Home for Erring and Outcast Girls

by Julie Kibler

  And finally, my feeling that I never want to be touched again. Not by anyone.

  Not even River.

  I tell myself I can make it through graduation. Then I’ll deal.

  Graduation falls twenty-one days after prom. The day arrives hot and bright, and humidity bears down on the crowded stadium.

  Catherine Elizabeth Sutton…I cross the stage to polite applause, accept my diploma, and take my seat again, thankful that’s out of the way.

  River’s name is answered by a similar smattering of applause. I can’t help looking up, at the podium, then toward the clapping. River’s mother wears the hairstyle, outfit, and soft curves of a middle-aged mother, but I know she’s different. She didn’t take the most common path to motherhood—not for around here anyway. She’s a high-ranking software engineer and the family’s primary breadwinner. She’s surely encouraged River to ignore the norms.

  Or maybe, River is just River.

  I look away. It seems obvious whom I’ve been studying.

  My face flushes, and I try not to cry.

  After the ceremony, I force smiles for photos, including some with Jess. Missing those is actually something I could regret one day. Our friendship has already cooled, mainly because we’ve been preoccupied with new relationships, but she’s been my best friend forever. We hug and promise to call.

  At River’s approach, I busy myself with my family.

  “Hi, Cate.”

  I want to turn, fall the rest of the way, collapse into River’s arms. It melts me, that timbre, that tone. It’s okay. It’s okay. I want it to be, but it’s not.

  Instead I wear an artificial smile. “River, this is my mom and dad. Mom, Dad, this is my friend River.” River flinches so quickly, nobody would catch it but me. They shake hands.

  Congratulations. Thank you. So nice to meet you.

  Mom’s gaze lingers on River’s retreating back. I think about the journal, and wonder if she’s thinking of it too.

  And then it’s over. I don’t even make excuses for ignoring party invitations. Mom knocks on my bedroom door Sunday, surprised I’m not ready for church and I say I’m staying home. It’s Senior Sunday and I won’t stand before the church to hear my honors and college plans read aloud. I don’t want the expensive study Bible they always give, with my name embossed on the leather cover, or the personalized laundry bag either.

  I don’t know what I want anymore. Not those.

  * * *

  —

  The following Monday, I take a test. I’ve woken to mild cramps and sore breasts all week. My period is due. I’ve counted the days repeatedly. I show the test to my mother, and she weeps. At dinner, my dad weeps too, painfully, but without a sound.

  They want to know how, why. Who.

  Finally, I tell them about prom night. I tell them about Seth.

  My dad wants to call a meeting with the deacons immediately, and I barricade myself inside my room. My parents’ arguing creeps all the way from theirs, even with both doors locked between us. Their voices are muffled, but I can discern their thoughts.

  Next week, we’re supposed to drive to East Texas for orientation at the tiny Christian university that offered me a substantial scholarship. But I’ve been thinking—not just for days or weeks, but months now—about telling my parents I prefer the public university that accepted me. I won’t get much scholarship money there, but I’ll be anonymous.

  Big pond. Little fish. New fish.

  Now, my decision’s been made for me, more or less. Again.

  I tap on their door and ask Mom to cancel our plans, and she cries new tears. She skipped college and a formal wedding—choosing a simple ceremony in a field of flowers.

  And me.

  She’s lived her life vicariously, and I keep screwing up her second chances.

  In the morning, she explains we need to meet with Pastor Lance. If I want to keep going to church, I have no choice. I shrug. I don’t know if I want to keep going. I hardly care. I just want things done. Out in the open. All of it. I want a new plan, a new normal. I’m tired of waiting.

  On a quiet Thursday night, we drive to the church, and Mom and Dad walk me in. I have no idea who’s invited, but the face I most expect to see, the one I most dread seeing, is absent.

  Seth is not there.

  Pastor Lance is, and the associate pastor—Seth’s dad—too. Just the five of us. Later, it becomes clear. In the conference room, Pastor Lance pats my hand and says he’s sorry I have to deal with this uncomfortable situation—that we all do. He assures me the church still loves me. That God still loves me, as if the two have spoken. I nod. My tears are gone, and strangely, my doubts about God with them.

  Pastor Lance asks me to tell them what happened. I don’t go into much detail, beyond explaining that I was unsure what Seth’s intentions were at first, that it was very confusing, that I had been taken by surprise. That I had no idea how to react.

  Everyone listens quietly.

  My dad asks one question. “Honey, to be clear, are you saying Seth raped you?”

  The pastor takes over. “We want to be very sure of what this was. I suppose if you’d been raped, you’d know. Right, Catherine?”

  I lift a shoulder. I know what it was. But what I did, was it enough?

  I’m still broken.

  Seth’s father says he doesn’t think his son would rape a girl. He says perhaps it was a misunderstanding. He, respectfully, struggles to believe it happened at all. In fact, he says, Seth is helping the youth pastor prepare for the annual abstinence campaign. I realize in that moment, he’s not even convinced Seth and I had sex, much less whether I wanted to.

  Pastor Lance says we have to make decisions about how to handle things. I nod. The decisions seem simple to me.

  “The one thing we know for sure is that this—these…accusations—could have serious repercussions for Seth’s potential call as a minister,” the pastor says, and everyone else nods.

  Even I nod, again, even as I feel the trap closing on me.

  The teeth of it, sharp and slow, but inevitable.

  Seth’s father’s confusion and denial is understandable, maybe, in his situation, but Pastor Lance isn’t making sense. I hear the words but can’t comprehend them. I remember Seth’s admission that he’d been in trouble for flirting with an eighth grader. I wonder again what his flirting looked like. I wonder why the family left. I wonder if his father even knows about that.

  And now, I wonder why Seth really came home from college. Maybe he’d been in trouble there too. In retrospect, it seems suspicious.

  A girl in the church became pregnant when I was younger. She had to write a formal apology to the church to be read at the end of a service. The church voted to accept it, and she was not disfellowshipped. She was not shunned. No male was named, insinuating the father was not a church boy. Church discipline is for members.

  They discuss my confession now. How I’ll write my letter. Who will read it.

  “What about Seth?” I say.

  They go silent and look toward me, as if they’ve forgotten I’m there, as if I’ve misunderstood everything up to this point. As if it’s obvious. Seth will not face any consequences for his actions—at least not in the public eye. Again.

  “Do you want him to marry you?” Seth’s father asks, shaking his head slightly, as if even the idea of it is ludicrous. He’s right. It is ludicrous.

  “Now, Catherine,” Pastor Lance says, gently, but firmly, “we have a few options here. If you’d like to stay in fellowship, naturally, we’ll take your confession before the church. And based on what your father tells me, there are several variables to consider…” His voice tapers, and he looks toward my dad.

  “We know you’re seeing someone else, Cate,” Dad says. “Your mom thinks it’s been going on a while.”

 
“What?” I say, but then I see my mother’s lowered eyes, and I know she actually did see the journal hidden beneath my mattress, that she probably even read it. I remember her eyeing River, after graduation, watching and wondering—and distinctly denying it all at once. She hasn’t told him everything.

  For the first time in days, I’m fully aware. I’ve been swimming in an overly chlorinated pool, and now I burst through the water.

  The sun is too bright.

  “Are you certain Seth is the father?” Pastor Lance says.

  I shake my head, but not in answer to his question. I see Mom’s embarrassment now, the red rising from her chest to her neck to her cheeks, entire patches of knowing. Don’t tell, the red says. Don’t…

  “Seth is the only person I’ve had sex with,” I say. I look rapidly from face to face, all of them skeptical except my mom’s. “I was…wearing the ring.” Even to me, it sounds like a desperate attempt to convince them—a naïve and desperate attempt. Do they believe they mean anything at all—the abstinence campaign, the ceremony…the promise?

  They’d meant something to me.

  Pastor Lance sighs. “So much is unclear here, but can we agree, for now, that Seth should continue his plans without unnecessary drama?”

  I look at Seth’s father. Is he as worried about his own career as he is about his son’s?

  I look back at Pastor Lance, who seems to believe his own bewildering babble.

  And I long to tell them that a confession from Seth might have a more profound impact on our youth than his allegedly unblemished history. Perfection is too much to live up to.

  But what about me? What about my plans? I have no choice about college now—even if I still wanted one. The Christian college won’t accept me pregnant and unmarried. Or if they do, I won’t be allowed to live in the dorm like the other girls. I may not be able to live in a dorm at any college.

  My plans, of course, are irrelevant. But what they’re saying about Seth?

  It’s bullshit.

  Now, in this room, in this conversation, I’m certain: It’s not unnecessary drama.

  Seth is going to get away with rape, just like he’ll get away with blaming it on me.

  Suddenly I no longer care what anyone thinks. And I no longer care what I’ve been taught since the time I was old enough to understand.

  “River Wilder.” I say. “That’s who I was seeing. Not anymore, though. That’s ruined now. But this isn’t River’s baby.” I sense more than I see my mom shaking her head, warning me again. She knows. She wants to keep me silent.

  To protect me? Or to protect her? I can’t tell anymore.

  “River is a girl,” I say.

  And I run from the church office, outside and down the street, and I run as long as I can, as fast as I can, as far as I can, until I’m drowning in sweat and my heart beats so hard it physically hurts. And then I run farther.

  * * *

  —

  When I finally go home, it’s late. My parents would usually be in bed, but they’re waiting at the table, a sheaf of printed pages before them. I try to keep going, but my dad comes after me and pulls me, physically, to the table. “We have to talk,” he says.

  But I’m finished talking. I listen instead, standing at the end of the table.

  I will not sit down for this.

  “We want you to know that none of this changes how we feel about you. We love you. Of course we do,” Dad says, looking to Mom, who nods, though her eyes are red and swollen and she struggles to make eye contact with either of us.

  “But you know, too, that we can’t just look the other way. This…relationship, it goes against what we believe. We want to be sure you aren’t confused or acting out for some reason.”

  Of course I’m confused, I think. Isn’t everyone confused about love?

  “We’d like you to see a counselor after we figure things out.”

  I am astonished. And not at all.

  “Pastor Lance and Barry won’t say anything for now. They’re allowing us privacy, given the situation. You don’t have to go before the church, for either thing, until we sort it out.”

  What do they think they’re going to sort out? I’m pregnant. I’m not married. I like a girl. I maybe love a girl. It’s very simple. And undeniably complicated at once.

  Especially the part where I was raped but apparently didn’t fight hard enough not to be.

  “In the meantime, Seth’s father wants your assurance you won’t say anything. He’ll provide financial assistance on Seth’s behalf. You can use the money however you’d like.”

  “How much?” I say, the first words since I came home.

  “Well…quite a bit.”

  “You took it?” I see the check now, peeking out from under the pile of papers—some kind of agreement, I suppose, that Seth’s father wants me to sign.

  “It’s not our choice. It’s yours.”

  “They want this to go away?”

  “I’m not sure that’s how anyone would word it—”

  “How would you word it, Dad?”

  “Well, I know his son’s career means a lot to him.”

  “Sure. And they just want this to disappear. That’s what happened to girls who got pregnant in the old days, right? They just”—I make finger quotes—“went away, until the baby was not an issue anymore.”

  “Not all of them, honey,” my mom says quietly. True.

  Now I sit. My knees shake. “And you think this is a good idea? Should I—should everything—just go away?”

  “Of course not, honey,” Dad says. “We love you. We want to support you.”

  “You want to support me with counseling? To be sure I don’t like girls? What if I get counseling and I still like girls? How will you support me then?”

  “We’ll always love you, Cate.”

  My mother nods, so quiet.

  “Mom? If I fall in love with a girl and decide to spend my life with her, maybe even raise this baby with her, what then? Can I bring her home for Thanksgiving? For Christmas Eve? For church? How will you support me then?”

  My parents sigh, together. They look at each other, at me, and say nothing.

  I have one more question, for both of them. “Mom? Dad? This money—do you think they really care what I do with it, as long as the problem goes away?”

  An unspoken word hangs between us now. We’ve been told, all our lives, as children and adults, that all sin is equal. But in practice, there’s a hierarchy. And I wonder now, which sin ranks higher in the eyes of the one who wrote this check and who scripted this agreement before me—I’ve scanned enough to know it’s buying my silence. It’s hush money.

  But which is the greater sin? Paying for an abortion to protect the reputation of a so-called man of God? Or being a woman who loves a woman? The answer seems clear now. Either way, I’m finished in this place.

  Call me a pragmatist, but I take the money. I sign the paper. And I walk away.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, with my car packed to the roof with things I’m not even sure I’ll need where I’m going—because I don’t know where that is, exactly—I make one last stop. River made me a CD a few weeks before prom and hid it in my backpack while I returned my lunch tray. Songs she’d written herself, though not specifying which she’d written for me. I played it again and again in my car.

  I listen to it one more time while I make my last entry in the journal I’ve been writing since I met her. I wrap them both, the CD and journal, together in a paper bag, and then roll tape around them until the package would take hours to open without destroying the contents. I take it to an old, abandoned church we’d talked about visiting when we’d been sitting on that picnic table in the park. River had seen it one day, driving and thinking about lyrics for a tune she’d composed. We
’d planned to go after school was out. After prom and graduation. She thought I would enjoy it more than any of the other places—it was for me, her “church girl.”

  The building is crumbling, literally falling down around the altar, and as I wander the small sanctuary, I can almost hear a choir singing old hymns, a piano, the hum of an organ played for centuries. One last altar call.

  I listen to the ghosts, and eventually, cautiously, I approach the area before the altar, where the floor has opened to reveal the underside, full of webs and dirt and things that live in the dark. I leave my offering—my sacrifice—dropping it out of sight into an undefined space, together with eighteen years of faith, and eighteen years of doubt.

  I leave it all behind—River, too—and drive away.

  LIZZIE

  Tyler, Texas

  1917

  The night was already dark, stars scattered across the narrow strip of sky visible above the thick pines on either side of the road, and a larger swath where the team pulled up by the Odd Fellows Lodge for the dance. She hadn’t been to town since the day she’d arrived. It was no different than ever.

  At eighteen, she’d been up over that saloon by the depot, waiting for Willis to return each night after she’d already been shoved down on the mattress four or five times during the day. Wondering if he’d black her eye for not earning enough for their supper, or worse, slap Docie for crying because she was hungry. She’d had to take Docie to her ma, finally, afraid Willis might go too far. Ma hadn’t wanted a kid around any more than she’d wanted Lizzie in the house, no matter how sweet. But she’d agreed to keep Docie a weekend, and it turned into more, until finally, Ma brought Docie to town and deposited her in their empty room, leaving word she wouldn’t keep her any longer.

  Lizzie had only asked her to mind Docie one other time. That was the time she worried about most.

  She didn’t have the time or energy tonight for more remembering. Inside the hall, the dance was already in full swing. At least it wasn’t free entry, which would keep the lowest out, and the hall manager would boot anyone who became rowdy or visibly inebriated. She hoped it wouldn’t be her ma or Arch—though they were quiet drunks these days, sliding down in their chairs and snoring when they’d had enough.