Godsend - Emily Strempler
Content Note: Abuse of a minor in a religious context
The church conference room smells of cleaner and sugary cheap donuts. She’s only a girl, and barely fourteen, adult voices clamouring around her as she stares into her hands. Presses her fingernails, one at a time, hard, into her palms, squeezing the skin until the edge leaves an indent moon. The meeting was supposed to be for her. This whole thing, she thinks, was meant to be about her.
The men talk, to each other. The head pastor, her father, the man — her man, she likes to think — his pastor, his cell leader. “We’re in this together,” he’d said, before. But now he’s sitting all the way down at the other end of the table, flanked by his own spiritual leaders. He hasn’t spoken to her, barely looks at her. He rants, talks with his hands, about “heavenly guidance” and “living up to the vision”, talks about her, but never to her.
When they’d questioned her, earlier — basic things: how they’d met, when they’d talked, what he’d said and done — he’d kept his head down, picked at the edge of the tabletop, looking like he wanted to disappear.
Was she something to be ashamed of?
Nothing she’s been taught, her whole life, inside or outside of this building, has told her why any of this might be wrong. As far as she can tell, she’s done everything right. She’s trying to do everything right.
Is it because she isn’t the first?
She knows she wasn’t the only one. She’s not stupid. Just young. And it isn’t like he lied. He’d been honest about his mistakes, and she’s been taught to forgive, and forgive, and forgive. If it comes from God, they said, it isn’t wrong. And he came from God, didn’t he?
No one has asked her how she feels about this — not being the first — or anything else. They talk over her and past her. They talk about his position, his ministry, his relationship with God, until she wishes she could be anywhere else. What about her feelings? Her life? Their relationship? Her relationship with God?
But no one asks. No one ever asks. And when they put the question to him — when they ask him if he would prefer to “step back from his position” while they work this — her — out, or “put this” — her — “on hold” until a more appropriate time — maybe sixteen? — he answers without even meeting her eyes. Puts her on hold. Like a call.
The blow is a ringing between her ears. Is this a breakup? The men are happy, congratulating themselves on a problem well solved, a job well done. She sits. Looks at her hands. Watches the future he’d promised dissolve through her fingers.
It was always about him.
Originally published by CLOVES Literary, November 2022
Emily Strempler (she/her) is a queer, German-Canadian, ex-fundamentalist writer of inconvenient fiction. Raised in a deeply conservative prairie community, she married at eighteen before leaving the church and moving out west. Her work can be found in numerous publications, including Broken Pencil, The Bitchin' Kitsch, and Agnes & True.
