Devoted

by Jennifer Mathieu

  “Thank you,” I say, tucking the paper into my pocket. When we walk out that boy Mark is sitting at a chair, his long legs propped up on the counter.

  “Mark,” Lauren says, “feet.”

  Mark sighs and lowers his beat-up shoes down to the ground.

  “So who are you, anyway?” he asks me.

  “A friend,” Lauren answers for me, walking me to the front door. “Call me,” she says. “Anytime. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “And Rachel, remember. You can make your own choices in this life. I promise you. You really can.”

  I nod, but Lauren’s wrong. I can’t make any choices. I can’t even choose what to wear or what to read. I don’t have a choice in the world, and I’m not like Lauren. I can’t just leave home like she did.

  I walk out to the van and climb in. I start up the engine, and the classical music station comes on. I grab the dial and spin it, listening to static mixed in with words and snippets of songs I don’t know—and will never know—and more and more static. I turn the volume up and scream as loud as I can.

  12

  When I get to Faith’s, I call and tell Mom a truck stalled out and blocked the road and that’s why I’m a few minutes late. She seems to believe my lie. Faith thanks me for the humidifier, and I give her a minute to rest while I rock a stuffed-up baby Caleb. He curls up against me, and I whisper in his ear that he’s a little sack of sugar. But he’s so congested that he snores like a little old man.

  Faith and Paul only have one car, so Faith spends most days alone in their two-bedroom house. I count the creaks of the rocking chair and picture myself in a home like this one with my future husband, whoever he is, and a sick baby. It takes me five minutes to memorize every inch of the walls of Faith’s house, and I imagine the crushing tediousness of every day exactly the same as before, full of backbreaking housework and a future husband who sets the rules for me just like Dad.

  I want to scream again, just like I did in the van.

  That night back at home, I make supper, bathe the little ones, and put them to bed. I’ve already memorized Lauren’s number to the tune of “Amazing Grace,” my favorite hymn. In the days that follow, I sing her phone number in my mind over and over. Even though I can’t email her anymore, having her phone number reminds me she’s a real person out there in the world.

  Maybe I can find a way to be like Lauren but different. Still part of my family but something new. Maybe I could ask my parents about living at home while attending community college.

  But Mom and Dad would never approve of that. Not ever. And Scripture says that God commands us to honor our father and mother. He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. It’s what the Bible says.

  But what about what my mind asks? What about what my heart wants?

  What about my one wild and precious life?

  I’m a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse. I can feel it in every bit of my body, and I find myself walking around the house ready to explode.

  These are the thoughts that are racing through my mind on the Saturday after I meet Lauren, when my mother finds me in the kitchen scrubbing out the breakfast pots and pans.

  “Rachel, we’re out of a few things, and I need you to run to the grocery store,” she says. She hands me a slip of paper with a few items listed on it and a folded-up twenty dollar bill. Normally we go to the discount warehouse closer to the city to buy in bulk, and when I see toilet paper and bread on the list I glance at my mother, uncertain.

  “Don’t we have enough of these things in the garage? In storage?”

  “I’d like them just in case,” my mother says. Her eyes avoid mine, and for a moment, I worry she’s getting sick again. I go to the coat rack to get my purse.

  “Ruth is coming with me, right?” I ask. I can’t imagine my mother will let me go out alone again, especially since I was late getting to Faith’s the last time.

  “You can go alone,” my mother says, straightening the chairs under the kitchen table, still not looking at me. “I trust you.”

  I mull over those three words in the van on the way to the store. I trust you. She’s never said them before. She never needed to.

  I walk through the aisles of the grocery store finding everything on the list. Music seeps through the air, and something about the song that’s playing catches my ear. I strain to hear the lyrics.

  I never hear popular music except for in stores, and usually there are so many of us talking I can’t make out any of it. When I reach the register, I load up the groceries on the conveyer belt. I don’t talk to worldly people very often, but this cashier is an older woman with a kind smile.

  “Excuse me, but what is this that’s playing?” I ask. I point up at the air, sheepish.

  She grins. “It’s the Beatles,” she says. “But you’re too young to remember them, right?” She winks.

  I’m too something to remember anything. But I don’t tell this to the cashier.

  When I make it home, I get to the kitchen door and open it, struggling with my bags.

  “Jeremiah, Gabriel, can you come help?” I say, trying to haul everything inside. The handles of the plastic bags cut into my palms.

  But there’s no response.

  Suddenly, my father appears in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room. He fills up the entire space, he’s so large.

  “I’ll get these, Rachel,” he says, coming toward me. “I need you to go into the family room.”

  They’ve caught me. I know it as well as I know the Lord’s Prayer. As well as I know the digits in Lauren’s phone number.

  I know it as surely as I know my own name.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask. The house is weirdly quiet.

  “Your younger brothers and sisters are at Faith’s house,” my father tells me. “Your older brothers are at a job site.”

  The trip to the grocery store is clear to me now. They had to get everyone out of the house while I was gone.

  Oh, Ruth, what did they tell you I did?

  When I walk into the living room, I see Pastor Garrett sitting with Mom in the family room. Pastor Garrett’s been to our home before. Once when Faith still lived with us and was recovering from an emergency appendectomy and another time when one of the twins had a serious case of the flu. But no one is sick in our house now. Not physically, anyway.

  My father follows me in and sits down, and three sets of eyes are on me. Everything in me is racing. My heart, my mind, the blood in my veins.

  “Hello, Rachel,” Pastor Garrett says. “It’s good to see you.” His voice is as loud and booming and full of self-importance in my family room as it is at church.

  “Hello,” I say, so softly I can barely hear my own voice.

  “Rachel,” he continues, “please sit down with us while we pray.”

  I swallow and sit down on the hard-backed chair someone has pulled out from the kitchen table. Mom and Dad are perched on the sofa across from me, and Pastor Garrett walks over and stands next to me, placing his hand on my shoulder.

  Take your hand off of me.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t think that way about Pastor Garrett. He’s a man of God.

  But haven’t I just thought of him that way?

  And don’t I want him to take his hands off me and leave?

  “Father God, we all fall short of your glory,” Pastor Garrett begins, “and we ask you to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Redeem our souls and restore us. We ask you in Jesus’s name for your love and the atoning blood of Christ Jesus. Amen.”

  I’m the only one in the room who has fallen short of God’s glory. Cherry-red hives are breaking out all over me, crawling up my neck like hungry spiders.

  “Rachel,” my father is saying, and his mouth is moving but my brain is so muddled I have to strain to even understand his basic English. “Your mother and I received a phone call the other day from Donna Lufkin’s mother. She was in downtown Clayton picking up a prescription, and
she saw you leaving the Clayton Animal Hospital across the street. She thought we would want to know that you were somewhere strange unchaperoned.”

  It’s over. I’m finished.

  “You know we’ve been concerned about your computer usage, and we called Pastor Garrett for guidance.”

  Pastor Garrett has taken a seat on the edge of my father’s recliner, and he’s nodding along with everything my father is saying. Concern fills in every wrinkle of his matchstick-thin face.

  I want to run so fast. I want to run so fast I disappear.

  “Pastor Garrett recommended Ken Mason come over to examine our computer,” Dad continues, almost as if he’s practiced this speech before. He takes a pause in between each sentence.

  Ken Mason is one of the church elders. I don’t know his family well, but I know he runs some sort of computer business out of his home.

  “Mr. Mason came over the other evening after all of you were in bed, and he found this on the computer,” my father continues, handing me a stack of printouts. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to take them, but my father holds them out long enough that I do. My mother is crying now, but she’s not making any noise. Tear after tear is sliding down her face, each one in a race against the next.

  I look at the papers in my father’s hands. It’s all of my emails with Lauren. Every single one.

  I know everyone expects me to be next—to get married and have babies just like Faith. And I really love kids. I love my little sister Ruth, especially. Even though she’s not that little anymore. But the thought of having babies of my own in just a few years—I know it’s what I should want. But it just isn’t.

  Let me tell you, if God took paying attention and being idle as prayer, I would be the world’s greatest at praying!

  I’m terrified about what will happen to me if I get caught writing to you. But I’m also terrified about what will happen to me if I stop. I want to keep writing to you, even if I can’t explain why in words.

  “But these were private,” I say, my voice barely audible. But I don’t have any privacy. Not really.

  “Have you been communicating with Lauren Sullivan?” Pastor Garrett asks, his voice serious and clipped. “Is that who you went to see when you went downtown?”

  “Yes,” I whisper. They want to make me say it. Even though they already know the answer.

  My mother’s cries turn into sobs when I admit out loud what she must already know.

  “It’s my fault,” she says. “I was sick. I wasn’t able to keep my closest eye on her heart. Oh Father God, forgive me.”

  “It’s not your fault, Mom,” I say, reaching out for her. But Dad places his hands between us. I shrink back into my chair.

  “Your mother and I have discussed this at length with Pastor Garrett,” Dad continues. “You need to reconnect with Christ. God wants to heal your heart, Rachel, and He needs you to be in a place without distractions. We feel it’s best for you to spend some time at Journey of Faith camp.”

  I remember James Fulton’s shame-filled face when he returned from Journey of Faith. I remember Lauren using the word brainwash to describe what happens there. And suddenly, even though I feel as if the floor underneath me is giving way, I feel something so deep inside of me I know it must be true.

  I can’t let them take me to that place.

  “What if I don’t go?” I ask.

  My mother’s eyes pop open, and she stares at my father and Pastor Garrett.

  My father glances at Pastor Garrett, who nods just slightly.

  “If you don’t go,” Dad says, “you can’t continue to live under our roof. You’re not a godly influence on your younger siblings.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I understand.”

  There’s silence, and Pastor Garrett clears his throat. I squeeze my hands together. They’re so slick with sweat they slide up against each other and slip apart.

  “Rachel, we want you to get ready to go now,” Pastor Garrett says. “Mrs. Garrett and I are prepared to drive you to Journey of Faith this afternoon.”

  “All right,” I say. “Of course.”

  I try to breathe. My own parents don’t want me unless they can send me off to a place that terrifies me because of what it might do to me. Psalms says when my mother and my father forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. But where is the Lord now? God, where are you?

  “May I go upstairs to pack and to have time to myself to pray?” I ask. My throat is coated in sandpaper. I don’t know how I’m speaking. I can’t look at anyone so I look at the floor instead.

  “Yes, of course,” says Pastor Garrett. I glance at him and he’s smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

  I want to slap him.

  I get up and as I turn the corner and walk down the hallway to the staircase leading up to my room, I grab the cordless phone hanging on the wall, quickly. I hear Pastor Garrett’s voice, still as loud as ever, leading my parents in prayer.

  I hold the phone and race up the stairs.

  Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound …

  “Hello?”

  I slip inside my room and shut the door.

  “Hello?”

  “Lauren?”

  “Yes, who’s this? Wait. Rachel?”

  “Yes,” I say, my voice a whisper. My body numb. “They want to send me to Journey of Faith,” I tell her. “Do you remember that place?”

  “Journey of Faith? Oh, fuck no!”

  I wince, and Lauren seems to sense it.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, “but no, Rachel. No. You cannot do that. You don’t know what they do to people there. You can’t go. I swear to you. Do not go. You’ll come back lobotomized.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I say. I’m standing in the middle of my bedroom now. The only bedroom I’ve ever known. The corners and quirks and cobwebs are all familiar to me. I know them like I know my own heartbeat.

  “You’ll come back not you,” Lauren says. I can hear a dog barking in the background. She must be at work.

  “I don’t know who me is,” I say, my voice barely audible. And I burst into tears. Finally.

  “Rachel, Rachel, take a breath,” Lauren commands.

  I try but I can’t. I’ve never cried like this before, like I’ve lost control of my body entirely. “My parents say I have to leave if I don’t go,” I manage. “They’re asking me to leave if I don’t go, but I don’t want to go there, Lauren.”

  “Listen to me,” Lauren tells me, her voice insistent. “Listen. Listen to me, Rachel. Pack a bag. Can you pack a bag? What’s your address?”

  I tell her through my sobs.

  “I know where that is. By the Nielsen farm, right?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. I’m gulping for air.

  “I’ll be there in less than half an hour. I’ll honk my horn twice, Rachel, and you will come out of that house. You’ll see me, and you’ll come out of the house and you’ll get in the car. It’s an old red Honda. You have to run out, do you understand? I can’t come in for you. Tell me you understand. Say, ‘Yes, I understand.’”

  “Yes, I understand,” I say through my tears even though I do not understand at all. I understand none of what’s happening to me except for some tiny little core piece of my heart that knows I can’t go to Journey of Faith. I can’t and I won’t and I won’t.

  “Pack a bag, Rachel. And bring your driver’s license. Do you have it?”

  “Yes, but it’s downstairs with my purse.”

  “Grab it if you can. I’m leaving now. Two honks.”

  She hangs up, and I stand there, finally able to swallow my cries. Don’t think, Rachel. Just do. On the floor of the closet, I find an old, navy blue tote bag I used to use as a diaper bag for Isaac when he was smaller. I grab what I can and roll each piece of clothing into a tight ball, trying to make as much room as possible. Underwear, my resale shop bras, old denim skirts, a nightgown, and loose-fitting blouses. I take my hairbrush off the dresser. I open my nightstand and snatch a
notebook where I like to keep a list of my favorite words (persnickety, mortified, magnanimous, freewheeling) and a postcard Aunt Marjorie sent us from Hawaii some Christmas long ago. Dad threw it out, but I took it from the trash and kept it. I liked to stare at the glorious beach scene on the front as much as I liked to reread the chicken-scratch handwriting on the back from the aunt I’d never had the chance to know.

  Merry Xmas from The Big Island!! It’s bee-yoo-ti-full here! Lots of Love to All xoxo Marjorie

  How many bee-yoo-ti-full places exist on this planet? How many has God made? How many will I never see if I stay here?

  I slip the card in my bag and check the clock radio on my nightstand. It’s been fifteen minutes. How long will Pastor Garrett and my parents let me hide away upstairs before they come and get me?

  I look at Ruth’s tidy bed and the throw pillow she’s arranged to cover the ink stain on the bedspread we got cheap at the Goodwill. Sweet Ruth. Good Ruth. My eyes sting, and I start to cry again.

  What if I forced myself to go to Journey of Faith? What if I forced myself for Ruth?

  But what if I can’t survive it? The physical labor, the isolation, the constant barrage of Scripture and correction, Lauren’s promise that I’ll be forever changed and not for the better. Even if I survive all of that, then what? Could I go to community college? Read whatever I want? Tell my father I don’t want to get married until I’m older?

  I find a notebook in Ruth’s stack of schoolbooks on her nightstand and tear out a fresh page, then search frantically for a pen until I find one.

  Ruth, I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I will get in touch with you soon, I promise. Please forgive me, Ruth. Please know I wouldn’t be doing this if I had another choice. I love you so, so, so much, Ruth.

  Love,

  Rachel

  I slip the note under Ruth’s pillow where she’ll be sure to find it. Then my eyes stop on the framed Bible verse she keeps on the wall next to her bed. Her favorite. From Hebrews.

  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

  I hear two honks in quick succession. I imagine Mom and Dad and Pastor Garrett downstairs in the family room, glancing at each other with what-was-that? looks on their faces.