In the Wilderness

by Kim Barnes

  She told me how she sneaked drags off Dad’s cigarettes, plugging the crack at the bottom of the bathroom door with a towel. It was her secret sin—she was sure not even my father knew. And because it was secret—because she had allowed herself to believe that she could hide such a transgression from her husband and God—she was doomed to reap what she had sown: the proof sat before her, her own daughter bedraggled and bloodied like some barroom whore.

  Would God lead me to sin, I wondered, in order to punish her, a woman who gave so much of herself there seemed nothing left but a shell? Even then, to think of her trying to hide, fearing the judgment of her family, made me want to reach out to her, rock in her arms and let her feel the kindred circle of mine, make her feel what connected us—something more than weakness and sin, something more than cigarettes: it was the overwhelming sense of guilt and despair brought on by our inability to see ourselves as worthy of love.

  I did not realize then what bonds there were between us. Nor did I consider these things when I was living in her house as the good daughter, fighting the bitterness and disdain I felt for her desire to please us. The struggle was constant: I knew I must subjugate myself, just as she did, to my father’s will, and then to the will of my husband; I also knew that I could no more imagine myself leading my mother’s life than I could imagine going against my father’s authority. Perhaps, just as my father had sacrificed his desire for the woods in order to take up his duty to God, I must give up my desire to control my own life. I must remember the cause of the Fall of Man; I must remember the perverse desire of Eve. I must learn to submit to my duty as a woman, don the veil of my sex, follow the teachings of Paul: “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of woman is the man. The woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.” If I wanted to honor my family and my God by attracting a righteous man to wed, I must remember.

  I must remember how deep and insidious was the nature of my weakness.

  The fall after I returned from the Langs I began dating Tom, a young man from church. His initial courtship filled my need to be loved and desired, and I found myself calculating my every action in order to gain his admiration. Our need to spend every waking hour together wore at my mother’s patience and my father’s stony authority. What I know now they undoubtedly saw then: Tom was proprietary, jealous beyond reason. He guarded my every move, chose my wardrobe, flew into rages if he found me talking to another boy, whether friend or suitor. When I was invited to a pool party at the house of a church member (the Assembly of God allowed swimsuits covered by long T-shirts for girls taking part in mixed swimming), he ranted over the phone at me: he had to work and I couldn’t go without him. It was improper. The other boys would see my body, his girlfriend’s body, and I’d be responsible for their lust. Was that what I wanted? Did I want them to look at me, to want to have sex with me? That was it, wasn’t it? I was a prick-tease, a loose, two-timing prick-tease.

  I cried. I pleaded my innocence and promised obeisance. I did not go to the party.

  Perhaps because he seemed already to own me, or perhaps because my chastity with Luke had, finally, been perverted into something unimaginable, I didn’t resist his sexual advances. I separated myself from his desperate fumblings, numbed myself to whatever pleasure and emotion I might have felt. My only desire lay in pleasing him, in being whatever it was he needed me to be.

  Often, after evening service my friends and I would meet at a local restaurant to drink 7 Up and eat fries sodden with ketchup. One night, because Tom was working late at his afterschool job, I left my parents’ car in the church parking lot (driving it a recently awarded privilege) and caught a ride to the cafe with two male friends from the church. We spent several hours talking and laughing with others our age, and I felt an odd exhilaration brought on by saying what I wanted to say without feeling Tom’s silencing gaze. I was still flush with my freedom when the boys dropped me off at the church.

  Tom was waiting for me in his pickup. The boys must have seen as I did the set of his face: more than sullen, closer to fury.

  “Do you want us to stay?”

  “No. It’ll be okay. Thanks.”

  They drove off slowly while I stood between my car and his pickup, wishing that I were back at the restaurant with its smiling waitresses and fluorescent lights. One lamp shone over the lot, illuminating a single corner with its glow. I watched moths flit across its beam, the shadows they cast huge and distorted.

  “Get in.” His breath escaped out the cracked window and disappeared. I made my way to the passenger side, opened the door and pulled myself onto the stiff seat.

  “So, did you fuck them?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” The whites of his eyes caught and reflected the light.

  “I didn’t … We went for a Coke.” I kept my hand on the door handle, thinking I could make it to my car before he caught me.

  “Bitch.”

  “Don’t call me that. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Whore.”

  I shook my head. He’d called me names before—stupid, dumb, cheap when he thought I was flirting—but never had he used words like these.

  “Tom, nothing happened. They gave me a ride, that’s all. Ask everyone else who was there. Ask …”

  “Liar!” He lunged across the seat, pinning me against the door. He was strangling me, crushing my throat with his fingers.

  “You slut!” He hit my head against the window until I screamed. Then, as though someone had dragged him backward by his shirt, he fell away, staring at me. In his eyes I saw horror, not at what he had done but at what I had driven him to do. I was monstrous.

  I fumbled at the handle and fell onto the asphalt. The door slammed, the engine shrieked alive and he was gone. I listened to the squeal of his tires around corners, the sound growing more and more distant, finally fading away altogether, until all that remained were the sounds of the city.

  I can hear the mill, I thought. There’s the train and the river. I didn’t care that someone might find me, ear pressed to the ground like a Hollywood Indian. I didn’t care that he might come back, or that my parents might be planning my punishment for coming in past curfew. This is what mattered—me, by myself, just outside the light’s perimeter, blending with the night.

  No one knew what had happened, not even my mother, who may have read in my face some pain but did not ask, giving what she could by admonishing my coming in late with words instead of grounding. The next day, when Tom came to the door with flowers, I took them without smiling and placed them in a vase, then folded my hands in front of me and waited. I believed I loved him, and that he loved me. Why else would he have acted so passionately? Why else would it hurt so bad to imagine his absence? The high-necked blouse I wore to cover the marks on my neck also served as a reminder of subservient modesty. I would not anger him again, would not cause him to question my loyalty. If I failed to make him happy, as I had that night by consorting with other boys, he would leave me.

  My mother said I was too young to get so serious. The retort was easy. “You were only sixteen,” I said. “Why isn’t that good enough for me?”

  Sixteen seemed to me an age when something should happen, something that might change the way people looked at me, the way I saw myself. I thought of my mother’s marriage, Sarah’s life with Terry, how all I ever wanted was to be given to Luke and left to spend the rest of my life in bliss. But that was not to be, and so I went to the department store and had my ears pierced.

  I drove home, my earlobes swollen with heat, fear of my father’s reaction adding to the feverish feeling. My hair was long enough to cover the small gold dots. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.

  But my mother did, and when she pulled back my hair and took in the twin punctures, she looked first as though she believed we were both doomed, and then she smiled a small smile and shook her head. “Kim, Kim, Kim
. You better hope your daddy doesn’t find out.”

  There was something of the conspirator in her after all.

  A few months later, I sat in Tom’s pickup after school, feeling the calm afternoon bend and mutate. My house faded and narrowed as I stared at it through the windshield. Nothing seemed familiar. “I want to date other girls,” he repeated. “I just think we’re too young to get so serious.”

  I sat frozen, refusing to believe what he was saying. “Kim, you can keep the ring. I think you should have it.”

  A huge bawling noise rose from my throat. I ran across the yard and threw open the door to my house so hard the windows rattled. I heard him gun his pickup out of the driveway, spitting rock and filling the air with the smell of burned rubber.

  My mother soothed me. It was for the better, she said. She washed my face with a cold rag and left me in my bed. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I whispered to myself again and again. I was ruined. No man would ever want to keep me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As the shiny newness of my conversion faded, leaving me with little more than the present by which to define myself, I found I longed for those times with Les when she and I believed we owned the few hours around midnight, when we walked the empty streets of Lewiston. I saw little of her, having left her behind with the cast-off remnants of my past life. One of the few nights we spent together she had stroked my hair. “Don’t worry, Kim,” she said. “We’ll get you back.” I’d shuddered beneath her hand, feeling that dark sister in me rise, and at least for a moment I felt suspended between two worlds—half novitiate, half sibyl.

  I drove to her house one spring afternoon, full of what Nan called piss ’n vinegar. It was a feeling I hadn’t had for a long time—a kind of itch that started from the inside and worked its way out so that I jerked with the urgency of it.

  Lewiston was turning green, green and daffodil-yellow, the sky so blue and clear it made your teeth hurt to see it. I recognized the restlessness I felt, and it scared the hell out of me. I wasn’t content, and nothing was more dangerous to a Christian.

  Les was home, and she must have read in my eyes what I could not say. Her parents were gone, so she grabbed her Marlboros and we headed down the road. On the way, we picked up a few others, friends I hadn’t seen since the old days.

  They got me to smoke a cigarette, and the rest came easy. I rolled down the window of my parents’ new Toyota, cranked the rock and roll and ripped through the back alleys of Lewiston at forty miles per hour.

  Les was beside herself, happy and laughing in that way I remembered—a kind of seize-the-day, open-mouthed guffaw that made me brave. The skunky odor of pot filled the car, but I decided not to worry about consequences. One day was all I wanted; one day to feel free again, in charge of my own life.

  Coming around a corner too fast, Lynyrd Skynyrd blaring, smoke wafting from the windows, I lost control in the gravel. The rest seemed a movie in slow motion: the car fishtailing, my frantic counter-steering, the trailer house that filled my vision as we skidded through someone’s herd of plastic lawn deer.

  The car stopped, nestled against the trailer so tight the poppies bent their broken necks into my open window. I didn’t wait to see who might appear to survey the damage done to the manicured yard. Tires spitting sod, I swerved back onto the road, suddenly aware of the silence coming from the backseat.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Jesus Christ!” Les blurted. I could tell by her voice she was pleased. Here was the old Kim back, heedless and even more valuable with her new driver’s license.

  But I’d had a scare, and the thump of my heart reminded me of the precarious state of my soul. What had I been thinking? God had let me have this close call, had let me know who was really in charge. I drove straight back to Les’s, dropped her and the others off without a word of explanation and marked the speed limit—a solid twenty-five—all the way back home.

  By the time I pulled into my driveway, the guilt and fear had set in. I wasn’t surprised by the absence of my mother, still at work, my brother still bobbing over numbers at the elementary school. I was relieved. I could take a shower, wash the smoke from my hair, pray the sin from my soul. But where was my father’s pickup? He should be in bed, sleeping his daytime sleep.

  The silent house had a heartbeat of its own, pulsing with space. I called my mother at work to let her know I was home. I waited fifteen rings before hanging up. I called my best friend from church, Bonnie. No answer.

  The panic crept up from the base of my skull, making my scalp tingle and tighten. Had I seen anyone since I’d left Les’s? Was I too dazed to notice who else existed in the world besides me? Where was everyone?

  The Second Coming. Blood to the horse’s bridle. Antichrist. 666. The Beast. I’d seen it all only a week before, in a film the church had shown: Christ had returned, taking the faithful to their heavenly reward, leaving those inconstant Christians (like me!) to suffer unspeakable torture at the hands of Satan and His legions. Revelations—the Rapture, and then the Tribulation. The faithful would receive their rewards and be removed from this time of terror, while those of us left faced a world given to unprecedented war and demons set loose upon the face of the earth.

  I ran outside, searching the streets. The air, heavy with the drone of bees and the smell of cherry blossoms they clung to did nothing to alleviate my fear. Of course Christ would come on a day steeped in perfection, a day when everything seemed new and sweet and full of earthly promise. In the quiet of mid-afternoon, no cars passed, no mothers stood in their yards pinning shirtsleeves and pants legs to clotheslines. I got back into my car, closed the door. I knew where I must go—to my grandmothers house. Nan couldn’t drive, never went anywhere but where we took her. She was certainly born again and free from sin. If she did not come to the door, then I was lost. Christ had returned for His true bride, and I had been left behind.

  I scanned the houses along the street, peering into the windows of strangers. No one. I glanced into my rearview every few seconds, but no one followed me. My heart raced and it was all I could do to hold off the wave of panic I felt swelling beneath my breastbone. Turn a corner. Go up Eleventh Street. Get to Nan’s, then you’ll know. I calmed myself, my mantra the names of streets and avenues: Burrell, Airway, Bryden, Thain.

  Turning off the car, I sat for a moment, frantically studying the house and its windows. No light, no movement. I opened my door slowly, unwilling to fracture the sealed space. The comfort I normally felt walking toward my grandmother’s home had turned to dread.

  I reached the porch, pressed my ear to the door, hoping for the sound of her ever-on TV. The silence convinced me. She’s gone. Everyone I love gone. All of them taken but me.

  “Oh, Nanny, Nanny,” I cried, calling for her as I had when I was a child, slumping against the threshold. I drew up my knees and rocked, thinking I wouldn’t leave this house, I’d find a way in and hide as long as I could, live off the jugs of water and cans of peaches and beans Nan had stored in the basement. I’d find a way to live until I could convince God that I’d withstand any torture, like Joan of Arc at the stake, if He’d only come again for me.

  The door opened and I fell onto the soft carpet of my grandmother’s living room.

  “Well, Kim honey. What in the world?”

  I jumped to my feet and stood staring at her in disbelief. Behind her the television projected its silent story, the actors’ mouths moving in a pantomime of speech. Instead of dark-suited men reeling off news of the Second Coming, Eddy Arnold and Eva Gabor pointed in astonishment at a pig.

  “What’s wrong with the TV?”

  “Why, nothing. Are you okay?” She peered into my face, her forehead arched in concern. I couldn’t take my eyes off the black-and-white screen, off the grimacing faces of those people mired in mud to their kneecaps.

  “Kim, what’s wrong?” She was pulling at my arm, pinching a piece of skin between her thumb and finger. I detached my gaze from the television and mov
ed it to her. Her eyes were gray, the same color as Eva and Eddy and their worrisome pig. No one else I knew had eyes that color. I moved my face closer to hers, looking for the slate-blue corona around each iris. “Nan? Nan?”

  “Sit down, Sister.” She pushed me toward the couch. “I’ll make us some tea.”

  “Nan, why is the sound off?”

  “The sound?”

  “The TV.”

  She studied the screen for a moment, as though she had forgotten its existence.

  “I turned it down because I was taking a nap. You woke me up.”

  I listened to her move through the kitchen, the familiar tick of cups and the discordant shuffle of her crippled leg. Was I crazy? My guilty conscience had done this to me. I was being punished.

  The warmth of the sugared tea relaxed me. Looking at my grandmother—the round body and twisted foot, the hair bound up in toilet paper to keep its style while she slept—I managed a smile. We switched the channel to Dialing for Dollars and turned up the volume, hoping that our phone number would miraculously be chosen and I could answer when the call came, ready with the Word of the Day, ready with my grandmother’s address and Social Security Number so that they could mail her a check for $300 and she could make one last trip to Oklahoma, she said, before she was too old.

  When I saw my father that evening, on his way to work, lunch pail in one hand, heavy gloves, thermos and notebook of logged miles in the other, I saw too that his hair was shorter. I should have known—every four weeks, same day, same time, my father visited the barber. How could I have forgotten this ritual?

  I felt comforted seeing him there, absolutely predictable, stepping into the dusk with the confidence of a man blessed with night vision. I often imagined him in the heart of the night, driving his truck full of wood chips down the river road, the moon riding the water beside him. What did he see during those hours when the rest of us slept and only the animals had eyes to mark his passage? What did he think while his family dreamed? He could just as easily have been asleep in his bed; his presence would have been no less felt.