Leaving Fishers (22 page)

It was Friday afternoon, in the midst of babysitting
the Garringer kids, that Dorry saw an answer. She hadn’t slept more than two hours a night for the past three nights, and she hadn’t eaten all day, so the answer came slowly, squeezed like the last drop of ketchup from an almost-empty bottle: of course. She should convert the Garringer children. The children were young and unsullied except by original sin. They would come easily to the Lord. She should have done it months ago.

“Jasmine, Zoe, come over here,” Dorry said weakly. The two girls were jumping onto and off of the couch, while Seth watched and clapped in time to a tape of nursery-rhyme songs.

“Don’t want to,” Jasmine said, and stuck out her tongue.

Dorry reconsidered the “unsullied” notion. “You must,” she said. “Or I’ll turn off the music.”

“I’ll come,” Zoe said. She tugged on Jasmine’s hair. “You too.”

Jasmine screamed as if Zoe had scalped her. “Ow, ow—don’t do that! Dorry, make Zoe take a time out!”

“Not now,” Dorry said. She pulled both girls down so they were sitting on the couch. She crouched, facing them, her arm across their legs so they couldn’t get up. “Behave and listen. Do either of you know who God is?”

“Someone big,” Jasmine said.

“Like Daddy?” Zoe asked. She giggled. “Daddy’s bigger than anybody.”

“Not bigger than God,” Jasmine said. “But I think he’s just pretend.”

“No,” Dorry said. “God’s real. He’s kind of like—everybody’s father.”

Zoe thought that was funny, and giggled harder.

“Stop laughing. This is serious,” Dorry said. She cleared her throat. She wanted to tell the girls about God’s love, but that wasn’t the way to save people now. The parties and fun were over. People didn’t listen unless you talked about hell.

“When you are bad, your mommy and daddy punish you, right?” she said. “That’s what God does, too. And we’re all bad, some of the time. So the way God punishes people, is, when they die, they go to a very bad place. It’s called hell. There’s fire there all the time—”

“We’re supposed to stay away from the fire,” Zoe said confidently, pointing to the family-room fireplace.

“You can’t stay away from it in hell. It’s everywhere. And everybody there gets burned up, all the time.”

Zoe and Jasmine were quiet now, their eyes big and scared. “But they don’t die?” Jasmine asked.

“They’re already dead. They can’t die more. So they just keep burning and burning forever.”

“Does it hurt?” Zoe asked.

“Yes. A lot. More than anything in your whole life. It hurts all the time. And people scream and scream, from the pain, but it never stops,” Dorry said. “It’s awful and it never stops and no one can make it stop, not even your mommy and daddy.”

Zoe started to cry. “I don’t want to go there. You can’t make me!”

“No, no, just listen. I can’t make you, but God can. And he will, unless you do what he says.”

“I don’t like God,” Jasmine said. “He made my sister cry.”

Zoe pushed away Dorry’s arm on her lap. “You’re bad,” she said. “I don’t like you anymore.”

“Zoe, just listen. It’s okay,” Dorry said. Somehow, she hadn’t pictured this. “You don’t have to go to hell. You can accept Jesus and be saved, and then you can save your mommy and daddy and Seth and all your friends, so they won’t burn either. You don’t want everybody you know to burn up, do you?”

“No! No! Don’t make me burn up!” Zoe shrieked. “Stop it! Stop it! Mom-mee!”

She careened out of the room, sobbing. Dorry chased her, calling, “Zoe, wait!”

Zoe pounded on the door of the back room
Mrs. Garringer used for a studio. “Mommy, Mommy, Dorry says you and Daddy and Jasmine and Seth and me are going to burn up in hell. I don’t want to burn up! I don’t want you to burn up—”

The door opened.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Garringer, I’ll get her calmed down—” Dorry said. “Zoe, what I said was—”

Mrs. Garringer flashed Dorry a look of sheer fury as she bent to hug Zoe. Zoe sobbed into her mother’s neck. “Mommy, God is going to burn us up. Don’t let him! I hate him!” Zoe was in hysterics.

Jasmine came running into the room and grabbed her mother’s knees, crying to be picked up, too. Seth crawled after his sister, wailing, “Ma-ma! Ma-ma!”

“Seth, here, you’re okay.” Dorry tried to pick him up, but he screamed and tried to wiggle out of her grasp, reaching for his mother. Helplessly, Dorry let him slide to the ground. He tugged on Mrs. Garringer’s legs, trying to stand up. Jasmine pushed him down, trying to keep her mother to herself. He screamed louder. She screamed louder.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Garringer,” Dorry said. “I didn’t mean to scare them. I only wanted to tell them about God—”

She had to shout to make herself heard over everyone crying and Zoe screaming, over and over again, “I don’t want to burn up!”

“Get out of my house,” Mrs. Garringer said fiercely. She crouched and hugged all of her children to her. They burrowed into her clothes, their faces hidden. Their cries were muffled. Mrs. Garringer soothed them—“Ssh, ssh, it’s all right. Nobody’s going to hurt you.” Then she glared up at Dorry. “I said get out. Now.”

“But—” Dorry couldn’t believe she’d heard Mrs. Garringer right. How could this be happening? If only she could explain, make Mrs. Garringer understand. But what she heard herself say was, numbly, “My ride’s not here.”

“I don’t care,” Mrs. Garringer said. She hugged her children closer.

“But—it’s cold out.”

Mrs. Garringer yanked her purse down from the counter by one purse strap. With one hand, she pulled out her billfold and, without looking at them, grabbed some bills out of the center. She flung the money at Dorry. Zoe screamed louder the whole time Mrs. Garringer’s arm was away from Zoe’s shoulders.

“Walk down to the store on the corner and call a cab,” Mrs. Garringer said. “Just leave.”

For a minute, Dorry couldn’t move, not even
to catch the dollar bills floating toward the stained kitchen linoleum. A twenty landed on a crushed Cheerio. “Am I—am I fired?” Dorry asked.

Mrs. Garringer said nothing. She patted Zoe’s back, smoothed Jasmine’s hair, kissed the top of Seth’s head.

“I’m fired,” Dorry said. “You just fired me.” Slowly she turned and walked out of the kitchen. The air she had to move through seemed as thick as concrete. Finally she reached the coatrack in the hall. She pulled on her coat without zipping it and pushed open the front door. The cold air felt like a slap.

She could still hear the children’s cries echoing in her ears long after she climbed down the front steps.

Chapter

Twenty-five

DORRY WAS SOBBING UNCONTROLLABLY by the time she reached the corner store. She could barely see to put her money in the phone, to dial Angela’s number.

“I’ve done something awful,” she wailed into the receiver. “I have to confess. I’ll have to atone for the rest of my life.”

The kid behind the counter gawked at her, as though she were an alien who’d suddenly materialized between the bread shelves and the bulletin board advertising dog walkers and snow shovelers. Dorry didn’t care.

“You’ve got to help me,” Dorry sobbed.

“Calm down,” Angela said coldly. She sounded annoyed. “Whatever it is can’t be that bad.”

“It is,” Dorry cried. “It is. I told the Garringer kids about hell and they cried and cried. They didn’t understand. I’ve destroyed them. It’s all my fault.”

“You were evangelizing. Right?” Angela asked.

“Yes, but I did it wrong. I shouldn’t have—it was all wrong. I shouldn’t have said anything to them—”

“Dorry, quit that. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

When Angela pulled up in front of the store in her sports car, the kid behind the counter called out, “Hey, hysterical girl, can’t you introduce me to your friend?”

Dorry ignored him and ran out to Angela’s car. She grabbed the door handle before the car came to a complete stop. She climbed in and tried to bury her face in Angela’s shoulder the way Zoe had cried against Mrs. Garringer’s. Angela pushed Dorry away.

“Get a grip,” she said. She held Dorry steady, by her shoulders, until Dorry slumped back in the passenger seat. “Now, tell me what happened.”

Dorry told it all, lingering her description on the sight of Jasmine’s and Zoe’s horrified faces, on their terrified hysterics, on Mrs. Garringer’s anger. When she finished, Angela shrugged.

“So what’s the problem?” Angela said. “People turn from the word of God all the time. They are in sin. The Garringers’ house is of the Devil, and it is better that you be away from it.”

“No, no, I was wrong—I shouldn’t have told the girls about hell—” Why couldn’t Dorry make Angela understand?

“Do you want me to talk to Mrs. Garringer?” Angela asked.

Dorry didn’t, but she did. She wanted someone to make everything better, to turn things back. To make the Garringer kids okay again. To make them love her again.

Angela started the car and turned onto the Garringers’ street. She stopped in front of their house, but left the car running.

“Stay here,” she said.

Dorry was grateful for the command. She watched Angela climb the steps, rap at the door. She saw Mrs. Garringer open the door a crack. Mrs. Garringer was talking and shaking her head. Then she was listening to Angela. Then she shoved the door shut.

Angela walked back to the car wearing a beatific expression.

“What happened?” Dorry begged. She couldn’t look at Angela, couldn’t stand that calm, self-satisfied, smug face.

“I told her that she and her household are evil for turning from God. I said she is wallowing in sin. I told her that when she and her children are in hell, she will regret turning you away when you offered a chance at salvation.” Angela spoke as casually as if she’d only said “Hello.”

Dorry gasped. “You didn’t.”

“I did.” Angela pulled away from the curb. She looked at Dorry. “I am a messenger of God and it
is my duty to tell the truth. It’s your duty, too.”

Dorry wondered if this was what it felt like to be shot. She looked down and felt stunned that her body was whole, unbloodied. There should be a huge, gaping hole right through her middle, a fatal wound from Angela’s words. She bent her head. “No,” Dorry whispered.

“What?” Angela pronounced the word so precisely that the ‘t’ practically echoed.

Dorry winced. You’re wrong, she wanted to say. God couldn’t want what you did, what I did. We were wrong. Out of habit, she held the words back, because anything she thought that was different from what Angela thought had to be of the Devil. But the Devil was bad and God was good, and Dorry knew that what she’d done to Jasmine and Zoe was bad. So it didn’t make sense. She tried to summon back the sense of tranquility and holiness she’d felt at the Fishers retreat—her sense of God—but all she felt was shame. The image of Jasmine’s and Zoe’s horrified faces swam before her eyes.

“If God wanted me to do what I did to Jasmine and Zoe,” Dorry said weakly, “I don’t want God.”

Angela gaped at her. “Dorry, that’s blasphemy. How can you say that? Pray for forgiveness. Right now. That’s just the Devil talking through you—”

“No,” Dorry said. “It’s me.”

“Dorry, as your discipler, I command you. Pray for forgiveness.”

“No,” Dorry said again. “I don’t want you to be my discipler anymore.”

“But as a Fisher—”

“I don’t want to be a Fisher anymore.”

Dorry barely knew what she was saying. She felt feverish and chilled all at once, so foggy-headed she could barely think, and yet absolutely certain she couldn’t let Angela win this time. Once the words were out, “I don’t want to be a Fisher anymore,” she was overcome with relief. Of course she wanted out. Evangelizing at the mall, being fake at parties, fasting at Thanksgiving—she’d hated Fishers. Why hadn’t she left before?

Oh. God. Dorry felt a spasm of grief, to be giving up God. She began weeping.

“Dorry, you can’t do this,” Angela said impatiently. “You’re a Fisher. You’re saved. How can you give away God’s gift of love and salvation—and suffer eternal damnation—just because of some brats? Come on, now. Repent, and then you can atone and—”

Dorry saw Jasmine’s and Zoe’s faces again, so innocent. So wounded. “They’re not brats,” she said. “Let me out. I don’t have to listen to this.” Dorry reached for the door with both hands. She
looked down and saw the Fishers ring on her finger. She shook it off. Even wrapped twice with red yarn at the back, it slid off easily and landed silently on the floor of Angela’s car.