Page 74 of If This is Love

He didn’t let go. I kept screaming. I flailed at him, and he used my high puff to swing me through the door and down the steps, but my knees never hit the ground. This evil man could swing me and shake me like a ragdoll, but there’s no way I was going to let my knees hit the floor. The only two things I would ever kneel for weren’t even in this building because one was my dead husband and the other was my god, and God wasn’t in this place.

This was hell fleeced over with riches given to him by people he manipulated.

“Ruth, you have lost your ever-loving mind,” Abraham barked at me. He and all the elders were now standing across the room, blocking the only other door out of here. “None of us are leaving this room until you get this under control. You need to repent, girl.”

“I havenothingtorepentfor,” I said through my teeth. “You all live in an alternate world. You don’t even see what all this really is.” I crossed my shaking arms over my chest and lifted my chin. “Move away from that door. I am leaving.”

Abraham took a step closer to me. “Girl, you need to understand that all of this is nothing buttough lovebecause you haven’t been able to break yourself of this spirit of lasciviousness and rebellion.”

“Love?” I bitterly laughed out the word. “Well, if this is love, I don’t want it anywhere near me.” My chin was shaking out of control, and my eyes were flooding, andmy god, my god, my god. “If this is love, love is a terrible, awful thing.” I pointed at an ornate, shining purple satin banner on the wall that spelled out a few lines of a Bible verse,love is patient, love is kind.“If this is love, thenthatis a lie. If this is love, your god is a liar and so are you, and this awful place you created is going to crumble right out from under your feet.”

Pastor John crossed the room in two long strides and threw his hand across my face, the blunt pain and force of it lighting up my vision with whiteness for a second.

But my knees still didn’t hit the floor.

I just backed up, pulled out my phone, dialed, and made a call on speaker.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“Yes, my pastor just assaulted me, and I’d like to press charges. His name is John Copeland. I’m at Eagle Hill Church on Doris-Miser Road in Neville, and he’s about to take my phone. My name is Ruth Washburn.”

“Okay, Ruth, I’m notifying the police right now. Are you able to leave the building?”

I swallowed, staring at the four big, scary men, who for some reason looked really,reallynervous all of a sudden. “Yes, ma’am. Yes, I can leave, and I’m leaving right now.”

Pastor John didn’t try to take my phone, but he did back up to continue blocking the door. So I was just going to leave through the stage.

I turned and started for the backstage door when Abraham spoke up.

“Ruth, don’t you dare even think about going back to that house if you walk out of here like this. I will see to it that you loseeverything.”

A sarcastic, heartbroken huff lurched out of my throat as I looked back at him. “I losteverythingsix months ago.”

And then I left.

I marched through the door. I marched up the steps. I marched to the center of the stage and bent down to pick up the microphone. Five hundred pairs of eyes were staring at me beyond the lights, and I lifted the microphone to my mouth.

“Your pastor just assaulted me,” I told the pin-drop-silent amphitheater. “The police are on their way. Astrid.” I lifted my arm to shield my eyes from the bright lights so I could scan the room. “Astrid, I can’t see you, but I’m leaving. It’s time.”

“I’m here!” came his voice from the far end of the sanctuary. “Come on, sis, let’s go.”

I lingered for all of three seconds staring out at the mass of humanity, holding the microphone at the level of my shoulder while spite and scorn rushed through my whole body, and I just let it go.

Mic. Drop.

Itsthunkloudly bounced around the cavernous space, and I was out of there.

I marched down the steps and up the aisle that I’d walked with Michael only four years earlier. And tears were silently streaming down my face, over my aching, throbbing cheek, and everyone was staring and murmuring, but I kept my chin high and reminded myself that Michael would be proud of me right now. That he was watching this heinous scene from heaven, cheering for me, and maybe Iwouldgo to law school in Norman, Oklahoma.

Halfway down the aisle, some ugly man with ugly, pallid skin called me a name so ugly I wouldn’t even repeat in my mind. But it was a word for women that had no place in the house of God because it was an insult toall womenincluding the mother of God herself, and that only made me swing my hips with every step I took. He spat at me, but he had terrible aim, and his nasty phlegm landed on the floor in my path, and I took greatjoystepping right on it and twisting my shoe to grind it into the pristine, red carpet, wiping my sole clean as I stepped away.

Even women in the pews were looking at me ugly, but that didn’t really matter either because my beautiful, tender-hearted best friend was standing there at the doors with his hand held out.

The police came. Pastor John was arrested. Astrid and I gave statements, and I pressed charges. We did go back to my house to get some of my things. Other than my clothes, I only kept a few sentimental items. I meant what I said to Abraham. That houseful of piddly material things wouldn’t give me back my heart. I didn’t care.

Astrid and I spent the night in a shelter. We stayed there a few days, and then he heard from his cousin in Texas who said we could stay there. I had no idea what I’d do in Texas any more than I had any idea what to do in Louisiana, and I’d already found a women’s shelter nearby that I liked well enough. I didn’t care. It was hard to care about much when you came from something like that situation, and I was just glad to be free from there.

Where I would go next was a total mystery, but it was hard to care about that, too.

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