I was the only person on the bus that afternoon. It was a lonely ride into town. The bus driver was not a devout Christian. He had a Darwin fish stuck to his steering wheel—and if that did not make his (lack of faith) clear, he wore a fish with legs around his hairy wrists, too. He was not the type to talk; neither was I. We passed the trip in uncomfortable silence, though I caught him staring through the rearview mirror whenever I adjusted my skirt to cover my calves. The physical and spiritual distance from everything allowed me to think about Ben—and how I would surprise him with my presence in the concert hall. It was the first time I was proud to be a violist.
My fingers hurt from the practice I put them through. The back of the plastic seat in front of me was my instrument and my wrist’s vibrato shook cleaner than weeping.
The town rose from nothing. Without warning, the driver paused in front of the bus stop.
This a stop? I asked, when it was clear he wasn’t moving.
You Jesus freaks don’t understand English? he said, even though he had never warned me.
(Why thank you, I spat, on my way out. I could be a mean nasty thing, and I cursed without ever cursing. It was a talent.)
The Aldi’s was at least a few hundred feet from the bus stop. I say that it’s half a store because the back half with the freezers did collapse in the last big thunderstorm to hit this part of the country. A Floridian import, Mr Feldman said of the storm. Mr. Feldman owned the half-dead store. The frozen things were now kept in the back in a small closet behind the store. Whenever I wanted a frozen bag of vegetables, I had to find Mr. Feldman and ask him where they were. He always recommended a zucchini or a bag of okra—new, exciting, different food. Down South they have a great affinity for zucchini and bake it in their bread, fry it, and shove it in lasagna. Though I did not have the opportunity to eat much of the zucchini bread, and since there were no ovens in the dorms, my roommates brought boxes of their mothers’ cooking. I never told them that my Mama did not bake me any kind of bread, or, in fact, bake anything at all.
The Aldi’s was empty when I reached. It was scrubbed. Suffused with bleach. The back was completely gutted out, the remains of the freezers put away. Now there was only a neat white wall with just the residue of where the freezers had once clung to it. I waited by the counter for Mr. Feldman. Even rang the bell on his desk a couple of times. I needed frozen peppers for the home fries I was going to make for church breakfast on Sunday.
Soon, the storage door opened. But it wasn’t Mr. Feldman—it was a girl. Her denim skirt reached her ankles and she tied her hair back with a scarf. She wore a shirt with sleeves that covered her knuckles. Fair. Delicate wide eyebrows, not the result of plucking but of gifted genetics.
How may I help you?
I could not place her accent.
Is Mr. Feldman here?
I’ll get him for you, she said, and as she spoke I found myself growing a headache just trying to place her. Polite and open, without the shields even devout girls like Phoebe kept up.
Before she turned back, she smiled.
You are from the college? she asked.
I nodded.
Mr. Feldman likes you students, she said. You are all so polite.
Maybe I melted when I saw her turn back, but I did not have the inclination to keep distance. From the beginning, I wanted to tell her everything.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Chapter 2
Iris,
You were the one who asked me the question. When you said that you were worried about my loss, I realized that that was what it was -- a loss. It meant more to me than the death of almost anyone else.
So how did I lose it?
Do you ever doubt that your husband loves you less than God? Of course he loves you a thousand times more. He will never tell you this. A religious man never admits it, but for a wife well-loved, he mourns her so deeply that God can never compare. That was the last question. That is how I knew it would be all right.
But how did it get to that question? We have been friends for six years, and there is so much that you do not know. I often wished I could tell you.
What shocks me the most is that I managed one whole year in Vernier with nothing and nobody, but two months into the next I met the two most important people in my life. First, I met Ben.
And then there was Iris.
Vernier College is at the bottom of an Appalachian mountain—it’s the college’s prettiest feature. In the fall it disintegrates into paintstrokes and in the summer it is a heavy green mass. The campus is two hundred miles away from Durham, the nearest big city. Pristine and isolated, Vernier is a pulsating heart that eats itself far away from civilization. When I lived there, a bus left campus once an hour from 1 PM to 7 PM. During this time, we were permitted to do light grocery shopping. The bus driver always checked identification before we were allowed to embark.
The closest town was Jobstown—we joked that it was hardly a town, and there were no jobs there. Half an Aldi’s, I think. A grandmother running a used bookshop out of her basement. A tea shop run by a young woman from Britain who makes the most wonderful mango chutney, Wensleydale and romaine sandwiches. One morning I realized that I ran out of sanitary napkins and had to go shopping. Phoebe wasn’t around, and by this time I became irritated with her anyway. Ever since the Langleys spoke, she was distant.
You were the one who asked me the question. When you said that you were worried about my loss, I realized that that was what it was -- a loss. It meant more to me than the death of almost anyone else.
So how did I lose it?
Do you ever doubt that your husband loves you less than God? Of course he loves you a thousand times more. He will never tell you this. A religious man never admits it, but for a wife well-loved, he mourns her so deeply that God can never compare. That was the last question. That is how I knew it would be all right.
But how did it get to that question? We have been friends for six years, and there is so much that you do not know. I often wished I could tell you.
What shocks me the most is that I managed one whole year in Vernier with nothing and nobody, but two months into the next I met the two most important people in my life. First, I met Ben.
And then there was Iris.
Vernier College is at the bottom of an Appalachian mountain—it’s the college’s prettiest feature. In the fall it disintegrates into paintstrokes and in the summer it is a heavy green mass. The campus is two hundred miles away from Durham, the nearest big city. Pristine and isolated, Vernier is a pulsating heart that eats itself far away from civilization. When I lived there, a bus left campus once an hour from 1 PM to 7 PM. During this time, we were permitted to do light grocery shopping. The bus driver always checked identification before we were allowed to embark.
The closest town was Jobstown—we joked that it was hardly a town, and there were no jobs there. Half an Aldi’s, I think. A grandmother running a used bookshop out of her basement. A tea shop run by a young woman from Britain who makes the most wonderful mango chutney, Wensleydale and romaine sandwiches. One morning I realized that I ran out of sanitary napkins and had to go shopping. Phoebe wasn’t around, and by this time I became irritated with her anyway. Ever since the Langleys spoke, she was distant.
Chapter 1
This is the first finished chapter.
(There's some bonus material, as I added a few things to the beginning. You can find the table of contents here.)
(There's some bonus material, as I added a few things to the beginning. You can find the table of contents here.)
Chapter 1, contd (4)
I watched Phoebe more than I watched the sisters. I gave up on finding Ben. And though I now sound jaded and neutral when I recount this day, I cannot overstate how much it meant to me then. Because it meant that I was part of something just by being myself. My mission was existence. To get married, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to have a large, loving family of young ones. To have a house with a living large enough for a blackboard so that I could home-school my children. Even then the prospect of home-schooling frightened me more than anything else I could think of, but it delighted me to think of other young mothers wanting the same for their children, so that I might ask them for help. I might collaborate. My children need not live a friendless existence.
(Which was what I'd endured.)
The Langleys finished their speech on female submission. I can't recall the exact words; their message was a cold wash on my face, a sweet scent. I only imagined submitting to someone like Ben. It was pure in my case. I did not care about the others -- not even for Phoebe, who seemed caught in a trace state even after the Langleys gave up the stage to thunderous applause -- but I wanted to aspire to that ideal because I knew it would make me feel attractive. Phoebe seemed so dazed that I had to help her get up. She was wired again, once on two feet. She ran from me and to the friends she'd spoken to before, discussing and parsing the speech with a pair of Californian twins whose accents made me think of sin and the beach. They might have gone toward the stage to try to catch the Langley sisters, but they were caught in such a thick knot of women, they gave up, vowing to try later. And though Phoebe left me to stand on my own, I did not mind. And I still looked around the room for Ben, if only to prove that he was not a mere figment of my imagination. I stood until the entire chapel cleared and I was alone with Dean Harper, who waited for the Langleys to exit the stage so that he could pelt them with a hundred thousand questions about their book. They were gracious and smiling after every question. Olivia even touched the professor's arm in a friendly gesture, which took me aback.
Then, the professor was gone, too, and the Langley sisters bent down next to the stage to pick up their handbags. Without thinking, I left my pew and approached them.
I love your mission, I said.
I made sure to stand as far away from them as I could manage without seeming rude. Their energy was palpable; it intimidated me. Olivia and Marie both displayed their fluorescent smiles, but this made me more uneasy, even though they appeared sincere.
It's not our mission, Olivia -- or Marie? -- said.
It's yours., Marie -- or Olivia -- said. You know that this is important or else you would not have come.
We stood for am moment excited from nothing. And then Olivia saw something -- someone -- behind me and screamed.
She screamed for Ben. I barely heard him behind me. His feet were tentative even in the building with the loudest floor in the university.
In a moment, he stood between them again. He wore a pair of pressed slacks and a shirt. I noticed his shoes. I did not look up at his face.
Are you a freshman? they asked.
Sophomore.
Olivia put her hands over her mouth with exaggerated exaltation. Oh, Ben, she said.
Marie smiled. It looks like Vernier College has a lot to offer you, she told him. By way of explanation, Olivia told me that Ben was a transfer from Liberty – Vernier had a better sound design program, Olivia said. She wasn’t above a little bragging – she made it clear that Ben was too good for the Falwell institution.
He can do God’s work here, Olivia said. He’s working on studying Handel and Bach’s sacred canons. (They laughed.) You even write some yourself, don’t you, Ben?
Ben and I looked up at each other, and I smiled at him directly. He returned it, bashful and precious.
I love canons, I said.
Ben smiled.
You must come to the Vernier’s first symphony concert, he said. I’m arranging vespers for strings.
Oh, those were the vespers. So hauntingly low they made echoes in my shoulder, and my joints burst from the feeling of them. That was Ben. I saw him and I knew him intimately as if I made him bare. That was a chilling thought.
(The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.)
I’ll be there, I said. I did not mention knowing him or that I was a violist. We did not meet when we practiced for the first time as an orchestra – I wondered if Ben was watching after all, whether this was an elaborate way to catch me lying. To expose me for the glittering snake that I was.
I don’t know if it was my imagination, but Olivia and Marie felt tense and a little less steady as we all stood together. One of us had to leave, so I turned and left. Olivia – or Marie’s – intense laughter warmed the empty chapel. If I caught the door, I would not have to hear Ben speak familiarly. My covetousness was more intense than I could have imagined. When I reached my room twenty minutes later, I went straight to bed, convinced that I’d escape this like a sick dream. Something that could be cured with two tablets, water, and twenty minutes of a Beethoven cello-piano sonata.
(Which was what I'd endured.)
The Langleys finished their speech on female submission. I can't recall the exact words; their message was a cold wash on my face, a sweet scent. I only imagined submitting to someone like Ben. It was pure in my case. I did not care about the others -- not even for Phoebe, who seemed caught in a trace state even after the Langleys gave up the stage to thunderous applause -- but I wanted to aspire to that ideal because I knew it would make me feel attractive. Phoebe seemed so dazed that I had to help her get up. She was wired again, once on two feet. She ran from me and to the friends she'd spoken to before, discussing and parsing the speech with a pair of Californian twins whose accents made me think of sin and the beach. They might have gone toward the stage to try to catch the Langley sisters, but they were caught in such a thick knot of women, they gave up, vowing to try later. And though Phoebe left me to stand on my own, I did not mind. And I still looked around the room for Ben, if only to prove that he was not a mere figment of my imagination. I stood until the entire chapel cleared and I was alone with Dean Harper, who waited for the Langleys to exit the stage so that he could pelt them with a hundred thousand questions about their book. They were gracious and smiling after every question. Olivia even touched the professor's arm in a friendly gesture, which took me aback.
Then, the professor was gone, too, and the Langley sisters bent down next to the stage to pick up their handbags. Without thinking, I left my pew and approached them.
I love your mission, I said.
I made sure to stand as far away from them as I could manage without seeming rude. Their energy was palpable; it intimidated me. Olivia and Marie both displayed their fluorescent smiles, but this made me more uneasy, even though they appeared sincere.
It's not our mission, Olivia -- or Marie? -- said.
It's yours., Marie -- or Olivia -- said. You know that this is important or else you would not have come.
We stood for am moment excited from nothing. And then Olivia saw something -- someone -- behind me and screamed.
She screamed for Ben. I barely heard him behind me. His feet were tentative even in the building with the loudest floor in the university.
In a moment, he stood between them again. He wore a pair of pressed slacks and a shirt. I noticed his shoes. I did not look up at his face.
Are you a freshman? they asked.
Sophomore.
Olivia put her hands over her mouth with exaggerated exaltation. Oh, Ben, she said.
Marie smiled. It looks like Vernier College has a lot to offer you, she told him. By way of explanation, Olivia told me that Ben was a transfer from Liberty – Vernier had a better sound design program, Olivia said. She wasn’t above a little bragging – she made it clear that Ben was too good for the Falwell institution.
He can do God’s work here, Olivia said. He’s working on studying Handel and Bach’s sacred canons. (They laughed.) You even write some yourself, don’t you, Ben?
Ben and I looked up at each other, and I smiled at him directly. He returned it, bashful and precious.
I love canons, I said.
Ben smiled.
You must come to the Vernier’s first symphony concert, he said. I’m arranging vespers for strings.
Oh, those were the vespers. So hauntingly low they made echoes in my shoulder, and my joints burst from the feeling of them. That was Ben. I saw him and I knew him intimately as if I made him bare. That was a chilling thought.
(The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.)
I’ll be there, I said. I did not mention knowing him or that I was a violist. We did not meet when we practiced for the first time as an orchestra – I wondered if Ben was watching after all, whether this was an elaborate way to catch me lying. To expose me for the glittering snake that I was.
I don’t know if it was my imagination, but Olivia and Marie felt tense and a little less steady as we all stood together. One of us had to leave, so I turned and left. Olivia – or Marie’s – intense laughter warmed the empty chapel. If I caught the door, I would not have to hear Ben speak familiarly. My covetousness was more intense than I could have imagined. When I reached my room twenty minutes later, I went straight to bed, convinced that I’d escape this like a sick dream. Something that could be cured with two tablets, water, and twenty minutes of a Beethoven cello-piano sonata.
Chapter 1, contd (3)
The chapel was packed. I noticed that most of the people sitting in the pews in front of me were young women. They wore their calf-length skirts as stylishly as most women their age might pull off a pair of skinny jeans. It was all in the hips and the gait and the self-confidence. The small stage was almost empty except for a podium and a small bench at the corner of the platform. I focused on the podium. The waspish buzzing around me didn't answer any of my questions: what book?
Phoebe left to have a conversation with another girl two rows in front of us and I looked around for Ben. Of course he would not be here, I thought, suddenly hating the all-female crowd. I know this sounds awful. The strike should not have affected me so much. I did not know his name. I did not even remember him truly. Love at first sight was impossibility. It was a travesty against a God who wanted us to grow into our love. It was a weakness, not strength. The world has and will always be full of temptation, I knew. This was the Devil. That laugh was the Devil.
I had my hands in my lap, my back arched. The hem of my skirt played against my legs. A girl in front of me turned around and motioned me to come closer to her so that she could tell me something.
What's the blog URL? she asked.
The blog?
I forgot it this morning, she said. I tried to look it up again, but Google's blocked.
I rolled my eyes, and we laughed.
I wanted to read about Marie, she said. When she absorbed my cluelessness, she continued, Marie was that friend of Olivia's that left her feminist college and came home to live with her parents.
Oh, I said.
So inspiring, she gushed. Marcie and Olivia were responsible for bringing her around to Christ. Such a radical transformation.
It looks like you already know what's happened, I said.
My computer crashed, she said flatly.
Computer issues were the butt of so many jokes on campus. It had something to do with the aggressive filtering software used by student life. I supported its use wholeheartedly, but it always crashed the system. (I did not appreciate it when, once, this happened as I was researching a paper on the Inquisition.)
Olivia and Marcie, I said, are they the Langleys?
She nodded. Marcie's the taller one, she said.
Then I heard a couple of short, sharp microphone taps before noticing that Phoebe was beside me again.
Sorry, she whispered.
She shook her head so violently that the entire row swayed a little bit. I saw the others shooting her poisonous glances, but Phoebe's nervous tick answered to nothing. Anne Dyer was the Humanities department secretary and she never spoke two words together without shivering. Her discomfort when it came to speaking with others was so intense it was contagious. I've seen others around her feel nervous. We met whenever I went to the registrar to clear up my schedule, and she felt papery-thin behind her desk there. The podium dwarfed her as she adjusted her glasses and tried to seem invisible.
When she said Welcome, the whisper generated such sharp feedback that Phoebe nearly punched my leg with her fist. After she finished meandering through an underwhelming speech she surrendered the stage.
I heard the Langleys' heels before I saw them. They were confident and even more modest than the rest of us; both sisters wore ankle length skirts and ironed blouses with cuffs that went past their wrists. Their skin was to their advantage in the harsh light and their silent vivaciousness cut through the eagerness in the room.
They saw something about the podium that they did not like. They called Anne Dyer back to the stage and pointed at the microphone. At first not understanding, a male professor sitting in the wings went up to the stage and searched for a spare microphone. He had to go into the tiny room behind the stage in order to grab one, which he did, corduroy jacket flying behind him as he rushed toward the sisters. Only when the microphones were placed to the Langleys' satisfaction, did one of them -- was it Marie or Olivia? -- took the microphone and tapped it again.
Sisters in Christ! she cheered.
Her voice was low. She had to have been a singer. It was the sultry voice of an opera singer who had just sung a bruising aria. She went on to thank the various organizers and professors that allowed them to use the chapel. I saw the faculty in the front row, ruddy and beaming in the bad light. They were proud of themselves and left their Bibles over their laps, crepe pages opened at random.
The Sisters in Christ! That's what we were, except for the handful of men who'd squeezed themselves into pockets of women around the room. What were they here to listen to? Roald Dahl's Witches spoke to an all-female audience just like this one. I looked at Phoebe and tried to imagine her in a wig, wearing gloves, without toes.
You are all here because you are tired, she began.
The whispers stopped.
You are tired because you watch the world around you, and nothing you can do can stop its collapse.
This kind of apocalyptic talk was pretty common in our college, but I'd never heard it done so convincingly before. They fear our culture and so they hate us. Nothing you can do alone can stop the collapse of our society. We must turn to our fellow churched beings and pray for the salvation of our world. These were familiar lines. Even at my worst I recognized the insecurity in them, the defensiveness. But Olivia sang her insecurity to the music of a sacred hymn. Phoebe closed her eyes and rocked to the powerful rhythm.
You see society around you, the secular among you, throw away their lives like old water, Olivia continued. But there is so much more.
So much more, Phoebe muttered.
We've written about it countless times, Olivia said. About girls who have entered secular colleges and fell to sin and temptation. Who felt pressured to leave the houses of their fathers and become victim to the fallen idols of feminism.
Phoebe squirmed next to me.
(She was not in her father's house. Did this make her a victim to the fallen idols of feminism? My fervor made me numb. I was beyond the self-doubt. I was the truth. I floated above the siren symphonies of the Devil's thoughts and pleas. But I stared at Olivia before searching for Ben. I could not find him.)
And now we are touring colleges across the country to ask the new Christian generation of women what they think, Olivia continued. Do you think you are prepared to be good helpmeets to your father and then to your husband? What does it mean to submit?
Marie tapped her own microphone and leaned over. Her bird neck craned, long and elegant, toward the podium.
And I'm sure that you've asked yourselves why the Bible tells us to submit. It's not because we are inferior.
(She laughed, as if the very idea was stupid.
Phoebe hid her laughter behind her hands.)
It is because we're equals. Why would the Bible tell us to submit if we were not equals? If we were inferior, then God wouldn't need to tell us so in the Bible, or to illustrate this with countless examples.
(I could quote this without even reading my Bible:
We submit to authority not because we are less deserving but because we are strong enough to subordinate ourselves. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5: 22-23))
Phoebe left to have a conversation with another girl two rows in front of us and I looked around for Ben. Of course he would not be here, I thought, suddenly hating the all-female crowd. I know this sounds awful. The strike should not have affected me so much. I did not know his name. I did not even remember him truly. Love at first sight was impossibility. It was a travesty against a God who wanted us to grow into our love. It was a weakness, not strength. The world has and will always be full of temptation, I knew. This was the Devil. That laugh was the Devil.
I had my hands in my lap, my back arched. The hem of my skirt played against my legs. A girl in front of me turned around and motioned me to come closer to her so that she could tell me something.
What's the blog URL? she asked.
The blog?
I forgot it this morning, she said. I tried to look it up again, but Google's blocked.
I rolled my eyes, and we laughed.
I wanted to read about Marie, she said. When she absorbed my cluelessness, she continued, Marie was that friend of Olivia's that left her feminist college and came home to live with her parents.
Oh, I said.
So inspiring, she gushed. Marcie and Olivia were responsible for bringing her around to Christ. Such a radical transformation.
It looks like you already know what's happened, I said.
My computer crashed, she said flatly.
Computer issues were the butt of so many jokes on campus. It had something to do with the aggressive filtering software used by student life. I supported its use wholeheartedly, but it always crashed the system. (I did not appreciate it when, once, this happened as I was researching a paper on the Inquisition.)
Olivia and Marcie, I said, are they the Langleys?
She nodded. Marcie's the taller one, she said.
Then I heard a couple of short, sharp microphone taps before noticing that Phoebe was beside me again.
Sorry, she whispered.
She shook her head so violently that the entire row swayed a little bit. I saw the others shooting her poisonous glances, but Phoebe's nervous tick answered to nothing. Anne Dyer was the Humanities department secretary and she never spoke two words together without shivering. Her discomfort when it came to speaking with others was so intense it was contagious. I've seen others around her feel nervous. We met whenever I went to the registrar to clear up my schedule, and she felt papery-thin behind her desk there. The podium dwarfed her as she adjusted her glasses and tried to seem invisible.
When she said Welcome, the whisper generated such sharp feedback that Phoebe nearly punched my leg with her fist. After she finished meandering through an underwhelming speech she surrendered the stage.
I heard the Langleys' heels before I saw them. They were confident and even more modest than the rest of us; both sisters wore ankle length skirts and ironed blouses with cuffs that went past their wrists. Their skin was to their advantage in the harsh light and their silent vivaciousness cut through the eagerness in the room.
They saw something about the podium that they did not like. They called Anne Dyer back to the stage and pointed at the microphone. At first not understanding, a male professor sitting in the wings went up to the stage and searched for a spare microphone. He had to go into the tiny room behind the stage in order to grab one, which he did, corduroy jacket flying behind him as he rushed toward the sisters. Only when the microphones were placed to the Langleys' satisfaction, did one of them -- was it Marie or Olivia? -- took the microphone and tapped it again.
Sisters in Christ! she cheered.
Her voice was low. She had to have been a singer. It was the sultry voice of an opera singer who had just sung a bruising aria. She went on to thank the various organizers and professors that allowed them to use the chapel. I saw the faculty in the front row, ruddy and beaming in the bad light. They were proud of themselves and left their Bibles over their laps, crepe pages opened at random.
The Sisters in Christ! That's what we were, except for the handful of men who'd squeezed themselves into pockets of women around the room. What were they here to listen to? Roald Dahl's Witches spoke to an all-female audience just like this one. I looked at Phoebe and tried to imagine her in a wig, wearing gloves, without toes.
You are all here because you are tired, she began.
The whispers stopped.
You are tired because you watch the world around you, and nothing you can do can stop its collapse.
This kind of apocalyptic talk was pretty common in our college, but I'd never heard it done so convincingly before. They fear our culture and so they hate us. Nothing you can do alone can stop the collapse of our society. We must turn to our fellow churched beings and pray for the salvation of our world. These were familiar lines. Even at my worst I recognized the insecurity in them, the defensiveness. But Olivia sang her insecurity to the music of a sacred hymn. Phoebe closed her eyes and rocked to the powerful rhythm.
You see society around you, the secular among you, throw away their lives like old water, Olivia continued. But there is so much more.
So much more, Phoebe muttered.
We've written about it countless times, Olivia said. About girls who have entered secular colleges and fell to sin and temptation. Who felt pressured to leave the houses of their fathers and become victim to the fallen idols of feminism.
Phoebe squirmed next to me.
(She was not in her father's house. Did this make her a victim to the fallen idols of feminism? My fervor made me numb. I was beyond the self-doubt. I was the truth. I floated above the siren symphonies of the Devil's thoughts and pleas. But I stared at Olivia before searching for Ben. I could not find him.)
And now we are touring colleges across the country to ask the new Christian generation of women what they think, Olivia continued. Do you think you are prepared to be good helpmeets to your father and then to your husband? What does it mean to submit?
Marie tapped her own microphone and leaned over. Her bird neck craned, long and elegant, toward the podium.
And I'm sure that you've asked yourselves why the Bible tells us to submit. It's not because we are inferior.
(She laughed, as if the very idea was stupid.
Phoebe hid her laughter behind her hands.)
It is because we're equals. Why would the Bible tell us to submit if we were not equals? If we were inferior, then God wouldn't need to tell us so in the Bible, or to illustrate this with countless examples.
(I could quote this without even reading my Bible:
We submit to authority not because we are less deserving but because we are strong enough to subordinate ourselves. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5: 22-23))
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Chapter 1, contd (2)
Phoebe came to my room before the dinner bell. At Vernier College, each dorm is equipped with a dinner bell that rings at exactly six-thirty. All classes end by five, but my last finished at four fifteen, so I practiced in my abandoned dorm while my roommates put their heads together in the hallway trying to plan a mission trip to Bolivia. My hand was busy trying to twist itself into fourth position. My instrument made me ache. The stress of holding it up was too much for me -- I felt the pressure of it everywhere on my body. Even the music was incidental, a strangled cry for something I could not name and was not doing correctly. When I was interrupted I put down my instrument and waited for the instant wave of relief.
Phoebe bounced on her heels. If she could, she would have dragged me from the room.
Are they serving eggplant parmesan? I asked.
Eggplant parmesan was the usual reason for Phoebe's excitement; little else motivated her to do anything. She rhapsodized about food a little less than she did the Lord, but I understood. If I had a grandmother like hers, I might do that, too.
I put the viola back in its case and zipped it shut.
No, Phoebe said. The Langley sisters.
I smiled and shook my head.
We saw them today, remember? By Williams chapel?
(How could I forget? So that's who they were. Langley. I never heard of them, but as soon as Phoebe mentioned them I felt the power of their brand. The Langley sisters. They reminded me of amazons or the large pagan works of art that commemorated the naked female form. Maybe this was the source of my revulsion. Their sheer power and beauty.)
Oh, I said. That's who they were.
Did you read their book? Phoebe asked.
I shook my head and slung my handbag over my shoulder, ready to leave. Phoebe grabbed my hand, something she never did. She hated to touch or be touched.
Say you'll come with me, Phoebe said.
She hurried to catch up with me. Somehow I had to quash my gag reflex. I felt ill from the headache this afternoon, and the pressure. Perhaps I should not have practiced. Even the thought of the string on an under-rosined bow made my teeth tremble.
They're speaking at the chapel this evening after dinner, she said breathlessly. And I really want to go.
I never saw Phoebe this desperate about anything, not even eggplant parmesan.
Sure, I said.
As we left Greene dorm, the air reverberated with Phoebe's silent squeals.
But I was not thinking of her. I only thought of Ben, the as-yet nameless creature whose laugh stole my heart that afternoon. It seems stupid now, but I was struck. I would have done anything to see him again.
Phoebe bounced on her heels. If she could, she would have dragged me from the room.
Are they serving eggplant parmesan? I asked.
Eggplant parmesan was the usual reason for Phoebe's excitement; little else motivated her to do anything. She rhapsodized about food a little less than she did the Lord, but I understood. If I had a grandmother like hers, I might do that, too.
I put the viola back in its case and zipped it shut.
No, Phoebe said. The Langley sisters.
I smiled and shook my head.
We saw them today, remember? By Williams chapel?
(How could I forget? So that's who they were. Langley. I never heard of them, but as soon as Phoebe mentioned them I felt the power of their brand. The Langley sisters. They reminded me of amazons or the large pagan works of art that commemorated the naked female form. Maybe this was the source of my revulsion. Their sheer power and beauty.)
Oh, I said. That's who they were.
Did you read their book? Phoebe asked.
I shook my head and slung my handbag over my shoulder, ready to leave. Phoebe grabbed my hand, something she never did. She hated to touch or be touched.
Say you'll come with me, Phoebe said.
She hurried to catch up with me. Somehow I had to quash my gag reflex. I felt ill from the headache this afternoon, and the pressure. Perhaps I should not have practiced. Even the thought of the string on an under-rosined bow made my teeth tremble.
They're speaking at the chapel this evening after dinner, she said breathlessly. And I really want to go.
I never saw Phoebe this desperate about anything, not even eggplant parmesan.
Sure, I said.
As we left Greene dorm, the air reverberated with Phoebe's silent squeals.
But I was not thinking of her. I only thought of Ben, the as-yet nameless creature whose laugh stole my heart that afternoon. It seems stupid now, but I was struck. I would have done anything to see him again.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Chapter 1, contd.
I remember writing this in the margins of Kings 1: I am not sure how this has happened to me. It is like a disease. I have a fever. People who are in love always describe it as a glorious sickness, but how can I even say that I am in love? I am struck. It is a moment I will forget. For a moment, the Lord was supplanted in my thoughts. I can only beg forgiveness.
My pen tore a hole in the page.
Forgiveness.
I did not know it then, but that was the word that meant the beginning of the end for me.
My pen tore a hole in the page.
Forgiveness.
I did not know it then, but that was the word that meant the beginning of the end for me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)