Before I Let You Go(31)

“It was the Lord’s will, just like your father’s passing. Who am I to question it? It was their time.”

Lexie and I found this sense of acceptance to be maddening, particularly when he started to expect it from us. Any time we complained about the forthcoming move, he responded with rapidly increasing impatience, as if we were being completely unreasonable. Mom wasn’t much better—she was excited about the move and renewed contact with her family, and she couldn’t seem to understand why we weren’t.

“But you’ll see your grandmothers and aunts and uncles every day, girls. It’s going to be so much easier on us all.”

“So much easier on you, you mean,” I snapped at her a few times, and each time, I was promptly punished with time in my room alone. This gave me time to think about all of the ways that this move was going to ruin my life—and time to panic about moving away from the house that contained all of my memories of my father. I’d lie on the floor and sob, but if I thought really hard about Dad, I’d always catch a sense of him in the room with me. It was a tiny glimmer—just a hint of his presence—but it was generally enough to calm me. I’d think about Lexie’s words the day of his funeral, and I’d remind myself again and again that Dad would never leave us—he just wouldn’t. I took some comfort in the idea that whatever was coming, Dad would somehow be watching over me.

And I was certainly seeing his family—and Mom’s—more than I ever had before. Mom kept taking us to Winterton to visit with them, trying to help us adjust, I think. Winterton was a quiet little village, with ordinary-looking houses and a main street with average businesses. I suppose if you looked closely enough, you’d realize something is “off” about it—it’s perhaps a little too neat, a little too tidy. All of the residents are sect families, all of the businesses are run by its members, and the church runs the only school in the village.

And so, all of the men you see in Winterton are clean-shaven with very short, neat hair—and almost all of the women look similar, too, with long hair beneath head scarves, and extremely modest clothing. There are no run-down homes, and almost everyone has a new car, and there’s virtually no unemployment—the church offers interest-free loans to its members to establish or develop their own businesses, so the main street of Winterton has a surprisingly wide variety of stores and there’s even an industrial area.

It’s not exactly a closed community. There are no gates at the town entrance, and the regional city of Collinsville, where we’d grown up, was only five miles away. Some Winterton residents run businesses in Collinsville, and I’d eventually realize that Collinsville residents liked to visit Winterton for the stores. It’s a nice place, and its residents are for the most part good-hearted, well-meaning people with close ties to their community and a fierce dedication to their faith.

Even so, Winterton is not a welcoming place. Members of the sect are never allowed to eat with nonbelievers, so while there are restaurants, only community members can utilize them. Exclusions like this exist all around. Even if an outsider wanted to move in to the village, they’d find it almost impossible to be employed there or find housing. And while the men took turns participating in “street preaching” over in Collinsville to share their faith, this generally amounted to a group of them standing on the steps of the post office shouting Bible verses at passersby on a Saturday morning. If evangelism was the goal, this activity was an endless failure. I never saw them actually convert to the faith, and visitors were not welcome in the services. The congregation was totally stable, with the periodic exception of new children born or members forced out.

But those on the inside of the sect are cared for in a way that most people in the outside world never experience—it’s a restrictive lifestyle, but for those who comply perfectly, Winterton offers a tight-knit community. I’m convinced that’s what Mom was seeking—after she lost Dad, she wanted to return to the close embrace of the somewhat sheltered world she’d grown up in.

I can still remember the shock I felt the first time Robert took us to his house. By then, we’d heard him speak from the pulpit quite a few times, so I’d wrapped my head around his seniority in the sect. His uncle had once been the head of the sect for all of its assemblies worldwide, and the closest thing to clergy the church had, because there were no pastors or priests. All ministry was done by the men in the church, and where decisions needed to be made, the board of elders took responsibility collectively.

At some point during Mom and Dad’s exile, Robert’s once-illustrious uncle had also been withdrawn from. That rejection is considered to be the worst fate that can befall a member of the sect. All ties are cut with a member who is withdrawn from—prohibitive clauses in their “interest-free loans” are called in and access to their own family is restricted, and then intense intimidation is used to drive them from their homes and the village.

But Robert had escaped his uncle’s controversy unscathed and was now on the board of elders. All of the women in the assembly seemed to think Mom was quite lucky to be marrying him. His house was enormous—but it was sterile. Like all other community homes, there was no television or radio, but in Robert’s house, there was also no sense at all that this was a home. Mom had decorated our real home so beautifully—with soft furnishings and photographs and artwork, and throw blankets on the couches and cushions and knickknacks. The sterile, whitewashed walls of Robert’s home disturbed me almost as much as the idea of living in the community did.