I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) (15 page)

Haven't we read this in our theologians? we asked.

Your theologians, Earnshaw said, have told you that the Next Step is the transition from being God's creatures to his sons. They have
seen through a glass darkly
. In fact, the Next Step will occur only when we recognize sin as an illusion.

Earnshaw punched his cheek, twisted his clenched fist in his palm.

Claire did not need to translate.

19

Who will be the first to undress? Earnshaw asked.

Now that he'd spoken the words, we realized it was the question we'd been waiting for all along.

Is this not the reason you have taken down your building, Earnshaw said, to look upon His creation without barrier?

Sarah Taylor, a single mother, thirty-six, stood. We closed our eyes, or looked down into our laps, until Earnshaw reminded us that the term
modesty
was a euphemism for shame.

Sarah's body, Earnshaw said, is half the mystery of God's nature. On
mystery
he curled his index finger against his forehead, furrowing his brow as if perplexed. Our children mimicked the gesture.

Sarah pulled off her shirt and unhooked her bra. She took off her jeans, so baggy and outdated the lace thong she wore startled us (but only for a moment) like a cussword. We suppressed the urge to cover our children's eyes; they hid their faces anyhow.

Sarah bent over and slid out of the thong, then stood and lifted her hands. When she began to sing the Doxology, we joined in, some of us also removing our clothing, though we stayed in the darkness outside the circle of firelight, chiding ourselves for being trapped by the current of modesty, a weakness we would teach ourselves—and our children—to overcome.

20

Two nights later, when we arrived at the cave, Sarah was already undressed. She sat with her knees pulled up, arms crossed over her breasts.

We removed our own shoes, shirts, pants. Our children played in the clearing, or borrowed flashlights to explore the woods, or drew with sidewalk chalk on the smooth surfaces of the granite and limestone. They refused to enter the cave.

Claire spoke to Sarah in a low voice, Earnshaw signing beside them, using small hand gestures as if whispering. Sarah lay back, letting her knees fall open, the soles of her feet pressed together. We closed our eyes.

She is half the mystery of God, we heard Claire say. We should look upon His mystery without shame.

We forced ourselves to look upon the mystery, the gap-lipped pinkness.

Who will be the first to enact the mystery of God, Earnshaw said, with Sarah? To show us, in the flesh, His total nature, male and female combined?

We were silent.

Even Christ spoke in parables, Earnshaw said. Sexual union is not only profoundly natural, but inevitable as a means of expressing the desired union between God and men.

A young man stood—Daryl Lotz, the philosophy student.

I will enact God's mystery, he said.

Sarah's breasts draped the sides of her torso. Daryl came forward, knelt between her legs, unzipped his cargo shorts. He put a hand on himself and moaned. If Sarah made any sound, we couldn't hear it.

Daryl lowered himself till his body was covering Sarah's. Then, abruptly, he crawled forward till his hips hovered just above her face.

Body of Christ, broken for you, he said, placing himself on her outstretched tongue.

21

Together each night, under the cover of darkness, we discovered the sacramental nature of oral ministrations. The men laid themselves on our women's tongues—and on one another's tongues—in humble acts of devotion. The women straddled waiting mouths, heads thrown back, eyes closed.

When we finished, we turned to Earnshaw (who watched, but, along with Claire, did not participate):

The Next Step, we said. Have we taken it?

Go further, he said. Think of the Son on the cross, the Father who put him there—dominance and subjugation also two sides of God's total nature.

We went further. We accepted everyone, endured everything, turning one another over and over again, our faces streaked with dirt and tears.

22

In the aftermath of our rituals, a stillness would overtake us. And in the stillness, our limbs entwined, we began to understand that the entrance to eternity lay not in the gratification of the body's desires, but in their denial. We discovered that on the other side of sexual union was a period of lucid stasis in which white roads unfolded on the insides of our eyelids, bright shapes rising on either side like backlit skyscrapers. In the stillness we allowed our thoughts, like clouds,
to drift among the tops of the buildings. We
observed
our thoughts (
Where are our children?
) and watched them
dissipate.

In the stillness we felt the approach of the infinite.

23

With fall coming on, in the sunlight of the clearing, leaves shrinking into bright stipple above us, we practiced being Awake to the Present Moment. Some of us mastered being still for such long periods of time that when we moved a limb we had to disentangle it from the kudzu. Lovely, we said, observing the coiling vines, purple flowers dotting our forearms, shins. Our children stayed in the woods. Sometimes we glimpsed them in the trees, peering down at us, hair hanging loose, obscuring their faces.

24

Former members and clergy from around the city sent letters. On Mondays, the postman carried them down the trail, leaving them on a flat rock beside the mouth of the cave. We knew what was in the letters, especially those that arrived certified mail.

There were legalities.

The South would not long stand our
debauchery
.

25

Have we reached it? we asked each day. Claire no longer translated. Our voices, weak from disuse, were difficult to distinguish from the wind in the Georgia pines.

26

Sarah Taylor achieved stillness for five days straight. We rolled our heads to admire the placid way she allowed insects to scurry across her naked torso. When on the sixth morning it was discovered she was dead, we observed her body as it appeared in the early morning light: face gone blue, eyes sunk in their sockets, cheekbones thrusting out. We covered her feet, legs, and torso with earth and rocks and leaves. When we reached her face we noticed her parted lips, tongue swollen and protruding slightly, her brow furrowed, as if death had caught her in the act of tasting something she didn't like.

27

When Earnshaw disappeared (Claire said he had
moved on
but many of us said that, like Elijah, he had been
caught up
), we knew we'd arrived.

Thank you, we whispered into the space around our heads.

We returned to stillness. Watched the letters pile up at the mouth of the cave.

28

A restlessness remains in our children. They gather fallen
branches and carry them into the surrounding woods. We suspect they're building shelters. In the afternoons we hear a rhythmic scraping, the sound of dirt floors being swept. We conjure images of their improvised hovels, their rudimentary fires; we imagine the ways in which they might divide their tasks—food-gatherers, fire-tenders, storytellers. At night we hear them singing, hymnlike strains bright with major harmonies.

All of this we will teach out of them.

How we'll lisp to our children—softly, softly.

When they come back from the world they've made without us.

Holy Ground

Goodbye, I say to my husband and children. I'm going for a run and won't be back for a few days.

They're sitting on the couch in the formal living room, all five in a row, arranged oldest to youngest.

I mean it, I say. Days. Maybe weeks. You might miss me.

The four-year-old starts to cry, and the sister beside him puts an arm around his shoulders.

Go on, my husband says. We'll be waiting for you when you get back.

Where? I ask. Where will you be waiting?

Here. We'll stay on this couch until you come back. You won't have to worry about our physical safety.

Thank you, I say, kneeling to kiss the tops of his leather loafers. I've needed to do this for quite some time.

You have our support, he says. He elbows the daughter at his side, who nods and elbows her brother. This continues down to the youngest.

I go into the kitchen and fill the center pocket of my anorak with protein bars, then remove a water bottle from its rack in the fridge—this I will carry in my hand. I slide my toothbrush down into my sock like a splint. I set the alarm, lock the back door, and head straight for God.

The church parking lot is empty except for the cars in the spaces marked
Seniors Only
. It's Thursday evening, night of the Caring and Sharing Dinner for Ambulatory Seniors. I jog into the courtyard—the maple in the center of the grass is topless, sparse yellow leaves on its lower half—and through the double doors of the Fellowship Hall.

White-haired folks are seated around glowing candlelit tables. The women wear red hyacinths on their wrists or tucked behind their ears. Old men in sweaters make eyes at the women. They raise their wineglasses with bent hands. A wiry chap in stocking feet plays footsy with the bright-eyed woman beside him, her nostrils flaring around an oxygen tube.

The shoeless man notices me and winks. Like to join us? he asks.

No, thank you, I say. I've come to see Pastor Robinson.

God bless the man! he says, raising his goblet.

God bless him! say the others, glasses aloft. One woman drops hers, spattering the sweater of the gentleman next to her.

The wiry man drinks until his goblet is empty. You oughta heard his sermon Sunday, he says to me. Man preached salvation by grace using the text of Abraham and Isaac . . .

I know, I say. I was there.

Remarkable synthesis of the Old and New Covenants, the man says. Theology like that makes you want to get up and dance. Makes you want to mount up with wings like an eagle!

He takes a large sideways bite of ham, showing all his teeth when he chews.

How lovely, the women exclaim. Marvelous, those strong teeth.

Baking soda—straight from the box since I was seven, the man says.

I find Pastor Robinson in his office.

I hear you're leaving us, he says.

I kneel and encircle his calves with my arms. Can I do this with impunity? I ask, looking up at him.

He strokes my hair.

I mean, it's nothing against you, or your theology. I'm just worn out from
thinking
all the time.

I place my cheek on his knee. He is a large man and his thighs are soft. His gray wool pants sprout tiny white threads like curling hairs.

How do I worship with heart, soul, mind, and strength? I ask, when I keep privileging the mind and saying no to the body?

His legs make a sharp movement; I'm forced to sit back on my knees.

It's not what you think, I say. I only want to go down and do some work among the poor.

Then, because I have decided to be honest in this endeavor, I say, I would like to confess something, before I go.

He pulls my head back onto his knees.

I breathe in, once. Long exhale. And I say: I've been having an affair with a man I've never touched. For almost a year now.

An emotional affair, Pastor Robinson says.

Yes. Physical, too.

He frowns.

The sharing of ideas, I say. The composing, together, of an elaborate fiction.

Pastor Robinson recedes into the cushions behind him.

It's why I'm leaving, I say. I'm afraid if I don't get away it's going to undo me.

Leaving isn't the answer, he says.

Listen, I say. There are days I let my six-year-old surf the net, unsupervised, while I compose e-mails in the den. Nights I put the children to bed, come downstairs, and realize I can't remember a single thing any of them said to me.

Repent, Pastor Robinson says. Before it's too late.

I'm no longer making love to my husband, when we make love, I say.

Tell him, he says. Let him see your remorse.

I
used
to feel remorse.

You'll lose everything, he says. Wind up inside a living hell.

Oh, I've been living there a while, I say.

Pastor Robinson shrinks farther back into the cushions.

I'm not the person I thought I was, I say. I might be capable of anything.

I can recommend several good marriage counselors.

I need to get some distance from it, I say. See pain and suffering, poverty and loss. Serve the poor in some way.

Immerse yourself in charitable works? Attempt to overcome evil with good? You know better. Your graduate studies in divinity . . .

They're doing me no good in this case, I say. Look, it's a last-ditch effort. But can I have your blessing?

There will be healing only in renunciation, he says. In turning away from sin and toward God.

I don't have it in me, I say. Not yet. Do I have your blessing?

Pastor Robinson stands. His oxfords are worn and rumpled leather, tiny pinprick holes patterning the toes.

I will pray for you while you're gone, he says. At length.

Running downhill on Hardy Road is the easy part. It's twilight, the sky blue-gray with only the planets out. The street is wet from the day's rain and the air smells like damp leaves and wood smoke.

I turn onto Fleetwood, run past Rock City with its ten thousand Christmas lights already glittering along the Enchanted Trail. I run past the Witch's Cabin Hotel, where Fleetwood begins to circle the Lookout Mountain golf course.

Here is something I've discovered: if you cut through the bramble and thick Chinese privet hedge across from the ninth tee, you will find yourself on an outcropping of rock above Flintstone, Georgia. Chattanooga to the left, Georgia directly in front of you, to the right Alabama picking up where the mountain begins to drop off. Everywhere, ridges cresting and cresting all the way to the Smoky Mountains in Kentucky, the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. Some mornings a cottony fog lies over the ribbed land below, and to look across it is like looking out across the sea. But on a clear day, they say you can see seven states. No one believes it, but the claim brings tourists up to our town.

I cut through the hedge in the place where I've been forging an opening and run out onto the rocks. Depressions in the limestone, filled with rainwater, look like tidepools. In a cleft between the rocks is a Moses bush, leaves brilliant red in the near-dark.
Take off your sandals, Moses, for the place where you are standing is holy ground
. Usually, when God shows up in the Old Testament—a theophany—people die. Or else they fall facedown as
if
they're dead. There are two exceptions: Moses and Hagar.

Hagar, where have you come from, where are you going?

I stand, breathing long and deep, the watery lights of Chattanooga coming on below me. I consider the city. I want to see it like this, whole and from a distance; to see, before I go down, the signatures of the things I am about to read.

Running down a mountainside is hard. There is much slipping at a sideways angle. Your bottom gets wet and all exposed skin is painfully raked. It is not good exercise.

When I reach the base of the mountain, I eat half a protein bar and drink some water. The backs of my hands are crisscrossed with scratches, bleeding delicately, and I wipe them on my running tights. It's dark now and the wet asphalt reflects the orange streetlights. I take Broad Street all the way downtown, where, in the colorless window glass of the Sheraton Starbucks, my reflection stops me.

You look
hot,
babe, it says. You could pass for twenty-five.

Quintessence of dust, I say. The reflection turns to preen its backside, taut in black spandex.

I quote First Peter: The holy women of the past used to adorn themselves with a gentle and quiet spirit.

Women over fifty, the reflection says, are the only ones who believe that. I know why you're down here. You're looking for some action before you get old.

That's not it, I say. I'm trying to mortify all that.

Two college-aged boys—men?—are looking at me through the window. One of them is frowning; he watches me from beneath dark brows. He is beautiful—curved top lip, defined cheekbones, long hair in a ponytail. Small hoop earring.

You know they're checking you out, the reflection says.

Doesn't matter, I say. Now listen: Injustice. Oppression of the poor. Mistreatment of the uneducated.

You want the one with the earring.

Racial unity, I say. Single black mothers and well-to-do white mothers forging genuine friendships. In organic settings.

You sure that's all you're after? The reflection stretches its calves.

It's the only thing left that might still save me, I say, letting my shoulders slump.

The reflection jogs in place, then sets her watch and takes off down the sidewalk. I need to get my heart rate up, she calls back over her shoulder. Goodbye and good luck.

I run after her. Her blond ponytail sweeps the empty space just behind her neck. I sprint to catch up with her, because she is beautiful, and has an excellent stride.

I run east on Martin Luther King, between the old stone buildings on the UTC campus. My hip flexors burn and I can't feel the second and third toes on my left foot. I'm not sure I will make it all the way to the poor. I finish the protein bar.

College girls with slouchy bags strapped across their chests walk past me, checking me out. In the darkness next to the alumni house, a black man sits on a metal bench.

Hey, he says as I run past. Lady. I know you.

I stop and turn. I don't think so, I say.

Bring your kids to school there, Tuesdays. He points across the street to the Conservatory of Music.

Used to be true, I say. Won't be true again for a while.

He sits with his legs spread wide. He has a thick throat, shaved head, rings on all of his fingers.

I'm beat, I say. Mind if I sit down?

He moves and I sit beside him. Aren't you cold? I ask. I touch his bicep with my index finger. You should have a coat on.

Ain't never been cold, he says, pressing my whole hand against his warm armskin. Never in all my life.

I pull my hand away. You will be someday, I say. Better buy a coat while you're young.

He grabs the sleeve of my anorak.
Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim,
he says, and I flee, pulling out of my anorak, leaving it hanging there in his fist, heavy with the protein bars.

The business district is dark. Doors and windows are barred. I pass small white churches on almost every corner. Because I am exhausted, because my food is gone and the bottoms of my feet are numb, I ask the Baptists for a ride. I pick the Second Street St. James Missionary Church—its doors are open and the lights are on in the sanctuary. The pews are unfinished pine. There is no altar, only a long table with a white tablecloth, behind which are seated two white girls who look like college students.

Are you here for the interview? one of them asks. Her bangs are streaked red and orange.

I've come to help the poor, I say. Actually, I'd like to just sort of hang out with them. But I think I need a ride.

She does look exhausted, says the other girl, who wears her hair in long braids. Can't we just skip the interview? The girl has a teardrop hanging from the end of her nose. When she turns her head I see it's a silver nose ring.

How do we know what skills she has to offer? the girl with streaked hair says.

I'm good with kids, I say.

What else?

I can recite many of the Psalms besides the twenty-third. If you call out a verse, I can find it in under ten seconds.

Is that all?

I can recite the Westminster shorter catechism and explain Calvin's TULIP, though of course Calvin himself didn't use the five terms represented in the—

Is that
all
?

I can sort of read Hebrew. In fact there was a man who spoke to me in Hebrew just now. He quoted Song of Solomon
. . .

Perfect, the girl with bangs says. Hebrew lessons in detox.

I'm sorry, the girl with braids says. We know it's not your fault.

Wait, I say. Are you looking for experiences of the supernatural variety? Once I saw the clouds open up in the shape of a five-point star.

It's a start, says the girl with bangs.

How's this? When I was little, maybe seven, I heard a voice outside my window one night. It was one voice but sounded like thousands of voices. Like the rush of a mighty waterfall.

The girl with streaked hair leans forward and readies a pen. And what did the voice say?

I wish I could remember, I say.

The two of them stand to leave.

For the third time that night I fall to my knees. Please? I say.

The girl with bangs turns and looks at me again. Well, now that's something, she says. On your knees like that. There might be a woman you could help.

Take me to her, I say. I've been running for such a long time.

The girl with streaked hair is driving. Her name is Jade. Her friend's name is Mimi. I'd be certain they were lovers if they weren't Baptists.

It's going to be crowded, Jade says to me. They're serving Thanksgiving dinner.

That's
today
? I picture my husband and children on the couch, microwave dinners balanced on their knees.