“Your eye, Mama,” Maeve says. She’s by the bed now. She hesitates, then steps closer, bringing a hand to my swollen face. I flinch and close my eyes, preparing for the shudder of pain. When nothing happens, I open my eyes. Her finger is hovering above my skin. She knows what a bruise is. She doesn’t want to hurt me. “Hungry, Mama?”
My stomach rumbles in response. “Yes,” I admit. “Very.”
“Come to the kitchen. Come have a biscuit.”
I hesitate. “Where is …”Your father? Your boss?“… that man?”
“Out working,” she says. “With Abel and Noah.”
Abel, Noah. Names as biblical as they come. How old is this girl? She looks like a six- or seven-year-old, but she speaks like she’s three or four. For a shameful moment, I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her little body until the truth comes sputtering out of her like vomit.
When was I taken from my home?
How long has it been?
What happened to me?
Are my children and husband looking for me, right now?
Are the toddlers having meltdowns?
Is the baby screaming for me?
The baby. My hand flies to my stomach.
My little sea creature.
The baby’s gone. I’m not six months pregnant anymore.
My mouth gapes open in a silent scream.
Throughout my life, on so many different occasions, I’ve wondered with genuine curiosity how people were able to move through the world without faith. In college, I watched the girls in my hall so proudly emancipate themselves from every institution that shaped them: their families, their country, their Creator. They were insistent on snipping every last one of their tethers to the mortal universe. It was unfathomable to me: the idea of floating forward through the world, held up by absolutely nothing. What kept you from plummeting?
As Maeve guides me down the hallway and back toward the kitchen, her little hand tightly gripping mine, I remind myself I’m not alone, no matter how much it feels like it.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
I remind myself, with more than a little bit of unease, that nothing is accidental. Nothing in this world happens that is not a partof His plan. (Visions of martyrs dance in my mind: women burning alive, children losing their heads, so some man’s faith might be restored. My hand drifts back to my stomach, and another wave of lightheadedness passes through me.I’m not some sacrifice, am I, Lord?)
The kitchen is quieter now. The two boys and the man are, as Maeve promised, nowhere to be seen. The older girl is bent over the kitchen table, her back to us. As we walk closer, I see her stirring something that looks like cake batter. She picks up the bowl and pours it carefully across a wooden grid, filling a dozen or so rectangle molds.
Soap. The girl is making soap.
I’ve done that before. It was one of the first tutorials I ever shared online, only a week or so after the (blessed!) day my account went viral. That video was sloppy and boring; I recorded it in one long take, wrote a painfully trite caption—cleanliness is close toGodliness!—and uploaded it, then watched with abject horror as all of my new followers shredded it to pieces.
Why is this chick even famous
This video is so out of focus lol
Did someone accidentally lobotomize Martha Stewart???
In the year following that moment, I made a dozen more soap-related videos, each one cleaner—ha!—and more well executed than the one before. Before long, the praise outweighed the anger, and the anger itself shifted in tone, from criticisms of the execution—à la,why is she evenfamous—to criticisms of the concepts inherent in the video—à la,who has time to make soap?
When that happened, I knew I had won.
Now Maeve drops my hand and runs over to the table, where she climbs into the chair next to her sister. “Mama wants a biscuit,” she says.
“Mama can wait until dinner,” the older girl replies.
