“Shattered Stained Glass”

          When Anna wakes up in the morning, before she does anything else, she peers cautiously out her bedroom window, opening the curtains just a crack to see if his car is still in the driveway. This morning, the driveway is empty. He’s already at work, and Anna breathes a sigh of relief. Getting ready for school should go smoothly this morning.

          In the bathroom, Anna gives herself a pep talk, trying to psych herself into taking yet another freezing cold shower. “Come on,” she says to herself, “it’s really not that bad. It’s really not. Just…get in there! Go! At least we have indoor plumbing; some people have to walk miles every day to get clean water…” On and on she goes, until she works up the nerve to jump in. The hot water heater has only been broken for about two months, but it seems like it’s been much longer than that. Like Anna keeps telling herself, though, it’s only September; at least she’s not stuck in the middle of January. She tries not to imagine how hard it might be to keep warm then.

          When Anna emerges from her journey into the Arctic, she quickly wraps a towel around herself.   She finishes getting ready, grabs her bag, and heads outside to wait for the bus. As always, her school day is slightly mundane, but that doesn’t bother her. She sits attentively in her classes, has lunch with her friends, and when the final bell rings, Anna packs everything up and gets a ride home on the same familiar, graffiti-covered school bus. At home she drops her backpack on the floor in her room; she decides to finish her homework later. She does the few dirty dishes left in the sink and takes the clean rugs out of the dryer; she places them carefully on the floor in the living room, strategically covering up as many of the stains on the carpet as she can. After she is done with her everyday household duties, Anna settles on the couch to watch TV and relax for a little while. All too soon, however, she hears a car door slam outside.

          Every muscle in her body tenses; her chest suddenly tightens, and Anna feels like she can’t quite catch her breath, no matter how hard she tries to breathe normally. Nothing enters her mind except the urge to run, to escape, to go somewhere far away from this house she lives in. She prepares herself for when he will walk in; she will behave like a turtle, hiding in her shell until it’s safe to come back out.

          The man comes into the living room, sets his Pepsi on the coffee table, and sits down to relax. By this time, Anna’s abandoned any notion of watching TV; she doesn’t want to be out here with him. She decides to retreat into her room and start on her suddenly urgent homework. Before she has a chance to do that, however, the man stands up and goes into the dining room. Immediately, Anna hears him muttering angrily to himself. She could kick herself for forgetting: it rained today! There would be a huge puddle next to the dining room table from the leak in the ceiling. It always makes him angry.

          At first, he isn’t angry at her, specifically; he just begins to fume, to no one in particular, about what a crappy house he lives in. Whenever he does this, Anna yells back at him in her mind. She pretends that she tells him to shut up. She imagines that she says, “How dare you talk about my house like that! How dare you!” She is too smart to yell at him, though, for she knows that it will only make the ordeal last longer.

          Suddenly the man is done complaining to the air and wants a target for his escalating anger. He crosses the kitchen with nearly inhuman speed and grabs Anna’s arm, shoving her back against the countertop. His face is no more than two inches away from hers now; he is screaming. Anna keeps leaning back as far as she can to distance herself from his rage, to give herself some room to breathe, but he just follows her. She tries to duck underneath his arm, and he raises a fist. Anna flinches and hates it; she loathes herself for showing weakness, yes, but she also doesn’t understand why she keeps flinching every time. He has never actually hit her; she knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he will not hit her. It’s too risky; he might leave a bruise somewhere, and then people might start asking questions. No one can find out; no one can know what happens behind their innocent white picket fence, their deceivingly peaceful-looking closed doors.  

          All this time, the girl has been trying to distract herself; in her mind, she goes somewhere far away where she doesn’t have to pay attention. This is one way she has learned to protect herself. This time it doesn’t work, and she finds herself screaming back at him, “We wouldn’t have a leak in the ceiling if you didn’t blow your money on a bunch of crap!” He shoves her across the room, and she trips, landing on the carpet. She sits there, staring at the ground, refusing to gratify him by crying. He continues his tirade until he eventually runs out of steam and stalks back to his bedroom to change out of his suit and tie.

          The week flies by, as weeks normally do, and Anna wakes up on Sunday morning and gets ready for church. She rummages through her closet until she finds her favorite skirt; she meticulously fixes her hair until every strand is exactly where she wants it to be. When she is finally ready, she and the other inhabitant of the house get in the car and drive off to church.

          When they arrive, Anna slips into the very last pew by herself, as usual. She watches as the man who calls himself her father greets the people at church with his plastic, sugar-coated Sunday smile. He sits and laughs and talks with his flock, and they love him. The children sitting in the pew in front of Anna’s are vigorously poking each other, but she doesn’t notice, as she is too busy trying to ignore her father’s sermon. This week the message is on 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient, love is kind.

           Instead of listening, Anna studies the church windows: stern-faced, stained-glass saints stare down at her from their perches. She wonders if they know how much pretense and façade goes into the preparations for a Sunday morning. She lets her mind wander until the end of the service. When church is dismissed, everyone gets up to fellowship with one another; many people in the congregation like to stand around after the service and chat. Anna goes to wait for her friend, Jake, in the church lobby. Sometimes Jake gets trapped in never-ending, monotonous conversations with well-meaning elderly ladies, but today he escapes quickly and comes to meet Anna. They joke around for a while and make plans to hang out at Anna’s house later in the afternoon.

          As Jake is getting ready to leave, he asks, “Is your dad going to be home?”

          “Yeah, why?”

          “Oh, I was just wondering. I like talking to him; he’s a nice guy.”

          Anna smiles weakly and forces herself to respond politely. Somehow she tells Jake goodbye without visibly cringing; she is not usually in the mood to hear people praise her father. Nevertheless, when Anna gets home, she begins to clean the house. She is looking forward to a visit from her friend, and she likes everything to look tidy when people come over.

          Unfortunately, the man is here, too, and he is reading something disagreeable in the newspaper. She can tell that it is disagreeable from the way he is loudly complaining about what he is reading. Anna is running low on patience today and makes a huge mistake: she tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he had better quiet down before Jake comes over. The man loses his temper. He stands up with such force that he knocks his chair over; he’s yelling again. He shoves her, but instead of landing on the carpet, she falls into the glass coffee table. Shards of broken glass scatter all over the floor, and Anna is bleeding from a dozen different cuts all over her hands and forearms. She pulls herself to her feet, still refusing to cry, and stomps to the bathroom to clean herself up. Thankfully, none of the cuts look extremely deep; Anna carefully starts washing them off and prays that she won’t need stitches. Before she does anything else, she calls Jake and tells him that she will just meet him at church tonight. She tells him that she fell into the coffee table, but she doesn’t tell him how it happened. She doesn’t want him to know how hurt she is.

          Anna and her father spend a somewhat subdued afternoon at home. Soon they eat dinner, and then it is time for the evening service. Before it begins, the pastor mentions a special prayer request he has. He stands in the pulpit and tells how his daughter has clumsily hurt herself. As he asks his adoring congregation to pray for a swift healing for her, he makes sure he clearly expresses his loving concern for his only child. Anna is sickened; her stomach suddenly wants to reject what she had for dinner. When she quietly slips out of the sanctuary, Jake follows her.

          “Anna, you look terrible; how the heck did that happen?! Are you okay?”
               
          “Everything’s fine,” she tells him adamantly. “I’m okay.”

          “Are you sure?”

          She pauses, then surrenders and says, “Actually... Everything is not okay.”