Leaving Fishers (20 page)

She wanted to call Angela, to confess, to find out what she was supposed to do. But Angela
would be at the all-night Fishers Christmas prayer service downtown. Dorry should be there, too. That was what she was supposed to do.

She went to bed. In the morning, she felt better. It was like she really had been sick, like she’d caught some virus of evil that her body had successfully fought. But now, Christmas morning, she was a new person, one actually capable of being a good Fisher. She opened presents with her parents and exclaimed politely over everything. When the rest of the family arrived, she remembered to thank Aunt Emma for the knitted socks. She sat beside Uncle Ed again for Christmas dinner but didn’t even flinch when he asked, “I see that ring is on your wedding finger now. Did you run off and get married?”

“No,” Dorry explained calmly. “I just lost enough weight to put it on the right finger. It’s a sign of my devotion to my church.”

Dorry heard the snickers far down the table, and the kids being loudly hushed. She easily ignored it. She passed the candied yams down the table without taking any.

Her uncle looked over at her plate, which contained a carrot stick, three pieces of celery and a dollop of mashed potatoes. “I reckon you ain’t fasting anymore, but you might as well be,” he joked.

“I’ve broken the bondage of being a slave to my appetite,” Dorry said. And it was true: The forkful of mashed potatoes she brought to her mouth seemed utterly tasteless. She put her fork down. She wasn’t hungry. She looked with distaste at the way Uncle Ed was shoveling in the mountains of food on his plate.

Uncle Ed started a conversation across the table about the price of a new bathroom sink he’d installed the day before.

“Dorry?” her mother called. “Can you help me with something in the kitchen?” Obediently, Dorry followed her mother out. Her mother busied herself sliding more rolls onto a platter that was already full. “This church stuff has gone too far. Can’t you just act normal for Christmas?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“I am normal,” Dorry said. “I’m better than normal. If you weren’t in sin you would see that.”

Dorry’s mother whirled around, with amazing speed for someone her age. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I mean,” she said. “How dare you say that to me.”

Dorry saw the tears at the corners of her mother’s eyes, but the words playing in her head were about the virtues of being persecuted, not the value of compassion. “I’m only speaking the truth,” Dorry said calmly. “Sinners usually don’t
like truth.” She suddenly understood Angela’s self-confidence, her air of assurance. It truly didn’t matter who was against her. She knew God was on her side.

Dorry’s mother practically threw the empty roll pan into the sink. It clattered loudly. “This is a stage you’re going through,” she hissed. “Your father and I will put up with it if we have to. But you don’t have to insult your uncle like that. Or anyone else. I won’t allow it.”

“Mom?” Denise pushed her way into the kitchen. “Come on back.” Denise flashed a dirty look at Dorry, as if she knew Dorry had made their mother cry. Dorry felt a spasm of guilt for upsetting her family. She wondered if she was supposed to follow Denise and her mother out of the kitchen, if they even wanted her back at the table. But she prayed ten times, “Lord, thy will be done. Lord, thy will be done,” and her cold calm returned.

Chapter

Twenty-two

SOMEHOW DORRY NEVER GOT AROUND to seeing Marissa or any other friends over Christmas break. She lived like a hermit in her room, reading the Bible and praying for hours on end. She called Angela twice a day. She barely ate. Once she heard her parents arguing in the hall—“We don’t have to put up with this,” her father growled. “How do we know she’s not in there smoking pot or something?”

“We’d smell it,” her mother answered.

Dorry stopped listening. Distantly, she was a little amused that her mother might know what pot smelled like. But she mainly blocked out everything about her parents. She refused every effort they made to draw her out of her room, away from her Bible and prayers. They had rejected God. She could not concern herself with them. She was not allowed to think about anything but Fishers.

Most of the time, she succeeded. By the time they got back to Indianapolis, she could keep herself pure and above sin about two days out of every three. She hoped Angela would notice a big
difference in her, a glow that didn’t show over the phone. At their first discipling session, just an hour after Dorry was back in town, she had to search for sins to describe.

“I picked my nose once,” she finally said, almost defiantly. Let Angela condemn me for that, if she has to, she thought. There’s nothing else. And I’m so pure now, so beyond my old selfish self, I don’t care if she tells everyone else in Fishers what I did.

Angela’s pen didn’t move. “That’s not really a sin,” she said evenly, not hearing or ignoring the challenge in Dorry’s voice. “Unless, of course, you did it in front of other people, and that made them question the rightness of being a Fisher. Did you?”

“No.”

“Anything else?” Angela’s pen hovered over the paper, waiting.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I said no. Don’t you believe me?”

“Of course,” Angela said calmly. “Let’s move on. Virtuous acts?”

“Um—” Dorry said.

“You don’t have any, do you?” Angela said.

“I was busy praying,” Dorry said. “And reading the Bible. I told you. I didn’t sin.”

Angela’s gaze was steady. “It’s true your sin numbers are down. They were low for your whole vacation. You know that’s good.”

Dorry felt a little thrill of victory. See—Angela was proud of her. But Angela was still talking.

“But your virtuous-acts numbers are down, too. You’re just a zero all around. You’re supposed to be a Fisher, not a zero.”

The words cut into Dorry’s iron restraint, unleashing a flood of insecurity. I knew it. Angela always thought I was a zero. And she’s right, I am. And then Dorry was just mad, mad at Angela, mad at herself. Frantically, she tamped down the anger. God, let me turn from this evil. God, let me turn from this evil. Biting her cheek, Dorry muttered, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”

After that, every day was a struggle. If she focused on God and obeyed Angela and just didn’t think, she was all right. But at the oddest moments, her anger flashed out or she developed evil doubts or questions about Angela’s commandments.

When Angela told her she needed to spy on a new member, to make sure he wasn’t sneaking cigarettes, Dorry stood outside in the cold for three hours one day, watching a single lighted window. The colder her feet got, the holier she felt. But when she reported back to her E Team,
and everyone’s eyes focused approvingly on her, a voice whispered in her head, “This is wrong. What you did was evil.”

When her parents got upset that her semester grades came back as mostly Cs with a few scattered Bs, she was serene as they screamed. “No, of course it’s not because I’m spending too much time with Fishers,” she told them resolutely. “They just expect a lot more at Crestwood. I’ve got things figured out now. I’ll do better.” Then she went to her room and sobbed silently, fighting the evil urge to curse Angela, Fishers, and God. “Help me do better. Help me do better,” she prayed again and again. She wasn’t sure if she was praying for her schoolwork or her soul.

The only place she could relax her guard against evil was at the Garringers’, baby-sitting. She gave piggyback rides to Jasmine and Zoe, played peekaboo with Seth, held their hands in endless games of ring-around-the-rosy and London Bridge. She savored the kids’ hugs, which were totally spontaneous and had nothing to do with Dorry’s sin numbers or virtuous-acts score. She didn’t have to consult Angela before telling Zoe not to stand on the kitchen table. She still felt uncomfortable around Mrs. Garringer, but Mrs. Garringer was only there at the beginning and the end, to say in her melodramatic way,
“Dorry, if you only knew what you’ve done for my sanity!”

Sometimes Dorry felt guilty that she enjoyed Jasmine, Zoe, and Seth so much—that her favorite moments had nothing to do with God or Fishers. But then one day in early January, Angela said, “Dorry, you’re not giving enough to Fishers. Saving souls is very expensive. Remember how Jesus asked his disciples to give all that they had?” She waited, as if expecting Dorry to figure out what she needed to do on her own. She didn’t. Angela sighed, and added, “You need to give your baby-sitting money to Fishers.”

“All of it?” Dorry asked, feeling the familiar spur of anger and doubt. “But that’s my college money.”

“If God wants you to go to college, He’ll provide a way.”

“Okay,” Dorry said, though inside she was seething. With Angela watching, she signed over a big check, clearing out her bank account. She hated herself for it. She hated herself for hating herself. She hated God and Angela both. She signed her name carefully.

And then, handing the check over, she felt suddenly free. Look what I can do. Look what a wonderful Fisher I am.

After that, when she began enjoying the kids
too much, she simply told herself her work was holy, because she was baby-sitting to earn money for Fishers.

Sometimes she even believed it.

Chapter

Twenty-three

PASTOR JIM CAME TO SPEAK TO DORRY’S E Team. It was a momentous occasion—some of the girls baked cookies, and Mark, the leader, had clearly put unusual effort into cleaning his apartment ahead of time.

Pastor Jim came into the room like visiting royalty. But his mournful expression instantly changed the festive mood in the room.

“We are failing,” he proclaimed sadly.

He sat on the floor. Quickly, everyone sitting on the bed or on Mark’s rickety folding chairs slid down to join him. Dorry knew why: Those who want to be first, should make themselves last. No Fisher could sit in comfort while Pastor Jim sat on hard, cracked linoleum.

“We have good news to share,” Pastor Jim continued. “But in the last month, we have won only fifteen new souls for the Lord.”

It sounded like a lot to Dorry. But she quickly adjusted her expression to one of sorrow, to match everyone else in the room.