“No! Daddy, please! Phoebe is here!”
He didn’t even bother to answer.
Phoebe
The next morning I was tortured with guilt over the kiss with Joel, and terrified that Suze would hate me. She said he wasn’t her boyfriend, but maybe she’d be upset anyway. I mean, what were the rules? I wanted to talk to her about it before he did.
Twice I went to the house, but nobody answered, and when I peeked into the kitchen windows at the church, nobody was there.
Amma and I were sitting down to dinner when a boy about ten delivered an envelope to the door. I recognized Suze’s handwriting and tore it open. A single piece of notebook paper was inside.
Dear Phoebe,
My dad found out about the play and he gave me the belt, and I’m grounded for the rest of the week. I am so sad! I’m going to miss your entire visit and I won’t be able to do the play, and I HATE HIM SO MUCH!
One of these days, I’ll get away from him, I swear.
I am so so so so so so sad about the play.
Love,
Suze
PS Write everything down for the whole week and leave it with Amma so I can read it when I’m free. Love you. Have fun with Joel. He’s such a nice guy. （I think you like him, and that’s okay.）
“What is it?” Amma asked.
I raised my head. “Suze landed the lead in a play, Anne Frank, and her dad found out and gave her the belt and grounded her.” Tears welled up in my eyes. “This is so unfair! She never gets to do anything. Her dad is so mean!”
She reached out and took my hand. “He is mean. He is a terrible man, Phoebe, and there are a lot like him in the world. There is nothing you can do for Suze right now except be there for her when you can.”
“Can you do something?”
She took a breath. “I do what I can, honey. I’ll keep doing that, I promise.”
CURRENT DAY
Chapter Ten
Suze
I remember a Sunday school class in some church or another. The details of the place are murky. All the churches blurred together after a while, sanctuaries and basements and pulpits and kitchens melding in a single memory file. Sunday school rooms boasted kid-size chairs and scarred tables and coloring pages of Jesus and the disciples. We sang songs and memorized Bible verses, and it was a happy place, cutting things out to glue on paper, using crayons to explore the lesson of the day. Bible verses still float through my mind at the oddest of times: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness.” “Love one another.” “The greatest of these is love.” And one that singsongs through with power, though I would almost swear my dad never uttered it because it was too positive: “Our God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think.”
Those were never the verses my father focused on in his sermons, which I assumed was a function of adults versus children. The grown-ups got the serious stuff, the harsh judgments and fiery admonitions, while the children learned about Jesus and love and kindness.
In this particular Sunday school class, my young, pretty teacher showed us a photo of Jesus as a brown man. He gazed kindly from a painting I now realize was a version of the Catholic Sacred Heart of Jesus. But for me, in that moment, it was the friendliest version I’d ever seen. I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, and right then, Jesus became my friend.
All at once, I understood that this kindly God could keep me company and listen to my worries and prayers and even sleep next to me at night when I was afraid. My mother must have already died, because I missed her the most at night, when I felt the emptiness of her death pressing into my room, ready to smother me. I asked the teacher if Jesus could stay with you while you fell asleep, and she said, “Oh, of course, Suzanne! What a wonderful idea, to talk to Jesus while you fall asleep.”
That was it for me. Jesus of the big brown eyes and happy smile was my constant companion. I imagined that he strolled along beside me to school, double-checking when I crossed the street to make sure I didn’t get hit by a car （which had happened to a girl in our class—she had not returned to school, though she hadn’t died）。 He sat with me during lonely sandwich suppers while my dad worked on his latest sermon, and when I fell asleep, I imagined Jesus held me, stroking my hair the way my mother had, once upon a time. Sometimes, Jesus sang to me.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t protect me from my father, and in my fury, I turned my back on that comforting prophet. Even Beryl’s gentle religion couldn’t penetrate when I returned to Blue Cove.