Rebecca

by Adam J Nicolai

  "I was busy getting ready for State."

  "Oh, I know, I know, but that's all over with now. Your mother tells me you'll be staying in Minneapolis after all, not moving out to Connecticut? That's a huge decision, Sarah, and we're all proud of you. Taking care of your daughter has got to come first, and you know your family in the Lord can help you do it."

  "I haven't really decided yet," she said, bristling.

  "Well, you'll make the right choice. You're a good kid, you always have been, and that little girl needs you, Sarah. She needs you to make the right decisions, and you're starting today, with dedicating her to the Lord."

  Yes. That's why she was here. To dedicate her daughter at the altar of God.

  She felt like she was suffocating.

  "Let's get this show on the road!" A smattering of Hallelujahs and Amens rippled through the little crowd. He gave a single, sharp clap, startling Rebecca into a cry, and huffed up the stairs to the altar.

  Betty gave Becca back to Sarah, but Sarah couldn't calm the girl down. She took a seat in the front pew, her mother to her left and Tiff to her right, as Becca squalled in her arms.

  "Folks," Dennis said from behind the podium, "I know we all have our own fond memories of Sarah. My earliest one is actually from the time I was praying with her mother, Beth. They'd just started coming to our church here, as a family, and Beth was desperate for the Lord. She came to me and let Jesus into her heart and little Sarah sat in the pews and watched. Beth set a great example for her daughter that day. It was an example that little Sarah followed herself the very next week, when she came to me and made the same prayer."

  The audience rippled with Hallelujahs. Sarah felt that she should join them, but her tongue had died in her mouth. She couldn't make it echo that word. She glanced at her mom, but the woman's eyes were locked on Pastor Dennis, her lips murmuring quiet praise.

  "And it's an example that Sarah has chosen to extend now, to her own daughter, Rebecca."

  Betty, sitting in the row behind, clapped Sarah on the shoulder.

  "Sometimes we get lost in these traditions. We get baptized, we come up to the altar for prayer. We have Christmas and Easter and go to church every Sunday. But we don't always think about what things really mean. Why we really do them. And that's a risk, folks. When we forget why we do things, we forget why they're important. We drift away in our walk with God, and those places of ignorance, of complacence, become holes that Satan can walk right through. So yes, in a minute I'll pray for little Rebecca and dedicate her, life and soul, to God. But what does that really mean?"

  He smiled broadly at Sarah. "Well, some of you may know that this baby was not God's original plan for Sarah's life. He blessed her with a great intellect. She was on a path to college at Yale, a path that involved practicing law. But she made some mistakes. Certainly we all do. And now God has blessed her with this beautiful baby girl."

  Amen, the little crowd murmured, and Praise Jesus.

  "Now, it would be easy for our Sarah to be upset about this. She could even blame God. Many have. Many would turn their backs, even curse His name. But not our Sarah. She knows, you see, because her mother raised her right. She knows that this child has no hope and no salvation without Jesus. She knows that without His guidance, without His hand in her life, this child is lost."

  Rebecca's cries grew more fervent as he spoke, echoing hollowly in the chapel; he ignored her voice, preached over it like it wasn't there.

  "Sarah is human. She's a sinner. She can't raise this child right; none of us can. So she's come here today to say, 'Yes, Lord! Take this child. I surrender her to You.'"

  Sarah's stomach writhed. Surrender.

  Praise Jesus. Hallelujah.

  "And for Sarah, too, it has deep meaning. She has strayed from God during this time. I'm sure it's been a time of deep reflection for her, of dark whispers from Satan. As I said, it would be so easy, so easy, to give in to those whispers and turn her back. But she's here, everyone. She's here today."

  Mom's hand found Sarah's knee and squeezed it; her eyes were still locked on the preacher.

  "By coming today, she too is re-committing: to her faith, to Jesus, to the blood of Christ. To raising her daughter with the Rod, and bringing her to church, and submitting to the Lord's wishes."

  Sarah felt like she could vomit. Her hands shook; her pulse thrummed in her temple like a live wire. The weight of the church was crushing her, driving her forward, but she was the only one hearing her daughter's screams.

  "Praise Jesus," Dennis breathed, agreeing with the crowd. "Sarah, would you bring little Becky up here?"

  Sarah stood, her quivering heels threatening to spill her to the floor. "I..." she said. Can't you hear her?

  Dennis gestured at the place next to him, as if she might have misunderstood him.

  Sarah tightened her grip on her daughter and turned for the door.

  "Sarah?" Mom asked immediately. "Sarah, up on the altar."

  Tiff caught on at once. She formed rank behind Sarah, a one-woman phalanx.

  "Sarah!" Mom barked. Sarah passed out of the chapel, emerged back into the entryway. She only had to reach the doors. Her heart was hammering.

  Mom grabbed her arm. "Where do you think you're going?"

  "Just let her go," Tiff said.

  "I'm not doing this," Sarah said, her voice quivering so badly it threatened to break.

  "Yes, you are." She actually tugged on Sarah's arm, trying to drag her back to the chapel.

  "No, I'm not!" Sarah jerked her arm away, broke into a clumsy jog for the doors. Becca squalled. Tiff swept up the empty carrier on the way out.

  "Sarah, get back here! Sarah, you - !"

  The doors swung shut behind them.

  88

  "She's gonna kill me."

  "Fuck her," Tiff answered, her eyes glued to the road. In the back seat, Becca was screaming.

  "No, she's gonna fucking kill me. Did you see how pissed she was?"

  "Fuck her!" Tiff repeated. "God, Sarah, that was your church? How did you survive it?"

  Sarah's phone lit up in her lap. Mom was calling. Sarah pushed Ignore, as carefully as if she were handling a rattlesnake.

  "That was her. Tiff, she's gonna kick me out of that apartment. I'm so screwed." When she lost her place, she'd have nothing. She'd end up in a homeless shelter. Why did she have to be so headstrong? A Dedication wasn't that big a deal. "I should've just let her do it."

  "Sarah, are you kidding? You can't let Becca grow up listening to that guy! God, he was disgusting!"

  "It would've been five minutes and some Bible verses, Pastor Dennis spouting some bullshit, and that's it. I'd still have a place to live."

  "Sarah, that wouldn't have been it. Your mom would want to bring her to church. She'd drive to your apartment to pick her up if she had to. "

  The thought arrested her. The chapel filled with people banging tambourines and screaming in tongues, Pastor Dennis prowling back and forth across the altar like a fat panther trapped in a cage. How old would Becca be before she decided she had her own demon?

  Mom called again, the green light on Sarah's phone flashing like the strobe from a police car. She jabbed at Ignore again.

  Tiff flipped the turn signal, eased over a lane. "You did the right thing. You're her mom."

  "They hate me there, Tiff."

  "Yeah. I noticed."

  "They act like they love me, but they don't. They hate everything about me."

  Tiff chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes still fixed ahead. "They're idiots."

  If they knew I was gay, they'd treat me exactly like they treated you. "They spend so much time talking about love and acceptance and forgiveness. Pastor Dennis spouts off about it every Sunday. But they don't really believe it. They..." Her heart was galloping. That old, wild scream boiled in her lungs. Sacrifice your daughter, or lose your apartment. Lose everything. It was a familiar ultimatum, somehow, one that had been haunting her for weeks.

  T
he consequences of her choice would crush her.

  "Fuck, Tiff," she breathed, fighting to keep calm, to keep the scream buried. "What am I gonna do?"

  Becca's shrieks blasted holes in the question. Tiff's eyes churned.

  "Okay. First of all, you don't know what she's gonna do. You don't know that she's gonna flip."

  Sarah barked a wild laugh. "Have you met my mother?"

  "You don't know, Sarah. You're still her daughter. She's still Becca's grandma. She's not gonna want you guys out on the street. She might be a little nuts, but she loves you. She loves you both."

  Sarah wasn't so sure of that. This woman had already kicked her daughter out of her house once.

  Tiff tried again. "Look. The lease is in your name, right?"

  "Yeah, but I don't have any money!"

  "I thought you said you had two thousand dollars saved up."

  "Well... I do, but -"

  "And I have like a thousand, after my open house."

  "I can't take your money! And even if I did, all together that's only like three months of rent."

  "Well, yeah, but that's three months to figure things out. My parents might help us. We could get jobs."

  "You're going to school, you can't -" The phone lit up again; it was a snapping viper, hissing in her lap. Sarah nearly threw it out the window.

  "Look, the point is, she can't throw you out if the lease is in your name."

  "If I can't pay the rent, it's just as good." Fuck. Fuck.

  Tiff stole her eyes away from the road, just for a second. "Sarah. You've got to calm down." She reached over, squeezed her hand. "Okay? We will figure this out."

  "Okay," Sarah said, but a voice in her head whispered, How long before she starts to resent you?

  She listened to Tiff try to reassure her for the rest of the ride home. Her mother's calls turned less frequent, but they still came, punctuating Tiff's assurances and Becca's cries like a crazy man on the street corner, shouting about doomsday.

  When they got home, Sarah fed Becca and calmed her down while Tiff went home to change. After Becca went down for her nap, Mom called again.

  Sarah pushed Answer and snapped, "What?"

  89

  "What do you mean, 'what?' Where are you?"

  "At home."

  "We had a hundred people here, Sarah, you can't just -"

  Sarah scoffed. "It wasn't a hundred people. And I don't know them anyway."

  "What? Don't know them? Sarah -"

  "They're your friends. Not mine."

  "How can you say that about Betty? About Pastor Dennis?"

  "Pastor Dennis is an asshole." The words struck her mother like a slap to the face. They hung in the air, gleaming, as she stammered.

  "Sarah... what has gotten into you? Why are you...?"

  "I don't want to dedicate her!" She wanted to scream, to force her mother to understand, but the sleeping baby in the swing next to her forced restraint. "That was your idea!"

  "You aren't going to dedicate your child to God?"

  "I walked out of the church today," Sarah growled. "What do you think?"

  "Sarah... why..." Mom was crying. "Why are you doing this? We need to pray about this! Don't turn your back on God!"

  "I'm not turning my back on God, Mom! I don't want my kid going to that church! And I don't care what Pastor Dennis has to say anymore! I don't see him for eight months and the first thing he tells me is I'm too fat and I need to get a husband? Fuck him!"

  "It's that girl," her mother said, her tears suddenly drying. "Isn't it? That lesbian?"

  "Tiff? Her name is Tiff."

  "Was she talking to you? Did she put you up to this? Sarah, this is exactly why you can't trust them. They aren't bad people -"

  "No, Mom, she's not a bad person. You're right about that. She's the only one who even gives a shit about me."

  "Oh..." She actually sounded compassionate. Of course she did, now. "Sarah, that's not true. Honey, I care about you. I wouldn't be paying for your apartment if I didn't -"

  "You wouldn't have kicked me out!" Sarah shrieked. Becca's eyes flew open; she lurched into a scream of her own. "Don't you fucking give me that! If you gave a shit you wouldn't have kicked me out of my own fucking house!"

  "Sarah, I told you I can't have a baby here crying all the time, I have to get up in the morning -"

  "And I don't? I was supposed to go to school! I was fucking terrified! And what did you do? You -"

  "I am trying to do the best I can with what we have, Sarah. I didn't create this situation. I did everything I could to try to help you be a good girl. You're the one -"

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm the one! I'm the slut who got knocked up! I'm the whore who can't keep her legs closed! I'm the dyke!"

  The conversation halted, like the silence after a thunderclap. From her swing, Becca convulsed with shrieks.

  Carefully, Mom said, "That is not true."

  Oh, here it comes.

  "Sarah, you listen to me. That is not true."

  "Yes, Mom, it is true, it's been true since I was eight."

  "Sarah, no. You've been spending too much time with that girl and Satan is working on you. I know it's scary but we can work through it. People recover from this all the time. We'll talk to Pastor Dennis -"

  "Are you fucking listening to me at all? It is true. It is who I am."

  "Sarah..." Her voice writhed upwards, creeping toward hysteria. "No, please listen, God can help you. You don't have to live that way. He can -"

  "I love Tiffany, Mom. I love her."

  "You shut your mouth!"

  "I love her, and she loves me."

  Her mother gave a strangled cry, like she'd just watched her daughter get murdered. "Who are you?" she shrieked. "Who the hell are you?"

  90

  The phone went dead in her hands. It was an alien artifact: its contours unfathomable, its markings gibberish. Sarah stared at it as her daughter wailed and the room spun.

  Oh, god. Why had she said that? Why... how could she be so stupid?

  "I'm fucked," she breathed. Her heart threatened to shatter her sternum. Everything looked different; the world had undergone apocalypse. "Oh, god. Oh, shit."

  She lifted the phone, thinking to call Tiff, then put it back down. She wasn't ready for that. She didn't know what to say. "I hope you're for real, because I just fucked up everything." She would reek of desperation, would send Tiff screaming for the hills.

  Becca's squalling was a cacophony of accusation.

  I have to call Mom back. Tell her I was kidding. I was just trying to hurt her. I'm really upset, and I just wanted to push her buttons.

  Take it back.

  But she couldn't. Her mother wouldn't believe her, anyway. It was too late now.

  This fact settled over her like a shroud. It was done. She'd driven off the cliff. For better or worse, she was plummeting.

  She wanted to just accept this, take hold of it and face forward, but she couldn't. Panic gibbered at the edges of her mind; then it tasted her, and tore in.

  She looked at what her world had become and screamed.

  91

  She was on the couch, her mind churning with horror as she stared at the wall and fed her daughter, when Tiff came back.

  "Sare?"

  Sarah blinked and looked at her, trying to process the fact of her arrival. She was back in her favorite jean shorts. Everything about her was pretty. "Hi."

  "Are you okay?"

  "I told my mom about us."

  Tiff's mouth opened, then closed. She had a cautious look, like she was handling a sculpture made of glass. "What did she say?"

  "She screamed."

  "She... ah, Christ."

  "She wants to cure me."

  "It's not something to be cured!"

  That was true. There was no cure. "She's gonna talk to Pastor Dennis." Maybe she'd finally get her exorcism.

  "Sarah..." Tiff swept to the couch, hugged her awkwardly around the neck as she fed Rebecca. "God,
I'm sorry."

  Sarah stiffened at her touch; she didn't trust it. Tiff was going to leave now. She was as disgusted as the rest of them. "What are you sorry for?"

  "I'm sorry your mom is such a bitch." She tried to turn Sarah's face toward her; Sarah refused. Tiff kissed her on the temple. "You don't deserve that. God, how could she do that?"

  Sarah didn't know what to believe any more. She wanted space. She wanted to fall into Tiff's arms. She wanted to run, screaming. She wanted to go to Yale.

  She wanted to be herself again. She had no idea what that even meant any more.

  She turned away from Tiff and focused on her daughter's tiny hands gripping the bottle, on her fragile throat working rhythmically at it. Becca didn't care what Sarah's mother had said. She didn't even understand it.

  "Sarah?" Tiff smoothed her hair. "Talk to me."

  "I didn't mean to tell her." How could she be so precise with her language in debate rounds, and so horrible at controlling herself in arguments? "We were... fighting about the church thing, and she said something about how this is all my fault, and I just... I just threw it at her. I didn't mean to tell her. I never should've told her." Her head was shaking. "Never. I never..." She sucked a ragged breath, trying to keep herself together; it caught in her lungs and tore into a sob. "I didn't choose this! I didn't choose! She thinks I chose! I didn't choose! I didn't! I tried, I tried - !"

  Tiff pulled her in.

  92

  She cried until she was numb. She wasn't asleep, but was close. She just wanted the world to go away.

  She felt Tiff take Becca and lay her down for a nap, the noises glimmering at the edge of her consciousness.

  Her phone rang and her eyes snapped open for an instant. Tiff was picking it up. She let them close again.

  "Hey. She's taking a nap, I'll have her call you back."

  There was a murmuring from the phone.

  "I don't know. She's exhausted. She doesn't have any help here."

  More murmuring.

  "Cal, I'm not getting into that with you. It's not my place."