Out of Heaven's Grasp (10 page)

He shut his eyes, and he looked so hurt, that I wished I could take it back.

But I knew that what I was doing was the right thing. It hurt, and it was hard, so that meant it was right. God’s way was never easy, but he required it of his people. I began to sob in earnest.

He reached for me. “Abby, please—”

“Don’t touch me.” I could barely get the words out because I was crying so hard. “I don’t know you anymore, Jesse Wallace.”

“Not you,” he pleaded. “Don’t you say that to me.”

I turned away. “Just go. I never want to see you again.”

There was no sound in the darkness except my heartbroken sobs.

His hand on my shoulder.

I shook him off. “
Go
.”

He didn’t move.

I looked at him. His face was all mangled, and his expression was destroyed, and he looked so lost and hurt.

It killed me to say these things to him. I wanted so badly to comfort him, but I knew that if I did, I’d never manage to stay strong. So, I gathered up my skirts and took off running, back for the house.

When I got back, I looked over my shoulder, and I saw the dark outline of him, standing there, not moving.

I felt as if maybe I’d broken him. I scrambled back inside the window, slammed it shut, and cried myself to sleep.

CHAPTER SIX

Abby

When I woke up, I started crying again.

I couldn’t help it. It hurt too bad. The worst of it was that I kept thinking about Jesse standing outside, so pitiful and sad, and I felt
guilty
for hurting him like that. How could I feel guilty when I knew I was doing the right thing? If I was following God’s commandments, wouldn’t he take this guilt from me? Or was the guilt some kind of test for me as well? How long would God test me?

I thought of the story of Abraham and Isaac, who was Abraham’s only son with his wife Sarah. God had told Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, but then God made Abraham and Sarah wait until they were very old to have a baby at all. One child. Isaac.

And then, in the night, God came to Abraham and told him that he must sacrifice Isaac to God.

After all those years, after all that waiting, God was forcing Abraham to kill his own son.

Abraham could have refused. But he trusted God, and he took Isaac out to an altar, and he prepared to sacrifice his only son to God, because that was what God required of him.

When God saw how willing Abraham was to follow his commandments, he stopped Abraham, and Isaac was spared.

I assured myself that I didn’t have it quite as bad as Abraham. I didn’t have to give up my only son. I only had to give up Jesse—and he wasn’t dead. He was out there, somewhere in the world, and maybe he was even okay.

Still, I couldn’t stop crying.

It was the day of my wedding, and my mothers were putting the finishing touches on my wedding dress, but all I could do was lie on my bed and sob.

My mother came in and held me in her arms. She rocked me like I was a baby, and she stroked my hair, and she told me to be brave and strong, that I would be rewarded in Heaven for my obedience.

But that only made me cry harder.

Mother Claudia and Mother Deborah also gave me hugs and told me they were praying that God would give me strength.

But it was as if the floodgates had been opened, and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. I cried until I was exhausted. And then I cried more. Finally, some time in the afternoon, it seemed as if I had no more tears left.

My older sisters Salome and Anna had come by to see me.

They sat down on my bed on either side of me, and each one of them took one of my hands.

“I felt like this too,” said Salome.

“You didn’t cry,” I said.

“Sure, I did.” She gave me a sad smile. “I only did it in front of my mother, though. I hid the rest of the time.” Salome was Mother Deborah’s daughter.

“It won’t be so bad,” said Anna. “You’ll be out of the house, on your own. You’ll be a woman. It’s like an adventure.”

Salome nodded. “A little bit. But you have to admit it’s different for you, Anna. You’re a first wife.”

“That’s true,” said Anna. She’d been married to a man close to her age, and it had happened so recently that she wasn’t even pregnant yet. She tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “But I was still scared about all of it. I didn’t really know Timothy before we got married. I didn’t know what kind of man he was going to be.”

I didn’t say anything.

Salome squeezed my fingers. “It doesn’t matter once you start having babies. Everything makes sense then. You won’t care if their father is old or young or handsome. None of that will matter, because you’ll be so in love with them.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” said Anna. “And you won’t have to struggle like Timothy and I do. Bob has such a successful farm. You won’t have to worry about food or money or anything like that.”

They smiled at me, and I tried to smile back.

I knew that they meant to reassure me and make me feel better, but it really didn’t help. I wasn’t crying because of marrying Bob. Sure, I wasn’t crazy about the idea, and it scared me. I was crying because of Jesse. I didn’t know what would happen to him, and I felt like I’d let him down. Like we’d all let him down. He was out there, trying to survive, and he had no one.

And it was my fault.

I didn’t have to meet him that night behind our house. If I’d stayed away from him, like I knew was the right thing to do, we’d never have been caught, and he wouldn’t have been cast out of the community.

That was why I couldn’t stop crying.

But I couldn’t say that, because now that Jesse was gone, we were forbidden from ever speaking of him. He had never been born. He was gone. His name had been stricken from the Book of Life. He was dead to all of us.

So, I just smiled at my sisters and tried to keep from crying anymore.

Later, when my mothers brought me my wedding dress, I let them put it on me, and I told them it was beautiful. I thanked them for all their hard work.

But when I heard my own voice, it sounded blank and empty, as if something inside me had been flattened.

I was quiet while they worked on doing my hair. They braided it into a crown around my head, and it looked beautiful. They made me put cucumbers over my eyes to try to take away the swelling from all the crying that I’d done, but it didn’t work very well.

So, later that evening, I was brought to marry Bob Carroll with a red and puffy face, but a beautiful dress and a gorgeous hair style.

Inside, I felt dead.

* * *

In the Life, the wedding ceremony was considered a private matter between the husband and the wife. No one else was permitted inside during the service except my father and mother, who served as witnesses.

There was no parading down an aisle with bridesmaids or flower girls. There was no music or processional.

We arrived in the house of Bob Carroll in the early evening, and I was greeted by my new family—three wives and eight children. (Seven more were grown and married already, and they were not there.) The wives were all older than me. Fern was in her sixties. She seemed like a grandmother, not a peer. May was in her late forties—the age of my mother. The youngest wife, Sally, was thirty-six. She had children that were only five years younger than me.

After shaking hands with the wives, we went into Bob’s office, where Gideon and Bob were waiting.

Gideon was apparently going to perform the wedding ceremony. Both of them smiled at me when I entered the room.

I tried to smile back, but it was hard to remember what a real smile felt like. Inside, I was numb, and emotions seemed like something from the distant past. Even though only two days had passed since the announcement of my marriage, I had changed in that time, and I knew I was never going to be the same.

Bob was balding, but—like all the older men in the community—he still kept what remained of his hair long. It was silvery-black, tied in a thin ponytail at his neck. He took my hand when I entered the room, and he smelled strongly of vanilla tic-tacs. I remembered that when I was a little girl, he would always offer one to me.

His hand was leathery and old. I looked down to see that there were age spots on his skin and that his veins stood up against his knuckles. He was wearing a suit, dressed up for the wedding. His belly protruded an inch or two over his belt.

But as Gideon began to ask us to repeat our vows, I looked up at the wrinkling face of this man, and tried to summon some kind of attraction or love towards him. I tried to see a man that I could feel something towards.

I couldn’t.

All I felt was resigned. This was happening, and there was nothing I could do about it.

When Gideon asked me if I took this man as my husband, I said, “I do.”

Bob slid an unadorned gold band on my ring finger. I stared down at it, knowing I was bound and claimed.

“You may now kiss the bride,” said Gideon.

Bob leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. They were thin and papery, and his beard was scratchy.

It was nothing like kissing Jesse, nothing at all.

But deep inside me, some part of me was glad of that, because some part of me treasured what I’d had with Jesse, brief and sinful though it might have been. I didn’t want to have another experience that trumped my moments with Jesse, because I wanted to keep those moments special and sweet and untouched.

Even after all of this, I still had a rebellious spirit.

No wonder God had decided to test me in this way. I was a very willful, wicked girl.

I must put all my old feelings aside and do my duty now.

Only when all my feelings for Jesse faded far away, would I really be free and pure and worthy of the Lord’s love.

* * *

After the wedding, there was a big dinner shared by my family and Bob’s. I supposed I was going to have to get used to thinking of Bob’s family as mine soon, but for now, it seemed too strange to do so.

I sat next to Bob at a big table in the dining room, and I watched him eat. I didn’t touch my food, however, because I still didn’t seem to have a taste for anything. Though I could smell the food, it didn’t smell very appetizing, and I simply didn’t feel hungry. If Bob noticed that I wasn’t eating, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to be paying much attention to me at all. He talked with Gideon and my father throughout the meal. Since Gideon and Bob were there, the rules that women were to be silent during a meal were observed.

In my home, my father had never enforced the rule, saying he thought it was ridiculous. If my mothers didn’t speak to him, he’d have no one to talk to except the boys. I was used to boisterous meals, full of laughter and the chatter of both male and female voices. I supposed that here, things would be different.

Bob and I weren’t going away for a honeymoon. Sometimes couples did. Usually when that happened, they’d take a trip to the Life community in Sarasota, Florida. However, ever since Gideon had come into the community, the elders had been speaking disparagingly of the Sarasota community, claiming they were far too worldly.

It was true that the community in Sarasota had city electricity and water but that was only because the area there was so built up that it was impossible not to be connected. Robert Morris himself had started the community there, and he’d said it was okay for them to function the way they did, as long as they kept themselves separate in every other way.

Anyhow, it was just as well, because I didn’t want to go away with Bob. I didn’t like the idea of being alone with him on a trip. We’d be spending our wedding night together in his house, and that was just fine with me.

Since Bob’s farm was so successful, he had a massive house. It was constructed of three wings, one for each wife. From above, the house would resemble a T, each wife’s wing jutting out from the center, where the kitchen and laundry rooms were located. Bob’s office, where we’d been married, was also in the center. There was a guest bedroom there, and I learned that would be my room for the time being. I didn’t know what would happen when I started to have children, and I didn’t bother to ask. Maybe if I didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t happen.

Fern was the one who took me to my room, since all her children were grown, and she didn’t have anyone to shuffle off to bed.

I had attempted to help with the clean up in the kitchen after dinner but had just felt in the way as I watched Bob’s wives and older daughters work and talk together. They all knew their tasks, whether it be washing or drying, and they knew where all the dishes belonged. I stood there, looking like an idiot, until Fern took me by the arm and led me down the hallway and told me about my room.

My guitar and my suitcase were already there. Between the two things, I had everything that I owned.

Fern opened a door off the room. “You’ve got your own bathroom here, with your own shower. Just be aware that there’s not usually any hot water after about nine in the morning, since there’s so many bathing in the mornings. You can try to get up early enough to beat the rush, or you can get used to the chill.”