Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science (2 page)

But today, I don’t want to go anywhere.

“I want to stay home, Mom,” I say.

“C’mon,” she says. And so we go. Mom lets us each bring a blanket and pillow for the twenty-minute car ride. I close my eyes and try to get comfortable, but now I ache all over. I wonder to myself why Mom’s making us get out of bed and drive to Grandma’s. When we arrive, Grandma greets us at the door with her soft-cheeked hug and the warm squeeze of her hand on my arm. I love the way her charm bracelet jingles.

“Here, let’s get you settled. Would you like to watch TV in my bed?”

Normally, when Grandma asks if I want to sleep in her room during a sleepover, I say no, politely, because Grandma snores, but today, it will be just Sherman and me in the room. I nod yes.

My brother and I climb under the covers and face each other, wondering what to make of today. We should be in school, but instead we’ll get to watch
Bewitched
and
Let’s Make a Deal
. Grandma brings us a tray, with two tiny glasses of orange juice, two bowls of Lipton instant chicken noodle soup (my favorite), cinnamon toast cut into triangles, and two bowls of applesauce.

I frown. I hate applesauce.

“Go on, have some,” Grandma says. “It tastes good when you’re under the weather.” She spoons it into each of our mouths as though we are toddlers.

I’m not sure what’s going on. Olivia just had chicken pox (or
the erroneous belief in chicken pox
), and we’ve spent the last week praying a lot and not seeing friends. Now, my brother and I
don’t
have spots but we’re “under the weather” and Mom has called Mrs. Hannah, who is praying for us. Instead of going to school we have come to Grandma’s, where we are being spoon-fed applesauce, which has what looks to me like teeny bits of chalk in it and leaves a taste in my mouth that is yucky and bitter. The cinnamon toast fixes that.

Mom comes into the bedroom, Grandma goes downstairs, and together we—Mom, Sherman, and I—sing “Mother’s Evening Prayer,” one of the hymns by Mary Baker Eddy that we know by heart. I don’t know why, but when I sing it, my eyes tear.

My throat tightens, and when the tune climbs upward on “nestling’s faltering flight,” I start to cry. I just want to feel better.

Mom rubs my back, my nose gets all runny, and my voice sort of wobbles through the remaining four verses.

After we’re done with the hymn, we recite the Scientific Statement of Being, just like we do at the end of Sunday school every week:

Although the words skip over my tongue as easily as the Pledge of Allegiance, I don’t really understand what they all mean, separately
or together. But we say the Scientific Statement of Being so often in our house that it just sounds to my ears like the words should make sense.

We stay at Grandma’s until two-thirty, when we have to hurry home before Olivia gets back from school. By then, I feel fine.

A few days later, Sherman and I both wake up with red spots. My brother counts eleven on his face, and more on his tummy, back, and arms. I have only two on my face and three on each hand, so I figure I’ve done a better job of praying than Sherman has. Still, we both stay home from school until the spots crust over. “The school has certain rules we have to obey,” my father reminds us. Neither of us asks why.

I am sitting
in the backseat of my dad’s old red Mercedes sedan, smushed between Olivia and Sherman. In the trunk of the car are three pies—apple, pumpkin, and pecan—and a loaf of banana nut bread, hot out of the oven. The warm, spicy smell is seeping into the back of the car, making me hungry. It is 10:45
A.M
., the beginning of what will be a long day; we will not be home again until late tonight. We are rushing to church, and then to Ammie and Grandpa’s for the Thanksgiving feast. Earlier this morning, the thermometer outside our kitchen dipped below freezing.

I can see my breath until the car’s heat kicks in. Dad is singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” and driving a bit too fast, because we are running late. Mom is perched on the front passenger seat, applying bright pink lipstick to her mouth with the help of a tiny mirror in the makeup compact she keeps in her purse. People say it’s
uncanny
how my parents look
just like
Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach. I have no idea who they are, but the way people say it, I know it’s a compliment. My mom is blond and pretty and slender, with brown eyes. My father is handsome with thick, dark hair and deep-set blue eyes.

Under our heavy jackets, we are wearing our Sunday best. Olivia and I are in matching plaid dresses, which she hates but I don’t mind. My brown hair is neatly parted down the middle, and I have two tight braids. Olivia refused the braids this morning, so beneath a pom-pom ski hat, her hair hangs in her face. Sherman is wearing gray slacks, a blue blazer, and a collared shirt with a tie. Already the tails of his shirt are untucked, the tie is crooked, and his blond hair looks like a rag mop, even though I watched Dad pull a comb through it just ten minutes earlier. Mom is wearing dressy brown leather boots with a skirt and matching blazer. Our father is in a suit.

This is the
first time I have been in our church since the renovation. On the walls I see the familiar quotes:

We are sitting in a pew toward the front of the church. We have our choice of seats because Dad likes to get here early, even though we rarely do. Usually, when Dad shaves on Sunday mornings before church, we can hear him whistling in the steamy bathroom. Getting ready for church puts him in a good mood. Mom has to make sure we kids are appropriately dressed, so she has less time for a relaxed
ablution
. (I like that word; it sounds like it has my name in it.) Almost always, the hot rollers are still in her hair when Dad calls from the bottom of the stairs, with a combination of disappointment and eagerness in his voice, “Honey, we’re going to be late!”

Mom’s sister, my aunt Kay, likes to say to Mom, “Well, Jo, if you’re
always late for church, maybe subconsciously you’d rather not go.” Dad says Kay likes to be controversial.

I love the new wooden pews of our church, even if they are hard and uncomfortable. Churches are supposed to have pews. Before the renovation, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Excelsior, Minnesota, had rows of plastic molded chairs with shiny metal legs like you see in a classroom or at Baskin-Robbins. Now our church looks more like the Lutherans’ and the Episcopalians’. I had hoped we’d get a crucifix and stained glass windows too, like they have at Grandma’s Mount Olivet, or Ammie’s St. Martin’s-by-the-Lake, but Dad says that’s
idolatry;
Christian Science is
metaphysical
.

I’m not sure what he means by that, but in the Commandments, Moses says,

Even though I don’t know exactly what
graven image
means, I do know from Sunday school that stained glass windows and crucifixes are graven images, and we are following the Commandments by having plain windows in our church and nothing fancy like pictures of Jesus on the cross.

At First Church of Christ, Scientist, Excelsior, Minnesota, the walls are bare, except for the two quotations and the posted hymn numbers. Where other churches have an altar and a minister in pretty robes, we have a platform with a double-wide lectern for the First and Second Readers, who are democratically elected by the church members and are frequently practitioners.

I turn around in the pew to watch as the church fills. I see my friend Lisa from Sunday school sitting with her parents and younger brother; we wave to each other. The organist starts to play some soft music to signal that the service is about to begin. Suddenly, I am nervous. The butterflies are flitting in my stomach, my heart
races, and even though I just went to the bathroom, I know I could go again.

On Thanksgiving Day, everyone is invited to stand during the service and give a brief testimony. I have never spoken in church, or in front of any audience for that matter, but I’ve decided today is the day. I know the order of service well. Because it’s Thanksgiving, the First Reader will read the Thanksgiving Day Proclamation from President Nixon. Then there will be a hymn and readings from the Bible and
Science and Health
, which the First and Second Readers will alternate. Then we make a silent prayer and sing another hymn and recite the Lord’s Prayer with its spiritual interpretation by Mary Baker Eddy. Then, it’s time for the soloist. (We don’t have a choir. I really wish we had a cherub choir like Mount Olivet, where the Lutheran kids get to wear gowns and sing holding candles.)

The soloist is always a problem for us. My brother and I are strategically placed at opposite ends of our pew, with our sister exactly in the middle, so that when the lady opens her mouth and the big song comes wobbling out, we can be
managed:
Sherman next to Mom next to Olivia next to Dad next to me. We tend to have trouble with giggles, and if we kids sit next to each other, it gets really bad. It never fails: we are perfectly well behaved until—and we know to hold our breath and pinch our lips between our teeth—the lady with the chins sings. There is almost nothing we can do to stop giggling. We close our eyes so we are not tempted to look at her. We sit on our hands. We play hangman with the back of the tiny envelope and the golf-size pencil, but the singing gets louder, louder, louder, and I start thinking of Tarzan swinging through the jungle. Sometimes, the lady doesn’t quite hit the high note right, and we almost pee in our pants it’s so funny. Today, I wish I had gotten to sit at the other end of our row because Mom doesn’t glare at us like Dad does when we giggle. And sometimes she almost snickers herself.

Finally, the First Reader will announce: “We welcome brief testimonies of Christian Science healing, as well as words acknowledging the power and efficacy of Christian Science in our daily
lives. To accommodate everyone who would like to speak, please limit your comments to under two minutes.”

I know this invitation, because I’ve heard it—I’ve waited for it—every Thanksgiving Day for as long as I can remember. But I’ve always chickened out.

Today the service starts with the hymn “O Gentle Presence.” We sang it a lot when we had the chicken pox. I proudly close my hymnal, because even though there are five verses, I know all the words by heart.

During the reading of President Nixon’s proclamation, I start to think about what I will say when I stand up. If this were a Wednesday evening testimony meeting, I could tell about a healing (or a
demonstration
, which is what Christian Scientists call healings). At the moment I can’t think of a single healing I’ve had. I know my brother had a healing of asthma and weak ankles when he was a toddler. And my sister had her ski accident. But those were their healings, not mine. I guess I can mention the chicken pox, since I only had eight spots.

I am so nervous about what I’m going to say that I completely miss the silent prayer, the readings from the Bible and
Science and Health
, and everything else before the soloist stands up, holding her black music folder in front of her. She breathes in through her nose so loudly that it whistles, and then she opens her mouth. I glance at my brother and sister; they have been trying to get my attention. My mother pokes my brother and sister gently in the ribs, and they look down at their shoes. The lady sings, and luckily we do not laugh.

And now the congregation waits for the first testimony. The long, seemingly endless stretches of quiet—while members of the congregation listen for their own divine inspiration, or for someone else’s—are the signature of Wednesday evening testimony meetings. During the Thanksgiving service, however, there are fewer silent gaps because there are more people in attendance, and therefore more speakers. I gaze around the room, looking for any obvious takers. My sister? My brother? No. They’re playing hangman. Am
I the only kid who plans to stand up? What about my friend Lisa? I turn around and find her. We catch eyes, and with raised eyebrows and a dip of her head, I know she is asking if I am going to stand up. I shrug my shoulders and grin a maybe. She shakes her head, a definite no.

Although we wait less than a minute, it feels like a long time before the first person stands up. It is Mrs. Warner, a dignified woman who has seven children and a husband who is not a Christian Scientist. She has a huge house, where every year she holds a carol sing with a piano player and a long buffet table with lots of Christmas cookies and spiced hot apple cider.