Ancilla: SOUNDBITE EDITION. (SERIALIZED, MATURE SECTIONS MARKED)

Yesod (PART 2, has 1044 words)

I'm sitting at a carrel in the university library in the religion section on the second floor, a stack of books shoved to the side in a pile. The Zohar - several books of it. Isaac Luria. A medieval treatise on golems that he doesn't have a personal copy of, which is why I'm doing my work here. My weekly readings usually include at least one obscure work that I can't find on his bookshelves and have to look up elsewhere. Plotinus, who doesn't seem to fit into this assignment on the movements and the evolution of the soul at all, but maybe I'm missing something; then again, maybe not. He's given me unrelated tangential readings before as a way of keeping me on my toes. If I don't notice that the readings are unrelated, then I'm not paying attention. Then again, sometimes the seemingly unrelated readings are related to the study material after all, and if I don't catch that, I'm not paying attention. The bottom line is that I need to read everything thoroughly and think about it or meditate on it.

Then I have to write him an essay, which I read aloud so that my findings can be critiqued - or, as some other, less thick-skinned people might call it, torn apart to the very stuffing. It's a learning experience. Builds character. No, really, it does. On rare occasions, I'm able to conduct study in an area of esoteric philosophy which I happen to already know fairly well, and in those instances, the grilling session turns into a real debate.

He seems to like that even better, interestingly enough.

He started giving me assignments after I told him I missed being in college. Like every other aspect of my training, the assignments are difficult - they're more difficult than some of the assignments I was given for my philosophy classes after I declared my major and started taking upper-level courses.

I think it's one of the sweetest things he's ever done for me.

"She's four years older than you are; she's a graduate student, while you're only a sophomore. You let her take advantage of you? I don't understand." I was expecting him to scream at me, the way he did when he found out I'd kissed my boyfriend, but he has yet to scream. He's so quiet I can barely hear his voice. His face is crestfallen. This is so much worse than screaming.

"If it was my idea, how could she be the one taking advantage of me?"

My mother is crying too hard to talk. At least she hasn't run to the bathroom to throw up again.

"Don't you know how horrible a sin this is? It's worse than murder. How could we have failed you so badly in teaching you right from wrong? You say you love her. You say this was your idea. You might not care about your own soul, but don't you care about hers?"

I swallow. Hard. I am not going to start crying in front of them. Not now. "Dad, I gave up Christianity for Lent. Your argument doesn't mean anything to me."

"When did that happen? Was abandoning your faith her idea, too?"

Actually, yes, it was, sort of, in an indirect kind of way, although I was already questioning it by the time she had her faith crisis and wound up giving up her Christian beliefs as part of the angst attack I had to talk her through. That was a long night. But that's nothing that needs to be discussed with my parents.

They found my long-distance phone bill, which, like all other campus communication, got sent to my home address during school vacations, before I could intercept the mail. Of course, they opened the bill. They said it was their responsibility to pay my college bills. They wanted to know why there were all those long-distance charges to a certain college town in the northeast part of the state, which my girlfriend happened to be living in because that was the location of her grad school. I can hide the truth, but I can't tell lies. (My now ex-girlfriend, actually; we broke things off a week before I went home for the Christmas holidays. Not that that's any of my parents' business, either).

And so, I was outed.

"You need help," my father says, and my mother nods tearfully. "We can get you therapy. It's not too late. We were probably blessed by God to have found out about this situation as early as we did."

Eventually, they give me an ultimatum. I can go through professional deprogramming - then, once I am back home, I can undergo spiritual guidance from our parish priest, while they keep me under house arrest, with constant monitoring; or I can leave and never come home or consider myself part of the family again.

If I allow them to take me under their control, they may eventually send me to the local public university and let me graduate. If not, they will mourn me as one dead, and that will be that. Either way, I won't get to attend the private college I've been enrolled in anymore, since it's several hundred miles away and puts me out of their reach, away from their control and their watchful eyes. I won't be able to afford the tuition payments on my own, since my partial scholarship only covers half the tuition, and I have no income of my own. However, the deprogramming option at least lets me stay in their good graces. Sort of. And it lets me have a chance of eventually getting back into college, albeit a public university that has a reputation for taking any student that breathes and probably won't be nearly challenging enough for me. Better gut classes at an undemanding, noncompetitive public university than no college at all. There isn't really much of a choice if I care about my own interests.

I start packing a bag.

I hope I can hang out at the Greyhound station overnight until I can arrange transportation to my dorm to collect the few things I can't bear to leave behind. I'd rather not spend the night on the streets. It's January.