The Depth of a Curse

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable..."

My voice trembles and my tears fall free. I slam his bible shut, and hurl it into his open coffin.

It lands with a heavy, wet smack on the fresh hole in my husband's breast.

That had been his favorite passage. So I had read it.

Not because it fit the occasion. How could any words fit this loss?

No, I read this passage only because he would have wanted me to. He would have wanted something of a christian burial, despite the way he left my world.... And this was the closest I could come to a prayer.

That was it, the very best I could do.

Not really a prayer. Just words.

Words spat, more than read.

No real depth, no outcry from my soul to the divine.

I'm grieving, and that is real. But I know better than to beseech God, because God lied to us.

The words torment my troubled mind and the more they boil the more I regret ever having read them aloud:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable..."

In light of our dismal end, any other passage would have been better. This one is a mockery. Hell!

And I know: it would have been better to burn that damned book than to read that passage over his grave.

We had read it often enough during the long winter and into the growing season. Living off the fat of our stores, we'd held faith that blessed rains would bring bountiful crops and a timely harvest...

We'd clung to faith that the LORD would provide for us, like He did the birds of the air. After all, we'd sown and toiled! we'd put in work, built callouses on our palms and nurtured the soil-- hoping in the LORD, that He would tend to the rest and keep us fed.

Such blind, stupid faith.

To me-- the poor starving wretch-- and to my husband-- the corpse-- this passage of God's compassion... was a mockery!

There was one shred of truth: He really did take such care of the birds of the air! And then a cold misdirection: the cruel, deceitful implication that He'd care all the more for His people.

I try to yell but it falters. All I manage is a pitiful moan, "Are we not ‘more valuable’ than your damned fucking birds?"

I spit, into the dry dirt.

Our crop had seemed so promising. Though our mason jars had all gone empty, and our dugout pantry utterly bare-- still we'd held our faith. And it seemed right, because our plants had been growing so beautifully.

One day they were full and healthy and the next morning they were wilted and dry. We'd dug one up to find a ruined, chalky mess where a tuber should have been....

We'd lost every damned plant to little writhing beetle grubs.

The LORD God, who provides for the birds of the air had also seen fit to provide for the worms and maggots of the dirt, and so He in his divine wisdom had taken food right out of our mouths! Stolen from me and my husband and used our labor-- our very lives-- to provide for what loathsome life wriggles in the damp.

I look at my husband's cold, ashen face... I remember that last miserable sunset and I feel nauseous.

I grimace.

Hadn't I begged Adam not to go? Hadn't I Begged him with all my heart and every drop of my soul?

But he had been adamant. The fool man.

He'd said it was a husband's job to provide for his wife, even to the point of death. And he'd taken up his shot gun, pressed the barrel against his chest.

I had screamed then. A wild and desperate plea. An animal scream. Inarticulate but pure. And I still hear it resonating in my core. The agony of seeing Adam on the brink had been unbearable.

Then he'd said, "This is the only way I've got left. The only way to make sure you've got food enough to move you to a land God hasn't forsaken-- the only way-- is to give you what little I'm carrying."

Adam's intention had been clear. He'd decided to feed me with his very body.

He meant for me to eat of that forbidden fruit.

Had he made that decision the moment our crop had failed? Or maybe he'd thought it up as a contingency when we first moved out here. Had this vile gift been his back up all along, a plan to see me through if the worst should happen?

It was desperation. I know that. My stomach knows it.

But his sacrifice had been in vain: I could not bring herself to eat of his flesh.

And now God is gloating, and I can hear His divine taunts in my bruised and wasted soul:

"Are you not more valuable than the birds of the air? Your husband's body is manna from heaven-- a bountiful harvest. Your hands have tilled the soil and worked the plow, and I have provided! The buzzards will come, and they will eat of his flesh. Why should you go hungry -- when you are more valuable than they? You've already come this far, done such work... Eat!"

I shudder, my stomach groans. And I can see God laughing in the storm clouds on the horizon.

What kind of Father draws satisfaction from watching the suffering of His own children?

Well I loathed to bear it.

I will not eat. I knew God is watching, leaning in for the show.... I will not give Him the satisfaction.

Suddenly, urgently, I need to escape the open sky. I need a roof between me and the LORD.

I flee Adam's grave, run to our home and fling open the door. I see my husband's shotgun lying on our bare table.

My hands tremble. What escape is this roof when it shelters such memories?

The gun would be quick. And there may be something right about ending things the way my husband had.

I pick it up and aim it at my heart, but the barrel is too long, I cannot reach the trigger.

It is such a terribly long barrel. Too long for anyone to reach really.

I wonder how my husband had ever managed to do it.

And I hear his voice again, like a ghost in the wind rattling the eaves of the house where he once lived: "The Lord will provide, we must have faith. Please, for Godsake, please! Trust in God!"

And hadn't he been ready to rattle off that goddamned passage? THAT FUCKING PASSAGE! About the birds of the air?

Hadn't my stomach screamed with something more than hunger... Hadn't there been resentment?

Hadn't my blood boiled?

Hadn't I hated him sometimes, for his shortsightedness? for bringing us out here against all hope and in the face of all reason!

Hadn't I begged him to take to the road, months before our stores ran out? Before we were doomed?

And hadn't he always, ALWAYS told me to put my faith in the lord!?

I pull away from these memories. They are useless. My idiot husband is dead and gone and I cannot shoot myself, the barrel is too long.

I set Adam's gun down and I fold my quaking hands before in my lap.

I feel the bones poking through, there should be meat on my thighs. But there isn't.

I think about the miscarriage.

Adam's fault. Not mine.

My body is not to blame. There was simply no nutrition to spare. and our child could not be maintained by my wasting self.

I wipe the back of my hand across my face, wipe away the tears.

Adam's fault our child starved inside of me.

Adam's fault for bringing us here to die.

And I storm back out of our cold, dry house, and shriek under an indifferent sky.

The deepening dusk casts a gloom over his grave, and that is good. Because this next part ought to be done in the dark and left there.

I hear a screech and look back to the house-- and there perched on the peak: a pale-faced ghost. A barn owl, come out to hunt.

Or taunt.

I curse it for a demon. My cry is all fury, "Go ahead! Watch and be jealous! You and all the birds of the air! Let the LORD provide for you, you meagre shits! I'm more valuable than you! I've will enough to take my meals and next time let it be you and let you be damned!"

It's lamp-eyes stare at me, and I feel a chill. I cannot be hidden, not from myself, or from the owl or from God.

But I laugh. A hungry, desperate laugh.

I have stopped giving a care about who is here and who isn't and who might like to watch.

And as I take my meal, I wonder how oh how oh how

oh HOW

did my dear idiot husband manage the trigger all on his own.