The Atonement Child

by Francine Rivers

  What sort of thing was growing inside her? Should it be allowed to live, considering the way it had come into being? Rape. What sort of conception was that? Did it count? Her head ached thinking about it.

  “Can I help you find something, miss?”

  She glanced up and saw a man wearing a store work coat. Her face flooded with heat. He smiled slightly, a troubled look in his eyes. “Miss?”

  How long had she been wandering the aisles of the store? He probably thought she was a shoplifter. “No, I . . .” She shrugged. “Aspirin. Do you have any aspirin?”

  “Aisle 10-B, bottom shelf.”

  After making her small purchase, she went outside. There was a public telephone outside on the brick wall. She opened the book to the yellow pages and looked for a cab company. The line was busy. Resting her forehead against the cold steel, she fought the prick of tears. The last person she wanted to call was Ethan. She didn’t want to go through it all again. She didn’t want to look across a booth and see his revulsion and hear how ashamed he was of what she’d let happen. As if she’d had a choice. She punched her own number and prayed.

  “Janet, if you’re there, please pick up.”

  “I’m here. What’s up?”

  “I need a ride, Jan. Can you pick me up?”

  “Where are you?”

  “At Jewel-Osco. On the corner of Talbot and Sixteenth.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.” The telephone clicked.

  Dynah sat on the bench out front. A moment later, an elderly lady in a nice dress sat next to her, a wire pull cart with a bag of groceries sitting in front of her. She smiled and then folded her hands in her lap and sat waiting in silence. The old lady reminded Dynah painfully of elegant Mrs. Packard and made her wonder how Mr. Packard was doing. It would be nice to go visit the old gentleman, but if she did, he would ask where she had been and why she had quit her job. And what could she tell him?

  Janet’s white Camaro pulled into the parking lot.

  “Ethan called a few minutes before you did,” she said as Dynah slid into the front seat. “He sounded pretty upset. He said you walked out on him at a restaurant and he didn’t know where you were.”

  “I suppose I should call him,” Dynah said. It wasn’t right to let him worry.

  “I already did,” Janet said, pulling out onto the main street again. “He wanted to pick you up, but I told him you called me and I didn’t think you’d be too happy if he showed up.”

  “Thanks, Jan.”

  “I’ll warn you, though. He’ll probably be sitting on the dorm steps.”

  “Could we . . . ?”

  “We can go to the Copper Pot. How’s that sound? I need a break from studying, anyway.”

  “Thanks.”

  Janet turned south. Dynah sat silent, watching stores and houses whiz by. Neither said anything for the better part of a mile.

  Janet glanced at her. “What happened, anyway?”

  Dynah leaned her head back against the seat. “I’m pregnant.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Janet said softly. “And what did he say? You should have it?”

  Dynah turned her head and stared at her.

  Janet glanced at her again, her eyes snapping with anger. “He did, didn’t he? Sanctimonious jerk.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “He broke up with you?”

  Dynah turned and stared out the front window. “No,” she said dully, wondering if that would be the next thing to happen. She knew that Ethan was having difficulty dealing with what had happened to her, and the bottom line was that he didn’t have to deal with it. He could just walk away. She stared down at the diamond solitaire she wore. Tears blurring her eyes, she twisted it around and around on her finger, wondering if she could bear to lose him. She would die if she did. She was sure of it.

  Janet frowned, giving her another quick glance. “Dynah, you okay?”

  She gave her a wan smile. “I’ll be fine,” she said, clinging to those words. Oh, God, will I be? What am I going to do?

  Janet pulled into the Copper Pot parking lot. “Busy tonight,” she said, taking the keys from the ignition and dropping them into her purse.

  Though the place was crowded, they were quickly seated in a booth near the back, right beside the doors to the kitchen. Janet ordered two coffees before the waitress even handed them the menus. “I’m starving,” she said and began reading the selections. “To heck with my diet.”

  Dynah stared at the laminated menu. She and Ethan were supposed to have had dinner together tonight. Instead, they had sat arguing in that nice restaurant, never looking at the menus. She could still see the look on his face when she had told him she was pregnant. Horror. Revulsion.

  “Dynah?”

  She glanced up and saw that the waitress had returned and was ready to take her order. “A bowl of soup, please,” she said, putting the menu aside. The last thing she cared about was eating anything, but if she didn’t order something, Janet would be uncomfortable.

  “What kind would you like? Split pea, minestrone, beef barley, chicken noodle, or potato?”

  Dynah shrugged. “Beef barley, I guess.”

  “The minestrone is out of this world.”

  “All right. Minestrone.”

  “What kind of bread would you like with it?” the waitress said, pen still poised. “Rye, wheat, white, sour dough, or corn bread.”

  “Wheat, I suppose.”

  “The corn bread is great,” Janet said.

  “Corn bread then,” Dynah said with a weak smile. She could always give it to Janet.

  Janet closed her menu and handed it to the waitress. “I’ll have the hamburger deluxe with everything, fries instead of potato salad, and coleslaw. And I’d like a piece of chocolate-cream pie first.” She grinned. “If I wait, I might not have room for it later on.”

  The waitress laughed. “I’ll bring it right away.”

  Janet rested her arms on the table and leaned forward. “You don’t have to do what Ethan tells you, Dynah. It’s your decision.”

  “He wants me to have an abortion.”

  Janet’s eyes flickered. “But I thought . . .” She frowned. “Well, then, what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  “Of course you should,” Janet said quietly, her voice low and gentle. “What else can you do?”

  “Have the baby, I guess.”

  “And then what? Who’d want a baby conceived that way? You’d be stuck with it for the rest of your life. It’s not fair, Dynah. It’s not right, either. Why should you have to suffer for what someone did to you? You’ve never done anything to deserve this.”

  “I’m not sure what’s right anymore.”

  Janet leaned closer, filled with sympathy. “I don’t know of anyone who’d look down on you for having an abortion under these circumstances, Dynah, even at NLC. Except maybe a few radical fundamentalists who don’t matter anyway. Like a dean or chairman of the board or something. And they don’t have to know. Nobody has to know.”

  “I’d know.”

  Janet bit her lip and frowned. She didn’t say anything for a moment. “You also know the circumstances that this baby was made in. What sort of beginning is that for a life?”

  Dynah cringed inwardly at the memory. It was still so raw, she focused instead on what had happened that morning. “I was so scared when the doctor told me. He said it without the least feeling, Jan. He wanted me to be back at the hospital by two thirty. He didn’t even ask if it was what I wanted.”

  “Maybe he was trying to make it easy for you.”

  “How can something like that be easy?” Eyes swimming with tears, she looked at Janet. “I’ve been against abortion since I first knew what it was, and now I’m supposed to have one? How can I?”

  “What did Ethan say about it?”

  She looked down at the place mat. “He said he’d take me back to the hospital and stay with me.”

  Janet sat back, surprised
and showing it. “Well, that’s something. I didn’t think he’d be so understanding.”

  Understanding. The word reverberated in Dynah’s mind. She wished she could understand so many things. Why it happened. Why, against all the odds, she should get pregnant. Why nobody seemed to want to hear how she really felt. She couldn’t understand anything anymore, least of all the arbitrary emotions that churned within her now. Fear uppermost. Guilt. Anguish. Despair. Anger. All tumbling over each other and churning inside her.

  It would have been better if I’d died that night.

  The thought stood stark in the silence between her and Janet.

  It would have been easier.

  The waitress returned with Janet’s pie and Dynah’s soup. Odd that the smell of food didn’t turn her stomach. In fact, she was suddenly terribly hungry.

  Another reminder of her condition, she supposed, wanting to weep.

  Janet smiled at her. “You want to say the blessing?”

  Thank You, God. For what?

  Knowing Janet had never been comfortable with praying aloud, Dynah nodded. The words came easily to her, out of years of habit. “Thank You, Lord, for the food we are about to receive, and may we be truly thankful. Amen.”

  Oh, God, she thought, her heart crying out to Him, her hands clenched beneath the table, out of Janet’s sight. Oh, God, help me. Help me! Take this burden from me. Let it be a false test result. If not, let me miscarry. Just let it be over. It’s more than I can bear.

  “Good, isn’t it?” Janet remarked, tucking into her meal with her usual gusto.

  Dynah ate in silence while a chorus of voices inside her head carried on a screaming debate. Those on the side of abortion were the loudest, the most logical, the most appealing to her bruised and battered spirit. And yet there was another voice, quiet, calm, almost imperceptible, that said, NO, THERE’S ANOTHER WAY.

  The anger that stirred in her was focused upon that voice, aimed against it, for she knew whose voice it was. She recognized it. She had been listening to it all her life.

  What way? What way that isn’t unbearable? What way that won’t bring shame upon me? What way that’s not fraught with complications and years of heartache? It’s not fair! It’s not right!

  BE STILL, BELOVED.

  Why should I be still? I’ve been still and quiet and complacent all my life! And what has it gotten me but this grief? I have loved You from my first breath. And You do this to me. Why did You let this happen?

  Ethan’s words drowned out the quiet voice in her head. “This can’t be God’s best for us.” Surely he was right. Surely Ethan knew better than she. He was closer to God, wasn’t he? His father was a pastor, his grandfather, and back another generation. He had studied the Bible from the time he could read. He was going to preach the Word. He would shepherd his own flock in the next few years.

  It makes a nice picture, doesn’t it, Lord? Me standing beside him holding the hand of a child begotten by rape? A pastor’s wife is supposed to be above reproach. I am a reproach! We saved ourselves for one another so that we could enter this marriage pure. Instead, I have this thing growing inside me, this creature put there by someone whose face I never even saw!

  “Your mom called again,” Janet said, finishing off her pie and pushing the plate to one side. “There was a message on the answering machine when I got back.”

  “I know. I was there when she called.”

  “Why didn’t you pick up?”

  “I couldn’t.” She shook her head, unable to give any solid reasons. The waitress delivered Janet’s meal, and they finished eating in silence.

  “I’ve heard it’s not so bad,” Janet said. “They give you something for the pain, and the actual procedure only takes about fifteen to twenty minutes. Then you rest for a while afterward. When you walk out of the hospital, you can put the whole thing behind you. It’ll all be over and done with.”

  Fifteen to twenty minutes sounded like a lifetime to Dynah. The rape hadn’t taken so long, and she hadn’t been able to forget that in two long months.

  It was late by the time they returned. Ethan wasn’t waiting at the dorm, but he’d left a message: I’m praying for you. I know you’ll do the right thing after you think it over. Love, Ethan. She knew what his prayers involved. In truth, they were probably not much different from her own.

  Janet returned to her studies. Dynah opened her own books and tried to concentrate. She’d barely passed the English exam and knew her grades were falling. She’d lose her scholarship if she didn’t get her mind focused soon.

  Another reason for having it over and done with.

  She had to make a decision. “The longer you wait, the harder it will be.”

  “I’m done in,” Janet said, snapping a book shut and stacking it with the others on her desk. “I can only cram in so much biology at a time.” She gathered her toiletries and headed out the door. When she returned, face scrubbed, teeth brushed, and short hair brushed, she bid Dynah good night and went to bed. She was asleep almost immediately.

  Dynah sat on her bed with her back against the wall, still reading, still trying to get the information into her head. She stared at the printed page feeling a hopeless lethargy grip her. What was the use of any of it? None of it made sense to her, and what did seemed useless information.

  Lord, is it all right with You if I do this? There isn’t a word about it in the Bible. I’ve looked. But surely You wouldn’t want such a child. . . .

  The telephone rang, startling her from her prayer. Her heart jumped, racing in apprehension. With Janet asleep, she had no choice but to answer.

  “It’s Joe.”

  Relief filled her until she looked at the clock and saw it was past midnight. “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Are you okay?”

  “I . . .” She started to lie and then closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “Not really.”

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  She smiled wanly at the tenderness in his tone. “That’s all I’ve done most of today. Talk and talk and talk about it. It doesn’t do any good.”

  Joe didn’t say anything for a moment. “I care about you, Dynah. I want you to know that.”

  Her throat closed up. She would have given almost anything to hear the same tone in Ethan’s voice. Instead, she’d faced his anger and disgust, his demands that she do what he thought best. Best for whom? Best for what?

  Is it best, Lord? Is this Your best? This rotten, miserable mess?

  “I care about what happens to you.”

  She could hear tears in his voice and struggled against her own. “I don’t know what to do, Joe.”

  “Don’t do anything you’ll regret,” he said gently.

  He didn’t have to say what he meant. “Ethan said he thinks I should have the abortion.”

  “I know what he says. That doesn’t mean you have to have one.”

  “And if I don’t? What then, Joe? Will he still love me? Ethan says this isn’t God’s best for us. He said God wouldn’t expect me to have it.”

  “Ethan isn’t God, Dynah. No matter how much you love him, he isn’t God.”

  “So what are you saying, Joe? That I have to have it. Is that it? Ethan said that’s what you’d say.”

  “Hang up on him,” Janet muttered, rolling over and pulling the pillow over her head.

  “I don’t want to see you hurt more than you already are,” Joe said gently. “I care about you.”

  Her eyes burned. “I know what you care about, Joe. Saving the unborn.” She pressed the Off button and threw the telephone into the dirty clothes hamper. Hugging her knees against her chest, she put her head down. The phone rang again.

  Rage burst inside her, unreasoning and focused. On Joe. On his principles, his values, his morals, his strong foundation in Christ Jesus. All of which she had shared not so long ago and which now filled her with unspeakable confusion and anguish, guilt and despair. Joe with that old question, unspoken but emblazoned no
netheless: What would Jesus want you to do?

  Jumping up, she pushed the portable telephone deep into the clothes. Snatching up her pillow, she pressed it down into the hamper, muffling the insistent ringing. When it didn’t stop, she grabbed her towel and went out the door.

  Standing in the shower, she put her face into the stream of warm water, trying to drown the thoughts that rang in her head as insistently as the telephone had in her dorm room. She wished she had listened to the doctor. She wished she had gone back at two thirty this afternoon. She wished it were all over and done with and she wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.

  She started to cry—deep, wrenching sobs—and wrapped her arms around herself, the water pouring down over her in a baptism of pain. Would it ever be over? Would nothing ever be the same? And if she chose abortion, could she ever feel clean again?

  Dynah called home the next morning. She knew she had put off speaking with her parents for far too long. The longer she waited, the harder it would be.

  Her mom answered. “Oh, Dynah. Thank God. We’ve been worried sick about you.”

  The sound of her mother’s voice made Dynah want to weep again. She wished she were home and could fall into her mother’s arms—but how could she without spilling her insides and the awful news with it? So she kept her voice warm and tightly controlled and said she was sorry. She said she hadn’t been feeling well. She said she hadn’t called because she didn’t want to worry them. She said she was so busy with classes and tests. And there was Ethan, making his demands of her. You know how men can be, Mom. It was all true. She was sorry. About everything. She was pressured. She didn’t feel well. Past exhaustion. Desperate. Despairing. And gripped by morning sickness.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Dynah? You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “I’m fine. Really, Mom. Everything’s fine.” Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.