Tessie D

It’s been a while since I left the house. It’s been almost a month since it happened. 

I guess everyone found out about me quitting the restaurant. Valerie, Ami, and Melissa came by the house the other day. They said that they wanted to see how I was doing. They’d heard rumors that I’d been dating someone. An older man.

I don’t think any of them had been to my house since my birthday slumber party in sixth grade.  We ate frozen pizzas and prank called random numbers in the phone book. We read our YM and Seventeen magazines and compared our thighs, clothes, and hair to the girls in the photographs. Someone brought a box of tampons, and we read the leaflet that came in the package, mortified by the drawings and giggling into the morning. Then, we made biscuit donuts in the morning and drank all Daddy’s Diet Cokes. Melissa gave me a Reba McEntire tape with my favorite song, “Fancy,” and Lisa gave me a pair of her ballet shoes that she’d outgrown. I had always wanted to take dance lessons, but we couldn’t afford the $25/lesson, so for months I wore the faded pink satin shoes with the delicate bow on the top everywhere. It was the most perfect day that I’d ever had. 

Now they were back at my house, and we were in my room.  For a momen, I could pretend that I was in the sixth grade again and I liked it. I liked seeing them. I felt like I’d slipped back in time, and I was glad that they’d come by. I felt more like myself, even for a little bit. 

“I love your dress. I couldn’t ever wear something like because it’d make me look huge. But, you don’t look that big at all. How much did it cost? It’s so pretty. Must be nice to have someone buying you pretty clothes.” 

And, the spell was broken. 

“You’re popular now, Tess,” Melissa smiled and elbowed me in the ribs.

My bedroom door was open and Momma must’ve heard that from the kitchen because she stopped washing dishes and over.

“Well, that’s always a good sign. Maybe the boys will like you more now. They’ll know what a prize you are.” 

“Yes, girls who date older men are always popular in town,” Ami said and giggled at her own cleverness.

Momma didn’t catch it, but I knew what Ami meant. 

“Yes, they’ll know you’re worth taking a look at,” Momma said and smiled, walking back to the kitchen. 

And, the saddness was back. 

I didn’t leave the house for the next week. I just stayed in my room, laying on my bed listening to music, reading, or sleeping. A weight had anchored itself to me. Clasp around my waist, pulling me into the bed. Like when the guy dies in A Nightmare on Elm Street. 

That imagry feels fitting.

 I tried to pull myself out of it. I went to church one Sunday. I thought maybe I would feel better if I could find God. I had been feeling abandoned by God. No, rejected. Abandoned means that God left me. Maybe I left God. What kind of God creates someone just for them to carry this suffering and burden. Maybe God had adandoned me. He already knew I was bad. They talked at church about being born of sin and doomed to Hell. Only through Jesus Christ are we able to get to Heaven. I haven’t found Jesus. In sixth grade, we read the Left Behind Books in Sunday school. The teacher was a skinny, middle-aged Army vet who wore fatigues to church. I asked an older woman at church if that was okay and told me that it was find because God didn’t care how we looked. Then she told me that I must be cold and to put on a sweater and cover up. 

In Sunday school, the six of us sat in a circle on stiff, uncomforable chairs, and the teacher read aloud from the books, narrating each character. He said that only those who listened to Jesus go to Heaven. I prayed every night, but I never heard Jesus talk back. I was so afraid that for weeks, I was convinced I was going to Hell. 

So maybe God went ahead and abandoned me, and this was what happens. I abandoned God, so he abandoned me. My ruin was inevitable.

I had hoped that maybe God would be at church. He wasn’t. Just a bunch of people gossiping and snickering. 

Eventually, I left my room in the evenings and started going for walks down the lane, into the pasture. I didn’t want to smell Momma cooking. Insetad, I walked in the field, the grass getting tall. Briars and cone flowers. Sunflowers. I was able to think in the quiet. The grass brustling against my legs. Green with slivers of blue. Tufts and clumps of grass. Thinking of God and religion. Walking without purpose or direction, trying to move past the anxiety. Alternating between anxiety and hallowness. The wind moving across the pasture, blowing through my hair. I wanted to find a reason for everything. An explanation. A resolution. Or, at least an absolution. The heat never relented, despite how fast I walked. There was never a breeze or relief. The harder I moved, the hotter it felt. God had abandoned me in the field. I prayed for help. Prayed that I could return back to the girl that I was. The girl I used to be. 

But, nothing. 

The reponse was always the same, just the sound of my feet plodding across the ground. The heat bearing down on me. 

I thought I was supposed to hear God when I called to him. That’s what they all said would happen. I was supposed to hear God in nature. But I didn’t hear anything but silence. Nobody cared. God, everyone was indifferent. My suffering made no difference.