Maybe it’s just sickening, how perfect my life is.
I paused. The pressure in my chest lightened a bit. My Online Natalie sensors flickered green, and I pushed dizzyingly forward.
Sometimes it actually makes me nauseous, howsatisfying—no, howperfectmy life is, and how good I am at living it.
That would do.
The problem was that Caleb couldn’t be trusted with money. Really, he couldn’t. He spent it on all manner of stupid things for the farm. Which is why I called Instagram support that night, waiting forty-five minutes on hold to speak with a human to ask them if they could split the incoming payments before they even hit my checking account.
Yes,I told them in a whisper. That’s right: I wanted to split the payments between the checking account and another one I’d just opened.
For Caleb, of course. I was doing it for him.
39
Remember how I saidI wouldn’t get pregnant? Remember how I begged the Lord,anything but that?
Yeah. Me too.
What’s that insipid little idiom that insipid little women love to say to one another when their lives take a turn for the unexpected?
If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans!
Ha! Hahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
Except I’m not laughing. I’m not smiling. I’m having a hard time even finding a way to formulate a prayer to the Lord that makes any coherent sense.
I try to stay calm. I walk around each day like a good little homesteader and I do my good little homesteader chores and bake my inedible little homesteader bread, and I swallow the rising panic that threatens to choke me out with each waking breath.
Do you hear me Lord? Do you see me
standing here, terrified? Not laughing?
Hello, Lord? Could you explain what
I’m supposed to learn, right now?
Hey, Lord! Just wanted to bother you for a quick sec.
See, I’m having some trouble with my assignment? And I was
wondering if you could give me something else to do instead?
The Lord does not reply.
There are no good days anymore, it seems. Only bad ones. When I tilt my face to catch the sunlight, I don’t feel His breath on my face. I don’t feel anything at all. I’m starting to feel like a woman who has been knocked up by a man who will no longer answer her calls.
It’s a test, I remind myself. For days, my mind has been nervously circling a single question:What happens if I fail the test?Except now, when I ask the question, I hear an echo of another one:What happens if I pass?
40
On a warm day in June,I met Producer Shannon at a coffee shop in town. Our interview was scheduled for the early afternoon. She was already there when I arrived, sitting at a corner table with two coffees. Her hair was colored a bright candy pink, pulled back into two messy pigtail braids. Her nose ring was a stud in the shape of a peace sign.
“I kept it black,” she said, pushing my coffee across the table. “I know you only use cream if it’s from your own cows.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Thank you.”
It was true, I didn’t use factory-farm dairy, but I’d mentioned this preference only once on my Instagram account, and it was over a year ago.
