Sickle-cell or something

You’d lost weight and you admitted it

And you smoked something too

Right before you got there

I could tell because you were kind

You looked 17 years old

And you told me aliens were coming

They were going to make you a rockstar

Somebody who was friends with Johnny Depp

You said the meaning of your name

It was “God is the King”

You told me I was “Daughter of the King”

You told me to continue my music

You knew it was all going to end soon

But you didn’t know quite how

You told me to be ready

That the galaxies were swirling together and colliding

That you’d be looking for me up there soon

You got in and started up the car with the bad backfire

And that pale horse rode off into the night

My shaky hand gripped your hand in that ambulance. I squeezed that gloved hand like my life depended on it. Because Lord, it sure did. And I know you was only working and doing your job, being so good and patient with me. I probably looked like I seen a booger or a ghost, and was pale as such too. But you asked me my name and you told me, “Sweetheart, we’re gonna get you there soon.” I was dying, I knew I was, but wasn’t alone. You were loving me right then. I asked you your name, and it was Adam. The sweetest name I ever heard. That good man taking me somewhere safe, just ’cause it was his job. Now it’s quiet, and I know there’s nothing more for me to do but keep going towards that safe, warm place all them that love me was leading me.

I don’t know much about loving, but I do know this: there is something about the way of a man with a maid. They’re so different, but when they come together at night, it’s like they’re the same. And I don’t rightly know how, but it’s the sweetness of loving that’s at the beginning of every person that is born into a family, so it must be a mighty important thing.

Thank God whatever you tried didn’t work. For now, your cheek is warm against my neck. I won’t get up until I‘m sure you can sleep tonight. You say you don’t have any faith. Please let me have it for you. It’s not as heavy for me. Your darkness, to me, is weightless.

“I hear you,” I whisper through your sobs, rocking your trembling body like a baby in a cradle. “You will be okay, I promise.”

Because the feeling is returning to your fingertips, tracing my shoulder blades— something like desire, and now, desire looks a lot like hope.

When you said that should we never touch again

You would still come around

I was not so much surprised at this saying

But I stared amazed

At how much I believed

In you and in

This, and at how I had good reason to

As I leaned into you leaning

On the kitchen sink

Each little light on in your parents’ house

I recall nights the moonbeams hit

Your eyes just right

And made me want to seep into your bones

And I remember, too

Days you wiped my snot with your hand

And clutched me to your chest

I blubbered and scratched

And you cried I love you I love you Grace

You are an unmade bed

Tousled & still warm, and I

Fully intend to return to you

This summer, I worked in the kitchen at a Christian summer camp. I wore a long gingham apron and a smile, my hair tied back under a pink bandana. The other kitchen ladies said my company was delightful, and my help appreciated. My hands stayed in the warm, sudsy dishwater most of the time, though they were occasionally set to the task of mixing up a cobbler or boiling water for sweet tea. The ladies were eager to inquire about my upcoming wedding, and I was happy to chat flowers, bridesmaids, and guest lists. But oh, what if they had known?

Those smiles, that seemingly tireless youthful energy; they were not simply my good nature. They were learned, they were earned at a price, a terrible price. I survived trial by fire, and came out on the other side with a hardened countenance (read: cheesy dimpled grin). Maybe I made it through with all my bodily appendages still attached, and without the disfigurement one associates with tragic burn victims. That doesn’t mean I’m normal, or even healthy. Don’t misunderstand: I have the joy of the Lord. Partakers of that great salvation will learn, if they haven’t already, that such a joy is not always, but often, a happy cohabitant of the same space as a most doleful affliction.

Those sweet ladies, twice my age, couldn’t have known the demons I’d faced and the suffering I’d caused. Seeing the remains of my teenage acne, the freckles on my collarbone, and the pigtails down my back, they would consider me a fine babysitter for their little Susie or Amos. They wouldn’t give a second thought to trusting me to cut a watermelon with a chef’s knife. Ha! As luck would have it, that summer camp fell on a good week. They caught me on my very best behavior. Had I “slipped up,” like I so often did during my highschool years, warranting an overnight stay on the 2nd floor? “Pity about that poor, sick girl. One just knows the fragile thing’s going to slip away without a trace someday and leave behind a hungry baby and a shell of a husband. Pity her mother and father didn’t keep her shut up somewhere. Pity, pity, poor wretched girl.”

But what they saw of me wasn’t a sorry, random chance, I must remind myself. What the world sees of me is not a monster hidden under makeup, nor a cured patient: what they see is managed symptoms (read: 10,000 hours of practice, and a certain number of milligrams). I’m not a clown, nor a feelingless hull; I am a master, a veteran, a scrawny yet hardy yet broken (yet alive) prisoner of war.

My captor was declared dead a long time ago, but sometimes, I tighten around my own neck the chain whose end now hangs limply in his cold hands. “Torture me,” I scream through gritted teeth, rattling the chain, “Because I am worth nothing, save for getting the treatment I deserve.” A meek Lamb calls gently, but firmly from the doorway of that prison chamber: “Your worth was decided a long, long time ago, when I died on a tree, in that place called A Skull.” This I know, I know better than I know my own name, so I let the chain slip away to the floor. Then, the Lamb leads me out through narrow passages, so dark I sometimes lose sight of him, and of all things. I then hold tightly to his soft little tail.

“You are both a little young to be married,“ is all the kitchen ladies would tell me. But I could see in the twinkle of their eyes that they were as excited as I was.

“You’ll both figure it out,” they say. “You love each other, you love the Lord, and that’s what matters.” I silently plead them to realize their classic fairytale error. Even the prettiest bride can turn into a witch. Even the best intentions fail. Can’t a wizened eye tell that much?

But what has gotten me through 20 traumatic years? Was it anything but faith like a child’s? Let me tell you one thing: childlike faith is a strong faith.

Dakota works at the fried chicken place, and lives with her parents and ferrets. She keeps cheap liquor on her bookshelf for medicinal purposes only. She crochets. Her friends at the 24 hour gym all have a crush on her. Her arms zigzagged with scars, she claims she is too old for that business now. She goes to church on the Sundays she doesn’t work, hugging the old church ladies who dote on her. She laughs violently, falling out of her chair at one of her own jokes. Dakota only happens to mortals like us once in a strawberry moon.

Ants farm aphids,

If you did not know.

They herd and work aphids

As we do cattle,

An old man once told me

Over a cafeteria lunch.

Nodding, I tried to move away

Politely, or so I thought.

’Get away from me,

You old man,’ said I,

Though only to myself.

‘You old lousy, creepy farmer.’

I spoke none of this, still,

He wore an expression

Like a simple child,

A sad hound dog pup,

And I knew he could feel

My seething hatred of him.

’Bee Kind,’ said his hat.

How am I such a cruel young woman?

Men I fear, but bugs and beasts—

They are much scarier than

Poor Old Joe

Building LEGO cars

Feeding the fish

Outgrowing his clothes

Running cross country

Summer lifeguarding job

First real car

First real heartbreak

Out ’til 1 a.m.

Faster faster faster

Run my boy

The colleges call

Take your pick

We’ll be here.

When I tried to hurt the young man who never had as much as an ill thought towards me, I knew my mind had packed her bags and flown north for the summer. My husband didn’t flinch at these blows of fury, but even in my manic state, my humanity could detect the fear in his eyes. It fed me— no, it fed the predatory animal that was protecting me from my past dangers. Still, the man had the saintly resolution of a Puritan. All he did was put his two big hands on my face, tilt his head, and say my name gently. My demon was struck dumb by the tears in my husband’s eyes.

As much as I ache to be a reformer, a pilgrim in this world of twisted morals and no absolutes, when I lay my head down at night I know I am really the wayward son. I am the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God,” and takes lightly every great mystery of love and of life. Life more abundantly, as it is written.

A measure of wisdom has been given to me in my short 20 years on this green planet; nevertheless, on my sunnier days, in little ways, I deliberately choose ignorance. My childhood was cold in many ways, but for whatever reason, I allow myself the perverted comfort of regressing to reasoning like a child. Maybe because I believe it will get me what I want, when I want it, from the good and honest people around me. My husband, God love him, would walk on coals if it meant I could live a productive and peaceful life with length of days. My own dear parents would do the same— Lord, now that they’re older and settled down, they’d pay anything to see me happy even for a day.

Still, I amuse and pleasure my own mind by walking as one who is without grace. I give myself a little too much slack to deliver jabs and abuse those ones I cherish, but only when I am deeply secure in their kindness, and assured of their intentions towards me.

The good man I’ve been given knows my mind better than I do—he knows when she hungers, when she is filled with overwhelm. So, just like he puts in 10 hour days fill up his little car and take me out to late showings of last year‘s movies, I expect him to provide for my mind’s deepest needs. I was never shown how to care for her; I was taught more about how to neglect her. I fling my every want on him, because I don’t know how to tell if what I want is what I really need. When he suggests what I might be missing in order to thrive, I berate him for trying to micromanage my life.

This is no way to live. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Where I come from, they don’t believe in psychotherapy. I’m not sure I do, either. Marsha Linehan, Confucius, the Buddha, they don’t know what’s good for me. But neither do I. I sure don’t believe in “Quit your blubbering,” because so far, it doesn’t worked. And I wonder if it is possible for me to grow up, or if I missed that boat entirely. As much as I kicked and screamed against moving out of my dark basement bedroom, it didn’t turn back the clock and force my mother and father to raise me the way I deserved.

They are a little more like grown-ups now. They even pretend to like each other sometimes. They quit going to church, but I have heard them praying. I think they may grow up to be fine parents someday. Perhaps within my children’s lifetimes.

Nathaniel tells me we are too young to have babies yet, though he has been a working man and a caretaker to his brother and sister and dogs and horses since the age of 14. The real reason we are childless is so simple, it goes without saying: I am not right in the head, If I was left at home with an inconsolable newborn, after a fortnight of fitful sleep, I would go batty. I would turn myself out to greener pasture. I cannot handle it. It’s not that I never will; it’s that the way people become decent parents is by growing up. And it would take an act of God to grow me up.

There have been acts of God in my life. When my sister was four years old, and I was in middle school, she drowned in a pool with three lifeguards on duty. A stranger, who had gotten CPR certified that very day, saw my baby sister’s purple form floating lifeless from the corner of their eye. She was resuscitated, and she made it when every precious minute ticking by said she shouldn’t have. Eight minutes without breathe testified that she should be brain dead at best. Angels were around my family that day in in the days that followed.

Unfortunately, she was already my father’s favorite before the accident, and though I love the little thing to death to this day, the miracle only solidified her royal status.

I am not bitter, or jealous; I was too old for that then and more so now. But a self-absorbed man has barely enough love for one woman in his life, let alone for a difficult and homely teenage daughter, especially when he has a tiny blonde one.

I still feel guilty to think this way, because my own father’s life is an act of God. When I was a baby and he worked seven days a week, he suddenly lost 30 pounds in just a few weeks. His body was attacking itself. He was sickly for much of my childhood. Many people who knew us then are amazed by the robust, yet aged, man he is now. So I should be more grateful that I grew up with two parents.

These days, I am. I have never been loved so much as I am now. Forgiveness is a balm in the life of a narcissistic abuse survivor, best applied liberally. But time heals all wounds only when they are not not festering with the maggots— controlling friends, partners, and relatives who decide to come out of the woodwork— attracted by that sweet, sickly smell that fresh wounds tend to emit. The kisses of an enemy are deceit.

The day I swung my fists at my gentle husband, I didn’t try to kiss him afterwards. I ran down the gravel driveway and into the road, as scared and exposed as the day I was born. Praise God that Nathaniel pushed aside his every urge to chase me down, and called for help instead. The next morning, when I looked in the mirror in a cold room that was not my own, I wasn’t anywhere to be found. I had hidden far, far away from the nightmare I created from pieces of a pleasant and quiet life I once led. I survived each day by remembering every time I had ever forgiven anyone. Surely if it felt so good, others may forgive me.

When the good man God gave me came to visit a week later, I knew what I had done was unforgivable. I had backed him into a corner, between a wall of the warm place we’d built together from our broken childhoods, and a wall of wisdom and the ways of the world. As principled and fundamental as he had been, a farm boy and a good catechism student, he ignored his Bible teachers’ warnings for to take me as his bride. I didn’t look like a bride, I looked like I wouldn’t even be interested in men. And I had long scars and I laughed too loudly at off-color jokes.

And every one of those teachers was right about me. I was less of a wife now than I was on that hot day in August with our family and closest friends. In fact, now, in the small room with the smooth doorknob, wearing paper clothes and under watchful supervision, I was more of a convict than anything.

Nathaniel’s cheeks were sallow when I saw him, and his hug more boney than it should have been. His eyes held no tears now, but were dry as the air. He didn’t say much, only told a joke comparing nurses and helicopter parents, gave me some pieces of good candy, and pulled a New Testament from his pocket. Then he lay beside me on the thin mattress and read to me about the little boy, and the fish, and the loaves.

I buried my face in his clammy neck, his voice a muffled deep noise, and wished like a thousand times before that we could make a little boy of our own. On that hospital bed, I felt the imaginary child lying between us, warm and soft and quiet. His name was Starling and he looked just like his mom. When I reached out and felt how fragile he was, I recoiled, remembering for the first time the sensation of his father‘s face beneath my fist.

“We can’t have a baby. He will fall from the nest,“ I interrupted Nathaniel’s reading and the present moment.

He gathered me into his arms as my breathing turned to sobs. His voice was barely a whisper, “Yes, my baby, he will.”