There was a moment that winter. I was kneeling on the carpet,

listening to Dad testify of Mother’s calling as a healer, when my breath
caught in my chest and I felt taken out of myself. I no longer saw my
parents or our living room. What I saw was a woman grown, with her
own mind, her own prayers, who no longer sat, childlike, at her father’s
feet.

I saw the woman’s swollen belly and it was my belly. Next to her sat
her mother, the midwife. She took her mother’s hand and said she
wanted the baby delivered in a hospital, by a doctor. I’ll drive you, her
mother said. The women moved toward the door, but the door was
blocked—by loyalty, by obedience. By her father. He stood, immovable.
But the woman was his daughter, and she had drawn to herself all his
conviction, all his weightiness. She set him aside and moved through
the door.

I tried to imagine what future such a woman might claim for herself.
I tried to conjure other scenes in which she and her father were of two
minds. When she ignored his counsel and kept her own. But my father
had taught me that there are not two reasonable opinions to be had on
any subject: there is Truth and there are Lies. I knelt on the carpet,
listening to my father but studying this stranger, and felt suspended
between them, drawn to each, repelled by both. I understood that no
future could hold them; no destiny could tolerate him and her. I would
remain a child, in perpetuity, always, or I would lose him.

—

I WAS LYING ON MY BED, watching the shadows my feeble lamp cast on the
ceiling, when I heard my father’s voice at the door. Instinctively I
jerked to my feet in a kind of salute, but once I was standing I wasn’t