Rapture of Canaan (8 page)

For the next hour, Uncle Ernie talked to the girls about courting. He said that Herman Langston could sit with Leila in church, if he was willing to go, but that there’d be no holding hands or touching of any kind. He said he’d already told Herman, and that once he’d proven his intentions for Leila, he might be able to accompany her on walks.

Back in their bedroom, Imogene shrieked and giggled, and Leila blushed. It wasn’t until later that she saw the pink azalea flowers lined up across the outside of the windowsill.

 

 

 

T
he church and its classrooms were sacred places. Anything
done there had to be done with the spirit of God in mind. Once when Mustard was little and church was dismissed, he hopped up off the pew and dashed outside. Bethany yanked Olin up, unhooked his belt before he even knew what was happening, and followed Mustard out onto the church stoop where she blistered his backside in front of God and everybody, beat him until he wet his pants, just for running in the sanctuary.

But in the fellowship hall, a rectangular building situated just behind the holy structure and surrounded by some scraggly pine trees, we could be ourselves. That’s where we ate, when the whole church ate together, and that’s where we had our youth retreats.

A couple of times each year, the Fire and Brimstone young adults would host retreats for the Fire and Brimstone youth. On those occasions, all the children would bring blankets and pillows from their houses, and we’d praise God from twilight to daybreak if we felt like it, studying scripture and singing songs and talking about everyday situations we faced that the adults didn’t have to.

David and Laura and Everett and Wanda and Ben Harback and some others who weren’t yet shackled with children of their own would lead us in workshops about how to deal with the children on the bus who made fun of us, about how to know when we should tell our elders about unholy books we might be reading in school. We did fun things—like building a bonfire and destroying fashion magazines that somebody brought in from town just for the occasion.

We had boiled peanuts and popcorn. We could talk about anything there.

But that all happened later, after Grandpa Herman had given his sermon.

Each time, Grandpa Herman would come in early. We’d all eat supper together, and then he’d lecture us while we sat at the wooden tables in front of him. Then he’d tell us to put our heads on the table, with every head bowed and every eye closed.

Obediently, we’d follow his instructions.

Then he’d ask us to raise our hands if we wanted to go to Hell. He’d say, “Unless you’ve been saved and baptized in the precious blood of Jesus, each and every one of you will be going to Hell.”

And then he’d tell us stories about how Jesus was coming back, any day, probably within the next five years, and that we needed to be ready to greet him. He said that unless we’d been baptized, when the rapture happened, we’d be left behind. We’d wake up one day and call out “good morning” to our parents and hear no reply. We’d look for them only to find their clothes left in the bed.

He said that we’d run out of food. That big bugs would chase us around and sting us with their tails, and that though we might be sickened unto death, we could not die.

He said we’d turn on the faucet in the bathroom and find only blood running out and would have nothing to drink.

He said evil multitudes would come unto us and cut off our limbs, and that we wouldn’t die. We’d sit there, with no legs to run with, and be stung and stung again by the beasts.

And then he’d say, “But you don’t have to be left behind. You can go straight to Heaven with all of God’s special children if you’ll only open your hearts to Jesus, ask him for forgiveness and welcome him into your hearts.”

And then he’d tell us to raise our hands again if we feared going to Hell. Whoever raised their hand would be taken away to the church where Grandpa Herman would lead them to salvation.

It happened the same way each time. The youngest children invited to the youth retreats would get saved right away. I’d raised my hand years earlier, but each time Grandpa Herman gave his after-the-rapture speech, I found it hard to catch my breath, hard to focus on God’s love and not God’s meanness and spite. I thought that really I wasn’t saved at all.

Grandpa Herman said that when you were truly saved, you felt like you could fly. But I never felt that way. Not about Jesus.

And each time I knew that I must not really be saved, that I must not have opened my heart to him. I tried to figure out how you go about opening your heart. I tried not to think about being left behind, but in the nights, I kept slipping out of bed, checking the faucet to make sure it wasn’t bleeding.

On that occasion, it was John who went away with Grandpa Herman and came back testifying. We listened to Grandpa Herman’s words coming out of John’s eight-year-old mouth, and it made me feel sick all over.

But then we broke into groups, and my group had just me and James and Pammy and Lorrie Evens and Joshua Langston, both older cousins who lived on the other side of the compound. David and Laura were our leaders and they talked to us about “Teenage Temptations,” about how at our age, we might be tempted to put on lipstick at school or smart-mouth a teacher in hopes of winning the affections of a boy or girl in our class. But they said it was important for us to wait until all those urges passed and until we had secured our hearts in Jesus. They said we would find a mate among God’s special children if we didn’t show off, and to come and talk to them if we had problems because it hadn’t been too long since they were our age.

Then they took questions, and Lorrie asked about kissing, and I could see David and Laura both thinking that next time, Lorrie would have to move up with the high-schoolers that Everett and Wanda taught. Laura told her it was “inappropriate,” and Lorrie shut up.

Then Pammy asked if it was a sin if we accidentally let our knee socks fall down and a strange boy saw our legs. David told her it wasn’t one, but that she should keep her socks up, and Lorrie suggested that she could get rubber bands to hold them at the top.

I didn’t ask anything at all, but I worried that the next year when Pammy went to junior high and had to dress out for gym, she’d tell.

It was almost midnight by the time Ben Harback released the younger children. Then they began playing Red-Rover, and he started the popcorn, and pretty soon, the older groups were let out too.

Pammy and I made up a little cushiony bed, and then we sat up talking for a while. Some of the smaller children fell asleep, and across the room, Ben Harback and David sat with some boys telling jokes, and Lorrie Evans was in the corner talking to Wanda and Laura and pretending to be all grown-up.

Me and Pammy sat on our pallet and pulled a thick white blanket over us, up to the neck. Mustard came and stretched out beside Pammy, and she said, “You can’t sleep here. You have to sleep with the boys.”

Mustard said, “I don’t want to sleep here anyway. I want Ninah to tell us a story.”

And then James sat down beside me, and Barley sat at the foot of the bed, and Mustard smacked Barley with his pillow, and Barley hit him back, and everybody laughed.

“Everything okay over there?” Ben Harback called.

“Yeah,” Barley hollered. “Ninah’s gonna tell us a story.”

“Shhhh,” Laura whispered loudly. “Some people are sleeping. Y’all keep it down.”

“Go ahead, Ninah,” James said. “Tell us a good one.”

“Hmmm,” I thought. “Okay. I’ll tell you about the time that Nanna and Grandpa Herman lost their shoes.”

Barley settled down and pulled the tail end of our blanket over his legs. Pammy moved over to make room for Mustard, and James moved in closer to me.

“See, back in the days when Nanna and Grandpa first started courtin, he’d come by her house early in the morning and pick her up for school. And that was how they dated. Just walking to school together.

“One day Grandpa Herman picked her up, and they set out on the dirt road towards the schoolhouse two miles away.”

“I’m glad we’ve got buses now,” Barley said.

“Me too,” Pammy echoed.

“Anyway, it was a sunny day, in April maybe, and the sap was running in the trees so the whole place smelled like pine, fresh and warm.”

James, who was sitting next to me Indian-style, had started to shiver, and I moved in closer to Pammy so that our sides were touching and offered him part of the blanket.

“Thanks,” he said.

“What happened next?” Mustard asked, sleepy.

“Grandpa Herman told Nanna that they should take off their shoes and not wear them that day. That they should hide their shoes somewhere and pick them up on the way home.”

“Could you go to school without shoes?” Barley asked.

“You could way back then,” Pammy answered, and yawned.

“So they stopped on the side of the road. And Grandpa Herman peeled off his shoes, but Nanna was shy about her feet. Grandpa Herman said, ‘Look,’ and did a little dance for Nanna with his white skin shining.

“And then he sat back down beside Nanna and started unlacing her boots.”

“Nuh-uh,” Pammy said.

“Yes he did,” I promised. “He reached down and untied her shoes and then he pulled them off her feet one at a time. And then he reached up and took her socks and pulled them down too, slowly, down her legs.”

“Really?” Mustard said.

“Yeah. But he didn’t touch her skin.”

About that time I felt a poke and realized it was James’ hand, resting on my leg. I pulled in my breath quick and kept talking.

“He folded her socks up neatly and stuck them back inside her shoes, and then Grandpa helped Nanna up. They felt the prickles underneath their toes of baby blades of grass just breaking through the soil.”

“So what’d they do with their shoes?” Barley asked.

“Wait a minute. I’m getting to that,” I told him.

I looked around, and Laura and Wanda were still talking to Lorrie. David and Everett and Ben were still giggling in the corner. Nobody was looking our way at all. James’ fingers fumbled lightly at my leg, at the skin behind my knee that’s softer than newborn biddies. I slid down a little, and my dress slid up, and then he was massaging the place where my knee changed to thigh.

“They took their shoes and stuck them in a drainage pipe that ran underneath a dirt road. The pipe had a lot of dirt packed over it, but it was like a bridge, separating two sides of a creek. Except the creek had dried up. Anyway, that’s where they left their shoes for the day, and they danced all the way to school, feeling dusty sand powder up around their toes and leaving footprints side by side for anyone to see.”

James’ eyes were only half open. His mouth was half open too. Pammy, laying right beside me, didn’t notice a thing. I was very still.

“But that day at school, it started raining. It rained from the time they got there until just before they left. And when Grandpa Herman met Nanna on the school steps after the last bell, they knew they were in trouble deep.”

He reached up quickly, to the middle of my thigh, shifting his body as he did it so that anybody who was looking would just see the blanket change positions from his movement.

The heat rushed up my body and into my face. I licked my lips and kept talking, trying not to breathe out loud.

“They got their feet and legs all muddy walking back to the pipe,” I told them. “Nanna had splats of mud above her knees that she had to flick off with her fingernails. But then when they got to the place they’d left their shoes, they were gone. Washed away by the creek that had come back to life in the storm.”

“What’d they do?”

“They had to go home and tell their parents about their sins,” I said.

And then James reached up again, almost too high, just barely escaping the edge of my underpants, and his hand there felt like a thousand ladybugs crawling. For a second, I thought I might lift right off the bed, zip up into the air, and float across the room. I felt like a pine tree in spring. I knew if I opened my mouth again, there was a chance I’d speak in tongues.

“And then?” Barley posed.

I cleared my throat, and James slid his hand back down to my knee, and I quivered all over without meaning to.

“And then they couldn’t walk to school together for the rest of that year. Except they did it anyway. Grandpa Herman would wait for Nanna half a mile down the road, and then Imogene would walk ahead of them and holler back to Nanna if she saw anybody else coming so that Grandpa Herman could duck into the woods.

“And they didn’t even care that they had to wear old shoes that were too tight and left marks across their feet because they were in love and it didn’t matter.”

“That’s a good story,” James said.

“Y’all should go to bed, maybe,” I sighed, and rolled over to face Pammy.

T
hat night I dreamed of Jesus on the cross, on a cross in the
field behind The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind. I dreamed I was standing at my bedroom window, and Jesus was on the cross, holding a handful of azaleas for me.

I dreamed I went outside in just my gown, and walked up to him. He was too nearly dead to speak, but all he had in his eyes was love for me. And I walked up to the wound in his side where he’d been stuck with a sword. I put my mouth on that wound and began drinking from it, swallowing his blood.

And then the wound in his side became a mouth, kissing me back, and I could slip my tongue into the wound, feel the inside of his skin with my tongue, circle it there, tasting him.

But when I looked back at Jesus, he’d turned into James.

I sat up and peered around the dark room. Bodies lay everywhere, sleeping against walls and beneath tables. I didn’t know where James might be.