Mary Queen of Bees. Diane Glancy

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СКАЧАТЬ sisters in the same bed? When burning inside with longing? When burning with more than one longing? Or with a longing that branched like a tree with leaves falling when we lay in bed at night and smelled the stench the fire left in the parsonage? But with it also, the smell of new thatch.

      Ahaz saw the holy furniture of the tabernacle, my mother said—the laver, lampstand, table of bread, and other pieces. He had his priest, Urijah, made similar furniture. Only Ahaz rearranged the pieces. He made offerings to God in the wrong places. He cut off borders, and took the laver from the oxen that were under it, and put it on the pavement of stones—II Kings 16:17.

      There was not a multiplicity of worlds in the Lord. He was single in heart. This is what our mother said. We were wrong to want our own way. It always would be wrong. It was humanity’s way.

      Outside, the birds were screeching. It meant the cat was in the tree, or a bird not of their kind was encroaching. Maybe it was my own evil thoughts that would pervert the words of the Lord like Ahaz.

      This was the pain. If I could, I would dismantle what belonged to the Lord like Ahaz, and use it in my own way. I would be like my father. He didn’t have a head for cattle. He didn’t know the fields. He was overwhelmed by the children Susanna gave him. He couldn’t handle the numbers of us. He didn’t know how to handle our lives. He had dreams that scoured him. The neighbors were against him. His own congregation. His wife. His children. The world, it seemed, where he could not fit. Or the world was more than he could dwell in. He always thought beyond it. He dreamed of other places. He couldn’t pay his bills. He had his books he bought. Nothing we could eat. Nothing we could wear. Impractical. Impractical.

      In my despondence I read Psalm 22—My God why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from helping me? O God, I cry by day, and You do not answer, and by night but find no rest.

      Blessed fire. Return. Scatter us to other houses where we might play.

      There is something holy about fire. It had its wicked side when it burned houses, but even when it did, there was something holy about it.

      After the fire, our father bought travel books and talked of missionary work in China or the East Indies. He worked with his scorched manuscripts on Job. Every page more complicated than the last. He seemed bogged down in possibilities and interpretations. He could not let it go.

      Meanwhile we could not go out in society in the shabby clothes we wore. No one would know we studied scripture on our own.

      Epworth. Dear Epworth. The ground full of graves of the Wesley infants. Is there any way out of Epworth other than death?

      My father planted mulberry, cherry, pear and walnut trees after the fire. It took a year to rebuild the house and left us farther in debt. My mother and a servant planted beans, peas and Brussels sprouts in the garden.

      I could crawl as a bee, awkward with its heavy wings. I am silent in this wretched house filled with God. No one hears. Not even God who must be poor also, though He owns cattle, the Bible says—Psalm 50:10.

      The Israelites made offerings of animal sacrifice in the Old Testament, but that was before Christ offered himself in the New Testament. Now we make our offerings with the praises of our mouth. I praise You for my bent feet. I praise You for the stiffness of my back. I praise You for prison. I praise You for our father’s debt. I praise You for parents that only meet to make more children.

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