Tiny babies understand very well. ‘Hello, Bobik,’ I said. ‘Hello, dear.’ And he gave me a special kind of look. . . . He’s no ordinary baby.—natascha
“Hey, Bekah?” A door swung open; cold wind tickled my neck. The voices continued, and I tried to make sense of them—as if I were deciphering echoes through a long tunnel.
“Bekah Caaaardim! Are you up? It’s Marielise and Heather! We’re gonna take you to ward council, remember?”
“Do you think she forgot?”
“She hasn’t forgotten a single meeting all year, and we still have a little time. She’d want us to wake her up. Why don’t you check her bedroom while I wait in—oh, my heck!”
“Wha—ohmygosh.”
Through a small crack I’d managed to create between my eyelids, I saw a vision: Marielise Kimball (from
As I rubbed the glue from my eyes, my elbows collided with something soft and warm. Chris’s pale green eyes were open and staring; he was lying on top of the chenille blanket, his arms around me and my face pressed against his bare chest. Basically, we were spooning.
I yelped and rolled off the couch. Heather’s oh, my heck! had roused Marianne; I could hear her running the water upstairs. At any moment she would burst into the living room. I held my hands to my face and moaned, “I’m getting kicked out for sure!”
“No, Bekah, I’ll explain it if you ever need me to,” he whispered.
“Go away,” I hissed, pushing him towards the door to the basement stairs. “See you at church, if I ever get out of the bishop’s office.”
I shut the door just as Marianne skipped down the stairs from her suite, resplendent in the silky silvery robe that she saved specially for getting caught in her pyjamas. Her face looked a little red from washing off her nighttime masque.
“Sorry, there’s nobody here anymore,” I said. “Oh, look! The pink polish on my toenails is chipping.”
Marianne separated some squished blond curls with her fingers, “Well, who was here?”
“Marielise and Heather, they were gonna take me to ward—”
“You’re So Vain” rang out from Marianne’s iPhone. She picked up: “Hello?” Marianne listened for a moment, then looked up at me, “Yeah, she’s here.” She looked at me, shrugged again, and ran back up to her room. The last thing I heard her say before the door was, “Okay, start at the beginning.”
On my escape into my room, Graça looked up from some rapid texting, her violet eyes wide.
“Nothing happened!” I yelled, flopping face-first onto my comforter, and that’s when I remembered that I was covered in bruises.
* * * *
An hour later I was standing in front of our full-length hallway mirror, shaking my head. Half a jar of theatrical-strength foundation had not completely covered up the bruises, so I shook my hair around my face and surveyed the general effect. I’d had to pull out my secret-weapon outfit for this trip to church—nothing else would do, and neither would staying home.
My dad had bought me this dress for my high-school graduation after he saw me cut out a picture of it from one of Marianne’s Anthropologie catalogues and tape it inside my day planner as a reminder to work extra hours and to ask my boss at Blockbuster for a raise. It was navy blue, the color of my eyes, and shaped in a very flattering late-seventies flowy style down to the crochet trim just below my knees. I looked hot in this dress, but I did not look slutty. I’d need every hot-but-not-at-all-slutty vibe I could get when I walked into sacrament meeting today.
Marianne complimented my dress as she swept past me to the front door, but she didn’t mention her phone call. She looked radiant, of course, in a white sheath, a beige open-knit wrap sweater, and tall beige stilettos the exact color of her nylons. Graça was wearing black, as usual. Sometimes she made me wonder whether people in
“Good morning! Welcome to church, Bekah,” David Jones (from
“Sister Cardim, just the person I’ve been looking for!” Bishop Ramirez chirped just as I’d taken relative shelter in an empty row of seats. I smiled and shook the bishop’s hand. “So, Rebekah, how have you been doing lately?” the bishop continued.
“Oh, the usual, y’know, rehearsals,” I answered. With the corner of my eye, I saw Christian Miles walk/limp into the auditorium and choose a seat in the back next to Nyx Hastings.
“Anything I can do for you?” my spiritual leader asked significantly.
“Um . . .”
“Acutally, Sister Cardim, I don’t think you and I have talked much since . . . well, anyway. Should we meet after church to catch up?”
“Sure, I’d love to!” I gave the bishop a huge grin and stared up into his warm brown eyes surrounded by leathery laugh lines. Ten months ago I had been sitting at his dinner table, holding his and his wife’s hands, waiting to hear whether his son, my boyfriend, was alive or dead. Now what did he think of me?
All Marianne asked after I told her I’d walk home on account of my appointment with the bishop was, “So who was he?” When I refused to tell her, she lost interest, but I relaxed just a little—Marielise and Heather must not have recognized Chris.
Graça sat beside me during sacrament meeting. And Sunday School. And Relief Society. No one else got within three seats of me.
* * * *
“Do you have anything you wish to tell me?” Bishop Ramirez asked after the customary formalities. He told me about the power of forgiveness, about how he could help me access the power of Christ’s Atonement to take away my guilt and pain, about how he knew that I was a good girl who tried to do what was right. When I still didn’t crack, he tried another tactic: “Y’know, I miss talking to you at Charlie’s baseball games. We had some good times.”
“Well, Charlie’s never going to play baseball again, so we’d still be missing those games,” I muttered.
The bishop’s smile hardened and disappeared. “Look, Bekah, I don’t work with circumstantial evidence. I can’t help you if you don’t confess.”
“I’ve nothing to confess.”
He rubbed his temples. “Are you sure? Should we go over For the Strength of the Youth again?”
“Okay, okay, I fell asleep on the couch with a guy. Because we were really tired. Nothing happened.”
“I know there’s nothing wrong with that, technically, though it does violate the Honor Code, but it suggests that you and this young man are maybe too comfortable together. Have you found yourselves nearly crossing other boundaries, even if technically ‘nothing happened’?”
I moaned, my throbbing head in my hands.
“Bekah, I know this is uncomfortable for both of us, but you have to remember that I’m your bishop, and whatever we say in this room stays in this room. Are you and this young man dating seriously?”
“No!”
He frowned. “So this is casual?”
“No, it’s nothing. I don’t even like him! We never, ever, . . . Oh my gosh, you’re never going to believe me.”
“It’s not about what I believe. I’m also worried about that bruise on your chin, the one covered in makeup. This relationship isn’t a healthy one, and I tell you this as someone who cares.”
I grabbed a handful of Kleenex out of the box on his desk, the tidal wave was breaking. “Please, can I go now?” I sobbed.
Bishop Ramirez looked crestfallen. He really did care about the welfare of my soul. I almost wished I could confess a sin to him just to ease his mind. Instead, I walked out of his office, trying to maintain my dignity in front of a few lingering ward members as well as I could with my face blotchy and wet, and started the long, cold walk downhill to the condo.
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