In the Wilderness Read online

  It was Luke I thought of one Sunday night as I waited for my parents to finish their good-byes. Brother Lang’s sermon had been a long one, and everyone seemed ready to file from the pews and head home. No one had a special need or pressing confession to present to the congregation—not even Sister Paxson, a large, dark woman given to fits of lumbago, who normally went forward to have her swollen knees anointed with the thick green olive oil kept pushed to the back of the lectern. People had already begun pulling on their coats and shaking hands with their neighbors when Brother Lang stepped from the stage and clapped his hands together.

  “Our work here tonight is not done,” he announced loudly. Everyone stopped still, eyes widening with sudden interest. “There is one among us who has a weakness, a need.” He released one of his hands and held it out, fingers together, pointed at me like a hatchet. “Sister Kim, will you come forward?”

  My parents looked from Brother Lang to me, then shuffled back to let me pass, their hands lifted in prayer, palms up, as if to catch rain. Those who had left their seats, thinking the evening’s worship closed, settled back into their rows.

  What was it I needed? My throat wasn’t sore. The pain in my shins had stopped, healed by the woman revivalist in Orofino who told me I lacked calcium, pressed her thumbs into my temples until my head pounded, then released me with her encouragement to drink more milk. As I walked down the aisle, mentally checking my stomach for pain, the balance of my shoulders and hips, I passed Luke. He sat in the front, leaned casually into the pew’s hard corner. Even the backs of his ears were beautiful.

  Brother Lang grasped my shoulders, then gently pivoted me to the congregation. I looked out over the room, into the upturned faces and moving mouths of God’s people. Luke, only a few feet away, met my eyes with such intensity I felt suddenly paralyzed. He was seeing something in me no one else could see, something that threaded through the soles of my feet and into my leg bones like the ancient canes of berries, piercing my bowels and lungs, twining its tendrils around my throat so that I labored to breathe. The intimacy of his vision was not holy. The way his mouth, lips slightly parted, drew me in with all the air in the room made me reel. The hands gripped my shoulders tighter. I felt each finger and thumb press into my flesh—I counted them under my breath, eyes closed.

  “Sister Kim,” the voice spoke to the back of my head, “how long have you been burdened with poor sight?”

  I opened my eyes slowly, blinking for a moment to force the room into focus. My mother stood with her hands clasped in front of her breasts.

  I thought back to that August afternoon, to the birds on the wire. How old had I been? That girl was another lifetime ago. Was I eight?

  “At least three years,” I whispered.

  “These glasses are a heavy burden. The Lord can heal these eyes, and will,” Brother Lang turned me back to face him, “if you will only have faith.”

  I looked into his own eyes, so dark the pupil and iris bled together. Like the eyes of an animal, I thought.

  Until that moment, I had seldom considered my vision. The glasses were a part of me, an extension of my body. Because of them I could see my way from one room to another without holding to the walls and shuffling my feet. Now, their presence seemed less a gift than a flaw, a mark of weakness.

  I felt a sudden growing shame, the same shame I felt at the new roundness of my breasts, the hair in hidden places. I lowered my head. I remembered my hand cupping Sister Baxter’s fevered ear. The image reviled me. How foolish to believe that I held in my power the gift to discern the infirmity of another: I could not even see the reflection of my own face in the mirror without the grotesque magnification of glass.

  “Sister Kim. Do you have faith?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “Do you believe God can heal your eyes?”

  I nodded again. I had never before been afraid of prayer. Many times I had felt the laying-on of hands. Now the preacher’s fingers seemed locked, digging into the soft pockets of flesh between my neck and shoulders.

  I did not want to be there, my ears filled with moans and high singing building into the staccato rhythm of tongues. I did not want others to see my disgrace: my pride had blinded me to the blemishes of my own body. In believing that I, a silly, stammering girl, could work miracles, I had drawn attention to myself. My spiritual vision had clouded to match my eyesight. I thought of Luke, the cloistered stairway. Had I really believed God could not see through such blackness?

  I waited, eyes closed, for the touch of pungent oil, Brother Lang’s finger sliding twice across my forehead in the shape of a cross. Instead, I felt my glasses lifted from my face. I opened my eyes to see the blur of his hand tucking the dark frames into the pocket of his white shirt.

  I lost my balance and grabbed for his arm. He steadied me, then pressed his thumbs against my eyelids. The prayers rose higher, a loud thrum of joined voices, yet each voice distinct and recognizable: Brother Story’s b’s and p’s popped from his lips in little explosions; his wife’s language was a monotone string of m’s, ah’s and long e’s, sustained, it seemed, without her ever having to take a breath. The combined chant surrounded me like the amplified murmurings of bees.

  “Hear us now, Jesus. We come to Thee to ask that these eyes be healed. Heal these eyes, Dear Lord, so that our sister might see clearly all you have created.”

  He made short, sharp jerks with his hands. I strained with the effort to keep rigid.

  “She knows, Lord, that if she has enough faith, if she will only believe, she will be healed!”

  Others were shouting now. Their feet stomped the wooden floor as they called on the Spirit, Jesus. Sweet Jesus.

  Then the hands pulled away, the voices quieted, and I opened my eyes.

  “Sister Kim, how many fingers am I holding up?”

  I blinked, my vision still dark with the print of his thumbs. His hand floated so close I could see the half-circle of his wedding band.

  “Three,” I answered. Somewhere behind me, Sister Johnson called out, “Praise the Lord!”

  “Can you see your parents?” The hand was at my arm, turning me once again to the room. I looked to where I left my family. Browns and blues washed together as though I were looking through water. I peered harder. Sister Johnson twirled in the aisle—I recognized her high-pitched voice, the characteristic trilling of her glossolalia. But I could not see my mother and father, only the arms raised to heaven, undulating like meadow grass. I shook my head. No one seemed to notice. The room vibrated with the loud praise of men and women given over to the Spirit. Sister Lang pounded out a hymn on the upright, and I knew the meeting would last long into the night.

  “You must believe and you will be healed. Go home tonight and pray for faith to accept this truth.” Brother Lang released me, and I felt my way up the aisle until my father caught my wrist.

  Three days passed before I regained my sight. Three days of not seeing the blackboard, of being unable to find the swings at recess. I told my teachers and friends my glasses were broken and let them lead me like a pet dog. I clutched my mother’s sleeve when we walked to and from the car, and even though I had never needed it before, I began to leave a light on at bedtime: If I woke, I could not see beyond the lamp’s dim silhouette. I was no longer a child secure in my parents’ bed, their closeness giving boundaries to my nighttime world.

  Did my mother feel her own faith waiver, watching from the window as I stumbled up the driveway to catch the bus, holding to my brother’s coattail, clutching the books I could not read? Did she long to take from that preacher the glasses he had pocketed and lay them beside my bed as I slept? I’d wake and find them there, my prayers answered, the prayers of a child wandering scared, lost in the waters, waiting for a hand to reach from the bank and pull her to safety.

  I imagine my mother kissing my eyes when she believed I was deep into dreams, as I now kiss the fluttering and delicate lids of my own children. I hear her whispering, believe. I open my eye
s and see her disappear into a rectangle of light.

  At the next Wednesday night prayer meeting, Brother Lang slipped the glasses into my hand, as though he himself were embarrassed by my failure. I waited until the singing began before I put them on and reached for the hymnal, thrilled to see the black letters distinct against white pages. It seemed miracle enough. With the book held straight out before me, I began to sing.

  Later, in the stairway, air damp with close breathing, Luke reached to slide the glasses from my face. I caught his hand.

  “You’re so much prettier,” he whispered.

  I folded the hard frames in my palm and clasped them tightly. I closed my eyes and waited in darkness for his kiss.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The company town of Headquarters, just over the hill from the hollow at Dogpatch, consisted of two groups of houses separated by the railroad tracks and large shop buildings belonging to Potlatch. The small dwellings south of the tracks housed company workers—those who felled, hauled, scaled and processed the timber. North of the tracks, behind the Headquarters store, a wooden stairway led up to the Circle, where the road threaded between the shop buildings and store before looping back on itself at the top of the hill.

  The Circle was where the supervisors lived—men who, by skill or inheritance, held positions above the other workers. The homes facing one another across the Circle were larger and better appointed than most I had seen. Real grass rather than wild clover and timothy grew to the doors of the houses. The children who departed the Circle to catch the school bus, taking the wooden steps two at a time, wore store-bought clothes. The boys had cartoon lunch pails; the older girls shimmered in nylons and red leather shoes.

  Lola Johnson and her husband, Pete, lived in the Circle. They had attended Cardiff Spur Mission for years, and they themselves were active missionaries: whale baleen and ivory decorated their walls and shelves. Their house, with its second story and separate dining room, seemed enormous, populated by four boys and one girl, Cynthia, whose room I longed to lounge in and never leave—pink everything, ruffles everywhere, wallpaper with the tiniest rosebuds I had ever seen. Even the sun slanting in through her dormer window, filtered through lace, softened to a delicate and powdery light.

  Before the Langs came to Cardiff and my parents began spending more and more evenings at their table, we had spent a great deal of time with the Johnsons: late-night sledding parties, taffy pulls, dinners of exotic dishes Lola had learned to cook from one native tribe or another. Cumin and curry wafted from her kitchen, and I thought I had never inhaled anything so foreign and rich, as though a hole had been dug in the earth, releasing secret and mysterious smells.

  I remember their easy laughter and their patience with me when I asked to set to ticking the only metronome I had seen in my life. I remember afternoons when my mother and Lola drank coffee at our kitchen table, leaning into their whispered conversation with the intensity of message bearers. And I remember my mother, many months later, standing at the sink, crying as she read the letter Lola had sent—an explanation maybe, perhaps a plea for my mothers intervention, but nothing I can imagine now as a confession.

  From the beginning, Lola had voiced her disapproval of the Langs’ ministry, casting one of the few votes against their bid for pastorship. After their arrival she continued to play the organ during service as she had always done, but now Sister Lang had a place at the piano, playing with modest composure the unembellished chords she had taught herself. Lola, a teacher of music, made the organ an instrument of exuberant praise.

  I see now how she brought judgment upon herself. She prayed louder than most men, twirling in the aisle until the long fall of her auburn hair loosened from its bun and flowed around her shoulders. Sister Lang said once she had seen her at revival dance out of the sanctuary and into the foyer. “I peeked around the corner,” she told us, “and there she was, smoothing her hair and checking her teeth. Then here she came back out, singing and swaying. She thinks she’s got us all fooled, but she ain’t fooling nobody.” I remembered all the times I had heard Lola sing in the Spirit and prophesy in tongues. Even in shapeless skirts and high-necked blouses, there was something unfettered about her, something beautiful. Maybe it was this that caused Brother Lang to dream.

  I sat one night in the parsonage kitchen with my parents, listening transfixed as he told of his vision: a chipmunk with eyes like obsidian rode his shoulders, whispering in his ear an evil seduction. He said that each time he reached to pull the harmless animal from his neck, it would turn into a lion. In fear, he would release his hold, and the demon would resume its original form.

  He mimicked the motions, grabbing the air behind him as though dragging the thing from his neck, his eyes widening in surprised horror as he described the lion’s foul breath and glistening fangs. We felt its weight on our own shoulders as he hunched in his chair, breathed out our own relieved sighs when the monster metamorphosed back into its small squirrel body.

  Finally, he straightened and opened the Bible he held in his lap, one finger marking the chosen passage:

  “He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.” And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.” And he said unto them, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”

  Brother Lang said that God had revealed to him the dream and its meaning: the monster was Lola, full of deceit and cunning, revealing her true nature when threatened—she was predatory, destroying the church with false witness. To drive her from our midst would require great prayer and sacrifice: only the purest spirit could hope to face such a demon without losing his own soul to Satan.

  The Devil walked among us cloaked in good deeds, a devil who could quote Scripture and pray in the tongues of angels. Wasn’t Satan, after all, once an angel Himself? Brother Lang said we must purge ourselves in order to see the enemy’s true form. He said he would take the burden upon himself so that God might enlighten us all. The next Sunday, he would begin his fast, forty days and forty nights, following the example set by Christ to purify his body before crucifixion.

  Each of us had fasted for shorter periods but none could remember when a leader or member had taken on such a trial. When he asked that we gather around him to pray for strength, for God to accept his sacrifice, we reached out our hands, humbled by his willingness to suffer such pain on our behalf.

  Over the next few weeks, we watched Brother Lang take on the carriage of an old man. His wide, ruddy face yellowed and shrank; the skin of his forehead tightened across his skull. The belt cinching his waist became riddled with newly punched holes, and his suitcoat hung from the bones of his shoulders as though still on its hanger. We held our breath as his sons helped him from his chair to the podium, where he tottered drunkenly, lisping out God’s promise of retribution.

  As we lifted our voices in prayer, I opened my eyes just enough to see the faces of those around me, and I knew they were wondering, Who? Who walks among us disguised as one of God’s own? I dared not look at Lola, who lifted her voice highest of all, calling on Jesus to open our eyes so that we might see the true nature of the devils who deceived us.

  Perhaps Lola knew all along that the preacher’s words were directed at her. As the knowledge of his intent spread, the church divided, a few believing their pastor’s words less Gospel than the rantings of a jealous man, but most caught up in the fever of his convictions. He stood before us, willing to die in his quest for truth, while Lola continued to dance, whirling from pew to pew, singing out God’s praises.

  Finally, the family was shunned. Cynthia and her brothers, whose eyes no one could meet, filed that
last time from the church, following the march of their mother, their father, a tall, handsome man, who rose last, wanting more than anything to fight it out, to grab the skinny man from his shoes and shake him till his bones rattled. No one turned to meet his challenge, offering only their bowed heads in compensation. Brother Lang sat weak and smug, shriveled to a hard, leathery knot.

  I think of that letter my mother held in her damp hands as she leaned against the counter, letting the hot water run and drain until steam rose from the scalded dishes. It was written by a woman who, like herself, had been given the command to serve and obey. And like her, even covered and unadorned, the woman was lovely.

  Did my mother wonder why Lola did not give in, why she did not submit and allow whatever possessed her to be exorcised, cast out by the elders, by the preacher whose hands trembled to touch her? What secrets had they whispered across the table while we went about our play, children oblivious to our mothers’ lives, their desires, their unnamed temptations?

  This was my mother’s lesson, and my own, a lesson I have not yet unlearned: be still, be invisible. Do not draw attention to yourself, for in doing so you become a target. I would learn that unholy men will rape you. Men of God will leave their meditations and good wives to lust after you. Satan himself will see you flashing, drawn like a fish to a vulgar lure, and take your soul for his own. Even then, before I knew what awaited me in the world outside our circle, I felt the threat that I as a woman was to myself and those around me. We were weak, unpredictable, no more capable of controlling our whims and desires than Eve, whose very nature caused the fall of Man, was able to control her gross appetite.

  I became determined to deny myself any pleasure. I fasted for days to rid my soul of whatever evil I carried inside me, even those evils of which I was unaware. I stayed with the adults in the kitchen after service, avoiding Luke’s eyes, praying into my hot cocoa when I saw him disappear toward the stairs. Women, I knew, were responsible for every temptation. If Luke sinned, if he touched my knee or brushed his arm against my breast, judgment would fall on me.