Leaving Fishers

  “Here, taste this. Should I add more salt?”

  Dorry panicked. The spoon might as well be steaming with the fires of hell. She pretended to be busy with the water pitcher. “Ask Heidi. I can never tell.”

  “Heidi—oh, what am I thinking. Heidi hates gravy. Denise?” Dorry’s mom called.

  Dorry’s hands shook pouring water. She was weak with hunger. Of course, she’d only missed one meal, but with the smells of all the Thanksgiving food reaching for her, it seemed like much more.

  Soon Aunt Emma arrived and slid her candied yams onto the table. The kitchen got more crowded. Boisterous kids hid under the table and tugged on the tablecloth, threatening disaster, until someone shooed them away. Dorry felt faint.

  Dorry’s mom went and whispered to Dorry’s dad, sitting in his recliner in the living room. He stood and whistled so loudly the neighbor’s dog began barking. It silenced every Stevens. “Grandma says it’s all ready Let’s eat!”

  There was the usual scramble for chairs. Dorry sat near the kitchen so she could run errands for her mom. Her uncle Ed ended up on one side of her and her sister Denise on the other.

  “Some boy give you that ring?” Uncle Ed said. “You going to leave us and marry some city slicker?”

  “Dorry’s got a boyfriend?” one of her nephews snickered. Even Heidi turned to look.

  “No, no,” Dorry said, embarrassed. “It was . . . from my church.”

  “Churches are handing out rings now? Hot dog!” Denise’s husband chuckled. “If they’d just hand out the husband to go with them, you’d be all set, Louise.”

  Louise was one of Dorry’s cousins, still unmarried at thirty-eight. She rolled her eyes and turned back to her stuffing.

  Dorry looked around at all the familiar faces, the people she’d known all her life. She had to convert one of them by Sunday. “The ring’s not about boyfriends or marriage,” Dorry said slowly, searching for bravery. “It’s a sign of God’s love and devotion, and my own unworthiness, and, and . . . my duty to obey.”

  There was an awkward silence. Dorry’s words seemed to lay on the table as embarrassing and unwanted as the spinach casserole someone brought to Thanksgiving one year during a shortlived health kick.

  Then one of the youngest Stevenses called out, “Where’s my mac’roni cheese?” and his mother tried to explain there wasn’t any. The usual chatter sprang up again. Dorry began passing food. Each dish seemed more desirable than the last: potatoes, rolls, Denise’s special cheese-stuffed mushrooms. Dorry dreaded the moment when someone noticed none of it was ending up on her plate. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d just think she’d eaten quickly and cleanly.

  No such luck.

  “That church of yours forbids you to eat, too?” Denise asked, between forkfuls of potatoes.

  “Just today,” Dorry said miserably, her eyes following Denise’s fork to her mouth. Mmm. Mashed potatoes. What if Dorry ate just them? How could God mind that? No one would have to know. Resolutely, she shook the thought away. Her stomach growled. “I’m fasting today. It’s—like a test.”

  Denise practically dropped her fork. “What? That’s crazy.”

  Across the table, Dorry’s mom instantly stopped comparing grocery prices with Aunt Emma, as if her motherly antenna had just intercepted news of a plane crash. “Oh, honey,” she cried. “You didn’t tell us that. That can’t be right. Surely you misunderstood—”

  Dorry shook her head no. She’d understood.

  Uncle Ed dug his elbow in her side. “If I was you, I’d tell that church where to go,” he said, then guffawed at his own wit.

  “What’s God got against food?” Aunt Emma asked.

  “So you don’t eat. What’s that do?” Denise asked. She waved her fork so close to Dorry’s face that Dorry could easily have leaned forward and gobbled a big bite of potatoes. She swallowed hard.

  “If I succeed, it’d be a sign, I mean, proof, that food isn’t a false god for me, that I don’t care more about it than I do about God and Fishers, the church I’m in—”

  Dorry could tell how she sounded by the looks on her family’s faces. She stopped.

  “Tell you what I’d do,” Aunt Emma said suddenly. She stood up, her chair scraping back loudly on the hardwood floor. She dug a spoon deep into her candied yams and, leaning across the table, deposited them on Dorry’s plate. Dots of the brown-sugar sauce dribbled across the tablecloth. Then Aunt Emma looked around wildly, eyes lighting on the platter of rolls. She took one and tossed it onto Dorry’s plate. She might have gone on, but the other food was out of her reach. “What I’d do,” she said, sitting back down, “is I’d eat all I wanted and tell that church I’d follow all their stupid rules tomorrow. If I felt like it. Tell them today’s a holiday It’s Thanksgiving. The point of Thanksgiving is to eat.”

  Dorry gulped. “The point of Thanksgiving is to give thanks to God,” she said in a near whisper.

  Across the table, her mother frowned, her expression telegraphing the message, “Eat. Now. Quit making a disturbance.”

  Dorry looked down at her plate, at the hot, yeasty roll, at the succulent candied yams, their pool of brown-sugar sauce spreading across her plate. She could feel everyone staring, waiting to see if she would eat. The food all but called out to her. She felt light-headed. How easy it would be just to pick up the roll. How much she longed to eat. Her stomach twisted. She brought her hand toward the table. She remembered her lazy, joking thought the week before: What was the Devil going to do? Hide behind Aunt Emma’s candied yams?

  Dorry pushed herself away from the table and ran to the stairs.

  Behind her she heard several people call, “Dorry!”

  “Honestly—” Aunt Emma rumbled.

  Dorry could hear more than one chair being pushed back from the table. Who would come after her? Then her father’s voice boomed: “Let her go. She’ll come back when she gets hungry. No use letting anyone else’s food go cold over this.”

  Crying, Dorry ran to her room, slammed the door, and flung herself across the ancient twin bed brought down from the attic because her own bed was in Indianapolis. It creaked, protesting her weight. Even her bed was against her. Why did everything have to be so hard? How could she stand being so hungry?

  “Dear God,” she started praying. But her family’s mockery—“What’s God got against food?”—was too fresh in her ears. She felt more foolish than holy. Maybe Aunt Emma was right. Maybe she shouldn’t have to follow rules on a holiday.

  After a few moments, Dorry crept out of her room and down the hall to her parents’ bedroom. She took the phone from their nightstand and punched in Angela’s number. It rang six times before an unfamiliar female voice—Angela’s mother? A maid?—answered.

  “May I please speak to Angela?” Dorry asked.

  “She’s eating Thanksgiving dinner and cannot be disturbed,” the woman said disapprovingly. “I suggest you call back later.”

  Dorry went back to her room and sobbed. Oh, Angela couldn’t be disturbed because she was eating Thanksgiving dinner. Why did she get to eat if Dorry couldn’t?

  After a while, the knocks started on her door. “Dorry, we’re all having pumpkin pie now . . .” “Dorry, we’re putting the leftovers away. Don’t you want anything?” “Dorry, the relatives are leaving. Don’t you want to say good-bye?” She mumbled, “Leave me alone,” each time.

  Later, when she thought her parents were napping, Dorry crept down the stairs and filled a plate with leftovers. She was too angry to be hungry anymore, but if Angela could eat, so could she. She wolfed down a huge slice of turkey, three rolls, a mound of cold potatoes, and a pile of stuffing laced with visibly congealed butter before her mother came into the kitchen and caught her.

  “Dorry—” she began.

  Dorry put down the plate and ran back upstairs without speaking.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  DORRY WOKE TO HEAR THE PHONE ringing, insistently, many times.

  Then
it stopped and, “Dorry?” her mother called.

  Confused about where she was—Indianapolis? No, her old room, with the wrong furniture—she ran into the wall trying to find the door. She squinted at the digital clock. Eleven-thirty. Late.

  Dorry got the phone downstairs and shouted up, “Got it.” She waited to hear the click to be sure her mother had hung up before she said, “Hello?”

  “You didn’t call,” Angela’s voice rushed at her. “I was worried about you.”

  Dorry’s stomach churned. She could picture cold potatoes and greasy stuffing and rolls fighting for room inside. “I tried calling this afternoon. You were eating.”

  Without entirely intending it, Dorry made the word “eating” an accusation. She wanted to yell so much more—Why did you ruin my Thanksgiving? I’d been looking forward to this day for months, and now it’s over and my family thinks I’m crazy and I barely left my room. And you were eating!

  “You could have called back.” Angela’s voice was gentle. “Did you have a happy Thanksgiving?”

  “Of course not,” Dorry sputtered. “You told me to fast, remember?”

  “But I always feel so light and holy when I fast. Closer to God. You did fast, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I mean—sort of. Just not the whole day.”

  “Oh, Dorry.” Dorry could hear the full weight of Angela’s disappointment in her voice. She could picture Angela’s exact expression.

  “I didn’t eat Thanksgiving dinner with my family,” Dorry said. “I—I stood up against their persecution, just like in the Bible. But then I called you, and you were eating your Thanksgiving dinner, so I had a little to eat later—”

  “Oh, Dorry. What sin you fell into. You let the Devil win.”

  “But you ate. It’s not fair.” Dorry knew she sounded like a sulky child. She didn’t care.

  “My discipler did not order me to fast,” Angela said sternly. “I do not worship the false god of food. So it didn’t matter if I ate or not. But you—you promised me. You promised God.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dorry said automatically.

  Angela sighed and Dorry felt truly guilty. She had agreed to fast, even if she hadn’t wanted to. She should just be more careful from now on about what she agreed to.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I did the thing that was hardest, not eating with my family. You should have heard what they said.” She described the dinner and her dramatic departure from the table. Somehow, telling Angela about it, Dorry almost began to see it the way she wanted Angela to. She wasn’t crazy, the way her family saw her. She was holy and pure and strong in her faith. She’d been resolute in the face of ridicule.

  “But you ate after that,” Angela said softly. Her tone implied that Dorry was weak and contemptible, but might be forgiven.

  “Yes. I did,” Dorry admitted. She didn’t say how much. “But I—I can fast again tomorrow. I can do it the whole day. You’ll see.” Dorry couldn’t believe what she was saying. What if Angela said, “Yes, fast tomorrow”?

  But Angela breathed slowly, “No-oo. We’ll try that another time. You need to concentrate on your second goal.”

  In her anguish over fasting, Dorry had forgotten about that. “Converting someone,” she said.

  “Yes. Whose soul will you save first?”

  Dorry thought hard. She didn’t want to do this. But if she said, “I can’t,” Angela would think she was a bad Fisher. So would God. “Maybe my friend Marissa,” Dorry said. “I’m going to spend all day with her tomorrow.”

  “Then I’ll pray for her. And you.”

  They stayed on the phone a lot longer, Angela praying at length over Dorry’s sins and her plans for converting Marissa. By the end, hanging up, Dorry almost felt at peace. She worried about Marissa, but Angela had said she should leave those worries to God.

  Dorry stood up and raised and lowered her shoulders, sore from sitting with the phone for more than an hour.

  “Dorry?”

  It was her mother, standing at the foot of the stairs.

  “Was that your friend from that church?”

  “Yes. Everything’s okay now.”

  Dorry’s mother frowned, and Dorry could see the heavy lines of age in her sagging face. She looked so tired. Guiltily, Dorry wondered if it had been good for her to work so hard fixing the Thanksgiving dinner, even though she’d said she wanted to. And then Dorry hadn’t even helped her clean up. Wasn’t that a sin, too?

  “I’m not—” Dorry’s mother stopped and began again. “I know you’re almost an adult, and certainly there’s nothing wrong with religion. We’re all Christians, of course. But this church isn’t right for you. They expect too much. They’re—unreasonable.”

  “But Mom—” Dorry reminded herself that she was supposed to be representing Jesus to an unbeliever. It wasn’t just her talking to her mom. “God expects a lot of His people. And He gives a lot in return. You should commit yourself wholly to Him, too. And read the Bible. Then you’ll understand.”

  “I understand enough.” Her mother gripped the banister tightly. While Dorry searched for a good answer, a holy answer, one God would give, her mother turned to go back upstairs. “Well, it’s past my bedtime. At least tell your friend it’s rude to call after ten o’clock at night.”

  “I will, Mom,” Dorry said. But she was angry and upset again. She’d lost the peace Angela had given her.

  Chapter

  Seventeen

  “OKAY, TELL ME EVERYTHING,” MARISSA breathed.

  She and Dorry were both lying on their stomachs across Marissa’s bed, their usual pose for sharing secrets and gossip. The familiar room around them felt as much like home as Dorry’s own—more so now that Dorry’s belongings were all transplanted to Indianapolis. Dorry’s initials were right beside Marissa’s on the back of Marissa’s dresser. Dorry’s face smiled (or grimaced) out from half the photos stuck into the sides of the mirror. But there were changes in the room that Dorry had noticed right away: Unfamiliar books were stacked on the desk. An unfamiliar corsage was wilting on the cluttered bulletin board—not from a dance, Marissa had reluctantly admitted, but from marching band recognition night. A pile of unfamiliar fabric lay in the corner from some new craft project of Marissa’s.

  “You want to know everything?” Dorry hedged.

  “Well, you know nothing around here ever changes. So you’re the one with all the news. Except, oh, did I tell you about Steve Vaughn and Ashley Hanover?”

  “No, what?”

  “They broke up.”

  “They were dating?”

  “All fall. Hot and heavy.”

  “Oh,” Dorry said. She was curious—it was hard to imagine tall, lanky Steve with short, fat Ashley But gossip didn’t seem the right opening to converting Marissa. She rubbed a worn spot on Marissa’s bedspread. “Did I tell you about Fishers?”

  “Who’s that? Don’t tell me—you’re dating someone.” In her excitement, Marissa rolled over and perched cross-legged on the bed. “I told you that new haircut would work wonders.”

  Dorry felt a slight pang, remembering her crush on Brad. What if things were different, and she were sitting here telling Marissa about dating Brad? Marissa would love that. But her crush on Brad had been lust. It was wrong. Evil. She pursed her lips. “Fishers isn’t a who, it’s a what,” Dorry said. “This has nothing to do with hair.”

  She could hear the irritation in her own voice. If God wanted Marissa saved so badly, why didn’t he send down a bolt of lightning and do it himself? Dorry thought of the kind of answer Angela would give to that question. And Marissa was her best friend. How could she let her go to hell? Guiltily, she sat up and tried again.

  “Fishers is, well, it’s kind of like a church, but it’s not boring and useless. It’s real. It’s—they have all the answers about God and Jesus and how people have to live to keep from going to hell. You have to believe in Jesus and be baptized as a Fisher.”

  Marissa giggled. “Geez, Dorry, you
sound like a Holy Roller.”

  “No, the Holy Rollers are fanatics. This is the truth. This is the only church that’s right. Wouldn’t—” Dorry cleared her throat. “Wouldn’t you like to join?”

  Marissa looked puzzled. “Dorry—you really believe this stuff?”

  Dorry nodded. She watched Marissa’s face. Marissa looked uncertain at first, then guarded, as if she’d put up a screen to keep Dorry from seeing what she was really thinking. Dorry felt as insulted as if Marissa had physically pushed her away.

  “You know everyone in my family goes to the Methodist Church,” Marissa finally said. “If they go anywhere. Let’s talk about something else. What are kids wearing in Indianapolis?”

  “That’s not nearly as important as Fishers,” Dorry said. “That’s just—frivolous. I wanted to tell you about something that really matters.”

  “You did tell me. Now I’m asking about something else.”

  “But don’t you worry about your eternal soul?”

  “No,” Marissa said. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t believe in Jesus and God and all that.” She lowered her voice as if it were slightly embarrassing to be caught talking about religion.

  “But—”

  “Come on, Dorry, lighten up. Listen, don’t you want to know why Steve and Ashley broke up? Nobody’s supposed to know, but Ashley told Shawn who told Nikki, who told me—”

  Distantly, Dorry listened to Marissa’s account of the doomed relationship. Marissa started with the first date, so when she finally ended with, “—Can you believe that?” Dorry discovered she’d missed the main part of the story. She suddenly didn’t care either. All she could think about was having to call Angela that night and admitting that she’d failed to convert Marissa.

  “Marissa, I know you’re Methodist and all, but couldn’t you try giving Fishers a chance? We could just pray together, and then—” Dorry realized nobody had told her what to do once she converted someone. Everybody had to be baptized, but surely she couldn’t do that by herself. And Marissa wouldn’t have anyone to be her discipler, as a Fisher all alone in Bryden. If Angela had really expected her to succeed, wouldn’t she have told her what to do?