LITMIR.BIZ

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from a binding. He wouldn’t have known.

      The rod was frequent in the house with so many children full of unmet needs. To do without and not complain, even as small children with fretting always in the eyes, running down the nose.

      Conquer the will and bring them to an obedient broken spirit.

      When the will of a child is totally subdued, and it is brought to revere and stand in awe of the parents, then a great many childish follies, and faults may be past over.

      I insist upon conquering the will of children early because this is the only strong and rational foundation of a religious education. Without this both precept and example will be ineffectual. But when this is thoroughly done, then a child is capable of being governed by the reason and piety of the parents.

      They were quickly made to understand they might have nothing they cried for.

      —From the Writings of Susanna Wesley

      We could not ask for anything. We ate what was given to us. Even if we gagged. We were regimented. Orderly. Stifled. I wanted to scream out. I kept the screams in the barn inside my head. Between my ears. Oh, they were fondly there. Until I could in the woods by myself cry out, holding along the fence. Until a farmer arrived wondering who was hollering. What was happening? Nothing, sir. I’m just letting out the screams pent up in me. Wild beasts they are. Trampling me at night. I cannot run from them. I cannot walk without my crutch. It isn’t a proper crutch. Just a stick a neighbor found and gave to me when he saw me hobbling along the road.

      Was there anyone who walked on a crutch in the Bible?

      Yes, there were many cripples that Jesus healed.

      Any of the disciples or close followers? I asked my mother.

      No, but I would learn to walk without help, she said. Or I could lean forever on my sisters.

      Jesus hasn’t healed me.

      Have patience, she said.

      There was nothing. Nothing I could do. They laughed at me. Made fun. I was held in derision. A word I heard my father use when he talked of the way neighbors held his views. Because they didn’t accept my father’s political views. Because he was a zealot. Because he didn’t know how to run a farm. Because he didn’t pay his bills. Because we were poor. Because his judgement was in want. Because his wife would not let their children play with others.

      It is the word, frustration, I ponder. Frustrated. What does it teach me? How to conjugate? No, frustration is more of an object that will not move. It has rooted itself in my being. It is a brilliant needle sparkling in the sun as I sit by the window and sew another patch on my ragged dress. The thread is a line. I could swallow it and choke. I could die and my mother would sweep my shadow from the corner.

      A list of what I like—

      A corner of our small pasture when no one is there.

      The cows because they don’t concern themselves with anything but grass. Though sometimes they stare when I pass and share with them the gospel.

      The barn. When I am alone there. After milking when my fingers cramp.

      The stars when they are bees in the hive of the night sky.

      My feet hurt when it rains. They hurt in frost. They know they might become frozen. They do not fit into shoes. They are susceptible to blisters and little rebellions. I would leave my feet in the slaughter pen. Maybe then I could walk.

      It is a sin to be morbid. It is a sin not to walk.

      Our parents. A mismatched pair. Mother should have been father, and father, mother.

      There is a list of what not to do. It is long as forever. All flogged by longings.

      She teaches us to read. To want. To long for, by the large writing of my hand.

      Therein is the multiplicity of longing.

      It is all the same. Suffering. Suffering. The God we belong to requires it. Mother sees to it. Father in his distance does also. He gives us his absence. His inability to handle what needs to be handled.

      Our mother meets with all the children once a week. For an hour, she sits before us. Not altogether. But one by one. It is like talking to a cow in the field that looks solemnly at me. Why doesn’t she ask what I feel? Why doesn’t she say she will stop my sisters from mocking the way I walk? She asks only of my learning of scripture. My slowness. My unworthiness before the Lord. Did she play children when she was child?

      But somewhere in the slowness, there is a spark of determination. Maybe it is anger. A pollen to go with the sting. I feel capable of learning. Of being upright before the Lord. Of walking the way others walk—even though it would not be in this lifetime.

      My Letters to Paradise—

      I would like to not be thwarted at every turn. Even for the most ordinary thing. I would like a soothing for the longing that is a bee sting. I would like for there to be an end to want.

      My father worked continually on a commentary of the Old Testament book of Job—Dissertationes in Librum Jobi. My youngest sister, Kezzia, was named after one of the daughters of Job [Job 42:14]. Job with seven sons and three daughters. My father with seven daughters and three sons. My father’s book was in Latin and Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean and others. Why didn’t he just say in English, Job struggled to walk on two feet? To not limp through his trials. Why did my father have to make his work so laborious and ornate? Why couldn’t he meet Job where he was? And where was Uz where Job lived? My father posited. Somewhere. Somewhere. He raised more questions than he answered. I feared my father’s writing was difficult. No one else seemed to take an interest. The sale of subscriptions was not going well.

      Job had to listen to his friends. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. I had my sisters, Emily, Sukey and Hetty. Even the younger ones sometimes taunted me.

      My father read all Hebrew texts about Job. No one knows who wrote the book, but my father insisted it was Job himself, standing apart from himself, outside himself, as though he were the character he was writing about. Job knows the earth, the weather, its cycles.

      We are gifted with free will, my father tells me, which includes the choice of sin. But I don’t know what he connects that thought to.

      1701—In a time of prayer my parents argued. My brothers and sisters looked at them startled. She would not say amen to his prayer for King James. The parents were doing what the children could not. We all left the room. I sat on the top stair and listened. My sisters hid in the bed. Finally, the strain broke and my father left the house. The mother sent all the children to bed where we cried softly into our worn blankets.

      The following year, my father returned. He was visiting a sick parishioner when the parsonage caught fire, burning all but a third of the house, including his work on the book of Job.

      1702—The Fire Number One. Possibilities—[I heard my father say].

      Sparks from a neighbor’s chimney on our thatch.

      Sparks from our own chimney.

      A broken chimney tile.

      A cracked stove pipe.

      A stray ember from the fireplace onto a frayed rug.

      The Epworth Rectory had three stories. Made of timber and plaster. Covered with straw thatch. There were seven rooms, kitchen and parlor, hall and buttery. Three large upper rooms where we slept. The house was dim even in the day. At night, a candle hardly made a difference. Outside there was a garden with a stone wall. A barn of timber and clay walls covered with thatch. Three acres beyond the barn that bordered wildness and boredom.

      Whatever the cause, the roof, on fire, fell on our bed. The sisters ran from the room. A servant came and led Hetty and me downstairs and pushed us from a window. Why didn’t she leave me upstairs? She could have let me die. I would have gone to the Lord that couldn’t possibly be worse than the Wesley house.

      Our mother was burned on her hands, neck and arms, rushing

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