vi. sundays

On Sundays we go to church. Our mother captures us to wrangle us into crisp floral dresses and pull a brush through our hair until we look something like other, nicer children. We sit as dressed as strangers in pews, trying our best to stay still as we are told of an incomprehensible god and how he wants us to behave. The relief of being sent down to Sunday school halfway through service is overwhelming.

In the musty basement we are fed canned apple juice and listen to our mother and the other Sunday school teachers tell us stories about technicolour dream coats and water from wine. We are told parables to teach us the lessons we must know to be good children. I memorize bible verse but cannot tell what they mean. We are told to obey and to plead forgiveness.

We are not very good at either of these things.

On days that are not Sunday, we do not wear dresses. Nice clothes do not belong on us, our adventures too hard for fine things to survive. We are far better suited to our jeans and overalls, to hand-me-downs already worn in, that dirt and slime and blood will not ruin. Our hair is cut short so that it might be more manageable, though still at times our mother must simply cut out unsalvageable knots.

Strangers who meet us ask our mother how old her sons are. They do not expect such wild, untamed looks from little girls.

When she is six my sister screams and cries and fights until the hairdresser will not cut her hair anymore. Our mother allows that it may grow out no longer than her shoulders, and a peace is found. We other two are not so lucky, and continue to receive mushroom cuts for many years following.

Still, it is not as though we particularly care. Hair is only one of many things we are teased for at school. We make few friends, only those wild things like us, who know nothing of places with sidewalks.

Even with these friends, we have little companionship but each other. So deep in the woods we do not have the luxury of after school visits, of weekly sleepovers with neighbourhood children. There are no neighbourhood children to be had, with acres and acres of land between every house. The nearest children our age kilometres away. We see them on Sundays in bible study.

We do try to be good children. We obey when we remember too, when our restlessness does not demand action from us. When we are not poked at by children who do not expect us not only to push back, but to conquer. We learn to keep to ourselves. Sisterhood is all we have. We are best friends. We are worst enemies. Our bonds are strange to outsiders. We do not have the gentle companionship or teasing rivalries we see modeled in our cousins. We will gladly die for each other. We will try to kill each other.

When we fight, we fight like animals, like children possessed by wicked spirits of tooth and claw. We tear into each other leaving bruises and blood from bites and body checks.  Our mother is exhausted with us. She drags us to bible study and bible camp and tries to tame these wild creatures into biddable children. She teaches us to say our prayers before bed, to show reverence and gratitude towards god.

We were not built for reverence. We delight in dirtying our Sunday dresses, playing in the church yard in the rain. We fill our pockets with frogs and bugs and try to smuggle them with us. The wonders of hills and trees hold more awe than wooden walls and dusty stained glass windows. In the forest we dig up old bones, buried only by sediment and circumstance. We do not mean to frighten other children by showing them off. These children do not live like us. They are the children of our parent’s friends, who live in towns and cities far from the wilderness. Who do not know where a hamburger comes from, and scream at the gift of a cow molar.

At dinner, we say grace, thanking god for the food that we planted and fed and tended and slaughtered. The deliverance of these things to our table does not seem like much of a miracle. More often than not, I forget my bedtime prayers if unprompted.

Our mother puts us in piano lessons. We are good children there, who are eager to learn and to play. Our restless energy can be wrought on the piano keys, learning to play songs that are harder and faster. We do well enough in school, and cause only a little trouble. We still scare other children, on occasion, but most grow used to us. We join sports and drama club and learn to play well with others.

Our mother stops teaching bible study. Our summers become filled with work, no vacation bible school to be had. We become more biddable children, time wearing down our roughest edges. Our mouths learn to hurt with words instead of teeth. Our nails become red with paint instead of blood. Our feet still find paths through the trees that no one else knows, but we learn to walk sidewalks as well.

I do not remember when we stopped going to church. I do not miss it. We spend our Sundays in the forest.