Chapter 20: Girls Gone Mild

I’m big.

Huuuuuuge.

Goodyear is jealous.

At three months, I look like I’m full term. At five, I am asked if I’m having twins. Full term, Pastor Real says the congregation is following my belly like the bouncing dot over lyrics. Funny.

Remember what Grandpa warned you about if you swallow a watermelon seed? I must have swallowed five.

I have too much amniotic fluid. This kid has an Olympic pool, with enough extra room for animal floaties and a lazy river. This time around, we are in a far more stable position, and though I am horribly uncomfortable, my baby will have an actual house to live in once she exits the pool. Once toweled off, she’s my beautiful daughter. Spectacularly messy affair as new life always is, and a good metaphor for how things have been at the church. Lots of new life, cleanup in aisle 3, please. She has jaundice, the result of a different blood type, and has to come home in a tiny cocoon of light, wrapped up like a little glow-worm, the second of two lights who have my heart. She joins her brother on Sunday mornings at 6:15, two blanket burritos sleeping in the auditorium as their parents prepare for 7 am rehearsal.

We have been at Pastor Real’s church for a few years now, and it’s been sobering. Honeymoon period over, blinding chrome worn into a dull patina, we now have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

This place was multiplying like horny bunnies in June, and it was great messy fun, but with all of the new nose ring wearin’, cigarette smokin’, swear word cussin’ folk around, the Churchies were starting to circle the wagons. Pastor Real constantly had people in his office holding court about the latest broken rule.

Even in this relatively less-constricting format, the Churchies are overly sensitive to things like a bra strap being slightly visible. “That’s distracting” says a Churchie to me one day, I was wearing a tank top in the hot summer and you could see a bit of strap in the back, because bra designers are feeble-brained morons who have no idea how the hell to get the straps in the right place, and clearly have never attempted to put one on. One time when my daughter is like three, and has adorable ruffled bloomers, the same Churchie complains that when my little peach raises her arms, the wee ruffles peek out. I’m starting to not like this woman. Seriously, you’re being weird, lady. That’s what modesty rules do, though, make things awkward.

There is an odd modesty culture in most churches, frumpiness is next to Godliness, and it’s unholy to look your best. And unbeknownst to me, while we have been busy with worship thinking my daughter is being taught about the Bible and being a good person in Sunday school, she is instead being taught all of this clothing BS, how to pray for your future husband (what if you want to be single?) and children (what if you’re infertile?) and other vital things like sitting quietly to learn as good girls (boys are exempt), and that campfires, fishing and rambunctious activities are good for boys and crafts and knitting are what girls are meant to do. And you better listen to the men, they know best. She is taught that the man is the head, the woman is the neck. Holy stereotype. I don’t find any of this out for years. I’m glad she didn’t listen, what she told me about those days was enough to make me want to burn my bras and the crazy books that taught this bullshit.

But I can’t burn my bra here, I can’t even wear a tank top without being judged. Shoulders are straight from Satan’s Make Him Stumble 2003 design collection.

Long shorts, 3/4 sleeves, baggy clothes that don’t emphasize or flatter anything, these are Holy and Protect You Against Evil.

The irony is it absolutely doesn’t work.

One of our squeaky-clean khaki-clad deacons with a squeaky-clean denim-jumper-bearing wife, either one a modesty poster child, is caught. Ongoing impropriety with one of the members who wore no Jezebel makeup at all and dressed like a Mennonite. He is quietly removed from leadership. I am one of very few people who knew about this, his wife approaching me in tears and begging me not to tell anyone. I never did, and the whole situation was quietly swept under the carpet. Was this the right thing to do? Who knows? Handling a situation like this is more complicated than it would seem. His devastated wife was caught between a rock and a hard place. He had a prominent place in the community, wouldn’t want the community to know. It may damage his business, and that would directly affect her. They have children, wouldn’t want them to know either. What if they already figured it out? Kids are much smarter than they are given credit for, and my experience in youth ministry would inform it is best to be open with your kids, they probably already figured it out a long time ago. I dream of a world in which one can boldly walk out the door when they find their love in the arms of another. The betrayal, the pain, the ruined trust…

Throughout my church years, I see the repeat performance of someone with a squeaky clean appearance and a veneer of perfection hiding something awful… something that stinks to high heaven, like a beautifully painted deck that one day crushes easily when stepped upon, the wood beneath having long rotted into mush. I find those who appear a bit too perfectly put-together to be unsettling…what are you hiding? Wolves in sheep’s clothing have their costumes carefully curated, and must have the whitest wool and the brightest eyes, or else someone will suspect. I’m suspicious myself when I see someone’s house and Every. Little. Detail. is perfectly in place. Do you do anything at all other than clean your house?! Where are the bodies buried??

It made me wonder what else was going on… unhappy marriages, affairs, wayward children, if you peel back the rooftops of those with the happy-life veneer, what’s really going on? No one’s life is perfect. And there is a big secret I haven’t yet figured out.

A horror right in front of me.