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Show in my father's house/ 43 and poked his head out the window. "All those kids your brothers and sisters?" he asked, pointing to the group of children in the orchard. I caught my breath, thinking of my father's warning about strangers. I remembered how the grownups worried recently, when one of Aunt Rachel's children told a school-friend about our family. I stared at the man for a moment, then dropped my gaze. "No," I said. I shoved a cluster of grapes into my mouth so I couldn't answer any more questions, and hurried, flushed and trembling, to the barn where I waited until the stranger backed out of the driveway. I watched awhile longer, afraid he would return, and remembered my father told us we should be proud of our family. "You aren't just half-brothers or half-sisters. We are all one, all one family." And he said we shouldn't be embarrassed about the way we lived. "There's no need to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ," he had proclaimed, and read a passage from the Bible to prove it But the dark flush I felt was shame, the same feeling I got when I stole cookies from my mother's cache in the linen closet. I had lied. I tried to think of what I could have said without lying. But one way or another, everything I might have said felt like a lie. That evening, during dinner I asked my mother, "Why do we |
