"I'm sorry, dear. But we have no choice
but to close down the orphanage." Mrs. Hutley sighed sadly.
“But Mrs. Hutley---“
“No, honey I’m sorry, we just can’t afford to
keep it open.” She rubbed Amy’s arm sympathetically. Amy tried not to flinch at
the touch.
“There must be something we can do.” She said firmly,
refusing to accept this ultimatum.
“I’m sorry Amy, I know how hard you’ve worked
but we don’t have a choice. No one will support us. The building is practically
falling apart, and that’s not how most people want to run things.” Mrs. Hutley
laughed gratingly. Her smile fell when she saw Amy’s face, and the patronizing
sighs returned. “I’m sorry, sweet pea. I tried, I really did. Mr. Hutley asked
all over town but we can’t find a sponsor for you. It will all be alright. God
watches over the little ones.”
She patted Amy’s cheek and smiled, before
turning back to her television set, where Lucille Ball was stuffing her face
full of chocolates while the audience screamed laughing. Amy felt her chest
grow tight.
Of course
God watches over them. They’ll all be alright, I believe that. But what about
me? What am I supposed to do now? This was my purpose.
She turned and walked out of that bare, white
house, so empty, so rich and so terrifying. She looked out at the blue sky and
the picket fence and the green lawns, and gardens and women waving to one
another with smiles pasted on their made-up faces, and red-stained, lying lips.
To most it was just a white, upper-class suburban neighborhood, but to Amy it
was the image of everything that she’d always known and always secretly hated.
God, what
do I do if I can’t help them? Who am I if that’s not who I’m meant to be? How
do I know? How will I ever know?
She closed
her eyes and pressed her hands to her face, feeling the tears run over them in
warm rivulets. She got into her car and
started to drive, she didn’t now where she was going or how fast or how far. As
the day grew slightly darker with Louisiana thunderclouds she noticed vaguely that
the suburban streets disappeared and were replaced with lush green fields,
cotton rows and corn furrows. Everything somehow seemed better in the country. Amy
closed her eyes, knowing she shouldn’t. But there were no other cars to be seen
out on the road and she longed to rest her burning eyes. The day grew even darker.
A storm was coming. She felt tight inside, tight and angry. Never before had
she felt so full of frustration and confusion.
Suddenly slamming on the breaks, Amy tore the
door open and snatched at her handbag, pulling out a smoke. She kicked off her heels
and started walking along the road, stopping for a moment to roll off her
nylons and stuff them into the small clutch purse.
Her cigarette didn’t relax her like smoking
normally did. Without even knowing why, Amy stopped abruptly and looked up into
the thunderclouds as the first silent drops of rain splattered dark on the hood
of her Cadillac.
“Okay!” She shouted. “I don’t know what you
want from me. Because I’ve given everything and now You’re taking it away. Didn’t
I trust? Didn’t I believe? Isn’t that
what you wanted?” She was screaming now, all alone on a country road. “I did
everything I thought you were asking, so why do you take it from me now? I did
this for You! I did it to serve, to be useful, to teach them all about You and everything
everyone’s ever told me I ought to do so why this, why now, why ,why why?” She
choked, wiping her mouth against her sleeve. “I can’t understand why an all powerful
God would take yet another home away from all these beautiful children who love
Him.”
Thunder rumbled. And lightning cracked. And Amy
did know why. She heard a voice, not in the thunder or the rain as it crashed
down in sheets. A small voice said wanly like a whisper from the wind,
“But I didn’t
take it from them. I took it from you.”
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