that's his problem. Not yours.” I continue. “Think of it this way. Let's say you have a terrible pain in your ear. So you go to the doctor, and he runs every test available. They all show up negative. He scratches his head. He's got no idea what is causing your pain. So he decides there's nothing wrong with you. He can't understand it, so you must be crazy.”

“It happens.”

“It does.” I sit back. Let it simmer. “It happens every day.” Then I make sure it sticks. “You aren't crazy, Mrs. Evans. And what your husband does to you is considered abuse. You are in an abusive relationship. So let's talk about what you want to do about that.”

By noon I'm waiting in line to pick up Ellie from her last day of sixth grade. As she comes to the front of the school, a few kids come running, chanting, “We survived! We survived!” They say this with smiles, eager for summer break, but the cheer brings tears from my Ellie.

Grabbing her backpack, I wrap my arm around her, trying to shield her from any more pain. We hurry to the car, where she collapses in grief. I drive away from the crowded campus as quickly as possible and pull into an empty lot where a concrete slab and driveway have been poured for a new home. At the moment no construction workers are on-site, and we find the privacy we need.

“Ellie?” I keep the car running, trying to combat the day's heat with air-conditioning. “Honey?” I reach for her hand, and she lets me hold it. “I'm listening. Please talk to me.”

“She's not coming back, is she? That's what people say. They say Sarah's never coming back.”

“They don't know that, Ellie. We are still trying our best to find her. We won't give up. I assure you.”

“But what if we can't find her, Mom? What if she's dead?”

I sit in silence and let Ellie's sorrow find its way to the surface. She talks. I listen. And for the first time since The Day, we both begin to accept the truth.

“You know what I think, Mom? I think even if she does come back, it'll never be the same. So either way, she's gone for good.”

July 2005

“We're heading out. Come with?” I tie my tennis shoes and try to convince Ellie to join Beth and me for a walk.

“No.” She doesn't look up from the couch, where she's pretty much been camped since the end of school. She's got a pile of books to read, a glass of sweet tea, and the remote control. She changes channels faster than she can possibly tell what's showing.

“Come on, Ellie. You'll feel so much better if you get some fresh air with us.”

“No.” She says it louder, in a low monotone. Her message is clear. She won't join us.

“All right then. See you in a bit.” I give her a kiss. Beth follows me out the door. “I still hesitate to leave her alone. I know I have to stop thinking that way.”

“Is it better now? Since you cleared your summer clients to stay home with her?”

“I don't know. I mean, I feel better being here, but now she says I'm smothering her.”

“Carl still won't let her get a dog? It might be just what she needs. Maybe a Lab, like Boudreaux.”

“He won't budge. We're lucky he tolerates Beanie.”

Beth says nothing, and I let it go. We walk in silence for a while, down our rural lane that runs long and flat like a landing strip between the open ditches. On each side, crawfish chimneys dot the yards, puffy white towers of mud where they've burrowed into the wet soil. As we pass the last of the small brick houses on my street, we turn onto a wooded trail. We're barely ten yards from the road when a large doe snorts loudly, a guttural warning to other white-tailed deer in the area. In response, Beth breathes deeply, as if she's glad to have something to distract her from grief. We continue walking, despite the mosquitoes, each of us working up a sweat. Last autumn's pinecones and sweetgum balls crunch beneath our feet as the bright summer leaves shine green. We weave our way through the sturdy, thick trunks of hickories and honey locusts, cedars and sycamores, until we come into a towering pine grove with a few thick-leaved magnolias tucked around the edge. The evening sun streams through the tops of the pines, turning the needled carpet a burnt orange beneath our feet. The air smells of barbecue, and I'm guessing one of my neighbors has lit their backyard grill for supper. To everyone but us, it's just a normal day.

“People like to say this is God's plan. That he doesn't give us anything we can't handle,” Beth says as pine needles wave in the wind, the air whistling crisp notes between their wire-thin tips.

“I never like it when people say those things. Do you?”

“Truthfully?” The act of speaking seems to be taking all she has to give. “It's hard to hear. I'm still angry, Amanda. And the longer this goes on, the madder I get. Why would God let this happen? Not just to Sarah, but to anyone? To any child. I don't understand.”

I can't give Beth the answers, so I stay quiet.

“Preacher and I always thought we could handle anything that happened to us. Our faith was unshakable. But now . . .”

I wait in silence, grateful Beth still allows me to be a part of her life.

“Back when we were in the early years of ministry, we met a young mother who had just lost all three of her children. It was a house fire,” Beth says. “Remember?”

I nod. The family had not lived in Walker long before the tragedy, but it made the front page of the
Livingston Parish News
. “How could I forget?”

“And to make matters worse, it was her husband who had set the fire. He burned down the house with his own children locked inside. Didn't want her to have custody, so he killed them all. It was one of the worst things I've ever seen. Preacher and I were so young. We had no idea how to help her.”

I shake my head. I can't imagine.

“We sat up with her all night in our living room. She cried out again and again, ‘Why would God do this to us?' Preacher said, ‘It's okay to be angry at God. He can take it. And it's okay to blame God. He can take that too.' The woman said, ‘I do blame him. I do.' And what could I say to her? I wasn't even a mother yet. I couldn't possibly begin to fathom her loss. Everything I thought to tell her sounded so trite. I was afraid she was going to take her own life, right there in front of us. I've never seen anyone so broken, not before or since.” She releases a gentle sigh and then adds, “Not even you and me.”

I pull a palm-sized piece of bark from one of the pines. “What happened to her? The mother?”

“She moved back down to Grand Isle where her parents lived. But when Sarah disappeared she saw it on the news, and she reached out to us. She said there wasn't much she remembered about that night when her kids were killed, but one thing Preacher said had always stuck with her. Had seen her through the worst of it all.”

I wait for Beth to explain.

“He told her, ‘If you want to ask God, “Why me? Why my children?” that's okay. Ask him. Because his son was killed too. That's what the crucifixion is really about. God stands with us through our suffering. The loss. The pain. He understands.' ”

“I guess I never thought of it that way,” I admit.

“The woman said, ‘Every time I start to feel hopeless, as if there is no longer a reason to live, as if God is against me and I'll never be okay again, I remind myself that life is not all we think it to be, that there is more to the journey. Much more than we can understand.' ”

I look up into the straight, thin pine needles striped against the sky, their lines like ribs inhaling and exhaling with each pulse of wind. “Is that still what you believe? Since Sarah?”

Beth follows my stare to the heavens and exhales loudly. “I don't know.”