Well, I’m not sure exactly what the end goal is, but that’s fine. He’ll tell me when He’s ready.
In the darkness of the kitchen, I pray feverishly, whispering my gratitude, then I bless myself and drop into a crouch. I hike my nightgown up and scrape as much of Old Caleb out of me as I can.
I make two promises to myself. First: I won’t forget the Lord’s message again. And second: I won’t allow myself to get pregnant here.
I’ll do anything, Lord. Please. Anything but that.
As I finger myself, my mother’s voice echoes in my head, a gentle loving song:A man may work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done, never done, never done.
30
The morningthat my sister and mother were set to leave, my mother asked me to take a walk with her in the fields. We left Abigail where she was, lying on the couch, watching cartoons sullenly with the children, and were barely halfway across the driveway when my mother said, “How are you doing, Natalie?”
I tried to match her display of warmth. “I’m fine. How are you?”
She sighed and stopped walking, and I reluctantly stopped too. We were standing by the barn, facing the mountains, while she fiddled nervously with the cross on her necklace. “Lord, bless mothers with daughters,” she muttered.
“You clearly have something to say,” I said brightly. “So spit it out. Please.”
“Well. I’m worried about you.”
“You’re worried about me.You’reworried aboutme? When Abigail’s over there threatening to get”—I lowered my voice to a forceful whisper, even though we were alone—“divorced?”
She gave a helpless shrug. “It’s my fault. The way I raised you both all alone, no father figure in the house—I thought it would all work out, but maybe it wasn’t … right.”
As my mother launched into her monologue, I felt a combination of humiliation and fury lift me out of my body. My spirit rose until it was hovering by the roof of the barn.
… Worried about the children …
… not sure why you’re renovating a house that’s already …
… farming is not something to be taken so …
… a very nice man, but I’m worried that he might be …
It was a deeply painful monologue to receive, and I’m sure for my mother to deliver. I was suddenly shocked, nearly bowled over, by how utterly pathetic the situation was. The situation meaning my life. My children, my husband, my home. Yesteryear Ranch. Our stupid fucking farm.
Why had I thought this would work?
She was right, of course. I’d known it all along, in the quietest part of me: we were failing at make-believe. My husband was not a natural John Wayne. I was not an effortless housewife. We could fool our loved ones from afar, but up close, you could smell it. Something rotten in the air.
While my mother went on, I cast my gaze out across the fields. In the far distance, Caleb was tending to his zucchini plants. Worthless vegetables. We might as well have been growing pennies. At that moment, he stood up and waved cheerfully. My mother paused her speech—something about Clementine and her ill-fitting dress, so sad, could I really not take the time to find the poor thing something in her size?—and the two of us, trained in politeness as we were, both waved cheerfully back.
A new thought came to me, the most alarming of all: it wouldn’t be easy to get my husband to give this up. He loved the farm. He didn’t notice the smell, or if he did, he wasn’t bothered by it. He was never going to leave, which meant—
Doug was never going to make him leave. Of course he wasn’t.
For months, I’d been eyeing our three-year anniversary nervously, wondering what would happen when we got there, if Doug would cut us off financially. Now I realized that had been a meaningless fear. He didn’t care if the farm became profitable, not actually. He’d already gotten what he wanted: a corner of the world to sweep his son into. A little padded jail cell. It was merely a bonus that the jail cell in question sounded quite nice in a speech. No,Doug would never stop giving us money. He would simply give us less, and less, and less. Which meant that I was stuck here. Trapped. Alone in the middle of nowhere with—God helpme—my husband and children, in perpetuity, slowly creeping toward poverty.
A crest of panic swelled in me. I gazed tearfully at the sky.There were no other choices, Lord. You brought me here. You dropped every breadcrumb. You wouldn’t leave me alone now, would you?
“You’re doing so much, Natalie,” my mother said. “I just think you might have bitten off a little more than you can chew. Your friends are worried about you, you know.”
“Friends?” My mother and I both knew I didn’t have friends.
“Vanessa. From track? She saw Caleb selling your vegetables at the farmers market, and she was kind enough to point out that you really can’t do that, sweetie, if the vegetables aren’t organic.”
“But theyareorganic.”
