Текст книги "Water Walker"
Автор книги: Ted Dekker
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
10
I was awakened the next morning by the creaking of my door, my thoughts still caught in a dream that had haunted me throughout the night. In the dream I was Alice, and I was in a special hospital made for people who had psychological problems. There I’d met a girl named Christy who thought she was trapped. I told her she could just walk out, but she didn’t believe me.
What a silly girl, I kept thinking. Just walk out, silly.
And that’s when I woke up to the creaking, half expecting to look over and see Christy at the door. Instead, I saw a woman standing in the doorway, smiling at me.
It took me a moment to remember that she was Kathryn, my birth mother. I was in her house.
It crashed into my mind all at once, like a data download. That and the events from last night by the dark lake.
Kathryn walked in wearing a black dress that looked new, then closed the door behind her. “Good morning, Eden. Did you sleep well?” She crossed to the window and pulled back the curtain. “Hmm?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She turned back to me. “Because today’s a very special day.” She sat down on the bed next to me. “This is the beginning of a new life for all of us. The old will pass away, behold, all things will become new.”
She said it with such assurance and beauty that I thought she might be right. Maybe there was some greater good that would come out of my being brought back to her.
Or maybe I was just too naïve to see the impossibility of that. I was still too confused to know which. But I did feel better than I had the night before.
“It’s time to get up,” she said. “I’ll help you make the bed and then I have something I want to share with you. Something very close to my heart. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
Together we made the bed per her instructions, folding the corners just so, smoothing the bedspread with the palms of our hands, and setting the pillow squarely at the top of the bed.
She inspected the room with a satisfied smile, then asked me to kneel down on one side as she crossed to the other side.
“Kneel down here?” I asked, standing across from her.
She removed her shoes and settled down to her knees, with her elbows on the bed. “Yes, right there, Eden. Just like me.”
I knelt down and rested my elbows on the bed.
“Fold your hands.”
I folded them, thinking she was going to lead me in a prayer.
“That’s my precious girl. Now I’m going to tell you about the old to help you understand why we need the new. Behold, the old wineskins will be made new. That’s what we’re going to do today, sweetheart. And you need to know why. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Good.”
She shifted her gaze and stared at the wall behind me.
“My father’s name was Byron Miller. We were wealthy. He was a religious man and served as a deacon in the church. But on the inside he was rotten to the core. He liked to gamble and run shady deals and when his sin caught up to him it was more than he could bear, so he killed himself. With his death, the blessing of God was vanquished from our lives. We went from being rich to dirt poor overnight.”
A far-off look had edged into her eyes and her smile fell away. She spoke in a near monotone, and I could feel the pain and bitterness in her voice.
“My mother’s name was Sarah, and she couldn’t manage the guilt and shame of her loss so she turned to drinking. It destroyed her and she couldn’t take care of me properly, so child services took me away from her. I ended up in an orphanage, just like you. I was eleven when they took me. It was like living in hell for me. I was a slave in Egypt and I hated it. So when I turned fourteen, I ran away.”
She paused, eyes faintly misted by tears as she thought back to her childhood.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She forced a smile. “It’s all right, sweetheart. All of that is going to be made whole now. Always remember that above all, one law can never fail: you reap what you sow. Some call it karma. But there’s more. You also reap the sins of your father, until all the generational sins of your bloodline have been atoned for. That’s how it works. My father brought a curse into our home and left me to suffer for his sin.”
She took a deep breath.
“I had a beautiful daughter who I named Eden and she was taken away from me. That was you, darling. When I got out of the institution, I nearly lost my mind looking for you, but you were nowhere I could find. I was at the end of myself when Zeke found me. I met Wyatt, your father. More than anything I wanted another baby, so I conceived and gave birth to a baby girl named Sarah, after my mother. But Sarah was stillborn.”
Her mouth had fallen, pulled down by a frown that drew deep lines in a weathered face that looked older than she’d appeared only a few minutes earlier. The weight of her burden was too much for her to bear alone, I thought. And that thought surprised me, because I didn’t normally arrive at those kinds of conclusions. I felt sorry for her; she was a deeply trouble soul.
“I’m sorry.”
She continued as if confessing a terrible shame—maybe that’s why she wanted us to kneel.
“I had failed twice, first with you and then with Sarah. I knew that I had to have a pure child that I could raise in righteousness to break the generational curse and make right what my father had made wrong. So I tried again, and when Bobby was born dumb, I knew that my womb was cursed forever. That’s when Zeke helped me see that trying to have another child wasn’t what God had for me. That’s why Bobby was born twisted. My place wasn’t to have another child; it was to rightfully reclaim the daughter who the devil stole from me. My firstborn, the pure one.”
Her eyes settled back on me and she smiled. “I had to find my Eden. You’re the one who will take away all of my sin and make right all of what has been made wrong. The years that the locusts have eaten, God will now restore sevenfold. You and I are one, what happens to you, happens to me. What God has made one, let no man tear asunder. Through your righteousness will come great blessing.”
My righteousness?
“You don’t have to understand all of it, sweetheart. I’ll help you stay pure. You’re a precious angel. You are my Garden of Eden, my lily of the valley, the lamb without blemish. If anyone ever tries to hurt you again, it will be over my dead body.” She paused. “Today, old things will pass away and all will be made new. Wyatt told me that you can’t remember anything before six months ago. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“So you see. Even that’s confirmation. Old things have been put away; even your mind has been made new. You are perfect. No one else on earth could be who you’re called to be. You really are my spotless lamb.”
It sounded terribly strange to me. But I also saw how the tenderness returned to her eyes and face, and being a person with only six months of life to recall, I wasn’t in a place to find immediate fault with anything she said, however strange it sounded.
“Today is the day of your first baptism,” she said. “I’ll need to bathe you and scrub your hands and feet, and wash your hair, prepare you for baptism.”
“I bathed last night,” I said.
“That was before you went out by the lake and defiled yourself. Even if you hadn’t, we will always have to take great care to make sure you’re perfectly clean before we offer you in baptism. Remember, you will reap what you sow. There will be some rules. We follow only the path of our crucified Savior. In doing so, we live in resurrection, cleansed of all sin. He will turn our filthy rags into robes of righteousness.”
She watched me with adoring eyes that made me feel a bit mixed up inside.
“Doesn’t that sound good to you, Eden?”
When I didn’t respond, she pressed gently.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It sounds a little scary,” I said.
“Of course it’s a little scary at first. Don’t you think Jesus was scared when he went to the cross? We all feel fear, that’s okay. As long as we are willing to wash it all away in obedience. Then we’re made whole. All of this will become clear as you walk the path God has made for you, sweetheart.”
She pushed herself off her knees and stood, then crossed to the closet, withdrew a black bathrobe, and laid it neatly on the end of the bed.
“Undress and put this on, then come to the bathroom. I’ve already drawn the water.”
11
IT TOOK Kathryn over an hour and two hot baths to clean me to her satisfaction. I felt awkward at first, as I had the night before. But then I began to think of it as being cared for, like people who went to a spa, although I had never been. When I thought in those terms, I found that I wasn’t bothered.
All the dead skin had to come off, she explained. Did I know that the body shed billions of flakes of skin every day? She claimed that 90 percent of all house dust came from the skin of those who lived in that house. She also said that the flesh was like an old, leather wineskin—something people used to carry wine in a long time ago. All of that old skin had to come off before I could be made new through my baptism.
So she scrubbed my feet and hands, and knees and all of my skin with different kinds of brushes, depending on how tough the skin was, because she didn’t want to harm me. Some of it hurt a little, but she said that all true cleansing came with at least a little pain or there was no gain.
She had me brush my teeth twice and she washed my hair three times, so that not one hint of oil remained. Cleaned my ears out with Q-tips and rubbing alcohol. Filed and trimmed the dead skin at the base of my nails—my cuticles, only she pronounced it like ‘cut’ icles. We had to ‘cut’ away the ‘icles’, she said.
When she was all done, she brought me a pair of white underwear, another black robe, this one newly washed, and some brand-new rain boots that she said had been purified. Then she asked me to sit on my bed and wait while she made sure everything was ready.
“Where are Bobby and Wyatt?” I asked. I hadn’t seen them since waking.
“They’re getting ready. They can’t see the bride before she comes to her wedding, now can they?”
“What wedding?”
“That’s you, sweetheart. I’m married to Wyatt, but God is your groom. Now you just wait right here until I come for you. Please don’t touch anything; it’ll defile your skin. All right?”
I didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter.
“Okay.”
She smiled warmly, and left, closing the door behind her.
Her comment about God being my groom was confusing, naturally, and once again I wondered if my staying might be a terrible mistake. But then I thought about Bobby. And I reminded myself that nothing bad had actually happened.
I was only playing a game, getting in costume and putting on a stage play. What harm was there in that, if it made everyone happy?
Kathryn came for me ten minutes later, put a blindfold on me because she wanted it to be a surprise, and led me out of the house, down the porch steps and across the yard, then through a door to what I assumed was one of the outbuildings I’d seen earlier.
I couldn’t mistake the excitement in her voice as she stood before me and asked if I was ready.
“I guess.”
Carefully, so as not to disturb my combed hair, she untied the blindfold, and withdrew it from my head.
I blinked in the dim light and looked around. We were in an old, small, wooden shed with exposed beams overhead and clean straw on the ground. Two metal candle stands each held a dozen white candles, which lit the room.
To my right sat a large porcelain bathtub with decorative iron feet. The porcelain was chipped in places but otherwise had been polished. It was filled to the brim with clean water.
Kathryn stood directly in front of me, dressed in her black dress, next to a table lit by a single candle. On the table were an open black-leather Bible, a brass bowl with some liquid in it, a clear glass with what looked like moonshine or some other clear fluid, a small golden ring, and a folded white robe.
Wyatt stood to my left, dressed in blue overalls, next to Bobby who was wearing a dark robe, but not like mine. His was old and ragged and dirty, which surprised me, considering how obsessive Kathryn was about cleanliness.
He watched me with pride, wearing that sheepish, crooked smile of his.
“Hello, Eden,” he said.
“Hush, Bobby,” Kathryn snapped. “Not a word from you.”
Bobby hushed, but his smile remained stuck to his face. Wyatt looked on kindly, hands folded at his waist.
Kathryn gave me an encouraging nod, lifted the Bible, took a deep breath, stared directly into my eyes, and spoke without looking at the pages opened before her.
“As it is written, though having made man in his image as his children, God found man’s ways wicked and intolerable. And what God had made lovely, he now detested, having no stomach for the wayward means of what he had made. Thus he hated his children and saw to confining them to a place of eternal torture without mercy. And there came into this world of hatred the Son of God, proclaiming that if those God had fashioned in his likeness bowed before God in fear and presented themselves as living sacrifices, the One who had fashioned them in love would forget his hatred of them and allow them to escape the torture awaiting them.”
She took another deep breath and this time blew it out through pursed lips.
“And so it came to pass that on the morning of the seventh day of the new creation, man brought the spotless lamb, a living sacrifice, before God. And with it, a goat.”
Her eyes shifted to Bobby.
“And on that goat God placed all of his hatred to satisfy his lust for vengeance.”
My heart leapt with frightful worry. I had never heard of this kind of God.
She turned back to me. “The lamb was found to be pure and acceptable in his sight. He took her as his bride, to be touched by nothing impure for the length of her life. And he commanded the lowly mother of the bride to tend her well and to present her pure before him on the seventh day so that his anger might not rise up again. In this way will God’s favor rest on the bride and on her household and return blessing sevenfold.”
One last breath, through her nostrils.
“Selah,” she said softly.
She dipped her head and set the Bible on the table.
“We present this bride to our Father to take away all of our sin, that we might be found acceptable in his sight and restored to our true birthright as the blessed children of God.”
She walked up to me and slipped the black robe off my shoulders.
“In removing the black robe, we shed the stain of sin from this spotless lamb of God.”
Kathryn released her grip on the robe and let it fall in a heap around my booted feet.
“Come with me, sweetheart,” she whispered, taking my arm. “Please do exactly as I say.”
I was wearing only my underwear and the rain boots and although it was hot outside, I suddenly found myself trembling.
“Sh . . . sh . . . sh . . . There now, it’s going to be okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She stopped at the edge of the tub.
“Step out of your boots and directly into the water without touching the ground, darling. You can’t dirty your feet and defile the water.”
Kathryn had said I wouldn’t be hurt, and nothing she’d done so far made me think she would lie to the daughter she’d gone to such lengths to find. The words and rituals were strange, to be sure, but then everything that had happened to me during the last six months was a bit strange.
So with Kathryn’s help, I pulled first one foot out of a boot and set it in the ice-cold water, and then the other. Now in the tub, gooseflesh rippled over my body and I stood shaking.
“Move closer to the front, sweetheart.”
I shuffled to the middle of the tub.
“Now sit down.”
I hesitated, then lowered myself into the cold water, shivering.
She smiled at me approvingly, placed her right hand gently around my throat and her left hand at my lower back.
“As God himself was lowered into the grave to appease his Father’s rage, so now we offer this lamb into the grave so that she might rise and be found worthy of God’s love.” To me: “Don’t struggle, darling.”
Without further warning, Kathryn applied pressure to my throat and pushed me back. I’d heard of baptism, of course, and so I already knew that she was going to push me under. I let myself go, not wanting to upset her.
The moment the water covered my face, I felt it fill my nose and panic ripped through me. My body jerked up.
But Kathryn wasn’t ready for me to come up yet. Her grasp on my throat tightened and she held me down.
For a moment, I relaxed, thinking that it would only last a second and then be over. But the second turned into two, and then four, and suddenly I wondered if she was actually going to drown me.
The instant that thought entered my mind, my survival instincts swallowed me and I began to struggle to get my head up and out of the water. But with my increased effort came increased pressure on my throat, holding me down.
I could hear Kathryn’s muffled voice crying out above me, and the sound pushed my fear deeper. I began to thrash, clawing for the edge of the tub, kicking my legs, screaming underwater.
Still, my mother held me down. I thought that I was going to drown. With each passing second I became more certain.
But I didn’t drown. Instead, just as my world started to go black, my head was suddenly pulled up and out of the water. I came up sputtering and gasping for breath.
Kathryn wrapped her arms around me and held me tenderly. But I was confused and I began to cry.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m right here. Sh, sh, sh . . . Mommy’s right here to hold you. That’s my girl, I’m right here for you. Sh, sh, sh . . .”
I let her hold my drenched head in her arm and slowly brought myself under control.
“It will be much easier if you don’t struggle the next time,” she whispered. “We’re almost done.”
When I had calmed, she pulled back and put her hand under my arm.
“Stand up with me.”
I pushed myself up with her assistance and stood in the tub. Kathryn retrieved the folded white robe from the table, opened it wide and told me to step out of the tub. She draped the robe over me and helped me slide my arms into the sleeves.
“You see? You’re perfectly whole,” she assured me. “You have nothing to fear. We’re almost done.”
She led me to the table, picked up the brass bowl, and dipped her fingers into the liquid.
“With this virgin oil, I anoint you, Eden, the spotless lamb cleansed of all unrighteousness.”
She raised her hand over my head and sprinkled some of the oil in my hair. Then retrieved the golden ring from the table and lifted my left hand.
“With this ring I do wed thee to God.”
She slid the ring over my finger. Then kissed each of my cheeks.
“What was lost is now found. What was dead is now risen from the grave. What lived in transgression is now made whole, a spotless bride now loved by the God of vengeance.”
She gazed lovingly at me for a long moment, then turned and walked to the wall. There was a whip with leather straps hanging from a nail. She unhooked it and walked back, face now flat, eyes on Bobby.
“And on the goat he transferred all of his anger for the goat he found unworthy of his love.”
She was going to whip Bobby? My heart froze, and I almost cried out. Maybe the fear had robbed my voice, I don’t know, but I watched in disbelief as Kathryn instructed Bobby to take off his robe and turn around.
He was smiling as he did it, eyes on me. Proud. Surely not aware of what horror might be headed his way.
“Bend over,” she instructed.
He obediently doubled at the waist and stood ready.
Kathryn gently whipped his back with the straps once. It was a symbolic beating.
“To this unworthy flesh I transfer all of God’s wrath.”
She whipped him again, gently. But her words cut to my heart.
“I confer all of our sin to the defiled one . . .”
Another lash.
“So that righteousness might be found in the pure bride.”
Again.
“I curse thee . . .
Again.
“I curse thee . . .
She laid the whip across his back seven times. On the third ‘I curse thee’ something in me changed. I was watching my young brother who was too naïve and innocent to fully grasp the emotional burden being placed on his back, and I realized something new.
I knew that I was home.
That I was home and I wasn’t going to leave.
I wasn’t going to leave because if I did, there would be no one to save Bobby, just like Kathryn had told him. I couldn’t abandon my poor, innocent brother. Ever.
What I’d half decided the night before was now sealed in my mind.
After Kathryn had laid seven lashes across Bobby’s back she told him that he could stand straight.
He turned around, smiling wide with crooked teeth, as proud as could be. And I smiled back, holding back a well of tears that wanted to cleanse my eyes of what they’d just seen.
I love you, Bobby. I will take care of you. I promise you, I will never leave you.
“It is finished,” Kathryn said, spreading her arms wide.
Wyatt started to clap and was joined first by Bobby, and then by me.
“It is finished.”
But really, it had all just begun.
