Freedom's Child (13 page)

Virgil Paul lifts his head from prayer to look down to the four hundred–plus parishioners. The women’s eyes stare up to him from blue headscarves, the men are in pale yellow ties: the liturgical blue signifies heaven; the yellow represents divinity. Virgil’s armpits and ribs itch with drops of sweat as his clammy hands close a red leather Bible. The congregation smiles. The congregation nods. The congregation faces forward, their backs to a camera on a tripod at the end of the aisle near the church’s front doors.

“As we finish here today, I ask for a special prayer for the safe return of our sister in Christ. Our daughter, Rebekah. Go in peace.” Virgil makes the sign of the cross with the edge of his hand. “And may the Lord bless you and protect you all.” A uniform “Amen” fills the room. Virgil waits for a member to walk to the camera and give the nod, the nod that indicates that the podcast has ended, the filming is over.

An occasional clearing of the throat echoes from the corner. The noise of an infant crying from the back pulsates through the church.

“Let us prepare for our second sermon. Let us show our true colors to the Lord.” The flock of worshipers reaches under their seats
as Virgil disappears into the back. In his office behind the altar, he locks the door behind him. His long, rectangular office is eggshell white with a large poster of his face hanging over his mahogany desk. In it he grins, a set of pearly dentures from thick, ham-ish lips. A farmer’s tan he acquired as a child out in the soybean fields seems to have permanently stained his skin. His mousy brown hair with impressively not one gray strand borders a pale tan line on his forehead from straw hats worn in the summer sun. The windowsill behind his desk holds several versions of the Crucifixion: some gold, some wood. Reverend Virgil Paul begins to masturbate.

It’s the power trip he gets from a growing audience that submits to him. The thought of being chosen by God himself to be such a faithful servant so high in the ranks of Christianity. Virgil tries to stay quiet so no one can hear. He thinks of the young and blossoming Michelle Campbell who lives next to him on the compound, at the very end of the street.

He opens a wardrobe and takes out a makeshift whip made of an old belt now hot-glued with thumbtacks. As he nears his climax, he wraps the belt around his thigh and pulls, the sharp points making him bleed onto the floor. The closer he gets, the harder he pulls until he finally finishes. This mortification of the flesh is his punishment for sin, his penance and atonement. He recites: “
For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live
.”

He removes his coat, rebuckles his pants, and grabs a long purple robe from the wardrobe, the color signifying royalty. He steps into it, weak from the climax but ready as ever to save as many souls as he can, to prepare them for the Day of Freedom.

He remembers back to a time when he thought he knew so much about God. Virgil supposes many think that upon leaving seminary. And that was before Gabriel, the archangel and messenger of God, came to him in a dream and told him to recruit in preparation for the Day of Freedom. For God told him the exact minute of the day
when Christ will return. And now he looks forward to the arrival of FreedomInJesus, Freedom Oliver. A sense of gratification rushes over him, that God allowed his reach to stretch across the country and all the way to Oregon. Time to carry out God’s work, and God’s work through him was amazing. Part of Virgil’s mission was to send out volunteers to stand at the supermarkets, gather the people, make the masses grow.
Aim for the runaways, the drunkards, the whores
. People like this had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. What better people, then, to lead to Christ and to this very church.

But the recruiting had to stop; Gabriel the archangel even said so in one of his dreams. It was attracting too much attention from the townspeople. Besides, he couldn’t just have his congregation come and go as they pleased, lacking that kind of discipline. But for the Pauls, Virgil had to put an end to the recruits out in public. And aside from the Paul family, no one was allowed out.

When he returns to the pulpit, the people have transformed. They all wear white robes. “For it says in Revelation chapter six, verse eleven,” he shouts to the group. They continue together, “ ‘…and white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.’ ”

Twenty-four deacons, including Goshen sheriff Don Mannix, sit in the front rows and continue reciting scripture with gold foil crowns on their heads: “Revelation chapter four, verse four: ‘And round about the throne
were
four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.’ ”

Virgil continues: “Let us pray.” The congregation goes to their knees. From the back, a man with a loud voice yells. He speaks in tongues, a language no man can understand. Halalas and tikabobs pour from his mouth and the people pray. They listen. They agree.

In the front, a woman who claims the gift to translate tongues.
She yells, “The Lord speaks this message to those who shall inherit the kingdom of God: The Rapture is upon us. We are the chosen ones, the fruits of the vine.” The people utter their
amens
and
praise-the-Lords
. Two more members go to the aisle, where their bodies thrash and jerk on the ground. Praises follow as the woman continues: “The storms this week: they destroyed houses, homes of the people of the world, wicked people. It was God’s way of showing He is coming back soon.” Virgil shouts an amen, fist in the air. “And we were spared, because of all we’ve done for the Lord. But God warns us that we are on the brink of losing our seats in heaven.” The man shouting in tongues ceases with the babbling.

“This is not the last of it!” Virgil shouts, eliciting cheers from the people. “Another storm is on its way, says the Lord. For He told me in a dream: a bigger storm, a more catastrophic storm, is on its way, a storm that none of us are yet prepared for.”

The sermon is
three hours in. Behind the row of deacons, in the second row, are two dozen visibly pregnant women who try to hide their squirms of impatience. Behind them sits Carol Paul, a tall woman with short, curly black hair and hands that no soap could wash the lemon scent from. In fact, calluses on her hands were tinged yellow from hours of making homemade lemonade day in and day out. The tie of her blue headscarf chafes under her chin from the sweat. The fluttering up and down of paper fans offers no respite from the foul-smelling sweat of people who are allowed to bathe only once every two weeks. But Carol, the obedient wife that she is, must be doing only one of three things: singing hymns, praying, or smiling. She has to urinate but continues to hold it. Leaving in the middle of one of her husband’s sermons, well…she should know better than to show such disrespect toward Virgil.

She feels the air on the sweat of her lap as five-year-old Magdalene wakes from her nap. She rubs her eyes and stares off as her
father continues with his sermon. Carol adjusts the blue headscarf on her daughter’s head and fixes her light brown pigtails. “Did Rebekah make it to church today?” Magdalene asks as she rests her tired head on Carol’s shoulder.

“Not today, sweetie.” Carol lifts her hands in praise.

Magdalene does the same, waving her arms back and forth over her head. “She’s in big, big trouble. Right, Mommy?” Carol looks down and smiles to Magdalene, peels the matted pieces of hair from her face.

Carol and Magdalene join the other parishioners in speaking in tongues as the row of expectant mothers slide their robes over to expose their bellies, tight and stretched, skin full of limbs and fluids and living tissue that swim in utter darkness. The reverend places his hands on the bellies as he walks past them, muttering blessings to the unborn in a language only God’s chosen can understand. He anoints them, using oil to leave signs of the cross with his thumb, using the hand he just jerked off with. Some of the women convulse with praise; others faint. God has a way through Virgil, that’s for sure. Michelle Campbell, one of the expectant mothers at fifteen, jumps to her feet.

“Look, Mommy.” Magdalene pulls on her mother’s robe and points to Michelle. In a loud whisper: “Sister Michelle went pee-pee in her pants!”

“A miracle is upon us,” Virgil yells. The songs of praise become louder and louder until Magdalene has to cover her ears. Virgil instructs Carol to run back to the house and get what’s needed to perform the birth. “A gift from God is on its way!” She grabs Magdalene’s hand and races out of the church.

Carol and Magdalene’s matching black loafers skid against the dirt road, their feet covered in dust. Carol squeezes her daughter’s hand and hurries farther from the church, the sounds of praise becoming syrupy vapors in the day’s humidity behind them. The lanes are lined with small white bungalows-turned-apartments,
one-bedroom homes that sleep half a dozen, easily. At the end of the road, farthest from the compound’s entrance, is the Paul house, an old double-story country house one would imagine being the topic of the
Southern Living
magazine dream. A copper rooster of a weather vane glows still in the autumn’s anomalous heat wave.

The house smells of lemons and baked Dutch apple pie. “Do you remember where Mommy’s doctor’s bag is?” Magdalene’s pigtails bounce in the sunlight. “Go on, I’ll be right back.” Carol runs down the hall and slams the bathroom door behind her, shimmying out of her underwear before she’s halfway to the toilet, about to burst. She grunts with relief, a moment to herself so she can breathe; moments alone are few and far between. She hears Magdalene drag the doctor’s bag down the hall before she knocks on the bathroom door. Carol pulls her clothes back together, damp with perspiration and tarnished with dirt. She opens the door and looks down to Magdalene, who smiles with pride on bringing the bag half her weight to her mother. She expects her mother’s gratitude, but she doesn’t get it. “Go wait outside, I’ll be out in just a minute.” A look of disappointment sweeps over Magdalene’s face; her head hangs low. She drags her feet out to the porch.

Carol places the doctor’s bag on the bathroom sink and unzips it. She traces a stethoscope with the tips of her fingers, remembers a time when she was at the top of her class at the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky. She remembers the sin associated: the clubs when the bass of bands like INXS and the Smiths would move her. The boys she’d steal cigarettes from and make out with back in her dorm room. The marijuana she and her sister used to smoke behind their parents’ backs. But that was nearly thirty years ago, many moons into the past. That was before she found God, who saved her from her evil ways. Before she found Virgil.

Carol looks in the mirror; she looks at an entirely different person. The crow’s-feet plant themselves unkindly around her eyes these days. She thinks about how Virgil was right all those years
ago, though she didn’t see it right away: that doctors don’t heal; only God has such power.

At the bottom of her doctor’s bag is a faded, half-ripped sheet of lined paper.

Dear Carol,

I’ve only imagined that you still think of me, of your family, though we’ve had no contact in nearly three years. But I am alone these days, I’ve lost you to a man who only loves himself, a man who uses God as a tactic for evil. I just wish you could see this the way I saw it. And who can be expected to live with such loneliness? There’s been so much that’s happened, so much I wish I could tell you. But you’re not here. And who knows if you’ll be there to get this letter, to go to my funeral. I just miss my sister. I miss my best friend. Tell Ma and Pa that I love them, and that I’ll always be with them.

Always,

Clare

Carol doesn’t notice a tear that makes a streak on her cheeks through the dust she collected outside. She remembers when she first received the letter half a decade ago, when she could smell her twin sister’s perfume on it. And while the smell disappeared only weeks later, Carol sniffs the note in a hope that she can detect a residual trace. But she doesn’t. She never does.