Mary would probably laugh and tell me that I’m remembering this wrong

by Evangeline Scheibe
Visual by Veronica Hernandez

My greatest fear as a child was that I was never going to get married. I had wanted a family for longer than I could remember: I would work part-time, homeschool my six children, and cook and clean for when my husband came home from work. I was confident in my future, until I happened upon the fear that I would never find someone to marry me. 

I could imagine no future more bleak than one in which I emerged from my twenties unwed, bitter, and alone. Once past the age of prime eligibility, which I firmly and inexplicably believed to be 22, I would be doomed to come home every night to a dark and empty house that was probably haunted and certainly miserable. 

The vision sprung upon my 10-year-old mind with matchless aggression, but I welcomed it. I took it in, fostered it, and nurtured it, and in my care it blossomed. I began to scope out the boys in my Sunday school class, assessing their ability to provide for a family while plotting to make them fall helplessly in love with me. 

The blond boy playing with blocks in the corner? No, too boring. He wouldn’t be a good husband. The boy with the light-up shoes? Maybe, except he never pays attention during our Bible lesson. I want kids that can sit still and do well in school. Certainly not the boy that bumped into me during recess and didn’t even apologize. Unacceptable.

I begged Mary to let me make dinner every Sunday night, so that I could practice for when I had my own family. One Sunday, over the remnants of a homemade chicken pot pie that was my pride and joy, I asked her how to walk “sexy.” She and I, along with my older sister, took turns walking while swaying our hips while Kevin chuckled at us from his perch at the head of the table. After a few jokes at my expense, mainly about how I was walking like I had something shoved up my rear, I concluded that “sexy” was not in the cards for me. I was not discouraged; I could redirect my efforts to the development of other alluring qualities. 

Once, while sitting in the passenger seat of our family van, I broke down into tears and shared my fears with my mother. As she turned out of the church parking lot onto the highway, the setting sun flooded the car with golden light. I squinted pointedly out the window, praying that my watery eyes had gone unnoticed. Mary faltered for a moment, surely taken aback by the passion with which I confessed my despair.

“Oh Eva, you have nothing to worry about. I don’t tell you this often, because I don’t want you to be prideful, but you really are a beautiful girl. You’ll have all sorts of boys wanting to marry you.”

She uttered it with such solemn secrecy, such pride, that I felt like she had let me in on a secret I wasn’t meant to know. I peered at my reflection in the side mirror, half blinded by the sun but desperate to see what she saw. I had never been called beautiful before, but I didn’t think to argue with her. She knew best.