Beyond Belief (17 page)

You’d think I would’ve had trouble reconciling my double life, my strict belief system, with my cheating, lies, and growing sexual curiosity. This duplicity was arguably un-Christian and required increasingly complex mental gymnastics to justify. But I had role models: my parents, pastor and wife so full of certitude and sanctimony, praising the Lord on Sunday and talking trash about church members on Monday. We prayed for dear Deacon X and his wife that they would give up the sin of cable TV, even as my father stopped by their house when the World Series was on. When Mrs. Z came by our house one day to drop off church linens she’d laundered, my father watched from behind the living room curtains, quipping as she left, “Call the Department of Licensing, there’s a boat without a license plate out there.” I laughed at this—my father had a wicked wit—but later I thought about fat Mrs. Z and all the times I’d seen her praying up front at church during the weekly altar calls and I felt sad.

Every human interaction my parents had seemed to be an opportunity to establish distance, to sever any connections founded on anything but the Lord, to judge and reject all who didn’t meet their harsh standards. We didn’t talk to supermarket clerks, because they sold alcohol and cigarettes and as such were instruments of Satan. Police officers we treated with exaggerated courtesy, because law and order were precepts ordained by the Lord, but in the coming End-Times the cops would become tools of the state and hence our obeisance was probably temporary. Not even my grandparents were exempt, receiving harsh comments for skipping Wednesday prayer meetings here and there and for their
occasional pinochle game with neighbors.

More and more I feared my parents’ ruthless eye, the spotlight gaze examining my flaws, finding my inevitable shortcomings, and casting me out of their hearts. Regardless of all I was doing to prove myself worthy, if they deemed my motives and my heart—me—not spiritual enough, then what? Punishment, damnation, a lonely life without God and my parents? I felt empty most of the time, but I figured that was probably just my excessive dieting.

W
E LEFT FOR
P
ROSSER
at 5:00
AM
Saturday. Dad drove the van, listening to sermon tapes and drinking coffee from a Thermos. The rest of us dozed. I woke up as we turned into a gravel parking lot. “You girls worked hard to get here,” Dad said, pulling into a spot. “I’m proud of you for doing well on your tests. The Lord is too.”

“We’ll see you at lunchtime. You two stick together,” my mother instructed.

I climbed out of the van, stiff and yawning. “You think Rob and Aaron are here?”

Maggie shrugged. “I need to go to the bathroom.” As we walked away from the van, she added softly, “Thanks for helping me with my test.”

“Next time, study,” I snapped, and walked ahead of her.

Crossing the parking lot, we eyed the other kids heading toward the church. The girls seemed impossibly cute in jean skirts and flats; the boys were like beings from another planet, laughing and shoving. At the bathroom we joined a long line.

“Hey. That’s a pretty crazy jumper,” a girl behind us said, cracking her gum.

Pleased, I smoothed my corduroy jumper and said, “It’s
vintage. I got it at a thrift store.”

“My gramma has one exactly like it,” her friend said, and the two giggled. “What’re your favorite jeans?”

“We don’t wear pants,” I said, trading looks with Maggie. The kids here were from pretty liberal schools and churches. These girls wore skirts above their knees and loads of makeup.

“I like Jordache baggies,” the girl said.

The line moved. Maggie went into a stall.

I stared at the row of hand dryers on the wall. I’d been so excited to get here and already it was shaping up to be a long day. How did these girls know, just by looking at me, that I was a square, a loser? What would it feel like to be a part of their little clique, invisible but accepted, lovingly kidded, the way it happened in books and in my imagination?

“So my cousin gave me a Judy Blume book to read,” the friend was saying quietly.

The Jordache girl gasped, clearly shocked and impressed. “No way.”

My breath caught in my chest. I heard a flush and prayed no stall doors opened just yet.

“She’s Episcopalian,” the friend said, as if that explained something. “I mean, a Judy Blume book. My mom would freak if she found out!”

“I read Judy Blume books,” I said ultra casually, I hoped.

The Jordache girl turned to look at me like she’d smelled something offensive. “Those books talk about gross things,” she said.

“People who do those things are gross,” her friend agreed.

Now everyone in line was looking at me. I tried to shrink within my senior citizen’s jumper. I did those things. Those things felt good. When I touched myself, I felt so warm and safe and loved—if only
for a few minutes, before the guilt and shame moved in. Could these girls tell by looking at me that I did those things? Oh dear Jesus, why had I opened my mouth?

A stall opened up and I ducked inside. When I came out, Maggie was waiting, looking worried. She’d applied lip gloss. “What’s a Judy Blume book?”

“Nothing,” I said, hurrying her toward the door, away from the Jordache girl and her friend who were giggling inside the handicap stall. “I haven’t read any. I was just kidding.”

“You better not be hiding books from Mom and Dad,” she said, pushing past me and out into the hall.

A
T THE LUNCH BREAK
we spied Rob and Aaron at the dessert table. “Let’s go say Hi,” Maggie said. I glanced around the cafeteria. No sign of our parents but I was sure they were somewhere nearby, watching and omnipresent, like the Lord. I was so nervous as we moved closer to Rob and Aaron that I thought I might faint.

We all said Hi. I added, to Aaron, stammering a little, “How you?”

He grinned and said teasingly, “I fine.”

“You guys going to the midnight skate tonight?” Rob was busy piling cherry crisp on his plate.

Maggie said, “No.”

“Maybe,” I said, even though I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be allowed.

In the afternoon, I tied for second in the Sword Drill, a competitive Bible verse lookup contest that rewarded nimble fingers and intimate knowledge of lesser-known books of the Bible, such as Haggai, and Second Thessalonians. As I stood onstage with the
other champions, shaking some youth pastor’s hand and accepting a shiny satin rosette embroidered with the image of a Bible, I cast an embarrassed, covert glance at the Jordache girl, but she and her friend were busy whispering and giggling.

Next, there was special music played by a band with an electric guitar. The song definitely had too much of a rock-and-roll beat for my parents, but they couldn’t very well march us out of our seats up front without causing a ruckus, so Maggie and I sat furtively tapping our feet along to Amy Grant’s “Everywhere I Go” while everyone around us sang along and clapped.

After the final sermon, Preacher Todd, from Portland, who was movie-star handsome, stood at the altar and implored everyone to get right with the Lord. All the visiting pastors and pastors’ wives, including my parents, stood at the front, waiting to pray with sinful teens. Even with my head bowed, I could feel the weight of Mom and Dad’s eyes. Guilt churned my stomach. I thought about The Book, hidden under my mattress, remembered the way I’d bragged about it in the bathroom, trying to make myself look—what? Worldly? Experienced? Cool? Everything my parents—and the Lord—abhorred.

Maggie pushed past me and went forward to confess her sins. I could already see how this would go. She’d pray for forgiveness, get right with the Lord, and later she’d confess about both of us cheating, possibly even mention Judy Blume. If I stayed in my seat, my punishment would just be that much worse. The only thing now was to go forward too, and repent. I’d have to show my parents The Book, have to confess to lying and deceitfulness. Would they have to know about the rest? About
those things?

I walked slowly to the front. Ten or twelve kids were already kneeling at the altar, many crying, one slender boy sobbing openly
into his folded hands. My mother met my eye and smiled slightly. A woman with her hair up in a bun knelt beside me. “Oh Lord, hear our prayer for forgiveness,” she prayed, and, yielding to the bubble of sadness swelling inside me, I wept, more from hopelessness than penitence for my sinful mind and hands.

Maggie and I waited around for our parents afterward as they said good-bye to their pastor friends. The auditorium cleared out pretty fast, everyone anxious to get over to the roller rink. “Should we ask if we can go?” she said.

“They saw us go forward, right?” I said. “Maybe they’ll let us go skating.”

“Maybe,” she said hopefully.

In the van, I sat on the edge of the seat, seatbelt unfastened, watching out my window as the Jordache girl and her friend laughed and climbed aboard a school bus that would take them skating. Our father slipped off his suit coat, settled into the driver’s seat, and poured lukewarm coffee out of his Thermos. It seemed, from his frown and protracted silence, that something was on his mind.

“Daddy, could we—” Maggie started, and my stomach did a little nervous flip.

He held up a hand, sipped his coffee with a deliberate slurp. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think the devil must be pretty pleased about now. All that rock music and long hair on a bunch of so-called Christians.”

“I can’t get over the girls’ hemlines,” Mom said, equally disappointed. “They all looked so worldly.”

“Somebody explain it to me. All right? Is this what the Lord had in mind?” Dad said. “Miniskirts and a sermon weaker than McDonald’s coffee?” He started up the engine.

“A lot of kids went forward and got right with the Lord,
though,” I said, looking at Maggie. Her eyes were dark smudges against her pale face.

“Well,” he said, seeming slightly mollified.

It was a long shot, but I had to try. I added, “Dad, do you think—could we go skating . . . ”

His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “You mean with those boys you girls were chasing around at lunchtime?”

“We weren’t chasing,” I said. “We were just talking.”

He stepped on the brake so hard that I slid halfway off my seat. “Is that right?” he asked, turning around to look me in the face. “You just got right with the Lord, and now you want to go skate around in pitch darkness to rock-and-roll music with a bunch of boys?”

“No, sir,” I said, my voice barely audible, a biblical divide yawning between the truth and my words. I scooted back and let my tears come again. After a while, after I stopped crying, I reached into my bag and pulled out my Sword Drill ribbon. I stroked the pillowy red satin. It glowed in the van’s dim lighting. This ribbon meant something. I’d won it. But even still, I felt so guilty: All the Bible verses in the world couldn’t hide the fact that I was a colossal fraud. Agatha Christie would have found me a worthy foe.

“You did good, sis,” Maggie said to me, softly, consolingly.

“Did well,” Mom corrected from the front seat. “And yes, honey, you did well.”

Disappointment was welling up so deep inside me that I thought I might drown. “I could have done better,” I said.

My father said, nodding, “With more practice, next time you ought to get first place.”

So he agreed: No matter how well I did, I would always be failing on some level, could always do better. This realization was my now, my future. We sped on down a dark, two-lane highway. I settled
into my seat, cheek pressed against the cool glass. Dark-hearted as I was, confession could wait awhile. If my best would never be good enough, what was the rush? I’d tell my parents about The Book—but in a few days, after I returned it to the library. Maybe I’d reread it first. And those things? They were private, they were for me. They were the one thing in my life that no one could take away. The van rolled on toward home. I closed my eyes and imagined myself in my bed, safe and warm under the covers, exploring my body’s geography with my restless fingers.

Body Language

Pamela Helberg