Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science (3 page)

“I am so
very
grateful to Mary Baker Eddy for Christian Science, and the way our family has been so
beautifully
protected each and every day.”

Mrs. Warner sits down, and lots of people nod in agreement. (She says the same thing every year, and I think: With all those kids and that big mansion, it sure is true.)

The First Reader nods and says, “Thank you.”

I look around the church again. Another couple of minutes pass, and Mrs. Hannah, our practitioner, stands up. She has a sugary voice with rounded
o
’s and lots of nose. Whenever I see her, I think of the teapot song.

“ ‘To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings!’ ” Mrs. Hannah starts.

I’ve heard this before too. My Sunday school teacher opens class with the sentence practically every week. She continues, “ ‘Theese are the oh-pening words of Mrs. Eddy’s textbook,
Science and Heath with Key to the Scriptures
—and oh, how true, how precious they are! We are soh blessed to be living at a time, and in a playce, where we are free to practice our faith, the
Science of Christian healing
. I am soh very,
very
grateful for Christian Science.”

The First Reader nods again and says, “Thank you.”

Mrs. Hannah sits down. Over the next ten minutes, more people stand, including my dad. I think his testimony is the best. He is not
nervous at all. He stands with his hands in his pockets, jingling his keys or some change. Every once in a while he pauses and rocks up on his toes when he is saying something important.

“When I was a child,” my father begins, “I was plagued with a persistent stammer. I couldn’t say words that started with
p
without getting stuck. But when I found Science—or, I should say”—he goes up on his toes here—“it found
me
, I decided to do something about it. I called a Christian Science practitioner, who guided me toward a prayerful solution to my problem. She helped me to see my true, God-given perfection. I learned that if I am speaking God’s words, and living God’s love, I simply cannot”—Dad goes up on his toes again—“have a stammer. Within a week, my problem with
p
’s literally vanished! I am so grateful for Christian Science, and its healing power.”

Dad sits down, and the First Reader says, “Thank you.”

That was a lot of p’s! I remember when my dad used to talk like that: P-p-pumpkin p-p-pie. I smile up at him. He smiles back.

The church is silent again. I look at the First Reader, who glances at his watch. I can tell there are only a few minutes left for me to say anything. Now my hands are really sweating.

But I stand up. Or rather, all of a sudden, I realize I
am
standing up! I open my mouth and take a deep breath. I try to speak loudly and clearly, but my words come out barely above a whisper. I race through “IamverygratefulforChristianScienceandandandandShepherdShowMeismyfavoritehymn” and sit down. I realize that a man stood up at exactly the same time as I did, and he is still giving a testimony. My brother and sister snicker, and I think to myself that I would like to disappear, be invisible. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. I try to pretend that nothing’s wrong: I bend down and purposefully yank my tights at each knee, even though they’re not falling down. The man giving the testimony finally sits, and then the First Reader nods to him.

“Thank you,” he says. “And now, hymn number 253.”

I want to stay there, hiding under the pew. I kind of hate the First Reader for not noticing me. But then I think, maybe nobody in the church—other than my family—heard me. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think. As we all stand up to sing the closing hymn, my father leans in toward me, puts his arm around me, and whispers, “You did good, Loosh.”

His little hug and gentle voice are supposed to make me feel better, but they don’t. I wish I could fall through a trapdoor into the basement of the church.

Later that night, after the Thanksgiving feast at Ammie and Grandpa’s with the Morrison cousins, we are back at home. It is bedtime. I am waiting as usual, way down under the covers near the foot of my pretty, canopied trundle bed, for our bedtime prayer ritual, even though at eight and a half, I’ve begun to wonder if I am getting too old for this. As always I have asked my father for a drink of water. When he returns with Dixie cup in hand, he has
no idea
where I am. He sits on my bed. “Lucia? Loosh?” he calls out. “Where are you?” And he pats down the bedding with his hands. “Well, I feel a bunch of pillows in here, but no Lucia! Hmm.” He scratches his head. “I guess she’s gone out for the night,” he says. He walks toward the door, turns off the light, and I scamper out from under the covers and say, “I’m here!” The light goes back on, and I take a sip of water and set the cup on my bedside table.

“Fathermothergod?” Dad asks.

I fold my hands, and he covers mine with his, and we pray in unison, eyes closed.

My father pauses.

“I was very proud of you today, Loosh.”

I smile, but I’m doubtful.

“No one even heard me,” I say.

“
I
heard you,” he says. “And God heard you.”

“Well, it wasn’t about a healing. I haven’t even
had
a healing.”

“Oh, yes you have!” my father says.

“No I haven’t,” I persist.

“Don’t you suppose that your good health is sufficient proof of God’s healing power? Christian Science has protected you so well, you’ve never even been sick!”

“Except for chicken pox,” I correct him.

“And that’s something to be grateful for, isn’t it?”

I nod.

After my dad leaves the room, I think to myself that I’ve outgrown our lights-out ritual. I’m also curious. He said because of Christian Science I haven’t needed healings. But how can he even say
that
if there’s no such thing as sickness? If there’s no such thing as sickness, there should be no need for healings.

I am ten
years old. Sherman, who is still seven, is bouncing with me on the trampoline in our backyard, while Mom prepares dinner and helps Olivia study her vocab words. It is the first really warm day of the summer, and Sherman and I are soaking wet. We’ve spent the last half hour chasing each other through the sprinklers. Now, as we jump up and down, my long, wet hair makes a slapping noise as it hits my back, and the water from our sopping clothes drips onto the trampoline’s canvas. Each time we land, the water shoots upward from the canvas, spraying us again.

Sherman jumps high and doesn’t worry about his landings, but I worry about mine. I keep thinking about the time last fall when we were jumping on Aunt Kay’s trampoline, when some junior high kids launched me overhead and I landed right on my ankle,
crrk
. It hurt so much that immediately I started to sweat, and my eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t scootch off the trampoline because the big kids kept bouncing. Suddenly the air around me was too hot and I thought I might throw up. I lowered myself quietly to the ground and crawled across the lawn favoring my left side; fortunately none
of the big kids noticed. Halfway to the house, I had to stop and rest against the trunk of the big oak tree. I prayed the woozy feeling and the awful throb in my ankle would stop. As I watched it swell, I wondered if maybe it was sprained or even broken. I groaned. Then I whispered, trying not to cry, “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter.”

Please, Mom, I thought to myself, please look out the window and see me and take me home.

“All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.”

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table with her two sisters. She didn’t look up—Aunt Kay was showing Mom and Aunt Mary plans for the new house—until I had crawled all the way down the lawn and into the kitchen, and was standing in the doorway. I motioned to her to come to me, and my eyes started welling up again. She stood up and excused herself. I held it together until we got into the car, and then I sobbed all the way home.

I guess that was a real healing, since now, nine months later, I notice it doesn’t hurt a bit. My ankle was huge, but I only missed two days of school, and I didn’t get to use crutches or even an Ace bandage, obviously, which was kind of disappointing.

It was a long time before I would even sit on the edge of our trampoline again. But now I will jump as high as any of my friends, and I can land a backflip with a half twist every time.

All of a sudden Chipsie, our shaggy mutt, trots up beside the trampoline. She frequently carries a stick or an old sock in her mouth, but today we know to stop and take a closer look. Just yesterday, she brought home a very small, white, dead kitten. Today, like yesterday, Chipsie’s tail is not wagging; she is cowering. Sherman and I jump off the trampoline, and as we approach her, she backs up slowly and goes down on her elbows.

“Look! She’s got another one!” I say.

“Maybe this one’s still alive,” Sherman says. “Drop it, Chips.”

Chipsie very gently sets a little black kitten on the ground, and
we realize that she is trying to save the poor thing. We kneel down to take a closer look. The kitten appears freshly licked. I can see that its black, downy fur is moist on its underbelly. I gently stroke the kitty with one finger. Its body is warm. I can feel the soft, squishy belly and the corrugated ribs. The kitten’s eyes are closed.

“It’s alive,” Sherman whispers.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “I think it’s dead.”

My brother sprints to the house and disappears through the door to the kitchen. He returns with the makeup compact from our mother’s purse.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Checking for breath,” Sherman says. “They do this on TV.”

Sherman pinches open the makeup case and holds the mirror to the kitten’s tiny nose. No steam.

“Try it again,” I whisper, and we move closer, but again, there is no steam.

Sherman’s eyes fill with tears.

“It must have just died,” I whisper. We wait there, thinking.

“Let’s call Mrs. Hannah!” Sherman says.

I look at my brother warily before glancing back down at the kitty. Admittedly, it looks
barely
dead. But as a fourth grader—in one more week I’ll be a fifth grader—I am old enough to know that dead is dead and alive is alive.
Common sense
(my fourth-grade teacher Miss Fetterly’s favorite term, she uses it daily) tells us that you can’t make something that’s dead, un-dead. But in Christian Science, there is no such thing as death, just as there is no such thing as illness. I know from Sunday school that this kitten is perfect in God’s eyes. We only have to see his perfection to make him
whole
(or un-dead) again.

“No, wait!” Sherman blurts out. “Shouldn’t we call Dad? We should call Dad!”

The idea of calling Mrs. Hannah is instinctive, automatic, because she has been our practitioner for so long. Every time there’s
been a bump or a scrape, a sore throat or a sprained ankle, we have called her and asked her to pray for, and with, and about us. And every time we’ve called her, we’ve gotten better. But now we remember that we can call our father instead. Early this spring, one evening before bedtime, our parents sat the three of us down on the tattered love seat in the kitchen to share some very special news. The way their eyes sparkled, I had thought Mom and Dad were going to tell us about a baby on the way, and my mind had rushed ahead: Would it be a sister? A brother? The announcement—that Dad had quit his insurance job at Marsh & McLennan and was going to be a Christian Science practitioner—would draw out many complicated feelings over time, but at first, the news was merely a letdown compared to the dashed fantasy of a new baby.

My first reaction to Sherman’s suggestion is I doubt even Mrs. Hannah can heal a dead kitty, and she’s journal-listed. Her name is in the back of
The Christian Science Journal
, under “Practitioners/Minnesota.” (I like that you can leaf through the
Journal
’s back pages and find churches and practitioners listed from Excelsior, Minnesota, and Boston, Massachusetts, and Paris, France, or even places as far away as Nairobi, Kenya, and Tokyo, Japan.) Our father isn’t listed, not yet. He says he has to have a number of
documented
healings under his belt first.

I know that the
documented
healing of a dead kitten will surely get my father listed in the back of
The Christian Science Journal
, whose logo, after all, is a cross encircled by a crown, with the motto

in small lettering around it. Resurrecting a barely dead kitten has to be—by weight alone—less complicated than healing a dead person. But I don’t know where common sense ends and Christian Science
begins, or if there is any overlap, like those intersecting circles of the Venn diagrams in math class. I decide that the worst that can happen is the kitten remains dead. Then, we’ll bury him in a shoe box in a grave next to his sister, in the backyard at the edge of the woods.

We hurry through the kitchen with the dead kitten cupped in Sherman’s hands. Our sister, Olivia, who is still sitting at the kitchen table, looks up from her homework long enough to give our mother a bored, knowing, slightly appalled glance. In one more week she’ll be an eighth grader. Our mother, on the other hand, appears casually amused, indicating with an elbow where we might find another shoe box. We prepare a Buster Brown box, padding the interior with toilet paper. We stick the kitty inside, march upstairs to our father’s study, and put the box, covered with its lid, on his desk.