THE COLOR OF ORDINARY TIME
Virginia Voelker
The Color of Ordinary Time
Copyright © 2013 Virginia Voelker
100 Ton Press
[email protected]
All rights reserved, including right of reproduction in whole or part in any form.
This is a work of fiction, with all that entails.
One
Every Sunday two billion Christians world-wide pray for the end of the world. I’m sure most of them don’t even think about it. It is so much a part of what they do every week. So many words on a page. So many words mumbled while they think about their football game, or getting lunch on the table, or about when the service will be over, and why the air conditioning isn’t turned up farther. It’s right there in Lord’s Prayer: Thy Kingdom come. It means we want Jesus to come again and take us all to heaven because we’re saved.
Of course, in not thinking about it too hard, we avoid thinking about what that really means. There’s the good part of the meaning where we go to live with Jesus forever. There’s also the sad part of the meaning, where we believe that there are people who may not go to live with Jesus forever. And then there’s the scary part of the meaning, where we have to ask ourselves how sure we are that we’re in the first group. It’s not always easy to answer that last bit. Not always as straightforward and simple as we’d like the matter to be.
I suppose, if asked, Walton Taylor would be happy to give out the names of all the saved who will be going to heaven on the last day. It would be pretty simple for him, as they all belong to his church. Not much of an exercise at all, seeing as the membership of the First Free Pristine Church of God’s Unbridled Holiness stands at eighteen. That includes him, as the pastor. The number does not include me, Walton Taylor’s daughter.
To spite my supposedly lost soul, my father has been trying to bring about the last day since I can remember. Daily it is a topic of prayer and reflection for him. He rejoices in every moment he views as persecution of his faith. It always assures him the end is nigh. Of course, it’s not too hard to be persecuted in your head. Especially in a town like Charity, Illinois.
Not that the people of Charity are bad, or mean, or cruel. At least not any more than any other town would be. It’s just that if you are rude enough to them, if you confuse them enough, and if you aren’t willing to try and see anyone else’s view of things, they eventually go quiet on you. Not rude, just unresponsive. As if they realize there is simply no more to say that hasn’t been said. Walton Taylor is the embodiment of rude, confusing, and inflexible. They went quiet on him when I was ten. That’s eight more years than most people give him.
Understand, it’s not that my father wants to see me in hell. I’m sure he would like nothing better than to see me back in the folding chairs of the one-car garage he has slowly turned into a church. He has not given up his fight to see me repentant, and back as a member of his congregation. I’m not sure if his continued struggle is a matter of love, or a matter of duty. Still, he continues to fight for my soul, and I continue to insist I am already saved.
We’re not unusual. Most fathers and daughters fight at some point. The boyfriend or the husband he can’t stand, the clothing he doesn’t want her to wear, the chores she hasn’t completed. Mostly, these fights have a time limit. The relationship ends or he accepts it, the clothes go out of style, the chores get done, and everybody moves on. They have days when they agree, days that are good, days where they have fun together. There are no good days with someone who thinks you are going to hell. There is no agreeing to disagree, no moment when salvation isn’t an issue. Especially with someone who believes the end of the world could come in the very next minute. That he may only have seconds to keep you from hell.
Which is why I left.
Of course, I say “left”. Which sounds like I thought about the ramifications, and made a plan for the future without him. This could not be further from the truth. It has always felt more as if I eloped. Even though there was no boy involved. My only lover, now or then, was a lifestyle and a religion of which he did not approve. So I packed. He threw me out. I went to college. I moved on with my life. All of these things are true, and all of these thing are false.
I did, that final day in his house, defend myself. I even put forth the idea that perhaps I was saved, and he was not. There are certainly more people in the world that agree with me than the seventeen he counts as his supporters. The pride, ignorance, and arrogance displayed just in the fact that I would have that thought, let alone voice it, are on the list of things I have been repeatedly called to repentance for. To this day I am the child, and he is the father. I am the girl, and he is the man. I am the smart one, but not as smart as him, in his mind. And I must be brought to know my place.
How does my mother do it? How does she live with such a man? The simple truth is, she does not. She is dead. I do not recall her. I was two when she died. Too young to know her. Too young to know what the state of their marriage was, or had been. It’s for sure my father’s view of those times is colored by his beliefs. So maybe it’s just as well we’ve never really spoken of her. I do know that he considers her to be in hell. He has mentioned it often in sermons. At least he did when I was still there to hear them.
So he soldiers on alone. A man always beset by whores, liars, and the damned, the chief of which is his own child. Noble and strong and upright in his own perspective. True to God and unswerving in the face of all adversity, including a whoring wife, and the most painful defection of a child. There are times when I sympathize. I truly do. It must be horrible to know that kind of pain. Not that he would admit to feeling anything but joy in God at his lot in life.
I steel myself against those thoughts of sympathy. Especially now as I prepare to visit my home town again. As I do every summer when I get a break from my teaching job. I enjoy those times back, and I dread them. If he is in town, then there is a soap box preacher dogging my footsteps, and proclaiming my sins to the world. If he is already out on his summer crusade, then I will not see my father for a least another year. Will not be able to see what toll another year has taken on him. Will not be able to see how he is doing, to hear how his preaching has improved.
They say that God is our Father. Sometimes when I hear that, I think of my best friend — Ivy Brandt’s — father. It is a comforting picture. I can understand how loving and forgiving works. It makes sense. Other times when I hear that, I think of my father, and I am scared. I could be hell-bound.
But I don’t think I am. But he thinks I am. But I don’t think I am. And so, even as we don’t speak, the argument surges on.
*
Time was, you could hardly keep Ivy nailed down if she believed there was an injustice taking place. Born a crusader, honor, truth, justice, and right are ever Ivy’s watchwords. Law and order her concerns. I respect her character, and her lofty ambitions. I also recognize that her utopia-tinged assessment of her fellow man occasionally leaves her blind to, and blindsided by, our baser inclinations. By contrast, I am of a more chaotic bent and bias. In short, I expect people to screw up, screw me over, and screw around. She never does.
That was how we really met and became friends. She was going to right a wrong in my life. She had decided to make me nicer.
Perhaps all children are left adrift in the world at some point. Stuck between the world as they must learn to cope with it, and the world as their parents have led them to believe it would be. My struggles with that transformation started early, and still in many ways continue on. My father’s world, the world as he had taught me to view it, was a place of laws that were simple and finite. There was a way things were to be done, and any
deviation from that way lead to hell. What could be more straightforward?
I was overbold in those first days of kindergarten. Sure that I would make my father proud through my faithfulness. He had warned me over and over that since I was being bussed out of Charity to school, I must guard against the onslaught of temptation that was sure to come my way. He warned me repeatedly that Susan, the only other girl in the congregation my age, and I must stick together. We must go as the disciples into the world by twos to spread God’s Word. Even as young as we were, Susan and I had a mission that we had to fulfill.
Dahlia Washington was the most beautiful little girl I had ever seen. Dahlia had smooth dark skin, and white white teeth, and huge dark almond shaped eyes. She was always dressed in adorable color coordinated outfits. Her hair done in tight glossy black braids with beads on the ends that matched her blouse, and socks. I especially envied her the beads. The beads that just brushed her shoulders, and made a lovely clicking sound whenever she turned her head.
It took me three days to get up the courage to approach Dahlia during recess. When I told her earnestly that wearing braids in her hair was vain and sinful, and that furthermore, wearing pants was going to send her straight to hell, she did the only thing a reasonable five year old could do. She looked down at her crisp new blue jeans, with flowers embroidered in shades of pink on the legs and pockets, and then looked at me standing before her in my calf-length dark blue homemade dress, my hair pulled back in a tight bun that rested at base of my skull. I must have looked like a midget librarian.
Then Dahlia reached out and shoved me. I folded like a house of cards in the dust at her feet. The other girls standing with her laughed. From her position three feet behind me Susan stared down at me with wide horrified gray eyes. I was shocked too. I’d never been pushed by another child before. My only playmate ever had been the compliant Susan.
“Keziah is a name for a pretty girl, not a ugly girl scrawny white girl. From now on your name is Ida Ugly. Say it. Say your name,” demanded Dahlia.
I remained silent with shock. Dahlia kicked me in the thigh. “Say it.”
“Ida Ugly,” I managed through the haze of shock and pain.
“Um, you sure are da ugly,” said Dahlia, while her friends giggled behind her. Then they all turned and walked away, while I struggled out of the dirt with Susan’s help.
Ida Ugly, how I would come to hate that name. It took Dahlia a ridiculously short amount of time to cow me entirely. By the beginning of second grade I had stopped even occasionally fighting back when Dahlia or her friends called me Ida. By the beginning of third grade Dahlia and her group pretty much left me alone. Not because I had changed, or Dahlia had, but simply because they had grown bored. It was too easy to torture me. By that time, of course, my place as whipping girl was firmly established in the class hierarchy.
Interestingly enough, Susan, who wore the same dresses, had the same hair style, and I can only think was taught the same things, never became the focus of anyone’s ire. For a long time I wondered why. She was prettier than me, blond hair and big soft gray eyes, and well proportioned, instead of small and painfully thin. For years I thought that was what the difference was. I was wrong.
As for the adults around us, they simply never noticed. Or at least they never seemed to. I am especially thankful that my father never knew. I never told him that Dahlia was beating me up and taunting me. I was only willing to present her as a success story. Other little girls dreamed of dresses and ponies, and parties, and being Mommies, or teachers, or astronauts. I dreamed of converting people and presenting them to my father, ready to be members of his church. He’d be so proud to see how many I had saved. He would see that I had persevered. He would see that I was worthy. He’d be proud of me. I would be righteous and go to heaven.
Of course Ivy was there through it all on the outskirts. She was never one that taunted me, but for many years she just ignored my existence. Ivy was popular. Not mean, I don’t think, but popular. She had her own circle of friends that had nothing to do with Dahlia. She was pretty, all bouncy brown curls and big blue eyes. She was nice, and she was always dressed well. She was also smart, consistently one of the top-graded children in the class.
With the start of our Fourth grade year, we were assigned our first large independent project and allowed to pick our groups. We were allowed to pick up to five people per group. I knew my group would be made of two. Me and Susan. Susan and I. Just like it always was. We didn’t even turn to each other for reassurance in the class room. It was just how things were.
After school that day Ivy approached me while we were waiting for the bus. “I want you in my group for the project,” she said.
I actually looked around to see who she was talking to. I could not believe she was talking to me.
“Why?” I asked. Dealing with Dahlia had taught me that much. Never agree to anything without all the information.
“Because your grades are as good as mine and we could do a really great project together. I want an A. Don’t you?”
“Yes. There are other kids you could ask.”
“My parents say you’re lonely and that’s why you’re so mean. Maybe if you work on the project with us you’ll be less lonely and mean,” said Ivy.
“I’m not mean.”
“You are. And if you ever say anyone is going to hell again I’ll slap you harder than you’ve ever been slapped.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. We’ll meet at my house on Friday’s after school to work,” said Ivy starting to turn away.
“What about Susan?”
“My group is full.”
I knew who her group was full with. Jessica, Tara, and Sara. They went everywhere together.
Just like that I deserted Susan. She would end up in the slush group the teacher made up of kids that didn’t have groups by the end of the week. They did their project on Peru and got a B. We did our project on Japan and got an A plus, plus plus plus. Ivy believed in doing every piece of extra credit that existed and then some.
Ida Ugly would still be around until just after I got breasts in high school. But I didn’t mind as much. Once Ivy was willing to include me, Dahlia was willing to ignore me entirely.
There was only one time after that day in fourth grade that I said someone was going to hell. Ivy Brandt did what she’s said she would do, and slapped me harder than I had ever been slapped. Which is pretty dang hard.
It is worth noting here that the day I told my father about the project was the first time I contemplated a lie before I told it to my father. Always before I had lied to him badly and in the moment. Mostly, I had gotten caught. That day, on the way home, I knew he would rage at me for “willingly going among sinners”, that his hand would sharply meet my cheek, or the back of my head, when he found out I was a member of Ivy’s group. So I came up with the lie before I ever got off the bus.
When his hand connected to my cheek and he started to yell at me, I told him the teacher had assigned the groups. That made him rethink my news. Suddenly, I was a noble warrior for God, walking among the sinners to convert them. Carrying God’s Word where he himself could not. When he charged me with saving all of their souls I nodded gravely, and excused myself to start my homework.
It would not be the last lie I would tell him, and which he would foolishly believe. I was about to become an expert.
Two
That summer, the summer Ivy and I were twenty-five, started auspiciously — at least for me. I had wrapped up my classroom, already signed my contract with the school to teach the following year, packed, and found someone to water my plants, all with ease and even dispatch. As I drove south toward Cahokia, where I would meet Ivy, I checked off the landmarks in my mind. The rusted thresher left out in a field for at least a decade. The Lutheran Church that I always swore I’d stop and look around one day. A man-made lake next to a corn field. The tumbledown farm house with the antique ferris wheel out front.
It star
ted to rain as I got closer to Cahokia. Not one of those weak rains that only left the air hot and cloying, but a nice, strong, steady rain that would leave the air cooler. I didn’t consider it a bad sign, but a blessing. There was no thunder or lighting, no flooding. It seemed to be an omen boding no ill.
When I got to Cahokia I pulled into the gravel lot at the base of Monks’ Mound. Ivy was very much one for tradition, and this was ours. Every year, before I joined her at her parent’s house for two or three weeks of vacation, we stopped off here. We had climbed the mound together for the first time the summer we were eleven, and we’d climbed it together every summer since. We always have nacho chips and cream soda at the top.
I will say that in order to understand how good nacho chips and warm cream soda taste at the top of Monks’ Mound you have to have started the habit early. Also, it’s best not to invite the park police to your impromptu picnic.
Ivy is almost never late. So after I had waited ten minutes in my car, with the rain slipping down the windshield, I began to worry. After fifteen minutes I fervently wished that I had given in and gotten a cell phone when everyone else started to get them. At the twenty minute mark I started to consider going over to the interpretation center and seeing if they had a pay phone. I was saved the trip when Ivy’s blue sedan pulled into the parking lot two minutes later.
The rain had mostly let up by that point, so I slipped out of my car, relieved to see her, and not at all bothered by the remaining sprinkles. The air had cooled, and a breeze had come up from the east. At least it smelled like the east. Like damp corn fields and grass, instead of the city to the west.
When she stepped out of her own car, I thought Ivy looked pale. I didn’t remark on it as we hugged. Then, empty-handed, Ivy turned down the gravel and dirt path that led to the base of the mound. I followed her.
In silence we started to climb the mud-slicked train-tie stairs. Only twice before had I seen Ivy struck silent. I pondered this as we climbed, our sneakers squishing.
The Color of Ordinary Time Page 1