In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [79]
I could tell myself these truths as they had been taught me. But what of the desire I myself felt rising like smoke from the friction of skin on skin? No one had ever given me the prayers to diffuse my own carnal lust; no one had spoken of the hunger of women. Surely it must be particular to my own perversion that this want grew in me.
I steadied myself with the rationale that we were nearly engaged. Another year, I promised myself, and we would be married, free to couple and lounge wholly naked, every inch of skin slick and revealed. Already, the names of our children were written in the margins of my Bible: David and Caleb, Jessie and Sarah.
I let my fingers touch the roughened skin of his knuckles, then felt the wedge of his hand between my legs, gently widening the space until his palm rested hot against my thigh. His eyes never left my face. I could see his mouth open a little, his white teeth, the tip of his tongue. I jerked when his hand brushed the crotch of my panties.
“Hey,” he whispered, “you don’t want to wake them up.” He nodded toward the ceiling as though it were a window. They were sleeping, I knew, but God never slept. I closed my eyes, ashamed, afraid, unable to move.
Then the hand was gone. I opened my eyes to see him standing before me, once again grinning. “You’d best go to bed,” he said, then left the room, leaving me to the light.
I shuffled the papers into order, then rose unsteadily. What had happened? Nothing. I ascended the stairs to my room—a doorless closet in the hall, really, just outside the real bedroom, where Terry and Sarah slept.
The sheets cooled my skin. I opened my Bible to the passage underlined in red: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
I must have faith, I told myself. I laid my glasses on top of my Bible and turned off the light. I could barely discern the stars out my window, but I knew they were there and kept looking into darkness until sleep took me and stars no longer mattered.
CHAPTER NINE
I stood at the kitchen sink, running hot water over the plates and looking out the window. The temperature had been hitting one hundred the last several days and air rose in snaking ribbons off the streets of Spokane.
The water scalded my hands, but I had learned not to mind the heat that turned my skin crimson. Sister Lang and Sarah could dip their hands quickly into the steaming rinse basin and pull out dishes sanitized and gleaming. In the bathtub each night I practiced, closing the cold water faucet down a turn at a time until only the hot ran over my palms.
For the last several weeks I had been watching the women carefully. I had much to know about keeping house and cooking, and always before I had resisted participating in any of the kitchen chores my mother had asked me to do. If I were to be a good wife for Luke, I must work hard to learn his preferences: how much salt he liked on his eggs, how much sugar in his coffee. I folded the sheets into tight rectangles, following Sarah’s careful instructions. Each towel was doubled, then triple-folded and nested neatly in the closet. On my own initiative I had begun to clean the tub each evening after Luke’s bath, wiping away the greasy smudges. Gathering his dirty clothes in my arms, I felt proud—so different from that other self, who might have shunned such a simple and loving task. Now I was fulfilling my duty, and the Langs surely must see how grateful I was, how worthy I was to be their daughter-in-law.
My every prayer had been answered. Even the problem with Luke seemed under control. Only once since that night at the