In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [86]
In the keepsake photographs taken by our own Christian cameraman, we look scrubbed and virginal, happy in our abstinence. But every time I hear a zealous politician or clergyman declaring the church a protector of chastity, I remember the common aftermath of any teenage social function I attended, whether blessed or unholy: a mad scramble in the backseats of the fathers’ Buicks or behind the church or in the closet where the choir robes hung down like a hundred satin wings. Even on the chaperoned bus trips to one Christian youth conference or another, straws were drawn to see who got first shot at the back, where lovers might pass their allotted ten minutes in seclusion behind the carefully draped garment bags and coats. The one difference between the manifestations of the hormonal ragings of those damned and those saved may be this: how deeply the afterglow is tinged with guilt.
What part of our trysting the attendant adults were privy to was met with punishment. For sneaking out of the girls’ dorm and knocking on the boys’ windows, we were made to spend the night not in our bunkbeds but on the cold seats of the bus, shivering without blankets or pillows. And then there was the “hot seat,” a wired metal stool the offender had to sit on to receive her “jolt” of discipline.
I sometimes regret those years in the church, filled with guilt and perhaps even abuse, yet given the choices in my own life, even considering the summer with the Langs, I feel lucky to have escaped the chasm that so many of my junior high school friends eventually fell into. The last time I saw Maria, the girl whose filthy upstairs bedroom seemed such a haven from the prison I believed my life had become, she was working as a carhop. I did not recognize her, but she did me. Her front teeth were gone, and one side of her face was grotesquely swollen. “The old man,” she said, shaking her head, dragging from her cigarette a final, sideways puff.
I never saw nor heard of Patti again but cannot imagine her life took any uphill turn. Of the others I was closest to, the ones with whom I chased the bums and smoked dope after school, the majority are dead, imprisoned or living with abuse. Larry died in the river, Dennis in a car wreck. The night Les and I were caught coming home from the party and made to lead our separate lives, those who had dropped us off robbed the corner store at gunpoint and were caught the next day. Most were sent to do time in juvenile detention, and I might easily have been one of them. I wonder if I could have faced the old storekeeper and his silver-haired wife, who had been so kind to me in the days when all I wanted from them was a few pieces of penny candy.
• • •
My father continued his night work, and my memories of him during those years are few. Only on Sundays did he seem part of the family. Other times, when my mother insisted that we ask for his approval of our activities, my brother and I waited for that window of opportunity to present itself: in the evening, when he rose from his bed and made his way to his chair, where, before leaving for the truck yard, he sat with his Bible and the plate of food my mother offered.
I seldom asked for privileges that might not be granted and knew well the boundaries of what events were considered acceptable. If I did question his decision, the reaction was immediate: there need be no reason but his word, and that word was no. I risked punishment if I opened my mouth again. I held my tongue but felt the resistance in me rise. In my room I would reach for my Bible and find the marked passage, Colossians 3:20: “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.” I closed my eyes and let the words settle into an intonation that separated me from the room, the house, the man in his chair whom I feared