Going Back
I woke up the next morning at noon, to the sound of the phone ringing in the living room. I must’ve slept so late because I was up all night talking to Lisa. I had just barely woken up when Lisa picked up the phone in the other room. I listened to her side of the conversation tiredly. “Hello?” She listened as he person on the other end spoke. “May I tell her who’s calling?” Another pause, this one long. Finally, she stuttered, “O-oh. Ok. Hold on.” I heard her run down the hall to give the phone to our mom. Then she came back to my room, running the whole way.“Cassy, you will never, in a million years, guess who just called us.” She said, throwing herself onto my bed. “Was it Mitchel Musso?” I asked, still half asleep. In my eyes, it would most definitely be a historical event for the Disney star to call our house. “What? Why would-” I heard her laugh and she started shaking me. “Wake up!” I turned over in my bed and tried to look at her, but my eyes wouldn’t stay open. “Joe Belle just called.” She said dramatically. That got me awake. I shot straight up in my bed and looked at her.“You’re lying!” I said.“No I’m not!” She said. “Mom’s out there right now, talking to him.” She pointed toward my closed door.“What are they saying?” I asked. I reached up to rub my eyes while she answered.“I don‘t know. I didn‘t listen long enough to figure it out.” She stopped. “But he probably just wants to gloat some more. Rub it in our face that he made us leave and he got to stay. Why else would he call?” I thought about it. I couldn’t think much, because the brain fog of sleep was starting to take over my brain again. Either way, I tried to look on the bright side. “Maybe he wants to say he’s sorry.” I twisted my hands in my lap and I heard Lisa sigh. “I wish things were like that.” She said. “But I don’t think that’ll ever happen. Joe is not the kind of guy to admit he’s wrong, and unless he does, he’s just going to start this whole fight over again.” She started to twist her hands as well. “I hate to say it, but this call is probably just going to make things worse.” She sighed again.“Maybe it’ll make things better.” I said hopefully. “We could try to figure out what they’re saying.” I suggested. I hated not knowing what was going on around me. At least if I knew, I would know how to fight it. “Cassy, I don’t want to have to listen to them fight. I don’t want you to have to listen to them fight, either. The best thing to do is just stay in here until mom comes in here and tells us that everything is all right, even though it isn’t.” She frowned and I knew from experience that she was trying not to cry. I wanted to trust that she knew best, but I had a feeling that something was about to happen that I didn’t want to miss. “Can’t we go listen for just a little while? If they start fighting we can come back here and listen to your music until we can’t hear anything, okay?” I said, hoping she would agree. I didn’t want to go out there alone. I wanted her to come with me. I could see that she was thinking, but I recognized her expression. It was the one that said, ‘I really shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m going to anyway.’ “Fine.” She said. “We’ll do it. But I can’t promise you this is gonna turn out the way you want it to.” I nodded. If you’ve ever had that feeling where you aren’t worried about something until someone warns you about how bad it could turn out, you know what I felt right then. We crept out into the hallway, keeping as quiet as we possibly could. I tried to peek around the wall to get a better look, but Lisa gripped my arm and pulled me back. When I looked at her, she shook her head as if to say, ‘Don’t push it.’ I nodded my head and turned back to look forward. I crouched and listened to my mom talking while Lisa crouched behind me with her hand on my shoulder, and I could tell she was nervous. Both of us listened quietly to our mom’s end of the conversation. “Joe, this is very unexpected.” She said. “It’s a good idea, but are you sure we could do it?” She sighed. “We have our own church that we’ve settled into now, and I don’t want to put the girls through all of this again…especially if it ends up working out the same as…” Another pause. “You have to realize that even if we work this out, we may not come back. Lisa and Cassy have been through enough and I’m not pulling them out of another church. She listened to Joe. “No, I don‘t think they are. And I don‘t know how to change that.” She said, sounding defeated, thought I couldn’t imagine why. “You can’t blame me for being a skeptic.” She said. “You haven’t exactly kept your promises in the past.”I started to get nervous. Mom never talked to Joe like this without it leading to some sort of fight. Lisa was thinking the same thing. “Come on, Cassy. We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.” She tugged on my arm. “Just a little longer.” My legs started to feel weak and I leaned into the wall for support. The rest of the conversation went on in a whisper, and I had to strain to hear it. Meanwhile, Lisa was nervously glancing behind us, as if calculating how long it would take to run back to my room if things got bad.Mom kept on. “What do you expect us to do, Joe? Just pack up and leave another church so that we can come back to one that treated us like dirt the first time we were there? Without a guarantee that we’ll be welcomed back?” She paused for effect. “That doesn’t exactly sound like a fair deal on our side.” She waited for him to respond to this. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Joe. We have two entirely different viewpoints. We’re never going to see eye to eye.” She stopped and took a breath. “What makes you think that could change now?” His response obviously shocked her. “You’ve been praying?” I peeked around the corner and saw her hang her head, still holding the phone to her ear. Her voice got so soft that I barely heard what she said. “Joe, I’ll call you back. I need to talk to the Cassy and Lisa about this, and I’ve got some praying to do myself.” She waited while he said his goodbyes, which she responded to with a quiet, “Mhm.”I turned around to look at Lisa, who had her lips pressed together in a thin line and looked like she was about to cry. “We can go now.” I said. She turned and we both walked back to my room and sat on the bed. “What’s wrong?” I asked when the door was shut.For a moment, she sat on the edge of the bed without saying anything. When she did speak, she was quiet. “I can’t believe it.” She said. “We might be going back.”I smiled. “I’d get to see Lacey!” Lisa still looked ready to cry. “You don’t want to go back?” She shook her head.“That’s not it. I just got used to not being there, you know. And now to be going back…it’s just…” She blinked and two tears rolled down her face. “It’ll be so different from when we left.” All of the sudden, she sniffed, straightened her back and quickly wiped her sleeve across her wet cheek. “But we shouldn’t even worry about it, because Mom might not want to go back either way.” Just then the door clicked open and mom opened the door slowly. She wasn’t wearing the smile that she normally did. Part of me was relieved, and the other part was worried. “Girls, I need to talk to you about the phone call I just got.” Before she got any further, I interrupted. “We know what happened, Mom.” Lisa looked over at me and I think she almost smiled. “I think we should go back to the church.” Now my mom looked like she was going to cry. She came and sat in between Lisa and me. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” She asked. I nodded fervently. She turned to Lisa, who smiled and nodded. “Even after all that’s happened, you girls want to go back?” She asked. Lisa took over.“It’s always been our church, Mom. That never changed when we left.” She paused. “That’s why we never stopped calling it ‘the church’.” She smiled and another tear fell down her cheek. “It’s our home, Mom. We have to go back.”Mom put her arms around both of us and hugged us tight. “I’m so proud of you girls.” She cried. “You’re some of the strongest people I know.” I sat up and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re stronger, Mom.”With that, she started crying and just sat on the edge of my bed, crying and holding each other and not saying anything. After a few minutes, she wiped her eyes the way Lisa had just done. She stood up from the bed and turned to look back at us. “I guess I’m going to go call Joe, then.” She said, and walked out the door
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