The Wright Way

Chapter 20 - The Wright Way

The roar of a motorcycle passing by wakes me up. I lie on my back, my eyes still closed, and listen to its sound dying off in the distance. A car rolls by, and then another one, and then it's quiet again. It must be the middle of the night judging by the light traffic and the darkness behind my eyelids, interrupted only by the occasional blinking of the neon sign. I lie still, waiting for sleep to swallow me again. Then, there's a movement next to me, and a hand wraps around my chest.

I freeze. Is Joshua in my bed again? He went back to his sofa after we spoke, and then I must have dozed off again. He's clearly back now, though, his hand a light weight on my chest, his head pressed to my side. Have I dreamt him leaving, or did he come back later? Or am I dreaming now?

My eyes still closed, I free my right hand from underneath him, and then I lie still, listening to his steady breathing. I should kick him out of my bed—will do that—but not yet. I always try to do the right thing when I'm awake, but I haven't opened my eyes yet, so I guess this counts as if I'm still asleep.

Maybe I am. That would be even better. You can do things in your dreams you wouldn't think of doing in reality.

For example, lying in bed with your hand around another man.

You don't want to have your will tested, he said.

Am I failing the test?

Memories come, as they often do at night. My friends whispering to each other about what boys do to girls when marriages are consummated. It sounded so unappealing to me, while my friends seemed excited by the prospect. How Marianne smiled at me when the two of us sat in the waiting room of Uncle's office while he and her parents discussed our marriage behind the closed doors. I tried to smile back, but then I thought about what would have to happen between us, and it almost made me sick.

And those summer days, even before that, when we'd been playing, jumping into the river with my friends, a bunch of happy, careless teenagers, and how my friends' wet bodies glittered in the sun and how strange looking at them made me feel. I didn't understand what it meant back then.

It's only when I decided to leave that Uncle had that conversation with me. I was going to the big city and I had to know what dangers lurked there. We'd been protected from the knowledge, but once I decided to leave, he couldn't let me go without warning me of the mad ways of the outside world.

Some people could kill you for small cash because they needed money for drugs, he said. Other people hurt themselves by injecting artificial materials to have bigger lips or breasts. There were people who would starve themselves to death in order to look thin. There were people who'd sell their bodies. There were men who would take a woman against her will. There were men who lay with men and women who lay with women.

Sin had many faces.

He showed me articles. He showed me pictures on the Internet that was not allowed anywhere in Bethlehem except for, it turned out, his office. Perhaps he wanted to shock me into changing my mind and staying and marrying Marianne.

I was shocked all right, but not only by the things he'd shown me, but by the implications some of them had on me. I thought that I was just strange. It turned out I was worse. I had to leave and find a way to fix myself.

"Do you still want to go?" asked Uncle after all had been said, and he was sitting in his brown leather chair, watching me.

I nodded, looking away. I wanted to run, to disappear before he could read in my eyes my deepest fears and secrets. It always felt like he could do that. His eyes were scalpels able to cut me open and extract things I could only think about it in the dark with my eyes closed, because that way there were but a dream and meant nothing.

Yet now Joshua is breathing softly under my arm and he's real. It's as if a piece of the dream slipped into reality and it's both scary and exciting.

He must leave. It's a good thing he goes to that interview tomorrow. It was wrong to bring a temptation into my own home and it'll be right to let him go. I could continue trying to help him, but this is too close. Perhaps thinking that I could change him was too ambitious given how little progress I've apparently made in changing myself.

The room is quiet, apart from the occasional sounds of cars passing by. I allow my hand to brush against the side of his face, encountering a long strand of hair that I tuck behind his ear. This is as far as I'm ever going to let this go.

There's a noise next to me—not where Joshua is lying, but to the other side. A brief quiet rustle and a click. I perk my ears. A mouse? Then comes a movement of air against my face, which is even stranger, given that the window is closed.

I open my eyes and then I know for sure that it's a dream, because six people in white robes are standing around the bed.