What Girlish Dreams Are Made Of: A First Kiss Passover Story
...and deleted chapter from “Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare & Sexual Purity” | ⏱️ 21 min read | 🎧 Audio version coming soon
It’s rather strange being an adult content creator known for stories about her childhood. If you’ve felt jolted by my social media posts ping-ponging from innocence to sexiness, with religious trauma rants and funny cat memes in between, you’re not alone. I’m well aware of the breadth that my content spans. It is but a microcosm glimpse of my inner world, the true arrays of which are reserved only for those who know and love me best.
I say this to acknowledge the incongruency you may perceive. If it bothers you, I understand, yet I am a whole person. Not a niche. Every woman was once a girl.
This newsletter is another deleted scene — an entire deleted chapter, rather — from my book, Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare & Sexual Purity. The last scene I shared was an Easter story. I swear I didn’t mean for its follow-up to be a Passover story but — by sheer coincidence — Passover is tomorrow and here we are.
The bulk of my published memoir takes place in my teen and young adult years. It was the precious pages of my pre-teen youth that were mostly cut. Does it serve the greater arc, is the question every writer must ask themselves throughout the editing process. When the answer is yes, an even more ruthless question demands: Is it necessary?
These deleted scenes I’m sharing here were not, in fact, necessary to the telling of my story. Yet I’m still terribly fond of these darlings I killed. It brings me great joy to revive and share them with you.
If you’ve read Wayward, this segment would have appeared around chapter two or three. If you have not read Wayward, I hope you’ll enjoy these as essay-style musings of Little Alice, who is always a bittersweet delight to revisit. Her diaries were referenced and I remain stunned by her insights.
Some identifying markers have been changed to protect others’ privacy. Dialogue has been recreated to the best of my memory and, like all works of narrative nonfiction, my truth is as subjective as anyone else’s. Feelings are not facts, after all.
Come back in time with me to April of 1996.
The tire swing cradled my spinning body. I hung in the black rubber hollow from three bone-colored ropes anchored to the oak’s sturdiest branch, watching them unravel and basking in the mind-numbing pressure of what Dad called “g-forces.” Gravity pulled at my legs and blood rushed to my head. My bottom felt exposed, dipping into the gaping hole of the tire. I knew my shorts must have shifted and my underwear was probably showing. I didn’t care. No one else was in the front yard. I smiled up at the leaves, anticipating the final jerk of the tire swing when it unwound from its last twist. Three more rotations… Two… Whoosh!
I peeled my head off the tire as the spinning slowed, giggling. It was April, nearly a month after my family had gone to the Rodney Howard-Browne conference. I never told my parents how the pastor crushed me. My neck had been stiff for over a week but at least I could turn my head both ways again.
Closing my eyes, I felt the swing reach its brief pause before unwinding once more, this time in the other direction. A new rush of queasy shivers rolled from my stomach to my scalp, making my short hair stand on end. I loved spinning myself out.
“Hi, little girl.”
My eyes sprang open and my body jerked from its slumped position. I faced the purple irises growing along the front of the house. The male voice I didn’t recognize sounded near. Still lightheaded, I didn’t trust myself to stand up. I pushed my bare toe off a knobby root slumping through hard-packed dirt, turning to see who had interrupted my rare moment of solitude. A brown-hatted white man crunched through the gravel driveway toward me. He looked younger than Dad and wore a suit, a tie, and a smile that made me wary.
Thoughts raced through my sobering head. Mom and Dad always told my siblings and me not to ever, under any circumstances, go outside the fence that enclosed our property. They never told us what to do if a stranger walked himself into it.
“Hello,” the man said again.
He seemed friendly but I kept my guard up. “Hi.”
“Where’s your daddy?” he asked.
“Inside.”
The man stopped about ten feet from me where the gravel met the grass. He looked around the yard and up at the house. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Alice.”
“Mine is Daniel. How old are you?”
“Ten.”
I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers. I couldn’t understand why I was replying to the man’s questions. I wondered if I should try making a dash for the house or just scream for Dad from where I dangled on the swing.
“Do you know the love of Jesus?” Daniel asked.
Instantly, my belly unclenched. He was a Christian.
“Yes,” I said, returning his smile. I slid off the swing but kept the tire between us. “We’re Christians, too.”
“What kind of Christians are you?”
“I don’t know. We’re just Christians.” Then I remembered what Dad told me to say when anybody asked me this. “Actually, we’re nondenominational.”
“Nondenominational, huh? Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?”
“Oh yes.”
Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t a Christian. He sounded like one but I had better make sure, in case he got hit by a car later and wasn’t saved. I didn’t want him to go to hell on my account.
“Have you accepted Jesus into your heart?” I asked.
“I sure have, sweetie. In fact, that’s why I’m here today. Do you go to church?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you believe Jesus died on the cross for your sins?”
“Yeah.”
I started feeling a little confused. I had already told him that I was a Christian.
“Do you want to have eternal life with God when you die?” he asked.
I knew that I already was going to have eternal life with God when I died, so I didn’t need to want it. Still, I nodded my head out of politeness.
“Then I’m going to give you this Bible,” he said, reaching into his bag. His hand found what it was searching for and extended a small blue book with shiny gold lettering. It fit perfectly in his palm.
“Thank you,” I said. “But we already have a Bible.”
“Then you can have this one for your very own,” he said.
I hesitated, feeling like I shouldn’t take it for some reason. Then I thought it would be rude not to. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Plus, it was very pretty.
I let go of the ropes and was careful not to brush Daniel’s hand as I took the Bible from him. When I opened its pages, I saw colorful illustrations accompanying the familiar stories—Jesus handing loaves of bread to a crowd gathered on a hillside, Lazarus coming out of a tomb, and Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet with her hair. The writing was so tiny that I could barely make out words. A thrill ran through me when I realized I could use the magnifying glass I’d gotten for my birthday to read the miniature verses.
I was about to say thank you when the back door slammed. Dad marched in our direction, his black curls bouncing with every step. His newly grown beard hid his lips, which I knew must be pursed because his eyebrows were furrowed.
“Can I help you, sir?” Dad asked. Despite his words, Dad’s tone wasn’t courteous. He put himself between Daniel and me.
“I was just having a conversation with your daughter about our lord Jesus Christ,” Daniel said.
“We already have a relationship with Jesus and we’re not interested in your literature.”
Dad towered over Daniel, who looked like he was trying to hide his intimidation. Dad could have that effect on people if he wanted to, which I figured came from his law enforcement years.
“Alice, give this man back his book,” Dad said.
“But Dad—”
“Give him back the book.”
I sighed, handing the miniature Bible back to Daniel. He returned it to his bag.
“Sorry to bother you,” Daniel said, backing up the driveway. “It was nice talking with you, Alice.”
Dad followed Daniel to the end of the driveway, making sure he left, and then he dragged the chain link gate shut. Its latch fell with a solid clang.
“Why don’t you come back inside the house,” Dad said as he passed me.
Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the sitting room where we found Mom at her desk in the turret. My two-year-old sister Kate stood beside her in the playpen, her dimpled hands gripping the foam-padded railing.
“Who was he?” Mom asked.
“He was a Jehovah’s Witness,” Dad grumbled. He peered out one of the windows as though Daniel might come back.
The hardwood floor creaked beneath my weight. Mom looked at me, shoving her dark bangs out of her eyes. “What did he want?” Mom asked me.
“He wanted to know if I was a Christian,” I said, looping my fingers through Kate’s blond curls. “But when I told him I was, he acted like he didn’t hear me.”
Dad rolled his eyes.
“What’s a Jehovah’s Witness?” I asked.
“They’re…” Dad paused, trying to find the right words. “They’re like missionaries.”
“Weren’t you and Mom missionaries?”
“Yes, but we were a different kind of missionary.”
“Why were you guys different?”
“We were in Nepal and Thailand to teach Bible ministry. This guy just wants you to join his club.”
“But he gave me a Bible,” I said. “It had pictures of Jesus in it.”
“They have a different Bible than we do,” Dad said. He didn’t sound pleased about this.
“Are they Christian?”
“Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas,” Mom said, returning to her paperwork.
What kind of Christians didn’t celebrate the birth of Jesus? And what did they think was wrong with birthday cake? Clearly they had an issue with birth for some reason.
“They’re just a different branch of Christianity,” Dad told me.
“Oh.”
My curiosity was far from satisfied but I had the feeling Mom and Dad were done with the conversation. Kate pulled at the hem of my t-shirt. Her brown eyes were wide and round with points that tapered at the inner and outer corners, like the Dairy Queen logo. Sometimes we called her Dairy Queen Eyes.
I watched Kate play while I tried to processed what I’d learned. Dad had said that Jehovah’s Witnesses were a different branch of Christianity. Branch probably meant the same thing as denomination. The impression I got was that denominations didn’t count as real Christianity, yet Dad said that regardless of a Christian’s denomination, all of us believed Jesus was the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins. To me, that meant we were all going to heaven when we died.
I wondered what the dividing factors were. Learning that not all Christians read the same Bible seemed significant. I wanted to know what other Bibles said that my family’s didn’t. How did one know which was the true Bible?
Mom’s voice interrupted my pondering. “Alice, I need you to go to the study and tell the kids we’re leaving in half an hour.”
So the study was where my other siblings were. They were probably watching a movie, which was why the house was so quiet.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Vine City,” said Mom.
“But what about dinner?”
“We’re going to eat dinner there since they’re doing Passover. I want you all to be ready with your shoes on.”
I’d completely forgotten it was a Saturday.
Despite being nondenominational, Vine City Fellowship’s members seemed to like thinking of themselves as a Messianic Jewish congregation. Like Messianic Jews, we believed Jesus was the Messiah, the savior the Jews in the Old Testament had been waiting for. Dad said the Jews of today were still waiting. We celebrated Christian holidays, like Christmas and Easter, and Jewish ones, like Rosh Hashanah and Passover.
I dreaded Passover. The Seder meal sucked. As I left the sitting room, I made a mental note to sneak a granola bar out of the pantry before my family left, in case I couldn’t eat the bitter meal ahead of me.
I found Teddy, eight, Madeleine, six, and Bryant, five, sitting cross-legged on the floor of our playroom. Their eyes were glued to Simba, who was singing about how he just couldn’t wait to be king. Simba’s nasally voice never failed to annoy me.
“Guys, Mom says to get ready,” I said. Madeleine’s honey-brown French braid didn’t move. Teddy and Bryant, whose crew cuts I loved to glide my hands over, didn’t acknowledge me either. I walked in front of the TV and repeated myself.
“Alice, get out of the way,” Madeleine said.
“We’re going to Vine City in half an hour,” I told them. “Mom wants us all to be ready.”
“Okay, we’ll be ready,” Teddy said.
I could tell he just wanted me to stop blocking his view. Bryant said nothing but then he rarely did unless it was absolutely necessary. I decided not to let them hold me back from my getting ready, and I had a lot of getting ready to do.
I ran upstairs to the slipper-pink bedroom I shared with my sisters. A room of my own was a dream I knew would probably never come true, since there were five of us kids. Kate slept in a crib against one wall while Madeleine and I shared the full-sized bed beside the window. Our view overlooked two apple trees in front of the kitchen porch. The nighttime air was still chilly but I kept the windows open so the scent of apple blossoms could waft through once the buds bloomed.
Our view also overlooked what Mom and Dad called “the projects,” but I never saw anyone building projects. When my sisters and I couldn’t sleep, we watched dramas unfold in the glow of street lamps. Girls double-dutched and sometimes lost earrings in catfights. Boys breakdanced on cardboard slabs while Tupac and Cypress Hill blared from Cadillac trunks. I liked rap. It was so different from the worship and classical music my parents listened to.
“What do you like about that noise?” Mom asked me once. “That thud-thu-thu-thud, thu-thu-thud? It’s just the same beat over and over.”
“That’s why I like it,” I replied. “It’s predictable.”
I went into the closet and pulled out my most prized possession: my dress-up box. Ruffled straps and sequined hems spilled over its edges. Tulle, leotards, ribbons and fringe delighted me almost as much as library books. Most treasured of all was my handmade hoop skirt. Period piece fashion enthralled me. I spent hours trying to recreate gowns from my favorite era, the Belle Epoque, and I was proud of the ensembles I came up with. Vine City was the only place I wore them. Dressing up wasn’t necessary but I took advantage of the opportunity to feel “fetching,” as they said back in the 1800s.
Once stripped of my play clothes, I pulled white stockings over my tanned legs, careful not to make any new snags with my fingernails. Then I carefully stepped into my hoop skirt. To make it, I’d straightened three wire hangers and twisted their ends together to make one large hoop. Three white shoelaces attached the hoop to a canvas belt, which I cinched tight around my waist in lieu of a corset. I knew from books that real 19th-century undergarments were made from whalebones, but I hadn’t figured how to attain those yet.
With my hoopskirt in place, I gently pulled overhead the white cotton petticoat I’d made out a Ralph Lauren skirt Mom gave me. My favorite dress followed, a hand-me-down from an older cousin made of rayon silk patterned with peach-colored roses. Its puffed sleeves made me feel like Anne of Green Gables. I zipped myself up the back, then tied the two sashes on either side of my waist as tight as my exhale would allow.
For the finishing touches, I slipped on white lace gloves and the wide-brim straw hat I’d fashioned into a bonnet with a silky blue ribbon tied beneath my chin. It made the sides of the hat pressed uncomfortably against my ears, but I loved how the shape hid my eyes from anyone who wasn’t directly in front of me. Lastly, I stepped into my black patent leather Mary Janes.
I glanced into the mirror attached to the back of my bedroom door, pleased that I looked as elegant as I felt. I was ready.
Worship had already started when my family arrived at Vine City for the special Passover service. A keyboardist, tambourinest, and drummer accompanied a middle-aged couple onstage playing acoustic guitars plugged into amplifiers. “Show your pooooow-werr-errr, oh-oh Loooorrrrd, ourrrr God,” they sang. Everyone clapped along to the music. “Show Your Power” by Kevin Prosch always got the crowd moving.
My family snaked around the back of the low-lit gym, passing people jumping up and down with their arms extended to the ceiling. We reached our usual spot to the right of the stage. “Show Your Power” ended with a burst of applause as we took off our coats and settled in. After a minute of mindless guitar strumming and occasional murmurs of prayer into the mic, a new song began, “True Love” by David Ruis. He was one of the men who had come to Vine City two years back to tell the congregation about the Toronto Blessing. By 1996, he was famous.
The band at Vine City frequently covered David Ruis’s songs. Mom and Dad even owned a couple of his CDs. “True Love” was about desiring Jesus to kiss us and take us into His bridegroom chamber. I didn’t know the Bible’s Song of Solomon inspired the lyrics. I simply liked the melody, and I imagined David Ruis was singing about Jesus’ wedding night from the church bride’s point of view. He couldn’t have wanted to marry Jesus himself. That would be homosexual.
A sign language interpreter sat near the front of the stage. I didn’t think there were any deaf people in the fellowship but I enjoyed copying her movements and that night I joined right in, my lace-gloved hands mirroring hers.
“Let me know the kisses of your mouth,” I sang, signing the words. “Let me feel your warm embraaaaace, let me smell the fragrance of your touch, let me see your lovely faaaaaaace, take me away with youuuu, even so, Lord, cooooome."
The adult entendres were lost to me at the time. I suspect anyone who did catch them chose to ignore them, banishing the sexual connotations of what a wedding night entailed. Jesus was pure. He didn’t have sex, and even if He did, surely He wouldn’t have an orgy with His church bride. That was how we Christians were supposed to think of ourselves: as the bride of Christ faithfully awaiting His return. Our hearts, minds, and bodies had better be pure when that happened.
“I loooove you, Looord,” I sang. “I love you more than liiiife.”
Worship ended after several more songs. The gym lights flickered back on as the pastor walked across the stage, reading the evening’s announcements into a wireless microphone.
“Owen Carlson has asked us to pray for his son Ezekiel,” the pastor said. “He injured himself on their farm a few days ago.”
Ezekiel was one of my friends. My eyes scanned the rows of chairs but the Carlsons must not have come that night. They were hard to miss with twelve kids. Like my family and others who went to Vine City, the Carlson kids were homeschooled. Besides the largeness of their brood, they also stood out because their daughters weren’t allowed to wear pants. The Carlson girls wore long skirts with stockings underneath.
I didn’t think it was fair that the Carlson girls had to wear skirts while their brothers got to wear pants. I wore a dress because I wanted to, not because I had to. There was a difference. I was sure that at least some of the Carlson girls would have preferred wearing jeans to skirts.
The Swanberg girls had to wear long skirts, too. They were the second-largest family at Vine City with ten kids who were also homeschooled. Ethan Swanberg was my age. I avoided him ever since we’d kissed in his bunk bed two months ago.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Ethan—I liked him too much and everybody knew it. I tried to steal a look from beneath my bonnet to where he stood with his family behind me. There he was, blond-haired and blue-eyed like the rest of his siblings. He was so cute. I wondered if he ever thought about kissing me again.
***
My family had gone to the Swanberg’s farm in early February, right after my tenth birthday. Their property boasted sloping cornfields crusted over with snow—perfect for tobogganing. We piled as many kids as we could fit onto the long, handmade sled, our legs wrapped around the person front of us. Our dads gave us running pushes downhill and we soared until the toboggan inevitably tipped over, scattering us across the frozen field. We never knew why it tipped but it always would.
We’d gone inside the Swanberg’s house to thaw afterward. Our parents sat downstairs in the kitchen while Ethan and I hung out in one of the upstairs bedrooms he shared with some of his brothers. His sister Miriam, a year and a half older than me, was with us, along with my siblings Teddy and Madeleine. Ethan and I were sitting on his lower bunk deep in conversation. I can’t remember what we talked about because Miriam interrupted us with a suggestion that made me forget everything at once.
“You guys should kiss,” Miriam said. She stared right at Ethan and me, a naughty grin widening her rosy cheeks. Teddy and Madeleine stared at us, too, as well as a couple of Swanberg toddlers who appeared out of nowhere.
“What?” I said. My voice didn’t sound like my own. Ethan turned bright red.
“Kiss,” Miriam said again.
“Kiss! Kiss!”
Miriam, Teddy, Madeleine, and the toddlers kept chanting for Ethan and me to kiss while he and I eyed each other. I’d never kissed a boy. I knew I shouldn’t kiss Ethan, but I didn’t know why. I’d never thought about it before. Suddenly, I wanted to. Since Ethan wasn’t protesting, he must want to as well. The realization made me deaf with excitement. Now I knew what people meant when they said time slowed. Not only did it slow—it made everything in my peripheral vision fade to black. It made my heart thump in my ears instead of my chest. It made my knees press together.
I gave Ethan a look that said, Do you want to?
He gave me a look back that said, I will if you will.
Oh my gosh. I was about to have my first kiss. With Ethan Swanberg.
But I couldn’t do it with everyone watching.
“Only if you turn out the lights,” I told Miriam.
Miriam flipped off the bedroom light switch. Everyone fell dead silent as Ethan and I tried to make out each other’s faces in the dark. I could barely see his silhouette in the faint light coming from the hallway.
Ethan scooted closer to me over his bedspread. Our hands bumped. A reflex wanted to pull my hand away, then I realized how silly that would be, given that we were about to kiss each other. I let his fingers stay covering mine. They were warm. I leaned toward his outline and sensed him leaning toward me. I closed my eyes and tilted my head to the right. I expected Ethan to take it from there, but he must have been waiting for me to close those last few centimeters. I leaned in just a little bit more and then my lips felt his. They were soft. I hadn’t expected that. I gently sucked my pucker in, electrified when I felt Ethan do the same.
The light came back on with no warning. Ethan and I jerked apart, not looking at each other, while everyone watching laughed hysterically. I was furious with Miriam. She was laughing loudest of all and I knew she’d been the one to flip the light switch back on. Their older brother Thomas entered the room.
“What’s going on?” Thomas asked, taking in the sight of Ethan and me blushing on the bottom bunk while our siblings howled around us.
“Ethan and Alice kissed,” Miriam told him.
“You kissed?” Thomas asked Ethan, his eyebrows impossibly high.
Ethan nodded. He smiled.
“You’re gonna be in trouble,” Thomas said.
Ethan’s smile faded. Thomas was right. I wanted to ask him not to tell my parents but knew that would only make it worse. Thomas exited the room. Everyone else left except my kissing partner and me. I don’t remember if Ethan looked at me because I didn’t look at him. Dread flooded me, filling every pulse that excitement had left. I imagined my parents’ reaction downstairs. Miriam came running down the hallway and popped her head into the bedroom.
“Mom and Dad wanna see you,” she said to Ethan. Her smugness maddened me. “Yours, too, Alice.”
Mr. and Mrs. Swanberg chastised Ethan in the dining room while Mom and Dad sat me down in the kitchen. I couldn’t look either of them in the eye.
“Why did you kiss Ethan?” Mom asked.
“Because Miriam said to,” I said.
“Do you do everything Miriam says?” Mom asked.
“No.”
“Why did you listen to Miriam?” Dad asked.
I shrugged, my eyes watering with tears. Mom sighed. It was worse than having her yell at me. I heard Ethan being sent back to his room. Mr. and Mrs. Swanberg came into the kitchen a moment later.
“I’m so sorry about that,” Mr. Swanberg said to my parents. I kept my face down, not wanting them to see me cry.
“We are, too,” Dad said. “It won’t happen again, will it, Alice?”
I shook my head in earnest. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself do something so stupid. Self-hatred and shame silenced me the whole hour-long drive home.
But I didn’t stop replaying my kiss with Ethan in my head, time and time again.
***
“Ow!” I cried.
My own voice snapped me out of my memory and back into the Vine City gym. Bryant was scrambling past me, followed by Teddy and Madeleine. I realized kids had been dismissed for children’s ministry.
The screech of sneakers on polished wood echoed as we made our way to our assigned groups. I saw Ethan making his way to ours. Even though our initial run-ins were out of the way, an awkwardness lingered between us where there had once been companionship. I liked Ethan because he was quiet, like me, but we could talk to each other about interesting things. Things like dinosaurs and the Black Plague and lightning bug juice. Now we couldn’t even make eye contact. I missed my friend.
Kids at Vine City were divided into groups based on age. Each group was named after one of the Old Testament tribes of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin. These tribers were named after the twelve sons of Jacob but for reasons I didn’t know, Vine City substituted some of these names for those of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. It was almost as confusing as reading an Old Testament genealogy list itself.
My tribe that year was Ephraim. All tribes had a banner and Ephraim’s had the image of grapes because of a quote from Judges 8:2.
“Aren’t the gleanings of Ephraim’s grapes better than the full grape harvest of Abiezer?”
I had no idea what the Bible verse meant. All I knew was that when kids were dismissed from service, I was supposed to find Ephraim’s grapes stitched onto a white flag and stand beside it until all of kids in my tribe were under its shadow with our pastor for the evening. Tribe pastors rotated every Saturday. That night, Ephraim had Mr. Sullivan. He was handsome, as tall as Dad, with sandy brown hair. I didn’t dislike him but I wished our pastor that evening had been his wife, Mrs. Sullivan. She always let us do arts and crafts while Mr. Sullivan liked to preach a lot.
Tribe after tribe, we followed our respective banners down the tiled hallway and into the classrooms of the school. All of the back seats were taken by the time I entered Ephraim’s classroom, so I had to sit at a desk in the middle, which I hated. Having people behind me made me feel nervous.
Saturday nights were the one of the few times I interacted with kids other than my siblings. These kids were my age and they had pecking order, cliques, and rivalry. I didn’t think of myself as shy most of the time. Whenever I was in a room with my tribe, I became a shell of my curious and outspoken self. I knew I wasn’t cool. My dress-up outfits alone made sure of that. I was self-conscious enough to notice the stares that came my way, and I clocked the girls who whispered to each other as they looked at me, but I wasn’t insecure enough to conform.
Mr. Sullivan wasn’t sitting behind the teacher’s desk as most tribe pastors did. Instead, Mr. Sullivan half-sat on top of the desk facing us, his hands folded in his lap.
“We’re going upstairs as soon as the Seder meal is finished being prepared by Mrs. Mueller,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Before that, I’m going to share something with you kids.”
Everyone in the room quieted under the command of his silence.
“Not a single one of you,” Mr. Sullivan said, drawing out the suspense, “in this room tonight, is going to die before you’re seventeen.”
He let that sink in. I felt stunned, both by his seriousness and his statement.
“How do you know?” asked one of the boys near the front.
“God told me,” Mr. Sullivan said simply. “He said that he has a plan for each and every one of you, and he said that all of you here—in this classroom, with me—will live to see seventeen.”
I wanted to ask what would happen to us after we turned seventeen. I was afraid of the answer. Maybe when we all turned seventeen, we’d die.
Mr. Sullivan continued with his sermon but I no longer paid attention. His prophecy spooked me. If everyone in Ephraim died at once, as soon as the last person in the tribe turned seventeen, maybe that meant Jesus would be returning for Judgment Day. The year would be 2001.
We’d all heard the Bible story of how Jesus would return to Earth riding a white horse from the skies. Trumpets would sound and we’d all be judged. Jesus would separate the sheep, His true followers, from the goats, nonbelievers and Pharisees. Pharisees were pompous fakes. They only put on a show for God and didn’t really love Him or live for Him. Dad called them hypocrites. The only time Jesus seemed to get mad in the Bible was when there were Pharisees involved.
I hoped I was a sheep and not a goat when Judgment Day came, whether I was seventeen or not. Jesus said goats would be thrown into a lake of fire. I prayed that God would see my heart was pure, not phony like the Pharisees. I truly believed in Him.
Mrs. Mueller knocked on our classroom door to let us know Seder was ready. We followed her down a corridor and up a staircase that led to a spacious classroom with a banquet table low to the floor. I figured it was probably several folding tables whose legs hadn’t been unfolded, covered with sheets for tablecloths. On either side of the table were cushions to sit on.
“We’ll be eating on the floor just like they did in Bible days,” Mrs. Mueller said.
The Seder meal this year was no different from the year before. Dreadful. In my haste to get dressed, I’d forgotten the granola bar I meant to grab. Now I was stuck with salt-watered parsley, horseradish, a hard-boiled egg, some greens, a mysterious paste, a tablet of matzo bread, and a kabob of lamb. The meat was purple, like a dead squirrel whose insides were splayed across the road.
Every part of the Seder meal was bitter, to symbolize the bitter tears wept by Hebrew slaves in Egypt before God freed them from the Pharaoh. I wished the Seder symbolized the land of milk and honey God led the Hebrews to after they were freed. The Passover menu would probably be a lot better. I imagined eating bowls of whipped cream drizzled with honey, or honey-flavored ice cream, or a drink of warm milk with honey. But God’s instructions were clearly laid out in the book of Exodus and Mrs. Mueller had followed His menu exactly—except for the wine, which she substituted with grape juice.
Grape juice would always taste like religion to me. I had to drink it during Communion and the Seder supper, but I couldn’t stand it any other time.
I pretended to take small bites from each dinner item in front of me. The matzo was the only edible part, in my opinion. How anyone could call it bread was beyond my understanding, since its dimpled surface was so hard that I had to break pieces off with my hands before putting them in my mouth, where I let each piece soak in my saliva for several seconds before attempting to chew. When the time came to eat the lamb, I didn’t reach for the kabob, hoping no one would notice. No such luck.
“Alice, you need to eat your lamb,” Mrs. Mueller said to me.
She watched until I picked up the skewer and forced myself to chew off a tiny bite. I gagged. I heard several other kids gagging as well. Resentment blocked out everyone and everything around me. I didn’t know why the pastors made us do this. Putting ourselves through dietary misery didn’t do anything for slaves who had died thousands of years ago. It was times like this that I thought God was mean.
I banished the blasphemous notion. I pretended to wipe my mouth with my napkin as I spit out the chewed-up lamb in its folds. I drank the grape juice I hated to wash down any remaining strings of purple meat, which I imagined was made purpler by the juice. Purple. What an ugly color.
When I rode home with my family later that night, I told Mom that I didn’t want to go to Passover again because the food was so horrid.
“Just hold your nose,” she said.
“But that doesn’t get rid of the texture,” I said.
She ignored me. I changed the subject, telling my parents what Mr. Sullivan had prophesied for the class of Ephraim.
“Do you think it means we’ll all die as soon as we turn seventeen?” I asked.
“No,” Dad said. He didn’t sound too confident, though. He took prophecies pretty seriously.
“Well, what do you think it means?”
“Why don’t you talk to God about it,” Mom said.
That was one of her favorite phrases to tell me. I felt like it was code for, “Shut up.” Or maybe it was Mom’s way of saying, “I don’t know.” Or, maybe she genuinely thought I should talk to God about it.
The problem was, I did talk to God. He never talked back, at least not that I was aware of. Maybe I needed more practice. I decided to read my Bible more often and be extra aware of any verses that jumped out at me. God probably was speaking back to me and it must be my fault that I couldn’t hear Him. Maybe it was because I’d kissed Ethan. Whatever God’s reason, I felt troubled by His silence because I believed He had a plan for me. If I didn’t go along with it, He’d surely punish me. I knew from Bible stories what happened to those who disobeyed God.
“If you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands,” God said in Leviticus 26, “and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength.”
God didn’t stop there.
“If after all this you will not listen to me,” he continued, “I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve. I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.”
I had to learn how to hear God better.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this, you’ll probably enjoy my book, Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare & Sexual Purity.
I’m Alice Greczyn, an author and speaker. This newsletter is free because I think helpful information should be free as much as possible. Please subscribe, and if you’d like to donate to my costs (news subscriptions, image licensing, audio recording, etc.), I’d surely appreciate it. Thank you.
Your use of the written word is magical as always. This painted so many vivid images, and the beginning brought back so many memories of past dealings with Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Thinking about ten-year-old Alice's first kiss, I'm wondering how traumatic it would have been if she had learned the "future husband" nonsense shortly thereafter.
I could read your writing all day. I feel I can picture everything in this chapter. Thank you for sharing these deleted chapters. They are too good to never be read.