Read Online Camilla by Madeleine L'Engle - Free Book Online

her. She asks that sort of question partly because it shocks people and partly because she doesn’t believe in God and she really wants to know what other people think. I think perhaps she feels that if she finds enough people who really believe in God, maybe she’ll believe in Him again too.
    It’s the only thing we’ve ever really fought about—I mean a real fight, not just a spat. Luisa has to have a spat at least once a day. But about this all she’ll ever say is “You’re just a dope to believe in God, Camilla,” with such scorn that I seem to shrivel and curl all up inside though I am determined to go on being a dope if that makes me a dope.
    So now I said “Yes!” to Frank almost as though he had raised a whip over my head.
    â€œThat’s very refreshing,” Frank said, “very refreshing indeed. Do you know, oddly enough, so do I.”
    â€œOh,” I said.
    â€œMaybe it’s just a reaction because of Mona and Luisa. But I doubt very much if my God is the same kind of God you believe in, Camilla Dickinson.”
    â€œI don’t believe in an old man in a night gown and long white whiskers, if that’s what you mean,” I said rather sharply.
    â€œTell me about your God,” Frank demanded. “What kind of a God
do
you believe in?”
    We walked around the park and I didn’t say anything because I was trying to think the kind of God I believe in into words. God wasn’t anything I ever thought about at all before I met Luisa. He was just something that was always there, the way Mother and Father were before Jacques. And when Luisa talked to me about God it didn’t make me want to think about Him; it just made me stubborn. But Frank made me want to think.
    We paused for a moment to watch two old men wearing wool caps and big woolen scarves sitting on a bench with a chessboard between them. They sat as still as statues, almost as though the chill November air had frozen them. We waited until finally one of them reached out a hand in a gray woolen glove and made a move and then Frank walked me over to a bench and pushed me down on it and we sat there and a brown leaf dropped from the tree behind us and drifted down onto the sidewalk.
    â€œWell,” I said at last, “I don’t think it’s God’s fault when people do anything wrong. And I don’t think He plans it when people are good. But I think He makes it possible for people to be ever so much bigger and better than they are. That is, if they want to be. What I mean is, people have to doit themselves. God isn’t going to do it for them.” And at the same time that I was saying this and believing it, I was thinking, But why did God let Jacques come?
    Frank said, “I like that, Camilla. I like what you said. Sometime I’d really like to have a good talk with you—if Luisa’ll let me tear you away.”
    Again, when he talked about Luisa and me like that, it made me mad, and I said, “That’s up to me.”
    â€œWell, will you, then, Cam?” Frank asked. “There are so few people in the world anybody can talk to. I mean about things that matter. Most girls your age—well, when you go out with them you know they’re always kind of thinking about being kissed. I mean it’s all so kind of new to them, that sort of thing, and it makes them kind of one-track-minded. But with you—if anybody notices the way you look in your sweater, it’ll be me, not you. And we can talk. Usually a girl you can talk with isn’t—doesn’t have any—but you do. You sit there and you talk about God and you look just beautiful.”
    When Frank said that it was as though something warm and lovely had exploded right in the middle of my stomach and, like the sun, sent rays of happiness all through my body. All my misery about Mother and Father and Jacques disappeared from even the darkest corners of my mind,