My eyes looked back and forth from the door I’d come out of to the door it seemed I had no choice but to go into. Now I was going somewhere else, somewhere new, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I stared at the mahogany door once more and took a deep breath while reading the words engraved on the brass plate.
The Cry Room.
I remembered again why I’d never wanted to go inside previously. Who would want to spend a church service in a place with that name? Though I’d never been inside, I’d deduced that this was a place for mothers to take their crying babies. Did I mention that Lily wasn’t crying? I was the one about to burst into tears. At the beginning of my pregnancy, I’d enjoyed the way people had offered me a seat or given me special privileges, but even that had gotten old. Being escorted out of church and into a special room by my husband and mother-in-law was just too much.
This wasn’t the first time I’d gotten this kind of reaction to feeding my hungry baby, of course. I’d nursed Lily in hot cars, bathroom stalls and guest bedrooms. Church had been the only place in my life where all of the pieces of me—Christian, wife and mother—could exist at once. And now, even at church there was a special place for me to go, away from my husband, who seemed to be slipping from me by the second, from the pleading look in his tired eyes.
Maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing, this forbidding door in front of me. Maybe it was time for me to find my own place, both in our marriage and in our church. I attempted to square my shoulders like that flaming-hot church mother had done, but I was too weighed down by the diaper bag on my shoulder and the baby in my arms. Instead of standing straight, I almost fell over. Again.
My husband sighed, but reached out to support me again. “What are you doing, Tracey? You’re going to drop the baby on the floor. Look, I’ve got to get back in there before Mom comes back out here and makes a scene, okay? It’s not a big deal to go in the Cry Room. Almost every church in Illinois has one of these now. There’s a window in there where you can see everything. And who knows, maybe you’ll make some friends here. It might be good for you.”
I took a deep breath. “Maybe I should just take Lily to the nursery and stay in the service with you. Maybe she’ll make some friends in there.”
Ryan lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t try to be funny, okay? You know Lily hates it in there. After the diaper rash and the screaming last time, we agreed that she’d stay with you. Since Mom is acting so crazy about you feeding her in the church, I guess that means we’ll be apart until you stop nursing, but don’t turn this into a big fight. Not now.”
Until I stop nursing? What was that supposed to mean?
He pulled back from me as if he’d touched something not so nice and straightened his tie, a silk one Rochelle had hand-painted and sent as a gift for his birthday. Right now, I wanted to wring Ryan’s neck with it and get in my car and drive the two hours back home to Leverhill, where Rochelle, Dana and my other friends from the Sassy Sistahood e-mail group still lived. My heart went back there for me, back to my old church where they let mothers feed their babies under a blanket and people knew how to say hello. Where—
“Tracey!”
As my husband raised his voice to the tone he used with his insubordinate employees, a baby on the other side of the door let out a piercing scream. My husband folded his arms and made an I-told-you-so face.
“See? There’s a reason for this. If that child was in the service, no one could hear and then the mother would have to get up and try to get out from between all those people—”
The door to the Cry Room jerked open and a woman I’d seen many times before stormed out with her crying child. Tears were streaming down her face, too. “Excuse me,” she said as she pushed past us.
I watched in amazement, first at the dark room revealed when she opened the door, and second at her exit from the one place that was supposed to be for crying. She wobbled on her high heels across the foyer to the nursery. I gasped in disbelief.
The door opened again and a smiling face appeared, a deacon’s wife whose name I couldn’t remember. Sister Hawkins, maybe? That sounded right. She ran the Mother-to-Mother ministry and had very definite ideas about what being a mother meant. Running my graphic-design firm, In His Image, from home and putting Lily in part-time day care did not fit with her concept of motherhood. Probably the only reason Mrs. Hawkins (that was her name!) still spoke to me was because I nursed Lily instead of giving her formula. She’d never say that, but it was the only thing she’d discussed in our brief conversations.
Ryan formed a tight smile as the woman stepped forward with one hand behind her to buffer the sound as the door closed. He narrowed his eyes at me a little, just enough that only I would notice. “Sorry about the noise. It’s our first time. It’s a little bit of an adjustment.”
Sister Hawkins leaned forward, speaking only to my husband and barely above a whisper. “We really like to keep it quiet here so that everyone can hear and the other babies stay peaceful. That baby—” she pointed down the hall toward the path that the mother who’d left had taken “—he wouldn’t take his bottle. Not much we could do to help with that….” She paused to quiver at the idea.
“Anyway, Brother Ryan, your wife and daughter are more than welcome to join us. We’ve been wondering why she hasn’t come in before now. I know that I sent her an invitation.” She smiled wide, revealing the gold front tooth that had surprised me the first time I saw it. Now it just made me want to giggle. There were a lot of things we could do to hide our pasts, but some things just told the tale for us. The light hit the gold tooth from all angles. My husband blinked as if someone had just taken his picture. I was too mad to laugh.
I forced my mouth shut when Ryan squeezed my hand. I hadn’t realized it’d been hanging open. I don’t know which thing stunned me more: Sister Hawkins’s gold tooth or the fact that babies couldn’t cry in the cry room. What was the point of the place then? I decided to ask. “So it’s not really a cry room, is it? It’s a place for moms to nurse their babies?”
The woman turned to me. “Yes, that’s it exactly. They’re called Nursing Mothers’ Rooms at some churches, but the Cry Room was what the building committee chose. I know it seems different at first, but it’s church policy. With Brother Ryan advancing in favor with the pastor and the other men, you don’t want to be disobedient and hold him back, right?” She patted my arm, then held it tight.
Feeling like a homesick kid on the first day of school, I gently pulled away. “I do want to follow the policy, but the church I grew up in doesn’t make the mothers leave the sanctuary to feed their babies. Our pastor wanted all the families to stay together—”
Ryan frowned. “He’s not your pastor anymore. And that’s not your church. This is. Now go on in, hon. I’ve got to get back.” He brought down his tone for Sister Hawkins’s sake and gave her a polite nod as well, but not before whispering, “I’m sorry,” out of the corner of his mouth.
I dropped my head. I was sorry, too. Once again, I was proving his mother right. That look on my husband’s face had said it all. Though he loved me, his mother seemed convinced that I would never be quite right for the job of being his wife or running his house. I’d heard her whisper it to him more times than either he or I would admit. Queen’s doubts had always made me feel bad, but this morning I wondered if she wasn’t right. I couldn’t help thinking too that Dana had told me not to marry Ryan. At the time, I’d thought she was jealous, since they’d gone out a few times. But now…
The woman’s hand gripped my arm again, and before I knew it, the dim room enveloped me and the door shut behind me. Lily wiggled awake in my arms. I could imagine her blinking to adjust to the darkness the way she did in her crib at home. She knew she was somewhere different, somewhere that seemed far away. I