Page 73 of If This is Love

A heartbeat of stillness passed before I was ripped away from Astrid by the collar of my Sunday dress and jerked across the room. Abraham and two other elders, a man named Kenneth and one named George, were standing in the hall, glowering into the room at Astrid and me and blocking the door.

“Ruth, we’ve got a real problem, don’t we, sister?” Pastor John rumbled in his biggest, most patronizing voice. He’d gotten really tired of mynonsenseas they all called it. All these sinful secret meetings with my best friend. My lack of joy in serving my father-in-law and the visitors tohis home. My demeanor that was prickly at best. “You have let this spirit of lasciviousness run roughshod all over your life, and you need intervention. You needintercession. What in God’s good name are you eventhinkingslinking around this holy church, corrupting this sissy boy and spreading your sin all over the place?” He pointed at Astrid across the room. “You know we’re already having plenty of problems with that boy, and I’m starting to think he’s struggling because you won’t leave him alone. Abraham and I have hadlongconversations about how you did all this to his son, too. So unless you’ve got a really good explanation this time, I think we’re going to have to nip all this in the bud right now.” He pointed at me. “I have already delayed this Sunday service to deal with you, so you’d better get to explaining.”

I was just numb. “I’m sorry, Pastor, I don’t know what specifically I need to explain right now.”

“Did you know,” he boomed, stalking in a slow circle around me while I felt all my blood rush to my feet and my eyes glaze over, “the spirit of lasciviousness is directly related to the spirit ofwitchcraft, Ruth? It is. And that’s why you’ve been suffering like you have been for months. This spirit of lasciviousness is breaking you down in front of all of our eyes, and you are letting that spirit of witchcraft into your life, and it’s justwrecking you. So why don’t you just start with telling us why you left the sanctuary to come back here and this boy followed you?”

Theboyhe was talking about was twenty-six years old. He was only aboyin all of their eyes because they suspected his secret and believed they could beat it out of him with intercessory prayer, and decided in the process that he wasn’t a grown man because of it. He didn’t fit whattheydecided a man was, so they treated him like a child, and I was so sick of it all that I could’ve vomited right there in the middle of the prayer room.

“Pastor, he is not a boy,” I mumbled, deadpan and tired. “He’s a grown man, and he came to this room with me because he’s my friend, and I’m going through a hard time, and I wanted to see my friend.” I slid my vacant eyes to Abraham. “He’s not allowed to call on me at my home anymore, and I believe the Lord said the church is intended for fellowship.”

“Notthiskind offellowship, you smart-mouthed little snit,” Pastor John snapped. “And we’re just going to have to do this the old-fashioned way since you’ve got a spirit of rebellion, too.”

Before I could even think, he’d grabbed the collar of my dress again and shoved me toward the door so fast I lost my footing, but I didn’t fall. He switched his hold to my upper arm, squeezing it so hard I knew there was going to be a bruise later, and something inside me was burning so hot and furiously that I was about to blow my top like a pressure cooker.

He was dragging me down the hall toward the doors that led to the elders’ private prayer room and the steps that led to the stage in the sanctuary, and I marched with him. I didn’t care. I was about to do something, and I didn’t know what, but it wasn’t going to be what he was about to try to force me to do.

We burst through the ornate, etched-glass doors of the private senior prayer room, and he dragged me toward the door that led to the steps and the sanctuary stage, and threw it open. I was in pitch blackness for about ten paces and then the bright, fancy lights of the stage blinded me.

“Church, we’ve got a problem here!” he announced to the massive auditorium. “We’ve got some serious sin in the ranks. And what happens when there’s sin in the ranks?”

“It robs us of our freedom!”the congregation chanted back to him.

“That’s right!” Pastor John was strutting across the stage like a damn rooster, and I shuddered. The organist tickled the ivories with a quick melody intended to pump up the crowd. “And how do we deal with sin!”

“A confession of faith!”

“That’s right!” He chuckled smugly and clapped his hands together around the microphone he was holding. “Praise the name of the Lord. Praise God.” He strode up to me, shoving the microphone in my face like this was a twisted game show and he was the host. “Now, sister, this is your opportunity to condemn all that sin in your life and march forth in truefreedom.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d done this. Plenty of scandal had slithered around in the dark, shadowy corners of this community. Pastor John used to be married. He cheated on his wife, and then he made her get up here and tell everyone all the ways she had so poorly served her husband that she drove him to adultery. They only stayed married a few years after that. I heard that she’d gone to law school and was now an attorney in Norman, Oklahoma.

And for some reason, law school sounded kind of appealing all of a sudden. Norman, Oklahoma sounded appealing, too. Calling up my pastor’s ex-wife to sob and ask how she’d managed to escape sounded most appealing of all.

The lights were too bright for me to see anything but the microphone in front of my face. My panting breath was amplified through the atmosphere of the entire five-hundred-seat amphitheater. Even if I was down to keep playing this game with these terrible people, I still didn’t even know what the sin was that they wanted me to confess.

Hugging my friend in privacy?

Wantingprivacyin myown home?

Wanting to justgrievefor my husband?

Wanting to just have one damn day to myself where I could sort through everything I had been through since I lost the one real thing I’d ever known?

No.

No.

No.

The game was over. That was enough. This wasn’t a life.

I was going to law school in Norman, Oklahoma.

Or maybe I wasn’t, but that’s where I was going to pretend I was going becauseI was leavingthis place, and I had to pretend I had somewhere to go.

I turned from the bright lights and started to march off the stage when Pastor John grabbed my hair where it was swept onto the top of my head, jerking me back so hard that I stumbled, but I didn’t fall. He dropped the microphone with a loudthumpand feedback screech that cut through the air along with a collective gasp from hundreds of people.

My hands flew to my hair—Michael had always called it acrown, and who thehellwas this evil man thinking he could lay a finger on something this holy—and I screeched like the wild woman every single one of them already thought I was, “You will not touch my hair, you rancid charlatan!”

---