Obloquy

  *

  Right before Greg and I were married, I had secretly gone to the doctor and had him put me on the pill. Something that Dad and Greg both would have frowned on. Still, I guess some of what my mother had tried so hard to instill in me had sunk in. I wanted to wait a while before I let myself get pregnant. Of that, I was glad. For six months later I was coming to realize that I wasn’t sure I could handle running errands for Greg, my father, and being in charge of the ladies prayer meeting now on Tuesday afternoons at our home and raising a child too.

  Being in charge of the ladies’ group really wasn’t something I desired to do – not even a little bit – but Greg and Dad insisted that it was my duty ( I was really beginning to hate that word at this point) as a pastor’s wife to do all I could in supporting the church activities, especially for the women. After all, Mom wasn’t there. Therefore, I had to fill her church duties, as well. Another thorn in my side.

  I kept telling myself that things would get better, but they never seemed to. One Monday morning Dad received some papers from some lawyer out in Los Angeles – we lived in a suburb of San Antonio – which Mom wanted him to sign. She had filed for divorce.

  At first, Dad went about as ballistic as I have ever seen him, snatching up his personal Bible from his desk in his church office and throwing it against the wall, knocking down a framed watercolor of Jesus. Our church didn’t look too kindly to divorce. Dad had always preached against it. However, the way he excused his way out of it to the congregation was from the Bible, of course. According to scripture, a man could divorce his wife if she had committed adultery. Therefore, that is what he told the parish the following Sunday morning – That Mom had left him for another man. That she had lost her way and chosen to follow the life of sin. Therefore, God would overlook the divorce. Then he asked the congregation to pray for her sins.

  I was sick to my stomach.

  To my knowledge, Dad knew no such thing. When he wasn’t looking, I chanced to read the papers. They had to do more with property and financial issues than anything. Mom merely stated that Dad had not fulfilled his obligations to her in the marriage and she wanted out. He was neglectful of her needs, and that was putting it mildly, from what I had put together now. Unless he had some other information, he was just assuming he was right and covering his image for the congregation.

  On one level, knowing the way my father thought, I could understand his sense of betrayal. However, he refused to see that he had any part in my mother leaving us. His whole life was totally and completely tied up in the church – not his family. In his way of thinking, we should have been grateful that he took care of us at all. That he supported us. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t there for us as individuals.

  More and more I could see why Mom left.

  Needless to say, I was beginning to really wish I had listened to her and waited to get married. It was too late, as far as my mother was concerned. However, I now knew that she was in the Los Angeles area. But that covered a lot of territory, about nine million people. And though I did entertain the idea of trying to find her, I knew better than to bring it up to either my husband or my father. I did my best to put the idea out of my head, and tried to do what they expected of me.

  But I was growing damn tired of it.

  Then Nancy Peloski came to our church with one of our regulars, a matronly widow by the name of Ruth Jamison, her aunt. Nancy wasn’t real attractive, kind of plain, and skinny with mousy brown hair and brown eyes.

  I, of course, invited Nancy to the ladies’ prayer meeting at our house. She hesitated at first, but her aunt insisted that she might enjoy it. So she finally agreed.

  Little did I know just how drastically my life was about to change.