Read Online Hungry for the World by Kim Barnes - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kim Barnes
Ads: Link
had little tolerance for the simple platitudes and condemnations the church handed down. Throughout the calls for Catholics to forsake their idolatry and know the true God, for women to turn deaf ears to promoters of the ERA who wanted only to enslave them, for the fornicators and adulterers and the nearly unmentionable Sodomites to forego their evil waysbefore the Day of Judgment fell upon them, I felt my resistance rise, and perhaps it was this that I believed set me apart—my innate unwillingness to simply believe, agree, accept. I kept silent, for to question might imply that my allegiance lay with the Enemy.
Instead of lashing out, I drove my rebellion underground, so deep that even I forgot it was there. Its eruptions were minor compared with the wholesale rejection I’d practiced before, and I believed I might survive this way, presenting my shining surface for inspection while beneath ran the currents of my desire for knowledge, for freedom to explore and experience and entertain the endless possibilities contained in my body and mind.
Each night I prayed for the humility to accept my station, to lay down my armor and weapons and quit fighting, let go that inherent and overwhelming drive I felt to set my own course, fly into the face of my predetermined fate. I knew that to continue in my obstinacy would once again lead me down the path to destruction. I must be docile, pliant, willing to bend. I must be a dutiful daughter, make of myself a worthy wife. Above all, I must, for the length of my woman’s life, give myself over to the direction of another.
T HE FALL OF MY FRESHMAN YEAR in high school, I came to believe that what held my greatest allegiance was not my family or my church but Tom, a thin, fair-haired boy who had begun his courtship while holding my hand during prayer, so that, even now, when I remember my voice rising in praise that early September, I feel the tingle of somethingnew about to happen, something sparking, traveling my knuckles, settling light and electric beneath my breastbone.
He was the son of a deacon, a good boy a year older than I was who didn’t smoke or drink or cuss, who, like me, wore glasses and spent too much time reading. We began sitting together during Sunday school, walking hand in hand from the foyer. Hand-holding in and of itself was not a sin, but, we’d been warned, it could lead to disastrous things. (I still have several of the “hand-holding sticks” various young suitors carved for me at church camp, abiding by the rules set by our elders: the boy could hold one end, the girl the other, and in this way their flesh would not be tempted toward further engagement.)
Our parents were friends, and so there were afternoons when we were able to gaze at each other with great longing across the dinner table, and I began to believe that I might not survive more than a few hours away from Tom. My father, I knew, was watching me carefully: my overt preoccupation with a boy was new territory for both of us.
Could I go with Tom for a Coke after choir practice? Yes, my father said, as long as I returned home by the designated hour. Sundays after church, Tom took me to the gravel pit just south of Lewiston, where we fired round after round from his .22 revolver. The further I stood from the target, the more shots I placed in the tightest space, the more he praised me. He taught me to load and unload, sight in, compensate for distance and trajectory. He bought a .357, and I learned to allow for greater recoil, the concussion through my wrists and shoulders.
Those long afternoons alone with Tom, hidden from theroad by a cirque of basalt, gave me my first taste of true freedom. The reflected warmth of the rock, the heavy gun in my hands, Tom’s soft words of direction and praise, the red-tailed hawks winging lazy loops overhead—I felt both independent and protected, stronger, and strangely new.
Tom lived in a large house with his parents and numerous siblings. As long as
Instead of lashing out, I drove my rebellion underground, so deep that even I forgot it was there. Its eruptions were minor compared with the wholesale rejection I’d practiced before, and I believed I might survive this way, presenting my shining surface for inspection while beneath ran the currents of my desire for knowledge, for freedom to explore and experience and entertain the endless possibilities contained in my body and mind.
Each night I prayed for the humility to accept my station, to lay down my armor and weapons and quit fighting, let go that inherent and overwhelming drive I felt to set my own course, fly into the face of my predetermined fate. I knew that to continue in my obstinacy would once again lead me down the path to destruction. I must be docile, pliant, willing to bend. I must be a dutiful daughter, make of myself a worthy wife. Above all, I must, for the length of my woman’s life, give myself over to the direction of another.
T HE FALL OF MY FRESHMAN YEAR in high school, I came to believe that what held my greatest allegiance was not my family or my church but Tom, a thin, fair-haired boy who had begun his courtship while holding my hand during prayer, so that, even now, when I remember my voice rising in praise that early September, I feel the tingle of somethingnew about to happen, something sparking, traveling my knuckles, settling light and electric beneath my breastbone.
He was the son of a deacon, a good boy a year older than I was who didn’t smoke or drink or cuss, who, like me, wore glasses and spent too much time reading. We began sitting together during Sunday school, walking hand in hand from the foyer. Hand-holding in and of itself was not a sin, but, we’d been warned, it could lead to disastrous things. (I still have several of the “hand-holding sticks” various young suitors carved for me at church camp, abiding by the rules set by our elders: the boy could hold one end, the girl the other, and in this way their flesh would not be tempted toward further engagement.)
Our parents were friends, and so there were afternoons when we were able to gaze at each other with great longing across the dinner table, and I began to believe that I might not survive more than a few hours away from Tom. My father, I knew, was watching me carefully: my overt preoccupation with a boy was new territory for both of us.
Could I go with Tom for a Coke after choir practice? Yes, my father said, as long as I returned home by the designated hour. Sundays after church, Tom took me to the gravel pit just south of Lewiston, where we fired round after round from his .22 revolver. The further I stood from the target, the more shots I placed in the tightest space, the more he praised me. He taught me to load and unload, sight in, compensate for distance and trajectory. He bought a .357, and I learned to allow for greater recoil, the concussion through my wrists and shoulders.
Those long afternoons alone with Tom, hidden from theroad by a cirque of basalt, gave me my first taste of true freedom. The reflected warmth of the rock, the heavy gun in my hands, Tom’s soft words of direction and praise, the red-tailed hawks winging lazy loops overhead—I felt both independent and protected, stronger, and strangely new.
Tom lived in a large house with his parents and numerous siblings. As long as
Similar Books
