Obstetrix(17)

“Pastor was preaching at a special service for women struggling with infertility and a group of us went together,” Janet said. “He prayed over each of us and he told Sister Emma that God was going to open her womb and give her a son, and he told me that God had another plan for me.”

“Did He?” I asked.

“Sister Emma got pregnant with JJ the next month,” Janet said. “And he was right about me. Clearly God had other plans.” Her brow furrowed a little. Emma reached over to squeeze Janet’s hand.

“Anyway, that prayer service was pretty intense, and Pastor was preaching at a revival meeting the next week so we went to that,” Emma said. “He talked about his vision of a community, a blessed community. I talked Jason into coming the next night, and the next. And Sister Janet brought her husband. Jason and I were churchgoers at the time, we went to Crossroads, but honestly we were pretty lukewarm. Pastor changed that.”

Nods around the circle.

“So your kids,” I said. “How old are they?”

“Bethany is thirteen now, and JJ is six.”

I glanced out at the rest of the meeting hall. In the opposite corner I could see children around a few of the big tables, their heads bent over what I assumed was schoolwork. Emma leaned in to point. “Do you see the little ginger head and the green shirt? That’s JJ. And Bethany’s working in the kitchen today, but she’s also a redhead.”

“Does Jason have red hair?” Emma’s hair was light brown with a little gray in it.

“He does,” she said. “I compared him to Ron Weasley when we met—that was before I got saved, of course. I grew up secular.” She and Janet exchanged a look and then she looked down at her sewing with a little bit of a smile.

Natalie started humming something, and everyone else joined in, singing a hymn in harmony as they stitched. I listened, wondering if the kids had access to books to learn to read—when I took a break from sewing to go use the bathroom a little while later, I sneaked a look at what they were working on. They were all doing math worksheets, so, hard to say.

Emma’s daughter, Bethany, was washing her hands in the bathroom when I arrived—at least, that was my guess, given the hair. She had freckles and long red braids that made me think of Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables. When I came out of the bathroom, the younger kids were putting away their math worksheets and their teacher was herding them over to the entryway to put on boots and coats. Apparently it was recess time.

From the window by the sewing corner, I watched the younger children run outside. There was well-trampled snow in the center, deeper at the edges, and some of the kids had ventured into the deeper drifts to build a snow fort. A few boys were having a snowball fight.

“That’s what I love the most about living here,” Heather said, following my gaze. “It’s the way childhood ought to be.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“No screens,” she said. “Back in the secular world, I didn’t buy my kids phones or iPads but things like that were just everywhere. Anytime they played with a friend, even a Christian friend, they wound up on screens sooner or later. And I didn’t feel like I could let them out of my sight, even just to play in the backyard. Here my kids can run all over. Real work—they start helping with chores almost as soon as they’re walking, here—but real play, too.”

“Which ones are yours?”

“The red hat and—oh, for crying out loud, he’s not wearing his hat. The little boy in the blue coat, working on the snowman? I hope he left the hat inside and didn’t lose it again. And that one, over there, the blond girl with the pigtails. Their older brother is working right now and their younger sister is napping in the crèche.”

Back in the center of the room, Sarah rang a little brass bell for attention. “Women’s fitness, fifteen minutes,” she said.

There was a shift as people started putting away their tasks. Was this mandatory? Natalie settled back into her chair, so, apparently not. Emma, Janet, and Heather were all getting up. “Come join us,” Emma suggested, and I trailed after her.

Tables were being rearranged again, and the rule of the hour seemed to be that men could not be present, because the handful of men and older boys who’d been in the community space all picked up and went elsewhere. I followed Emma and Grace into a room to the side that turned out to be a windowless storage room with shelves holding heathered gray sweat pants and T-shirts that looked like what I wore in my gym classes in the 1980s. I changed with everyone else, folded my clothes and put them on the shelf, and exited to find rows of worn yoga mats already laid out.

“I invite everyone”—was Sarah looking at me or beaming at everyone?—“to take a seat on their fitness mat in whatever posture works for you.” She sat down, cross-legged. “We’re going to start with silent prayer. Let’s close our eyes. As we breathe in, we say silently: Lord Jesus, Son of God. As we breathe out we say: bless my work and make it holy.”

I breathed in, thinking, This feels like we’re starting a yoga class.

There was a faint click as Sarah started a tape. An actual cassette tape. (I peeked to be sure.) It played the same meandering synthesized music that routinely accompanied the yoga classes at my health club, although there I think they came out of the teacher’s iPhone. And then Sarah invited us all to stand, and proceeded to lead us in a set of stretches and postures nearly identical to the ones I had done every time I’d let my friend Kim talk me into a yoga class.