least not tonight. Good night, sweet, confused girl.
MEGAN: I’d be offended, except I know: you only know I want to leave, but not all the reasons. One reason: it does not make me happy to see people killed or starving or maimed. I don’t want to mock them; I want to help them.
It is your place. You’re a friend. Sleep well.
* * *
Between Grace, C.G., and the news, I was presented with fresh opportunities to stew in my confusion and despair daily. Grace was stewing, too, sending me text messages fretting about Hell as she sat at her desk doing data entry work downtown. As I struggled to answer my sister’s pressing questions about our eternal fate, my thoughts returned to Margie’s letter to the editor—that contradiction of relying on our hearts when our hearts were evil. It had not occurred to me to see that paradox to its logical conclusion, but now a new question dawned on me:
What if the Bible wasn’t the literal and infallible word of God?
At home in my bedroom, I froze. This was the sine qua non of our belief system, the foundational truth of the life I had led since I was capable of conscious thought. I was surprised at how noiselessly it shattered.
Not a single breath passed before my mind pulled forth a Bible story that had rankled me since the first time my mother read it to my siblings and me when I was a little girl.
In the book of Judges, the final three chapters tell the tale of a Levite and his concubine. We are not told their names—only that she played the whore against him, and retreated to her father’s house in the city of Bethlehem. There she remained for four months, until her husband went after her, to speak friendly unto her, and to bring her home again. By the repeated entreaties of his father-in-law, the man was convinced to stay and eat and make merry for several days. The fifth day arrived, and as they prepared to leave that afternoon, the woman’s father pressed him again: Behold, now the day draweth toward evening, I pray you tarry all night. But the man would not. He and his concubine and his servant departed, though it was too late in the day to make it home by nightfall.
That evening, rather than spend the night in a city of strangers, the Levite decided their group would press on to the city of Gibeah, of the tribe of Benjamin. They arrived just after sunset. When an old man saw them preparing to sleep in a street of the city, he drew near. “Let all thy wants lie upon me; only lodge not in the street,” he warned them. The old man brought them into his house to care for them and their animals.
As they were making their hearts merry, the men of the city surrounded the house, beating at the door and calling out to the old man: they wanted to rape the Levite. “Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.”
The old man begged them not to do such a thing: “Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them will I bring out now, and humble ye them, and do what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.”
But the men of Gibeah wouldn’t listen to the old man. The Levite took matters into his own hands, delivering his concubine to the men beating at the door.
And they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.
As the day dawned, the woman collapsed outside the door of the old man’s house. Her husband arose and opened the door to leave, only to find her there. Her hands were on the threshold.
And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going.
But none answered.
The Levite picked up the body of his concubine, carried her back home, and hacked her into twelve pieces. He sent one to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds. The tribes gathered and sent messengers to Benjamin: turn over those men of Gibeah so that we can put them to death.
The children of Benjamin refused, and civil war ensued—the eleven tribes against the one. Benjamin dominated the first two skirmishes, annihilating forty thousand men. The Israelites wept and fasted and made