Devoted (15 page)

I'm terrified about what will happen to me if I get caught writing to you. But I'm also terrified about what will happen to me if I stop. I want to keep writing to you, even if I can't explain why in words.

“But these were private,” I say, my voice barely audible. But I don't have any privacy. Not really.

“Have you been communicating with Lauren Sullivan?” Pastor Garrett asks, his voice serious and clipped. “Is that who you went to see when you went downtown?”

“Yes,” I whisper. They want to make me say it. Even though they already know the answer.

My mother's cries turn into sobs when I admit out loud what she must already know.

“It's my fault,” she says. “I was sick. I wasn't able to keep my closest eye on her heart. Oh Father God, forgive me.”

“It's not your fault, Mom,” I say, reaching out for her. But Dad places his hands between us. I shrink back into my chair.

“Your mother and I have discussed this at length with Pastor Garrett,” Dad continues. “You need to reconnect with Christ. God wants to heal your heart, Rachel, and He needs you to be in a place without distractions. We feel it's best for you to spend some time at Journey of Faith camp.”

I remember James Fulton's shame-filled face when he returned from Journey of Faith. I remember Lauren using the word
brainwash
to describe what happens there. And suddenly, even though I feel as if the floor underneath me is giving way, I feel something so deep inside of me I know it must be true.

I can't let them take me to that place.

“What if I don't go?” I ask.

My mother's eyes pop open, and she stares at my father and Pastor Garrett.

My father glances at Pastor Garrett, who nods just slightly.

“If you don't go,” Dad says, “you can't continue to live under our roof. You're not a godly influence on your younger siblings.”

“Yes,” I say. “I understand.”

There's silence, and Pastor Garrett clears his throat. I squeeze my hands together. They're so slick with sweat they slide up against each other and slip apart.

“Rachel, we want you to get ready to go now,” Pastor Garrett says. “Mrs. Garrett and I are prepared to drive you to Journey of Faith this afternoon.”

“All right,” I say. “Of course.”

I try to breathe. My own parents don't want me unless they can send me off to a place that terrifies me because of what it might do to me. Psalms says
when my mother and my father forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.
But where is the Lord now?
God, where are you?

“May I go upstairs to pack and to have time to myself to pray?” I ask. My throat is coated in sandpaper. I don't know how I'm speaking. I can't look at anyone so I look at the floor instead.

“Yes, of course,” says Pastor Garrett. I glance at him and he's smiling like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

I want to slap him.

I get up and as I turn the corner and walk down the hallway to the staircase leading up to my room, I grab the cordless phone hanging on the wall, quickly. I hear Pastor Garrett's voice, still as loud as ever, leading my parents in prayer.

I hold the phone and race up the stairs.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound …

“Hello?”

I slip inside my room and shut the door.

“Hello?”

“Lauren?”

“Yes, who's this? Wait. Rachel?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice a whisper. My body numb. “They want to send me to Journey of Faith,” I tell her. “Do you remember that place?”

“Journey of Faith? Oh, fuck no!”

I wince, and Lauren seems to sense it.

“I'm sorry,” she says, “but no, Rachel. No. You cannot do that. You don't know what they do to people there. You can't go. I swear to you. Do not go. You'll come back lobotomized.”

“I don't know what that means,” I say. I'm standing in the middle of my bedroom now. The only bedroom I've ever known. The corners and quirks and cobwebs are all familiar to me. I know them like I know my own heartbeat.

“You'll come back not you,” Lauren says. I can hear a dog barking in the background. She must be at work.

“I don't know who me is,” I say, my voice barely audible. And I burst into tears. Finally.

“Rachel, Rachel, take a breath,” Lauren commands.

I try but I can't. I've never cried like this before, like I've lost control of my body entirely. “My parents say I have to leave if I don't go,” I manage. “They're asking me to leave if I don't go, but I don't want to go there, Lauren.”

“Listen to me,” Lauren tells me, her voice insistent. “Listen. Listen to me, Rachel. Pack a bag. Can you pack a bag? What's your address?”

I tell her through my sobs.

“I know where that is. By the Nielsen farm, right?”

“Yes,” I tell her. I'm gulping for air.

“I'll be there in less than half an hour. I'll honk my horn twice, Rachel, and you will come out of that house. You'll see me, and you'll come out of the house and you'll get in the car. It's an old red Honda. You have to run out, do you understand? I can't come in for you. Tell me you understand. Say, ‘Yes, I understand.'”

“Yes, I understand,” I say through my tears even though I do not understand at all. I understand none of what's happening to me except for some tiny little core piece of my heart that knows I can't go to Journey of Faith. I can't and I won't and I won't.

“Pack a bag, Rachel. And bring your driver's license. Do you have it?”

“Yes, but it's downstairs with my purse.”

“Grab it if you can. I'm leaving now. Two honks.”

She hangs up, and I stand there, finally able to swallow my cries. Don't think, Rachel. Just do. On the floor of the closet, I find an old, navy blue tote bag I used to use as a diaper bag for Isaac when he was smaller. I grab what I can and roll each piece of clothing into a tight ball, trying to make as much room as possible. Underwear, my resale shop bras, old denim skirts, a nightgown, and loose-fitting blouses. I take my hairbrush off the dresser. I open my nightstand and snatch a notebook where I like to keep a list of my favorite words (
persnickety
,
mortified
,
magnanimous
,
freewheeling
) and a postcard Aunt Marjorie sent us from Hawaii some Christmas long ago. Dad threw it out, but I took it from the trash and kept it. I liked to stare at the glorious beach scene on the front as much as I liked to reread the chicken-scratch handwriting on the back from the aunt I'd never had the chance to know.

Merry Xmas from The Big Island!! It's bee-yoo-ti-full here! Lots of Love to All xoxo Marjorie

How many bee-yoo-ti-full places exist on this planet? How many has God made? How many will I never see if I stay here?

I slip the card in my bag and check the clock radio on my nightstand. It's been fifteen minutes. How long will Pastor Garrett and my parents let me hide away upstairs before they come and get me?

I look at Ruth's tidy bed and the throw pillow she's arranged to cover the ink stain on the bedspread we got cheap at the Goodwill. Sweet Ruth. Good Ruth. My eyes sting, and I start to cry again.

What if I forced myself to go to Journey of Faith? What if I forced myself for Ruth?

But what if I can't survive it? The physical labor, the isolation, the constant barrage of Scripture and correction, Lauren's promise that I'll be forever changed and not for the better. Even if I survive all of that, then what? Could I go to community college? Read whatever I want? Tell my father I don't want to get married until I'm older?

I find a notebook in Ruth's stack of schoolbooks on her nightstand and tear out a fresh page, then search frantically for a pen until I find one.

Ruth, I love you so much. I'm so sorry. I will get in touch with you soon, I promise. Please forgive me, Ruth. Please know I wouldn't be doing this if I had another choice. I love you so, so, so much, Ruth.

Love,
Rachel

I slip the note under Ruth's pillow where she'll be sure to find it. Then my eyes stop on the framed Bible verse she keeps on the wall next to her bed. Her favorite. From Hebrews.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

I hear two honks in quick succession. I imagine Mom and Dad and Pastor Garrett downstairs in the family room, glancing at each other with
what-was-that?
looks on their faces.

When I peek out the bedroom window, I see a dusty red Honda parked in the yard, its engine still running. Two more honks.

Come Out. Come Out.

I grab my bag. I head for the door. I open it.

Without looking back, I race down the stairs.

 

13

It's been over a week
since I moved in with Lauren, but I still haven't gotten used to the smells I've encountered in her one-bedroom apartment. Sriracha sauce. Cats. Peppermint-scented body lotion. And something Lauren calls Nag Champa incense.

“I promise, it gives off good vibes, good energy,” Lauren says as she lights a second stick of the strange, sweet-smelling stuff and gray smoke starts to make cursive letters in the air. “That sounds corny, but I'm trying to make you laugh.” She watches me from the broken-in pink arm chair in the corner. It's like she's counting how long it will take for me to start crying again.

One.

Two.

“Rachel,” Lauren says, her face falling as I burst into tears, her voice dropping into a whisper, “I wish I could make this all easier.”

I sniffle and let the tears flow for a minute. I'm curled into the corner on the couch, which is in no better shape than Lauren's pink armchair. But the couch is comfortable, which is good because it's where I've been sleeping at night.

“I just needed to cry,” I say out loud. “Again.”

“I know,” Lauren says, nodding. “It's normal. I think I cried every day for weeks after I left, I was such a wreck. But I have an idea. Diet Coke. That always cheers me up. You want one?”

“Sure.”

I've had soda before on a few rare occasions. Wedding receptions at church. The one time my parents took me to Red Lobster for my birthday. But mostly it's an indulgence we can't afford. Lauren says Diet Coke is her “one vice” since she left the city. When she told me that, I had to ask her what a vice was. Something not so good for you, she says. But of all the vices, she tells me, soda is probably the least bad one.

We sip our drinks, and I let the fuzzy, cool bubbles pop against my tongue. The cold can feels good in my hand. Finally, I'm calm enough to really talk.

“I keep picturing what happened when I left,” I say. I can't forget the way I grabbed my purse from the hook near the door and turned to tell my parents and Pastor Garrett in between sobs that I couldn't—wouldn't—go to Journey of Faith. I can't forget the strange, contorted expression on my mother's face that I tried to unsee the moment I saw it.

“Where are you going?” my father bellowed, raising his voice for the first time in my memory. “How can you abandon Christ's path for you?” And Pastor Garrett prayed in a loud voice, “‘To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God!' Open your servant Rachel's eyes, Father God! Open her eyes, we pray!”

I couldn't find the words to answer or explain, and I was afraid if I tried I would lose my nerve, so I ran outside and found myself inside Lauren's red Honda, crying so many tears I thought I'd never have enough to cry again. The first night at Lauren's apartment I'd only been able to calm down after I'd called home from a phone we borrowed from her next-door neighbor. Lauren didn't want anyone from Calvary to be able to reach her.

My father answered when I called, and when I told him where I was and that I was safe but I just needed some time away and that he could reach me at this neighbor's number, he used a voice he'd never used with me before. But I recognized it anyway. It was the detached, measured voice he uses with worldly clients who hire him to trim their crepe myrtles. The careful, better-than-you voice he pulls out with the cigarette-smoking mechanic—the only one in town who can keep our van running.

“Rachel Elizabeth,” he said, “when you are ready to return to the Lord, to His service, to walk with righteousness and be healed by attending Journey of Faith, you will contact us. Until then, you are not permitted to communicate with this family. We're praying for you, Rachel Elizabeth.”

And he hung up the phone, just like that. I held the receiver for minutes after, sure I was mistaken. Certainly that wasn't all he could have to say to me, his own daughter.

“That's what I keep running over in my mind the most,” I say to Lauren. “What my dad said when I called. That my own dad said that.” I wait for tears to start again, but my body won't have it anymore.

“It's like how I couldn't picture that my own dad could beat me up like he did, but he did,” says Lauren, her black fingernails tapping against the edge of her soda can. “Just because our dads are our dads doesn't mean they're perfect or even right. I know that's weird to hear, but I think it's the truth.”

I curl my knees up under my chin. I want to tell Lauren that at least my dad never hit me. That maybe my dad just needs more time to understand me. But I keep quiet and nod.

Lauren picks up the little black cat that's clawing at her chair. He's the one she calls Frankie. She rubs one of his ears, and he purrs contentedly.

“Tell me again what makes Journey of Faith so bad?” I ask Lauren. Maybe there's some small part of me that's still considering toughing it out—just to be able to see Ruth again or hug my mother, however briefly.