The truth was that I didn’t understand, either, and the fact that I lacked a good answer—a sound explanation for this “bad feeling”—bothered me. My grandmother had shown me nothing but kindness, but I couldn’t seem to stop judging her according to the church’s rubric. I had already crossed the lines between “Us” and “Them” several times—for Josh, Newbery, Chad, Libby, even Cora and Ryan here in the casino—but somehow, those lines remained firmly in place.
It was an obvious point, but it suddenly struck me that this Us/Them mindset was deeply ingrained and resistant to change. Unless I wanted to be forever ruled by a nebulous fear of outsiders, it wasn’t enough for me just to cross that line a few times; I needed to decide whether the line should be moved, or changed, or erased entirely. It couldn’t be a simple matter of a blanket rejection of my former beliefs, either, which would be no less silly and irrational than unquestioning acceptance of them. Instead, I would need to look at the evidence. I’d need to carefully examine each of these thought patterns, holdovers from Westboro that would have to be challenged and reconsidered—over and over again—if there was any hope for lasting change. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
I thought about the last time we’d heard from Nana—a birthday card she’d sent to Grace back in October. I had felt so sad for her, ignored by our family for years on end. Happy birthday, Grace, she’d written. I’ll bet you are growing up beautiful. Wish I could hear from someone. I love you. As little as I’d seen Nana, she hadn’t missed sending us birthday cards in all my years. Like my mother, I had seen her efforts as a pitiful substitute for having a real presence in our lives, but now the gesture seemed like determined persistence—an effort to maintain an open door despite my parents’ attempts to seal all doors shut. Nana had been trying to show that she loved us, even though she couldn’t be around us.
“I think I want to call Nana now,” I said to Grace. She nodded. What was there to stop me from picking up the phone that instant? I got her phone number from Josh and began to pace an empty room filled with slot machines, tuning out their jingles as the phone began to ring.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Nana … this is Megan.”
“Hello!” she said. “Megan who?”
I winced. The moment I clarified that I was her granddaughter, Nana started to cry—and all the harder when I explained that Grace had left, too. “I have been waiting for you grandchildren for years,” she said. “Decades. Megan. I never thought it would be you.”
“I didn’t, either,” I told her truthfully.
Listening to my grandmother describe her years of struggle and sadness, I began to see the lasting effects of Westboro’s treatment of outsiders. Nana’s pain didn’t come from a one-time decision to keep her at arm’s length and out of our lives, but from a continuing and active rejection—from watching the years of her life tick by without the love of her family. Nana had been living this nightmare for more than thirty years. The pain was ongoing. I wondered how I would ever bear it.
* * *
Dec. 20, 2012—Day 3
THE SUN ALSO RISES
Wonderful how one loses track of the days up here in the mountains.
Time slowed to a crawl in Deadwood. The hours stretched out endlessly before me, and on the good days, I couldn’t get enough. After year upon year of constant churning and contention, I began to relish the quiet. I would take the day’s reading to the fluffy green couch by the huge window in the living room—a single pane, so it was a view unbroken—but I’d often end up spending more time staring out the window than at the page, watching the snow blanket my car and the neighborhood and the pine forests farther up the hill. When Grace was ready for chocolate or an adventure, I would happily indulge. I loved seeing where her whims would take us. Donning thrift store wedding dresses for an impromptu photo shoot at Deadwood Dick’s Antiques. Watching students put the finishing touches on the life-sized log cabin they were building in shop class during a drop-in tour of the local high school. Wading through knee-high drifts of immaculate snow along a creek in Spearfish Canyon, where the echoing snarls of a pack of dogs—another possible instrument of God’s wrath?—suddenly broke the silence and sent us hightailing it back to the car. Taking care of my sister gave me purpose. I knew I couldn’t give her what she truly wanted—the return of our beloved family—but after all we had lost, I wanted to offer consolation however I could.
“No!” Grace objected playfully one evening. We’d been reading by lamplight in the attic, and she had just hauled her huge old, clunky, barely functioning typewriter across the room, setting it down eleven inches from my face. After several minutes of poking and grumbling and paper-loading and reloading and random dings later, I moved toward the door to find a quieter space. “You can’t leave me! You’ll be reading to the sound of my typewriter! It will be so poetic. In Deadwood.”
“Everything is poetic in Deadwood,” I told her, laughing, but settled back down to read.
“I’m writing that down,” she declared. She continued noisily pecking away for a few moments and then apologized. “I want to write these thoughts as I have them,” she said by way of explanation.
I considered. “I like to think about my thoughts before I have them.”
She laughed again. “I’m writing that down, too!” Her delight was contagious.
But it wasn’t enough. The bad days—the ones where Grace would refuse to speak to me, behaving as though she didn’t see me, couldn’t hear me—began to multiply. The smallest of disagreements could grow into a days-long episode of the silent treatment, and I struggled to understand why my sister was so upset with me. If I didn’t immediately get on board with her ideas—like the indefinite trip to France—she would insist that I was impossibly selfish and didn’t care about her. If I offered an explanation for my disagreements, then I was simply “justifying myself” and not listening to her.
And then there was Chad. He had reappeared a few days before I left Westboro, and we’d been in touch ever so cautiously—and only via text message—ever since. He explained his sudden and protracted absence in a way that both relieved my hurt and made my heart ache: he’d been fevered and immobile for weeks, after he’d managed to contract both mononucleosis and West Nile virus simultaneously. He had almost died. Our communication had been as tentative as ever, due in part to a new anxiety he harbored: that I might suddenly show up on his doorstep unannounced. As unpracticed as I was in the art of “normal” relationships, I was under no illusions that such a move would be a good idea. He telegraphed his reticence just as clearly as he had his care. There was that small part of me that delighted in the idea of our being in the same state, but South Dakota was vast. In Deadwood, I was nearly as far from Chad’s home as I had been back in Kansas. And when I told him about our plans to run away and read books, I didn’t tell him where we were going.
I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself.
By the time I arrived in Deadwood, Chad and I were back to texting nearly every day, though still cautiously. He was curious about what I was doing and thinking, wondering how I was adjusting to life on the outside. His queries seemed like a test sometimes, and at the heart of each stood a single question: Did I really belong outside of Westboro’s fences? When he finally asked me where we had chosen for our reading quest, I told him the truth with studied nonchalance. “Enjoy Deadwood,” he answered. “I’ll be out there sometime after Christmas. I’ll try to look you up. Until then.” My whole body hummed with excitement, but when Grace caught me grinning stupidly at my phone, she was angry. She never had to ask when it was Chad I was messaging, and she seemed to have an uncanny ability to intuit when I was just thinking of him. She didn’t like that I wanted to share so many things with him, and told me that his influence had bothered her for a long time.
“I can’t help but think he poisoned a part of you,” she wrote. She suspected that he was the cause of my initial doubts.
Reading Grace’s message, I
was overcome by a powerful sense of denial. No, no, no. We were never supposed to be influenced by outsiders, and that idea had been a constant refrain at Westboro since I was small. “These people have nothing to offer us!” we would say, a sentiment often accompanied by a dismissive sneer. God instructed us to stand fast and hold the line against evildoers. Behold, I have made thy face strong against their faces, and thy forehead strong against their foreheads. As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house. I was revolted by the thought that I had let an outsider affect me. It made me feel weak and vulnerable. Corrupted. I responded to Grace’s assertion with a slew of words about the church’s cruelty and doctrinal errors—but the more I tried to frame the words to insist that Chad’s arguments had not influenced me, the clearer it became that my sister was right, at least in part.
MEGAN: And Gracie—assuming for a second that he *did* poison a part of me, I can only see one possibility. I can see one thing that I lost (though I believe this process started way before Chad). If the thing he poisoned was my ability to go along with something even if I disagreed with it—if he killed my ability to ignore and turn away from my conscience—then I’m glad he poisoned it.
GRACE: I will never like him.
Although I tried to respond to my sister’s moods with gentleness and restraint, reason and logic, my efforts often failed spectacularly. A tsunami of rage, pain, confusion, and despair would engulf us both as we exploded at each other, storming off to far-flung corners of the inn with venom coursing through us. It was fast becoming clear that we had no idea how to navigate relationships outside the church’s black-and-white, all-or-nothing paradigm. I’d thought that going through this process with a most beloved sister might make things easier—and it did, in some ways—but leaving together had also created a situation I hadn’t foreseen. With two of us, the mental, emotional, and logistical struggles of starting life again, almost from scratch, were concentrated and compounded. We had never learned how to “agree to disagree,” because to church members, such a concept was blasphemous. Can two walk together, except they be agreed? What communion hath light with darkness? At Westboro, every decision had moral implications. Every question had a single correct answer. Miscommunication required blame, and mistakes required punishment. My sister and I knew how to cajole, issue ultimatums, attribute ill motives, and assign moral failure to the other party in a dispute, but we couldn’t compromise and we couldn’t move forward without a resolution as to which of us was in the wrong. Without an absolute authority who could resolve the problem and declare one side as just and righteous, we floundered.
“Are you … okay?”
Curled up on the couch in the parlor, I glanced up to see Laura’s tiny frame in the doorway, barely visible in the dwindling light coming in from the west window. She and Dustin had been out of town for several days, visiting her family for Christmas, and her presence here on Christmas Eve surprised me. Why are they home already? I hadn’t even heard her come in. I swiped at my swollen eyes and tried to reassure her that I was fine, but I choked on another sob instead. She sat down and tentatively put an arm around my shoulder. I briefly debated an attempt to preserve my dignity and walk away, but the last remains of my life were falling apart. What did I have to lose?
“She won’t talk to me!” I wailed. “I don’t know what to do!”
I wasn’t sure what I expected Laura to say. I just knew that I couldn’t stand another second of this solitary confinement. I needed my mother—but in her absence, I needed anyone.
Laura shushed me and rubbed comforting circles on my back while I calmed down.
“Do you want to have dinner with Dustin and me?” she asked.
I followed Laura into the kitchen, watching as she and Dustin maneuvered around the small space, chopping herbs and vegetables for some sort of soup. I had assumed they found it burdensome to have two guests puttering around their house, but they both seemed perfectly at ease with an emotional stranger recovering from a crying jag at their kitchen table. Dustin explained that they loved to travel and to meet new people, but since full-time jobs now made such excursions difficult, hosting guests was the best alternative. Laura waxed eloquent describing their experiences studying abroad—she in Belgium and the Netherlands, he at Oxford—and it was obvious that she missed the freedom and adventure.
When I’d regained full possession of my composure, Laura tactfully probed the cause of my distress. I was evasive, but explained that my sister’s lack of communication wasn’t really her fault. That we had just moved out of our lifelong home, and that our family wasn’t speaking to us anymore.
“Can I ask why?” Laura said gently.
I paused. Talking with Cora and Ryan at the bar was one thing, but Grace and I were living with these people. What if I told the truth and their response was outrage and anger? I knew such a response would be justified, but I didn’t want to risk it.
“We don’t agree with their religion,” I hedged.
They both nodded, and an inscrutable look passed between them.
As we loaded the dishwasher after dinner, Laura offered me another room—the old library on the first floor—to take some of the pressure off Grace and me.
“For free?” I blurted. “Thank you!”
She laughed. “No problem. Goodnight, Megan.”
* * *
A split second before I stepped into the kitchen the following morning, I realized the date and felt a surge of panic.
What am I going to say when they say, “Merry Christmas”?!
After all the years of picketing Christmas services, of singing our version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” (“Santa Claus Will Take You to Hell”), of listening to my mother read to us of the holiday’s pagan roots, and of reciting from the book of Jeremiah to passersby—For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not … they are altogether brutish and foolish: the stock is a doctrine of vanities … After all these years, my abhorrence of Christmas was visceral, and the thought of trying to frame the words “Merry Christmas” made me physically ill. I could ignore the shop clerks and Salvation Army bell ringers, of course, but I was a guest here.
“Good morning!” Dustin said brightly. I’m sure my face projected “deer in headlights,” but he was standing at the counter working the contents of a mixing bowl. “Waffles,” he explained. “Laura will be down in a few minutes.” He wrinkled his nose and lowered his voice: “She’s not a morning person, but my waffles should do the trick.”
When Laura trudged in a minute later, there was no sign of the chipper, friendly host from the evening before. She was still in pajamas, eyes half-closed, mouth half-open, and literally dragging her feet. She pulled a chair from the table and dragged it to the open heat register that I’d discovered on my first morning here, so that the warm air blew up her pajama pants. Her mannerisms and short stature put me in mind of a small child, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing out loud. Dustin joined me.
“Dustin makes the best waffles,” she moaned with a sigh. “That’s the only reason I’m not in bed.”
“It’ll be an easy day, anyway,” Dustin assured her, and then to me: “We’re just gonna watch Lord of the Rings movies all day. It’s an annual marathon. You’re welcome to join us.”
Laura was right about the waffles—copious amounts of real butter were the key, Dustin confided—but before I joined the movie marathon, I decided to test the waters with Grace. I returned to the attic to grab a change of clothes, my toothbrush, and a blanket, and though my sister was sitting in bed awake, she said nothing. She didn’t look up, studiously staring down at her phone. No rapprochement in sight. I made my way back down to the living room, wrapped myself in the blanket—all three of us had the same idea; the hou
se was freezing—and I settled in on the smaller couch.
Only the extended versions of the films would suffice for this pair of self-professed nerds, so The Fellowship of the Ring ran for nearly four hours. We had to keep pausing the action so they could explain more about this world of elves, dwarfs, wizards, and hobbits, but they didn’t seem to mind. As the credits began to roll, I remembered the holiday and looked around. Not only had there been no “Merry Christmas,” there was no tree, no red and green lights, no decorations, nothing.
Curious.
When I asked why, Dustin told me that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses and thus didn’t observe holidays that weren’t sanctioned by the Bible. That was why they had returned home on Christmas Eve: they’d been visiting Laura’s parents and couldn’t celebrate with them without running afoul of God and conscience.
My relief was palpable. “Oh!” I said. “We’ve never celebrated Christmas, either!”
“Really?” he asked. “What religion is it again?”
“Baptist,” I said.
“Don’t Baptists celebrate Christmas?” Laura asked.
“Not … our church.”
Dustin’s brow furrowed, and they both nodded. “Well,” he said, “should we pause for lunch?”
What I actually wanted was to spend the rest of the day firing questions at them. What did they believe? And why? How had they chosen to become Jehovah’s Witnesses? If they took instruction from the Bible, why had Laura’s beautiful dark curls been chopped? What about the passage that clearly requires long hair for women and short hair for men? Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
I managed to suppress my curiosity at first, but as the day wore on and we became more at ease with each other, I couldn’t help bringing the conversation back to religion. I tried to assume the role of objective observer, but I found it impossible to discuss the Floyds’ beliefs without contrasting them to my former tradition—and since Westboro’s beliefs and practices were so unusual and well-known, it didn’t take them long to guess which church I might be describing. As with Cora and the dealers at the Four Aces, I was surprised again at how understanding of my past Dustin and Laura seemed to be. Instead of anger or judgment, it was fast friendship that resulted from our opening up to one another. For the next several days, we spent every spare moment we could find together, talking about belief during their lunch hour, chopping vegetables for dinner, and sitting around the living room afterward with Bibles and Web browsers at the ready.
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