“Get out of my house,” my dad said, centimeters away from Jared’s face. Dad had Jared pinned up against the door.
“Stop it, Richard,” my mom said, still looking out the window.
“If you don’t have faith in this baby, then you don’t have faith in anything,” Jared said. He stared Dad right in the eyes, unafraid.
Dad turned to me, his hands still on Jared’s shoulders.
“What do you have to say about this?” he asked me.
“Jared believes me,” I said. “And I love him.”
“Jared believes what, exactly?” Dad asked.
“Jared believes that I am a virgin, and that I am pregnant.”
Dad took his hands off Jared and walked over to me.
“So. You’re the Virgin Emma? With angels and bright stars and mangers?” Dad asked; his eyebrows raised.
“I guess I am,” I said. Jared stood up from his slumped position against the door, walked to me, and took my hand.
“It’s the truth,” he said. “I know it.”
For a long time, the only noise in the house was the sound of Dad’s footsteps as he paced back and forth across the kitchen floor tiles. Mom kept saying, “Richard? Richard?” like she was scared he might just pace in silence forever.
Finally he stopped, looked at me and Jared, and said, “You’re loony. Both of you.”
“We don’t need to hear this,” Jared told him.
Then he turned to me.
“Go get your things,” Jared whispered in my ear. “You can stay with me at my mom’s. We’ve talked about it. She believes. She said she’s spent her whole life waiting for this.”
Dad turned purple.
“Yeah, Emma. Go get your things and stay with Jared at his mom’s,” Dad said.
“Richard …” Mom muttered.
My heart pounded against my ribcage, and I could feel the stream of blood in my veins violently crashing up like ocean waves in a storm.
“Fine,” I said. “Wait in the car, Jared. I’ll go pack a bag and I’ll be right back.”
“Pack two bags,” my dad suggested. “You might be gone awhile.”
“Richard …” Mom pleaded.
“It’s fine, Mom,” I said.
I ran up the stairs to my bedroom. I emptied the books from my backpack and started shoving it full of clothes, underwear, and toiletries. As I packed, I grew more confident in my story. Who does my dad think he is? I thought. He’ll see. He’ll wish he had listened to me. He’ll wish he had believed me. I was becoming my own biggest fan and most devout disciple. I would get my bright stars and angels and mangers and, when I did, Dad would be sorry that he ever kicked me out.
I couldn’t have anticipated how quickly things would escalate.
Well … maybe I could have, if I had thought about it at all.
The Church of Emma was not my idea. I swear I knew nothing about it until I got to Jared’s house that day. When word got out about the group, everyone around town talked about how I was the face of a full-fledged cult. But that’s not what it was like. That’s not what it felt like, at least.
Jared’s street was lined with cars when we pulled into his driveway. He squeezed my hand as we walked up to the front door. He looked at me, smiled, looked away, looked at me again, smiled again, and looked away again.
“What?” I asked, worried.
“You’ll see,” he said.
I heard voices from inside the house as Jared fiddled with his key to unlock the door.
“What a blessing!” one voice said.
“This is unbelievable!” another said.
“Can you believe it?” asked a third.
“They should be here any minute!” That was a voice I knew. It was Mrs. Carpenter’s.
The front door swung open to reveal a crowd of middle-aged ladies that I did not recognize. They huddled around the door and stared at me in silence, like they had thrown a surprise party for me but then forgot to yell “SURPRISE!” when I entered the house.
They looked like they were waiting for me to say something so I said, “Hi,” and everybody exhaled and laughed.
“You’re such a kidder, Emma,” Mrs. Carpenter said, coming up behind me and leading me by the arm to a chair. I sat down and, within seconds, somebody placed a glass of orange juice in my hand and a cherry Danish in my other. Mrs. Carpenter pulled a chair up next to mine, and the other ladies followed suit until we all sat in a circle around the Carpenters’ living room.
“So,” Mrs. Carpenter began. “You’re going to need prenatal vitamins and a birth plan. I’m assuming you have neither of those.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“And we should sign you up for a Lamaze class,” said the red-headed woman next to me.
“You’re right, Patty,” Mrs. Carpenter said. She was writing a checklist down on a notepad.
“I have onesies and hats from when Caleb was born,” said a younger lady that I thought I recognized as a cashier at the grocery store my family frequented.
“Should we book a private room at the hospital for the delivery?” Patty asked. “I hear they have some pretty nice suites.”
Beth, a petite woman with curly black hair sitting directly across from me in the circle, snorted.
“You think Mary had a private room?” she asked.
“Well, no,” Patty said.
“We have to stay as true to the original story as possible,” Beth said. “The child of God can’t be born in some luxury, penthouse hospital suite.”
“You’re right,” Mrs. Carpenter said. “The baby will be delivered right here. I’ll arrange for a midwife?”
“I think too much can go wrong with an at-home delivery. It’s risky. What do you think?” Patty asked.
The room was silent for a little before I realized that the question was meant for me. Everyone had turned toward me, and they waited for an answer.
I swallowed the bit of Danish that was in my mouth and said, “Just a regular hospital room should work.”
The ladies, Jared, and I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in that circle in the Carpenters’ living room. The Danishes and coffee were cleared out of the room, and Patty ordered a pizza for lunch. As we ate, we called doctor’s offices, took inventory of the old baby toys that could be handed down to me, and Googled the benefits of prenatal yoga.
As four o’clock approached, the women gathered their belongings and started to head out to pick their kids up from school, make dinner, and get some errands done. Before they left, Beth suggested I lead a prayer.
“Why don’t you give us your blessing?” she asked.
I thought that, if God were real, He would have struck me dead with a lightning bolt at that very moment. I was 100% unauthorized to bless anybody. Jesus blessed people. Mother Teresa blessed people. I couldn’t bless people. I could barely say grace on Thanksgiving without feeling a little silly and embarrassed.
“Sure,” I said.
Everybody stood and joined hands. My palms were sweaty as they grasped Mrs. Carpenter’s left hand and Patty’s right hand. Jared smiled at me reassuringly from across the circle before he and the group of women closed their eyes and bowed their heads. I kept my head up and my eyes wide open.
“Lord,” I started, because that’s how every other prayer I’d ever heard had started. “Bless these people here today who are dedicating time out of their busy lives to ensure the health and the safety of our baby. May they find peace in their daily lives and comfort in Your eternal love. Amen.”
“Amen,” the group repeated. They dropped their hands. Our circle dissolved as the women headed toward the door.
As Beth passed me, she bent down and put her hands on my Jennifer-Aniston-post-lunch belly.
“You are going to change the world,” she whispered, talking to the fetus. She removed her hands from my stomach, brought them to my face, and cupped my cheeks. For a second, I was scared that s
he would kiss me.
“You will change the world, too,” she told me.
“Thanks,” I whispered, the words barely leaving my lips.
Her voice became weary.
“We will support you and others will worship you, but many—maybe most people—will hate you. They won’t believe you. They will reject you. They’ll tell you that you’re a fraud,” she said. Her face was so close to mine, and I swear I could feel the little fuzzy hairs on her nose brush against the little fuzzy hairs on mine. “But no matter what, no matter how difficult it gets, you need to stick to your truth. Stand by what you know is real, and God will reward you.”
I pulled my face from Beth’s and looked around the room. The women were funneling out of the house, all abuzz with the news of another savior, a miracle from God delivered directly to their town by way of a sixteen-year-old girl. I felt like walking out to Jared’s shed, finding a shovel, digging a big hole in his backyard, and jumping into it. I wanted to be underground, miles, and miles below the surface, where nobody could see or hear me.
Stick to your truth, Beth had said. But my truth was long gone.
I met my first Nonbeliever in the school cafeteria during lunch the next day. I sat between Molly and Jared. Ever since he left our group, Gabe sat across the cafeteria with some of his teammates from the football team. We were eating pasta off of Styrofoam trays. Jared had called Molly that morning before school to tell her about his dream. Molly’s strong faith led her to reject me when she thought I wasn’t a virgin, but it also encouraged her to believe in Jared’s dream the instant he told her about it.
A boy I never met before suddenly sat down in the empty seat across from me. He had jet-black hair and a big nose with two big ears to match.
“Listen,” he started. “My mom might be kooky enough to believe in whatever scam you’re trying to sell, but I’m not. Most people aren’t.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, but I knew exactly what he was talking about.
“I’m Harold Carter. My mom is Beth Carter. She went to your psycho cult meeting yesterday. She told me that I should worship the ground that you walk on, but let me tell you, I don’t buy any of this.”
“Hey!” Jared shouted. I could feel his body tense next to mine. I patted my hand against his thigh to try to calm him down. Molly looked on nervously.
“You’re sick. You’re a con artist,” Harold continued.
Jared stood up. His stance reminded me of lions I’d seen in documentaries. He was ready to pounce.
“Listen, man,” Harold said, standing slowly and starting to back away. “If you want to fight someone, don’t fight me. I’m not the one who cheated on you. I’m just stating the obvious. I don’t know who Emma screwed, when she screwed him, or why she screwed him, but what I do know is that she sure as hell did not screw God. Wake up, man. You have to be an idiot to believe that.”
Jared hurdled over the width of the cafeteria table toward Harold, launching our lunch trays up from the table. Pasta sauce and chocolate milk splashed down to the floor. Harold started to run away from the table, but Jared’s longer legs were faster. Jared wound his arm back and aimed a punch at Harold’s shoulder. Harold belly-flopped onto the black and white tiles of the cafeteria floor.
Excited for a fight, everyone in the cafeteria jumped up from their seats and circled around the two boys, creating a makeshift arena. Five lunch monitors swarmed over from their corners of the room and tried to break through the crowd of onlookers to reach for Jared. Molly and I followed them to the center of the circle. Jared knelt on the floor, hovering over Harold. He kept Harold pinned face-down to the ground between his legs. Harold squirmed violently on the floor as Jared punched his back and shoulders over, and over, and over again.
Mr. Jenkins, our AP Euro teacher, grabbed Jared’s arms and tugged him up off of the floor. Jared writhed in Mr. Jenkins’ grip, desperate to hit Harold again. His hands pulsed bright red from punching. Drops of sweat sprung from his forehead. His eyes bulged out of their sockets.
“Calm down!” Molly shouted at him.
Jared looked in Molly’s direction, and then his gaze shifted over to me. When our eyes met, his body relaxed. As Mr. Jenkins escorted him out of the cafeteria toward the principal’s office, the rage on Jared’s face melted away and was replaced by an eerie, determined confidence.
“You should worship the ground Emma walks on,” Jared shouted. “All of you should!” His proclamation boomed above all of the other voices in the cafeteria. Everybody went silent and turned their attention away from Jared and toward me. Mr. Jenkins tightened his hold on Jared’s arm and quickened their pace as they exited out the double doors of the lunchroom. The cafeteria roared like a crowd at a concert, loud with gossip and commotion.
Harold stayed on the floor, his face pressed against the tile. The other four lunch monitors bent over him like a team of paramedics, checking his pulse, asking him if he was all right, rubbing his back. I wanted to bend down to him and apologize for Jared’s behavior, but my lips felt like they were glued shut.
Harold stood up from the floor, groaning every time he shifted a limb. The lunch monitors tried to get him to sit back down until the nurse came over to make sure that he would be all right, but he shook them off. As he walked over to me, I felt both ashamed and proud. Harold thought I was a liar, and his suspicion was so strong that he fearlessly confronted me about it in public. What if he could convince more people that I was lying than I could convince I was telling the truth? I had Jared, Mrs. Carpenter, Beth, and the other women in our group, but who would the kids at school believe? Harold or me? Even my own parents would probably side with Harold. How far would he go to prove me a liar?
For all the nervousness that I felt, my heart swelled with an equal amount of happiness. I had seen a Nonbeliever face a Believer for the first time, and a Believer had been victorious. Sure, Harold had confronted me about lying. But what happened to him? He’d been knocked down, reduced from a confrontational douchebag to a helpless boy wriggling around on the floor. Jared’s belief stayed strong, and he used his belief to fight my battle. Jared made me feel invincible, like I had my own personal superhero following me around, fighting off all the bad guys trying to harm me.
Harold faced me. His toes met mine. His face was smudged with dirt, and the gridded outline of the floor tiles was imprinted on his left cheek and forehead. Harold’s eyes gleamed. His smile was so wide and bright that it could have been used in a magazine advertisement for toothpaste, if he hadn’t had a bloody lip. Next to me, I heard Molly swallow.
“This is only the beginning,” he warned, before he turned and walked away.
The first headlines came out the next day. Newspapers, blogs, Facebook posts, the local six o’clock news. Everybody had something to say about me. The more time passed, the more people talked, and the crazier the headlines got:
Local Teen Claims to be Pregnant with God’s Baby
Emma-culate: New Savior or Total Hoax?
Emma Victor, 16, Rocks Small Town with a Virgin Conception
Victor’s Believers Grow in Numbers, Meet Weekly
Emma Victor: Teen Drama Queen or Dangerous Cult Leader?
I had gone from being a normal girl to a media sensation overnight. The Carpenters’ phone rang constantly. Neighbors and newscasters all wanted statements from me. Some were just curious. Is it true? Are you really pregnant with God’s baby? Did God talk to you? What does God sound like? Are you scared for such a large responsibility? Others were downright mean. How do you live with yourself? How have you manipulated all of these people into believing you? What makes you think that God would choose you? Have you been tested for mental illnesses?
Whenever Mrs. Carpenter or Jared spoke with Nonbelievers on the phone, they’d get heated and defensive. They’d say, “She’s not a liar. One day, you’ll wish you had been a Believer. You’ll be sorry you ever doubted Emma Victor.” Whenever I picked up
the phone, I was mostly quiet until I finally got sad enough to hang up. The curious callers that asked genuine questions made me feel just as guilty as the aggressive Nonbelievers. Some seemed like they really wanted to believe in me and my baby’s miraculous conception. They were so desperate for a savior that lying to them made me feel dead on the inside. Whenever the callers asked, “Is it true? Are we all saved?” Jared and Mrs. Carpenter would confidently answer, “Yes, yes we are.” I would just hit the phone’s “end call” button.
After we received the calls for a few weeks, I told Mrs. Carpenter that I thought the stress from the harassment might harm the baby, and that day she got rid of the landline all together.
The next time I saw Gabe Albright, I was five months pregnant and hadn’t been in school since the cafeteria incident. The school never got the chance to suspend Jared for fighting Harold. Mrs. Carpenter claimed that Jared was acting according to his religious beliefs, and she had him taken out of school on the basis of “extraordinary circumstances.” I didn’t even need my parents’ permission to leave. I just dropped out. Instead of going to school, I stayed at Mrs. Carpenter’s, where week after week my following grew. I didn’t go anywhere or do anything outside of the house anymore. Everybody came to me. Mrs. Carpenter hired a tutor to come over on weekdays so that Jared and I wouldn’t fall too behind in school. Beth and the other women would drop by daily with gifts: baby clothes, toys, and, after I casually mentioned my constant cravings for it during one of our meetings, so many big bowls of homemade potato salad that we ran out of room in the Carpenters’ refrigerator to store them all.
Instead of going to youth group every week, I had my own group come to me. The Believers had grown exponentially since that first afternoon at Jared’s house. The news stories sparked people’s interest and gave me publicity, so that soon people sought me out at Mrs. Carpenter’s house and joined us for our weekly meetings. It was no longer just Mrs. Carpenter and her friends. It was Mrs. Carpenter, her friends, her friends’ friends, her friends’ friends’ aunts and uncles and nephews and cousins, the cousins’ girlfriends and boyfriends, and their neighbors. Every Thursday at 7:00 PM, cars filled the Carpenters’ driveway and lined up on both sides of the street around the block. Before each meeting, Mrs. Carpenter and Jared would push the furniture up against the wall so that everyone had room to sit on the living room floor. Jared and I sat on a loveseat sofa that was positioned so it faced the sea of cross-legged Believers on the carpet. Molly always sat close to me, right at my feet.
In the Beginning (Anthology) Page 21
