Out of Heaven's Grasp (2 page)

I looked back down at my food. I worked hard on my father’s farm, but it was never enough for him.

In order for the elders to give a man a third wife, he had to be making enough money and producing enough food to support another woman and the children she’d bear. My father’s farm had always struggled. We did okay on our own, but six or eight more mouths would have broken us. Even though I was old enough to get married myself, I knew that my father wanted my only focus to be the farm. If I had a wife, I’d be trying to prove myself, not trying to help him advance higher in the eyes of the elders.

My mother gave me a sympathetic look, but she didn’t say anything.

Father didn’t like it when the women talked at the dinner table. He insisted that my mothers and my sisters stay quiet.

“Well,” said Father, “what do you think about Gideon, Jesse?”

I chose that moment to shove a mouthful of potatoes in my mouth. I chewed, giving him an apologetic expression.

He glowered.

I was pushing it, and I knew it. I should be better behaved. I didn’t want to make my father angry. If he was, everyone paid the price, not just me.

My younger brother Josiah spoke up. “I think he’s uppity, Father. Gideon’s sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, and it can’t be good for the community.”

“Oh is
that
what you think?” said Father.

Josiah nodded. He was the oldest child of Mother Miriam, which meant he was my half brother. He was sixteen and anxious to please my father.

“Well, that means you’re questioning the elders, doesn’t it?” said Father. My father was a complicated man. Even though Josiah was agreeing with Father, he wasn’t going to reward him for it. Instead, Father would reprimand Josiah. Sometimes I wondered if Father started these conversations simply to trap us. He took any opportunity he could to find us wanting and sinful, and then he punished us accordingly.

Josiah began intently buttering his bread.

“Oh, nothing to say to that, eh?” Father wiped his mouth with a napkin. We all used cloth napkins here in the community. Waste not, want not, as they said. No disposable items were ever used.

“We’ve all been taught that the elders are infallible,” I said, trying to save Josiah. “So, if we don’t agree with what Gideon is doing, then we must not yet understand the will of the Lord.”

My father chuckled. He dug back into his potatoes. “Well, that’s a possibility, Jesse.”

“Or,” I said, “I suppose he could be under the thrall of a demon. But if the elders can’t determine that, how are we to assume we can?”

“Exactly right,” said my father. “You see, Jesse, they’ve got us all by the balls, and the sooner you realize that, the better.”

Both of my mothers stiffened at my father’s crudeness. There was nothing they could do about it, but we all knew that my father shouldn’t be saying things like that. Even worse, he shouldn’t be questioning the elders. In the Life, the biggest sin that anyone could commit was the sin of doubt. My father was expressing doubt, and it was forbidden. It shook everyone to the core, because our father was the spiritual head of the family, and if the head wasn’t in the right place, the rest of us were also flailing.

Josiah set down his bread. “Well, I realize that.”

I glared at him. Didn’t he know it was better to keep his mouth shut?

Father regarded him. “And what do you think we should do about it?”

“Well, speak out against Gideon, of course,” said Josiah. “We can’t allow him to destroy the community.”

“
Wrong.
” Father banged both of his hands down on the table.

Everyone jumped.

Josiah gave him a guilty look. He was confused.

“Listen to me,” said Father. “They have us by the balls, and that’s the way things are. But no matter what happens, we don’t speak up. It may be that Gideon is sent here by the Lord to guide us. It may be that Gideon is a tool of Satan. But even if that is the case, the Lord has allowed him to be here in order to test us, and so we must endure him. Acceptance is transcendence, boy.”

Josiah looked down at his plate, clearly chastised.

My father looked at me. “I don’t think Josiah’s ready for the trip to Lebenet, Jesse. You’ll need to go alone.”

Josiah’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.

Man. I knew that had to sting. Josiah been excited about the trip to Lebenet, which was the biggest town anywhere near here. It was a four-hour trip one way, and we traveled out there to do some shopping at the Costco and to settle up with some merchants who sold quilts and skirts that my mothers and sisters made for stores in the area. Since I was the oldest, I’d been making the trip on my own for a few years. Josiah was meant to come with me for the first time so that he could learn the ropes and perhaps take the job from me if I was needed elsewhere. A trip to the outside world was a big deal.

I shook my head at Josiah. He should have kept quiet. He knew that Father was always looking to punish us.

And if Josiah got off without a beating, he was doing well, anyway.

I sighed and went back to my dinner, wishing I could escape back into my fantasy about Abby London. But unfortunately, Father had ruined that.

* * *

Abby

“When are you going to Lebenet?” I asked my brother Thomas. I was over at his house for dinner, because I was helping out in the evenings. His wife Carla had just delivered their newest baby a few months ago, and she was his only wife, so she could use the extra hands.

“Why?” said Thomas, grinning. He had his oldest daughter on his lap, and she was braiding his beard. “You want to come?”

“Oh, I can’t,” I said. I was rocking the baby. He’d just gotten to sleep, and I didn’t want to wake him. “Can I?”

Thomas shrugged. “I don’t see why not. What do you think, Carla?”

Carla stirred vegetables on the stove. “Definitely. It’ll be fun, Abby. When was the last time you went?”

“It’s been since I was a little girl.”

“See,” said Thomas. “There you go. You should definitely come along. It might be your last chance. I imagine the elders will be marrying you off any day now.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll be getting married.”

Carla laughed. “Don’t sound so excited, Abby.”

I peered down into the sleeping face of my nephew. “Well, I guess if I came along, I could help out with the children.”

“We’re not taking them,” said Carla, turning away from the stove.

“You’re not?”

She grinned. “Nope. They’re going to stay with my mother’s family.” Carla had been her mother’s last child, so her mother had an empty nest and probably missed having little ones underfoot. “We’ll be free, and we can go wild.”

Thomas laughed. “See? You have to come.”

I shot a wary glance back and forth between them. What did going wild mean? Lebenet was a worldly town, with all kinds of sinful temptations. I had to admit that I was curious about all sorts of things in the outside world, but I also knew that they were all sinful.

Thomas scooted his daughter off his lap. “I’ll talk to Father,” he told me.

“Well…” I smiled a little. “It does sound fun.”

“Good,” said Carla. “Then it’s settled. It’ll give us all a chance to breathe a little bit.” She went back to the stove. “Now, spill it. Why don’t you sound very excited about the idea of getting married?”

I turned back to the baby. “I never said that.”

Thomas wrapped his arms around her from behind. “How much longer is dinner going to take?”

She elbowed him playfully. “It’ll be soon.”

He kissed her neck. “I’ll be in the living room, all right?”

She smiled after him.

The two of them seemed happy, and they’d been arranged to be together. But Carla was lucky. She’d been married to a man nearer her own age, one without any wives. There was no guarantee of that. I could be married into an already-established family, one with two other wives already and tons of children.

Carla looked back at me. “You’re going to make the best wife and mother ever, Abby. You’re so good with kids.”

I shrugged. “I’m no better than anyone else.” We all came from huge families, and we helped out with our younger brothers and sisters.

“No, you’re good,” she said. “You really are. And I see the way you look at the baby. You want your own, don’t you?”

I hesitated. The truth was that I wasn’t sure if I did. I didn’t know much about the outside world, but I knew a little bit. And I knew that out there, women didn’t have to get married and have children young. It wasn’t that I had anything against the idea, not exactly, but I saw how exhausting it was. Even Carla, who was happy, struggled to do all of her duty. She’d only been married for three years, and she already had two kids. Within a few years, how many more would she have? And soon, if Thomas did well, he’d get another wife, and there would be even more children, more exhaustion. I remembered that Carla used to sing so sweetly at the worship meetings. But now, more often than not, she was too busy trying to keep the baby from crying. When I was married, would there be time for me to play my guitar? To sing?

Carla raised her eyebrows at me.

I forced myself to smile. “Of course I do.”

CHAPTER TWO

Abby

My father agreed to allow me to accompany Carla and Thomas to Lebenet. I’d be helping them to shop for essentials for the family and also to check in with a few merchants. Our family provided canned goods and homemade health foods to several different places. We’d be restocking with them and collecting on invoices.

Selling things in Lebenet was one of the ways that families in the community made money. Some families also did the farmer’s market circuit, driving produce out to various places and selling organic and whole foods. As part of our beliefs, the followers of the Life ate very natural, very healthy food. We believed that our bodies were temples for the holy spirit, and that we shouldn’t do anything to defile them.

Since we’d be doing so much, we took the family RV instead of just a car. It was possible to make the trip to Lebenet all in one day, but doing so was rough, because it meant eight hours on the road, four there and four back. Staying overnight in the RV made things a little bit less arduous. I’d done it as a little girl, when I’d accompanied my father. We’d parked the RV in the Costco parking lot and slept right there.

The ride there was a lot of fun. Carla knew a lot of silly car games, like looking for letters on license plates and signs. We talked and laughed. I could see that Carla was relieved not to have the children for a day or two.

We’d brought all our food with us, because the worldly restaurants didn’t prepare food to our standards. But I was shocked when we stopped for a restroom break at a fast food chain, and Carla came back with three soft drinks and a container of French fries for us to share.

It must have shown on my face, because she laughed at me.

“What?” she said. “My parents always let us kids have fries and Coke on trips. It’s my favorite thing about leaving the community.”

I couldn’t believe it. Her
parents
let her do this? I’d always thought of Carla’s family as godly.
My
parents would never allow such a thing, and I couldn’t believe Thomas was condoning it.

But he snagged a fry and grinned at me. “Go wild, Abby.”

I took a tentative sip of my soft drink. It was really sweet.

“Good?” said Carla.

I had to nod. “Really good.”

She smiled. “I think it’s okay every once and a while. For a treat, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Thomas. “A treat.”

The French fries were good too. They were salty and greasy, and I found myself gobbling at them. Still, even as I enjoyed them, I felt a well of guilt. Thomas and Carla both knew that what we were doing was wrong, and yet they were doing it anyway. It didn’t make sense to me. If something was a sin, then even indulging in it a little bit was bad for our spirits and our souls, not to mention our bodies.

But I ate the food anyway, and I also got a charge from doing it. It was exciting to rebel. It was exciting to taste the wickedness of the world.

After we arrived, we were busy until dusk, running our various errands. Then we sat in the RV and ate our dinner—hummus and vegetables wrapped in homemade tortillas.

As the sky grew darker, Thomas and I got out our guitars, and the three of us sang and played music for several hours. But after a while, the singing wound down. I wasn’t tired, not exactly. I was too wired by the change of scenery and the freedom of being away from the community.

But Carla had her head on Thomas’s shoulder, and he had his arm around her, and I started to feel uncomfortable, like I was intruding on them.

I set my guitar down. “Um, should we go to bed?”

Carla giggled. “Don’t you want to do some exploring, Abby?”

“Exploring?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “On your own. You could go run around town a little bit and give Thomas and me a few hours of privacy?”