The Abstinence Teacher (21 page)

It’s the goddam Christians
, she thought, ducking into her car and pulling the door shut behind her.
They won’t leave me alone
.

She knew she’d crossed a dangerous line in fourth-period Health,
openly challenging the Wise Choices curriculum, encouraging the kids to seek out more reliable sources of information. There would be a price to pay down the road—probably sooner rather than later—she had no illusion about that. But what was the alternative? To just stand there like a good little zombie and let the half-truths and outright lies—36 percent failure rate!—pass by without a peep of protest?

I’m done doing their dirty work
, Ruth thought, flicking her wipers to peel away the wet leaves plastered to her windshield like souvenirs in a child’s scrapbook.
They’re gonna have to do it themselves from now on
.

In a way, she was grateful to Maggie’s coach for making the situation so clear. Until she’d seen those girls, those beautiful young athletes, sitting on the grass in the sunshine, being coerced by adults they trusted into praying to the God of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and the Republican Party—the God of War and Abstinence and Shame and Willful Ignorance, the God Who Loved Everyone Except the Homosexuals, Who Sent Good People to Hell if They Didn’t Believe in Him, and Let Murderers and Child Rapists into Heaven if They Did, the God Who Made Women as an Afterthought, and Then Cursed Them with the Pain of Childbirth, the God Who Would Have Never Let Girls Play Soccer in the First Place if It Had Been up to Him—until then, she’d allowed herself to succumb to the comforting fiction that her quarrel with the Bible Thumpers was confined to the classroom, to a political dispute about what got taught or didn’t get taught to other people’s children. But now she understood that she’d been fooling herself. This wasn’t just professional; it was personal. They’d already messed with her job, and now they were coming for her kids.

THE FULL
extent of the threat hadn’t become clear until Saturday evening, when Frank brought the girls home, and Ruth tried to engage them in a conversation about what had happened that morning on the soccer field. At the time, she’d been most concerned with explaining
her position to Maggie, but she wasn’t unhappy to see Eliza follow her little sister into the kitchen and take a seat at the table. Eliza still hadn’t fully recovered from her mother’s fifteen minutes of infamy last spring, and it seemed like a good idea to prepare her for the possibility that things could get ugly again, which was something Ruth hoped to avoid, but couldn’t rule out.

“Who wants hot chocolate?” she asked brightly. “It got kinda chilly out.”

Both girls shook their heads.

“So.” Ruth smiled stiffly, settling into her chair. “You guys have a good day?”

“Okay,” Eliza muttered.

Maggie just shrugged, fixing Ruth with a frosty stare. On normal Saturdays she showered and changed at her father’s, but tonight she was still wearing her rumpled, grass-stained soccer uniform like a reproach, letting Ruth know that she hadn’t been forgiven.

“Look,” Ruth told her. “I know you think I overreacted this morning.”

This was an understatement. Maggie had been stunned by her mother’s intervention in the postgame prayer, and had only managed to stammer a couple of mild objections as Ruth forcibly separated her from her teammates and marched her off the field. It wasn’t until they reached the parking area that Maggie found her voice, but by that point she was a complete wreck, sobbing furiously and calling Ruth an asshole over and over again, a word that Ruth had never heard her use before. Maggie also repeated the phrases
You’re insane
and I
hate you
several times, in response to her mother’s increasingly flustered attempts to defend what she’d done. Though she believed she deserved an apology, Ruth had decided to let the matter slide; she didn’t think there was a whole lot to be gained from rehashing statements her child had made in anger and probably regretted.

“I admit that I may not have handled the situation as well as I could
have,” she said. “Maybe it would have been smarter if I’d taken your coach aside and spoken to him in a less confrontational manner. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, and that I intend to make sure he doesn’t do it again.”

Maggie pushed out her bottom lip and scowled, a look that, for all its attempted ferocity, just made Ruth want to hug her. It was the exact same face Maggie had made as a tiny baby, when she was working herself up to a good cry.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she demanded. “Coach Tim wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was just thanking God for all our blessings and saying how happy he was that no one got hurt. I don’t see what’s so bad about that.”

Ruth didn’t know where to start.

“Thanking God?”
she spluttered. “He’s a soccer coach, not a minister.”

“So what? You don’t have to be a minister to believe in God.”

“First of all, honey, not everyone believes in the same God. There are Jewish girls on your team, and Nadima, is she—?”

“Muslim,” replied Maggie. “But not strict.”

“See, you’ve got Jewish girls, a Muslim girl—”

“Atheists,” Eliza piped in. Until that moment, Ruth hadn’t even known if she’d been paying attention to the conversation, she’d been so completely absorbed in the origami box she was constructing out of a sheet of notepaper.

“That’s right,” Ruth agreed. “Atheists and agnostics, too. Not everyone believes in the same God, and some people don’t believe in God at all. And other people aren’t sure what they believe. But you know what? Even if every girl on your team belonged to the same church, the coach still doesn’t have the right to say a prayer with them. The soccer team is a town organization. I’m sure they taught you about the separation of Church and State in Social Studies.”

Maggie looked puzzled. “You said it’s the town, not the state.”

“The State just means the government. Town, state, federal, it doesn’t matter. The government can’t promote a specific religion.”

“My soccer team’s part of the government?”

“It’s a town-sponsored league,” Ruth said, worried that the discussion was drifting into a swamp of technicalities. “Plus you were playing in a county park.”

Maggie seemed momentarily stymied by the legal argument, but she quickly regrouped.

“Well, I still don’t see why you had to yell at Coach Tim like that. You looked like such a weirdo. Your voice got all high and shaky.” Maggie flailed her hands around her head like she was being attacked by a swarm of bees, and screeched,
“Stop that praying or I’ll call the police!”

Eliza snickered, and Ruth shot her a dirty look. It was not a pleasant thing to be mocked by your children, especially when you were trying to protect them.

“I was upset, honey. After what those nuts did to me last year, maybe you can understand why I’m not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I didn’t threaten to call the police, by the way.”

“Whatever,” Maggie conceded. “But just so you know, I’m not quitting the team. I don’t care what you say, and Dad agrees with me. He’s the one who signed my permission slip.”

Ruth had to make an effort not to say something nasty. It drove her crazy when Frank pulled the old Divide and Conquer. At the same time, she sincerely regretted suggesting to the coach that Maggie wouldn’t be allowed to play on the Stars anymore. She’d spoken out of anger, without thinking things through, and now she found herself in a no-win situation—either compromise herself publicly or turn her family life into a living hell.

“I didn’t say
you
had to quit,” she explained, refining her position on the fly. “All I want is a guarantee that your coach will behave
appropriately in the future. And if he can’t do that, then I think
he’s
the one who should quit.”

“Coach Tim can’t quit,” Maggie said in a trembling voice. “He’s the best coach I ever had. All the girls would hate me.”

“I don’t think so,” Ruth replied. “Some of them might be happy about it. But if it’s a choice between doing the right thing and being popular, we’ve gotta do the right thing.”

“But we’re tied for first place. We need him.”

“Mr. Roper could take over, couldn’t he?”

“He’s part of the church, too.”

“Really?”

“That’s what Candace says.”

Ruth was startled by this, though she realized that she shouldn’t have been. John had been part of the prayer circle that morning, even if he hadn’t been speaking. She’d just assumed that he’d gotten sucked in like everyone else. Back when she’d known him, he’d been a hard-charging, hard-drinking guy with some sort of high-powered financial job, not her idea of a born-again. It was like living in a horror movie, she thought,
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
or something. You never knew who they were going to get to next.

“I’m sure you’d find somebody,” Ruth said. “Your father would be happy to coach the last few games. He knows a lot about soccer.”

“Please,” Maggie said softly. “Just mind your own business.”

“This
is
my business,” Ruth said. “Your coach has no right to make you pray to a God you don’t believe in.”

Eliza snickered. “You mean a God
you
don’t believe in.”

“That’s right. I don’t believe in Coach Tim’s God, and I don’t think your sister does, either.” Ruth turned to Maggie, suddenly worried that Eliza knew something that she didn’t. “You don’t, do you?”

“I dunno,” Maggie said. “Nobody ever taught me about it.”

“Well, I do,” Eliza said. “I believe in Coach Tim’s God.”

“No, you don’t,” Ruth snapped.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Eliza shot back. There was a whitehead at the corner of her left nostril that Ruth had to restrain herself from popping.

“No,” Ruth assured her. “And I don’t think you’re a born-again, fundamentalist, evangelical, nutjob Christian, either. Because that’s what he is.”

“I believe in God.” Eliza spoke slowly and calmly, locking eyes with her mother. “And I believe that Jesus is His only son, and that He died on the cross for my sins.”

Maggie was staring at her sister, clearly startled by this news. Ruth’s immediate impulse was to try to convince herself that Eliza wasn’t serious, that she was just crying out for attention, but it didn’t work. There was something in her face and voice—the eerie serenity of the believer—that couldn’t be denied.

“Since when?” she asked.

“A few months,” Eliza said. “I’ve been talking to this girl in my class.”

“What girl? Do I know her?”

“Grace Park. She just moved here last year. I met her in Homework Club.”

“I’d like to meet her sometime.”

“Her family wants me to come to church with them.”

Ruth groaned. “Not the Tabernacle?”

Eliza shook her head. “It’s called Living Waters Fellowship. In Gifford.”

Ruth closed her eyes, trying to get her bearings, to react to this like a good parent, to not do anything that would open a bigger rift between herself and Eliza than there already was.

“Do you really want to go?”

Eliza nodded. “I was scared to tell you.”

Ruth reached across the table and took her daughter’s hand. It was
dry and rough—just like her father’s—despite Ruth’s frequent reminders to use lotion.

“You shouldn’t be scared to tell me anything. I need to know what’s going on in your life.”

Eliza seemed suspicious, but she didn’t withdraw her hand.

“So I can go?”

“I guess. If you really want to.”

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m not
mad,”
Ruth told her. “I just don’t see what you need Jesus for.”

Eliza smiled sadly and shook her head, like she pitied anyone who had to ask.

“He loves me,” she said.

THE STONEWOOD
Medical Group had its offices on the third floor of the Healing Arts Complex, a squat four-story building with dark mirrored windows that seemed to have been plunked down by mistake on a grim stretch of Hawkins Road otherwise dominated by auto body shops and small manufacturing facilities with mysterious names: Diamond Catalysis, Universal Recoil, Northeastern SaniSys, Zip Global Force. Ruth had only been inside the H.A.C. once before, when Maggie had gotten a plantar’s wart dug out by an insensitive podiatrist she still referred to as Dr. Ouchenberg.

The receptionist informed her that Dr. Kamal was running a little late. Ruth took a seat in the waiting area, picked up a
People
magazine, and pretended to be unperturbed by the elderly woman three seats away who appeared to be on the verge of coughing up a hairball. During a moment of inadvertent eye contact, the woman smiled gamely and assured Ruth that she wasn’t contagious. Ruth thanked her for the information and returned to her article detailing the collapse of Jessica Simpson’s storybook marriage. She found it hard to focus; her thoughts kept drifting to her mother, who had spent a lot of time alone in doctor’s
waiting rooms during the last year of her life and was always happy to engage a total stranger in small talk. Ruth looked up from the magazine.

“Nasty out today, isn’t it?”

The woman held up her index finger while another fit of coughing ran its course. Grimacing an apology, she wiped at the corners of her mouth with a Kleenex and took a sip from a water bottle that she carried in a foam holster suspended from a strap around her neck.

“I don’t mind the rain,” she said. “It’s the snow I hate.”

“I hear you,” said Ruth. “It’s okay when it falls, but then it sticks around.”

The woman pressed her fist against her mouth and cleared her throat for a long time, as if she were about to begin an oration. When her voice finally emerged, however, it was small and raspy, barely audible.

“My daughter’s in California. I’m going there for Christmas.”

“That sounds nice.”

“I have two grandchildren. A girl who’s eight and a boy who’s three.”

“Three? I bet he’s a cutie.”

“A holy terror. But I love him to death.”