Chapter 19

I came out of the bedroom a short time later, pulled on my shoes, and said “let’s go to work.”

No puedes trabajar con tu Corazon roto. You can’t work with a broken heart.

Watch me.

We headed over to the church building, to the usual Wednesday night activity; English class. No one showed. That was what I like to call a tender mercy. Heavenly Father knew that I couldn’t even speak. That I couldn’t even breathe. He knew better than to send me vulnerable immigrants trying to learn a language of exceptions.

Back in the apartment, I had numbly pulled on my nylons, as she rattled off in Spanish.

You can’t work like this. You need to take some time off. I had listened silently, cursing her all the while. It was she that made it unbearable. She just has this quality… that makes you hate yourself. Somehow you love her, but hate you. And suddenly your own skin becomes fleshy prison walls, trapping the hatred and pain inside. If it weren’t for my skin I would have exploded.

What hurt more than anything was President’s remark.

I don’t know what to do with either one of you at this point.

I talked to God about that one for a long time. He told me that President Stoddard had no authorization from Him to talk to me like that. That I had acted more mature than my mission president. That it was going to be okay.

At this point, I’m just trying to make sense of it all.

I think it would be easier if you were stupid, she said. Little does she know the hundreds of hours I’ve wasted wishing to be vapid. Willing myself to change into someone totally clueless. Unaware of the injustice of it all. But instead, here I sit. Cowering in my own emotional feces. Trying to pick out some meaning from the crap. I can’t find it here. Justice and mercy right? Two eternal laws. What happens if neither applies?

It takes time.

I hate time. You know, the one thing I’ve noticed about it is that no matter how hard you kill it, it won’t die. Naps, meaningless tv shows, hours wasted browsing websites. And yet it still endures. I wish I were that resilient.

Time passed slowly that night. After she had exploded, sitting on the curb outside the church building, her long black hair draped over her face. She was humming hymns, as I sat silently in the car. I tried to talk to her. She yelled. I actually thought she was going to hurt me. That somehow she would launch her demented little self on me and injure me. Maybe it was irrational. Maybe it wasn’t. Who can tell now?

I waited till I knew she was asleep. Until her breathing became even and deep. I crawled silently out of bed and slipped out of the room. I knew if she woke up, it would cause a storm to break that hell itself could not weather. So I crept. I didn’t breathe. I sat by the window, again. Watching the sky as it pulsed from one mood to the next, with a quick succession of busy clouds. I remember the ache in my chest; so deep, so real. As if someone had filled my heart with lead. Heavy. Cold.

From then on, it got easier. Even when it was hard, it wasn’t that bad. By the next afternoon, I had returned to the land of milk and honey. The place where people knew who I was. Where I knew where everything was. Where I could do some good.

He was wrong to take me out in the first place.

He was wrong to deny me the companion I was supposed to have.

So God fixed his mistakes, partially at my expense. And I went home. Home to the apartment with a bathroom fit for the Gods. Home to the oldest car in the mission. Home to the smell of new carpet and hot chocolate. Home to the bathroom floor that had known so many nights of pain. Home to the bed where my illness left for the last time. Just…. Home.

As we went around that first day, we stopped by the member’s homes. When they saw me, Oliva, Fanny, and Ashley all started to cry. We tried to surprise them, but when Fanny opened the door, she yelled “I KNOW she’s come back! Where IS she?” I came around the corner, and fell into her open arms. Even Baby, their Chihuahua, knew who I was. Raced around their back yard out of excitement. Sister Castellanos screamed like a little child when she saw me. I actually don’t think I’ve ever had a day in my life where I felt so loved.

And I needed it. After so much time feeling like a burden; a chore. I just needed people who would love me.

Round Lake was the reason. It was the rhyme. It was a ray of light in a time of utter darkness. It was the land of milk and honey. It was there that I learned what I could become, once someone trusted me.

I became a legend. An inspiration. The numbers of lessons we were having daily baffled the mission. They baffled me. I just looked on as the Lord blessed us over and over again. I wasn’t doing anything different. It’s as if he needed me to know that it was Him that caused us to have success. They were the blessings poured out upon President Doll for trusting someone who so desperately needed to be trusted.

For months he had mistrusted me, misunderstood me and talked about me as if I were a problem. For months he had been too quick to judge and too slow to love. For as long as I had been there, he had boxed me up in his mind, confident that he had classified me correctly. Conveniently labeled and shoved into a corner, like lawnmower parts or medical reference books. I tried to be the innocent, loving sister that didn’t care. But I did. Of course I see now the folly in the act; why did I try to make excuses for the way I felt? Those were my emotions; what made them invalid?

That day, we drove out of our way to get to his oversize house. We sat there awkwardly as I tried to love a man who so cruelly handled me. She was there, his loving wife. Almost motherly, but not quite. There was something about her that I couldn’t understand. Probably the fact that she married her emotionally myopic husband. Blind to those with real needs, unwilling to listen.

It’s only now that I’m okay with saying these things. There is no sin in disliking someone.

And so I do. I heartily dislike him. Just like almost every other practicing lawyer I’ve ever met. Heartless bastards, every last one of them.