In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [83]
I see how my life is often defined by the events of that summer, how my emotions are fenced by fear and distrust. And what a fourteen-year-old suffering her body’s own betrayal could not know about seduction I now understand: I seduced no one. I also know that I have no explanation for Sister Lang’s accusation. Remembering how carefully I shut myself down that day, how I’ve allowed myself so little memory of time and circumstance, I wonder if there is some other horror I might not remember. Can I believe any of these people capable of sins greater than my own? Who would I blame? Luke, barely sixteen? Terry, who may never fully have known of his role in the condemnation? A jealous mother or wife? The father, the family, the church, the Devil Himself, God?
For years there remained only one answer, and that answer was that the blame lay with me. I came to distrust no one more than myself, and the loathing I felt for any passion that threatened to rise in me—lust or love, joy or decided sadness, anger, hate, hope—eventually honed itself into a dulled and protective sheath.
It was a covering I wore well: this new consciousness suited the life of a Christian. Kindness to others was no risk—I expected nothing in return. I found it easy to turn the other cheek when the slap itself produced no sting.
That night when I arrived home and took up my life like an old and familiar garment, I felt only an overwhelming relief. In this place I knew the boundaries, knew what I must do to be accepted and survive. I had learned my lesson: I could not run; I could never again believe I knew the world that well.
I woke the next morning to the sounds of my mother in the kitchen. Jumping up, I washed my face quickly, combed and tied my hair. When she turned from the stove I saw my own benumbed smile mirrored in her face. I felt a pinch of repulsion. “Let me,” I said, and took the spatula from her hand.
My father and brother came to a table set with matching plates and flatware, coffee and milk poured, syrup heated. We bowed our heads and I offered up thanks for food and family. My mother began to cry softly. “I’m just so happy that we’re all here together,” she said.
Shame filled me, a hot and sickening infusion. What had I done to these people, the ones who really loved me? Nothing in memory seemed enough to have warranted my hostile behavior. I looked back on that other girl and shivered with disgust. That girl was no longer me.
As we cleared the dishes my mother turned to me. “You know we cannot trust you yet. Only time will take care of that.”
I nodded in agreement and understanding. Of course. Why should they trust me? I had hurt them deeply, had nearly destroyed my family. I too would need time, enough to make clear to them how deeply that other daughter lay dead.
I was grounded, although it was not called such. Just as at the Langs’, I could not leave the house without a chaperone, kept inside as though even the air might contaminate my fragile resolve. I read the Bible and prayed. I made up songs of grace and salvation on the piano. I attended church with my family four times a week and felt the eyes of the elders upon me.
Confession through testimony let me speak of my worldly experiences with the freedom of a voyager. Even as my mother and father listened to their teenage daughter describe the shame and degradation of her past, their eyes held the pride I remembered from before, when I was young, in that other life.
When asked to testify, I did so, but what the people wanted most to hear, I soon realized, was not just the part where I was reborn, but rather the part that they knew must have come before. They wanted to hear the horrors of drugs and sex: the story of loneliness and loss that was mine was not enough.
I had never shot heroin, had never found myself in