Chapter 24 #2
Overwhelmed by shame, I felt only worse after neighbors dropped by to pray for me.
I was mortified when Mom took me to see the local Pentecostal ringleader Adger McKay.
Supposedly, he could heal people, and Mom figured it was worth a try since nothing else was working.
I didn’t discuss my eating disorder with her, but obviously it was worse than ever.
While she waited in the car, I sat down in Adger McKay’s living room, about as ill at ease as I’d ever been. He said he could make me whole again. He could cast out my eating disorder as if it were a demon. But that was possible only if I let him lay on hands to fill me with the Spirit.
I needed to accept the gift of tongues or he couldn’t help me. I remember what that made me feel.
Controlled.
Exploited.
Captured like a butterfly.
He looked downright evil, pinning me with his eyes, his intense face gaunt, his nose sharp like a knife.
“No, thank you,” I said, getting up from the sofa.
“As you wish.” He got up too, his demeanor turning cold.
He died two years later, and I heard people tried to raise him from the dead for three days before giving up.
I don’t know if that’s true. But it wouldn’t surprise me.
After my encounter with him, I asked Mom not to take me to see anybody else.
Nobody was going to make me better, and I needed to be left alone.
She was as helpless with me as I’d been with her. I isolated, taking walks only after dark, setting out alone wearing my black trench coat to keep warm while melting into the shadows. I’d ponder my trainwreck of a life and wonder how I’d managed to derail like this. Why was I such a loser?
Once a local celebrity, an overachiever who made straight A’s, I’d dropped out of college.
I thought of myself as a has-been who never was.
I’d been locked up in a hospital for two months at the expense of $5,500.
That was the equivalent of some $30,000 today, an insurmountable amount. I asked Dad if he would pay it.
Paperwork was drawn up for my brothers and me.
He gave each of them the equivalent of what was outstanding on my hospital bill in exchange for being written out of his will.
That was our share of his estate, and we’d get nothing else.
John used his money to buy a pickup truck.
I don’t remember what Jim did with his. I got nothing, but at least my bill was paid in full.
After all this, and here I was no better.
I couldn’t control what I ate or didn’t, and by now I’d accepted there was no cure.
My failure at tennis had broken my heart and shattered my dreams. I felt like the biggest screwup on the planet.
I had nothing to look forward to, and wished I were dead.
I was thinking about it a lot, not saying a word to anyone.
I’d imagine disappearing into the woods and ending my life.
I had no purpose. I was ruined exactly like Mom said after my episode with the patrolman.
Jim kept a loaded .22 revolver in his bedroom, and using it crossed my mind.
But if for no other reason, I wouldn’t do that to him.
I didn’t want anyone blamed if I jettisoned off the planet and returned to the Other Side for repair like a damaged toy in Santa’s workshop.
“I don’t want the neighbors staring at me.” I told Mom I wasn’t attending church with her. “You go on and I’ll stay here.”
She wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I got dressed, putting on my black trench coat. When we walked into the lobby of Gaither Chapel, it was what I expected. Everybody stared. An elderly neighbor sidled up to welcome me home.
“I was going to send you cookies at the hospital but figured you’d just throw them up,” she said loudly.
“That’s all right,” I replied. “There was no need to send me anything.”
I tugged Mom inside the sanctuary with its stained-glass windows and wormy chestnut pews. Tucking us in the back, I sat next to the aisle. As we sang hymns, the pews creaking as we stood every other minute, I was increasingly uncomfortable. My heart was racing. I avoided eye contact.
Calvin Thielman appeared in his black robe, and began one of his colorful sermons, his sleeves flapping like bat wings as he gestured. I felt eyes on me. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Let’s leave,” I whispered to Mom.
She looked at me and shook her head.
“Then I will.”
She shook her head again, her hand on my arm.
“I’m going.”
Calvin was quoting Scripture as I got up. I walked out, pews creaking some more, people turning to watch. Mom had little choice but to follow, and I was relieved to step outside in the fresh air and sunshine. A few hours later the phone rang in the house, and I answered. It was Calvin.
He’d always been wonderful to me and was my only visitor at Appalachian Hall.
It was a happy moment during my stay when he showed up one afternoon.
A nurse announced that someone was in the lobby to see me.
Calvin and I talked for an hour, and I told him everything that was going on. He prayed that I would get better.
“Patsy, I saw you get up and leave church,” Calvin said over the phone in his Texas drawl.
“Yes, sir. I just couldn’t sit there.”
“I want you to come to the college vespers with me tonight. I want you to play your guitar for everyone and sing one of the songs you wrote.”
I felt my insides cringe at the thought.
I knew only three or four chords on the guitar I’d bought at Finkelstein’s Pawn Shop in Asheville, the same place I would get my manual typewriter for college.
But I couldn’t say no to Calvin. I’d adored him ever since we’d moved to Montreat, and his family was good to ours.
They’d have us over for Thanksgiving dinner and Calvin would warn us to be careful about biting into lead shot as we ate the duck he’d hunted.
Now and then he’d take me to Custer’s Last Stand in Black Mountain where the locals went for soft-serve ice cream dipped in chocolate or covered with sprinkles.
It was open only in the summer, and we’d sit at tables to the hissing of the bug zapper mounted on a pole.
I got off the phone and hurried to my bedroom, unclamping the cardboard case with my steel-string guitar that needed tuning. Calvin knew I used to play for my church youth group. I practiced one of my songs for a few minutes, making sure I remembered lyrics that are long since forgotten.