Good Christian Girl
a novel by L.L. Edgerton
Excerpt from
GOOD CHRISTIAN GIRL
“I know when to be quiet, to tamp down the urge to ask what may be misconstrued as an inappropriate question but which is simple curiosity born of ignorance. There is so much that I don't know that I long to know. Sometimes, sometimes, I feel as though I was born already knowing how to leaf through a dictionary's pages and look up answers to the things that I know I can never voice aloud; the books I read don't judge me, don't demand explanations or justifications or apologies, the way adults do. I wonder if, whenever people look at me, this is what they see: only a weird, introspective girl who likes to read the dictionary, someone who peers out at everyone else from big eyes behind big glasses, someone who asks too many questions.”
PROLOGUE
The shadowy figure is back; it seems to stare at me from its spot against the bathroom wall. I sit on the toilet and pee as tears spill onto my bare thighs. The crying needs to stop; I must make myself presentable, go out and finish making dinner. Rae, in her usual chair across from me at the table, will stare, with concern and annoyance both evident in her expression, as she realizes that I've been crying. I've tried to be different from how my own mom was; I think that maybe I've failed Rae and her sisters. I wipe, pull up my panties and sweatpants, and wash my hands so briefly that it probably doesn't count. It occurs to me that I've been wearing the same clothes for a couple of days.
Before opening the door, I pause, leaning against the coolness of the counter. There is my reflection in the large mirror, but for a moment it's not me anymore. I see my mom's eyes, green and sad, the way she used to look when it seemed that she was giving up; her hair, brown, with glints of blonde in some of the strands, and a few unwelcome grays too; her mouth line, the biggest betrayal, that my body would dare to replicate this manifestation of her anger, her pain; her exhaustion. I hate that I have become any semblance of her at all.
The last remnants of daylight are streaked across the bedroom carpet, which might have been more cream than beige, years ago, when the house was new, but which has been discolored by time and dirty shoes and cat puke. The sun is dying in the sky, a muted swirl of marbled gray and lavender fading into the horizon. The houses beyond the neighbor's field will soon be nothing but silhouettes, only boxy shapes, every one of them an expensive brick iteration of another just like it, about to be covered by night and its heavy blanket of stillness. I close my eyes and imagine myself disappearing as well. When I glance behind me, the figure is gone.