by Fiona Wilde
"We'll be back late this afternoon, Fred." Eric put a hand on Naomi's back and steered her towards the door, saying good-bye to her mother as he did.
Outside he looked at her quizzically. "What on earth did you say to your father that got him so worked up."
"I failed to denounce a political party, which as we all know is the eleventh commandment," she said sarcastically. "He is such an ass..."
"Hey!" He said the word sharply. "I was in complete sympathy with you until you said that. That's disrespectful, Naomi, and I'd better not hear you talk about your father like that again."
She stopped, suddenly furious. "He's disrespectful!" she countered.
"He's your father," Eric said in a decisive tone.
"I don't care!"
"Well you'd better start caring unless you want to spend more time standing than sitting!"
Naomi's face went red with embarrassment. She'd been trying since last night - unsuccessfully - to forget the spankings he'd given her. And now to be threatened with more?
Folding her arms across her chest, she stalked towards he church.
"So this is how its going to be?" she asked over her shoulder. "Are you just going to beat me for everything I do wrong?"
"No. Not everything." He had caught up with her after just a couple of strides. "But you will be accountable, Naomi. Someone needs to look after you."
She laughed at the irony. In L.A. she'd often cried herself to sleep with the secret need to have someone care enough to take care of her, to stop her from her chain of self-destructive behaviors. Now she had someone in her life committed to doing just that, and she wasn't sure she wanted it.
Naomi didn't tell him that, though. She didn't want to think about what had happened in L.A. anymore. If she just put it out of her mind then maybe it would all fade, like a bad dream. And she knew telling the Rev. Eric Feagans where he could put his oversight would earn her another trip over his knee. And she did not want that.
"What are we doing today?" she asked, trying to change the subject.
"Well, you're going to help me pack the bus. It's your first job as camp counselor."
"Camp counselor. Me?" It still amazed her that he trusted her around other young people, especially given what she suspected was a negative picture painted by her father.
"Stop worrying. You'll be great."
She sighed, not sure whether to be encouraged by his confidence or intimidated by his expectations.
The old school bus was backed up to the church storage shed, and she helped him load inner tubes, boxes of bottled water, soda and sunscreen into the back.
Then he instructed her to sit behind him and check off the list of names and addresses until every one of the campers had been picked up.
Eric introduced Naomi to each camper as they climbed onto the bus. Each one either smiled or offered a disinterested greeting typical of teens who didn't think it was cool to get excited about anyone or anything.
Naomi felt herself relax a bit more as each teen climbed on the bus. They weren't the uptight little Jesus freaks she had feared they'd be. Most of them were surprisingly normal. A couple of the kids even had pierced lips or noses.
Eric drove as they chatted and giggled in the row of seats behind them, and Naomi was struck again by how different he was from her father. When she was younger the Rev. Fred Kindle sometimes tried to organize day trips for youth in the battered church bus. He confiscated radios, cassette players - any musical devices the kids had and turned the scratchy bus radio to a Christian music station and tried to get the kids to sing along with whatever cheesy song the station was playing.
It was if her father saw something inherently evil in being young; perhaps he remembered how difficult it was to ignore a world full of temptations when life lays it before you like a seductive platter. He tried to do with the church youth what he tried to do to her, which was to turn them into dour adults before their time. It was a miracle to Naomi that he finally came to a place in his life where he admitted he was wrong about something. In this case, the admission had probably saved his church; every teen who climbed on board smiled at the Rev. Eric Feagans.
Naomi sat back in her seat, feeling slightly jealous. She would only admit to herself that his attention to her moral character had made her feel special. Today she would have to share him with a dozen other young people. But she was an adult and would be working beside him, and that set her apart. So it would still be a good day.
They were the first ones to arrive at the lake. The surface glistened like a piece of shiny glass. It looked cool and inviting on a day that was already growing ridiculously warm before noon.
The kids spilled out of the bus past Naomi, who waited in the seat behind Eric. He told her they would be the last ones off and would pick a couple of teens to help with the unpacking. He let her select and she chose a tall, pimply boy named Mark who'd cracked jokes the whole way to the lake and a girl named Beth who was looking as goth as her parents probably were willing to allow.
"Cool! I gotta job," Mark said. Beth just sighed heavily as she followed the taller boy, the chains at her hip slapping against pale legs that stuck out from beneath oversized black shorts.
It took two trips to lug everything to the water.
The packs of water and chips were placed on a nearby picnic table along with the sunscreen and bug repellant. The kids dropped their towels there, too, and with everything unloaded began to strip down to their swimsuits.
The Rev. Eric Feagans followed suit, pulling his t-shirt over his head to reveal a well-muscled chest. Naomi forced herself to look away as she began to strip down to her suit.
"No way!" A girl next to her stood staring at Naomi in shock. Everyone turned to stare along with her.
"What?" Naomi asked.
"Your tattoo. That's crazy! You're the preacher's daughter, right?"
They were staring at the falling angel that graced her right shoulder.
"Yep, sure am," Naomi replied quietly as she folded her shirt.
"So what's that mean?" It was the first time Beth, the Goth girl had spoken. Her voice was soft and slightly monotone. "Is it like a fall from grace or something?"
"Yeah, something like that." Naomi smiled.
"We'll need to take up a collection to get her another tattoo showing the angel climbing back up," the Rev. Feagans said. "Just because an angel falls doesn't mean it has to stay down."
Naomi looked at him gratefully.
"She's got another one here!" A pretty blonde girl with the flattest stomach Naomi had ever seen was pointing to her leg. "It's a thorny cross."
"Wicked..." Someone said.
"OK." The Rev. Feagans clapped his hands together. "Are we going to stand around staring at the new youth counselor or are we going to swim?"
"Swim!" the kids shouted in unison. But as they ran past her several looked back at Naomi with admiration. Naomi sensed that she'd passed some sort of test among the teens. She wasn't so sure about Rev. Feagans.
"Sorry," she said, removing her jeans.
He was reaching into a bag and pulled out two whistled. One he hung around her neck and the other he handed to her.
"For what?" he asked.
"For being such a spectacle," she said.
"Look," he said. "I already knew about your ink. If I'd been worried about it I wouldn't have asked you to come, or I'd have insisted you cover up. But I told you, it's no big deal. In fact, I think it makes you more acceptable to the kids."
Naomi smiled and then looked down at the whistle.
"What's this for?" she asked, turning it over in her hands.
"Mob control," he said. "If someone's getting out of line or playing too rough in the water blow your whistle. They won't hear you if you yell. Or they'll pretend they can't. They can't ignore this."
He put the whistle to his lips and blew. The kids all turned.
"Whistle check!" he said. They rolled their eyes.
"See?" he asked.
She nodded and laughed.
"So," he said. "You up for a swim?"
"Sure!" Naomi smiled. "Race you to the water!"
She won, but was sure he let her. The kids cheered as she splashed in. The water was colder than it looked and she stood shivering for a moment as she tried to adjust to the chill. But the kids were merciless.
"Baptism!" They yelled and began to splash her as Mark grabbed her from behind and dunked her under.
Naomi came up sputtering to the sounds of laughter.
"Don't get mad," she heard Eric say. "It's kind of a summer tradition. They did it to me on our first trip to the lake, only it took five of them to pull me down."
Naomi laughed and turned to splash the kids. A full-scale water fight ensued until Eric ended it with a whistle blast.
The kids dispersed to swim or sun. Naomi grabbed an inner tube and floated lazily while keeping an eye on her charges. By lunch time she was famished and was happy to settle down with her chips and sandwich after making sure the kids all had theirs.
One of the girls, Chelsea, came to sit beside her. She chewed on her sandwich as she stared thoughtfully at Naomi's tattoos.
"You lived in L.A.?" the girl asked.
Naomi nodded. "What did you do? My mom says it was probably something bad. She said your dad was ashamed of you."
"Chelsea, could you be any ruder?" Across the tale, the handsome youth minister was scowling.
"No, it's OK," Naomi said. "Really, Rev. Feagans, I don't mind answering."
"Yes," Naomi admitted. "I let my folks down pretty bad."
"What did you do?"
Naomi had flashbacks again of looking down from a darkened stage to see the faces of leering men illuminated by the footlights. They licked their lips with undisguised lust. Some made obscene hand gestures at her. If they could get away with it they'd touch her breasts or bottom or slide a hand between her legs while they were putting money in her g-string.
"Lived on the streets, panhandled, shoplifted." She looked at Chelsea. "Not exactly the kind of thing that parents want to put in the family Christmas newsletter."
A couple of the kids chuckled.
"Were you a prostitute?"
"Chelsea!" Eric said her name in a furious tone.
"What?" the girl protested. "My mom said she probably was. She said kids who ran off to LA always became druggies and hookers. She said not to swim too close to her because I might catch something."
"Then your mother needs a lesson in biology and manners," the youth minister said. At this point all the other kids had stopped eating and were sitting there, staring, as he scolded the girl.
"Now you go and sit on the bus until you can be more polite."
Chelsea rolled her eyes. "I don't have to listen to you," she said. "My daddy's head deacon."
"I don't care if your dad is John the Baptist," Eric shot back. "Get to the bus. Now."
Chelsea turned to her friends, looking for support. But no one would look at her. Naomi started to tell Eric just to let it go, but he apparently was expecting that from her because now he was shooting her a look that clearly warned her not to interfere.
Chelsea rose, muttering that her father would be sure to hear about this. The other kids watched.
"She's just jealous because someone as old as you looks way hotter than she does in a swimsuit," Mark said.
The other kids laughed and Naomi couldn't help but laugh, too. She'd never considered being in her twenties as "old," but to a group of teens she probably was.
"OK, OK. That's not nice either." Eric stood. "Everyone back in the water."
The kids stood and dumped their plates in the trash. This time Naomi didn't join them in their rush to the lake. Instead she just hung back, watching.
"I'm sorry about that," he said.
She shrugged. "Why? It's to be expected. Her dad's like my dad. I hear the same kind of judgmental nonsense from him growing up. She's just repeating what she's been told."
"Yeah, but she suggested you were into some sort of sex trade," he said. "That's offensive. You aren't that kind of girl."
Naomi pulled her sunglasses down so he couldn't see her eyes. She had been that kind of girl.
"Panhandling is one thing," he said. "But begging for food or even stealing to survive isn't the same thing as defiling and debasing yourself for money."
"No," Naomi said. "It's not."
He put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't let her get you down," he said. "You're a good girl. We both know it."
He blasted his whistle then and headed out to warn two boys that they were going out too far. Naomi sighed with relief as he went.
"Defiled. Debased. Those words suggested a kind of dirtiness that could never be washed away. A permanent stain. A scarlet letter. "W" for whore. And hadn't dancing been a form of prostitution? She'd stripped herself bare night after night, gyrating her hips just feet from men's faces. She's dipped into squats, twirled with legs akimbo on the stripper pole.
"You're so beautiful," one regular customer told her.
But she never felt beautiful. She felt like a piece of meat dangled before a pack of slobbering, snapping dogs.
Naomi reached back and touched the fallen angel on her shoulder. Eric had said she'd need to get another one representing the angel's climb back up. But she knew that was only because he didn't really know how far this angel had fallen.
Chapter Four
A car was outside the parsonage when they came back that afternoon.
"Uh-oh," Rev. Feagans said in an irritated tone. "That's Merle Watkins' car."
"Merle Watkins?" Naomi asked.
"Chelsea's father," Eric confided. "She must have called him from her cell phone after we sent her back to the bus."
Naomi glanced up in the big round mirror that allowed drivers and bus monitors to see the passengers. Chelsea sat looking towards Naomi and Rev. Feagans with a smug expression that indicated they weren't the only ones who'd noticed the car.
"I've never even met him," Naomi said.
"He and his family apparently joined right after you left," Eric said. "He's a big tithe-er."
"Which explains why he'd head deacon," Naomi said cynically.
The van pulled into the church parking lot. Parents were already waiting to pick up their teens. Naomi wished them all a good day as they departed.
"It was fun," Beth said. "You're cool."
"Thanks," said Naomi. "So are you."
She went to the back of the bus to help Eric unload.
"I was proud of you today, Naomi," he said. "You were great with the kids and handled that whole thing with Chelsea with grace and class."
"I'm sure I'll handle it better than I handle my father," she said. "Even though you put Chelsea on the bus he'll find a way to spin this as my fault."
"We'll see about that," he said. "I plan to walk you home. Don't' worry. I'm not going to make you face him and Deacon Watkins alone."
"You don't have to do that," she said as she handed him the last inner tube.
"I know I don't. I want to."
He locked the storage room and took her hand, squeezing it for reassurance
"Come on," he said and walked her towards the parsonage. A slight breeze was blowing and he late day sun through lengthening shadows across the cross-cropped lawn. Naomi could smell the scent of dinner wafting through the open window. Her mother was cooking meatloaf and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole.
They walked in the back door. Her mother smiled at their arrival.
"Did you have fun?" she asked.
"Yeah, we had a great time," she said.
"You got a lot of sun," her mother observed. Naomi looked down at her arms. In L.A. she kept a tan but since coming home she'd not been out much. Today had put some of her color back.
"How was her first day?" Naomi's mother turned to the youth minister.
"She was a huge hit," he said. "I see a full-time summer job for her if she's up for it."
Naomi's mother cast a concerned look towards the living room.
"I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you," she said. "Deacon Watkins wasn't too thrilled to hear that you'd asked Naomi to help out today."
Eric's response was to look at Naomi. "You know, I don't think the head deacon's even had the pleasure of meeting you yet. And you know what they say, there's no time like the present."
"Reverend Feagans, I don't know...." Naomi objected, but he was already leading her to the sitting room where the Reverend Kindle sat with a tall, professional looking man with close-cropped blonde hair. It surprised her a bit; she'd expected someone short and dumpy like his daughter. This man was actually quite handsome, but that attractiveness was marred by the condescending look he gave her as Eric offered an introduction.
"Reverend Kindle. Hello. I saw Deacon Watkin's car outside and thought this would be a good time to introduce Naomi to him since I plan to recommend the church find money in the budget to hire her as an my assistant. She's great with the kids."
"Really?" Rev. Watkins pulled his glasses from his face angrily. "That's not what my daughter tells me."
"Your daughter was extremely rude today, Merle," Rev. Feagans said pointedly. "I had to put her back on the bus. Whatever she tells you should be suspect."
"Are you calling my daughter a liar?"
"Deacon Watkins, I'm sure Rev. Feagans didn't mean..." Rev. Kindle was on his feet now, but the youth minister would not be deterred.
"I'm not calling anyone names. She however, did, which is why she was put on the bus. If you want an honest opinion of what the youth think of Miss Kindle, then I suggest you has them individually."
Chelsea's father looked at Naomi. Something in his prolonged gaze bothered her and she found herself crossing her arms across her chest in an attempt to cover her.
"The decent people of this church have every right to express concern about the moral fitness of those working with their children. We all know Naomi strayed from the path and my wife and I are not convinced that the church has gotten a full accounting of just how far she strayed."
"But you will, you will," Rev. Kindle reassured him. "This Sunday Naomi will confess her sins before the brotherhood of believers and repent before God that she might be accepted back into the body of Christ."