reconciliation

May walked down to the water barefooted. Her silhouette was shrouded in a long white dress and her long hair was pressed down flat against her shoulders. Her mother had told her not to wear any makeup, but she looked like a pig without it, so she had made sure to curl her lashes and paint them black before she left. 

Her father walked beside her with a heavy hand pressed against the small of her back. She hoped the sweaty fingers wouldn’t leave a mark on the cotton. May fidgeted, but couldn’t shake it. A small group of followers lingered a few steps behind, softly murmuring amongst themselves. May looked back at them over her shoulder and Silas caught her eye. His hair was pulled back into a bun and he’d taken his earring out. 

Silas was her father’s second in command. A young pastor-in-training who’d served two years in the navy. He was honorably discharged when he broke his back. When he broke his back he found God. He ran the church’s youth group, that was how May met him. Sometimes he drove her home and asked her to do little things like stand up straighter or wear her hair in a ponytail. 

May was unclean. A neighbor saw her with someone or other and then a classmate heard from somebody that she’d been with someone else. Nothing could be confirmed and May kept quiet. Today they were washing away her sins. She would be dirty again soon. She had plans to see Silas that evening after dinner. They were going bowling with the other teenagers in the group. 

When they reached the water, May’s father bid her to follow him in. He took her head in his hands and began to pray. The crowd bowed their necks and prayed along with him. May watched Silas through her curtain of hair, his eyes closed and his mouth muttering in fervor. She looked up at the treeline, the green kissing the blue summer sky. 

Then her father’s hands grew firm and pushed her head beneath the water. She hadn’t had a chance to breathe in and the force knocked the wind out of her. May held still beneath the surface for what felt like a long time. She watched the edges of her vision blacken and felt her head go fuzzy before her father pulled her up by the shoulders and dunked her again. 

May didn’t think about heaven. But she had always been fascinated by hell. She imagined a pit of fire. A jail with rows and rows of cells. A river of acid. Rotting bodies and screaming souls. She saw God as a judge with a giant gavel made of light. May thought that God must be a certain type of man. To take a soul out of one type of hell and throw it into the next. Maybe someone like her father could understand. Maybe someone like Silas. But it was not something May could reconcile.