15
No More a Child
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. So as 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 sure what to do.
There was no precedent for this: my father had never visited my room before.
He strode past me and sat on my bed, then patted the mattress next to him.
I took my seat, nervously, my feet barely touching the floor. I waited for him
to speak, but the moments passed silently. His eyes were closed, his jaw