Read Online The Sudden Weight of Snow by Laisha Rosnau - Free Book Online

or swaying like the other kids. She just stood there until the keyboard music stopped and the counsellors led us, blurry-eyed with Christ, back to our cabins.

    The evening after Pastor John’s visit, some young women from the church came over to talk about peer pressure and pure living. They were in their twenties and had solemn, presumably faithful husbands and an assortment of babies and toddlers. Pastor John’s wife, Trudy, ushered them into the living room like a herd. Trudy was my mother’s age but she continued to give birth every few years which seemed to keep her ina state of perpetual youth. We all knew Timothy 2:15: Eve’s original transgression had stained women. Childbirth could save us, bleach us clean with pain. The words were given to us right in the Bible, codes to our salvation.
    These were women with names like Wendy, Dawn, and Becky who shook their bangs out of their eyes, cocked their heads slightly, and nodded at the slightest provocation. Their bodies were soft-looking and smelled faintly of baby vomit and Avon creams and perfumes and they spoke in singsong, alternating between baby talk, Bible verses, and giggling. “We know how hard it can be. We were teenagers once too although, look at us now!” They beamed lovingly at each other’s babies. “We’re here for you, whenever you need a friend in Christ, or whatever.” They each nodded toward me, feigning understanding. “Your peers will try to deceive you but His Word will keep you strong, you know?”
    At the end of the evening, Vera joined us in the living room and we prayed together, a ring of faith, palms sweating between our joined hands. Then, the women formed a healing circle around me, their babies strapped in Snuglis to their chests or, if old enough, placed between their crossed legs. I lay in the middle of their joined hands, my back on the floor of our living room, limbs splayed. Each woman prayed to Jesus in a high, soft pitch for my forgiveness – “We just ask you, Lord Jesus, to let Sylvia know that we are here for her. To guide her, allow her to release her own sins, and fill her with your own spirit” – I stifled laughter after that last sentiment while the women started to sing. A couple of them began murmuring in tongues, babies gurgling their own cries and demands. I was to lie still,eyes closed. To be healed by the buoyancy of prayer and song.
    Being healed felt like holding my breath. I tried to keep myself down there, on the ground, limbs spread. Tried to convince myself I was light, floating, full of the Spirit. My unspent laughter blocked my throat and I struggled to pull in air. I shot up from the floor. “Will you stop! Please, just stop.” I left the room to shocked silence, babies still babbling, mothers still mumbling prayers.

    I was uncomfortable in groups of girls and women. By the time we left Edmonton, I had been surrounded by family, aunts and uncles, male and female cousins, and had gone to daycare which I didn’t remember as being segregated. When we moved to Sawmill Creek, both elementary school and church seemed to conspire to keep me in the Holly Hobby–themed bedrooms of classmates after school or in the middle of women’s circles whenever they felt I needed support or healing.
    Sometime in the sixth grade I started to develop breasts, and I felt that this would only seal my fate, take me farther away from reaching the tops of trees, balancing on the thin edges of fences. I had Vera take both Nick and me to the hairdresser in the mall. I waited until Nick got his standard cut, then took his place in the chair, and asked for the same one. The hairdresser was willing to cut my hair short but wanted to give me style, the option to curl, feather, and spray. No, I had insisted, I wanted the same cut, a boy’s cut, no curls, no cute flips. I wore my hair like that, dressed in baggy jeans and T-shirtsand made one last attempt to join the boys. When that didn’t work, I still couldn’t feign