I am doing what I must. I am doing the right thing.
“I’ll be fine, Rachel. Don’t worry about me.”
At midnight Mary lay awake with bars of clouded moonlight crossing the sheet that covered her, and she listened to the murmur of the breakers and remembered the first time she had heard them at Amarna. I am here… I am always here….
The door opened. She saw Luke framed in the shadows. At times she had doubted he would come, yet she wasn’t surprised to see him now. She sat up, waited for him to take her outstretched hand.
He had questions, but again she didn’t want to talk. She pulled him close until she could kiss his mouth, until she could whisper near his ear, “Make love to me, Luke.” That was what she wanted, and what she had, the two of them in the moonlight on white, smooth sheets, smooth skin warm and damp and musky with effort as they panted toward culmination. Mary lay open-eyed, gorging on sensation, arching her back and whimpering on the razor’s edge between pain and pleasure, while she watched the moon haloed in iridescent clouds, while she waited for his spasm of ejaculation, and laughed, holding at the center of her body and her being the potential of life.
The right thing. Yes. This is right.
Chapter 19
But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma… and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.
Yesterday Little Mary brought a frog to school, which led eventually to the subject of cold- and warm-blooded animals, which led inevitably to the subject of the evolution of those diverse solutions to the problems of surviving extremes of heat and cold.
Evolution. That seminal, magnificent concept that always fired literalists with manic zeal. Or fear, really. I had often touched on the subject of evolution, and certainly yesterday wasn’t the first time the children had heard the word.
But Miriam warned me two days ago that she would not let her children be taught “evil.” And three days ago I surrendered on the issue of teaching human reproduction.
I knew better. But Jerry wanted to keep peace in the family.
Today I was aware even at breakfast that Miriam’s children were quiet and uneasy, but I didn’t know why. Until now. It is the appointed hour for school, but when I enter the dining room, I find only Stephen and Little Mary waiting for me. On the table near Stephen’s right hand is a hapless garter snake imprisoned in a glass jar.
“I see you brought us another example of a cold-blooded creature, Stephen.” He nods, but says nothing. Mary is atypically still, hands folded in her lap. “Where are the other children?” I ask.
Stephen looks up at me, and his reluctance at being the bearer of this news is obvious. “They’re out in the garden.”
I am abruptly consumed with anger, wrenchingly intense, and it must be apparent in my face. As if in defense of his schoolmates, Stephen adds: “Miriam told them they had to help in the garden.”
Stephen knows that order has nothing to do with a need for help in the garden; fear is hidden in his eyes. His world has been shaken with a temblor he doesn’t understand. Mary understands it even less, and her eyes, pale against her dark skin, shine with pent tears.
I manage a smile. “Wait for me. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I go out the backdoor without slamming it, walk up the grassy slope at a measured pace, and all the while my pulse is pounding, my chest tight. Damn her.
All the women except Bernadette are in the garden, and all Miriam’s children are there. They stop their tasks—hoeing, watering, weeding—and watch me silently as I make my way to the gate, open it, and step inside.
Miriam stands near the gate, regal in triumphant self-righteousness. Deborah clings anxiously to her arm. A short distance away Isaac kneels in a row of broccoli, hands full of uprooted weeds, and looks guiltily from me to Miriam. Near him, Jonathan, sober and uncertain, leans on a hoe.
My voice is steady when I speak, and that surprises me.
“Jonathan, Isaac, Deborah… you’re late for school.”
They don’t answer me. I don’t expect them to. Miriam says coldly, “They aren’t going to school—not today, not ever again!”
My voice is still steady. “Didn’t Jeremiah tell you that one condition for your staying at Amama was that I would teach the children?”
“He may have agreed to that,” she retorts, her chin coming up, “but I didn’t. I didn’t agree to have my children taught blasphemy!”
Stalemate. For now, at any rate. I can’t ask the children to make a choice between me and their mother.
But I smile and ask, “Blasphemy? Have your children asked you more questions you can’t answer, Miriam?”
Her cheeks redden, but there is about her now an aura of power, and I recognize at this moment that it’s quite possible her power is not illusory. She says, “We’ll settle this Sunday evening at the family meeting.”
Poor Jerry. So much for his longed-for peace in the family.
The gauntlet has been thrown down, and the family may not survive this rupture of its peace. Miriam is willing to risk that for the sake of her convictions.
But so am I. Stalemate, indeed.
I glance once at Esther, whose children are waiting for me in the house. No doubt they are there because their mother made a hard choice to stand up to Miriam, and I’m grateful. That’s why I say nothing to her now. I don’t want to remind Miriam of her mutiny.
I turn away and start back to the house. No one bids me goodbye.
In the afternoon, after a midday meal marked by uneasy silence—which Jerry seemed to find annoying, rather than ominous—the cloudy sky delivers a soaking rain, and I sit at the table in the living room and watch the rain marching in off the ocean, hanging its beaded curtain from the roof. Enid occupies the other chair. I’m waiting for Stephen, and she’s taking time for a cup of tea before she goes to her loom. Her bony hands are tensely clasped around her mug. “Well, I’m sure we’ll work everything out at the family meeting Sunday.”
Sunday is the day after tomorrow. It seems a long time away.
“What an optimist you are, Enid.”
She stares at me. “Of course, we’ll work it out. We have to, Mary.”
I don’t argue the point. Gentle Enid, she doesn’t smell disaster in the wind. She is as irrational in her beliefs as Miriam is, yet I tolerate that in Enid because she tolerates my beliefs, even if she doesn’t understand them. Tolerance is a rare quality, and it is one with Enid’s capacity to love without question. She loves the children, she loves the adults in this family, she loves me.
But I wonder, will she love me when I am called a heretic, a blasphemer, an abomination before the Lord? When everything that has given my life meaning lies broken at my feet?