Less than a week before the ball, Dad has gone into paperwork-related overdrive and I’m stuck running a million ball-related errands. The decorating committee needs more pink crepe paper, the music needs to be put together on a playlist, the cake needs to be paid for. I still haven’t finished my questionnaire—though I think Dad and I have totally given up on finding time to finish those, much less go over them together. I still need to pick out the passage or quote or something to read in front of everyone. I went through To Kill a Mockingbird, but I can’t figure out what passage Mom used, so I think I’ll need to look elsewhere….
One thing at a time, I think, exhaling. Dad is gone, something to do with figuring out the table setup, but he asked me to look at the playlist used at the last Princess Ball, to see if there were any songs I wanted to add. He said it would be “on the table, in plain sight,” but given that there seems to be about four thousand different forms, packets, and contracts on this table, it’s sort of like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. I carefully shuffle through everything, trying to make sure everything gets put back in whatever stack it belongs in. Nothing resembling a playlist anywhere—I lift a stack of Princess Ball brochures to check under them.
Mom smiles back at me.
I freeze, set the brochures down carefully. It’s the picture of her at the Princess Ball, crisp and glossy, I guess because it’s been sitting in a box or frame instead of being handled frequently. She’s wearing that dress with the sleeves whose puffiness is rivaled only by her hair. My grandfather is on her right, tall and young-looking with tinted glasses, and they’re in front of a baby-pink backdrop with white roses in vases around them.
I sit down in Dad’s chair slowly, still staring at the photo. It isn’t quite how I remembered it—I was so focused on the puffy sleeves that I never saw the way the bodice of the dress is actually really pretty. I didn’t remember the roses, and I certainly didn’t remember there being a little cross necklace around her neck. Mom wasn’t very religious, and religious jewelry definitely wasn’t her style… but was it then? Did something change, or did I just never understand my mom’s beliefs to begin with?
Maybe it’s just a piece of jewelry. Something my grandfather gave her, something she owned that was pretty more than iconic. But still, I can’t help but wonder… did Mom think about God the way I do? Did she go to church, wishing she fit in and could say, without a doubt, that God loved her? Did she have questions that couldn’t be answered with scripture?
Or do I have those questions only because of losing her?
Maybe even Mom wouldn’t get it—why I doubt. Why I question. Maybe no one can understand what this feels like but me. I touch my neck, the spot where the cross charm hangs on Mom’s neck. No one can understand because… they really don’t know any better than I do. No matter what they think, how sure they are they’ve got everything figured out, they’re as in the dark as I am.
They might know Bible verses and hymns and stories and history, but no one can ever really understand God—no one can ever really know why he took my mom, why he lets bad things happen to good people. And no one can really know what I need from God, or what God needs from me—more prayer, more faith, more devotion… no one really knows.
Dad might get it—he’d be the closest to understanding, I think. He knows what it was like to lose her. Is the promise that “Mom’s in a better place” enough for him, or does he question, too? I wonder what he’d say if I told him all this, how no one can answer my questions, how I’m not always sure what I believe. Would he side with the Princess Ball committee, the church, Pastor Ryan? Or with me?
I wouldn’t ask him to choose sides, though. I don’t want him in the middle of me and anyone—it might hurt him, and I don’t want to hurt him. Not because of the Promises.
Because I’m his daughter.
I still need the Promises. I still need them to grab onto. But maybe not being able to grab onto God isn’t the worst thing after all. Maybe I’m not meant to grab on. Maybe I’m meant to grab on later, or onto a whole different religion, or quietly. Maybe I’ll never be able to go to a church and believe like everyone else does, and maybe I’ll still be angry sometimes, still feel like things were unfair. Or maybe someday I’ll have jewelry with a religious icon on it.
And maybe—no, not maybe, definitely—Jonas was right about more than just Anna. She had sex for her own reasons. Mona believes for her own reasons. Mom wore a cross necklace for her own reasons. Even Pastor Ryan is a pastor for his own reasons.
And I doubt. For reasons no one else can understand. And maybe that’s okay.