For a moment the idea seemed appealing because I would be so close to the computer and might be able to get on it again. As soon as the thought slipped into my brain, I pinched myself on the upper thigh. Hard. No, Rachel. Finally, I managed to fall asleep, only to be woken up by my alarm what felt like five minutes later.
And now there’s a pounding on the bathroom door.
“Rachel, I hafta use the bathroom!” Gabriel cries. “And Dad said you gotta get downstairs and help.”
“All right!” I answer back. My brain searches for the right words or Scripture to ask God for strength, but the words won’t come, and I give up and scowl at myself in the mirror. It’s not something I do often, and we never scowl in front of each other—a merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance, and being born again means we should always be merry—but something about scowling in private feels like releasing just a bit of steam out of a boiling pot.
When I head down to the kitchen, I discover Faith standing there, wiping down the counters and buttering toast and cleaning sticky faces. Faith always seems to have twenty arms when it comes to housework, and all of them work faster than mine.
“‘To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed,’” my father says, standing with his arms crossed, smiling broadly at Faith.
“Let all your things be done with charity,” Faith responds, blushing slightly.
“Hi, Faith,” I say, walking over to start washing the first round of dirty breakfast dishes, quickly, so my father witnesses my efforts. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might use the help of your big sister today,” my father says, answering for Faith as he sits down at the kitchen table to lace up his work boots. “As your mother continues to recover, so much is on your shoulders, Rachel, and I want to make sure you’re able to keep things running smoothly here at home.”
I don’t know if it’s because of the mountain ranges of dirty laundry collecting in the family room and the hallways or the overcooked meatloaf or my copy of A Wrinkle in Time, but my heart sinks. I touch my Titus 2 bracelet and for a brief moment I feel sorry for my future husband, stuck with a girl who’s more interested in books than in being a good helpmeet. With a girl who looked up Lauren Sullivan’s blog.
As I approach my older sister, she looks at me carefully. “Rachel,” she says in a whisper that’s still loud enough for everyone to hear, “I need to speak with you.” She guides me out of the kitchen and around the corner into the hallway leading to Mom and Dad’s bedroom.
“Rachel, have you examined your outfit carefully in the mirror this morning?” she says, her hands planted firmly around my shoulders. She’s an inch or two shorter than me, but her grip is solid. Sure of itself.
I glance down, anxiously searching for my offense. I’m wearing one of my ankle-length denim skirts, but it’s clean with no obvious stains. I have my black boots laced tight—the ones that used to belong to Faith—so I know they can’t be my error.
“What is it?” I ask, panicking.
“Look at your shirt,” Faith says, speaking slowly and deliberately.
“It’s a white shirt,” I say, and it is. A simple white button down with three-quarter sleeves. Clean. No stains.
“Rachel, your undergarments are clearly visible through this shirt,” Faith answers, the sweet tone of her voice cut with a firmness Faith has used with me since I was young and got distracted when I should have been helping during bedtime. “And you know that’s not appropriate. Remember Timothy. ‘In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with adorned hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.’”
I look down. Faith’s right. My white button down has been washed so many times it’s more transparent than I noticed, and the outlines of my tan resale shop bra are easy to spot. My cheeks flare up, and I’m grateful at least that Faith maneuvered me out into the hallway where my father wouldn’t overhear yet another one of my stupid mistakes.
“I’m sorry, Faith,” I start. “I’ve just been so exhausted lately, and I didn’t realize…” I trail off. There’s no excuse for this, so I shouldn’t even try. “I’m going to run upstairs and change right away.”
“Yes, I think you should,” Faith answers.
“Of course,” I say, my cheeks reddening so much I think I might melt right there in the hallway.
Faith lets go, and I race upstairs and into my bedroom where I shut the door to change. It’s rare that I’m in my bedroom without Ruth or Sarah there, too, asking me to help them find a missing sock or wiggling in front of me while I try to braid their hair. I open the closet we share and start pushing hangers aside, looking for something appropriate and clean, but I feel the ache in my throat about to crack open. Before I can stop myself, I sink to the floor of the closet and collapse into tears. I can’t do anything right. I can’t control my temptations not to think about Lauren, and I can’t run the house properly. I’m not godly, I’m not good, I’m not like Faith, and my future husband won’t ever appear if I keep being the mess of a girl that I am right now.
“Lord, please be with me,” I beg, hot tears sliding down my cheeks, frustrated that minutes before I could only scowl instead of finding the right words to ask God for guidance. I can’t even pray as well as Faith, who remembers the right Scripture to use at the right time. I clutch the hem of one of Ruth’s dresses and scream into it as loud as I can, muffling the noise so no one hears me. Just as we don’t scowl in front of each other, we don’t raise our voices in anger in this house. Ever. But for a moment, I feel lighter.
I wait, worried someone will come up the stairs to find out what’s wrong. But no one does, and I take a few deep breaths and get up, forcing myself to focus on the clothing hanging in front of me until I find a dark blue button-down shirt that I can wear. I ball the white shirt up and shove it to the back of my closet. My mom always has us cut up old clothes to use for cleaning rags—it’s cheaper than paper towels—but right now I just want this shirt out of sight until it doesn’t remind me of all the ways I can’t stop stumbling.
Finally, I manage to calm myself and head downstairs to continue the morning routine. I catch up on laundry while Faith goes over lessons with the little ones. When lunchtime comes, I carry a ham sandwich on wheat bread and a glass of milk into my mother’s room. Even though I offer her food several times a day, I have the best luck trying to get her to eat something in the middle of the day.
My mother is sitting up in bed, propped up on some pillows and staring out the bedroom window to her left. I washed the windows carefully late last week and the sun is streaming in, but my mother looks past the sun somehow. Her hands are folded in her lap like they’ve been sculpted there. Like they can’t move for anything. When she hears me come in she turns to look at me and smiles, but it’s a practiced smile. Just her cheeks pulling up on the sides, and only barely.
“Hi, Mom,” I say in a soft, low voice. I can’t stand to see her this way. Once when I was younger, Mom burned her hand on the oven rack, and it left a welt as thick and long as a number two pencil. But when she burned her hand she exclaimed, “The joy of the Lord is my strength!” and kept going. That’s the mother I know.
But this mother is propped up on her bed, halfway here and halfway somewhere else. Since the day Mom lost Joshua, I’ve managed to read about miscarriages a few more times on the computer, and some websites mention a condition called postpartum depression and medications that might help. Dad would just say that God is the great physician. But why do Mom and Dad believe in doctors for our bodies and not for our minds? After all, our brains are part of our bodies. But my questions are irrelevant because there’s no one to give me the answers.
“I have your lunch,” I say, placing the plate on the bed next to my mother and the glass of milk on her nightstand. She makes no effort to touch them, but she manages a quiet, “Thank you.”
“Can’t yo
u take one bite?” I ask, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed.
“I’m really not hungry, Rachel. Maybe later.”
“It’s important you get your strength back,” I say, feeling the lump in my throat threaten to split open again for the second time in one day. But I don’t want to cry in front of my mother—that will only make her feel worse.
“Yes, I know,” my mom answers. “I’ll eat something later, I promise.”
“Take just one bite, so I can see,” I say. “Please?”
For the tiniest second, my mother smiles a real smile, but it’s gone so quickly I’m not sure if I imagined it or not. She reaches out, takes a small bite of the sandwich, and puts it back on the plate.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
My mother exhales and starts crying. My mother cries during church services when she seems moved by a particular Scripture or song, and she cried out of joy when Faith told her she was pregnant with Caleb, but I’m not used to seeing her cry like this. Out of sadness.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” I start, moving over to be closer to her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you eat when you’re not hungry.”
“No, Rachel, it’s not that. It’s just that I miss Joshua. I miss my baby boy. Did you know I had a dream where God spoke to me and told me it was a little boy? Did I tell you that?”
“Yes, Mom, you did,” I say. What I don’t say is I know you miss Joshua, but you have ten babies. Right here. Ten babies who need you. I need you. If you were here, I wouldn’t be getting a handful of hours of sleep a night trying to raise my brothers and sisters. If you were here, you would have let me know about my immodest shirt without making my cheeks burn. If you were here, you would have pretended not to see how much I loved that book, and I wouldn’t have had to rip it to shreds.
If you were here.
But I can’t say that. I shouldn’t even be thinking it.
“I miss him,” my mother continues, “and I know he’s waiting for me in Heaven, but I think he needs me now. I’m his mother, and he needs to be with me.” She wipes her tears off the bridge of her nose with both hands. “It’s wrong to question the Lord’s plan, but Joshua may have been my last chance for babies.”
Her last chance. I know my mother sees her childbearing as her gift to the Lord, as her way to praise Him. I wonder if she worries she won’t be able to praise Him enough if she doesn’t have any more children. My mind seizes on an image of myself pregnant, my stomach swollen tight, and my chest contracts and I try to find my breath. I think of the years stretched out before me, and know I could have a dozen children, maybe more. The thought of it, of ending up like my mother, crying alone in a bed while her other children wait for her, makes me want to scream, not sing God’s praises. And Mom is crying so hard now I’m scared Faith will hear and come in to see what I’ve done wrong.
I grab some toilet paper from her bathroom and give it to her. I pat her shoulder and try to comfort her, but I don’t have the words. I want to hug her, but my mother’s hugs have always been so measured. So careful. Parceled out in even pieces. I’m not even sure how to hug her right now, just the two of us.
My mother always told us she wanted lots of kids—from the day Dad met her working at a Stop N’ Go when she was nineteen and he was twenty, and they started talking and Dad asked her if she had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
“I was on the wrong path, and it wasn’t the path Jesus wanted me to walk,” Mom would tell us. This was the part of the story we always loved best when we were little. How God timed everything just right, and then all of us came along. We’ve heard the story so many times, but that still doesn’t make picturing my mother working at a Stop N’ Go any easier. It’s like trying to picture her flying through space. In the earliest photo I’ve ever seen of Mom, she’s pregnant with her first child, my oldest brother. It’s like she didn’t exist before that. And we’ve been everything to her, but now it feels like we’re not enough.
Not even ten of us are enough.
“Rachel, I need some time alone now,” my mother says, slipping down under the covers. “Thank you for bringing me the sandwich.”
“Okay,” I say, leaving the meal she won’t eat on the nightstand.
As I walk out, I stand by the door and look at the lump under the covers.
“Mom, I love you,” I whisper.
She doesn’t hear me. She doesn’t answer back.
* * *
That night after Faith has gone home and everyone heads to bed, I creep downstairs. Standing by my parents’ bedroom door, I count to one thousand to make sure they’re asleep. The day is already lost—a big black mark on the calendar. A messy scribble. An ink stain. I can’t start over until I fall asleep and the sun rises.
I might as well take advantage of my mistakes. My immodest clothing. My inability to run a house or make my mother feel better. My unnatural fear of the idea of getting married and having babies of my own.
I tiptoe down the hallway and sit down at the computer.
My heart is bumping up against my ribs—out of excitement or nervousness or both—and I find the link to Lauren’s blog easily. Once I click, there’s no going back. I know that. If I click, I’ll read the blog.
And I want to read it.
My index finger rests on the mouse. I hold my breath and squeeze my eyes shut.
I click the link.
Lauren’s blog pops up. There’s a cartoon drawing of a blue and green butterfly at the top left, next to a loopy black font.
BUTTERFLY GIRL—A blog about being born again from being born again.
There’s a picture, and it’s Lauren. It’s Lauren Sullivan without a doubt, and she’s sitting on a bed with her legs crossed, wearing black shorts and a dark blue top—the kind that doesn’t have any sleeves, just thin strips of fabric running over her shoulders. I can see her bra straps peeking out from underneath, too. Black bra straps.
Lauren’s red hair is blond now, with green streaks in it the color of lime popsicles or Palmolive soap. She’s six years older, but I don’t think she looks it. Weirdly, it’s almost like she looks younger somehow. That’s impossible, I know, but that’s how it seems to me.
She’s smiling so big. She’s smiling with her entire face. Even her dark brown eyes are smiling.
Then I’m struck by the realization that I’m smiling, too. Smiling right at her. So big and so wide my cheeks hurt. I put my hands up to my cheeks to make sure. Yes. I’m smiling. Hard.
I lean back a little in my chair and peek down the hallway toward my parents’ bedroom. I glance up at the ceiling to listen for noises. Nothing. I wait for the right verse to burrow its way into my brain, reminding me I shouldn’t be doing this.
I can’t hear one single piece of Scripture, just the hum of the computer building up and down over and over again like a heartbeat.
I shift a bit in the folding chair and lean in toward the light of the screen. I start reading.
7
Lauren Sullivan is currently working at Clayton Animal Hospital as a vet tech—a job she got since moving back to town. She has two cats named Mitzi and Frankie, and she is a vegan. A vegan, I’ve learned, is someone who doesn’t eat any animals or animal products—not even cheese or eggs.
Lauren is learning about meditation, which means sitting and emptying your mind of thoughts, but she says she’s not very good at it even though she likes the idea of it. Her favorite singer is a woman named Loretta Lynn and her favorite book is called The Handmaid’s Tale, which, she wrote in one post, “totally and completely and seriously blew my mind.”
She has two tattoos, one of a butterfly on her shoulder and one of a rainbow on her ankle.
Since getting these tattoos, I’ve determined they’re sort of cliché, but at the time I swear to you I got them in earnest, I really did. They meant something to me. They meant rebirth in the most earnest, honest way possible and I guess they still do, even though now I think they’re corny.
&
nbsp; That’s what Lauren wrote about her tattoos on her blog, which I sit here reading even though it’s well past midnight. I stare in fascination at the illustrations, amazed that Lauren would choose to do something so permanent to her body. Amazed that she can. She writes so much about her tattoos and her food habits and her favorite things that my eyes dry out trying to read about all of them.
Hello hello hello dear readers—all fifteen of you—in this post I am going to talk about my very favorite Manic Panic hair colors so get ready because there will be pictures … lots and lots of pictures.
Okay, so I’ve been wondering a lot about what it means to make the leap from vegetarianism to veganism, and sometimes I feel kind of flipped out that my food issues are just the old part of me looking for some legalistic lifestyle where I feel safe following a Set Of Rules which is sort of why I think sometimes I still eat bacon. To prove to myself that I’m still in charge of me.
Sometimes I miss the city … I miss the openness and the differences and the way no one knew about my past. But I needed to clear my head and I needed to move on from some of the crap I got sucked into living there so I’m back in my childhood hometown and that is kind of Freaking Me Out and everything because I’m afraid I’ll run into Them or people from the cult who hurt me, but it’s cheap as dirt here and I love my job and Mitzi and Frankie love it, too.
Every set of words Lauren writes sounds like an explosion—like she has so much she wants to say she can’t even stop to use periods or commas. Her pictures are like little explosions, too. In each one she has different hair, each picture starring some new, unusual color that can’t possibly be natural. Lime green. Lemon yellow. Sky blue. Like fireworks. I’m stunned at what she looks like. I suppose I thought she would still look like I remember her from her days at Calvary before she began to rebel. I instinctively touch my hair. The thought of even cutting it seems sinful.
Back in my old life, I couldn’t do anything to my hair. My hair was my crown of glory—or that’s what I was told—so I wasn’t supposed to cut it at all. But now my hair is mine to do with what I want, so I want to do the most extreme things I can think of with it. Dye it, shave it, gel it, whatever it. I keep wondering if I’ll get sick of doing these things and just let it grow out normal again, but it’s been six years since The Great Escape, and I’m still doing them so I don’t know.
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