Pocketful of Pearls (5 page)

Her pillow was gone. She crawled to the edge of the bed, snagged it off the floor with one hand, and curled around it.

What she wouldn’t give to be holding Sheba right now, alive and warm and unquestioningly loving, giving affection because
that was what they both did—giving and receiving in a single current that went in both directions.

The pillow would have to do.

But first, she had to get rid of the nightgown. She rolled off the bed and stripped it off, throwing the disgusting thing
in an arc like a sail into a corner of the room and pulling the comforting black flannel over her head.

Black, the color of the burned sacrifice. The color of coals, not completely consumed but ready for the match. The color every
Elect woman wore in public to signify the death of her human nature.

She had no idea where he’d found the white nightie, with its tiny tucks and narrow-edged lace. Probably in a mail-order magazine
specializing in quasi-Victorian garments, and sent to a P.O. box in a town where his presence at the post office wouldn’t
be noticed. She hated the wretched thing, covering her from throat to ankles while its fragile fabric exposed her so cruelly
to his hungry, possessive gaze.

And yet there was no way to stop it other than running away, and after the family’s humiliating disappointment with Tamara,
she couldn’t do that to her mother. She was the good daughter, the capable one, the one who didn’t run when the going got
so bad that running or death were the only options.

Running wasn’t possible. Death was.

So she died a little every time, offering up her body as a living sacrifice so that he’d be appeased. So that this wouldn’t
happen to anyone else.

Only her.

It had begun when her period had started, when the private studies and special times she’d had with Phinehas as a child had
lost their affectionate innocence and changed. He’d always touched her with love, and the novelty of it had made her hungry
for more. A hug after a long absence, a caress on the hand or the cheek when she’d shared a particularly lovely thought from
Scripture with him. She’d been his special princess, from the most favored family in the district, and that alone, he’d said,
had set her apart from the other girls.

Even Madeleine and Julia McNeill, who in Dinah’s eyes had everything she did not, were not as spiritually lovely as she was.
Or so Phinehas assured her, and she believed him. She certainly never heard such things from her parents. For them, all that
existed were rules and restrictions and do’s and don’ts. With her father, the Elect always came first—before himself, before
his wife, and certainly before his daughters. In the Elect, you lived within a structure of biblical traditions and found
beauty and protection inside it. But her parents, it seemed, wanted to make sure the fences were good and strong, to protect
her from the wiles of Satan.

At fourteen she’d become the confidante of Phinehas, listening as he shared his most intimate thoughts and longings. Things
he could never tell another living soul—only Dinah and God knew. She learned from him how difficult was the celibate life
of the Shepherd, how he had sacrificed the possibility of home and family to travel the state, bringing the gospel to hungry
souls. She learned how difficult it was for a man to get close to God when his body’s demands drowned out his ability to pray.

Her melting sympathy and desire to help him had been the catalyst that had begun it. It was her fault, really. He said he
couldn’t resist her, and after that first kiss, the first touches, she had learned that she liked being needed. Liked feeling
special, even beautiful.

And she learned to make it easy for him. She learned which stairs to oil, and how to spritz WD-40 on hinges so they wouldn’t
squeak.

Because when she didn’t make it easy, all the love went out of her existence. He could withhold his care and approval as easily
as he gave it, and the winter that descended on her young soul the first time he ignored her withered her so cruelly that
in the end, during his very next visit, she had not been able to bear it any longer and had gone back to him, begging his
forgiveness.

Yes, she had gone to him. Because she had wanted something for herself. Because she had wanted to feel beautiful and needed.
And for that selfishness God had punished her—with pain, with isolation, with a continuing struggle with the ambivalence of
knowing it was wrong, of hating every moment of it, but wanting it anyway. She kept this dreadful secret she could never share
with another living creature . . . except Sheba, who could give love but not sympathy in return.

Dinah curled miserably around the pillow. A glance at the clock told her there were still six hours to endure before she could
get up. She couldn’t even go downstairs for a shower. Her mother might not hear the water running at midnight—Dr. Archer’s
pills would take care of that—but the guest room was right across the hall from the bathroom, and Aunt Margaret would be sure
to wonder what she was up to.

After ten years, she still marveled—in a faint, hopeless kind of way—that no one knew. She had kept their little secret. The
ugliness. The pain and degradation. All were locked inside her body with no way out. No way to ask for help. And so, of course,
no one saw—or wanted to see.

No one cared.

Not even God.

Hours later, Dinah watched the sky fade from black to gray and when the alarm clock told her no one would question it, she
threw back the covers and tiptoed downstairs to the lower bathroom to shower. It made more sense to use the upper one, but
she couldn’t bear the thought of being naked and defenseless with Phinehas just on the other side of the wall. She stood under
water so hot it steamed and scrubbed her abdomen and thighs with ruthless disregard for the redness of her skin. Then she
dried off, wrapped her rose-sprigged dressing gown around her, and returned to her room, where she dressed swiftly.

For a woman of the Elect, clothes were a burden and the source of much moaning and discipline. But unlike the local girls,
Dinah couldn’t buy clothes in the stores in Hamilton Falls. Part of the reason was that hardly any of them stocked things
in black that had the two additional qualifications required by Elect women—they had to be reasonably attractive while at
the same time maintaining a woman’s modesty with high necklines and long sleeves.

Dinah had a third qualification. She was so slender things literally fell off her. In the case of skirts and dresses, she
usually wound up making her own. That was another reason she had envied Julia McNeill when they were teenagers. Julia could
flit off to Spokane for a shopping trip whenever she liked, where Dinah was trapped helping her parents, who were older than
most, with the home place. Just getting to the fabric store to make something for herself meant careful scheduling and juggling
of other people’s priorities.

Even putting food on the table meant work. They had the money to buy pickles and canned fruit until the end of time, but Mother
insisted that they put up their own, the way she had learned in her own mother’s kitchen. And Dad had fixed ideas about what
constituted women’s work that were even more firm than the general Elect view. So there you were.

On the rare occasions when she got to the library to indulge in the sin of logging onto the forbidden Internet and checking
her father’s stock portfolio, Dinah would surf the Web and look longingly at all the professions a woman could take on if
she had the training. But for a woman of the Elect, going to college and getting trained for something other than husband
and family was, if not frowned upon, then certainly not supported. What man would marry a woman who was better trained and
possibly even making more money than he was? Who would be the head of the household in reality, no matter what they were in
a spiritual sense? The two heads had to be embodied in the same person, or chaos resulted.

At the rate Dinah was going, though, she’d graduate with a PhD in nuclear physics long before she’d ever be a wife and mother.
The thought of being married nauseated her. And of course, without the
wife
part, the
mother
part was impossible.

Her own depressing thoughts drove her down the stairs and into the refrigerator, where she pulled out some eggs and bacon
and quickly made herself her first breakfast, the one she could eat all by herself before the family and Phinehas appeared
around eight o’clock.

She would not think about Phinehas. She had learned to put him in a compartment and lock him in there while she went about
her work. Otherwise she would wind up down by the river, screaming. And that would hardly be becoming to a daughter of one
of the favored families, would it?

At least today was Sunday, and she wouldn’t see much of him. He would take her father’s place and lead Gathering in their
living room, and then later today he would take Melchizedek’s place at Mission and lead it, too. Between both obligations
he would be sequestered in his room, preparing to preach the Word of God, and she would be free of the gaze that was like
an invisible leash, tugging at her, controlling her, making her go where she didn’t want to.

When she went out to feed the chickens, Dinah remembered who else was in the barn, and shook her head at herself.

Lovely, Dinah. Hire the man, hide him, and then forget to feed him.

She turned back to the house and fried some more eggs and bacon, slid them on a paper plate, and added an orange and a cup
of coffee.

Sheba ran to greet her when she pushed open the barn door, craning her glossy neck to see what was on the plate.

“Sorry, darling. This isn’t for you.” Sheba didn’t listen. She hopped up and down on both feet, thrilled at the prospect of
something besides lay crumble for breakfast. “No, pet. This is for Mr. Nicholas.”

As if she’d called him, the man appeared from the direction of the hired man’s apartment. His skin and hair were damp, and
his face glowed above the collar of a shirt that was as filthy as it had been the day before.

“Is that for me or for Sheba?” he asked by way of greeting, his gaze fixed on the plate as hungrily as Sheba’s had been. The
hen had given up and stalked off to make the best of the lay crumble.

“For you. But she’s upset about it.”

She handed him the plate at arm’s length and watched him gobble its contents down.

“Thank you,” he said when he was finished. This time he didn’t lick it clean, so he must be feeling better.

“I need to ask you about my duties,” he went on. “If cleaning up after the chickens isn’t a possibility, you might give me
some instructions. I had a marvelous sleep on that very comfortable bed in there. I think I’m able to start today.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Sunday is a day of rest. And tonight we’ll be leaving for the Mission hall at about six thirty. So if
you wanted, you could go into the house and do your laundry. You’d have two hours before we got back.”

His fingers curled a little into the hay on which he sat, but she didn’t know why. Anger, perhaps? But at what?

“Thank you. Thanks very much. I feel like seeds are going to sprout at any moment out of the pockets of this shirt.”

She smiled. Not anger, then. But she couldn’t imagine what else it might be.

“After all our guests leave, I’ll introduce you to my mother. Then you’ll have the run of the place. Do you have any clothes
besides those?”

Carefully he set the empty plate beside him on the bale. “A few things in a rucksack, equally as grubby.” He sipped the coffee
slowly, breathing in the scent of it between each swallow.

“Wash it all tonight.” She paused, then made up her mind. “My father was a bigger man than you, but you might be able to use
something. Once everyone has gone we can look.”

“I wish I could do something besides continually thank you.”

She backed away from his gratitude. “You will. Once you start work, you will.”

Leaving him there, she escaped into the chicken yard, made sure the birds had all they needed for the day, and went around
to the back of the barn. There, she neatly disposed of her first breakfast and covered up the evidence with compost. Then
it was time to prepare second breakfast for the family.

With Aunt Margaret helping, Dinah was able to get the table cleared by nine forty-five, which left her fifteen minutes to
put her hair up properly and put on a good dress. An Elect woman’s hair was supposed to be her glory, but Dinah hadn’t received
much in that department. In response to the flapper haircuts of a hundred years ago, the Shepherds had decreed that a woman’s
hair should be long enough to wash the feet of Jesus, as Mary the sister of Lazarus had done. At the same time, they said,
the hair must be modest and a means of sacrificing vanity, so it had to be put up. Some of the women, like Madeleine Blanchard,
could do an effortless French roll and look as elegant as any worldly woman while still maintaining the standards of modesty
required by Phinehas—and by extension, God. But Dinah’s hair, while thick enough and as healthy as ordinary shampoo could
make it, was uncontrollable. You’d think that with a head full of curls, it would curve prettily around her face and temples.
But no. It went in whatever direction it felt like going in the morning, and sometimes the best she could do was wrap it into
a bun and hope for the best.

Promptly at ten o’clock, the first of the cars began to roll into the yard for Gathering. Phinehas was already in his chair
in the place of honor by the fireplace, head bowed as he prepared to lead the flock in worship. After a hymn, Phinehas indicated
the Gathering was open to sharing. One by one, the men got up to say what God—or their wives—had given them to speak.

Dinah found it hard to concentrate in Gathering on the best of days; today, with Phinehas at the front of the room, it was
impossible. How could she be grateful for the love of God when because of it she could barely get downstairs and into a chair
without biting her lips from the pain?