Chapter Three Soraya
Chapter Three
Soraya
All is never lost—unless you give it away.
—Rules for Witches
Today had been weird, and she hadn’t been herself, honestly. She shouldn’t have gone into that store. She shouldn’t have gotten wine drunk in public and spilled her guts to Nora and Daisy.
Nora didn’t even like her. She never had.
Which was fine. She and Nora were just .
. . too different. Soraya had tried being nice to her, but Nora had been such a hot mess in high school, it had been hard.
She couldn’t be okay with Nora smoking cigarettes in an alley.
It was bad for her. So of course she said something about it, and Nora got mad.
Nora was always mad.
Now so are you.
Ouch. She didn’t like that. She’d tried so hard all her life to be happy. Filled with joy. The light she was supposed to be in the world. A beacon on a hill.
Now she was alone in her kitchen, everything far too quiet while she kneaded her sourdough loaf and listened to nothing, a black hole of darkness shut away, which wasn’t a commission in any ideology.
Usually, she put on a Bible-study podcast or some worship music, but she felt empty, and for the first time didn’t want to be filled by anything. Not someone else’s thoughts or opinions on what she should do or how she should feel.
Her whole life was about receiving instruction and listening to it.
Maybe that was part of why Nora had always felt tricky.
She didn’t listen to anyone, and Soraya had to listen. Always.
It was so quiet that the knock on her front door followed by the ring of the doorbell just about sent her straight to heaven.
“Probably hell,” she muttered. She stepped away from the counter and wiped her hands on her apron as she made her way to the foyer. “Since I went into Satan’s lair today.”
She peeked out the side window and frowned. Kristi, her Bible study leader, was at the door. She had missed the last two weeks.
She felt a little bit guilty about that, but at the moment, she felt weird and bad and guilty about everything, so nothing really galvanized her into action like it used to.
It was a tangle she couldn’t sort through.
She jerked the door open and smiled. She hadn’t even forced the smile, it was compulsory. Her church smile. The everything-is-fine smile. Glory-to-God smile. Hallelujah.
“Kristi,” she said. “What an unexpected surprise.” Well, that was both redundant and obvious.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure. I was just . . . I’m about to put a loaf of bread in the oven.”
“Oh. Lovely.”
Kristi came in and stood there in the vast entryway, her smile competing with Soraya’s for brightest. And most fake.
Anxiety hooked itself around Soraya’s stomach. She thought of the missed Bible studies. She was definitely getting a check-in. A Hey, girlie, let’s have coffee without the preceding message.
An ambush.
At least the house was clean. She didn’t have anything else to do. Nothing but keep it clean, bake the bread, and worry. Worry that the entire place was going to crumble around her. That everything she had lived for, created, would fall apart. That she would be crushed beneath the weight of it.
But she kept smiling. “Come in. I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
“Tea for me, thank you,” Kristi said. For some reason, that felt like a rejection.
“Of course.”
Kristi had been to her house a number of times, so Soraya didn’t have to lead her to the kitchen but did anyway, wringing her hands as she did.
She put a kettle of water on the stove. Kristi sat down at the small table by the window. Soraya found she couldn’t join her, so she stood next to the stove, waiting for the kettle.
“We’ve been worried about you.”
She didn’t have to ask who. The women’s Bible study. Kristi was here representing the group, clearly.
“I appreciate it. But . . . there’s no need to worry about me.”
“We’ve been praying for you.”
Which meant talking out loud to God about her, as they sat in a circle listening intently to glean all the possible details of why she so desperately needed prayer.
They would never gossip, of course.
Soraya clenched her back teeth together.
“Thank you.” Even though her smile was wide, she could hear the tension in her voice.
“David texted me,” Kristi said.
Did he text you his penis?
Somehow she didn’t ask that question. Somehow. But it felt like the floor had fallen away, and the frightening thing was she actually had no idea what he had texted Kristi, because she didn’t know him.
The husband she thought she had would never have sent photos of his naked body to anyone else. Never. But David had. He wasn’t the man she knew.
He could have sent Kristi anything.
A photo of his penis, a shared location halfway around the world, because maybe he had decided to leave everything behind. A selfie with a person he had just murdered. Genuinely, it could be anything.
“He texted me,” Kristi repeated, and Soraya realized she had just been sitting there with a smile frozen on her face and hadn’t responded at all.
She wasn’t going to. Because Kristi had come here. She was the one who knew what she wanted. Who knew why she was here, and what David had texted. Why should Soraya have to play a part in a performance she hadn’t agreed to be cast in?
“He wanted me to talk to you about the separation.” Kristi sighed, like she was talking to a child. “Soraya, you have to go back to him. He’s your husband. He made a mistake.”
“He did make a mistake,” Soraya said, her lips barely moving. Maybe she was still smiling. Maybe she was snarling. She had lost feeling in her face, so she couldn’t really say. “He directed a text intended for someone else to me. Then I found out who he really is.”
Kristi tilted her head to the side, the faux compassion on her face so apparent to Soraya it nearly choked her.
“That’s not who he is. He’s a good father, a good husband.
He volunteers on the sound team at church, he is so good.
He was tempted. Satan comes after people who are doing the Lord’s work. ”
Soraya was about to say something—anything—to stop this recitation of her husband’s supposed virtues, but Kristi pressed on.
“Think about the internet. It’s filled with women trying to tempt good men to sin.
There has never been a point in human history where men faced greater temptation.
Now, with the push of a button, they can be in easy contact with someone looking to fulfill their fantasies. ”
Soraya blinked. “But you have to look for it.”
For a moment, Kristi’s eyes went blank. Soraya could see she’d said something Kristi didn’t have an instant response for in the preplanned script she’d come with.
Then Kristi’s eyes lit up, as if a flash of inspiration had just hit her.
“If a man is looking for it, it means he’s missing something.” Kristi stared at her meaningfully. “It’s up to you to fulfill your husband’s fantasies.”
Soraya huffed. “I can’t do that if he doesn’t share them.”
They had sex at least three times a week. That was a lot, she was pretty sure. Not that she sat down and compared notes with anyone, but it seemed like a reasonable quantity of sex.
He never asked what her fantasies were.
An uncomfortable feeling began to bloom in the pit of her stomach.
She didn’t know what her fantasies were.
She didn’t know what his fantasies were.
They didn’t talk about sex. They just had it. Since he seemed to like having it, she’d never had reason to believe it wasn’t satisfying for him.
She’d never considered if it was satisfying for her. It was often fine, and she really didn’t mind it. They did pretty good, she’d thought, all things considered.
They had gone from kissing chastely to their wedding night, which had been like going from walking slowly down a country road to getting into a speeding car and careening around corners at a hundred miles per hour.
Anything she knew about sex she had learned from him.
And neither of them knew anything. Because they weren’t supposed to know anything about sex before they got married.
Because they were supposed to keep their thoughts pure.
So she had gone from very much keeping her thoughts on whatever was pure to having to figure out what to do with a naked man, and that was a difficult thing to do.
How could it be her failing?
How could it be her failing when they had been in the exact same position?
Why did he know more about what he wanted?
It meant he wasn’t doing what they’d been commanded to.
It meant that he was . . . If he had information she didn’t, then he had come by it during their marriage. He had come by it keeping secrets.
Alone at night in her bed, her thoughts spun around in circles, eating their own tails.
Alone at night, she blamed herself. Of course she did.
She wondered why she wasn’t pretty enough.
She wondered why her life hadn’t divinely worked out the way she’d been sure it was ordained to, since she had done everything right.
Had done everything to earn blessings. A perfect, easy marriage, because she’d had that good godly sexuality with her husband.
Because she had given herself to him—after marriage and only to him—just like she was supposed to.
But with Kristi staring at her like this, she could not accept the blame. Watching another woman verbally absolve David of any wrongdoing. Hearing what she’d said to Nora parroted back to her . . .
It didn’t sound so reasonable when she wasn’t the one saying it.
In fact, it felt entirely unfair.
“As wives, we need to be in tune with our husbands,” Kristi said.
“It sounds to me like you’re in tune with my husband,” Soraya returned. “Does your husband know he was texting you? Because texting David is a risk.”
“Soraya.” Kristi’s cheeks turned red. “I’m satisfied in my marriage. My husband is satisfied with me. He has nothing to worry about.”
“That’s what I thought too. Until recently.”
She was feeding into this, and she knew it. By continuing to go to church with him. She wasn’t making a definitive enough stand. He had asked for her back, but he’d never admitted wrongdoing. It was all defensiveness. It was all this: I was tempted. The undertone of it all was: You aren’t enough.
No. He was going to have to actually repent. It couldn’t simply be excuses wrapped up in blame. She was going to stand firm on that.
If that was a sin, then . . .
Maybe she didn’t know God as well as she thought. Or maybe they didn’t. Because suddenly there were all these endless excuses being made when a man did something that was expressly forbidden.
She didn’t think she was the one who was wrong.
She just didn’t.
“You don’t have a job, Soraya. David has been a good husband. A provider. He made a mistake. But he’s the one who takes care of you. He takes care of your boys. What are you going to do without him?”
The words sounded like a threat. A prophecy.
You’re nothing, and he’s everything. What will you have left if you leave him?
“I’m going to get a job,” she said, in defiance of both Kristi and the voice in her head that called her nothing.
She thought of that store, the one she’d been scared to stand in earlier. Suddenly, she wanted to go back to it. Suddenly, she wanted to be there. She wanted to do something no one would expect.
Because apparently David could have virtual affairs, and she was expected to forgive him just because it wasn’t physical. Just because . . . because he was a man? Because she was expected to be endlessly understanding of the temptations men faced?
Because she didn’t have a choice.
She was going to show them that she did, in fact, have choices.
“Soraya,” Kristi said slowly. “We all prayed for you at the church staff meeting earlier.”
Oh, there was the truth. They were talking about her. All of them.
“Pastor John prayed that you’ll see what a good man you married, that God will show you how to forgive and be gracious, and that’s really why I’m here today.
I hope you can hear the words I have for you.
I know everything seems difficult right now.
But you know God won’t give you something you can’t handle. As long as you continue to honor him.”
A faint memory began to scratch at the back of her mind. Her telling Nora that her mother leaving her was some kind of test from God. That he was trying to show her his goodness through trial.
She remembered very clearly what Nora had said in response.
At the time, she had been horrendously offended. Not only because what Nora said was sacrilegious, but because she hadn’t been able to understand that God didn’t make mistakes. That any trial she was experiencing had to be for her own edification.
What a . . . a bitch Soraya had been.
What a bitch Kristi was being now.
“Don’t blame my husband’s mistakes on God.” The teakettle whistled. “Wow. Too bad that took so long, and now you have to leave.”