Watch How We Walk (18 page)

26

NO ONE SPEAKS DURING THE
drive to the Hall. Emily shivers and twists in her seat as the rough wool scratches her legs. When they arrive, there are only a few other cars in the parking lot and they trudge through the gravely snow and inside. Everyone but Emily takes off their wet boots and changes into dry Hall shoes. Emily stomps the snow off as best she can and waits for the rest of them to finish. Her mom looks at her feet and before she can say anything, Emily tells her she forgot her shoes.

— It's no wonder, your father rushing us around for no reason at all. The meeting won't even start for another forty minutes.

The curtains are drawn across the window of the back room and they can't see who is in there. Emily's dad is nowhere to be seen. Is there a special meeting with her dad and the elders? She wonders if he is in trouble, and her stomach drops at the thought. No, she can't imagine her father doing something wrong.

Emily nearly forgets about her aching hand, but then the itching starts again under the edge of the cast. She decides not to ignore it this time, she doesn't care about self-control right now, and takes a pen from her purse. She shoves the end under the edge of the cast and scratches until it feels better. Lenora sits next to her, doodling in the margins of her
Awake!
magazine. Emily strains to see what she's writing but Lenora catches her and scribbles it out before she can read anything. The meeting in the back room goes on for almost twenty more minutes, as the main room fills up with brothers and sisters and kids and bags bursting with Bibles and
Watchtower
s.

Just then she spots Uncle Tyler in the doorway of the cloakroom. He sees her too, smiles and crooks his finger, motioning her over. She hops from her seat and into the aisle, just as her father walks up to their row.

— Where are you going?

— I'm going to see Uncle Tyler!

She scurries past him before he can tell her not to. He doesn't try to pull her back; Emily knows her father doesn't boss her around nearly as much when there are other brothers and sisters around.

In the cloakroom, her uncle hands her a plastic bag. She notices that he has tucked his curls under his shirt collar; he still hasn't gotten it cut.

— Here you go, kiddo. I heard about your busted hand. This should keep you occupied for a while.

He stands back while Emily opens the bag. Inside, there are six brand-new Trixie Belden books. Six! They're all ones she's never read, and not musty used copies either. Real ones, which must have come from the bookstore at the mall in the city. Emily is shocked; she's only ever gotten them one at a time from her mother — her father doesn't like her to read too many worldly books — and the rest from the school library, but they only have a few. Her eyes feel like they're pulsing out beams of sunlight and she can't stop smiling.

— Thank you! Wow, I've never had this many new ones at once before!

She smiles so wide it makes her face hurt. He holds up a hand to high-five her, which she does with her good hand.

— Congratulations on your first cast.

There is a rattle and screech as someone turns on the stage microphone.

— I'll sign it after the meeting, okay? Sounds like they're starting.

— Okay.

Emily rushes up the aisle in her big heavy boots with her bag of books. Her parents look at her when she sits down but they can't ask her any questions because Brother Wilde is at the podium beginning the prayer.

Emily tries to listen but she can't; she's too excited. During the meeting, she nudges the bag open a little with her foot, but it rustles too much and her father shushes her before she can make out all of the titles. She sits and squirms and fidgets and is elbowed by her father. She devises a plan. There is a small flashlight on a ledge in the porch, and she will snatch it on their way back inside when they get home. Then she can read in bed after the late meeting for as long as she wants, tucked under the blankets with her new books. She knows that no matter what strange or scary mess Trixie stumbles into, she will figure it out and fix it and make everything right again by the end.

Halfway through the meeting and after the second song, there is a break. The elder tells everyone to take up their purple copies of
Singing and Accompanying Yourselves with Music in Your Hearts
and turn to page twenty-nine. Emily grins. “Watch How We Walk” is her favourite, the most upbeat song, with a jaunty, bouncing piano score. Unlike the other slow, mournful songs, this one is actually fun to sing. Emily hops to her feet, then tunelessly — but for once with enthusiasm and volume — joins in.

Let's watch how we walk, and watch how we talk

That thus we may be alert and wise . . .

As soon as the song is over, Emily smuggles her bag of books into the bathroom stall to look at them. As she waits for a free stall, Sister Bulchinsky waddles in and smiles.

— Hello, Emily. How are you tonight? How's your poor hand?

— Fine, thank you. Better. How are you? Emily knows to be polite; if she is not, her mother will find out.

— Oh, fine, fine. I see your whole family is together at the meeting tonight.

Sister Bulchinsky keeps talking from inside the stall.

— I take it Brother Tyler is over that cold he had last week?

Emily didn't know he had a cold. So much for
alert and wise
.

— I don't know. I guess so.

Sister Bulchinsky rattles open the door and smoothes her red floral dress, and Emily darts into the stall. She no longer tries to be quiet as she rustles open the plastic bag of mystery novels.

There are two she hasn't even heard of:
The Mystery of the Phantom Grasshopper
and
The Mystery of the Midnight Marauder
. She sits down and starts reading immediately, while other sisters and kids enter and leave the bathroom. The toilet in the stall next to her flushes several times before someone knocks on her door and jars Emily from her book. She clears her throat.

— Just a minute, please!

— You all right in there or what?

It's Lenora.

— Almost done. Emily flushes the toilet to muffle the sound of her putting the books back into the plastic bag, then she tries to shove the entire bundle into her purse. They bulge out, and she holds her bag behind her. She unlocks the door and comes out to where Lenora waits, smirking, her hand on her right hip.

— What were you doing in there? Lines of coke?

Emily gasps and swivels her head to make sure they're alone, that no one else heard her say something like that. Talking about drugs is only a few steps away from doing them, and that's why the elders say it's best to avoid talking to worldly teenagers as much as possible.

Lenora just laughs and fixes her hair in the mirror, tugging it down over the shaved patches. It looks almost normal, except for the platinum colour.

— Hurry up, they're about to start again. Something's up too: all the elders were having another secret meeting in the back room during the break. Somebody's in trouble.

Lenora sounds gleeful. Emily straightens her skirt and they hurry up the aisle as Brother Davies starts the second half of the meeting.

Back at their seats, their father is rigid in his chair and their mother slumps on her right arm, leaning and dozing against the armrest. She jolts awake with an elbow from Lenora, who then giggles and whispers, “That'll teach her for getting mad at us when we fall asleep!” Lenora bites her lip and stares fixedly ahead. Emily tries not to laugh. It's time for the
Watchtower
article talk, which on Thursday nights often goes beyond the meeting's end at 9:30. Emily has forgotten what it's supposed to be about this time.

She pretends to take notes during the talk but actually plays one of her counting games, making a small chart in her notebook: how many blue shirts or dresses, how many white, how many plaid, how many yellow. It passes the time and no one can tell because she is mostly still and staring straight ahead. She tries to play without turning her head at all, which is difficult. Her parents, she assumes, will think her industrious, which is one of her new favourite words.

Emily is distracted from her game as Brother Davies pauses and shuffles his feet and coughs onstage. There are some mumbles from within the rows of the congregation. He isn't supposed to be up next. He grasps both sides of the podium as though holding himself up, and sighs like a deflating balloon. Dark circles ring his eyes and he clears his throat several times, then straightens some papers on the podium. He looks forward and across the congregation, over their heads, and stares at something on the back wall. The curious nudging and neck-craning subsides and the congregation stills as though a breeze has ruffled them, then disappeared. No one whispers or fidgets or moves at all. Even the babies and toddlers are quiet.

— Brothers and sisters . . . His voice is uncharacteristically low and even, as if he is about to soothe someone distraught.

Emily has experienced several kinds of silences. Some are relaxing, like when Lenora has gone out, and Emily is in the bathtub, still as can be, ears underwater. Then there are these silences at the Hall, when an elder asks a question and no one puts their hand up, or when he mentions wrongdoing. Then everyone wonders if it is them, or who is the unrepentant one, and twists their necks to see who is red-faced and squirming; the guiltiest will look the most uncomfortable. This silence is more frightening. Emily thinks that if she so much as moves, it will be her that Brother Davies is talking about. And she knows that everyone else feels the same way.

— It is with great pain and sorrow that I am delivering this talk tonight. It is always a sad time when a fellow brother or sister strays from God's ways and follows Satan. It is a darkness and a blight upon the entire congregation when someone must be removed from our midst. But it's essential in order to keep our congregation clean and beyond reproach.

The murmurs surge again, and Emily feels like she's being pulled below waves by an undertow. The air shifts and swirls and makes her dizzy as everyone tries to figure out who is about to be disfellowshipped, and for what. The air in the Hall feels charged, stretched, as if there are thousands of tiny rubber bands above them, poised to snap. Emily is still afraid to move. If she shifts the wrong way in her seat, even a little bit, everyone will think she is the guilty one — they will find out about her worldly books, and she will be removed. Hardly moving her head, she braves a sidelong glance at Lenora. Her face is blank, unreadable, and she doesn't fidget or write notes or anything. She grips her armrests so tightly that her knuckles strain white against her skin.

— There is always a scriptural reason behind the decision to disfellowship a brother or sister, and this case is no different.

Brother Davies lectures on cleanliness, on being vigilant against temptation and bad association, on abstaining from worldly influences, particularly, he drones, “from those of the flesh.” The murmurs stop at the word “flesh.” Many brothers and sisters now openly turn around and survey the room, stretching out of their seats for a better view of their fellow Witnesses, as though it is a race to identify the unclean one. The meeting is already twenty minutes past its usual length.

Brother Davies goes on to discuss the sanctity of marriage, how Jehovah God created marriage for child-rearing, and that only within that covenant between one man and one woman should sexual activity take place.

Someone must have committed adultery. That was the only other time Emily had ever heard a sermon like this, when Brother Carson was publicly reproved for cheating. Soon after, he divorced his wife, and never came back to the Hall. Sister Carson now takes care of their five chubby kids by herself, and the other sisters make sure that there is someone to help her with them all when she goes out door to door. Emily wonders if she brings all five with her to every house, squirming and squealing and wriggling like piglets.

— The scriptural basis for this disfellowshipping is found in First Corinthians, where the Holy Bible discusses
unnatural acts
.

He cites the chapter and verse, then reads aloud.

— ‘Do you not know that unrighteous persons will not inherit God's kingdom? Do not be misled. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men, nor thieves, nor greedy persons, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit God's kingdom.'

— That's right, brothers and sisters. ‘Nor men who lie with men.' This most unnatural sin is very serious. Those tempted by homosexual thoughts must fight against them, as hard against Satan as they can.

A murmur ripples through the congregation and seems to stop at Emily's family.

— So for unnatural acts, and conduct unbecoming a Christian, I hereby disfellowship Tyler Golden.