Faith Wish

by James Bennett

  She read through the document a second time, but none of the language changed. It felt so degrading. Of all the academic rebukes she’d ever received, this was the most humiliating, even more so than the LD resource room. At school, if you were put on a contract, you were a dork. No, worse than a dork; you were a jerk. Contracts were for special ed people, behavior disordered, or at-risk students. People who were so screwed up they had to be in the alternative school.

  Or even worse, contracts were often for students with criminal records who were in school while on probation.

  Mrs. DeShields turned to face her. “Well, what do you think, Anne-Marie? Do you think this is a contract we can work with?”

  “I feel humiliated,” she answered immediately.

  “I can understand that, but try to think of it as an opportunity as well.”

  “How can I? I feel like a criminal.”

  “Try to think of the contract as a focus factor. You know exactly what the demands are, timetable, and so forth. You can even go through graduation ceremonies with the rest of your class.”

  “I wouldn’t want to. It would seem too phony.”

  Mrs. DeShields paused long enough to bend a paper clip out of shape. “Is it the same kind of humiliation you felt last fall when we tested you for ADD?”

  “Yes, only worse. This seems so final.”

  “Final is what we want. Final is what we’ll get. The contract will help you in that respect.”

  Anne-Marie felt tears forming again, but she refused to shed any. She’d been bathed in the light of the Lord earlier in the morning, but the contract made her feel unworthy. Was God convicting her for pride? Would He show you a beautiful sunrise only to hide it behind a dense cloud cover? She remembered Chris’s words of support: The Lord loves you just as much as a valedictorian.

  Mrs. DeShields went on, “You were embarrassed about the resource room experiment, but did it help you?”

  Anne-Marie sighed before she answered. “Yes. It did.”

  “You got B’s in American history and Effective Living. What do you think your grades in those courses would’ve been without the resource room?”

  “I know, I know. They’d have been lower. Everybody gets high grades in Effective Living, though. That’s a B we can’t really count.”

  “Oh yes, we can count it,” answered the counselor swiftly. “Many students get low grades in Effective Living, because they don’t take it seriously or put forth any effort.”

  Anne-Marie was perusing the contract again. She wanted to change the subject. “Mrs. DeShields, these classes all meet in the evening or late in the afternoon. Why is that?”

  “Many students who take summer school classes have full-time jobs. Some of them are even adults working on getting their GED.”

  Anne-Marie didn’t know what a GED was, and she didn’t really care to find out. But all of a sudden the humiliation was acute again. She implored the counselor, “Mrs. DeShields, please; I’ve got ten days left, isn’t there some way I could get this work done on time?”

  “Anne-Marie, let me turn the question straight back at you. For instance, where do you stand on your biology term paper?”

  The Canada geese again. God, I wish I’d never even heard of them. “I’m still stumped,” was all she could say.

  “Don’t you think you can make better progress on it in summer school? You’ll have lots more time to work on it, and you’ll only have one other course to worry about. And by the way, Mrs. Walls is willing to give you an incomplete rather than a failing grade.”

  It was a hollow victory. Mrs. DeShields might be making sense, but the disgrace Anne-Marie felt overwhelmed her. Tears began forming again, but she blinked them back. “Mrs. DeShields, do you think I’m a retard?”

  “Of course not. And I know we’ve used that word for teasing, but we should stop it. Retard is a slur word; it’s demeaning. I think you have a mild learning disorder based on your ADD, but it’s certainly not going to cripple you.”

  “Does this have to be mailed to my parents?”

  “Now Anne-Marie.”

  “I was just hoping …”

  “Unfortunately, yes it does.” Mrs. DeShields was legalistic but somehow supportive at the same time. “You know it’s school policy that performance contracts be signed by a parent or guardian.”

  “When will you mail it?”

  “It won’t be for a little while yet. We are processing others right now and we’re on overload with state-mandated standardized testing. It could be a couple of weeks.”

  “It could be after finals then?”

  “It’s possible.”

  She left the counseling center about twenty minutes before the fourth-hour passing bell would sound. She could spend the time in the library before she headed for lunch. Her stomach was roiling; she felt she’d crossed the threshold to join the Body of Christ earlier, then the contract, which was absolutely mortifying. When she got to the library door again, she whispered last night’s passage: “‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’”

  She could get through this because she wasn’t alone. The light of God’s Kingdom would illuminate the darkness and the shadows. It would be in His time, though, not hers.

  June 2

  She was sick again, for the second day in a row.

  By 6:30 A.M. she had thrown up in the toilet a third time. The only breakfast she’d eaten, the glazed donut, was floating in the bowl along with the gross scent of barf. Her mouth was disgusting with the rancid aftertaste. The nausea made her miserable, but at least there was privacy, because she had the upstairs bathroom all to herself.

  She stood up to examine her waxen face in the medicine cabinet mirror. For the third time this morning, she brushed her teeth, and rinsed with Scope. Hidden behind the mouthwash bottle was an EPT home pregnancy test, which she hadn’t found the nerve to try yet. She was still woozy, and her head ached, but at least the nausea was past.

  Anne-Marie knew she was pregnant. She had no doubts at all. For the past three weeks, each time she got up in the morning, she was woozy and nauseous. Sometimes for an hour or two, sometimes longer. It would be ironic to become pregnant by her one intimate encounter with Brother Jackson, when she’d had unprotected sex with Richard Bone more times than she would want to admit. But that was all too long ago; she’d had several normal period cycles since she’d let herself be seduced by him. As soon as she washed her face, she went downstairs. Her mother was in the master bedroom, applying makeup.

  Looking out through the window, Anne-Marie could see the hired hands making preparations for her sister Eleanor’s royal reception. It would be a big surprise to Eleanor, but not to Anne-Marie; she was long accustomed to her big sister’s position in the limelight.

  Eleanor would be surprised and embarrassed by the crowded party on the lawn, the photographers from the West Suburban Times, and the choice buffet provided by Van Meter Catering. There was even a string quartet unloading instruments from their van.

  By the time the limo which brought Eleanor from O’Hare Airport glided to its stop in front of their home, Anne-Marie was quarreling with her mother. The quarrel was not intense, because the shouting matches were a thing of the past, now that Anne-Marie had found the Lord. Before, she had always been in the prison of her own selfish willfulness.

  Watching the limo from the window, and the flock of people who greeted it, Anne-Marie was reminded of the parable of the Prodigal Son. But even the Prodigal Son wouldn’t get a reception like this. My father wouldn’t think the Prodigal Son deserved anything other than a good whipping and maybe thirty hours of community service.

  She knew the time was short. “If I miss this class Monday,” she told her mother, “I can make it up the next day. Lots of people do that.”

  “Maybe that’s a part of their contract, then,” her mother replied.

  “It’s got nothing to do with a contract,” Anne-Marie explained. “It’s just a procedure for making up missed classes. Not e
verybody in summer school is on a contract, Mother.”

  “But you are, though, remember?”

  “Not officially, though. There’s no contract in writing yet.”

  “Don’t sound like an attorney, okay?”

  “I live with an attorney, remember? I’m just saying we don’t have anything official yet from the school.”

  “But we’ll be receiving it soon.”

  “I mean, Monday is just an orientation meeting. I’ve had my orientation face-to-face with Mrs. DeShields. Remember?”

  “How could I forget? I was there.”

  “That’s my point,” Anne-Marie tried to explain. “You know that I’m acquainted with all the details.”

  “All the details we know about,” replied her mother. “There may be more. There may be a syllabus, or other printed material.”

  “Mother, this might be different if I was just looking for a place to hang out or goof off. All I’m asking for is permission to fellowship with the Lord.”

  Her mother was looking into the dressing table mirror while trying to adjust a stubborn earring. “Don’t play the holy card, Anne-Marie. I doubt if that will be a strategy that works.”

  “I’m not playing cards, I’m just telling you the truth.”

  “There will be lots of other chances for Bible study groups, I’m sure.”

  “But not with Sara’s group. It only meets on Monday nights.”

  “Then maybe somebody else’s study group, hmm? Or maybe just plain old church on Sunday morning. I feel confident that the Lord makes His presence known in settings other than Sara Curtis’s family room.”

  Why should I expect my mother to understand? But how could she, when all she knew of religion was the watered-down and the lukewarm? What could she know of the bold, the born-again, or the Spirit-filled life? She couldn’t be expected to understand something so transforming, so passionate. It would have been even less likely for her mother to understand the complex relationship she had with Brother Jackson or the tiny snail of life turning in her womb. Must be turning. How else could she explain the morning sickness?

  Her mother had the earring in place and was ready to join the reception. “I can’t talk about this now, Anne-Marie. We’ll have to table it until later. We’ll discuss it with your father.”

  That was the death sentence for sure, since her father was even more rigid than her mother. She needed to set her own needs aside, though, because this was Eleanor’s day, not hers.

  Most of the reception was on the front lawn, although the driveway was available as well because her father had gotten permission to move his restored Jaguar and the old Chevy into a neighbor’s driveway. The tent on the lawn turned out to be unnecessary; the day was glorious with warm sun and very little breeze. Some people sat beneath it however, to get out of the bright light.

  Eleanor gave Anne-Marie a quick hug of greeting, but then was swallowed up by well-wishers and media. A number of the city’s leading citizens were there, as well as a Republican state representative named DiGregorio, to whom her father made yearly campaign contributions.

  By the time the strings commenced with selections from Vivaldi and Mozart, Anne-Marie was helping herself to mushrooms and scooping them in a mellow, cheesy dip which seemed to go down easy.

  When her stomach began feeling touchy again, she finished with the mushroom dipping, tied off a couple of full garbage bags, then went inside the house. She watched the proceedings from the living room window. She was happy for her sister’s stunning success and recognition, as she knew the Lord would want her to be, but she herself was grounded. The whole scene reminded her of her own history of paltry achievement in comparison to her older sister’s.

  Her father had now gathered all those assembled into a sort of semicircle, while someone Anne-Marie didn’t know was extolling the praises of Eleanor’s winning the Oneppo Medal, a symbol of the highest academic esteem in the entire universe.

  Other people were scheduled to add a few remarks, Dad included, and the media would interview Eleanor, but Anne-Marie went to get the mail. There were two letters for her, one from a Junior college and another from the high school. She took them upstairs to her room. Her television was on, playing a rerun of a cable religious program in which Billy Graham Junior was interviewing a born-again woman who was a former drug addict. Anne-Marie’s television was nowadays tuned to Channel 14 almost exclusively. She turned it off.

  With escalating anxiety, she tore open the letter from the high school. It was what she expected—the contract for summer school. It had Vice Principal Rosario’s signature now as well.

  It wasn’t until the early part of the evening that Anne-Marie got to spend some private time with Eleanor on the sunporch. The caterers were still cleaning up, but nearly finished. “Can I see your medal?” asked Anne-Marie.

  “Sure.” Eleanor handed over the medal, resting on its cushion of velvet in its open black box. It was large, maybe two inches from top to bottom, a clear crystal in the shape of a teardrop. In the center was a three-sided obelisk, which looked like granite or marble, suspended magically to form an elongated, glittering pyramid in three dimensions. When Anne-Marie held it up to the window, in the evening light, its center bent the light like a colorful prism. She hoped it wasn’t a pagan thing, because it was truly breathtaking.

  “Do you have a chain for it?” Anne-Marie asked her.

  “Not that I know of,” was Eleanor’s reply.

  “Then how will you wear it?”

  “I don’t think it’s a medal for wearing, Baby. Where would you wear it? The Oneppo Medal is only for show, I’m afraid.”

  “It should be for show because it’s so beautiful,” Anne-Marie replied. Jealousy reared its ugly head again. She put the medal back inside the box.

  “It’s only an academic award and not worth all this commotion,” said Eleanor. She meant the press conference, of course, and the reception. Eleanor had changed into a pair of faded blue jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt. She stretched and yawned before adding, “Lots of people win academic awards, but they don’t have parents with resources or access to the press.”

  It was a typical Eleanor remark. So utterly self-confident she felt no need to show off anything for anybody. The medal might just as well have been a plastic trinket from the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. What the medal meant was that Eleanor was top of her class in the MBA program at the University of Chicago, which won her a full fellowship at Harvard Law School. What it meant to Anne-Marie was the most recent symbol of Eleanor’s spectacularly successful life.

  As she handed back the box, Anne-Marie tried to guard against the envy. The envy was a habit but it didn’t need to be, not anymore. The Bible warned not to covet; it didn’t say anything specific about coveting your sister’s life, but Anne-Marie felt certain that was meant to be part of the meaning. Then, without even realizing it, she had started to cry.

  “Baby, you’re crying. What’s wrong?”

  She wasn’t sobbing, but there were tears sliding down her cheeks. She tried wiping them with the back of her hand before she said, “Nothing. Besides, this is your day.”

  “I’ve had more of my day than I can endure,” said Eleanor with contempt. She made a sour face like she’d just taken a bite out of a lemon. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I’m pregnant,” said Anne-Marie quickly, before her constricted throat could choke her.

  “Oh no. Oh dear.” Eleanor put her arm around Anne-Marie’s shoulder. “Come here.” Anne-Marie let her head drop to Eleanor’s shoulder, but her tears began to flow again immediately.

  “Who’s the father?”

  Anne-Marie could only shake her head. She didn’t want to try to explain the Brother Jackson circumstance, and besides, she was ashamed of shifting the focus from Eleanor to herself. It took nearly three minutes of tear-wiping and nose-blowing before she recovered enough composure to start answering Eleanor’s questions.

  “Are you sure?” Eleanor wanted to k
now.

  “I’m sure,” she said, with her head still nuzzled into Eleanor’s sweatshirt.

  “How are you sure?”

  “I took one of those home pregnancy tests. I got it at the drugstore.” The Lord hates a liar, so why do I do it?

  “Not good enough, Baby. Not reliable enough.”

  “But it says so, right on the package.”

  “Not good enough. You need to go to a clinic for a real examination.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, home pregnancy tests won’t cut it. You need to visit a clinic.”

  “I know I probably should.”

  “And not just to confirm that you’re pregnant, either. You need to get a complete examination if you are.”

  “I know I should,” Anne-Marie said again.

  “What do you plan to do about it?” Eleanor asked her.

  Anne-Marie looked up to meet her sister’s gray-green eyes. Nobody could listen like Eleanor, nobody ever could. “I don’t know. I just get confused.”

  “We need to visit a place like Planned Parenthood or the Women’s Support Network. You need to know all your options and you need to understand all the health issues.”

  Anne-Marie nodded but didn’t answer. She buried her face again in the fresh lilac smell of her big sister’s arm. She knew Eleanor’s advice would be perfect.

  “A big part of the confusion comes from not having enough information,” Eleanor was explaining. “The more knowledge you have, the less scary the dilemma.” She was stroking Anne-Marie’s hair and pulling the wet strands out of her eyes.

  Anne-Marie had a fleeting thought of Brother Jackson, long enough to wish she could introduce him to Eleanor, but knowing all the same that she wouldn’t understand or appreciate him. It felt so sad when important parts of your life didn’t fit together.

  “I’ll help you,” Eleanor promised. “Tomorrow, we’ll do some networking until we can get the kind of help we need. Try not to worry too much; there are choices and options.”

  Eleanor’s advice couldn’t have been more appropriate or sincere, but Anne-Marie understood the relief it provided was dead-end. The perfection was the problem. She was the unworthy sinner, pregnant and confused, while her big sister was perfect.