According to my mother’s loose interpretation of the Bible, it was unholy, unhealthy, and downright blasphemous for a woman to be over the age of twenty-five and not married. She’d quote Galatians, Ephesians, Thessalonians, and any other book of the Bible ending in “ians” as she’d bellow, “You’re not a lady until you’re married and you’re not a woman until you’ve had at least two children.” By the time we were old enough to realize there was no such passage in Galatians, Ephesians, or Thessalonians, it was too late. The psychological damage had already been done. We had bought into it. And for that reason alone, no woman in my family dared go into her twenty-fifth birthday without a husband.

My sister Sharon, two years my junior, after three visits to the obgyn married her gynecologist, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “sampling the goods.” She seemed happy. Though I can’t really tell. We weren’t that close to begin with and then she and her husband moved to Ohio.

My sister Sarah, five years my junior, married the good Reverend Mark or Mike or Marty…I kind of forget. They met during a revival. He was old-fashioned, extra-Saved, thirty-nine years old going on sixty, and looking for a bride. Sarah, on the other hand, was naïve, inexperienced, twenty-three going on six, and looking for a free ride. Both saw in each other what they wanted, quickly married, and relocated to some small town down south. She never forgave my mother for remarrying after Daddy died so we don’t see her very often.

My cousin Clarissa, on the night before she turned twenty-five, met a complete stranger in a nightclub and married him before the clock struck twelve. Of course, the next day they divorced, which was okay, since there was no shame in divorce. In divorce there was compassion. Sympathy. Being divorced was like joining a sorority where you could sit around during holidays eating potluck, sharing pain, and sipping on a never-ending supply of bitter aid.

But for some strange reason, which I have yet to discover, I dared to be single. I chose to be the sole Moore family rebel. To go against the grain. To challenge the family and their ridiculous rules. As a result, I have the unheralded dishonor of being the only woman in the family over twenty-five who has never taken the coveted stroll down the aisle. My maiden status is the favored conversation at reunions, birthdays, baptisms, and funerals. I’ve become my mother’s sole whipping girl. And with a decade of putdowns, setbacks, and near-marriage misses, I have more stripes on my back than the entire cast of Roots.