I am Rebecca (14 page)

ON A COOL SPRING EVENING
in September, Rachel and Saul came to our house for dinner and to tell us all about the baby. Mother wept with joy. Magdalene’s eyes shone at the thought of becoming an aunt. Zillah said, ‘I want a baby too.’

Abraham high-fived Saul and kissed Rachel’s cheek. For once, Father didn’t growl at him for unseemly behaviour. Luke said all the right things, and shut his mouth on the questions I could see were burning in his mind. I too wanted answers about pregnancy and birth. How much did Rachel herself know, and was she worried she’d get sick the
way Mother had when Zillah was born?

None of us raised difficult questions, and the evening was a happy one. Father’s prayers were full of thanks for the gift the Lord had bestowed on Rachel and Saul.

The baby would be born at the end of March. Mother brought out the crib she’d used for all of us. ‘I will wash all of the lining to make it fresh for the little one.’

Rachel said, ‘Please may I take it as it is, Mother? I will so enjoy getting it ready.’

Perhaps Mother remembered my comment about Rachel finding time heavy on her hands, because she said, ‘Yes, of course.’

Magdalene touched the gathered fabric lining. ‘This is so lovely. I had forgotten.’

It was fabric like the one I’d chosen for my wedding petticoat.

Mother stroked her hand over it. ‘This was my wedding gown.’

‘You were allowed patterned fabric?’ I shouldn’t have asked — she looked uncomfortable.

Father said, ‘The Rule was very lax at that time. Rachel, you should replace that with the plain material from your own wedding dress.’

But she wasn’t his to command any longer, and Saul said, ‘I think our baby will like to sleep in something pretty.’

Father was completely taken aback. He frowned, but then he managed to collect himself. ‘I apologise.
Rachel, you will of course do as your husband asks. But I would urge you both to let the Rule guide you in all things.’

Saul had stood up to Father, but had he done so to show Father my sister wasn’t under his authority now? Or did he do it because he really believed it wasn’t breaking the Rule for a baby to sleep in something decorative — something pretty?

I wanted to talk to Rachel about Mother’s wedding dress too. It proved the teachings of the Rule could be changed, and had been changed. Who had done that, and why? Would the Lord send us one teaching only to change it later? I felt bad for thinking about such things and longed for my sister to help me make sense of it all.

I also hoped Father wouldn’t feel it was his duty to report the patterned bassinette lining to Elder Stephen.

I turned my thoughts to the baby. What would it be, and what name would they give it? Would Rachel dare name her child after the brother or sister we’d lost? Daniel for a boy and Miriam for a girl. Or maybe even Esther.

It wouldn’t be fair to put the idea to her but, knowing my sister, she’d probably already thought of it.

TWO
WEEKS LATER
I came home after a day of helping Sister Thomasina with her three little ones to find Mother unusually flustered and, just as unusually, with none of the children around.

‘Mother, are you well? Is something wrong?’

She swished her hands at me. ‘No, of course nothing is wrong. Go to your Father, Rebecca.’

‘He is home? Already?’ It was only 5.30. He always came home punctually at 6.10.

‘He has news for you. Go. Do not keep him waiting any longer.’

I sat down at the kitchen table.
No. Please Lord, let it not be about Ira
.

‘Does he want me to marry Ira? Is that it?’

‘Ira? Goodness me, of course not! That young man will never get another chance at marriage, surely you understand that?’ But she wouldn’t look at me.

‘Mother, please — what is it? You are not happy about it, are you?’

She pulled out a smile. ‘Yes, my daughter, I am. I am just surprised, that is all. It is so unexpected, but the workings of the Lord are not ours to question. Go to your Father. He will tell you all you need to know.’

It was plain I’d get nothing more from her. I pushed myself to my feet, suddenly angry. I should have understood about Ira? How could I when nobody told me anything — when nobody ever answered a single question?

I knocked on the study door.

‘Come in, Rebecca. Sit down.’

Why? What’s happened?

Father rubbed his hands over his face.

Fear chilled me. ‘Father, what is it? Have I done something wrong?’

He rested his hands on his desk. ‘No, your behaviour is always in accordance with the Rule. You are a good daughter, a godly person.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘My beloved child, Elder Stephen came to see me today. The Lord has directed him to take you as his wife.’

I couldn’t have heard right. Elder Stephen? Surely he meant Ira? Even he would be better.

I sat there, shaking my head. I felt sick and pressed my hands into my stomach.

‘No. I can’t,’ I said at last. ‘Not Elder Stephen.’ He was our leader. He was an old man. He terrified me with impossible questions.

Father sighed. ‘It is, of course, a great honour he has chosen you.’ I just kept shaking my head, so he went on, ‘But I understand your reaction. He is seventy-six. You are sixteen.’

I felt a trickle of hope. ‘What did you tell him? Did you refuse permission?’

For a moment, he didn’t answer, but he looked as if he was preparing for a great battle. My hope faded. ‘Rebecca, my dear daughter, you do not understand. The Lord speaks through Elder Stephen. If you
refuse to marry him, you will be refusing the will of the Lord.’

To do that was to refuse salvation. It would mean I’d be cast out — damned and dead.

‘No, please, no. I can’t. Not Elder Stephen.’ I was afraid of him. I could never be at ease in his presence. He asked his questions and frowned at my answers without ever telling me why. I’d never be able to tell him my true thoughts. I would need to be on my guard every second of every day. And he was old — sixty years older than me.

My father stood up and walked around his desk to sit in the chair next to mine — Rachel’s chair. ‘You
must
marry him. Rebecca, I have lost two children to worldliness and damnation. I do not want to lose a third. Think of your immortal soul. I beg you not to put it in danger by refusing to obey the will of the Lord.’

I hugged my arms around my body and asked my own terrible question. ‘Is it truly the will of the Lord?’

Now my father would tell me to fall on my knees. He would pray and pray and pray for me to be pardoned for doubting.

He surprised me. ‘Rebecca, we are called the Children of the Faith. Faith is about continuing to believe. It is about knowing the Lord speaks to us through our leader. We follow the will of the Lord as revealed through our leader. He is the means by which we will reach salvation. We cannot question faith. All we can do is continue to believe.’

I couldn’t believe. Not this. ‘But what if the leader is wrong? What if this is just something Elder Stephen wants? What if it is not the will of the Lord?’

Even that didn’t make my father pray for me. It didn’t make him angry. ‘That is the nature of faith. We have to accept Elder Stephen’s word, and we have to accept that his word is the word of the Lord. That is our faith.’

I saw there was no hope for me. My immortal soul would achieve salvation only if I obeyed. I longed to be able to speak my true thoughts. I didn’t try. They would distress my father greatly.

He said, ‘Rebecca, good things will come of this. You will be a wife. It is a hard thing for a girl to face a future without a husband or children.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘The Lord will bless you with children. Elder Stephen assures me he is still able to become a father.’

I stared at him, trying to understand, trying to believe. ‘But I don’t even know what that means, how it happens.’

His voice was gentle, sad even. ‘Your husband will tell you. This marriage is a blessing from the Lord. I will pray for you to accept that. Go now and help your mother.’

I got to my feet but didn’t go to the kitchen to help Mother, though there was no conscious thought in my mind about disobeying. I just walked until I saw with surprise my sister running down her driveway, her hands outstretched and fear in her face.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ She pulled me into the house.

I collapsed in a huddle on her kitchen floor. ‘The Lord has told Elder Stephen to take me as his wife.’

RACHEL SAT ON THE FLOOR
, holding me while I cried. The meal she’d been preparing stayed neglected on the bench.

Saul came home. I heard her telling him what had happened. Minutes later, he handed me a cup of tea and a handkerchief. I didn’t want the tea but he coaxed me to drink it. ‘There’s sugar in it,’ he said. ‘For shock.’

We heard a car pull up outside. Abraham called out, ‘Praise the Lord,’ and walked in. He knelt on the floor beside me. ‘Father’s outside in the car. He wants you to come home.’

The three of them talked quietly above my head.
The words arrived in my brain in a meaningless jumble. Saul and Abraham pulled me to my feet. They held my arms over their shoulders and half-carried me out to the car. Father opened the door and Rachel told me later he had tears in his eyes.

At home, I couldn’t eat. Mother put me into Magdalene’s bed. She gave me a hot-water bottle, but nothing could stop the shivering. Some time later, Magdalene came in to put Zillah to bed. Both of them were quiet. Later still, Magdalene came to bed, but instead of climbing up to my bunk she slid in beside me. ‘Please don’t cry, Rebecca. Please don’t cry.’

When I woke in the morning, both my little sisters were squashed in the bed with me. Their love made me weep again.

I stayed home that day. Sister Thomasina would miss me and she’d wonder where I was, but I didn’t have the strength to help care for her children. Rachel came. Mother cooked the food she always made when any of us were ill. I couldn’t eat the chicken soup, or the egg custard. Rachel put fingers of dry toast in front of me. ‘Eat this. It’ll help. You need to stay well, Rebecca. Please try.’

To please her, I managed to get some of it down.

She stayed with me all day. We didn’t try to talk. I couldn’t. My mind was numb. I was living in a nowhere land where nothing made sense.

Saul came to collect my sister late in the afternoon. ‘Come to my house tomorrow,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ll come and get you. We’ll walk together.’

Dinner was a silent meal that night. When it was finished, Father said, ‘Rebecca, it is my duty to tell you Elder Stephen will announce the marriage on Sunday.’

Two days away. Nothing was real any more. What did it matter when he announced it?

Mother whispered, ‘The marriage? Has he set a date for that?’

‘It is to be on the first Sunday of November.’

Abraham, his voice tight with anger, said, ‘But that’s not a Meet day. That’s against the Rule.’

Father just said, ‘It is what the Lord has guided him to do.’

I stood up and walked to the bedroom. In three weeks and two days I would become the wife of a seventy-six-year-old man who terrified me with his questions and whose presence overwhelmed me.

In the long hours of the night, I made many plans, discarding most of them by the morning. One thing, though, was clear in my mind: I needed information, I needed knowledge.

RACHEL CAME FOR ME
in the morning. We walked to her house. ‘You have not slept,’ she said.

‘Not much. I did a lot of thinking. Rachel, please — I need to know what happens between a man and his wife in the marriage bed. Please, will you tell me?’

I’d known the request would upset her. I was right.

She got to her feet, walked a circuit of her lounge. Stopped at the window. ‘I cannot do that, Rebecca. It is against the Rule. I am so sorry. Please do not ask me to break it.’

I bowed my head, fully understanding at last that her loyalty now was to her husband. There was a silence between us until I asked, ‘Just tell me — would you like to share the marriage bed with him? With Elder Stephen?’

Her horrified face was all the answer I needed.

‘I will pray for you,’ she said. ‘We both will.’

‘Thank you.’ I had no faith now in prayers, just as I no longer had faith that Elder Stephen spoke the will of the Lord.

She made us tea. I couldn’t eat the biscuit she put on my plate. I asked another question I knew would distress her, although it wouldn’t have once, before she married. ‘Do you believe Elder Stephen speaks the will of the Lord? Do you believe it in your heart?’

She answered the way Father had done. ‘That is our faith. We must believe, we must accept it is so. I do not want eternal damnation for either of us, Rebecca.’

The visit broke my heart. She was truly gone from me. Before, we’d have had a proper conversation. She’d have used her brain to think things out. Now I was alone.

I left earlier than usual to walk home. I was angry. Was I the only one of the Children of the Faith who thought this marriage was Elder Stephen’s desire, the only one who believed it had nothing to do with the will of the Lord?

Look at the facts
, I wanted to shout at my sister, at everyone.
First, he reassigns Malachi. And why? Because he knew Malachi wouldn’t stay. Then Sister Jerushah dies. He waits a month or two, then says the Lord tells him to marry me.

‘I don’t believe it!’ I shouted the words at the traffic, and nobody heard.