sense of her lies, nor of the way they then shunned me. In their faces turned away, I saw what I was, what I must always be.
I was kept in those rooms until the end of the summer when my parents came for me. Instead of a slouching teenager who spat her anger, what they found was that good girl I had once been, dressed in modest clothing, nodding politely, quick to attend to her father’s wishes. How could it not be the miracle for which they had so diligently prayed? They knew nothing of my life there except that I had been transformed back into the daughter they remembered, before things went bad, before the Devil whispered my name.
When, on the drive from Spokane to Lewiston, I attempted in some way to articulate what had taken place, my mother responded with silence, my father with a single, oblique comment: “I was afraid that something like this might happen.”
Although I might have interpreted my father’s statementas a kind of acknowledgment of the Langs’ culpability, what I believed was that the Langs’ rejection was my punishment, that I had earned it with my willfulness and rebellion. Back in our church at Lewiston, I sat straight in my pew beside my family and sang, “I want Thee forever to ransom my soul.” I sang, “I shall be whiter than snow.” When the sermon ended, I knelt at the altar for hours until my body weakened and I lay on the floor with others, whispering my plea, praying for more.
M Y PARENTS AND I never talked about what happened that summer. The distance between us was loud with what we could not say—words of anger, words of love. My relationship with my father seemed to exist only through proxy. If I needed permission to date or stay late after church, it was my mother I queried, who then asked my father and relayed his yes or no.
Time not spent at school or church I filled with books, their pages softening the silence. I read about the cowboy Shane and Loki, the Norse god of mischief. I read
The Martian Chronicles
and
1984
. I suffered through the cruelties visited upon Oliver Twist by the industrial machine. One literature teacher rewarded my interest by giving me the task of screening books for the class library, and so, before my parents could find out, I’d read my way through
A Clockwork Orange, Go Ask Alice
, and
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask
.
I borrowed from the county library in methodical fashion: I started at the beginning of the fiction shelves and checked out three books at a time, working my way through sciencefiction (the spines with their yellow rocket ships and nuclear atoms), through fantasy and mystery, classics and contemporary. I discovered the stories of the Holocaust; I read about Sybil and her umpteen personalities.
I paid no attention to the names of authors—the stories were what mattered. I read Judith Krantz and Richard Bach with the same rapt attention I gave Roth and Bellow. I liked
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
, and so the librarian gave me Castaneda. Mysticism fascinated me: Nostradamus and Black Elk, Philippine faith healers, African fire walkers, Uri Geller, who could twist a fork with nothing more than the power of his mind. But this was witchcraft, and so I hid the books in the folds of my sweaters, secreted them away between
Little Women
and
The Cross and the Switchblade
.
What I wanted was someone to share this with, someone who could talk with me about things both common and extraordinary. I’d made few friends since my conversion: others in our youth group still eyed me with suspicion, and I was not sure where I fit into their circle. Although I had confessed my sins and been forgiven, my transgressions stayed with me like an ember bedded in ash: who knew what might fan that fire, cause it to spread and inflame those who stood too close? My intimacy with the world set me apart from those whose pages in the Book of Life remained unsullied.
As much as I longed to regain that place of purity, I
I was kept in those rooms until the end of the summer when my parents came for me. Instead of a slouching teenager who spat her anger, what they found was that good girl I had once been, dressed in modest clothing, nodding politely, quick to attend to her father’s wishes. How could it not be the miracle for which they had so diligently prayed? They knew nothing of my life there except that I had been transformed back into the daughter they remembered, before things went bad, before the Devil whispered my name.
When, on the drive from Spokane to Lewiston, I attempted in some way to articulate what had taken place, my mother responded with silence, my father with a single, oblique comment: “I was afraid that something like this might happen.”
Although I might have interpreted my father’s statementas a kind of acknowledgment of the Langs’ culpability, what I believed was that the Langs’ rejection was my punishment, that I had earned it with my willfulness and rebellion. Back in our church at Lewiston, I sat straight in my pew beside my family and sang, “I want Thee forever to ransom my soul.” I sang, “I shall be whiter than snow.” When the sermon ended, I knelt at the altar for hours until my body weakened and I lay on the floor with others, whispering my plea, praying for more.
M Y PARENTS AND I never talked about what happened that summer. The distance between us was loud with what we could not say—words of anger, words of love. My relationship with my father seemed to exist only through proxy. If I needed permission to date or stay late after church, it was my mother I queried, who then asked my father and relayed his yes or no.
Time not spent at school or church I filled with books, their pages softening the silence. I read about the cowboy Shane and Loki, the Norse god of mischief. I read
The Martian Chronicles
and
1984
. I suffered through the cruelties visited upon Oliver Twist by the industrial machine. One literature teacher rewarded my interest by giving me the task of screening books for the class library, and so, before my parents could find out, I’d read my way through
A Clockwork Orange, Go Ask Alice
, and
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask
.
I borrowed from the county library in methodical fashion: I started at the beginning of the fiction shelves and checked out three books at a time, working my way through sciencefiction (the spines with their yellow rocket ships and nuclear atoms), through fantasy and mystery, classics and contemporary. I discovered the stories of the Holocaust; I read about Sybil and her umpteen personalities.
I paid no attention to the names of authors—the stories were what mattered. I read Judith Krantz and Richard Bach with the same rapt attention I gave Roth and Bellow. I liked
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
, and so the librarian gave me Castaneda. Mysticism fascinated me: Nostradamus and Black Elk, Philippine faith healers, African fire walkers, Uri Geller, who could twist a fork with nothing more than the power of his mind. But this was witchcraft, and so I hid the books in the folds of my sweaters, secreted them away between
Little Women
and
The Cross and the Switchblade
.
What I wanted was someone to share this with, someone who could talk with me about things both common and extraordinary. I’d made few friends since my conversion: others in our youth group still eyed me with suspicion, and I was not sure where I fit into their circle. Although I had confessed my sins and been forgiven, my transgressions stayed with me like an ember bedded in ash: who knew what might fan that fire, cause it to spread and inflame those who stood too close? My intimacy with the world set me apart from those whose pages in the Book of Life remained unsullied.
As much as I longed to regain that place of purity, I
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