To Be Child of God [A Merome Story]

✧Chapter 13✧

The first time I visited the room Jerome and I would be given after I marriage, I completely froze. It was simple, the exact same ones as every single one that newly wed couples were given, my brother and friends included. Terah and Gabriel's room was the same, a few down the hall from me, with my friends' rooms in between. But when I walked in the doorway, number 37 on the door, Faith and mother behind me, I completely froze up.

For now it was bare, sparsely populated with a double bed, a wardrobe and two dresses, small bathroom just inside the door. There was a few other items, an ironing board, shelves, two chairs and a lamp, but other than that it was empty. There were no curtains, no sheets, no duvet. There was room on the far wall for a single bed, a bunk bed likely, for the first children of the couple. I just choked up the moment I saw it.

Jerome's family would be the one to decide the linens for the room, the curtains and sheets and duvet, but I trusted Jerome's sisters to make it pretty. My job, for now, was making my wedding dress, some new dresses for everyday wear, and maybe adding small trinkets, bible verses sewn onto cloth or toy for future children, to the shelves.

Faith saw my look. My mother was too busy critically examining the room for stains or chips in the paint on the wall to notice when my little sister came up and hugged me tightly. I let out a choked sob into the top of her head, muffled enough for mother not to notice, before quickly composing myself. I couldn't afford to cry, not now. But seeing it like this, knowing I would be married and living in this room in a few months, made it so real that I almost fainted from fear. Everything was so uncertain, so scary, I didn't want anything to change. I wanted to stay with my family and be my mothers little girl again, not raising her siblings about to get married to a man who would take me away from here. I still didn't know if I was doing the right thing.

When I tried to continue sewing my wedding dress later that night, I cried. I couldn't touch the thing without knowing what it really meant. It meant shattering the rule to pieces. It meant leaving the community, never seeing my friends' babies. Never seeing any more nieces or nephews from Gabriel, or Faith when she was married, or any of my siblings.

But if I stayed... I knew I couldn't be true. If I chose to stay, Jerome would leave. I would be like Terah or maybe like the girl Luke left, single and alone, maybe with a child on the way. But I couldn't raise a child here. I couldn't have children, at all. I had already raised my siblings. I couldn't do it again.

I went to my bedroom, saying I wasn't feeling well, and just sobbed into my pillow. I didn't want to leave. I couldn't leave my family, I couldn't leave behind everything I had grown up with to go out into the world we had been told would lead up to immorality, to hell and to damnation. But I couldn't stay here either.

That night really confirmed it- I needed to talk to Lachlan myself. I needed to meet him face to face and he needed to tell me everything he knew. What it meant to be trans, to be in the outside world. Surely it couldn't be that bad if he was trying to get other out? But then again, he could be trying to lead us to damnation.

I didn't know what to think anymore. I wanted to be a little girl again, the only thing on her mind being hanging out with her friends on breaks at school and what was for dinner. Not marriage and breaking the rule and leaving my family behind.

Justice crawled into my bed when she came into the room to go to sleep. She knew I was crying. I just hugged her tight. I didn't want to leave her either. I didn't want to leave her or Harmony or Mercy or Hope or Joy or Faith, or Liam or Matthew or Thomas. I didn't want to leave my friends.

I just held my little sister tight. I didn't know anymore.

----------------------------------------------------

The Elders announced the date of our marriage, mine, Abigail's, Susanna's, Sarah's and Ruth's, the following Sunday. It would be a month away, on a Sunday of course. I would be barely eighteen and a half by then, Jerome being the same age. It had come suddenly and I had to work very hard in order to get my dresses made, but I would be alright.

From the moment they announced the date, the anxiety set in. It was like there was something in my stomach, weighing me down with every movement, and it was almost painful at times. I felt like I was being crushed. At the time I didn't have the name for it, but it was anxiety. And it was bad.

I got through each day, but only barely. Jerome couldn't come anywhere near me, not now that Gabriel was sitting with his wife and new baby with her family, so I couldn't talk to him either. I likely wouldn't until the day of our wedding at god that scared me, so much. He wouldn't see me until he met me in my white dress on the day of, when I walked up the aisle to be married. My friends would be with me, each in their white dresses too.

I made it through by looking after the children in the daycare. I threw myself into aiding Justice in her independence, I sewed my dresses each evening with Joy, Hope and Faith, chattering to them and making jokes when our mother wasn't in the room. I almost never put Harmony down. I helped Mercy with her talking, taught her to get dressed on her own. I spent a couple of evenings a week with my friends, around at one of their houses, as we talked about the upcoming date.

It didn't help the anxiety though. I cried myself to sleep each night, and each night one of my sisters crawled into bed to sleep with me. I found it comforting, but it also made it worse. After all of this, I really didn't know if I could leave them. My little sisters need me. My brothers not so much, Liam was at a point when he was very independent and was capable of helping the others.

The wedding day was drawing nearer and nearer. Three weeks, two weeks, one. Five days. Three days. Two days. One.

Then the day dawned bright and clearly, my mother ushering me from my room bright and early, white dress laid on the couch.

"Good morning my daughter." My mother smiled. "Today is the day you become a woman, and enter the world of adults."