Dropped Threads 2 by Carol Shields

expensive. I joined the youth choir. I went on camping and boat trips, got crushes on gentle Jesus-loving boys, the antithesis of my mother’s taste in men. I never could quite swallow the doctrine, the actual Christianity. And my compulsion to undermine Church authority drove me to tell a few kids I was a witch. Having never forgotten Marilyn and Karen, I invoked their names in times of stress and irreverence and, in the middle of Sunday morning services, drew what could only be considered impious symbols on my wrists.
    I couldn’t help but like the complexity of my new witchy Christian self. To add yet another layer, I became friends with Bonnie, the baddest good girl in the sanctuary. Using Bonnie’s ID, I started heading out with her on Saturday nights to Outlaws, a downtown nightclub. As far as my mother knew, I was just going to Bonnie’s for a sleepover. And I did sleep over at Bonnie’s. And my body did remain the temple I claimed it was: loath to become remotely like the secret I had at home, I refused to drink alcohol and clung to my virginity like a life raft.
    At twenty, Bonnie was four years older than I, perfectly legal and far less interested in discretion: she blabbed all over church about her drunken escapades, all of which happened the nights she was without me. Nonetheless, rumour had it that I frequently got so drunk that I had to be carried from bars. I was considered a “bad apple” by parents now.
    One night after Sunday evening service, Bonnie and I were hauled into the pastor’s study and interrogated. Bonnie protested that it had been she who had to be carried out, that I didn’t even drink . He said he would have us kicked out of the choir if we didn’t apologize before the congregation for our behaviour, adding that my mother would charge Bonnie with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I shook my head; my mother would never . The pastor flattened me, announcing that people from the church were over discussing the matter with her this very instant. I was speechless. He fingered one of his gold rings. “Is your mother an alcoholic?”
    No one in this place, my place, had ever uttered that word as though it pertained to my family or me. With one question, he had ripped the clean right off me. I started to cry, asking why he would say that. Apparently I’d given his past inquiries about my home life silly and vague answers that were, to his mind, consistent with those that children of alcoholics gave. I looked up at his photograph on the wall shaking hands with the pope, panicked and broke into sobs, nodding.
    I didn’t realize that he was being a Gotcha Wizard, that he knew nothing but rumours.
    When I got home that night, I launched into a tirade against the charges my mother was to file against Bonnie. This was the first she’d heard of my having been in a bar.
    But I quit the Church immediately. It was sullied.

    Not long afterwards, my mother was drinking again. Deciding to leave, I made arrangements with a school friend who had two parents, a garage and a car and moved in without explanation. It would be two weeks before my friend’s mother trapped me in a corner and asked me why I wouldn’t go home. I had to come clean. It was the first time. The relief was all but trampled by guilt, but saying it out loud bought me a respite. With financial help from the Children’s Aid, my friend’s family took care of me for three months. Mom saw my departure as her personal rock bottom. She detoxed that summer, rejoined AA and made a decision that whether I came home or not, she would stop drinking for good.
    I did come home, somewhat reluctantly, afraid things would go back to the way they were. As I started Grade 12, though, my mother was going to three AA meetings a week, new AA friends were often over for tea and my mother’s former self became known as “that crazy person.” Soon, she started counselling other new AA members. One, a former stripper, came by the apartment and