The Painted Table(43)

She plops down onto the floor and leans back on her elbows. Idly wagging her feet back and forth, she tries to imagine what lies ahead. She is leaving an insular, unsatisfying home life, but it has been safe, making few demands. Mr. Mason’s convicting truism has flashed into her mind lately: “Dead fish flow with the stream.” The image sickens her. She does not want to be a dead fish any longer. She wants to get out of the home stream that goes nowhere. But she is afraid.

She might be ready for college academically, but in addition to learning, she supposes that college years are a time to cultivate new relationships and have fun. These things her family has not taught her, while books and movies have only given passive instruction. She hopes to forget her acutely self-conscious years trudging the hallways of Miller’s High. She critically views herself as unattractively large, which she is not, and boorish and dull, which, arguably, she can be. Can such a person ever have friends and fun?

Mulling the question, she surveys the familiar bedroom—the white-painted furniture, the homemade flowered curtains, the bedside table with its shelf of books. There she notices the black Bible presented to her at confirmation six years ago.

She was taught that the Bible contains the Word of God, so two or three times she tried to read it. She started at the beginning and soon became bogged down by its unfamiliar style and lists of odd names. The last time she opened it, she found that years before April had glued Green Stamps onto several pages, rather than into a Green Stamp redemption book. Irate, Saffee showed the desecrated pages to Joann, who breezily dismissed the deed. “Well, that just proves the Bible is a redemption book too!” she said, chuckling at her own wit.

Saffee considers that perhaps this is her last chance for some time to look into the old book, since she does not plan to pack it. Maybe there is some encouragement in it for her. Not knowing where to look, she decides to read whatever first meets her eye. She lets the book fall open, beyond the green pages, to near the middle, and reads:

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble;

Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.

She reads the sentence again, changing thou to you. You are my hiding place . . . She reads it a third time.

She knows that, much like her mother’s life, hers has been spent in hiding places, private and alone, not risking to unveil her innermost being to anyone. Perhaps not even to herself. The verse seems to say that there is some kind of protective place in God. A place away from trouble. This appeals to her reclusive tendencies. But what are songs of deliverance?

She recalls the tense night on the basement stairway, listening to her parents argue. There she heard God’s voice: Watch. Listen. Learn. Your life will be different. At the time, the promise did not seem to be a song, yet since then, it has lent a certain ever-so-personal lyric to her life. Intrigued, Saffee continues to read.

I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go:

I will guide thee with mine eye.

Saffee stares at the words. She had no idea the Bible would, or even could, communicate to her so directly. Instruct? Teach? Guide? How she desires these things. As strong as her eagerness to leave home is her fear of doing so. She has wondered if she will be able to maintain her comfortably safe distance from people. Will she be expected to speak in classes? Then there is the matter of a roommate. She attached a note to her application requesting a private dormitory room but is afraid it will not be honored.

She reads on.

Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle . . . Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about.

If God cares enough about her to communicate like this, at the very moment she needs it, maybe she can leave home less afraid. She tucks the Bible between layers of clothes in a suitcase.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT



WHAT’S IN A NAME?





In a sense, Saffee’s new life begins because of her name. “Kvaale” places her in the J through L group for five days of freshman orientation. Somewhere between Monday’s health forms and Friday’s convocation, she meets Mary, Mary Kvaale, who pronounces her own name as if it is an appellation of honor, even beauty.

“Hello. My name is Mary Kvaale,” she says, politely extending her hand, her serene, blue eyes looking confidently into Saffee’s. To others, it would have been such a minor thing. But Saffee is stunned. All her life she has painfully resented being stuck with this funny last name, and her first is not at all better. When she cannot avoid admitting to Kvaale, she distorts her mouth and quickly rolls her eyes, showing how distasteful it is to claim. In contrast, Mary speaks the very same name with seeming pride, suggesting that her Kvaale-ness is a sacred trust. Saffee appraises an aura of loveliness that envelops the girl simply because she speaks so softly, so self-assuredly.