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.)



A thousand ripped letters are strewn across my desk. I have never sent any of them. They are addressed to my nearest and dearest. And they chronicle the loss of my faith.

Marie and Sophia,


I have come so close to hating you, but you are incapable of understanding it. And it won’t do to hate those who are incapable of hatred.

Ben,


I love you, but I cannot compete with God.


1

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. --Hebrews 10:23

The first time I saw Ben, I wanted him to fall in love with me. The weakness was so strong I almost vomited, and my temples wanted to burst beneath the pressure of my fingers when I held my head in my hands.

My friend Phoebe and I were on the way to our Bible study group. It was a real trek across the lawn to the building where it was held, so I stopped by one of the old willow trees and adjusted my shoe. That's when I saw Ben; he stood across the plaza and in front of the wizened chapel next to two tall women, whose patrician faces were whipped by the biting wind and hair as strong as flags. I felt a sharp stab of jealousy for a man I did not know and about women I could only aspire to emulate. Though Phoebe waited for me near James Hall, I took my time with my shoe, massaging my bare, aching feet. One hand stroked her collarbone to smooth her thumb over a pearl necklace and the other hand kept her skirt firmly by her knees. It was this care for her skirt that made me understand that she was impatient, but I did not care. I had to look at Ben, and the more I looked at him, the less I could remember his actual appearance. It was the gentleness that I saw, the way he left his hands by his sides and was content to listen. How he laughed.

Then I joined Phoebe, who rocked her Bible against her chest. The scene by the chapel caught her interest, too. But her eyes were for the women who stood near him, who now kissed Ben lightly on the cheek before leaving for the parking lot.

Have you heard of them? Phoebe whispered.

I stood closer to her. No, I said.

Her eyes were bright. She seemed star struck, blushing as she watched the women slip behind the chapel. Then she glanced at her watch.

Who are they? I asked.

Phoebe wasn't done craning her neck to catch the last of their clacking heels.

If we don't leave now, we'll get demerits, I said.

I tapped her shoulder and she shivered, straightening up. The women were now out of sight, and the sharp pressure in my chest eased. Phoebe smoothed her hands over her hair one last time, and together we went to James Hall.

#

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.

#

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.
#

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))

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.