In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [78]
We polished the old oak pews and mended the hymnals with tape, cut the grass and trimmed the roses. I worked beneath the late summer sun, modest and hot in my long sleeves and borrowed, sagging skirt. The sanctuary held little light, and when I stepped into the shadowed room to escape the heat, the air was heavy with the coolness of wood.
While Sarah, pregnant with twins, took her afternoon nap and Sister Lang attended Tupperware meetings, I found once again the plain chords they had taught me at Cardiff and played for hours on the old upright. They granted me this time alone, but little other. My privacy was a commodity I bartered for their trust. I had no money and was dependent upon them for my toothpaste and tampons (Sister Lang shaking her head), for the antihistamines I needed to subdue my allergies. Except for the church, I was allowed to go nowhere without them, but where would I have gone? I was no longer a runaway. I had no other friends. Even my parents seemed dead to me. Yet the more obedient my behavior, the tighter their surveillance. I accepted this, expected it. I had much to pay for. My debt was great.
Even greater was my need for Luke’s approval. He had become more attentive, taking my hand when we walked to the store, reminding me to cover my knees when I sat. I had forgotten the modest ways and now I must relearn them. I shuddered at the memory of my first night with the Langs, at my grotesque desire for Luke, at my act of inhaling his smell. But the guilt could not override the stir of pleasure I felt even in memory: the warm musk, the dusky odor I associated with strong men and hard work.
Once again I spent hours on my knees, pleading with God for strength and purity of thought. Often I’d find myself, still kneeling, my head resting against the altar, surfacing from a dream of Luke. Even my prayers deceived me. Satan surely knew my weakness and found me unguarded even in this sacred place. I denounced His evil presence. My salvation lay in virtue, and virtue was never true if not tried: in the trial itself lay the merit. I pushed my thoughts forward, imagining our wedding night, when with the blessings of God and our elders he would draw from me a sacred and binding blood.
And I gave thanks for this: that somehow my virginity had remained intact. I believed that even when I was lost to the world some part of me had resided in grace. Perhaps, all along, I had been saving myself for Luke.
“What’s the answer?” I tapped my pencil against the table. “Do you remember the equation?”
Luke stared blankly at the paper, chin resting in his hand. He shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
I released a dramatic sigh of exasperation, then began ciphering in the margins. “If X equals seven, then …” Luke’s index finger traced small, ever-widening circles on my knee, “then Y must be … Stop!”
“What?” One corner of his mouth curled into a weighted grin. I pushed his hand away. He slid the pencil from my fingers, so slowly the room darkened before I remembered to breathe.
It had been this way for a week. Each night we stayed up late and strangely alone, he a student of home correspondence schooling, I his tutor.
Each night he scooted closer until our shared breath lifted the book’s pages. When his leg first brushed mine, I shifted, conscious of the heat between us. But this too became familiar, safe because it went no further. His hand on my knee I knew trespassed the boundaries of virtue, yet each night found it there again, until finally I gave in and reset my boundaries: no higher.
My choices seemed few to me then. I could not risk anger, I believed, which would surely turn him away from me. And wasn’t anger itself a sin? I had been charged with getting him through his home schooling and was flush with the honor of such responsibility.