Embrace Me (39 page)

I feel sick, like someone just propositioned me for sex or something.

Oh, Lella.

A Caribbean cruise? The movies? Going out to eat? Eat what, Lella? Mashed potatoes and gravy? What are you thinking? What are you thinking?

How can I go back on the road without you? Display myself like that without you displaying yourself like that? I'll be like the twins! We didn't swallow light bulbs or regurgitate keys or twist ourselves into pretzels, we were just freaks, Lella. FREAKS!

The door of my sideshow life closes behind me. Locks and bolts crash into place, soldered together by a situation beyond my control.

I press the tears back and rush out the door. I've got to get out of this room. I've got to get to the lake. I've got to sit and think. I don't know what to do. I can't go back on the road. I've got nothing anymore. No place to go. No future. Nothing.

Go!
Peter says.

Yes
, John agrees.

I slam the front door behind me, my coat open to the breeze. My skin burns. I burn.

A woman walking her dog gasps as I pass.

The dog rears up, tail wagging, and he jumps against me. I fall backward, landing on my rear end in the grass.

“I'm so sorry! Bibbers! Leave that poor woman alone!”

My scarf! I forgot my scarf! I grab at my neck, no scarf. No scarf!

I scrabble, gaining a bewildered stance, pressing my hands on my cheeks.

The only way to the lake is through the town square and beyond.

Oh no, I can't do this.

Go to the lake. Get to the lake
, the words resonate within me. Bartholomew? Peter?

Jesus?!

No, surely not Him.

So I hurry. I quicken my pace with long strides.

“Oh, my gosh!” a man says. Then looks away, ashamed.

Dear God, please don't make this like a movie where the beast gets pelted with eggs and trash because people don't understand and when they don't understand they get scared and do all sorts of things out of character. I mean, there they were, hanging around the general store, caring for their neighbor, and all of a sudden a beastly person walks by and out come the pitchforks.

Okay, that thought helped.

“Mama! She's so ugly!” A little girl points to me. “What happened to you, lady?”

The mother's eyes open wide, beautiful brown eyes under finely arched brows. “Rebecca!”

She turns both of their backs on me.

But still stares and quick intakes of breath burn me as I burrow through the lunchtime crowd, and why did it have to be lunchtime? Each gasp strips something away from me.

“Look! It's one of the freaks!” A teenage boy reaches out his hand as I pass, makes contact with my shoulder, and pushes as hard as he can.

I lose my footing, watching him as he looks at his fat girlfriend in triumph.

“Oh!” I gasp, reaching out.

Everyone leaps away as I fall a second time, my spine scraping down the brick ledge beneath the window at Java Jane's.

The lake! The lake! Just think about the lake. That's all.

Forget where you are.

A young girl tugs my coat as I make it to my feet yet again. She stands with two of her friends. She's crying. My heart melts.

“Don't cry for me, sweetie. Cry for all these people who are frightened.”

Resolved by her compassion, I chart my course, looking neither to the right nor to the left, passing through the square, finally turning onto Lake Shore Drive. Only a mile or so more.

My feet feel like lead. I pass the souvenir shops, still closed. Posters of perfect women in bikinis holding up suntan lotion, bleaching in the front windows, perfect, perfect women, selling something. The Dairy Queen. Joyce's Juicy Burgers. A small walk-in clinic only opened during the season. A Candy Kitchen. Josef's fine dining. Barnacle Bill's Seafood. They all slide by, these places of the normal, the perfect, as I hurry forward, the wind against me.

I stumble a third time, landing in the gravel at the side of the road.

A car pulls over as I gain my feet, rubbing my road-burned palms down the legs of my sweatpants.

“Lady! Are you all right? I saw you take that tumble.”

I lift my face to him. “I'm okay.”

“But your face. Did you fall on . . .”

“I'm deformed!” I scream as he leaps from his car. “I'm deformed! This is me! Get out of here. Leave me alone!”

The tears bite again.

No. No, no, no!

“But your knees . . . and your forehead.”

The fall ate through my sweatpants. Blood drips down from a gash amid the abrasions. “Please!” I wail. “Leave me be.”

“But you need help.”

“I'm almost home.” I lie. But then it doesn't seem like a lie. “Please. I'll be all right.”

He pulls out a handkerchief and wipes the sweat from my face. He places it in my hand. “Please. Let me help you.”

He looks like a nice young man. Sandy brown, curly hair, kind eyes. “I'm Robbie Fraser. I live on the lake. I can take you out there if that's where you're going.”

“No. I can't. I've got to walk.” I wipe my forehead. Blood imprints the white cotton.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” I want to yell at him like I yell at Rick.

He tries a few more times to convince me, but finally, shaking his head and looking like he thinks he failed me, he gets into his car and drives off.

I press forward.

The handkerchief!

I tie it around my face. Bless you, Robbie Fraser, for lightening my load.

I stumble onto my dock and facedown I beg God to come. Please, if You're only in my face just once in my whole life, God, let it be now.

Do not forsake me.

I turn over, lifting my face to the sky.

There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

I have held you in the palm of my hand. I have held you in my arms since before you were born.

I will never let you go.

Father, forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing. Jesus, take away my sin.

I can only feel and feel and feel, the verses from my childhood pouring into my head as I stare into the sky, the midday sun on my face, watching it as it begins to travel through the deepening blue.

I give up, Lord. Into your hands I commend my spirit.

“Val?”

“Augustine.”

“Jessica saw you tearing through the square a little while ago. I called Charmaine. She's taping for
Port of Peace
and said I'd probably find you here.”

I sit up and I grab his hand, holding it to my heart.

“Val. What's going on? You're hurt. Your knees—”

“I was black inside, like tar. I've festered unforgiveness for years. Do you realize the ugliness of my face simply reflects who I am inside? I've been so mean to you.”

“That's a little dramatic, isn't it? You were burned.” His tone is tender.

“You know what I mean.” I look out over the cold waters of Lake Coventry. “Baptize me.”

“Right here?”

“Yes. Right now. Finish this thing. If you don't do it, I'm going to jump in the lake on my own and hope something takes. I'm that desperate.”

He sits for several seconds and says, “I won't fail you again,” and unlaces his boots. As he takes off his leather jacket he mumbles, “Oh, Jesus,” over and over again.

I remove my shoes and my coat.

“Take off your socks too. You'll be glad they're dry. Do you have an undershirt on under that sweater?”

“Yes.”

“Then take your sweater off too.”

He removes his flannel shirt, folding it and laying it atop his jacket. He slips off his dime store watch and tucks it in one of his boots. Our skin raises up goose bumps. “Ready?”

Somehow, it all seems rather utilitarian, talking of socks and whatnot. Shouldn't we have just waded in without a thought, the Spirit taking such windy control we hadn't a thought for socks and whatnot? But it's mid-March.

We both gasp as we wade into the frigid lake.

“Oh, Val.” He gathers me into the crook of his right arm. “Oh, Val. Just embrace me as I lower you into the water. It will be all right.”

He touches my face and his eyes rest on me. He kisses my forehead, holds my nose shut with his bandana, then says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father . . .”

And under I go, the cold waters swallowing me whole. His arms supporting me.

“And the name of the Son . . .”

Yet another time, and into the waters of the lake my tears spill.

“And the name of the Holy Spirit.”

I feel like I'm under for minutes. Years of tears gushing from my eyes and my body. Can a body cry? I die. As He died. Disfigured upon a cross.

He had no form or comeliness.

He died in ugliness, on display.

The holy freak, the Son of God, raised up for all the world to see, to laugh at, to mock, to despise, even to feel sorry for.

Augustine's arm tightens around me and he lifts me out of the waters.

He holds me in his arms, crying hot tears onto my face. “I don't deserve this. I don't deserve this. I don't deserve this.”

Okay, it may not have been like the scene of a movie, but I was happy for the dry socks.

“You rode on your bike?”

He hands me a helmet. “I knew it was urgent. And I'm not in shape to go running to the lake these days. It's gonna be a cold ride.”

He climbs onto the Harley and I climb onto the seat behind him.

“You know, a friend of mine, years ago, said he wanted a motorcycle someday. Well, he wasn't a friend. In fact, he was my enemy for years.”

“He's not your enemy any longer?”

“No. I've forgiven him. At least I think I have.”

Augustine twists the throttle and we head back to town.

Being forgiven is good, but forgiving is something even holier.

I think John would agree with that.

NINETEEN

AUGUSTINE

T
here's a verse in the Bible about God doing more than we could ever ask or think. That's what He did for me there at the lake with Daisy. For it was Daisy I baptized last week.