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))
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