Fleeing Fundamentalism Page 10

  “Fred says the same thing,” Amber added, setting her cross-stitch down and twisting her long blond curls around her finger. “He says I’d better start being meticulous now because when we’re living in a parsonage, my housekeeping skills will be out in the open for everyone to see. It scares the wits out of me.”

  “Can you believe that Dr. Spencer actually quoted First Timothy to his class the other day?” Dianna said, laughing. She stood up and thrust her hands on her hips, then lowered her voice into a deep baritone. “A minister must be one that rules his own house. For if a man cannot rule his own household, how shall he take care of the church of God?”

  With that we all burst out laughing, but deep inside I think we all wondered whether the implications of Timothy might someday come back to haunt us all. At the time, though, I refused to let such future possibilities frighten me. Instead I was going to enjoy every minute of fun and freedom I still had left with my two new friends and my lively little girls.

  David approved of my friendship with the other wives because he knew it kept me cheerful and occupied. The other husbands felt the same way. They were all glad we had something to fill the hours as they darted late to class or gulped down dinner so they could get to the library—rarely stopping to chat with anyone, not each other or their spouses. We seminary wives understood that it was a necessary sacrifice we were called to make—God was preparing us for the ministry. We would have to get used to our husbands spending large amounts of time away.

  At the time I didn’t think much about the ministry. Carise, Micael, and I were having too much fun. After morning coffee with the Widows’ Club, we would go back home and begin our daily routine: chicken salad for lunch, a Jane Fonda workout tape at two, then snuggling together in our chilly student apartment for an afternoon nap. After dinner we would watch the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and Sale of the Century, which got us in the perfect mood to turn on the tape player full blast and rock out to Rod Stewart—me the lumbering Disney elephant encircled by two tiny wildly dancing mice. To this day I’m sure it’s why Jason came out so fidgety. Somehow, on the deepest, most visceral level, Rod Stewart and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” bouncing through my belly must have shaken him into a frenzy.

  Jason was born in February, during a cold Chicago storm that froze every puddle into a solid ice brick. The wind howled and whipped at the car as David rushed me over snow packed roads to Lake Forest Hospital after my water broke. When we got there, he realized he had forgotten his textbook and returned for it once I was checked in. On the labor monitor I watched the red peaks of the contractions getting higher and higher. I breathed my Lamaze pants and hoped David would get there soon. A few minutes before Jason arrived, he came running into the room. “Sorry, I’m late. Wow, the roads are ghastly out there.” When we took our new son home, Dianna and Amber were waiting, cheering with WELCOME HOME signs and two weeks’ worth of frozen casseroles. Carise and Micael practically suffocated the tiny, dark, and handsome little boy with kisses, and Carise said, “He looks like a Kewpie.”

  With three small children to take care of, I didn’t spend much time thinking about esoteric questions of God and the meaning of the universe. I didn’t even care that we were poor as beggars in a fairy tale. After David left for school, the girls and I would bathe, then lotion and powder our new little family member, dress him in his infant overalls and flannel shirt, and sit him in his baby chair on the couch. Mom had sent Carise and Micael tiny pink tutus, which elevated their dance routine to a more sophisticated level. They would tug on their ballet garb, flee into the living room, and turn on Vivaldi. Carise, a graceful, sparrow-boned four-year-old, floated over the carpet, making sure that her movements were precise and dignified. Micael, a chubby twenty-four-month-old ball of energy, looked more like a baroque cherub spinning, twisting, and pirouetting around the room, stopping only long enough to rush over and put a wet kiss on her brother’s giggling cheek.

  In June 1983, David graduated with his second master’s in theology. In late May he had learned of a Baptist church in the Seattle suburbs that was interviewing for a minister, so as soon as the graduation ceremony was over, we loaded our sparse belongings into our rattletrap trailer and headed west. Dianna and Amber stood next to the car, looking glum as we squeezed the last frying pan into the backseat. “Well, it makes sense that you would be the first to take the plunge,” Dianna said, “being the oldest and all.” (Dianna, at twenty-six, was actually the oldest member of the Seminary Widows’ Club.) She laughed as she threw her arms around me, then burst into tears. Amber followed, crying as though I were headed for the Final Judgment.

  “I’ll be okay, ladies,” I said, hugging them both and whispering in their ears, “I’ll just remember: wash and polish, wash and polish.”

  Tears were still running down our faces as the car lurched out of the driveway. I turned and waved back at them, huddled together, holding hands. But even in our sadness, we ultimately knew that our destiny was to move forward to serve God, our husbands, and the congregations we were eventually going to enter.

  Six

  Calvary Baptist Church

  CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH, standing on a hill with its white clapboard walls, its steepled roof reaching toward heaven, looked as though it had been lifted out of a Norman Rockwell painting. For over three decades the same families had attended the church, taking personal and serious responsibility for the appearance of the building and grounds. Cultivating its gardens each Saturday, they added new daffodils or Dutch irises beside the rainbow hued rows of azalea, hydrangea, and rhododendron bushes. Work parties planted bulbs of tulips, white lilies, and pink cyclamen, to pop up just in time for Easter, and trimmed the jasmine that scented the entire grounds as it climbed the garden arbor, reaching higher and higher, like voices in the ladies’ choir. Bright perennials bordered the concrete steps that led up to the tall white sanctuary doors.

  Inside, at the end of a long row of pews, a wooden podium perched high on a platform above the flock, and behind it a velvet curtain concealed the oblong baptismal. Although it was hidden, all good Baptists knew the baptismal was there. In our faith, baptism by immersion was protocol as unquestioned as washing one’s hands before dinner. In fact, it was the issue of baptism that gave birth to the denomination back in 1609. John Smyth and his flock in Amsterdam separated from the Church of England over the doctrine of infant baptism, which placed a baby under the covenant and immediately into the church family. Smyth insisted that the rite should be performed only once an adult became a believer. Thus baptism, following a profession of faith, symbolized a mature union between the Christian and the church. Since immersion uniquely characterized the belief of Smyth and his followers, the baptismal took on great significance, giving its name to the movement. Today in Baptist churches around the world baptism continues to loom large in doctrinal statements and building plans.

  The beauty of Calvary Baptist delighted me. It was clear that the members of the congregation took religion—and church maintenance—seriously. And the salary they offered of $1,200 a month, with a parsonage to live in, would get us out of our nomadic, graduate school poverty. We had scrimped and scraped for five years, with no income other than from preaching jobs that David picked up here and there. Each jam jar was rinsed out, dried, and shelved to be used for canning, and all wrapping paper was carefully folded and hidden away on Micael’s birthday in May, to reuse on Carise’s in August. Every piece of garage sale baby furniture was kept in trust for the next kid, every pair of socks mended, every plastic bag reused. My parents had been a godsend in those lean years, paying for much of David’s seminary tuition and constantly sending us bits of money for the extras—“mad money,” as Mom called it. Now the idea of a full-time income made me breathe a long sigh of relief. I knew it would take enormous pressure off David and lighten his mood. But we didn’t have the job yet, so we needed to be in top form during the interview, because other eager seminary couples had also applied to shepherd th
e picturesque church. “We’ve been working toward this for five years now,” David said. “Let’s do all we can to make the right impression.”

  “What dress do you think I should wear?” I asked.

  “That floral one,” he said. “Conservative but not dowdy.”

  We arrived early on Sunday morning, and I took Carise, Micael, and Jason down to children’s church, praying they would behave as perfect cherubs. I had outfitted them in their best: the girls in matching red silk dresses and white laced pinafores I’d sewn, Jason in a handsome black suit and crisp white shirt that Mom and Dad had sent especially for the occasion. We were as ready as we’d ever be for the test ahead.

  David preached his most stirring—and well practiced—sermon, and the congregation erupted in applause at the end. The outburst made my heart leap because I’d never seen congregants show such emotion in church. After the service gray-haired parishioners lined the back of the sanctuary, bathed in dappled light beaming down through the stained-glass windows, calling out to David and me as we filed past during the last hymn: “Praise the Lord, what a sermon!” … “Uplifting message, Pastor” … “Glory be to God!” Out on the manicured lawn the elders grinned with delight as members whispered in their ears what looked to me to be further positive assessments. Then Don, the assistant pastor, a short, bald, heavy through the chest fellow with a wide, flat, pie-shaped face, stepped over to us and slapped David on the back. “You passed with flying colors, young man,” he said. “Now the board wants to take you to lunch, to see if you are as charismatic in social circumstances as you are in the pulpit.” He laughed genially as if to say, “Not to worry—you’ll be fine.”

  On our way to Ming Court for lunch, Janet, Don’s wife, and I chatted in the backseat of their car. “Now, this is the time the elders will size you up,” she said. “Don’t be nervous. They’ll just ask a lot of questions, but remember that everyone loves the Lord and is quite harmless.”

  I was grateful for Janet’s warning, because as we walked into the dimly lit restaurant and took our seats opposite a long row of elders and their wives, the group stared with ravenous expressions as though it were me they planned to devour for lunch instead of the pork dumplings. It felt like I was in one of those awful dreams where you suddenly realize you have to take a test that you haven’t studied for, and you aren’t wearing any clothes, and you can’t get out of the room, because your legs won’t move. As the waitress set out flower rolls, crab Rangoon, barbecue pork, and pot stickers, the elders began tossing live hand grenade questions at me:

  “Do you enjoy teaching children’s church?”

  “Do you have much experience teaching women’s Bible study?”

  “Do you like to entertain?”

  Thank the Lord I suddenly remembered the sallow-skinned pastor’s wife from Bible college saying, “As a minister’s wife you must always display a meek and quiet spirit. It’s best to keep your tone soft and nonthreatening.” I lowered my voice an octave and tried to defuse each question while nonchalantly taking bites of appetizer.

  “Oh, yes, I have lots of experience teaching women’s Bible study”—which was mostly true.

  “Yes, I love to entertain”—which was entirely true.

  “Yes, I love teaching children’s church”—which was a bald-faced lie.

  Just that moment I bit down on a piece of pork I’d covered in an innocuous looking white sauce as, too late, I heard one of the elders say, “This horseradish dip is absolutely deadly. I’ve never tasted anything so strong.”

  A bomb exploded in my sinuses, and my eyes watered as I scoured the table for water. None to be found. Thank goodness I had a napkin in which to hide my face. I sat perfectly still for several seconds, trying desperately not to choke or spew horseradish all over the elders and their wives. After my eyes stopped watering, I silently apologized to the Lord for lying about children’s church and chastised myself for being so unsophisticated and reckless—I had never eaten horseradish before. Now that I was about to become a minister’s wife, I would have to be more careful and look both ways before moving in any direction.

  After several more meetings and mercifully uneventful luncheons, David was hired, and we moved into the roomy four-bedroom parsonage only a few steps from the church. Light poured through huge windows that spanned the entire front of the house, filling the open rooms with warmth and making me eager to take my counted cross-stitch projects into a gallery to have them matted and framed and then mount them on the lovely walls. After David said he thought we could afford the purchases, I bought yards of fabric and began sewing curtains and throw pillows, tablecloths and chair cushions, even opening a Bon Marché charge account to buy our first new couch in six years of marriage. “Isn’t all this sunlight wonderful?” I said to David. “And the parsonage is so big it feels like Buckingham Palace.”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “It’s nice to settle into a place where we can make a new beginning.”

  I hugged David and imagined our new life together, now that he was free from the pressures of school and we had a steady income and a little extra money for nonessentials. We’d start to do things together, like occasionally getting a babysitter and renting a cottage by the sea, even though it would cost more than a month’s grocery budget during our seminary days. Holding hands, we’d walk along the soft, wild dunes and watch the terns and gulls flying overhead and the waves rolling in and out. We’d make reservations and eat in a fancy restaurant that overlooked the crashing, rolling Pacific, its cool mists dampening the salt breeze. We’d stroll back to our cozy cabin with old knotty pine paneling that gave off a warm, golden glow. David would make a fire in the hearth as the light faded to gray and night slid into the room, and I would peel off my clothes and jump shivering into bed. Then I would watch him undress against the flickering flames and slip in next to me. Once fire’s heat filled the tiny place, we’d kick back the sheets and frolic like newlyweds, free to make all the noise we wanted. In the morning we would wake up in each other’s arms, smelling of musk and lovemaking. We’d brew strong coffee and sit around, grungy and full of opinions, reading the Seattle Times out loud to each other, our bare feet touching, longing for nothing, not to be older or younger or in another place or time—simply together.

  I imagined that in our new life all the pleasures would be homey ones: the smell of our children’s skin, their hair damp as we pulled them slippery and giggling from the tub; an overstuffed armchair to match the new couch; a postcard from Jean and Doug in Mexico City, telling us that the Lord was blessing their ministry; the luxury of grocery bags jammed full of unnecessary things like Brie, hot chocolate, ginger ale, and salmon, sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be unpacked. That’s what I imagined as, there in the parsonage, David and I stayed in each other’s arms for a moment, hugging, on the lookout for the future that we expected. I think that was the happiest day of our life together, though we never knew it.

  Suddenly David froze as two noses pressed against the window. In the glare of sunlight, the interlopers could not see us standing in the kitchen. The man spotted the new living room couch and said, “That material doesn’t look practical to me.”

  “It’s far too light for a house with three small children,” added his wife, her hair pulled back neatly in a bun. “It’s pretty now, but give it a week and it’ll be a mess.”

  “Forget the color—how can they afford a new couch? We certainly can’t buy furniture like that … Maybe we’re paying them too much.”

  David whispered, “Don’t worry; just stand perfectly still, and they’ll go away.”

  Once they left we laughed, and David said, “Kind of like living in an ecclesiastical aquarium.”

  After several weeks of curtain sewing and picture hanging, David and I felt that the house looked so warm and inviting that we could ask the elders and their wives over for dinner. I had been careful not to put too many nails in the parsonage walls, the house being church property and all. But I couldn�
�t help making one minor adjustment: the carpet. A matted green dreadlock shag straight from the 1960s, it had a thick plastic runner over it, starting at the front door and extending down the hallway and making the entire entryway feel like an ice hockey rink. Even though the carpet was already knotted and worn, the elders apparently felt that if everyone walked lightly, it had another decade or two left in it. I carefully rolled up the fourteen-foot vinyl monstrosity and hid it in the closet, replacing it with a friendly doormat.

  That night, after the house had filled with the starched elders and their stern wives, Phoebe, a no-nonsense cricket of a woman, inquired about the hard plastic. “Where is the runner?” she chirped. “With all the people who will be in and out of the parsonage, I’m sure you understand the necessity of protecting the church’s carpet.”

  “Of course,” I said in my practiced minister’s wife voice, soft and submissive, and lugged it out of the closet and rolled it back over the deadly green shag.

  After Phoebe and the other guests left, I looked at the cold, cheerless plastic, rolled it back up, and returned it to the closet. I’ll simply take it out right before Phoebe visits again, I told myself, thinking that I was getting this minister’s wife thing down pat—surely she would never peer in the windows, like a neurotic landlord, and see it missing. But the next week Janet pulled me aside and whispered, “Phoebe peeked in the parsonage windows and saw that the runner was missing again. She isn’t very happy about it. She asked me to tell you that she is very concerned the church carpet is going to be a mess before you know it.”

  Phoebe was right about one thing: an army of people paraded in and out of the parsonage. Young people burst in to use the bathroom or grab something from the fridge, the way they’d rummage through a stand-up cooler at the convenience store. One day while David was taking a shower, two teenage girls exploded through the back door. They were halfway into the bathroom before I hollered out for them to stop. After that, David mentioned our lack of privacy to Pastor Don. The next day Janet left a package at the front door. Inside was a pink bathrobe with a note attached: “Now if anyone barges in on you, at least you’ll be wearing a pretty house-coat.” I examined the clump of material that looked as though it had been whipped up from a 1950s chenille bedspread, and realized that having a beautiful parsonage to live in would be a double-edged sword: nice kitchen and plenty of room for parties, but such amenities would come with very little solitude or privacy.