Out of Heaven's Grasp

by V. J. Chambers

  I couldn’t manage to have an opinion, so I just shrugged and said in a quiet voice, “Whatever you think is best.”

  Sometimes, someone would tell me to smile. I did my best.

  What was so surreal about everything was that the world was moving forward in a seemingly normal way. But I felt as if all the color had drained out of my surroundings. I felt as if all my sensations had dulled. It seemed like everything around me was working perfectly, but that I was somehow damaged in some way.

  I felt like the world should stop working too.

  But it didn’t.

  At dinner that night, I couldn’t eat. I tried, but all the food tasted like cardboard, and my stomach seemed closed off.

  Afterward, I made excuses and said I was going to bed. I was lucky enough to have my own room now, since my two older sisters, who I used to share it with, had both gotten married and left home. I was glad of the privacy, but once in my room, I didn’t want to go to sleep.

  This was my last night of freedom, and I didn’t want to waste it.

  I sat up on my bed, looking around at all of my things. I didn’t have much that I really called my own, I realized. Some clothes. My guitar. I would disappear from this house, and it wouldn’t even make any difference. Life would go on here, same as always. I’d seen it after my sisters left. There were so many people in my family, that none of us were really anything special. We were just more hungry mouths, more labor for the farm. At that moment, I felt worthless. I’d never had any potential, I realized. I was always destined to marry a man, cook, and make babies. That was it.

  I stared at my guitar and thought of my dream to play in front of huge groups of people, to hear them clap for me and tell me that I was special.

  That was a stupid dream. I should have known better. I wasn’t special. Besides, wanting to be elevated above others was a sin. I was meant to be humble. To be submissive.

  I flung myself back on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I can’t do it,” I whispered. “Please don’t make me do it.”

  And then… almost as if an answer was coming to me from Heaven, I heard the words of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me.

  I shut my eyes and took a shuddering breath. Jesus had faced death for me. He had gone through a horrible ordeal on the cross, dying for my sins. In comparison to that, marrying Bob Carroll wasn’t so bad. I could do this. If this was the trial that God required of me, I could face it.

  Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.

  I lay there, my eyes closed, and something like peace washed over me.

  And there was a pounding noise at the window.

  I sat up, startled. It was already dark outside, and most people in the house were asleep. Still, that knocking noise was loud. I ran over the window.

  Jesse was outside, peering in at me.

  I yanked the window open, my heart leaping at the sight of him. “What are you doing here? I thought they cast you out.”

  “They did,” he said. “I came back for my truck.” He reached through the window for my hands. “I came back for you. Come with me, Abby.”

  I pulled my hands away. Hadn’t I just made peace with this decision as a test sent by God? “No.”

  He pushed the window up even higher. “Come on.”

  “Jesse, I can’t.” I looked back at the door to my room. What if someone heard us talking? “You have to go.”

  “Abby.” He fixed me with his blue eyes.

  Oh, why was he so nice to look at?

  “Okay, I’ll climb out the window, but only so that we can talk somewhere else, where no one can hear us.”

  He grinned at me.

  My heart swelled.

  Carefully, I climbed out the window. Jesse put his hands on my waist and lowered me to the ground.

  Once I had both feet on the ground, I realized how close our bodies were. I expected Jesse to let go of me, but he didn’t.

  He pushed me back against the side of the house, and suddenly his mouth was on mine, and he was kissing me.

  I’d never felt anything like it my life. Sweetness burst through my body. His lips were soft. His tongue was softer. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and I kissed him back.

  And we kissed for a very long time.

  But this was a sin. This was a temptation sent by the devil. Jesse had been cast out of the community, and that meant that he was now part of the wickedness of the world. I couldn’t let this happen.

  So, with effort, I pushed him away. “We can’t,” I managed. My limbs felt weak. The kiss had felt so good.

  He looked up at the open window, then back at me. He grabbed me by the hand and tugged me away.

  We ran away from the house, deep into the shadows of the night. When we were out of earshot, we stopped.

  His face was mangled and hurt, but there was something wild about him, something in his eyes, and it made him even more appealing than he’d ever been before. I found myself unable to keep my eyes off of his body. His broad shoulders. His powerful hands.

  I wanted…

  I didn’t know what I wanted, but it frightened me. I took several steps back from him.

  “Why?” he said.

  I didn’t understand. “What?”

  “Why won’t you come with me? What have you got here?”

  I bit my lip. “It’s not about that. It’s about doing what God commands.”

  “Don’t say that shit, Abby.”

  I winced at the expletive. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I mean it,” he said. “This isn’t what you want. You want to play music. You want to travel. Come with me.”

  I thought about it for a minute. Climbing into Jesse’s truck and leaving the community behind forever. Forging our own lives somewhere else. Excitement surged through me, but then it was replaced with terror. “It wouldn’t work. They’d come after me. I’m engaged now.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” he said. “To Bob Carroll? He’s already got three wives. And he’s too old. It’s disgusting, Abby.”

  I wanted to cry. I wrapped my arms around myself. “I have to do it, though. It’s what God wants.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Jesse. “It’s what Bob Carroll wants.”

  I stared at my shoes. “He’d come after me, though. He would.”

  I’d seen it twice. In both cases, a young girl had run away to escape a marriage to an older man. But the community had rallied together and gone after her. Both girls had been brought back, and both were married now.

  “We’d get away. I would get us away.”

  “How can you know that?”

  Jesse rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe I should have told him that we had sex.”

  “That we had what?” I said. I’d never heard that word before.

  He looked up at me. “You know, marital relations.”

  “But we’re not married,” I said.

  He lifted a finger. “I’ve got it. When they come after us, I’ll tell them you’re pregnant with my child, and there’s no way he’ll want you after that.”

  My jaw dropped. “You wouldn’t dare!” My body was wracked with conflicting emotions. A nearly pleasant feeling when he said the words my child like I belonged to him, and then a sick, sick sense of dread at the idea of such an awful lie. I hugged myself tighter. My voice dropped to a whisper. “We didn’t do anything like that.” I glanced at him, nervous. “Did we?”

  “No.” He looked at me like I was crazy. Then he furrowed his brow. “Wait, you don’t know? Aren’t they going to tell you before they marry you off to that bastard?”

  “Tell me what?”

  He stepped closer to me. He caressed my jaw. “Come with me, Abby. We wanted to get married. We can get married out there. And then…” His voice lowered to a husky whisper. “I’ll show you.”

  He was kissing me again. The kisses were so nice, too wonderful for words. His hands roamed over my back, over my waist, pulling me ti
ght against his firm body. Everywhere he touched me, it seared into me. I was swept away by his mouth on mine, by his arms encircling me.

  And my body… my body was reacting in ways that alarmed me.

  Once, in the shower, on impulse, I had parted my legs and let the water from the nozzle spray over me there. It had felt overwhelmingly good, explosive and delicious.

  Now, pressed against Jesse, I was feeling something almost similar. Warmth grew between my legs. Some foreign, powerful desire was struggling to take control of me.

  But back then, I’d known that what I’d done was the dirtiest, worst kind of sin. I’d been so guilty after, and I’d sobbed and prayed to God for forgiveness. I knew that this was an evil temptation as well. Jesse was cast out of the community. It was to be as if he had never existed. Now, he was nothing more than a tool of Satan to turn me from what was right and true. I couldn’t give in to him anymore.

  I put both my hands on his chest and shoved him as hard as I could.

  He stumbled away from me.

  “No.”

  He drew in a shaky breath. “Abby—”

  “You’re doing the work of the devil, Jesse. You’re trying to drag me down with you, but I can’t let you do that.”

  His face twisted. “Please don’t say that.”

  I started to cry. “You have to go away. You’ve been cast out, and you’re… you’re evil now. I have a chance to get right with God, and I have to take it.”

  He shut his eyes, and he looked so hurt, that I wished I could take it back.

  But I knew that what I was doing was the right thing. It hurt, and it was hard, so that meant it was right. God’s way was never easy, but he required it of his people. I began to sob in earnest.

  He reached for me. “Abby, please—”

  “Don’t touch me.” I could barely get the words out because I was crying so hard. “I don’t know you anymore, Jesse Wallace.”

  “Not you,” he pleaded. “Don’t you say that to me.”

  I turned away. “Just go. I never want to see you again.”

  There was no sound in the darkness except my heartbroken sobs.

  His hand on my shoulder.

  I shook him off. “Go.”

  He didn’t move.

  I looked at him. His face was all mangled, and his expression was destroyed, and he looked so lost and hurt.

  It killed me to say these things to him. I wanted so badly to comfort him, but I knew that if I did, I’d never manage to stay strong. So, I gathered up my skirts and took off running, back for the house.

  When I got back, I looked over my shoulder, and I saw the dark outline of him, standing there, not moving.

  I felt as if maybe I’d broken him. I scrambled back inside the window, slammed it shut, and cried myself to sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Abby

  When I woke up, I started crying again.

  I couldn’t help it. It hurt too bad. The worst of it was that I kept thinking about Jesse standing outside, so pitiful and sad, and I felt guilty for hurting him like that. How could I feel guilty when I knew I was doing the right thing? If I was following God’s commandments, wouldn’t he take this guilt from me? Or was the guilt some kind of test for me as well? How long would God test me?

  I thought of the story of Abraham and Isaac, who was Abraham’s only son with his wife Sarah. God had told Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, but then God made Abraham and Sarah wait until they were very old to have a baby at all. One child. Isaac.

  And then, in the night, God came to Abraham and told him that he must sacrifice Isaac to God.

  After all those years, after all that waiting, God was forcing Abraham to kill his own son.

  Abraham could have refused. But he trusted God, and he took Isaac out to an altar, and he prepared to sacrifice his only son to God, because that was what God required of him.

  When God saw how willing Abraham was to follow his commandments, he stopped Abraham, and Isaac was spared.

  I assured myself that I didn’t have it quite as bad as Abraham. I didn’t have to give up my only son. I only had to give up Jesse—and he wasn’t dead. He was out there, somewhere in the world, and maybe he was even okay.

  Still, I couldn’t stop crying.

  It was the day of my wedding, and my mothers were putting the finishing touches on my wedding dress, but all I could do was lie on my bed and sob.

  My mother came in and held me in her arms. She rocked me like I was a baby, and she stroked my hair, and she told me to be brave and strong, that I would be rewarded in Heaven for my obedience.

  But that only made me cry harder.

  Mother Claudia and Mother Deborah also gave me hugs and told me they were praying that God would give me strength.

  But it was as if the floodgates had been opened, and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. I cried until I was exhausted. And then I cried more. Finally, some time in the afternoon, it seemed as if I had no more tears left.

  My older sisters Salome and Anna had come by to see me.

  They sat down on my bed on either side of me, and each one of them took one of my hands.

  “I felt like this too,” said Salome.

  “You didn’t cry,” I said.

  “Sure, I did.” She gave me a sad smile. “I only did it in front of my mother, though. I hid the rest of the time.” Salome was Mother Deborah’s daughter.

  “It won’t be so bad,” said Anna. “You’ll be out of the house, on your own. You’ll be a woman. It’s like an adventure.”

  Salome nodded. “A little bit. But you have to admit it’s different for you, Anna. You’re a first wife.”

  “That’s true,” said Anna. She’d been married to a man close to her age, and it had happened so recently that she wasn’t even pregnant yet. She tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “But I was still scared about all of it. I didn’t really know Timothy before we got married. I didn’t know what kind of man he was going to be.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Salome squeezed my fingers. “It doesn’t matter once you start having babies. Everything makes sense then. You won’t care if their father is old or young or handsome. None of that will matter, because you’ll be so in love with them.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” said Anna. “And you won’t have to struggle like Timothy and I do. Bob has such a successful farm. You won’t have to worry about food or money or anything like that.”

  They smiled at me, and I tried to smile back.

  I knew that they meant to reassure me and make me feel better, but it really didn’t help. I wasn’t crying because of marrying Bob. Sure, I wasn’t crazy about the idea, and it scared me. I was crying because of Jesse. I didn’t know what would happen to him, and I felt like I’d let him down. Like we’d all let him down. He was out there, trying to survive, and he had no one.

  And it was my fault.

  I didn’t have to meet him that night behind our house. If I’d stayed away from him, like I knew was the right thing to do, we’d never have been caught, and he wouldn’t have been cast out of the community.

  That was why I couldn’t stop crying.

  But I couldn’t say that, because now that Jesse was gone, we were forbidden from ever speaking of him. He had never been born. He was gone. His name had been stricken from the Book of Life. He was dead to all of us.

  So, I just smiled at my sisters and tried to keep from crying anymore.

  Later, when my mothers brought me my wedding dress, I let them put it on me, and I told them it was beautiful. I thanked them for all their hard work.

  But when I heard my own voice, it sounded blank and empty, as if something inside me had been flattened.

  I was quiet while they worked on doing my hair. They braided it into a crown around my head, and it looked beautiful. They made me put cucumbers over my eyes to try to take away the swelling from all the crying that I’d done, but it didn’t work very well.
r />   So, later that evening, I was brought to marry Bob Carroll with a red and puffy face, but a beautiful dress and a gorgeous hair style.

  Inside, I felt dead.

  * * *

  In the Life, the wedding ceremony was considered a private matter between the husband and the wife. No one else was permitted inside during the service except my father and mother, who served as witnesses.

  There was no parading down an aisle with bridesmaids or flower girls. There was no music or processional.

  We arrived in the house of Bob Carroll in the early evening, and I was greeted by my new family—three wives and eight children. (Seven more were grown and married already, and they were not there.) The wives were all older than me. Fern was in her sixties. She seemed like a grandmother, not a peer. May was in her late forties—the age of my mother. The youngest wife, Sally, was thirty-six. She had children that were only five years younger than me.

  After shaking hands with the wives, we went into Bob’s office, where Gideon and Bob were waiting.

  Gideon was apparently going to perform the wedding ceremony. Both of them smiled at me when I entered the room.

  I tried to smile back, but it was hard to remember what a real smile felt like. Inside, I was numb, and emotions seemed like something from the distant past. Even though only two days had passed since the announcement of my marriage, I had changed in that time, and I knew I was never going to be the same.

  Bob was balding, but—like all the older men in the community—he still kept what remained of his hair long. It was silvery-black, tied in a thin ponytail at his neck. He took my hand when I entered the room, and he smelled strongly of vanilla tic-tacs. I remembered that when I was a little girl, he would always offer one to me.

  His hand was leathery and old. I looked down to see that there were age spots on his skin and that his veins stood up against his knuckles. He was wearing a suit, dressed up for the wedding. His belly protruded an inch or two over his belt.

  But as Gideon began to ask us to repeat our vows, I looked up at the wrinkling face of this man, and tried to summon some kind of attraction or love towards him. I tried to see a man that I could feel something towards.