MARKED | Creative Nonfiction by Summer Hammond

“Out of all the boys, Summer, he’s the one you set your heart on?”

Sliding down her sunglasses, my mother eyed me in the rearview mirror as we left for Luke Michael’s graduation party, a blue paisley gift bag perched on my lap. What my mother was really saying was, listen kid, you don’t stand a chance. She assumed I was exercising my admittedly prodigious gift of obliviousness and in dire need of a wake-up call.

Luke, after all, was the dream catch, not only in our congregation, but in the whole circuit of congregations, maybe even the whole district.  

I was more astute than my mother realized. I knew where I stood, having been painfully enlightened recently at Black Hawk Junior High. Being a Jehovah’s Witness was unattractive enough. I was the only one in the school who didn’t celebrate birthdays, sing the Star-Spangled Banner or stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. However, added to this, I dared to have frizzy hair, braces and a big nose. Recently, as if the world were a workplace and an essential task had been grossly overlooked, a classmate had yanked me aside to hiss: “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you’re ugly?”

I understood that I was not, by a long shot, the winningest girl in love with Luke Michaels. I was not “in his league” – I was out in the sticks, striking out at rookie ball. My mother’s logic was unassailable. Her fear for my heart, completely reasonable.

And still, incorrigibly, I dreamed.

As the cornfields slid by, and we sailed into the rural Iowa town of De Witt, excitement gained momentum inside me. My mind traveled back to the day last summer when my outsized hopes took root.  

Rosie Michaels was my mother’s best friend, another mother to me. Each week, Mom dropped me at Rosie’s house for Bible study. I wasn’t yet baptized, but diligently working toward it. On that fateful day, I arrived to Bible study with the Watchtower publication You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth, and a life-changing bug barn.

Bugs fascinated me. I could watch them for hours on end. In his workshop, my father built me an insect carrier, shaped like an iconic Iowa barn, painted red. Everywhere I went, I collected walking sticks, cicadas and little leaping grasshoppers. Rosie’s grape arbor concealed treasure: huge buffalo katydids with humpbacks and shimmering wings, intricate as stained glass.

After Bible study, while waiting for mom to pick me up, I hunted. With practiced stealth, I waited for the singing, then gently, with two hands, parted the lush leaves. They were magnificent, these katydids, and each time, cupping one in my hand with exceeding care, releasing her into the bug barn pre-furnished with plentiful leaves, grass, lettuce, fruit—a veritable bug resort!—I felt privy to magic that others missed.

“Whatcha got there?”

Startled, I rose, and found myself face-to-face with Luke.

I had grown up with Rosie’s four boys, all of us attending the same Kingdom Hall, a rented space on the top floor of the old Farm Bureau building in downtown De Witt. Our families often gathered for picnics, tennis, bowling and pizza.  

At that moment, Luke unfurled before me, a new creature. It was as if all at once, he had molted, come into the world a different self.

He crouched, gazing intently into my bug barn. I took him in—sleeveless work shirt rippling in the breeze, tan muscles filmed in sawdust, sweat-glistening brown and golden hair. I gazed with rapture, with shock, with a near tear-inducing awe, as one must when rounding a bend only to witness the lavender fields of Provence unfold, a heart-gripping spectacle of sheer beauty, one you never imagined would be yours to see.  

Luke looked up, flashing a grin. “Cool katydid.”

He knew her name!

And that was that.

Cars packed the Michaels’ driveway and lined the street so my mother and I, arriving a bit late, had to park quite far back, then walk. This gave me time to straighten the tissue paper poofing out from the gift bag my sister helped me pick out. “Do you know what he likes?” she’d asked.

“Paisley.” How proud I was to know this! It was one of the details, like gold coins, I’d discovered and collected about Luke. Drawing on my innermost resources, I had overcome my shyness, seeking him out for conversation each time we visited the Michaels. I had learned that his favorite jeans brand was Guess? He planned to commit to door-to-door preaching full-time, fifty hours a month, as a ‘regular pioneer’ after graduation. He worked in his father’s construction business, and hoped to take it over someday. He was also inordinately fond of ties, even more so than most Witness boys. Luke had shown me his collection. Twenty-six ties! I gently caressed one, overcome by the intimacy, not just the silken touch, the fact I had been so trusted, welcomed into his kingdom.

“Do you think he likes me?” I had asked my sister, who, when recruited to do so, had scientifically observed the two of us together, taking meticulous note of Luke’s expressions, gestures, tone of voice, and the way he looked at me.

She’d responded, “I think he’s very…fond of you. As a friend. Remember, you’re fourteen.”

“Someday I’ll be older though. I’ll catch up.”

Her slow nod was enough to buoy inside me the hope that most would shoot out of the sky.

The Michaels’ spacious living room boasted tall ceilings and exposed wood beams, decorated that day with graduation streamers and balloons. When mom and I stepped in, Luke was surrounded, nearly engulfed, by a group of girls cheering as he ripped open presents and wrapping paper flew. “You see, he’s got himself a harem,” Mom said out of the side of her mouth. “You’d think he was Tom Cruise.”

I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Not because of Luke, or his harem, but because my allergies were kicking in. My whole family had been diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivities, as a result of living in a mobile home trailer with high levels of formaldehyde. Our mobile home had been sold to us without warnings regarding formaldehyde content and the possible health effects of long-term exposure. Doctors had dismissed our symptoms—nose bleeds, headaches, rashes, lingering infections—and we were finally officially diagnosed by an allergy specialist in Wisconsin. He had administered injections of various chemicals, including formaldehyde, which hit us all like a river of fire, bringing us to our knees.

As it turned out, countless beauty, hygiene, and cleaning products contain formaldehyde, triggering our immune systems to produce intense reactions whenever we encountered them.

I was considered the healthiest in the family since I had lived in the mobile home the least amount of time. However, even though I wasn’t as sick as my sister, who’d had to leave school her sophomore year, I was still knocked flat by a tidal wave of perfume.  

Grabbing mom’s arm, I choked, “I think I have to step outside.” Accustomed to quick exits from malls, restaurants, grocery stores, anywhere chemicals proliferated in close quarters, mom and I beelined toward the door.

“There’s my Summer sunshine!” Rosie sang. Her red hair gathered into a big, exuberant ponytail, she stepped out of the kitchen as we scurried by. In her hand, a tall glass filled with lemonade and glittering gems of crushed ice.

“Perfume,” mom said, as I coughed into my fist. “We’ll be out on the porch.”

“Here, honey, take this.” Rosie pressed the drink into my hand.

On the patio, I sank into one of the cushioned wicker chairs. My chemical sensitivities were akin to severe hay fever with throat constriction, wheezing, watery eyes, and at times, dizziness and heart palpitations. That day the tips of my ears had turned bright red. “You see her ears?” Mom said as Rosie stepped out through the sliding glass doors. “What did I tell you?” The defiant note in Mom’s voice, like she was trying to prove something.

“Redder than two stop lights,” Rosie said, “even redder than my hair!” she giggled, nudging me. “I’m sorry, my sweet Summer. I didn’t think about your allergies when I sent out the invites. I would have told everyone to knock off the perfumes.”

There was a moment’s pause, in which I registered thick discomfort. Our illness had polarized the Kingdom Hall. We’d missed a lot of meetings. The brothers and sisters tended to pile on the fragrances—kind of like a burnt offering to Jehovah, only instead of a ram, the holy smoke of Aqua Net and Drakkar Noir.

But Jehovah’s Witnesses were stricter about attendance than the lady with perpetually pursed lips parked behind the big desk in the school office. The Watchtower Society preached that we were living in the Last Days. Armageddon was fast approaching, and the Kingdom Halls were present-day Arks, the only place that would keep us safe, as the world around us sank like the Titanic. We were obligated to maintain consistent meeting attendance not only to ensure our survival into the New Earth, but to prove our loyalty to Jehovah and His earthly organization.

My father had been in discussion with our Elder body, asking them to educate the brothers and sisters about formaldehyde and “Mobile Home Sickness”. I also knew he was asking them to push the brothers and sisters to limit the amount of fragrances they wore to meetings—and this wasn’t going over so well.

Eventually, Rosie and Mom wandered off the patio together, deep in conversation. I took a long drink from the lemonade.

“Hey, Bug Girl.”

“Tie Guy!”

Luke grinned, and sat down beside me—so close. The lemonade slipped down the wrong pipe. I choked, pounding at my chest.
“Oh no,” he said, sniffing at his shirt. “Mom told me to shower and change before I came out. Do I still…?”

I laughed and coughed at the same time. “It’s not you!”

“Do you need the Heimlich?”

I laughed even harder, then started to hiccup. I was really winning the day. “Here,” I wheezed, kicking the gift bag toward him, “open this before I die!”

“Please don’t say that.” He picked up the bag and said, “Paisley!” Then met my eyes. “You remembered.”

“Totally.”

He smiled, crooked and sweet, then flung the tissue paper and lifted out the long rectangular red and white box. “Hmm. What could it be?” He glanced at me, bit his lip, and opened it. “Whoa! You got me a Guess? pen. Seriously?”

I sat upright, hands folded in my lap, beaming. For a long time, I had debated between a navy blue and silver paisley tie and a leather attaché case. But he already owned a truly majestic collection of ties, and the case, although it would be useful for the door-to-door preaching work, seemed too much. The pen was perfect.

A soft, sentimental voice piped out from Rosie’s record player onto the patio as someone opened the sliding glass doors.

Rosie was on a Michael W. Smith kick. I don’t think she realized that he was a famous Christian singer, basically a lyrical spokesman for the ‘Pharisees’ and ‘false prophets’ of Christendom. When she heard God or Lord, her mind quickly scribbled over it with Jehovah.

“No way.” Rotating the pen, Luke had found the engraving. Lucas Nathaniel Michaels. I didn’t tell him that I had paid extra, quite a lot, to have his whole name engraved. I didn’t tell him that I’d spent every penny saved from carpet cleaning jobs with my dad. But I did say, swinging my feet, “You do the books for your dad’s construction business. I saw the accounting ledgers on your desk. I thought you could use a nice pen.”  

I could tell, the way his face grew serious, and he swallowed—message received.

Luke set the pen back in the box. Then, before I knew it, his arms were around me. “Thanks, Summer. This is really special. And it means a lot.”

A group of Witness girls, each one breathtakingly lovely, clustered in a knot just outside the sliding glass doors. They watched us, smiling at one another, whispering over their drinks. It was clear they thought the tableau was cute. Luke, the Iowa Adonis, hugging the homely girl with strange afflictions who was desperately in love with him. Poor dear. She didn’t stand a chance.

I could feel what they thought. And I didn’t believe them.

“Do you think…he could love me someday?”

Out in the yard with my sister, laying on our backs in the grass, I held my breath.

My sister would think about this. Her answer would be honest. She thought about things more than anyone I knew. She had endured more things than anyone I knew. Forced to drop out of high school due to environmental illness, she would never experience a graduation celebration, or a normal young life, like Luke’s. 

Homeschooling was then illegal in Iowa, so our parents had requested a home-bound tutor. School administrators bucked against the request. Although my father submitted paperwork, including the toxicity report on the mobile home trailer, as well as our test results at the allergy clinic, confirming multiple chemical sensitivities linked to formaldehyde exposure, the school required more proof before sending a tutor. In response, my father had initiated two lawsuits: One against the mobile home manufacturers, and another against the Pleasant Valley school system.

My sister didn’t feel well most of the time, had recently been in the hospital undergoing brain scans, and was now preparing to testify in court, defending her right to an education. Added to this, her friends from Kingdom Hall were dropping away. As my sister wryly joked, she wasn’t exactly the life of the slumber party when bonding rituals, like applying nail polish, made her vomit.

She was now confined to hanging out with her little sister, swooning over the worn-out cassette, The Birds, The Bees and The Monkees, while laying on our backs, the sky, the stars, and the opening piano chords of Daydream Believer, like bittersweet heart-climbing vines.  

“I think,” my sister said, hesitant, yet deliberate, “the chances are zero to none.”

I was no statistics expert but that was not good. I broke into a cold sweat. I wanted to curl into a ball. “Is it because I’m ugly?” A fractured cry.

My sister flung a handful of grass at me. “You are not ugly! You are striking.”

Which meant that I was ugly in a showy way. “Then why don’t you think he could love me?”

My sister said softly, “Luke’s a good Witness boy who’s got to marry a good Witness girl.”

My mouth fell open. “I am a good Witness girl!”

She stared into my eyes. “You know they’re talking about us.”

Some of the brothers and sisters, including some of the Elders, didn’t believe we were sick. Speculation and gossip buzzed. Unlike a mainstream church, where members could come and go, mostly without remark, for Jehovah’s Witnesses, missing meetings was a wrongdoing.

“But…we haven’t done anything bad,” I said.

“The other day, when Rosie was here for coffee, I overheard her and Mom talking. Rosie said” — my sister looked down, tore at the grass— “she didn’t know if she should be our friend anymore.”

Late August arrived wearing gold. The cicadas whirred and sawed, a raucous chorus in the treetops. Bill Michaels was at the grill, Rosie’s apron, the gingham one with frilly lace pockets, stretched across his belly. He flipped a burger high in the air and twirled. Rosie kicked out a leg, ducked, and shrieked, “Billlllll!” as the burger narrowly missed the top of her head, landing on the picnic table and bouncing into the grass.

We all cracked up. It was a moment as warm as the day, our families laughing together, as they’d done for years. That moment seemed to testify that nothing had changed. Though my sister now wore a tight, forced smile when Rosie reached to hug her, Rosie was still our friend. Every week, Rosie still studied the Bible with me. She washed her clothes in white vinegar and didn’t use product in her hair, so I wouldn’t get sick. She still called me her Summer Sunshine. And she bought me the What Katy Did book series. Once, that summer, she had brushed out my hair in the sunlight with such aching tenderness, it felt like I was her very own.

One day, I could be.

It had been exactly one year since I’d fallen in love with Luke. He sat beside me now, and every so often, his knee swung out, touching mine, and delight poured through my body. The sun, in her luxurious descent, rouged the trees, the grass, and everyone’s skin. I took in each face at the table. We all looked like angels. When the New Earth came, we would look just like this, together forever, and my family would be healed.  

After dinner, while the others prepared for a badminton showdown, I grabbed my bug barn from the car.

Luke called out, “Hunting katydids?”

I gave a thumbs up.

I was stunned when he dropped his racket, bowed out of the game, and jogged over.  

I motioned for him to sit beside me on the ground, beside the grape arbor. I put my finger to my lips. We waited, sitting side by side. Finally, a katydid began to sing, sonorous and operatic. When others joined, the chattering chorus was rich, resonant, like a star-filled sky made of sound.

“Wow,” Luke whispered. “I’ve always heard them, but I’ve never actually sat here and listened.”

We rummaged through the leaves together, brushing elbows, a beautiful communion as the sunset thickened over our heads, painting our skin in burnt orange. A katydid flew out and I took Luke’s arm. “Look!” She winged over us, more fairy-like than any creature I’d ever seen, the graceful flurry of her tender green wings. She hovered there, just above our heads. From Jehovah, I thought. A blessing. Luke and I turned to one another, held eyes, and smiled.

“Luke!” Rosie called. She strode our way. The look on her face triggered me to release my grip on Luke’s arm. My mother had told me that before becoming a Witness, Rosie was a schoolteacher, and given the right conditions, could still be stern. Until now, I had not viewed that side of her. My bug barn at my feet, I laced my hands in front of me.

“Luke,” she said, her eyes darting between us. “Rowanna’s here.” Then she smiled, and it was like the sunlight breaking through again. “Summer, come with me, come meet Luke’s friend.” She circled her arm around my waist, guiding me toward the driveway, the girl now emerging from her shiny silver car.

The rollicking badminton game paused as everyone gathered around Sister Rowanna Collins. In bubbling high spirits, Rosie made introductions. Sister Collins, Rosie said, hugging Rowanna close, hailed from a congregation in Wisconsin. Rosie had met her at an assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Janesville, and was taken with her outstanding devotion to The Truth—already a regular pioneer in the door-to-door work and planning to volunteer at Bethel, the world headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn. “Well, I told her I have a son her age and maybe they’d like to write to each other,” Rosie said, with a giggle, resting her head on Luke’s shoulder. “How long have you two been corresponding, Lukey?”

“A couple months now,” Luke said, gazing at Rowanna. And oh, was she picturesque, with her long auburn hair flowing past her waist. She looked like a piece of the sunset, drifted to earth.

She shoulder-bumped Luke, flipped her car keys. “So Rosie invited me and I thought, sure, why not, I’ll come visit, hang out with my pen pal.”  

“You two have fun!” Rosie shouted as they disappeared together into Rowanna’s car. With a wink, Rosie nudged me and said, “You see? Luke’s been using that beautiful pen you gave him!”

***

It is a well-known fact, in the Witness community, that a good many marriages start with letter writing. Correspondence was encouraged by the Watchtower Society as a wise form of courtship, a way to get to know one another and suss out compatibility, without endangering what the Watchtower calls “our precious chastity.” Sisters anxious that their marriageable children find a good match in The Truth, often attend JW assemblies and conventions, hoping to acquire the address of at least one promising prospect.

In other words, we all knew what it meant when a couple was said to be “corresponding”.

On the car ride home that night, one Bible mystery, at least, was solved for me.

Why did men in the Bible so frequently rent, or tear, their shirts?

Ahab, Jacob, Mordecai, King David and Paul. So many others.

I no longer had to wonder.

This kind of pain was pain on fire.

This kind of pain, you couldn’t hold back until you got to your own room.

I was envious of the Bible men who shredded their clothing, fell to their knees, threw their heads back, and roared. I wanted to rent not only my shirt but the whole sky, rip it out and crumple it like black crepe paper, tear out every single star, threads ripping. Throw it all in God’s face.

I tried sucking it in, the rage-pain. Fat tears rolled down my face but I didn’t make a peep.

Then I caught a glimpse of my mother’s face in the side view mirror, illuminated by a street light, the wrenching flash, how broken she looked.

Then my sister reached over and set her hand on my knee, the lightest touch.

I set my head back against the car seat. A howl, tearing through the prison of my ribs, flaming up my throat, wrenching apart my jaws, breaking loose.

It was unearthly, like nothing else, from the pit.

That howl, more than any delight, told me—and the world—what I felt for him.

My sister turned to look out the window, her chin sunk on her hand. My father switched on the radio, shifted from one staticky station to another.

My mother was the only one to speak. “Well, we all saw that coming, didn’t we? We tried to warn her.” Anger, the first emotion she reached for. The one she knew best how to deploy.

I fell over sideways, curled into a ball.

“We tried to tell her she set her sights too high.”

I wept like it was gushing straight from my veins.

“We all knew that Rosie wasn’t going to pick her…”

I sat straight up and screamed, “ROSIE LOVES ME!”

My mother whipped around in her seat and screamed back in my face, “Not like that! She can’t! Don’t you know our family’s been Marked?”

I froze.

Dad swung the car to the side of the road, sliding a little on gravel, until we came to a standstill almost in the ditch. His face, pale and pinched. He hadn’t expected the information to come out like that.

A grain truck thundered past, and the car shook.

At this, my mother’s anger fractured, and she, too, began to weep, straight into her open hands. “God, God, now we all have to suffer.”

When the Elders “Marked” someone, they had determined the person was spiritually weak and while the sin wasn’t grave enough to warrant disfellowshipping, the congregation was warned to avoid the “Marked” person—or family. This practice was based on 1^st Corinthians 15:33: Do not be misled. Bad associations spoil useful habits.

Rosie had remained our friend, despite this, risking her own good standing in the congregation.

However, due to our “Marked” status, my sister and I would struggle to make friendships with other Jehovah’s Witnesses. It would be equally hard to date and marry. Since we weren’t allowed to associate with worldly people, that left us with no one.

My father won the lawsuit against the mobile home manufacturers, and shortly thereafter, we packed up a Ryder truck and moved away from Iowa. In the Ozarks of southwest Missouri, we didn’t have to wait for school administrators to validate our health struggles. Homeschooling was legal.

In our new town, living in isolation like exiles, my father insisted that we maintain our faith. At the dinner table, he read to us from the Watchtower. Articles that proclaimed the true religion as one distinguished by love, and pinpointed the Witnesses as God’s chosen people due to their love for one another—made my mother blow. At the new house, in a new state, dinner after dinner ended this way. My father soldiering on, reading us ‘faith building’ text, while my mother slammed her fist on the table, cried hypocrites! And stormed from the room.

My father, driven by endless hope, found us a new Kingdom Hall in the rural town of Republic, Missouri, where the Elders focused on outreach to those who suffered from misunderstood illnesses like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. The Elders at Republic had even remodeled the Kingdom Hall, installing an upgraded air filtration system for brothers and sisters like us with chemical sensitivities.

But I wish my father had not done any of these things. I wish that instead of protecting our faith, he had destroyed it.  

This would have been terrifying for all of us. The beliefs were a narrative that answered every big question, leaving us in little doubt about the meaning of the universe and our role in it. My father had chosen the religion in his twenties, fresh out of the army, after Vietnam. Studying with the Witnesses helped him make sense of the suffering and chaos, too much to fathom or bear. It infused him with hope that there was a plan to the madness, and further, the earth he loved so much and grew up tending as an Iowa farm boy, would one day be healed and flourish, along with every human heart.

But the pain inflicted on his family was a crossroads, an opportunity to reckon with the poison inside the organization, and tear free, together.

After all, it wasn’t just happening to us.

Members of the faith were routinely “Marked”, for missing meetings, not preaching door-to-door enough, not wearing approved attire, dating outside The Truth, and a whole host of misdemeanors that rendered them objects of sanctified slander, excluded from social life.

It was even worse than this. Those who were disfellowshipped, or formally removed from the congregation, were to be treated as dead. Families were instructed to annihilate loved ones, essentially, by ending all communication. “Take the love from my heart, Jehovah.” This was the prayer one mother in our new congregation told us she prayed every morning, sobbing in the shower, grieving her adult disfellowshipped daughter. “Please, take the love from my heart.”  

Though I made friends in my new Kingdom Hall, our reputation restored by the Elders there, an understanding had seeded in my brain. I swept my gaze around the congregation, the gray-haired old women who had been with the organization for sixty or more years, the toddlers in dresses, adult men in suits and ties, the mothers cradling infants, all of us with our Watchtowers open and highlighted: I wasn’t safe here. None of us were.

When I was sixteen, we traveled back to Iowa for my grandfather’s funeral.

Like old times, Rosie Michaels invited us for dinner.

My sister, still living at home in her twenties, finishing high school through correspondence, would never feel the same about Rosie. She drifted off with her plate to another table. I went with her, and soon we were joined by Luke, as well as Jessica, his brother’s girlfriend.  

Luke was, shockingly, still single.

We all caught up. He told us he was preparing to take over what would become Michaels’ Brothers Construction, a thriving local business. It had been a long time, but my heart and body remembered. His starry smile, the gold points in his hair—along with some grass. When I pointed that out, he laughed, brushing it away. “Yeah, I’m also doing landscaping on the side.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said, my heart in my voice. He was beautiful. Not just in one way.

Later, my sister reported to me that, when I left the table, Luke’s eyes followed. Stirring his drink, he had turned to her, and asked, “So, how old is Summer now?”

Jessica’s ears had perked. “Ooooh, Luke likes Summer!”

His “I do not!”—a too-hot retort, along with a blush, rising into his face.   

I asked her to narrate the story, again and again, in the back of the RV as we returned to Missouri.

And what were his exact words? And what was his tone? And what did his face look like when he said it?

“Do you still think—zero to none?” I asked.

My sister smirked. “I might have to adjust my calculations.”

“Yes?”

She tapped her lower lip. “It’s a 99.9999999% chance that…”

“Yes?” I hugged my knees.

Her eyes lifted to meet mine. She smiled.

“That Tie Guy could love Bug Girl.”

The rapture was almost painful, too much to hold. Biting my lip, tears in my eyes, I turned to look out the window. The cornfields rolled away.

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