Part 35 (1/2)
”It's okay,” Ms. Carpenter says kindly. ”I know she wrote it. She came and talked to me about it, as I'm sure you no doubt heard from Michele.”
”What did you say to her?”
Ms. Carpenter's face lifts with a small smile. ”That's between us. I'm sure Baker will tell you when she's ready. But you wanted to protect her? Why?”
”Because-well, because I didn't want her to get hurt. Because I could tell how scared she was.”
”And you weren't scared?”
”No, I was, but I wasn't really thinking about it. All I could think about was her.”
”Why?”
”Because,” Hannah says, her heart pounding with the answer, ”I love her.”
Sunlight illuminates the smile on Ms. Carpenter's face. ”It's amazing,” she says, folding her tissue over in her palm, ”the things we'll do when we love another person.”
Hannah swallows. ”But I still don't know whether that love is good or bad.”
Ms. Carpenter turns her head and squints at the altar. Her sharp, dark eyebrows draw together the way they do when she's unearthing the heart of a novel. ”You mentioned Adam and Eve,” she says, her eyes narrowing further and further. ”Which is pretty perfect for this conversation, since they represent both love and sin.”
Hannah follows Ms. Carpenter's line of sight toward the altar, but she finds she can't look steadily at it. ”And how do I-how do I know which one I'm playing into?”
”Oh, I think we're always playing into both,” Ms. Carpenter says easily. ”That's what makes us human, right? Now look-I'm not a Creationist, Hannah. I don't believe the story of Genesis is supposed to be taken literally at all. I think humanity, at the moment-I think we're trapping ourselves in the story of Adam and Eve. That we're getting too caught up in the specifics and forgetting the larger meaning of the story.”
”What's the larger meaning?”
”Well, you tell me. What do you think?”
”I don't know. I think about that story in my head and-all I see is a man and a woman and no way to reconcile who I am with who they were.”
Ms. Carpenter crumples her face in sadness. ”You know what I think?”
”What?”
”I think the most essential thing is that G.o.d didn't want Adam to be alone. G.o.d wanted Adam to be able to love someone. To have a relations.h.i.+p that reflected G.o.d's own love. And so he made Eve so that Adam could love her. So that Adam could be fully human. And when he made Eve, he gave her the miraculous capacity to love Adam back. Do you ever think about how crazy that is?-Our miraculous capacity to love? We don't know why, we don't know how, but our hearts and souls are drawn to others. We weren't made to be alone. We were made to love. And when we love, we automatically know G.o.d without even trying to, because G.o.d is love. If we love as he made us to love-if we love with our hearts instead of our criteria-then we simply are love.”
Hannah exhales. ”So-you're saying it's okay for me to love Baker?”
”That has to be your call. I can't sit here and pretend to know the mysteries of your heart. That's between you and G.o.d. If you love her, and if you know G.o.d's love by loving her, then it's up to you to decide whether that love is worth seeking.”
”Okay.”
”But Hannah,” Ms. Carpenter says tentatively, ”I can tell you that I believe-that the human heart's mysterious ability to love others is never wrong. Your heart will never ask your permission to love. It's going to love whomever it was made to love, and the best thing you can do is follow it.”
”It's just-it's scary when other people don't understand that.”
”Yeah,” Ms. Carpenter says, nodding with sad eyes.
”I've tried to pretend like I don't care,” Hannah says. ”Like I'm not afraid to break the rules. But deep down...I'm really scared.”
”You've been very brave so far.”
”No,” Hannah says.
”You have. Not just with other people, but with yourself. It takes overwhelming amounts of bravery to call yourself out on who you are.”
”It wasn't bravery so much as an inevitability.”
”There's nothing inevitable about it, Hannah. Some people go entire lifetimes without facing the truth about who they really are.”
”But I'm still working through it,” Hannah says. ”I think Baker is, too. I think we're both so ashamed of our feelings.” She swallows. ”It's hard to love someone when loving them makes you feel ashamed of yourself.”
Ms. Carpenter dips her head. Hannah releases a shaky breath and twists up the corners of her tissue. When she looks up, Ms. Carpenter is peering at the altar again.
”What are you thinking about?” Hannah asks.
Ms. Carpenter meets her eyes. ”Shame,” she says.
Hannah nods. ”It sucks.”
”Do you remember everything from the story of the Fall?” Ms. Carpenter asks. ”Not just the part about picking the fruit from the tree, or about Adam and Eve sharing the fruit. Do you remember what happened afterwards?”
”G.o.d was angry with them.”
”No, before that. Right after their eyes were opened.”
Their eyes were opened, and they saw that they were naked...
”They covered themselves up,” Hannah says.
”Exactly,” Ms. Carpenter says. ”They were ashamed. It's the second part of the sin.”
”Their shame? But-they should have felt ashamed. They disobeyed G.o.d.”
”Sure, but think about it in a bigger context. What does it mean about humanity?”
Hannah turns her hands in her lap, staring hard at the prints of her fingers. ”That we shame ourselves? That we hide from G.o.d?”
”Right. Sometimes I think G.o.d reacted the way he did because he was so, so anguished that Adam and Eve hated something about themselves. They didn't realize how beautiful they were in the Garden. They didn't realize how perfect they were in their love. When their eyes were opened-when they saw that they were naked-they felt as if they had to cover themselves. They thought what G.o.d had made was shameful and embarra.s.sing and wrong. Can you imagine how that made G.o.d feel? How his heart must have ached to see them denying their beauty, their humanity, in front of him like that? It's the most heartrending part of the story.”
”I'm like them,” Hannah tells her. ”I'm hiding from G.o.d because I'm ashamed of how he made me. I hate him for the way he made me.”
”Hannah,” Ms. Carpenter says softly. ”I think we all hide from G.o.d sometimes. We all have things we're ashamed of. The essential thing is that you work through it.”
”How am I supposed to do that?”