Leaving Fishers (15 page)

Dorry waffled between embarrassment that her finger was too fat and relief that she wouldn’t have to wear the ring where a wedding ring would go. Wasn’t there some superstition that if
you wore a ring on your wedding finger, you’d never get married? Looking around, Dorry noticed for the first time that all the girls were wearing rings on their left hands.

“The vows?” Tina reminded softly.

Angela put her hand over Dorry’s. “Repeat after me. I vow—”

“I vow,” Dorry said.

The rest of the words came in groups of two or three, so Dorry had no time to think about what she was vowing. She only put it all together later: “—to be worthy of my discipler’s faith in me. I vow to obey her commands unquestioningly. I vow to be a fit servant of God.”

“Very good,” Angela said when Dorry was done.

One by one, the other girls put their hand on Dorry’s and prayed over her. Each ended, “May it be your will, oh Lord. Amen.”

“And now the commission,” Angela said. “When I was assigned as your discipler, I had to make a list of goals for you at every level. The goals are pretty much the same for everyone at Level One. But at Level Two, I have a lot more choices, because this is an even greater time of coming to accept your discipler’s authority.”

“How many levels are there?” Dorry asked.

The girls exchanged glances.

“That doesn’t matter,” Angela said.

“What are all of you?”

The others shared another look that left Dorry out.

“You’re not allowed to ask that,” Angela said.

“What?”

Angela gave Dorry a look that made her remember the “unquestioning” part of the vow she’d just made. “No one’s allowed to ask higher-level Fishers their numbers. It’s like—questioning their authority. Like, if you’re a two, you might not listen to a three if you knew she just was a three.”

“I see,” Dorry said, though she didn’t.

Angela stood up and placed her hand on Dorry’s shoulders. Her stance reminded Dorry of a queen bestowing knighthood on a subject. “As your discipler, Dorry Stevens, I command you to end your worship of the false god of food. Your body is a temple of God, and you should keep it holy. As a sign that you have turned away from your former evil ways, you shall fast on Thanksgiving Day.”

Dorry jerked back. “What? I don’t worship food.”

Angela shook her head and glared. She put her hands back on Dorry’s shoulders. “Furthermore, you shall begin your mission as a witness for
God’s righteousness. You will join an evangelism team, and you will convert at least one person on your trip to Ohio.”

Dorry held back words she knew would get her in trouble.

“In the name of God, Amen,” Angela finished.

“Amen,” the other girls said.

Tardily, Dorry added, “Amen.”

All the girls took turns hugging her again. They acted as though Angela’s commands were absolutely ordinary. But Dorry’s mind was in turmoil. How could Angela think she worshiped food? She liked it, sure, but who didn’t? So she was a little overweight—it was genetic. All the Stevenses were heavyset. And how could she fast on Thanksgiving? What would her family say? As for converting someone in Ohio—she’d been talking to her parents for a month about Fishers, and they were no closer to a conversion than ever. How was she supposed to convert someone in only four days?

But at the back of her mind, a small, guilty voice whispered: You do eat too much. That’s why you’re fat. You don’t really expect a beautiful, skinny person like Angela to want to be seen with you, do you? She’s probably been disgusted by you since she met you. She was just too nice to say so. And you’re a coward, too. Angela
knows you haven’t tried hard enough to convert your parents or anybody else.

The others were cleaning up and getting ready to go. Tina slid the crumbling remains of the cake back into its bakery box. Before, Dorry would have been tempted to say, “Hey I’ll finish that off. It’s not enough to take home.” But now the sight of the cake, the heavy feel of it in her stomach, made Dorry feel sick. She watched Tina carelessly heave the cake box into the trash. She thought of the nickname everyone had called her: Chocolate. Her favorite food. But if Angela was worried that Dorry worshiped food, why did Angela let people call her that?

“Angela,” Dorry said. “I don’t really have to fast on Thanksgiving, do I?”

Angela stopped in the midst of fastening Dorry’s sin tally sheet into her binder. “Of course you do. I told you to. I’m your discipler.”

The other girls were working in slow motion—listening, but pretending not to. Dorry wished she’d had the sense to wait until it was just her and Angela. But she couldn’t stop now.

“I mean, it’s impossible not to eat on
Thanks giving
. I can’t do it. My family will think it’s really weird. They’ll get upset.”

Angela snapped the rings of her binder back together. “Jesus upset a lot of people.”

“But if they’re upset, how can I convert anyone? Anyhow, I can just try, I can’t promise that anyone will be converted—”

“Dorry—” Angela slid her binder into her book bag and turned to face Dorry. “No one expects you to do any of this by yourself. God will help you. That should be enough for you. Let’s pray about it, shall we?” Angela bowed her head and clasped Dorry’s hand. As if on cue, the other girls smoothly flowed from busily cleaning up to holding hands and looking prayerful. Dutifully, Dorry dropped her head.

Chapter

Fifteen

DORRY PLACED THE STEAMING BOWL OF freshly mashed potatoes on the table, inches from the plate she knew would be her own. Behind her, one of her nephews dove to catch a Nerf football and banged into the table. Gravy sloshed onto the tablecloth.

“Not in the house!” Dorry’s sister Denise yelled.

“—so, like, are kids in Indianapolis wearing those peekaboo blouses? I know
you
wouldn’t, but I’ve been trying to tell Mom that everybody does, and if you tell her maybe she’ll let me wear one—” Dorry’s thirteen-year-old niece Heidi chattered as she carelessly put the platter of homemade rolls down on the spot of spilled gravy.

Dorry’s stomach rumbled. So far she’d said nothing to anyone about fasting or Fishers. It’d been easy enough to skip breakfast without being noticed. That was every man for himself: cereal grabbed hastily from the command headquarters of the Stevens family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Dorry figured her mom hadn’t stopped to eat breakfast either, in the midst of stuffing the
turkey and mixing rolls and grating slaw. But she’d been sampling all morning, licking spoons and testing seasonings. Only moments ago, she’d thrust a spoon dripping with gravy toward Dorry.

“Here, taste this. Should I add more salt?”

Dorry panicked. The spoon might as well be steaming with the fires of hell. She pretended to be busy with the water pitcher. “Ask Heidi. I can never tell.”

“Heidi—oh, what am I thinking. Heidi hates gravy. Denise?” Dorry’s mom called.

Dorry’s hands shook pouring water. She was weak with hunger. Of course, she’d only missed one meal, but with the smells of all the Thanksgiving food reaching for her, it seemed like much more.

Soon Aunt Emma arrived and slid her candied yams onto the table. The kitchen got more crowded. Boisterous kids hid under the table and tugged on the tablecloth, threatening disaster, until someone shooed them away. Dorry felt faint.

Dorry’s mom went and whispered to Dorry’s dad, sitting in his recliner in the living room. He stood and whistled so loudly the neighbor’s dog began barking. It silenced every Stevens. “Grandma says it’s all ready Let’s eat!”

There was the usual scramble for chairs. Dorry sat near the kitchen so she could run errands for
her mom. Her uncle Ed ended up on one side of her and her sister Denise on the other.

“Some boy give you that ring?” Uncle Ed said. “You going to leave us and marry some city slicker?”

“Dorry’s got a boyfriend?” one of her nephews snickered. Even Heidi turned to look.

“No, no,” Dorry said, embarrassed. “It was . . . from my church.”

“Churches are handing out rings now? Hot dog!” Denise’s husband chuckled. “If they’d just hand out the husband to go with them, you’d be all set, Louise.”

Louise was one of Dorry’s cousins, still unmarried at thirty-eight. She rolled her eyes and turned back to her stuffing.

Dorry looked around at all the familiar faces, the people she’d known all her life. She had to convert one of them by Sunday. “The ring’s not about boyfriends or marriage,” Dorry said slowly, searching for bravery. “It’s a sign of God’s love and devotion, and my own unworthiness, and, and . . . my duty to obey.”

There was an awkward silence. Dorry’s words seemed to lay on the table as embarrassing and unwanted as the spinach casserole someone brought to Thanksgiving one year during a shortlived health kick.

Then one of the youngest Stevenses called out, “Where’s my mac’roni cheese?” and his mother tried to explain there wasn’t any. The usual chatter sprang up again. Dorry began passing food. Each dish seemed more desirable than the last: potatoes, rolls, Denise’s special cheese-stuffed mushrooms. Dorry dreaded the moment when someone noticed none of it was ending up on her plate. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d just think she’d eaten quickly and cleanly.

No such luck.

“That church of yours forbids you to eat, too?” Denise asked, between forkfuls of potatoes.

“Just today,” Dorry said miserably, her eyes following Denise’s fork to her mouth. Mmm. Mashed potatoes. What if Dorry ate just them? How could God mind that? No one would have to know. Resolutely, she shook the thought away. Her stomach growled. “I’m fasting today. It’s—like a test.”

Denise practically dropped her fork. “What? That’s crazy.”

Across the table, Dorry’s mom instantly stopped comparing grocery prices with Aunt Emma, as if her motherly antenna had just intercepted news of a plane crash. “Oh, honey,” she cried. “You didn’t tell us that. That can’t be right. Surely you misunderstood—”

Dorry shook her head no. She’d understood.

Uncle Ed dug his elbow in her side. “If I was you, I’d tell that church where to go,” he said, then guffawed at his own wit.

“What’s God got against food?” Aunt Emma asked.

“So you don’t eat. What’s that do?” Denise asked. She waved her fork so close to Dorry’s face that Dorry could easily have leaned forward and gobbled a big bite of potatoes. She swallowed hard.

“If I succeed, it’d be a sign, I mean, proof, that food isn’t a false god for me, that I don’t care more about it than I do about God and Fishers, the church I’m in—”

Dorry could tell how she sounded by the looks on her family’s faces. She stopped.

“Tell you what I’d do,” Aunt Emma said suddenly. She stood up, her chair scraping back loudly on the hardwood floor. She dug a spoon deep into her candied yams and, leaning across the table, deposited them on Dorry’s plate. Dots of the brown-sugar sauce dribbled across the tablecloth. Then Aunt Emma looked around wildly, eyes lighting on the platter of rolls. She took one and tossed it onto Dorry’s plate. She might have gone on, but the other food was out of her reach. “What I’d do,” she said, sitting back
down, “is I’d eat all I wanted and tell that church I’d follow all their stupid rules tomorrow. If I felt like it. Tell them today’s a holiday It’s Thanksgiving. The point of Thanksgiving is to eat.”

Dorry gulped. “The point of Thanksgiving is to give thanks to God,” she said in a near whisper.

Across the table, her mother frowned, her expression telegraphing the message, “Eat. Now. Quit making a disturbance.”

Dorry looked down at her plate, at the hot, yeasty roll, at the succulent candied yams, their pool of brown-sugar sauce spreading across her plate. She could feel everyone staring, waiting to see if she would eat. The food all but called out to her. She felt light-headed. How easy it would be just to pick up the roll. How much she longed to eat. Her stomach twisted. She brought her hand toward the table. She remembered her lazy, joking thought the week before:
What was the Devil going to do? Hide behind Aunt Emma’s candied yams?

Dorry pushed herself away from the table and ran to the stairs.