Obstetrix(22)

The cult had scripture reading and prayer of some kind every day after dinner, and Sunday was all-day church. After breakfast there was an hour of “worship music,” which featured Emma singing and a band that included Brother Ethan with an electric guitar. Then a room divider got pulled across the room so that the adults could have “church” and the children could have “children’s church,” which would have worked better as a division with something more soundproof than a room divider. I was sent to children’s church, which seemed to be the kids under ten, with about half the teenage girls there to try to keep them in line. I wasn’t sure if I was there in my capacity as an ignorant child who needed basic instruction, or in my capacity as a girl capable of babysitting.

Joy was in charge of children’s church. As we heard Pastor John’s voice (muffled, because he was speaking with his back to the partition and the speakers faced away from us), Joy led the kids in more songs and then had the kids go around with prayer requests. Bethany requested prayers that her dental cavity heal itself so she didn’t need her tooth pulled. I winced at that, especially since she sounded absolutely sincere.

She was followed by a girl who looked about nine who somewhat petulantly prayed that her brother would remember to wipe his feet when he came inside later because she didn’t want to have to mop the floor again. “Constance,” Joy said, reprovingly. “Use your gentle voice.” Constance’s face darkened and Joy reached across the table to tap her chin. “The Lord’s rules are sweeter than honey,” she said. “Take a deep breath and we’ll let you try again in a minute.”

JJ, Bethany’s little brother, asked for prayers for his mother because he’d heard her crying the other day. Another boy wanted to pray that we had garlic bread with the lasagna this week. That set off more meal-related prayers—someone wanted to pray for dessert to come every night. A girl who looked like she was right on the line between “child there to be taught” and “teenager present to provide the babysitting” prayed for unspecified wisdom, which turned out to be the default thing you said if you couldn’t think of anything better.

We circled back to Constance. She had smoothed out the fury in her face, put on what sounded to me like an obviously false happy tone, and prayed for God to make her more patient with her brother.

“Much better,” Joy said. She turned to me. “Dr. Liz? What would you like for us to pray for?”

I almost had them pray for my father, who was probably very worried by now, or would be soon when I didn’t return his Sunday afternoon phone call. But other than Joy, these were children. If I persuaded someone like Bethany of the rightness of my position that they should let me go, the most likely result was going to be Bethany getting into trouble. “Wisdom,” I said.

Joy asked everyone to pray for a safe delivery for her baby. Then she glanced over her shoulder towards the room divider, and sighed. On the other side of the partition, we could hear Pastor John’s voice, though not his words; he was still on the upswing of a crescendo, and clearly not getting done for a while. “I’ll tell you all a story,” she said. “Which story would you like?”

“Can we hear Cinderella?” asked one of the little girls near the front.

Joy shook her head. “It’s Sunday. You can have a Bible story.”

“Baby Moses!” one of the other girls said.

Joy started the story of Baby Moses in the bullrushes with “once upon a time…” like she was telling a fairy tale, and I was pretty sure she made some mistakes, although since neither of us had a Bible it wasn’t like I could check. From Pharaoh’s daughter rescuing Moses from the Nile, she went on to a fairly detailed story about child-Moses and his friend, the son of the pharaoh, that was absolutely not in the Bible and I realized after about ten minutes (it was a long story) was a retelling of portions of Tom Sawyer, with the pharaoh’s son in the role of Tom and Moses as Huck Finn.

When the adults finally came to get the children for lunch, I had a moment with Joy and said, “Can’t wait for the sequel where Moses takes a raft down the Mississippi.”

She glanced at me and shrugged. “Sure was easier back when I could read them chapters of books.”

The snow had continued to fall throughout the morning, and in the afternoon, as most of the adults went back for more church, the children were allowed to bundle up and go out to play in the fresh snow. Joy went in to sit with the adults for the afternoon worship service, and a few of the other women came out to supervise the children, with the help of a couple of the teenage boys. I was left with the children again, and mostly stood and watched as snowflakes drifted down and melted on me. The teenage boys ran around and played with the younger kids, helping them build a new snow fort, throw snowballs, and make snow angels. Early in the afternoon, two of the boys were pretending to be Spider-Man and the Hulk; one of the teenage boys redirected them into pretending to defend the cattle herd from a wolf pack, but as soon as the older boys moved on, the younger kids went back to playing Spider-Man. The boy playing the Hulk was Andrew, the little blond boy I’d noticed at the clinic. The one with the sick mother. And the extensive welts from being beaten.

As the afternoon wore on and the snow tapered off, several of the men came out with shovels to manually clear the narrower walkways while someone else plowed with the golf cart again. People were coming out of the community building to round up their children and get them into dry clothes before dinner. The band, now including Joy, was playing a last song for the people preparing the meal.