“I know it’s not rational. To be honest, I’ve never been the biggest believer. It was always difficult to rationalize what the Bible says about homosexuality and how purely I feel about it in my heart.” She unwrapped a caramel candy from her green purse—something that Megan had laughed nonstop about the first time she saw Thelma toss them into the shopping cart, only for them to end up in herpurse.“But that’s just how it was done back then. You grew up, you maybe went to college or worked as a secretary or schoolteacher for a couple of years, and you got married. It was just… how it was done.”
Crystal wrote something in her notes. “Do you think your son blames you for this?”
“It’s not like we talk about it. And I’m certainlynottalking to him about it.”
“Based on his reaction to his own daughter and the neighbor who’s asked you out, it sounds like there might be some resentment toward female sexuality.”
“I suppose no boy wants to think about his mother’s… love life.”
“Of course not. But between finding that book as a boy and hearing whatever rumors he did afterward…”
Thelma sucked on the candy between her teeth. “It comes back to it all being my fault.”
“Let’s go back over the ultimate truth, Thelma.” When Crystal’s voice dipped that softly, that deeply, Thelma knew to brace herself for the rehearsed phrase from hell.“It’s not your fault. Nobody who travels through time does it knowingly.”
She swallowed the caramel-flavored spit in her throat. “No, but it might be a message from God. He might be punishing me for my sinful ways.”
“Would He punish your children like that because of you?”
Thelma almost choked. “Have you ever read the Bible? Of course He would.”
Crystal sank into her chair, one leg over the other. Her pants that day had flared legs that draped over her ankles. Thelma couldn’t stop staring at a large mole beneath Crystal’s malleolus.I only know that word because my neighbor broke her ankle and I had to take care of her for a week.When bored, Thelma had flipped through the doctor’s notes that had been left on Christie Henderson’s kitchen table.
“Have you been to church since coming forward, Thelma?”
Something about that question unsettled her stomach. “No. Nobody in my family goes to church anymore. Not even Robbie, and he went to Sunday school almost every weekend. He even still has some of my old artwork on the walls.”
“We’ve become quite the secular society. What was your denomination again?”
“Lutheran.” Thelma clenched her molars on top of the candy. “Bill was raised Baptist, but he converted to Lutheranism for me when we got married. He always said that it was ‘nicer’ thanBaptism. But he had to get used to our children being baptized as infants.”
“Lutheranism still has a significant presence in Los Angeles. Have you thought about attending a service?”
“Can’t say I have. Guess I just assumed I was too behind for it.”
“You might be surprised, Thelma.”
She went to the park across the street when her session was over. Thelma was on the list to take updated driving lessons, but they wouldn’t begin for another week, and she still relied on rides from people like Robbie, Megan, and Pauline.
It was the latter she was meeting in half an hour. Until then, Thelma sat on a bench and read the small book she had in her purse.
One of the many stickers she had stolen from Megan’s study desk was stuck in Hebrews 10:36 of Thelma’s pocket Bible she had picked up at the discount store. (Forever delighted to see it was the English Standard Version, of course.) Megan had used the internet to help Thelma find more passages about patience, endurance, and being steadfast. Not that Thelma told her granddaughter why… Megan was so worldly at such a young age that it felt facetious to try.
“For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.”
To say that Thelma had favored the New Testament since coming forward was an understatement. Hope and promise filled those Gospels and Epistles, and if Thelma had ever needed faith in Christ, it was now, during the most trying time of her life.Yet is it really so trying if I can sit on this bench and breathe the air?Already, the air was better than the ‘50s. Already, she feared less being herself. And, already, she had seen what women like her granddaughter had achieved with newfound rights over the decades. There was still a lot of work to be done, but within two months, Thelma had already found herself coming around to theidea of feminism, when it had turned her off only a little while ago.
“For you have need of endurance…” She softly read aloud with her pocket Bible right in front of her face. “So, when God is satisfied with what I have done, I receive his promise…” She lowered the book. “But what is his promise?”
She asked Pauline her opinion when she pulled up to collect Thelma.
“Oh, honey, I don’t do church anymore,” Pauline said with a hearty hoot. Her new car glided down the freeway as they made their way toward Van Nuys. “I didn’t have a choice back in the ‘30s… hell, there wasn’t much else todothat wasn’t work or barn dancing.”
“What was your church?”
“Oh, we were Presbyterian. My old church is actually one a bunch of celebrities get married in now! Can you believe it? Back then, it was nothing more than a one-room, whitewashed building where we crammed ourselves in come rain or hot weather. I can still see my mother fanning herself and being too darn tired to corral the rest of us into behaving.”
“I don’t know much about the Presbyterians,” Thelma admitted. “Are they Calvinistic?”
