Tracy Leonard was planning on not taking communion, but not a soul in Bethel Church knew it. That morning, she got into the Explorer in silence, brought both hands up in front of her face, almost as if praying. Her husband drove. He didn't know a thing about her decision either, but then there were lots he didn't know.
This is the path her determination had taken. The Lord's Supper is a means of grace-the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ broken and spilled all over the earth for the sin of mankind, hers included, hers foremost maybe, because hers was the only sin she knew deep within the marrow of her bones, deep within the tangled sinews of her heart, deep within her own barren womb. She knew she could look around Bethel Church and pick out other's sins-Madeline's unending gossip, Mark's corporate greed, Vangie's blind arrogance, Brett's flirtation with adultery-but the only sinner she knew to be worthy of judgment was herself. With her heart overflowing with sin, she was in no shape to accept God's grace. She knew her jealousy. She knew her envy. She hated what she felt in her heart, but she was powerless before its rapacious appetite.
Like Othello's, her jealousy had begun to eat upon itself. The green-eyed monster grew in her like ghoulish serpent; it prayed upon her, a deviant murderer cutting her heart up into pieces. But she wasn't its victim; she was its perpetrator. She did the sinning. She envied, horribly.
The tires sung at a different pitch when they crossed the bridge. They were almost at church. She knew the body and blood would be passed that morning, as always, in complete remission for all their sin. She'd taken communion for years, understood every word of the forms, knew, from the inside out, exactly what was happening. She was 35 years old, a successful head hunter with a reputable firm, salaried far beyond her own expectations, capable of moving into new jobs by way of offers that came at least once a month. Her closets were full of clothes, she and Will had a cabin on the lake, in addition to twice-yearly vacations which had become more and more exotic-Peru, Mongolia, Tanzania. But she couldn't have children. Or at least it hadn't worked. But that wasn't her sin.
Will, still in silence, pulled into the church parking lot in that patient way he had, so as not to make the trailer hitch scrape against the pavement. There were times when she hated almost everything he did, even though he didn't deserve it.
Nothing of this was his fault. She looked up at him as he parked, third row away from the door. She spoke to no one, kept her face down as they walked to church and Will found them seats. The only thing she was ready to proclaim at this communion service, bread and wine in hand, would be her own sin. She'd flunk the self-exam, just as she had flunked countless others in the privacy of her own bathroom. She knew very well the Lord would take her repentance, but she had no will to repent. She wasn't ready. That was her sin. She knew she took great joy in her envy, because envy was all she could feel after years of trying to have children, years of countless tears at the mere sight of baby toys, of cribs, of grocery store diapers, years of wishing and hoping and worrying about every last period, years of trying, a millennium of unanswered prayers that never rose above the ceiling in that empty room they'd so long ago designated for the baby who never came.
And after all of that, her own best friend, another barren Sarah like herself had announced, in tears, that she was. . .Tracy couldn't say the word. When she couldn't be, her own best friend, the only soul on the face of the earth, the only woman who knew what she felt, Mary Jane Admundson was.
They’d met at Hubbard’s, a booth in the back, where Mary Jane had reached for Tracy’s hand. They'd done that before, the two of them, crying through mutual sadness. She didn't say the word either—Mary Jane didn't. She sat there and held her hands and said, "Jeff and 1. . ."
That's all—just enough of a hint of smile for Tracy to know what didn't need to be said, what couldn't be said.
For the first time Tracy understood the Old Testament story, how a childless woman could have wanted a baby so badly she'd take the birth mother to Solomon's court. She knew because she wanted, like nothing else, that tiny little organism clinging to MaryJane's insides.
She and Will rose for the first song. That's why she wasn't going to take communion. She wasn't deserving. She was as full of sin as she was empty of child.
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Tomorrow--the sacrament. . .
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