Watch How We Walk

by Jennifer LoveGrove

  When they do, Emily misconstrues several prophecies, and bungles the chronology of several simple Old Testament stories. Her father appears to give up on the idea for a while, telling her that she is too immature and unprepared for baptism. She overhears him explaining to an elder on the phone that it is their shared trauma that has arrested her religious development.

  AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH school year, Emily’s parents write a note to her teacher excusing her from any activities or assignments that focus on Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, or birthdays, as well the national anthem and Lord’s Prayer. All Emily has to do is hand the teacher the note. Usually, they’ve taught other Jehovah’s Witnesses before, so they just nod, fold the note back up, and put it in a drawer.

  But after eighth grade, Emily is on her own, like the other Witness teenagers. It is up to her to explain to her grade nine homeroom teacher why she cannot stand for the anthem. Emily is now old enough to Witness to teachers herself.

  Jehovah’s Witnesses are to be No part of this world, which means . . .

  Other kids obsess over their first-day-of-high-school outfits, and Emily worries a little bit over what to wear too, but mostly she dreads trying to explain their religion to a new teacher. She practises what to say, and hopes she can get there early, before any other students arrive.

  Well, it means . . . that we have to keep apart from politics . . . stay neutral about government . . .

  Every rehearsed explanation sounds awkward and ridiculous, so she asks her mom what to say.

  — Just tell them it’s against your religion. She doesn’t look up from the television and just waves her away. Emily wishes she could remember what her parents used to write in her notes in public school. Maybe she could just forge a note. What had Lenora said to her teachers? Her explanation was probably concise and confident; she would never have been this afraid.

  Emily barely sleeps the night before her first day of high school and the insides of her cheeks are raw from biting them and grinding her teeth.

  She wakes up disoriented and nauseated, but doesn’t call out to her parents for comfort. They barely speak to her or to one another at this point anyway. Emily knows they still care about her, at least she thinks they do, but they are too preoccupied with their own guilt. It’s as though they’ve crawled into the damp caverns of grief, lain down, and forgotten about Emily.

  She can’t shake off her unease as she waits until it’s time to go to the monstrous high school. She switches on the light and picks at her gums until they bleed, then scratches her sister’s initials into the margins of the Watchtower article lying open nearby.

  The secondary school’s hallways are wide and dim and loud with teenagers. The older kids lounge in clumps along the lockers and jeer at the nervous ninth graders. Emily keeps her head down and ignores taunts of “Minor niner” and “Loser.” She finds her locker and fusses with the lock but eventually gets it open, puts her jacket away, and finds her homeroom. She pauses in the doorway. The classroom is almost full and there are very few familiar faces. In the front corner of the room, there’s a girl in a tight denim dress and bright pink shiny lipstick, her blond hair crimped to a nearly impossible volume. If it wasn’t for her same thick, round glasses, Emily would never would have recognized Agnes the Pentecostal. She stretches up in her seat and waves. She looks like an exotic bird taking flight. Emily smiles back. A few boys from her old school sit together near the back, all elbows and pimples and rattling chairs. The room smells like a combination of sweat, wet wool, and cheap perfume.

  The teacher is young, probably new, with her long dark hair clipped back, and she wears a black skirt and white blouse. She fidgets with a small gold cross around her neck, and Emily knows she won’t like her rehearsed speech about abstaining from the national anthem and the Lord’s Prayer. Emily stands in the doorway for a moment, unsure what to do. Then she closes her eyes briefly and remembers when Lenora pulled Tammy Bales off her in the ditch, and when she would change out of a mini skirt and into corduroy pants on the way home from school, and when she would do her hair before going to the Kingdom Hall, and tell Emily her secrets. Then she has a flash of the last time she saw her. Her stomach constricts briefly, and another student elbows her out of the doorway.

  Emily knows what to do.

  As the rest of the students file in and slump down into seats, she walks over to a desk near Agnes and sits down. Agnes smiles and Emily grins back. She doesn’t even look at the teacher and doesn’t hear the woman’s name when she introduces herself. Emily grips the side of her desk, steeling herself.

  When “O Canada” crackles through the public address system, her heart thuds like a huge bird against the cage of her ribs — the entire class must be able to hear it over the music. Then she stands up. She doesn’t leave the room. She just stands up like everybody else. Her head feels light, she’s dizzy and feels more conspicuous than if she’d been standing outside the room in the hallway like every year before. She twists around to look at what her classmates are doing, how they’re standing, if they’re looking up or down or straight ahead, if they’re singing along. Emily doesn’t even know the words to the national anthem. She stands next to her desk, shuffling from foot to foot and wills it to be over quickly.

  When she sits back down with the rest of her class, she feels a rush of adrenaline. She can’t stop grinning. She knows that there’s no way she can get away with it; the town is just too small and sooner or later, she’ll be found out. She’s going to get in big trouble, not just with her parents, but with the elders too. But for once, she doesn’t care. For the rest of that day, she holds her head high, sailing from class to class, sitting where she wants, talking to whomever she chooses, as she imagines Lenora had. At 3:30 the bell rings and she smiles, amused that her first act of rebellion has been one of conformity.

  That night, she sleeps better than she has in a long time.

  41

  THE BACK ROOM AT THE HALL smells like damp carpet and old books. Emily breathes carefully through her mouth, then slumps into a chair and yawns. She’s so tired she feels disconnected from her body, as though she is watching everything happen just a short distance away. She has been summoned to an “informal meeting” with Brother Wilde and Brother Davies. As if there is any such thing. Once the elders decide you’re a wayward sheep, there’s no reversing it. Emily’s hands tremble slightly, but she is determined not to let them see. She must be in trouble for something, though she doesn’t know what.

  — Thanks for coming in on a Saturday to talk with us, Sister Emily.

  Emily says nothing, just grips the armrests and stares at a torn bit of beige-flecked wallpaper just behind, and slightly above, Brother Davies’ head. Brother Davies looks at Brother Wilde before he continues.

  — We have some concerns about you and your family. We are worried, Sister Morrow, about you and your mother’s absence from so many meetings lately. She was supposed to be with you today to talk to us.

  They look at Emily expectantly, waiting for her to tell them why her mom hasn’t come with her, as though she’d tell them what they want to hear, simply because they’ve asked. But Emily won’t tell them anything. Besides, what can she say? That her mother just isn’t interested anymore? That most of what the elders say makes her angry? Emily doesn’t look up from the hangnail she picks at. For a few moments, she concentrates on breathing: inhale, exhale, not through her nose, focus, don’t tell them anything they want to hear. Don’t tell them anything.

  Emily shrugs. Brother Wilde takes a turn.

  — Is your mom ill? Is there anything we can do to help?

  Emily doesn’t remember how she got there. Surely her father drove her to the Kingdom Hall, but she doesn’t know where he is now, or why she is trapped in this stuffy room with a pair of elders.

  Emily yawns again and shakes her head.

  — Has your mom been keeping up
with the readings at home? Are you still having your weekly Family Study?

  She wonders how many Witness families actually have Family Study. There is no set time for it; you just fit it in whenever it’s convenient, on a night when there isn’t already a meeting. But they have to go to the Hall three times a week, and that’s not including the hours spent in door-to-door service. Emily and her parents rarely have Family Study, all of them around the table reading and discussing the latest Watchtower, like they’re acting out a miniature meeting.

  Emily squints as though trying hard to remember. Her dark hair is in her eyes and that is somehow making it very hard to concentrate. She is acutely conscious of hundreds of hairs shrouding her periphery. She wills herself to focus by biting the inside of her lower lip.

  — I don’t know. Sometimes.

  Brother Wilde and Brother Davies look at each other.

  — You don’t know?

  — That’s right. I don’t know. I have no idea if she’s doing the readings or not.

  — I see. Brother Wilde adjusts his blue striped tie.

  — We’re disappointed she isn’t with you today. We thought that some words of encouragement might help her, might strengthen her faith.

  — Oh. Emily snickers and tries to disguise it with a cough. Brother Davies raises an eyebrow and looks at her. His face suddenly fascinates her.

  — How do you do that?

  — Do what?

  — Lift up just one of your eyebrows. It looks really cool.

  Brother Davies frowns.

  — Emily, we know that your family has been through a lot. This is the time to turn to Jehovah God for support, to praise him, not to turn your back.

  Emily grips the armrests so hard her knuckles glare white and throb. Been through a lot. What do they know? The only suffering the elders know is what they read in the Bible. They haven’t had their favourite uncle or only sister ripped away from them. Emily sits up straighter and looks at them. They look at each other. They shift in their chairs and loosen their collars. Maybe Emily will be disassociated from the congregation. She’s not baptized, so they can’t disfellowship her, and though she has never heard of anyone so young being disassociated, she doesn’t put it past them.

  Perhaps they want to eradicate Emily’s entire family.

  Just as Jesus said in the book of Matthew, there will be great tribulation such as has not occurred since the world’s beginning until now, no, nor will occur again.

  Maybe the elders are trying to create their very own, uniquely local version of the Great Tribulation. They took away Lenora and her uncle Tyler. They’re trying to make her crack. They’re playing God.

  — Are you okay, Emily? Brother Davies’ upper lip is wet and glistening with sweat.

  — Is this a Judicial Committee? What did I do?

  Lenora was called before a Judicial Committee, shortly before Emily found her. In her long note, she described the leering, beady eyes of the four elders, how they kept her in this very same room for hours, asking her detailed, personal questions about Theo and what they did together.

  She was smart though, and even though you’re not allowed to make any record of a Judicial Committee hearing, she wrote everything down.

  There were questions about her gross misconduct, her grievous sins, her fornication. Questions about what she wore, where they met, who touched who first, and where, how many times, dates, places. At first she resisted but they wore her down, they kept her there all day, and it was dark when she left. They wouldn’t even let her take a break to go to the bathroom. Finally, she gave up denying anything. She couldn’t hide it anymore. Nor did she want to.

  I told them what they wanted to hear, and more. I told them everything. I just didn’t care anymore. What did I have to lose? When they asked me what underwear I was wearing the first time with Theo, I didn’t just tell them ‘black lace’ — I showed them.

  I made them look.

  They didn’t even try to stop me. Eventually they said, ‘Lower your skirt, Sister Morrow’ in that same condescending voice they all have. But not until each of them took a good look.

  In order to disfellowship Lenora, they were supposed to have an eyewitness to her sins. They didn’t. But they knew it was only a matter of time, so they started the process to subdue her. It was a game with them. They didn’t try to help her, to counsel her, or to forgive her mistake. They didn’t offer her the chance to repent.

  They told me I’d be disfellowshipped as soon as it was obvious that I was pregnant. That then everybody would be a witness to my ‘sin.’

  Emily sits there, in the room she’s been in hundreds of times but that she will never look at the same again. The room where the elders draw the curtains when someone is in trouble. The room they kept Lenora in, relentlessly, and probably Uncle Tyler too, and now her.

  — Of course not, Emily. You’re not in any trouble.

  Emily says nothing, but wishes she’d brought a notebook and pen with her. Just in case.

  They said, ‘You’ll be alone. Just you and your worldly bastard child. No one will help you. And that is what you deserve.’

  Emily would have helped. Even if it had meant sneaking around, she would have helped her sister. She wouldn’t have abandoned her. She would have babysat for Lenora, and helped her cook and clean and change diapers. She would have played with her little niece or nephew.

  At least, now she thinks she would have helped. But maybe at ten or eleven years old she would have been too afraid to defy her parents and the elders. Maybe she would have been just like all the other faithful sheep in the congregation, shunning her own sister when the elders decreed it. She would like to think that she would have done the right thing, but she isn’t sure. Fear is what made her do nothing to prevent Lenora from getting into trouble in the first place, so maybe she would have just renounced her along with everybody else. Because it was easier.

  She wonders about her parents, if they would have cut off their own grandchild after Lenora was disfellowshipped, or if they would have visited, brought presents, looked after him or her.

  They wouldn’t let me take notes during the hearing, but I wrote everything down when I got home. Keep the transcript safe. There’s a false bottom in my top drawer.

  Both Brother Wilde and Brother Davies are staring at her when she looks up. They probably think she was praying, and Emily doesn’t tell them otherwise. She’s too tired to be afraid of them and too angry to care, and that makes her feel free. She doesn’t know if she has any faith in God left, but she definitely has none in the elders. She knows they have already made up their minds about her; she’s beyond redemption, just like her uncle, just like her sister.

  They don’t want her anymore.

  That’s why they’d been so hard on Lenora. They didn’t want her back either. Their star pupil, then their biggest disappointment. They treated her more harshly than anyone else who had done what she’d done because they resented her. Such a bright, eager young Witness, learning difficult concepts easily, never being ashamed of the Truth, or intimidated by being different. She was fearless, yes, and bold, but they had failed to harness that. They couldn’t control her, and when she rebelled, it was with the same intensity and passion she’d formerly applied to the Bible.

  And that was unforgivable.

  Emily starts as Brother Davies clears his throat.

  — Did you hear me, Sister Morrow?

  — No. I wasn’t listening. She is careful to allow no expression to betray her face.

  — I said that, no, of course this isn’t a Judicial Committee meeting. What makes you ask such a thing? We’re just trying to help your family.

  They wanted to know how long each time was, what we did beforehand, what we talked about afterwards. What he said when he climaxed. If I had an orgasm. ‘You bet,’ I said, grinning, and looking each of them
in their hypocritical eyes. ‘I sure did. A lot.’ I didn’t care anymore. They may have caught me, but I won’t give them the satisfaction of punishing me. I’m not going to let them win.

  Emily looks up and leans forward. Her voice is low and even.

  — Help us? Like you helped Lenora?

  The room goes silent, then seems overwhelmed by sound. The fluorescent lights hum, a fly buzzes against them, a lawn mower rumbles outside. Everything is too loud. Emily covers her ears.

  Brother Davies and Brother Wilde look at each other again.

  — We know that your family is still grieving. It is a natural response to loss, but it’s been a long time now. It’s been long enough.

  — It has? I didn’t know there was a time limit.

  — Playing with fire is dangerous, Emily. Don’t forget that. You’re older now, and we don’t want you to follow the same treacherous path. Keep your faith in Jehovah, and try to focus on what’s right. What happened to your sister, tragic as it is, should also be a lesson. Don’t forsake God for anger and self-pity during these times, Emily.

  A lesson. She’s learning all right, but not what they want to teach her. What Emily understands is that it’s more important to maintain the appearance of faith and virtue than to actually have any.

  And she has proof. A detailed account of what happened. And no one knows she has it.

  She stops listening to the elders. She wonders how Lenora felt at the very end. Scared, probably. Trapped, like there was no other option for her. Maybe if Theo hadn’t broken up with her, she would have just run away to be with him instead. Maybe she would have had the baby. But she’d run out of choices, and refused to let the elders control her. So once again, she made up her own rules. Emily fingers the soft bit of braided hair around her wrist.

  — You don’t think God will resurrect Lenora, do you?