by Rebecca Rupp
I was beginning to cry all over again, which I wouldn’t have believed possible.
I could feel Boone petting my hair.
“And the beans didn’t work,” I said. Wheezed.
“What’s this about the beans?” Boone said.
So I told him the reason for the beans, how I thought if I could prove — really prove — to Ray that prayers didn’t work and there was no God, that she’d give up the Redeemers and change back to the way she was and come home and we could all be the way we were.
“Oh, Octavia,” Boone said.
He reached down and pulled me sort of partway onto his lap, where I didn’t fit anymore because I’d gotten too tall.
“I’m too big to sit in your lap,” I said. Snuffling.
“You’re just right,” Boone said.
He petted my hair again.
“Listen,” Boone said. “I’ve been offered a job with a financial firm outside of Burlington. It’s full-time, with a good salary and benefits. I’d be working in an office, though, so I wouldn’t be around every day when you got home from school. But you could go stay with the Peacocks in the afternoons if you didn’t want to be on your own.”
“You mean I can live with you?” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Boone said. “I never meant for this to happen. I’ve been crap-all at being a dad. I guess I’ve just been hoping that she’d come home too. But she’s not. She’s made that pretty clear.”
“What about your masterpiece?” I said.
Boone tightened his arms around me, and when he spoke, his voice was sort of choked, but that might have been because he was talking into my hair.
“You’re my masterpiece,” Boone said.
I WISH I COULD SAY it was all as easy as that, but it wasn’t.
The first problem was that Ray didn’t agree about me living with Boone.
“I’m sorry, Octavia. I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. Which meant no, and she wouldn’t budge off it, because Ray will never admit she’s wrong. When she gets that way, she’s like a stone wall.
The second problem was Alda and Geraldine, who backed her up, talking all the time about custody and responsibility and what it meant to be a good parent and the moral character of artists. Alda and Geraldine were not big on artists. They said artists were always abandoning wives and children and having mistresses, like Paul Gauguin, who dumped a wife and five kids to go paint in Tahiti, and Picasso, who was a terrible family man. Also artists were always painting naked pictures that might just as well be straight out of Playboy magazine and unholy pictures that were even worse than that but they wouldn’t say how in front of me.
“Boone doesn’t do that,” I said.
Because in the first place if anybody abandoned anybody, it was Ray, not Boone. Also even if Boone’s paintings are of naked women, you can’t really tell.
But it wasn’t just the paintings.
There was also the welfare of my soul, which according to Alda and Geraldine was in peril, since those who chase after false gods and idols will burn in hell. Boone was chasing after false gods. So were Andrew and Andrew’s parents and Aaron Pennebaker and his family, because they’re Jewish, and everybody in Winton Falls who’s Roman Catholic, and Dr. Cassidy, who does stem-cell research and wears pants, and all the Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and everybody else in the world who wasn’t a Redeemer.
I didn’t think that was giving God much credit.
I mean, if there is a God and he really is the maker of the entire universe, wouldn’t you think he’d be smart enough to give people the benefit of the doubt? Maybe you get to heaven and he pats you on the back and laughs and says, “Well, you did your best, but all that burnt-offering stuff was kind of silly,” or, “Good try, but I’m actually not at all fussy about hair.”
The real problem, though, was not Alda or Geraldine. It was Dr. Bethany Gilcrest of the Educational Center for Biblical Parenting.
Dr. Gilcrest was a Christian psychologist whose specialty was the Willfully Defiant Child. She ran a counseling service for parents who had them, which luckily for me was located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which is sixteen hundred miles from here. She also wrote a lot of articles about them, all with her picture on the front page. She had fluffy platinum-blond hair and false eyelashes, of which Mr. Peacock said a woman who puts those on her face is no better than she ought to be.
Geraldine brought home all the copies of Biblical Parenting Magazine with Dr. Gilcrest’s articles in them from her office for Ray. On the cover of one issue was a smiling mother wearing one of those pinafore aprons with ruffles over the shoulders, and a little kid with her fists clenched and her face all scrunched up and she was stamping her feet. Over the mother’s head was a thought bubble with a picture of Jesus in a field of flowers. There wasn’t a thought bubble over the kid’s head, but if there had been it would probably have had something like an exploding nuclear bomb. “See article, page 8,” it said.
So I turned to page eight and began to read.
“In a battle of wills between parent and child,” wrote Dr. Gilcrest, “it is imperative that the parent win. The defiant child is displaying a lust for power and independence that has no place in the home. He must be made to understand who is in charge and compelled to behave in an appropriately respectful manner.”
I thought Dr. Gilcrest sounded more like a prison guard than a parent. I wondered if she had any children. If she did, I hoped they were lusting for power and independence behind her back. I hoped they were stockpiling graham crackers and digging a secret escape tunnel in the backyard.
“Do not lose your confidence,” Dr. Gilcrest went on. “The Lord gave you this difficult child in order for you to mold him into a faithful servant of Christ. Your task will not be easy, but know that with the Lord’s help, you will prevail.”
I figured that the more Ray read that stuff, the more I was doomed.
This went on all through the last weeks of school. By then it was June and the days were getting warm. Boone planted a garden in his new tiny yard, with tomatoes and peppers and a lot of lettuce, and a pumpkin vine along the fence so that we could have our own pumpkins for Halloween. Though I figured the way things were going, I’d probably be spending Halloween in Pastor Bruno’s House of Sin.
Ms. Hodges started reviewing everything we’d learned all year, so that we wouldn’t blacken her name in front of Kate Choquette and Roger Richardson, who team-taught eighth grade. But I had a hard time concentrating, thinking how next year I might not even be around. By then I might be going to the Redeemer school and learning creationism and writing essays about Adam’s Help Meet and wearing Little House on the Prairie dresses like Marjean’s.
I don’t mean that I didn’t like Little House on the Prairie. It’s just not my fashion style.
Andrew tried to help by coming up with a really lousy plan for smuggling me out of town that involved a false moustache, a rope made out of bedsheets, and the Greyhound bus station.
But before he managed to talk me into trying it, which I was considering, we had the fight.
Not me and Andrew.
Me and Ray and Alda and Geraldine.
It happened at dinner, which was lentil soup, which I hate because it looks like toxic sludge, and I was picking at my food. Which is hard to do with lentil soup, because it’s all just sitting there in a bowl and there’s nothing you can hide under anything. I was taking teeny little spoonfuls and hoping nobody would notice.
I must have been drooping over my soup bowl looking miserable, because Geraldine asked me to please sit up and stop looking so glum.
“Octavia,” she said. “You’ve been a wet blanket around here for weeks. Do you realize how hard this is for all of us?”
“I just don’t like lentil soup,” I said.
“I think it’s more than that,” Geraldine said.
“Gerry, I’ve got this under control,” Ray said.
“I don’t think you do,” Geraldine said.
Then she turned to me. “Do you know how hard it is for us to see what your mother is going through?”
“Like what?” I said. “What is she going through?”
I thought Ray was pretty much getting exactly what she wanted.
“She wants nothing but what’s best for you,” Alda said. “She loves you. She’s been nothing but patient and understanding. It hurts her to see you so angry and uncooperative and resentful.”
“Separations are hard on kids,” Ray said. “It’s a difficult transition.”
“It’s not a transition at all unless there’s some effort on Octavia’s part,” Geraldine said.
“We all know this isn’t easy for you, Octavia,” Ray said. “We’re just trying to help.”
It didn’t feel like help to me. It felt like ganging up.
“Help how?” I said. “You always said people should make up their own minds about things.”
I could hear my voice getting stupid and wobbly.
“I don’t see what you see,” I said to Ray. “I’m not a Redeemer. I don’t want to be a Redeemer. I don’t want to be here.”
Nobody said anything. They all just looked at me.
“Ray, I want to go home,” I said.
I put my forehead down on the table next to my bowl of lentil soup because I didn’t want to look at anybody anymore.
I heard them all talking over me, and Geraldine telling Ray to be firm and quoting from Dr. Bethany Gilcrest. I shoved back my chair, got up from the table, and ran upstairs to Alda and Geraldine’s storeroom, which I wouldn’t call my room because it never felt like mine. The little clay pots my beans used to be in were lined up on the windowsill. I’d stopped praying for them after the science fair, and Boone had planted them all in his tiny garden. Because of Henry, Boone has a soft spot for beans. But just then I didn’t care.
I swept all the pots onto the floor and watched them smash. Then I threw myself down on the bed and lay there with my face in the pillow.
Downstairs they were all still talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying anymore. It was just a babble of voices, with sometimes just a word or two coming clear. Gray steely-colored words.
Then there were quick footsteps in the hall, with Ray’s heels like castanets, which always meant we were late for something important. They paused outside my door. The door opened, and Ray said, “Octavia?”
I kept my face in my pillow.
“Octavia,” Ray said again.
She crossed the floor in two steps and sat down on the edge of my bed and put an arm around me. I could smell her lily-of-the-valley perfume, which she’s always worn ever since I can remember.
“You can go,” Ray said.
At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard her.
I picked my head up off the pillow.
“What?” I said.
“It’s okay,” Ray said. “You can go.”
“I can go?” I said. “I can live with Boone?”
“You can live with Boone,” Ray said.
I couldn’t believe it.
“Why?” I said. “I don’t get it.”
Ray shook her head and gave me a funny, crooked little smile, but there were tears in her eyes.
And then she quoted, just like Boone always does.
She said, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
ON THE LAST SUNDAY IN JUNE, the Redeemers got together to dedicate Salvation Mountain, which had gone up faster than anybody ever dreamed. All the little shacks that used to be hunting camps were mauve and green cabins now, with built-in bunks, and there was a dining hall that could be used for lectures and church services and conferences, and a Spiritual Trail leading to the top of the hill.
Ray took me to the dedication. She was wearing an Indian print skirt with a ruffle and her hair had grown out some, but not enough yet to put into braids. She had it tucked behind her ears.
In a weird kind of way, it was fun. All my class was there: Marjean and Ronnie and Cathy Ann and Todd and all the rest. It would be wrong to say that they’d all had changes of heart after our obedience class and were thinking of not being Redeemers anymore, because they weren’t and that wasn’t what happened. But some things had changed.
Marjean’s father had come around on the guitar lessons, after some backup from her mother and with the help of a quotation from the Psalms. (“I will sing a new song unto thee, O God: upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto thee” Psalms 144:9.) And Todd’s parents had agreed to get a computer. Todd had had a more uphill battle than Marjean because there aren’t any supportive Bible quotations about computers, but he managed to convince his parents that since computers were around at all, they must be a part of God’s creation, and if God had created them, he obviously expected us to use them. He also promised that he wouldn’t use it to gaze at immodest women but would apply it solely to godly purposes. He also pointed out that Pastor Bruno had one.
Other than that, though, everything was still pretty much the same.
At the end of the day I went off to climb the Spiritual Trail.
No matter by what name you call Salvation Mountain, it’s really a beautiful hill. It’s covered with maples and paper birches and little clearings with wildflowers, and at the top there’s a flattish part where you can see the whole sky. When I got up there, there was Pastor Bruno in his JESUS SAVES sweatshirt sitting on a mauve-painted bench.
“Hi,” Pastor Bruno said.
I didn’t blame him for being up there, what with his six sons, including the twins Michael and Gabriel, rampaging around below. Though it seemed unfair to Barbara, his wife, no matter how willing she was to serve. I mean, it takes two.
“Hi,” I said.
“I hear you’re leaving us,” Pastor Bruno said.
“Yeah,” I said.
Pastor Bruno patted the seat beside him, offering me a place to sit down. The stars were beginning to come out. I could just see the Big Dipper.
“So is this all because of the List?” Pastor Bruno said. “What was it you called that again?”
I bet that Alda and Geraldine had been bending his ear.
“Octavia Boone’s List of Terrible Things Caused by Religion,” I said.
Pastor Bruno pursed up his lips and shook his head.
“But none of that is God, Octavia,” Pastor Bruno said. “God didn’t create evil. People did. God gave us free will, and sometimes people make bad choices. They use free will in the wrong way. People aren’t perfect, Octavia.”
“So what about those bad choices?” I said. “What do you do about them?”
“We pray,” Pastor Bruno said. “And when God wills, our prayers our answered.”
It didn’t seem to me that prayers were going to do Ronnie much good. I said so.
“And sometimes,” Pastor Bruno said, “God answers our prayers by having a pastor take somebody’s father aside and give him a good sharp talking-to.”
“I don’t think I believe in God,” I said.
Pastor Bruno waved his hands around in the air.
“Then where did all this come from, Octavia?” he said.
“From the Big Bang,” I said. “And then after billions of years, from evolution.”
Pastor Bruno looked up at the stars. There were more of them now. I realized I’d forgotten to make a wish, and now I couldn’t remember which star I’d seen first.
“‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,’” Pastor Bruno said. “‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.’
“That’s where the universe came from, Octavia. Everywhere I look I see the hand of God. How is it possible not to believe?”
An early mosquito whined in my ear. If there was a God, I thought, I wished he’d seen fit not to use his hand to make mosquitoes.
“There’s another Be
rtrand Russell story,” I said. “It’s about the Celestial Teapot.”
“What’s that?” Pastor Bruno said.
Andrew had told me about it. It came from an article Bertrand Russell wrote about religion. It was called “Is There a God?”
This is what Bertrand Russell said about the Celestial Teapot.
What if somebody claimed that somewhere out between the Earth and Mars there was a china teapot orbiting the sun? Nobody could see the teapot because it was too little to be seen even by the world’s most powerful telescopes. So nobody could prove it wasn’t there.
And then what if ancient books said that the teapot existed and people had to hear about it every Sunday and kids had to learn about it in school? Then pretty soon anybody who didn’t believe in the teapot would be in trouble. People would think they were crazy or would say that they were going to hell.
I liked the story about the teapot. I had a picture in my mind of the teapot out there in space, orbiting around and around. In my mind, it looked like the gingerbread-cottage teapot in Mrs. Peacock’s teapot collection.
Pastor Bruno didn’t say anything for a while. Then he sighed and patted me on the shoulder.
“I’ll be praying for you, Octavia,” he said. “I’ll be praying that someday you’ll find your way back to us. You’ll be missed. And you’ll always be welcome.”
He got up from the bench.
“It’s getting chilly,” he said, “and they’ll be lighting the bonfire down below. What do you say we get back to the others?”
“I think I’ll stay here a little longer,” I said.
