Post by EZRA JACOB MCDOWELL on Oct 25, 2014 11:16:30 GMT -5
Ezra J. Mcdowell,
36 | HETEROSEXUAL | MARRIED | PARAMEDIC | LOCAL | ANDREW LINCOLN
I JUST WANT YOU TO SEE WHAT I HAVE MADE INSIDE THESE LINES, IT'S AS GOOD AS I CAN BE.
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You are three and it's the first summer you can sort of remember. The grass is springy and damp beneath your bare feet. The sky should be blue, but it's overcast and grey, which lends the heat a kind of oppressive muggy quality. There is some celebration at the church, although you don't understand what, and your eldest sister is leading you and your other siblings towards it. You can hear the dull singing of hymns in the distance. You are the youngest, so you've been granted the privilege of holding her hand. Every so often, she turns back and smiles at you. Your big sister is your favourite person in the world. She is always kind to you. She is always willing to hold your hand. You are seven and the walls in your house are paper thin. You can hear your parents talking in low voices two rooms away as clearly as if they were stood right over your bed. Most nights, you lie awake and listen to them murmur, and to the sweet cacophony of your sisters all breathing and snuffling out of time. Most nights, you lie awake because you're hurting. Sometimes it is your skin that hurts, because it is prone to dryness and is liable to crack and bleed. Sometimes it is your bones, because the Amish life is a physically demanding one, and you are still small and trying to grow. Tonight, it is the stinging welt that splits the tender skin between your shoulder blades. Whichever way you turn, you end up putting inadvertent pressure on the wound and making yourself wince. You keep having to readjust your sheet, because your back is faintly weeping blood and it keeps getting stuck to you. Your tongue is starting to hurt because you keep having to bite down on it to stop yourself crying. You cannot cry. The walls are so thin that he will hear you if you cry, and that is a satisfaction you will not give. You know you deserve this, but still. It is your father's way of teaching you a lesson, and the pain will be good for you in the long run. You will learn not to be so impudent, to not speak out of turn and interrupt your father when he is talking, and your newfound respect will help you to live a more modest life. It will be good for you. It will bring you closer to God. And yet you don't want to learn. Or at least, you don't want to cry. You don't want your father to know how much he has hurt you. Even if that means that tomorrow he will hit you again to make sure the message sinks in. Even if it means that he will hit you a thousand times on a thousand different days until you are better. You will not cry. You are ten and you are sat between your mother and your eldest sister in church. They have taken to sitting on either side of you to act as a buffer between you and the rest of the family. If you are allowed too close to your father, he will lose his temper at your constant fidgeting and you will pay for it behind closed doors. If you are allowed too close to your other siblings, you will accidentally incite them to misbehave with your restlessness... and again, you will pay for it behind closed doors. You cannot help yourself. You are a bad child. Even your mother tends towards irritation when she is beside you, and is constantly putting her hand on your knee with ever increasing force to stop you jiggling your leg. Only your eldest sister is entirely impervious to your agitation, and merely occasionally turns to give you a fondly disapproving look. Today, she is not even doing much of that. She is distracted. Her head is devoutly downcast, her hands folded modestly in her lap, but you can see her smiling. And if you lean forward to look past her, you can see the boy across the aisle smiling at her. And you know, even if you do not understand it, that their smiles are interconnected and that they are sharing something intimate and bizarre and flirtatious, and on some level it upsets you. Your sister is almost old enough for boys to start courting her. Sooner rather than later, she will marry and set up house with her husband. The thought of her leaving you makes you feel sick. The thought of her not sitting beside you in church, and holding your hand while you walk from place to place, and quietly changing the dressings on your welts when you've been punished... it frightens you. Because who will do those things when she's gone? When you all stand up to file obediently out of the church and the boy from across the aisle tries to approach her, you slip your hand defiantly into hers and scowl at him. Marking your territory. She is yours. Just for a little while longer. You are twelve and you're supposed to be helping with the harvest, but you're not. Your skin is bad. Perhaps it's the dryness of the early autumn or something in the crop which disagrees with you, but your hands have swollen again. They're painful. They keep cracking and splitting, and it is agony to touch anything. You have managed to climb as far as the lowest hanging branch in one of the trees in a largely disused orchard, awkwardly dragging yourself up with your elbows and forearms so that you don't further irritate your hands. You sit with your back against the trunk and doze, until you abruptly jerk awake to the sound of your name. Of footsteps trampling through the dying grass and half-rotted fruit. Of your father, breathing hard, calling your name again in irritation. They must have discovered your absence. There is a moment where you are absurdly still, torn between the Amish desire to climb down and repent and take your punishment, and a much more personal and individual desire to save your own neck. Self-preservation wins out, and after that pause, you don't think you've ever moved so fast in your life. You are out of that tree within seconds, and without even thinking, without stopping to consider what you're doing, you take off as fast as you can. You are sprinting across the orchard away from the sound of his voice, because you know if he catches you, you're in for it. You know you would rather just keep running forever than turn back and face whatever it is that he has in store for you. It is a panicked, careless animal instinct kind of plan, but you can see no other option so... You keep running. You run long past the point of sense, and then slow to a jog, and then finally a weary kind of trudge. You are halfway between the Amish compound and the nearest town when you're picked up by a patrolling cop car and returned to your family. Your father beats you so badly you are bedridden for three days. He stops your sister from seeing to you. Perhaps the agony will teach you not to be such a lazy coward. You are fifteen and you're supposed to be learning a trade. Your schooling is over, and so is "your easy childhood", according to your father. He is a carpenter and you are his only son, so you will learn woodworking from him. This means long hours sequestered together in his work shop. The sawdust disagrees with your skin. And your lungs. And your eyes. And everything. But mostly your skin. It isn't long before your hands are swollen and splitting again. Regardless, your father will not let you stop working. He is also furious when you bleed on his tools. You cannot win. He lets you take twenty minutes for lunch each day, although he always seems disappointed when you actually go, as if he expects you to follow in his footsteps and work right through the day without pause. You cannot match his devotion. You do not care enough. In fact, oftentimes, as soon as you are out of his dingy claustrophobic workspace, you think about running away again. About never coming back. Please God, anything to escape from another afternoon of splinters and savagery. You are sixteen and you are still apprenticing under your father. You live for your lunchbreaks, which you spend sitting on the fence overlooking the schoolyard with a small gaggle of your former school friends. You eat fruit smuggled from the orchards and swap sandwiches diligently packed by mothers and sisters, and you all eagerly discuss and spy on the handful of girls who happen to wander past. Many of them are quite lovely, and it is expected of all of you to start courting soon, so you're all weighing up the benefits of potential brides. While you can objectively see that many of your female peers are pretty and can personally vouch for the fact that many of them are nice, you are not especially interested in them. Not a single one. You've seen your vibrant older sisters marry and become quiet, dormant, lifeless. You do not want to marry a modest girl who, like your mother around your father and your sisters around their husbands, scuttles from your approach like a frightened mouse. You do not want an Amish wife to give you unhappy child after unhappy child. You once made the mistake of expressing this thought in front of your parents. It caused a row. Your mother is petrified that your lack of desire to marry and have children might mean you're a latent homosexual. Your father simply wants to know why it is that you think you're so much better than everyone else, why you think there is so much more in this world for you than there is for your peers, why it is not enough for you to live a Godly life. You wish you could explain that it's not that you think you're special. You don't want more. All you want is what everyone else has out in the real world - the freedom to choose how you live. Trying to explain this to your father would only result in pain. You have long learnt to keep your mouth shut around him. You are eighteen and you have still not officially been baptised into the church. It is a source of great shame to your parents, who cannot fathom why you are still unmarried and why you cannot master your trade and why you will not commit to God. Your mother still fears that you're gay. Your father has become ever fonder of criticising you now that the whole community feels it's justified. He likes to tell people of your arrogance, your stubbornness, your immaturity and have them commiserate with him. None of the other community elders can fathom having such a failure for a son. You don't know why you're still here. Why do you linger, when there is nothing for you here? You tell yourself you stay for your sisters, because you love them, but they are hardly the sisters you grew up with. You tell yourself you stay for your friends, but they're nearly all married, baptised, productive members of the community and there... is a certain shame in being associated with you for them now. You tell yourself you stay for your nieces and nephews, but even those small bright faces are wary when they look at you. You are a cautionary tale to them. Do your chores, say your prayers, listen to your elders, or you'll turn out like Uncle Ezra. Perhaps your father is right, and you are lazy and cowardly. The world is too big and scary to venture out into. You are not brave enough to be English, but you are certainly not Godly enough to be Amish. You do not know if there is a place for you at all... The day you leave the community, you do not actually intend to go. It is much like that day when you are twelve, where you start running and you don't want to stop. One day, on your lunch break from your father's workshop, you just start walking. And you keep walking. And your twenty minutes expire but you just keep going. You walk right the way into town, and you use the tiny amount of English money you have to buy a bus ticket, and you walk onto that bus and that's it. It never once crosses your mind to turn around and go home. You are nineteen and your wandering has lead you to New York city. You write one letter to your family in case they are worried that you're gone. You know they won't be. You know they are more likely to be relieved. You know you are probably already considered shunned. But you write anyway. Just one letter, to your eldest sister, because you know of all your relatives that she is the only one who might read it. You write almost nine pages in total. You tell her about the city, about how huge it is and how many people there are. You tell her how you're living right now in a homeless shelter, but that you have a job - that you work on construction sites, that your father's carpentry lessons are serving you well - and that soon you hope to have enough money to find a real place to live. You tell her how strange the English are and how there is no God here and how... how out of place you are. How you still worry that there is no place for you, because you do not fit anywhere. Your sister is pregnant currently and you invite her to come and live with you once you have a home, to have the baby in New York and raise your niece or nephew English. You will look after them, you promise. You know it's a long shot, but you swear to God you will look after them and they will have such a good life here with you. You are lonely, and you need someone. And she must be unhappy in her life, she must, because she is too lively and too good to be trapped back at home, but she can be happy here. Finally, you tell her how much you love her, how much you have always loved her, and how grateful you are for the kindness she always showed you. You get a very short letter in response. Six words. Do not write to me again. You are twenty three and it is hard to believe that it's been four years. It's hard to believe how your life has changed. You are like a real world person most of the time. You eat junk food and watch television and you learned how to drive. It is very rare now that you get any funny looks for not understanding how things work or for expressing bizarre opinions. When you first got to the city, you were scandalised. You almost had a heart attack the first time you saw a billboard advertising lingerie - you had never seen a woman in her underwear before, and yet there was one fifty feet high, shameless, out there for everyone to see. Now you barely even blink at nudity. You have stopped working on construction sites, because your skin got worse again. You have learnt now that you have consistent access to English doctors and modern medicine that you have psoriasis. It is so much easier to ignore now that it has a name and a description and you have a topical steroid cream to stop it getting the point of blood and infection. You wonder if perhaps you could have learnt how to be a proper carpenter if you'd known this during your long apprenticeship, and if your father would care that you're so much better now. You suppose it doesn't matter anymore. Now you work as a cab driver. Driving is such a novelty to you still that you enjoy it probably more than you should. You talk too much to your patrons. Most New Yorkers don't like that. The first time someone swore at you, you were very surprised indeed. You're getting used to it now though. To profanity and drunkenness and all other manner of sins. Once, you had a hooker in the back of your cab. You did not know what this was until she explained it to you. The world is a strange place. You are twenty four and you're still a cab driver. You still enjoy it. You have a regular fare now, a crotchety old woman who you pick up and take to the hospital every Tuesday afternoon for blood tests. She likes that you talk to her, she says, because nobody else does. You kind of know the feeling, as nobody really talks to you either. Except for people in the back of your cab telling you to shut up, and sometimes the people in church. You like your old lady. So much so that you usually wait outside the hospital for her to be done so you can take her home again. You're not sure you like the idea of her getting just any cab with a non-talkative driver who won't ask her how her appointments went. It is loitering outside the outpatient department that you meet your future wife. She works in the hospital. Her name badge says she's Teresa, but she insists that you call her Tess. She is easily the most beautiful girl you've ever seen, and when you tell her so within the first five minutes of meeting her, she laughs for a really long time and tells you that you're so earnest that she almost believed you. That first time you meet she refuses to go out with you, but you see her again and again, week after week and you start to wear her down. Soon you notice that sometimes she is waiting outside the hospital for you to pull up. She begins to coordinate her coffee breaks to your visits. After three months, she kisses you on the cheek when it's time for you to drive your fare back home. The following Tuesday, you ask her out on a date again, and this time she says yes. You are twenty six and you are finally marrying the love of your life. Finally. You first propose to Tess after four months of dating. You were still working on an Amish courtship schedule, having never dated at all in the outside world, and you felt as though four months was a very long time. She politely declines and tells you to maybe ask again in a little while. You manage to wait until just over a year before you ask again, and this time she accepts on the condition that you agree to a longish engagement. But now, nearly two years after that first date, you finally marry in a small ceremony before God and most of your loved ones. The bride's side is overflowing. The groom's, comparatively empty. You feel your family's absence, but you are so happy it's only a dull ache. You honeymoon for a week in her parents' summer home in Martha's Vineyard, and when you return, you immediately sit down and write another letter to your sister. You tell her all about Tess and ask about her family in return, sure you must have many more nieces and nephews now. You say you would love to meet them, and you would love for her to meet your wife. Three months pass before you receive her response. This time, eight words. Ezra, please. Do not write to me again. You are twenty eight and your life is everything that ten years ago, you never thought it could ever be. You are happy. You are settled. You have found your place in this world, and it is right beside your wife. Nothing seems to trouble you with her around. Your marriage is a great one. You are very much in love, and the two of you lead a full and challenging life. At your wife's encouragement, you change careers again. She helps you get a place on her hospital's EMT training program. You like the idea of helping people in need. Always have. It is something you have come to accept about yourself since leaving your community: your father was not right about you. You are not lazy and proud and selfish. Perhaps you are those things by Amish standards, but out in the real world, you're good. Insufferably good, almost. You spend much of your free time volunteering with your church, or helping raise funds for Tess' hospital. It makes you feel better. You are closer to God through your good deeds in New York than you ever were back in your community. When you finally receive your qualification and are able to start serving the public, it is one of the happier days of your existence. With the slightly better pay, you and Tess are able to move into a bigger apartment. You like it because it has a second bedroom. When you start renting the place, Tess takes one look at that second bedroom and one look at your face and says No.. While you're moving in, she insists the whole time that it will be a guest room and not a nursery. Babies have long been a point of contention between you two. Perhaps it is the Amish in you again, but you can't imagine not having a family now that you're married to the right woman. A huge family. You want sons and daughters, a dozen of them, and you want a home filled with people and noise and happiness and life. You don't know what Tess wants, just that whenever you bring up the subject, she pulls a face and starts talking about something else. It is not until six months after you move in and the guest bedroom has still not been decorated that she finally announces with a heavy sigh that you're probably not even going to have any guests, so you might as well just go ahead and turn it into a nursery. You don't know why she changes her mind, but you're glad she does. It feels like the final piece of the puzzle falling into place. You are thirty and you did not know it could be this hard to make a baby. You thought it was just something that was supposed to happen. After nearly a year of trying to conceive naturally, and a year of fertility doctors and ovulation schedules and last resort holistic remedies, you dip into your savings to try IVF. After two failed attempts, finally, eureka! You're so happy you don't know what to do with yourself. You take good care of Tess. You try not to let her stand on her feet too long, and you run around fetching her things that she never even asked for. By the end of the first trimester, when it comes time to tell everyone that you're expecting, you can hardly contain yourself. You want to shout it from the rooftops. Watching her belly expand is the most amazing thing, and you weep unashamedly at the first ultrasound. Seeing your baby's heartbeat changes your life. It recenters your entire universe. Tess, amused by your overexcitement, has to keep reigning you in. She makes you wait until you find out the gender before she agrees it's time to set up the nursery. It's a girl, so the pair of you spend a week painting in pink and setting up pink furniture and flipping through the pink pages in the baby name book. By the end of the second trimester, Tess' doctors are worried about some of her vital signs and put her on bed rest. You spend nights lying beside your wife with your hand on her bump, feeling for kicks and praying... just in case. You're sure nothing will go wrong, but it is never a bad thing to indulge in prayer... Tess goes into labour at twenty seven weeks pregnant. Your baby is born tiny and blue and frail, and immediately whisked away to be put on a ventilator. She lives just six painful hours, and every single heartbeat is a struggle. You are there when she silently expires, your fingertips pressed to the glass of her incubator. The nurse allows you both to hold her, once, briefly, before they take her to the morgue. She is still warm with potential life. You posthumously name her Hannah, and she is buried in a coffin the size of a shoebox. Something of you gets buried with her. You know everything happens for a reason, but you have never been so angry at God. You are thirty two and after eighteen months of marriage counselling because you and your wife could not bear to look at each other, you finally feel ready to try again. It takes another two rounds of IVF. You are both cautious in your excitement this time. When Tess miscarries in her first trimester, she decides never again. You do not push her. You don't think you can do this again either. There has already been enough heartbreak. It takes another six months of marriage counselling before you can start sleeping in the same bed again. Shortly thereafter, you donate all the baby furniture to charity and turn the nursery into a guest room. You are thirty five and life feels okay again. You have begun to acknowledge that children are not on the cards for you, and you're beginning to accept that this is okay. You are happy. You are happy with Tess. You are lucky to have her - not all people are so lucky to have someone they love this much. It would be greedy of you to ask for any more than this. It is a week before your thirty sixth birthday that you earn a promotion you've been working towards for quite some time. You've been slowly taking exams and clocking up work hours to make the leap from EMT to paramedic, and you're officially there. This is a good thing. It means more responsibility, more opportunities to help, and another jump in salary. You and Tess celebrate with a bottle of wine, and talk about what you'll do with the extra money. You discuss moving again. Perhaps you'll find a nicer apartment, in a better neighbourhood. Just the one bedroom. That's all you need. It's the unspoken undercurrent to the conversation that perhaps you'll both feel better if you put all this family business behind you, accept your life as a childless couple, find other things to fill your encroaching middle age with. You're not sure you're quite ready for that, but you pretend to entertain the thought. You listen to her expound the virtues of a beautiful studio with a balcony in some arty museum district, and make affirmative noises. You have just agreed to go to an open house this weekend when irony strikes, and the phone rings, and Tess answers it only to turn to you and tell you that your niece is on the line. She's been excommunicated. No pressure, but you're all that she has in the world. Can you come and get her? You are thirty six and you are now more sure than ever that God works in mysterious ways, because after eight years of trying to fill it, you finally have an occupant in your guest room. You had never met your niece until you turned up, confused and disorientated, at Lancaster police station in the middle of the night and collected her. She reminds you so strongly of your sister at first that you're not sure what to say to her. She is your sister, before she turned strange and cold to you, and started refusing your letters. It is only when you get her home with you to New York that you begin to start appreciating her as an entire separate entity. You love your niece. You love her both because she is your sister and because she isn't. Because she is going through what you went through and because she is doing it so much better. Most of all, you love her because she is family, and between your wife and your niece and yourself, the apartment is full of people and noise and happiness and life. It is not necessarily an easy adjustment to make, suddenly being responsible for a teenage girl amongst your other commitments and the ebb and flow of your already busy life, but it's okay. You're getting there. You're figuring it out. And you know that everything will fall into place eventually. It always does, one way or another. |
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