In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [80]
“Thank you, Lord,” I’d whispered, for surely God had seen my weakness. I spent the rest of the night on my knees, imagining Luke at his own bed doing the same, our prayers rising to mingle like vapors above the sleeping town.
Yet instead of drawing us spiritually closer, that night seemed only to have made it harder for us to be together. Luke seldom looked at me across the dinner table, and he’d taken to sitting in another pew at church. I believed I knew why: only by separating himself from me could he gain control of his physical self. I bowed my head in understanding, comforting myself with the knowledge that he and I waged the same battle.
Perhaps what the Langs were discussing in private had to do with Luke and me. I lifted the plates gently, trying to cushion the clatter of glass so that I might hear the murmur of their voices coming from the bathroom. They were all in there—everyone except me crowded in the tiny space, leaning against porcelain, because it was the only room with a locking door.
I had been told to remain where I was and finish the dishes. Why? Had he told his parents of his sin, and of mine? Were they in there deciding what must be done? I shook my head. No. They were a family and needed to speak of things that I was not yet privileged to hear, and I must be patient. Suspicion was the work of the Devil.
This was not the first time they had closed themselves off. I had been asked to go outside just yesterday because, Sister Lang said, they needed to have a family meeting. I’d stepped out into the hot afternoon, squinting my eyes against the light. Family, family, I thought. I live here, eat, sleep and pray here. Isn’t this my family?
“Lord,” I prayed, “just let me be here. Just let me stay.”
Was that Terry’s or Brother Lang’s muted voice? I strained to make out words, to detect some pitch or intonation that might calm me. I need not know the ways of the Lord, I thought, but more than anything I wanted to tiptoe across the kitchen and put my ear to the door. I watched the water filling the sink and leaned forward to catch the steam on my face, breathing in the moisture. Something was working at my guts, something dark and foreboding—the tremor of recognition I had been fighting to suppress.
Suddenly I knew what it was I was feeling, and I stepped back from the sink, grabbed the dishtowel and held it to my forehead and chin, wet with the steam and now sweat. It was all too familiar: the set of their mouths, the way they became silent when I entered the room. I remembered my mother leaned against the counter, the paper in her hands damp and curling, her quiet crying, her tears dropping into the scalding water as she read the letter from Lola.
The wave of certainty broke over me, threatened to consume me with panic. These people had saved me, had believed me worthy of love. If they were to refuse me, where would I go? If my desire for Luke had brought this on, I would purge myself. I would fast, shut myself away in a room without food, take only water and that so sparingly my body would know its true thirst.
The lock clicked. I could not bear for them to see my fear and kept my back to them as they filed by. There was nothing in the basin I could wash, nothing I could wrap my hands around and rinse clean. The screen door opened, sighed shut. Car doors slammed, an engine started. I spun around, suddenly afraid that I had been left. Sister Lang stood looking at me, and I was both embarrassed and relieved to find her there, hair tightly braided, familiar in her housedress cinched at