Evangelical Therapy, Part 8 - Rated "R" for Homewrecker
A serialized memoir about my former life as an Evangelical
We arranged my second visit in class, Jeremy’s phone number passed over on a scrap of paper.
I can’t remember what excuse I gave Drew to explain why I wasn’t going with him and the girls to church that Wednesday evening (some of these painful details have escaped me), but once he and the girls had driven away, I got ready and left, too.
I’d thought about it for days. I didn’t know what would happen if I went back to Jeremy’s place, but something had changed since my initial visit. I knew it was wrong, but I felt compelled to go, and I did.
The walls of his bedroom were plain—a dresser shoved in front of a window. All I remember clearly is the twin-sized bed.
“Hi,” I said, in the tone of voice you’d use for someone special.
He said hi back, pushed my hair behind my ears and started kissing me.
I didn’t have a good form of birth control and couldn’t have imagined asking him to use a condom. I’d never seen a condom except in a package in a store. Part of the silence that surrounded sex, body parts, and feminine hygiene in my community was created by lack of education. Young evangelical women were generally left to figure out birth control themselves, and after marriage, we all knew it was the woman’s responsibility to do so.
I’d been given a diaphragm by a doctor before my wedding, but didn’t know how to insert it correctly and was too embarrassed to ask (and therefore got pregnant within a few months of marriage). My second daughter was conceived while I was using the rhythm method, and the third, while I was on the mini-pill, which I had recently stopped taking because, like the regular pill, it gave me migraine headaches.
And anyway, I’d told myself beforehand that birth control didn’t matter because I wouldn’t let it go that far. I wasn’t going to his place to do that. Every part of me was thin, post-baby, post-nursing, and I felt embarrassed about my stretch marks, couldn’t imagine letting him see them.
But soon all our clothes were off, and Jeremy didn’t seem to care. Plus, he had the birth control issue figured out. For the grand finale, he bent me over to finish himself between my butt cheeks, and although I’d been into it until that point (as much as I could be with this wiry-armed stranger) I suddenly felt as if I’d missed an essential memo.
No words had been spoken, and I couldn’t tell what he was doing back there. Laughably, I thought maybe he had really bad aim, and I kept trying to maneuver my body into a better position to help him out. But he seemed determined to continue what he was doing, so finally I gave up, like when they roll you into surgery, and there’s nothing to do but surrender to whatever’s next.
Afterwards, we lay crammed together on his narrow bed, and I tried not to feel upset. It’s fine, I told myself, even though I was aware of my growing discomfort, my inkling that during that last part it wouldn’t have mattered who had offered herself up to him, as long as she was a woman with the requisite body parts.
I wanted him to see me, to be the specific woman he wanted. l didn’t know why he hadn’t wanted to “go all the way,” and I felt vaguely rejected, unsure of what l was doing there.
I should have been glad, considering my lack of protection! And maybe he just wanted to be careful for my sake and his own. But I had committed an enormous transgression, and I wanted this all to mean something, so I curled myself around him, trying to engender some intimacy through conversation.
He was twenty-seven, as I had guessed. He told me he’d worked in construction for almost ten years after high school but had decided it was time to go to college so he could get a “real” job. He seemed alone in the world, although I think later I heard his parents lived in Boise. But something about him seemed solitary, the lack of furniture, no pictures of friends or family tacked up on the walls. Or maybe he was just a guy who didn’t know how to decorate a room.
“Did you say you used to go to Valley Shepherd? In Meridian?” I asked, naming the Nazarene church in a nearby town.
“Yeah,” he said. An awkward silence ensued, and after a few more minutes, I got dressed and drove home.
I made it back to my house before my husband and daughters, where, for some reason, I didn’t feel guilty, at least not about Drew. It’s remarkable how much we hide from ourselves, manage to tuck away in the recesses of our minds, and l went through the next few days in a state of tension and self-deception.
Jeremy hadn’t said anything about wanting to see me again, and that (combined with the “butt cheek sex” and what l believed that implied about his feelings) had created a need for me—I wasn’t sure l wanted to get together again with him, but I also didn’t want to feel rejected.
On Sunday morning, I got my little girls ready, and we went to church, where we’d gotten in the habit of sitting in one of the front pews near my parents.
Unbelievably, the sermon that day was about sexual fidelity.
Pastor Kent was positioned almost directly in front of me. He started by reading his text for the morning, I Corinthians 6:18, a verse about “fleeing sexual immorality” and after his prayer asking God to “be with us in our cars, on our dates, and in our bedrooms,” I could barely stand to listen.
An image had come into my mind, an illustration I’d heard years before in children’s church, in which the teacher had held up a clear glass of water. “This is what sin does,” she’d said, as she dripped blue and orange food coloring in and swirled it around to make brown. “It makes you like a dirty glass of water.”
I also found myself remembering a girl from my private Christian high school who had run away with her boyfriend—they got as far as the bus station before they were found the next morning and brought home. She was missing from school the following day, and we thought she might never return. After all, she and her boyfriend had spent the night together.
She did come back a few days later but was made to stand in front of the whole school during an assembly and apologize for her wrong doings. That was the condition for her return to school, to community, was that we would all stare at her (like Hester Prynne) and think about what she’d done wrong—a punishment for her and a warning for the rest of us about what would happen if we even gave the appearance of sinning in this particular, most terrible fashion. I think her boyfriend had to go up front, too, but I barely remember him. The girl seemed like the one who had sinned.
By the end of Pastor Kent’s sermon, tears were streaming down my cheeks, although everyone around me was pretending not to notice. Drew in particular seemed determined not to look at me, and I kept my eyes on the back of the pew in front of us. The organist started playing, “Just As I Am,” and the pastor gave an altar call, inviting those who felt convicted to come forward to pray and seek forgiveness, but as the service ended, I tried to smile as if I’d just been moved by the music. As soon as I could, I gathered up my belongings and my daughters and hurried up the aisle.
Outside, Drew was silent as we piled into our minivan. He started the engine but didn’t buckle his seat belt. “So what’s going on?”
I could only think of one thing to say. “I have to go somewhere. Will you take me, please? I have to talk to someone.” I wiped my eyes with a crumpled Kleenex I’d found in my purse.
“Now?”
“It’s not far. I’ll tell you where to go.”
Over the years, I’d slowly learned to ask Drew for little or nothing, so I was surprised when he acquiesced, and I’m still not sure why he did—maybe the seriousness of my tone and expression.
“I promise I’ll explain,” I said, and we drove down the road, and in a few blocks, pulled up to the curb on Juniper Street.
Drew and the girls waited in our minivan, and I could feel their eyes on me, watching, as I made my way up the sidewalk to Jeremy’s front door.
I knocked, but nothing happened. I knocked again. Still nothing. I tried the knob, and it was unlocked as houses in Nampa often were.
Normally, I would have never done such a thing, but once again, I felt propelled forward, so I let myself in and went to his bedroom. The curtains were closed and in the semi-darkness, I could only see enough to tell he was lying under the covers.
“Jeremy,” I said.
He turned his head, then sat bolt upright. “What?” he said, sounding terrified. I’d woken him from a dead sleep.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What are you doing here?” He turned on a small light by his bed and grabbed his glasses.
“I wanted to talk.”
He took in my floral church dress and tear-streaked face and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “They got to you, didn’t they,” he said.
If this was his way of saying I was being controlled by the dictates of a shame and fear-based religion, he was right, but in that moment, I couldn’t absorb that. All I could do was nod as I swiped at my wet cheeks. “I’m so sorry for my part in this, and—I won’t be coming back.”
I had sinned (like the girl in my high school) and having compassion for myself and the reasons I had done so did not seem a possible response. I might have been trying to find a way out of the prison of my illness and misery via a complicated path, but l only felt guilt.
He still sat in his bed, naked from the waist up, looking even more solitary and alone.
“My husband is outside. I have to go.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” He lifted a hand. “See ya.”
“Jeremy,” I started, but my words trailed off, and he lay back down and turned on his side.
For a second I wondered if he’d cared about me more than I’d thought, but maybe he was just mad he’d gotten dumped. Or maybe he, too, felt guilty. Maybe he could stand outside evangelicalism and observe it more clearly than I could, but underneath, I think he was thoroughly Nazarene.
“Bye,” I said, and walked over the creaky wood floor and let myself out.
In the car, I still couldn’t look at Drew. “I’ll tell you when we get home.”
++
Drew was quiet for the entire ride to our house, and his silence felt harder to tolerate than if he’d yelled or shouted. Drew was rarely loud and aggressive—instead, he was quietly mean, dismissive of my feelings, and withholding of his affection.
Even when the l was sick, he would ignore me and refuse to help. Severe bleeding in the middle of the night after a wisdom tooth removal, pneumonia, corneal abrasions after giving birth—I was left to cope on my own, and take care of the children, too.
Is there another way to look at this? Even now, I feel like I’m complaining. But what is the point of having a spouse, if he doesn’t care about your well-being?
He left town the weekend of my oldest daughter’s fifth birthday to spend time with his brothers in their condo in Seattle. My youngest, a nine-month-old, was dehydrated and sick, on the verge of needing to be hospitalized, and when I phoned Drew at the condo to tell him I was worried, he got mad at me for calling and interrupting his fun weekend.
I’d had no anesthesia for my first daughter’s birth—my labor lasted thirty-six hours and toward the end, my cervix tore in an excruciating gush of blood and pain. When it was finally time to push, I was exhausted and depleted, and at first, I couldn’t do it. I pressed my lips together and tried, but when all I could do was make a sputtering sound, Drew laughed.
The Umbrella of Protection (the model taught for marriage at the high school I attended) under which women give up their agency and decision-making power in order to be kept safe via their husband’s care, didn’t seem to be working for me.
And isn’t this what all authoritarian regimes promise? Do what I say. I’ll be the strong leader you can look up to and believe in. You don’t have to make decisions on your own—trust me and I’ll tell you what to do. As long as you obey me, you’ll be safe.
++
He went straight upstairs without taking off his jacket.
In the kitchen, I doled out fruit snacks and cookies and got my youngest a honey bear of milk. “Dinner will be ready in a minute,” I said. “I have to change clothes.”
“She has to talk to Daddy,” I heard one of my daughters say, as I went up the stairs.
In the bathroom, I got my wedding ring out of the drawer and sat down on the bed. “It wasn’t a big deal,” I said, trying to believe that was true. “But I’m sorry. There was a guy—at that house. I studied with him after class one day—and—” I struggled to think how to continue. “He held my hand. I know it was wrong, and I won’t do it again.”
I slid my ring onto my finger. “And I’m not going to talk to him anymore. I don’t even want to.”
“What do you mean?” Drew, sitting beside me, gripped my hand hard. “Did something else happen?”
Someone told me recently that telling a lie is a trauma response, a way to hide and protect the truth of the self you are too afraid to show.
“No. It was just that one time.”
He looked unconvinced, and I felt like I had to tell him something. My throat closed up and then another confession began to roll out, maybe the one that felt safer to tell.
“There’s one other thing. It’s not about that.”
“What?”
He sounded mad, and I closed my eyes. “I got a credit card a while ago, and I’m having a hard time making the payments.” The secret of my JCPenney credit card had weighed on me for months, and in that moment, I wanted to feel the relief of sagging back into the familiar relationship I’d almost broken, and to know I hadn’t ruined our daughters’ lives.
“How much do you owe?”
“Five hundred and forty-five dollars.”
“What? Why did you do that?” He went over to our dresser and stared at it like there was some answer to be found there. “Where is it? Where’s the credit card?”
“Drew.” My heart was pounding, and I could feel each breath in my throat. “It was just for the girls’ clothes.”
“Mommy!” My middle daughter Ivy knocked on the bedroom door. “Alli’s crying. She wants you.”
“Mommy’s busy,” Drew said, sharply.
“No, I’m not.” I opened the door. “I’ll be right down. I promise,” I said, looking into Ivy’s worried eyes. “Just one more minute.” The other two girls were huddled at the top of the stairs, my littlest one sniffling.
But Drew had begun digging through the drawers of my roll top desk, sorting through my calligraphy pens and piles of old birthday cards.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for receipts. Bills. I want something in writing. I want to see all this for myself.”
“I have them. I’ll get them. They’re downstairs in the cupboard.”
His jaw shifted. “I want the credit card now.”
I fumbled through my purse till I found it and handed it over.
“You signed my name on this? Have you missed any payments?”
My throat tightened, and my eyes flooded again. “I’m going down to get the girls’ dinner.”
“Seriously, what is going on?” Drew shoved his hands in his pockets. “Is this because of your sister? She does whatever she wants, so you can, too?”
“Look. I’m wearing my ring. I’m not going to take it off again. And I feel terrible about this,” I repeated, but he’d sagged down on the bed.
“How do you think I feel? I have to think about you having an affair with my brother, and now this new guy, too?”
“I didn’t—that wasn’t—” I tried to think how to defend myself, but as the memory of my obsessive thoughts about Tom rolled through my mind, every response I thought of just made me sound guiltier.
“You’re ruining this.” He waved his hand in a way that seemed to include the whole house, and a picture came into my mind, perhaps a vision of the future, windows cracking, beams crashing to the ground, the roof caving in, the blue chairs I had picked out for the living room torn and broken, left on the curb like trash.
“I’ve been a good husband to you.” Drew got up and went into the bathroom and shut the door.
And in that moment, I was convinced he was right.
The tension mounts. Every episode you've written I find I can't stop reading once I start; and then you leave me at the end wanting to know more. What Kristen Kobes du Mez writes about in JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE as a social scientist, you describe from living inside fundamentalism.
There is such a disarming directness and authenticity about your writing that takes me straight into your experience without any buffers or distractions. Your profound naïveté and lack of support and understanding from anyone in your milieu breaks my heart. What an excruciating human experience!