Caleb Andersen, the Pastor’s son, a guitar playing golden boy, wears his tie and his shoelaces loose. His unauthorised Reeboks shine bright white under the triangle V-crease of his suit pants. I know fantasising about him is the worst kind of sin, but the feelings that waft around my body overtake me with such ease, that I’m left wondering why something that comes so naturally should be the subject of so many venomous sermons. When Pastor preaches against the sins of the flesh, I can’t help thinking he languishes over the very words.
Whenever Caleb leads Devotions a beautiful pain prickles inside me, like pushing a Q-tip into your ear too far. The strum of his forearm and his trembling tenor voice cause ripples on my skin that I know are not just the Holy Spirit. I can watch him for an entire service, his face glowing with euphoria, and the heat rises through me as I imagine being on the receiving end of all that fervent adoration. If God were a woman, I am certain the passion of Caleb’s devotion would make Her blush.
We’re assembled for Sunday Service. The boys and men sweat, bolted into suits and ties, while we soft soprano girls fan ourselves with sticky hands, longing for bedtime when we can remove our headscarves and let loose our Jezebel hair. No matter how much we twist it into braids or coil it into ropes between our sisterly fingers, we know our uncovered heads could turn the holiest of boys into blood sucking vampires. Mine is apparently a particular temptation on account of its colour and its curl, an accusation that seems unfair seeing as God made me the way I am. But I can’t help noticing that the cautious, pitying smiles I used to get from married women in our community when I was a girl, have crumpled in on themselves and shrivelled into thin scars. They hold their husband’s hands tight when I walk past.
“Fasten your headscarf Sister,” they say. “It’s slipping.”
“Have you measured your skirt this morning Sister?” they ask. “Two inches from the floor remember. You’d better not be pulling it up at the waist.”
I have tried to force my skirt down so that it sits on my hips and pin my headscarf so tight that it tears at the roots. Still, they find fault. Every day when an older Sister corrects or admonishes me, I feel the fire of my hair spreading to my forehead and cheeks, filling my chest with fury. I honestly doubt Jesus minds about my ankles quite as much as they think He does.
I guess that’s what you get when you’re not “born into a Community Family”. They love to remind me that I was practically feral when me and Poppa first arrived in the VW, that it took the Sisters two whole days to comb the knots out of my hair, and months besides to teach me basic things like not stealing food or other people’s belongings. They put us in a large house with two other families so there were spies everywhere. Now that I’m a marriageable age, and have learned to wait for mealtimes, they find other ways of nitpicking.
For a while their constant criticism worked. When I was thirteen, I started praying earnestly that God would make me short and mouse-haired and ugly. Then I noticed the Pastor’s son was growing too, transforming from a wispy, fly away boy to an almost-man with stubble and the right kind of dirt under his nails. I noticed the soft down on the back of Caleb’s neck, and the gilded skin of his forearms, and the way he looked up at a girl through his lashes even though he’s taller than all of us. I noticed his voice was creamy, like butter left to soften on the windowsill. My prayers changed after that.
Today, as we stand locked in worship circles of lifted hands, and I try not to fidget or yawn too obviously, I feel Caleb’s eyes on me. It’s as if I am Bathsheba bathing on the roof or as if he’s searching Scripture for a loophole. It feels sweet and also dangerous. When the meeting ends, as the women scurry off to slice burger buns and men to build the barbecue, I feel the heat and weight of a person behind me, and Caleb is suddenly pulling at my cuff.
“I’ve found a great place to watch the sun go down,” he says. “Wanna come?”
“I should probably be helping the sisters.” I bite my lip hoping he can read my thoughts.
“Ok. S’up to you.” He’s looking behind me but he’s still holding onto my sleeve.
“Maybe I can get away. Just for a minute.”
“C’mon then”.
We slip around the dispersing crowd, and I follow him out the back, straight into the forest, my blood like popping candy in my veins. He is far ahead of me, running now, and I want to call out for him to wait, but instead I hitch up my skirt and gazelle-sprint, hopping over branches and bushes, feeling my scarf slipping and not even stopping to re-tie it. When I catch him up he’s made a switch from a broken twig and is swiping at the pine needles on the ground. I watch the spruce flutter around his feet like starving wingless butterflies.
“Hey,” I pant. “Why….. didn’t you…. wait?”
“Your headscarf is slipping” he says.
I feel the sweet danger again. I have almost never been on my own with a man since Poppa and I got out of that VW all those years ago. Not even my own father. This thought jolts me. I miss the safety of Poppa’s lap and his chin on my shoulder and hot afternoons with nothing to do except weave a corn doll out of straw. Before, there were no long dining tables to separate us, no closed doors, no stream of endless chores to keep us apart, no need to stand on tiptoe to spot him in the crowded chapel. The feeling overwhelms me. I look up.
The sky is yellow. The air filled with the faraway smell of charcoal and sizzling animal fat. A smoky breeze brushes through the cassock of sycamore and pine trees above us, and a squirrel runs down the length of an oak and across the gnarl of its roots. It stops to investigate a lost shoe sitting in a congregation of forget-me-nots. The amethyst blue flowers remind me of the veins on Mom’s hands. The shoe makes me think of her throwing hers at the TV every time the President came on.
“The sun sets over there,” Caleb says, but neither of us move. The bottom row of his teeth overlap like crowded pickle jars on a shelf. He looks through his eyelashes at me and a fizz surges right down my back.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what Sal is short for,” he says, lashing at the brambles with his stick. “Is it Sally? Or Sarah?”
“Well, you know my Dad was a hippie before he came to faith right? But he’s dead to that now. Praise the Lord.” My voice sounds odd.
“So, which is it?”
“Which is what?”
“Sally or Sarah? Which is it?”
My tongue sits solidly behind my teeth, a thick motionless snake. I can’t move it. I haven’t said my full name out loud in more than ten years.
“Cat got your tongue?”
My lips are cemented.
“You must know what Sal is short for. Why won’t you tell me?”
“S…S…Sal…Salome.” My name splutters out of my mouth like sour grape juice.
He laughs.
“It means peace,” I say. He’s still laughing.
“You know… Shalom.”
“Wow. Does my Father know?”
“I dunno.”
“You can always change it I guess,” he says.
“Why would I want to change my name?”
“You know who Salome was in the Bible right? It’s unbecoming to be named after a…you know…an exotic dancer,” he says. “Sarah would suit you better. I think I’m going to call you Sarah.”
A gash of sunlight slicing through the trees splits his face— half in dark, the other half almost ghostly. A memory of Poppa felling the old willow floods back to me, his hair, tangled in its crispy leaves, his thick arms raised above his head in frozen precision, poised and ready to bring down my beloved tree. The axe blade pounded at the bark. Poppa howled. I screamed for him to stop. When Poppa tore down Old Willer I cried, not because I lost my treehouse and Mom in the same week, but because Poppa was so sad, he had to cut down a whole tree.
Back in California, before Mom died, I loved my name. I didn’t care that the kids at school called me Salami, even though Poppa used that as the reason for shortening it to Sal when we moved. I didn’t mind that I was different, that I wore canvas espadrilles that Mom had shipped over from France, that my hair was twisted with beads and feathers. I liked not having a set bedtime, that I ate when I was hungry, that Mom and Poppa kissed each other openly in front of me, even in front of their friends. There was a whole lot of kissing going on. I loved it all. I loved the rallies, and the banners and the men who wore feather boas and called each other “she”. I loved the candlelight and the singing, and all that music. When I remember California it’s the sweet-sour crunch of pomegranate blisters bursting in my mouth and the smell of incense.
Caleb clears his throat. He’s digging for something in his pocket.
“Anyhow…. Sarah,” he says. “I made you this.” He opens his fist and holds it out to me. In the dull light I see a circle of misshapen glass balls, like tiny deformed peas, sitting in his palm. He shows me the bracelet as if it were a handful of Candy Corn he’s just found in the creases of his pocket. Then he slides it over my wrist and clasps my fingers. He smooths his thumb over my up-turned palm and moves my hand so that the beads ping against each other. His hand is like oily meat.
“I’m gonna marry you one day,” he says, “I don’t care what my Dad says. God’s already told me.”
“Oh”.
I wonder if now we’re betrothed. It doesn’t feel like it. It doesn’t feel like Mom and Poppa with their heads touching and their shared cigarettes and taking turns to bite a single piece of toast.
“Cal and Sal – see we fit perfectly.” He weaves his fingers between mine and stands so close I can smell a stale trace of coffee and chewing tobacco.
“I’m going to Bible College in a month, so you’ll have to wait until I get back. Can you stand to be celibate for a little longer? It’ll only be three years. Then we can get married, live with my folks, y’know in a real household. Dad’s promised me a junior pastor’s role once I’m qualified.”
“I wish I could go to College,” I say.
“Well, that would be against God’s will. You know that right? Anyway, I don’t want my future wife filling her head with worldly nonsense. University hardens women, Sarah.”
“I didn’t realise we were supposed to be soft.”
“It’s all very well to have a passion for learning but passion is immodest unless it’s directed at your husband or at least the Lord.”
“What about Deborah in the Book of Judges? She killed Jael with a tent peg.”
“That’s exactly why I’m going to Bible College,” Caleb says. “So that when you have questions about your faith you can just ask me.”
I see Mom singing Joni in the bathtub, her tan face and her black kohl eyes and naked body glistening with oil and water and the smell of lavender steam. Mom always said my name as if it were a precious jewel in her mouth, a treasure that she could taste. I was her Little Peace Girl.
“You only need to have faith in yourself, Salome,” she would say.
I remember the feel of her strong hands. Hands that scrubbed at the racist slogans on the bus shelter and sprayed GIVE PEACE A CHANCE on the bridge. Hands that could hold a guy rope in a gale force without any help and could also smooth away a headache and catch a grey moth. Hands that touched my father’s knee with such tenderness that I stared so long I forgot I was fractious and fell asleep in her lap. As I stand handcuffed in the forest, I feel my small, tight life. I see it being squeezed even smaller, until I’m the size of a marble, a lentil, a speck of dust.
I want to leave, but Caleb skims his trembling, hot mouth down the length of my neck, and leaves a wet trail that I want to immediately wipe away. It doesn’t feel sweet anymore, only dangerous.
“Can you just….” I edge backwards. He leans into me again, like a thirsty dog in my ear.
“Caleb...” I take another step away.
“I thought you wanted this?” His voice is granite.
“I thought we were looking for the sunset.”
“My Dad warned me about you, Sarah” he says. This time he grabs me hard, pulling me toward his chest and groin. “C’mon Sarah, you know you want…”
“Hey.” My wrists are thin twigs of silver birch under his grip. “My name is SALOME.”
“C’mon Sarah, you’re going to be my wife so…”
“FUCK YOU.”
I snatch my hand away and the fragile bracelet bursts. A myriad of confetti pebbles explode into the air. And then, the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Mom, sears through me, fills my blood with silver, pours steel into the sinews of my flesh. I feel Biblical, like the girls who shattered skulls with tent pegs and brought down kingdoms with the wit of their kohl-blackened eyes.
“Where are you going?” Caleb shouts, but my feet are tearing through the brush like a flashfire. Like a California flash-fire.
Author: Jess Blatchley grew up in London in a multi-cultural family. She had the misfortune of being recruited into a cult in her teens, and much of her writing is inspired by her survival of that experience. Her work has been longlisted for Stroud Short Stories and published in Riggwelter Journal.
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I'm late to this party, but I'm sure happy I came! Great story. Fantastic writing. Loved it.
“Blood like popping candy in my veins”… wow, this writing is brilliant. Thoroughly enjoyed every word. More please!!!!