The Painted Table(52)

Saffee is quite sure her parents expect her to return home during the summer break. But by February, she knows that she will not. She can never go back “home.” Academics and a fledgling social life have ushered her into a different world. She refuses to consider that by staying away she is abandoning April.

During Saffee’s second year at school, April writes:

Life here is crazier than ever. You won’t believe what happened now—Mother and Daddy went up to the church and signed some papers to withdraw membership from the Methodist church! They say I can’t go to Sunday school or youth meetings.

Here’s what happened. Daddy was out of town (I hate it when he’s gone), and when I came home from school, Rev. Blakley was here arguing with Mother. She told me to go to my room and shut the door, so I did, but their voices were loud so I could still hear. Mother insisted that the end of the world is coming soon and Rev. Blakley had better do his part to warn the congregation. She said she hears information from “those who know” and that she’s a messenger to warn people, especially him. Rev. B. told her that she’s just an ordinary person and not a prophet, and she shouldn’t listen to voices, and the Bible says only God knows when the end of the world is coming.

Then he read her some verses out of the Bible. I only remember a little of the one that made her the maddest. It was something about when she dies she’s going to fade away and wither just like flowers and grass, but that God’s Word will still be around. She shouted that she will never be dead grass because dead grass is for burning and God told her she won’t burn and he better leave the house FAST! Which he did. She probably chased him out with her crutch. I stayed in the bedroom ’til suppertime. That’s when she told me none of us will be going to the church anymore.

When Daddy came home she made Rev. B. sound really bad and he believed her. Now he’s mad at the minister too!

Saffee, it was so upsetting. Write to me—at Marilyn’s.





Saffee writes back, “Hang on, little sister, your life will get better too before long. College in just three years.” That must seem like an eternity to April, but what else can she say? She encourages her to attend a different church.

Even though their mother has never embraced much that is offered by the organized church, and often distorts truth, Saffee wants to believe that her trust in Jesus Christ is genuine. Saffee rarely thinks to spend much time talking to God, but the mounting tensions at home that April writes about remind her that He is available. She begins to pray regularly for both parents and April, chastising herself that this has not been her habit.




Saffee checks the clock and scans her biology notes one more time. “Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology”—a quote from her professor the first day of class. She glances at a few underlined words: mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, evolutionary lineage. The last term is underlined twice. Some things about biology puzzle her. She entered college not doubting, “In the beginning God . . .” But how does He fit into all of this? In particular, does “evolutionary lineage” mean that she is trapped by a predestined genetic makeup to be like her mentally ill mother? What about “Your life will be different”? In spite of this promise, she’ll have to write a test the professor agrees with.




The last Sunday morning in November is clear and cold. Bare tree branches and street signs look as brittle as icicles. Saffee and Gloria hurry along neighborhood streets wondering why they had thought sheer hose would keep their legs warm and they didn’t need boots. Their black pumps skirt drifted snow. What was it that Joann had said when they shopped for school clothes? Something about womanhood succumbing to outrageous whims of fashion. Saffee chuckles to herself.

In her fourteen months away from parental expectation, Saffee has never accompanied her roommate to church, enjoying instead Sunday morning slumber, completely alone in the dorm room they now share for a second year. But after receiving April’s letter about the sisters’ involuntary excommunication from their Miller’s Ford church, today it seemed important to join her roommate on this frigid hike.

She’s never shared with Gloria, or anyone at school, for that matter, that her mother has psychiatric problems. Wouldn’t they look at her through different eyes, perhaps attribute every mannerism, maybe every word, to the possibility that she too must be . . . crazy? Other parents visit their offspring at school once in a while. Saffee is good at making excuses for hers—obligations, terribly busy all the time, you know.

Inside the chilly sanctuary, congregants wear their coats. Saffee heads for a back pew, but Gloria prods her halfway down to the front. Unfamiliar with Lutheran liturgy, Saffee mimics her roommate, like she still does concerning many aspects of life.