The Nowhere Girls(4)

Grace’s father said Prescott, Oregon, would be more in line with their family’s values than Adeline, Kentucky. He has a special gift for putting a positive spin on things that suck. He’s in marketing, after all. For instance, seeing a benefit in having to move away from the only home Grace has ever known because their (former) church pretty much drove them out of town. This, Dad interpreted as an opportunity to show fortitude and resilience. It was also a great motivation to improve their skills of clipping coupons, minimizing toilet paper usage, and finding new variations of rice and beans while Mom looked for a new job and Grace tried to get through a day of school without crying in public. While her parents practiced their fortitude and resilience, Grace practiced pretending to not be too upset that every friend she had, most of them since preschool years, threw her to the curb because her mom fell off a horse and bumped her head and refound God to be a way more liberal guy than everyone in their church wanted Him to be.

Mom’s first mistake in the church was being a woman, which happened way before she bumped her head. Many of the old white folks (in a congregation that was mostly old white folks) crossed their arms in front of their chests and frowned during her guest sermons, waiting for the real pastor to take over and do the real preaching. Even before the head bump, she was a little too chipper for their tastes, a little too into the love business. So they were primed and ready for all hell to break loose when she went and married those two gay guys who owned the dog salon. In her last sermon before she got the boot, in addition to reminding the congregation of the annoying fact that Jesus loved and accepted everyone without judgment, she alluded to his being a brown-skinned socialist. There was even a rumor around town that someone overheard her exclaim, “Fuck Leviticus!” while she was pruning roses in her yard.

So, just like that, after years of service, Grace’s mom was out of her job as director of women’s activities and guest speaker at Great Redeemer First Baptist megachurch, instantly reviled and hated by nearly seven thousand parishioners from Adeline and the neighboring three counties. Dad had just started his online marketing business and wasn’t making any money yet. But worse than being suddenly poor was being suddenly friendless in a small town where everybody was friends. No one would sit by Grace at lunch. Graffiti started showing up on her locker, the strangest of which was “Slut” and “Whore,” since she was, and is, still very much a virgin. That’s just what you call girls when you want to shame them. So Grace spent what remained of the school year eating lunch alone in the gym bathroom, talking to no one throughout the day except the occasional teacher, and her parents had no idea. Mom was too busy trying to find a new job and Dad was too busy trying to find clients; Grace knew her pain wasn’t something they needed to talk about.

Grace isn’t quite sure how to define what she’s feeling right now, but she at least knows it’s not sadness about leaving. Adeline made itself very clear that it no longer had anything to offer Grace and her family in terms of friendship or feeling welcome. And even before that, when Grace was comfortably lodged in her low but stable place in the social hierarchy, with a set cast of friends and acquaintances, with well-defined rules of behavior and speech—even then, with all that order—Grace suspected something was off. She knew her role well and she performed it brilliantly, but that’s what it was: a performance. Some part of her always felt like she was lying.

Maybe she always secretly hated Christian music and the cheesy, horribly produced Christian-themed movies they always watched in Friday night youth group. Maybe she secretly hated her social life revolving around youth group. Maybe she hated sitting at the same lunch table every day, with the same bland girls she never really chose and never particularly liked, who could be both timid and insufferably hostile to anyone outside their circle, whose gossip cloaked itself in Christian righteousness. Maybe she secretly wanted a boyfriend to make out with. Maybe she was curious about all sorts of things she was not supposed to be curious about.

Grace had always yearned for something else. Different town, different school, different people. And now that she finally has the opportunity to possibly get it, she realizes she’s terrified. She realizes she has no idea what she actually wants.

What’s worse? Lying about who you are, or not knowing who you are at all?

Right now, faced with the uncertainty of starting a new school year at a new school in a new town, Grace would give anything for the simplicity of her old life. It may not have been satisfying in any meaningful way, it may have not been true, but at least it was safe. It was predictable. It was home. And those things sound pretty good right now.

But instead, here she is—in this weird place that doesn’t know if it’s a small town or a suburb, stuck in this purgatory between an unsatisfactory past and an unknown future. School starts tomorrow, Sunday is Mom’s first sermon at the new church, and nothing feels close to being okay. Nothing about this place feels like home.

Grace suspects she should be praying or something. She should be asking for guidance. She should be making room for God. But right now she has bigger things to worry about than God, like surviving junior year of high school.

Grace realizes what she’s feeling is homesickness. But how can someone be homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist anymore?

And how can someone start a new life when she doesn’t even know who she is?