November Veil - Linda Hall      © Evangel Publishers

Chapter One

Prologue

Summer of 1971

I confess before God and before this congregation of my...my....

The girl’s voice was thin, unsteady. She was standing and her hands gripped the back of the pew in front of her for support. Beside her, the mother was still, unmoving, her hands folded primly in her lap, head bowed. The girl knew that her father was standing straight and grim behind his pulpit, his body stolid and hard. She did not look at him, but looked instead at the wooden cross on the white wall behind him, the brown beams which met in a small arch above it.

His words of that afternoon still echoed in her memory, “You have disgraced me, child, disgraced me utterly! I am an anointed man of God and you have plunged my entire ministry into contempt.” His eyes that afternoon were wild and feral, the eyes of a caged animal. She had trembled in fear in front of them.

—I confess....—she began again, slowly tentatively while a hundred sets of eyes watched her and waited. Her mouth was dry. She swallowed. She knew that the Bible commanded, “confess your sins to one another;” her father had told her that, but this was difficult. She also remembered the many Sunday evenings when she had sat right in this very pew while others stood and recited their misdeeds. Now it was her turn.

A small breeze fluttered in through the hot night from an open window. One of the overhead lamps began to sway, covering the walls with slow moving shadows; dancing, dusky images on the pale wall. She felt nauseous and covered her mouth with her fist.

Say it!—her father’s voice thundered.

The girl, barely 16, looked up at him and as she did, something in her died. She stood tall, nausea passed and stared hard into the face of the man at the front, this man who was her father, his purple and gold robes cascading around him like some garish costume left over from a grade school pageant. She saw him that way, suddenly, stripped of his authority, naked before her and ridiculous looking. The emperor without any trappings.

Her voice was even as she said the words—I wish to confess before God and before this congregation that I have been promiscuous. I am with child—

With child. The words her mother had instructed her to say. Like it was some holy thing or something. A gasp went up from the congregation. Heads turned. Whispers behind cupped hands. Frowns. Smirks.

An hour later and her father, sweat beading on his forehead and dropping onto the pulpit, was still howling down about fornication and adultery and God’s inescapable judgment. Children fidgeted and elderly ladies fanned themselves with folded up bulletins. Some glanced furtively in her direction, but she stared at her father. Pleased with her new strength, she smiled slightly.

Finally, the communion tray was passed, the elders carefully avoiding her. She would not be allowed to take communion until the church board had decided on a suitable punishment for her. But she had already decided. She would never take it again.

Half an hour later the service was over and the girl walked out of the church door without a backward glance. Her father, of course, would be staying behind, meeting with the church board to discuss further discipline. Outside, the girl calmly walked next door to the backyard of the parsonage where she lived, and lay down on the lawn, her hands making a pillow for her head in the soft dark grass. She gazed far out into the starry night; there was a place—there had to be—of safety. Of love. She would find it.

In a few moments she could smell the perfumy soap scent of her mother bending over her.

—Come inside. Father will be back soon—The mother’s voice was strained; her eyes were red.

Father will be back soon. The mother was just as victim, just as powerless against him as she was. Somehow, she had known this all along.

She knew that her father had what they call “charisma,” a presence that drew people. She knew that the pew sitters thrived on his fist-pounding, nostril-flaring, finger-pointing, pious-looks-toward-heaven sermons. She had seen them arrive by the busloads from neighboring Montana towns. She had watched as they filed into the little church, overfilling it, smiling to each other as they talked about miracles and the power of faith. She had overheard women whisper how handsome he is. This had surprised her the most. To her, he was horribly ugly, a caricature really; his face a Halloween mask, blotched and warted.

The girl rose and said—yes, we better not let father catch us out here, or we’ll both be in trouble.—She surprised even herself with this new boldness. Her mother looked at her sharply but said nothing.

That night the girl lay on her bed and cried. Her tears enraged her. She had vowed not to cry, yet her pillow was damp with them and she was powerless to stop. She clutched at her abdomen, already beginning to swell under her thin summer nightgown. Her one triumph was that she was not crying for her father, but she was thinking of Sammy, and of a brief moment of comfort, of love. And then he was gone. Laughing, like a clown in a parade who passes out balloons and candies. You think you are the only one, the truly special one, but when you turn around he is up the street, and other children are receiving his special favors. The parade has moved on.

Four and a half months later on December 12, her baby was born. She named him Sean, but her father called him Ichabod.

The delivery had been hard on her and she had to stay in the hospital for six days. The nurses were kind to her, but when she begged to please, please, please let me hold my baby, they avoided her eyes. —Your father has left strict orders—they said, fiddling with her water pitcher or the curtain clasps surrounding her bed.

But on the fifth night, a nurse with her finger to her lips opened her door quietly and lay baby Sean in her arms. He was wrapped in soft white cloths, a tiny bundle, no larger than a doll. His face was pink, his nose a tiny, pale button. His eyes were shut into little straight slits and his mouth moved slightly. He was the most beautiful little thing she had ever seen.

The nurse whispered to her—they’ll have my head if they see. But you take him. I have five children of my own. This is barbaric, this not letting the mother see the baby. I don’t care if he is going out for adoption. It’s just not right. I’ll be back in twenty minutes—

Despite the girl’s persistence, Sean did not awaken. She held him, cuddled him to her neck, touched his smooth, dimpled cheek, outlined his face with her finger. In a few moments in a cheerless hospital room in the middle of the night she had to stash away enough memories to last a lifetime. In a sudden moment of inspiration she reached beside her for the small hospital menu card, turned it over and scrawled— Baby Sean, I will love you always, from your mother Marylouise—then she unclasped her grandmother’s gold chain and cross, took it from around her neck, folded it inside the note and tucked them within the folds of his blankets.

Fifteen minutes later the nurse was back. The girl’s last memory was a flick of a tiny pink tongue, a reaching, a flexing of a small fist toward her.

A week later and Sean was gone, but don’t worry, her mother told her, he has been adopted into a good Christian family. The girl looked away.

Eight months later, the girl left with her birth certificate and $2,134.47 in cash. She had been clever. She had picked up small unnoticed bits of household change and tucked them in a small brown paper bag behind some old books in the back of her closet. Her father’s desk at church was a gold mine. He had begun a weekly radio show and people were sending him money. Stupid people, she thought. Late on a Sunday night there was often five or six hundred dollars, some stuffed in tiny, white offering envelopes, some in letters addressed to him. A twenty here, a ten there. He wouldn’t miss them. He wouldn’t suspect. She had become the perfectly obedient daughter. Compliant. Quiet. Yes ma’am. Thank you, sir.

One Wednesday night while her parents were next door at a prayer meeting she walked out of the back door, headed to town, boarded the Greyhound and rode through two days and two nights until she reached Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She had never been to Canada, but it was about as far away as she could imagine.

Seven years later she graduated from the University of Calgary with a degree in education and the sure knowledge that her father had lied to her. Her church had lied to her. There was no God. There were no miracles. Religion was a man made crutch for the unenlightened, the weak. She was one of the strong. She was one of the strong.