Jesus Saves (15 page)

“We deny the evil lurking within us because if the truth were to be exposed, we would be consumed and obliterated from this community. We would be swallowed by evil itself.” His pause was supposed to signal a tone change, but when he looked up he saw in-difference stiffening the people's faces and, like a lounge singer desperate to hold a crowd's attention, he raised and animated his voice. “But the truth is that we can live together in such a way that the world's deep structures of evil begin to wither away. We do it by being faithful to each other. We do it by casting off power and intimidation. We do it by surrendering our claim to any kind of superiority over anyone. We give up our desires to make excuses for our behavior and we give up our constant claim of innocence, a claim we make despite the sure evidence that we are up to no good. In other words, we decide to be accountable to each other—all of us. We can do these things and more, because in Jesus, God has given us the grace to do them.”

Resistance hung in the air like humidity. The congregation pushed their backs into the pews and braced themselves as if the church was an airplane hijacked by a religious militant. The tips of Mulhoffer's ears were red as bell peppers; he was furious her father hadn't taken his advice and preached about future growth, or at least copped the mega-church pastors’ down-home style and talked about television or sports. Even Mrs. Mulhoffer, who always hid her emotions behind a smile, looked surly.

Her father quickly intoned the benediction, then hurried down the pulpit steps to the bench by the altar. He hid his face behind the hymnal as the organ started up.

Thou most kind and gentle death
/
Waiting to hush our latest breath /

O Praise him, Alleluha
/
Though leadest home the child of God /

And Christ our Lord the way hath trod /

Praise, Praise the father, praise the son /

Praise the spirit, three in one.

The people sang off key, unable to disguise their hostility. She'd asked her father when he planned to move on to another theme and he said,
When they hear this one.

Fourteen: SANDY

The troll threw a banana onto the yellowed newspapers. Sandy crawled over, frantically peeled down the fragrant skin, and shoved the fruit into her mouth, almost choking. The troll laughed,
my little monkey girl.

Chained by the ankle to an exposed pipe in the basement, Sandy squatted on the cement floor next to the bucket filled with pee. She sucked the moisture from inside the banana peel and watched to see if he held anything else in his hands. She was the little monkey that sat on the wheelchair of the man with no legs in front of the gumball machine at the Walmart. The monkey wouldn't sit on the
man's shoulder, wouldn't take the peanut from the man's lips. She jumped from the Pez machine to the top of the tall one that sold Pepsi and Diet Coke.

“Good night princess,” the troll said, closing the door. The light went out and she was alone in the dark basement. How could she make the smelly stuff in the bucket into milk and where could she find a horse made out of white chocolate and a pink teddy bear that could sing the national anthem without looking at his notes?

She curled up on the newspapers. In a dream she spit gold coins and dried rosebuds fell out of her ears. She smelled like lake water, like a girl who'd been swimming all day in a pond where cows drink and frogs splay out from lily pads. Bits of leaves and blades of grass stuck to her cool skin under her bathing suit. Every word she whispered was trapped in a bubble and the bubbles formed a long necklace and her hair unfurled and she heard his footsteps above her, pacing this way and that.

Everything was right here. Furry blue elephants hovered like kites above her face, moving to the bouncing melody of “My Funny Valentine.” She turned her head, watched Elena the ballerina twirl as the notes grew farther apart and more sluggish. Inside her jewelry box, along with the gumball machine rings and the silver cross her aunt sent from Illinois, was the pink plastic bracelet she'd worn in the hospital, her name written in black magic marker with the officious slant of a nurse's handwriting.

“Stop,” she said, “if you're going to be like that.” The sound of her own voice, muffled and discordant, was like the mumbling of the retards in special ed who walked as if their legs were attached upside down. The banana warmed her, snaked through her body.
The floor didn't seem so cold and who cared about the white spiders hanging upside down from the water pipes and the mouse in the corner that sometimes ran over to gnaw threads off the afghan. Her brother said, “Just lie still.” And the darkness came into her like a mop's wet tentacles. The white kittens shouldn't be hard to find, or the baby-blue chick. And what about the little chipmunk in the floral apron who made tiny pink cakes, each layer no bigger than a quarter? It was cold down here and she let her teeth chatter like the Halloween sound-effects record her father'd bought the year they turned their living room into a haunted house. Sandy Patrick rubbed her arms and then her calves. But there was no way to warm herself; better to go sit in the lawn chair in the backyard, let sweat dampen the crotch of her bikini, let the deer look at her with his big brown bedroom eyes.

Inside the Barbie suitcase with the fat metal zipper lay a bathing suit with sand in the crotch, a pair of Snoopy shorts, and a T-shirt with a jelly stain. Underneath was her blanky, the silky top of a blanket worn to threads.

If you fell asleep too early at the slumber party, then the mean girls stole your training bra and put it in the refrigerator. They put plates of onion dip beside your cheek so when you turned your head, cool sour cream stuck to your eyelashes and oozed up your nose.

The boy was there, the one who sent the letter that read, “I luv U because your eyes are brown as the sequoias, your lips the
fiery red of hell, and yourself like I like them best.” In the closet, during her seven minutes in heaven, he gave her an Indian handshake and made jokes about slobbery kisses.

As the night wore on the girls got crazy, dancing to their favorite songs like lunatics, arms flying everywhere and legs akimbo. They screamed out the lyrics and Robin told a story about how her mother bled through her white Easter pants suit, how their dog tried to get the used sanitary napkin out of the trash. The girls’ faces twisted up with exhaustion and they started telling each other that they were stuck up. Robin got so overheated that she went completely nuts and tried to strangle Sandy with a jump rope and the basement door opened and the troll came downstairs, holding a candle that illuminated his hunchback and runny eye. He scooped her up, carried her over his shoulder, walking in a slight incline deeper into the basement and farther into the woods. Her cheekbone bumped rhythmically against the small of his back as she listened to starlings call one to another. Leaves trembled and the troll squashed tender green seedlings with his heavy boots. She held the afghan to her face and sucked her thumb. Snakes hung like moss off tree branches.

The troll hurried along the path littered with plastic potato chip bags and french fry wrappers, then stopped abruptly. She heard his key chain rattle as he unlocked the little wooden door. The troll set her down in the dark and lit a paraffin lamp and she saw in its glow that the walls and floor were made of red dirt, the bed of green moss, and in the middle, before her, a giant tree stump for a table and fat logs for stools. On the table oatmeal waited in a little wooden bowl, and the troll pulled the silver spoon with the filigree handle out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her, then sat down to watch her eat.

*  *  *

“I got a letter from him,” the bear said sadly. “It seems we've grown apart.” He was smoking rose petals in his acorn pipe, puffing on the bamboo reed. From his birch-bark poach, with the leaf-stem latch, he took a pinch of yellow petals, struck a wood match against the tree stump table, and leaned forward to light up. The smoke smelled like sunshine heating up one's hair, and of yellow finches with singed feathers. “Letters from the other side,” he said, “are always filled with gobbledy gook.”

All afternoon the bear catalogued his sorrows. Summer was long over, so there were no more berries, just bark and weedy plants to eat. He was horribly lonely and missed the caterpillar so desperately, some nights he barely slept a wink. But she could tell by the preoccupied cast of his eyes and how he held his snout straight out that the bear loathed himself for sinking down so deeply into self-pity, and he said in a voice meant to chide himself, “For goodness sake, let's not whine about it. I have my health and my reputation. Life goes on. The earth circles the sun, the planets go around. It's all like some complicated game with different colored balls played by invisible and benevolent giants.” He puffed a huge cloud of creamy smoke. “Maybe that's why I feel so anxious all the time.”

Sandy offered some herbal brew in the chipped teapot the bear brought as a housewarming present. He found it wrapped in a moth-eaten cashmere sweater inside a bag of trash. But he waved her off and took the well-worn envelope from his pocket and began to read. “I have my memories. You dominate them. The space you fill in my mind is overwhelming and now being alone is the best way for me. I can live this way. But I still pull you out from my memories to spend time with you. The best times. The happiest times.
When you and I were all that mattered. I miss you today, today especially. I want to hear your voice and listen to your words. I want to see your face and touch your cheek. There is a park here with a tree for you to sit lazily under. I would watch as you stray from the directness of the sun.” The bear's voice cracked and he trailed off but tried to act indifferent by rolling his eyes and flipping his wrist dismissively. “That sort of sentimental gibberish always puts me to sleep,” he said, faking a yawn. “If he really cared, he'd come back for a visit.”

Little Miss Nobody,
the troll kept saying, his hand tight on her upper arm. First she heard the whoosh of the match, then a lush crinkling of paper and the smell of smoke. The red ant bit between her shoulder blades. The sting was accompanied by a smell like hair singed in a curling iron. Her brain went sliding backward, dissolving into vaporlike heat off summer asphalt. A spark snapped out of the fire and bit her knee and her father pulled her back, said that campfires were dangerous, that once he saw a little girl who wasn't careful get fire in her hair.

Over her shoulder, she saw the red bee floating toward her back and felt its sting a second time, the pain a star shape, hot and cold, and then the troll cleared a rag of phlegm from his throat and the cigarette tip illuminated his fingers and he pushed the fire into the valley between his hairy knuckles and a pinched growl came out of his throat.

Save me Jesus. Save me Lord.
She smiled at the spiders dangling like acrobats above her head, listened to the mouse's minuscule feet
gallop against the far wall. The bear wore a velvet top hat and his emerald ring. He said reading the letter put him in the mood to recite a little poem he'd composed all by himself.
Never eat porridge from an ivory spoon. Don't drink all the sumac wine or you'll die too soon. Kneel down by the tiger lilies on hot summer days. Don't ever bother reading those boring Shakespeare plays.

Sandy heard the troll lock the basement door. She blew her own warm breath down between her breasts in an effort to heat up her heart. A teaspoon of light glinted on the shovel lying against the far wall. She was a little monkey. She was a little bird.

Fifteen: GINGER

Mulhoffer, using an unsharpened yellow pencil to point out figures on a flowchart, spoke enthusiastically about the church's future. He had a folksy delivery and low-key self-confidence that was undeniably contagious. His bald, egg-shaped head flushed pink with enthusiasm and every once in awhile he hitched up his pants. This gesture gave his presentation a sort of agrarian earnestness that worked like an aphrodisiac on the crowd. Men and women sat on pew's edge nodding at the architectural rendering of the future church complex. Designed by the same person who built the mall, it was a nondescript cement-block behemoth with long thin windows and an indoor water fountain.

She sat in the back pew near old Klass. Taking a taxi all the way here from his garden apartment downtown had exhausted him and he dozed silently; a spot of drool grew on the lapel of his dandruff-flecked jacket. Her father sat in the front pew and, as usual, played it all wrong. His features set in an arrogant mask, he gazed out the window as if Mulhoffer's speech was of no interest to him.

But Ginger knew better. His flushed neck and trembling chin implied that he was nearly hysterical with worry.

In the pew ahead sat the couple with adopted children. They were
nice;
the woman brought over a tuna fish casserole when her mother died. The woman's husband, thinking she needed direction, cornered her in the church parking lot and spoke animatedly about his marketing firm. But Ginger could never follow his words: telemarketing, annual quotas, targeted merchandising. The words evaporated as he said them and she'd just stare at him blankly and nod her head. But he meant well, they all did. There wasn't a single person present who didn't smile at her on Sunday mornings. So why did she feel like they were all zombies waiting in line to suck her blood?

At the end, just after Mulhoffer proposed buying TV time on the local channel and hiring a small, three-piece band, he praised her father for his devoted service to Good Shepherd. Mulhoffer winked at the congregation as he joked about her father's intelligence, his love of reading. “I can't even pronounce the names of the guys he studies, let alone get through a page of their books.” Her father, Mulhoffer said, had done a fine job at Good Shepherd, had an obvious love for God's word, but he was clearly overworked and needed a helpmate, a CO-pastor.

*  *  *

The teakettle rang out on the little hot plate her father set up on the edge of his desk, next to the Lutheran seal paperweight and a pile of church-supply catalogues. He turned off the heat and poured water into his mug, stirred the instant coffee crystals until each one dissolved, added a packet of creamer. Now that they were alone in the office, waiting for the congregation to vote, the wind dropped out of her father, left him exhausted and spaced out. A blanket from home lay folded neatly next to the desk and he brought a pillow from his bed. She realized, watching him pick through his mail, that he'd been sleeping here not because of his obsession with God's word and its connection to the salvation of Sandy Patrick, but because he thought that if he kept vigil he could somehow heal the rift between himself and his church.

Her mother always claimed that her father was singularly unsuited for the ministry. Because he was so sensitive, so easily able to cry, sad situations made him act stiff and officious, which alienated him from the very people he was meant to comfort. Most ministers, worn out by the perpetual worries of others, created a cheerful persona and spoke in coded clichés about God's will, but her father was still uncomfortable with his position as God's representative, thought it slightly embarrassing and somewhat absurd.

Ginger swung her legs over the edge of the wingback chair and her father glanced up at her as if he'd forgotten she was there.

“You know I'll have to quit,” he said.

Ginger nodded. But what would he do? At the end her mother had laughed in his face, said he was unfit not just for the ministry but for every other job too. He was a dreamer. “The world,” she'd said, “has no room for men who believe in angels.”

“But it's not the end of the world,” her father said, trying to sound parental and reassuring. Maybe it was in the pestiferous nature of the ministry, maybe the lack of imperatives in the spiritual life, but even as a little girl, he never made her feel safe.

There was a knock on the door and he said, “That'll be Mulhoffer. You should go.”

“Let me stay with you, Dad,” she said. Fear and dread nibbled at her heels. She was always terrified of his vulnerability and wanted now to protect him any way she could.

“No,” he shook his head, “you—”

The door opened and Klass hobbled inside. “Excuse me, Pastor.”

“It's okay, Klass. It's just my daughter. Please come in.”

“It's a shame, Pastor,” he said, leaning heavily on his cane, his face filled with nostalgia, “it's enough to drive me over to the Catholics.”

“Oh, Klass,” her father said, laughing, “anything but that.”

Ginger didn't feel like going home and reading over the employment ads in the newspaper, as her father suggested. She wanted to check on the girl who'd called last night and read her horoscope and an article from her mother's fashion magazine about spring sandals and the importance of proper accessories. There was an edge of terror in her voice when Ginger said she needed to get some sleep. She asked a flurry of questions: Did she believe in love at first sight? Were rich people happier than poor? If God existed, why would he let planes fall out of the sky and cars crash on the highway? Why
would he allow people to get married who weren't really in love? When Ginger insisted she had to get off the phone, the girl said she heard a noise, something rattling the window, somebody creeping around in the basement.

Ginger rang the doorbell. “I'm giving myself a beauty treatment,” the girl said as she opened the door, mud dried chalky on her cheeks, wetter around the ridges of her nose. The girl's eyes were as bright as green crocus knobs pushing up under a cover of dead leaves. She explained how she'd walked over to Revco and bought a facial pack, a hot oil treatment, shaving cream, special lotion. She'd tried on all the sunglasses on the display rack but none were glamorous enough. And did Ginger know about the place in the mall where they gave you a makeover, changed you into a winter queen or a butterfly princess, and then took your picture like a model?

She gripped Ginger's hand and pulled her toward the bathroom, telling how she'd called the boy she liked, the one who was teaching his dog hand signals.

“At first he was shy, acted like he wanted to get off the phone,” the girl said, “but then we started talking about dogs, how we both like big dogs and hate little yappy dogs, like poodles and Chihuahuas. I told him I wanted to live on a farm and have a lot of Labradors and golden retrievers.” The girl spoke fast, as if talking was as fundamental to her survival as breathing. Ginger heard these endless monologues from older women at the church who lived alone—they were so afraid of self-reflection that they chatted endlessly—but never from such a young girl.

“How's your mother?” Ginger asked.

“Oh, she's a mess, turns out the dentist got
involved
with somebody while at a conference down in Florida. She came by with
groceries, left me twenty dollars for lunch money, and said she'd be at his condo until further notice. They have to
talk things out
and they need, according to my mother,
to hold each other
at night.” The girl stuck her finger down her throat in a gagging motion and shook her head. “Why anyone would want to kiss that bald-headed monster is beyond me. The guy reeks of fluoride and whenever I see him I hear the whir of the drill and see blood spinning around in that little porcelain sink.”

She pulled Ginger through the doorway into the bathroom, where a beauty altar was set up on a peach towel next to the tub. Spread out evenly on the terry cloth, like instruments for an operation, were the spent tube of hair conditioner, a jar of purifying mud, a pink plastic disposable razor, and a small travel-size can of shaving cream. “I'm going to shave my legs.”

“Don't do it,” Ginger advised. “You'll be a slave to that razor forever.”

“I don't care,” the girl said, looking away, giving her neck a defiant twist. “My mother got me some cotton bra-and-panty sets.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“And I already have my period,” she said, kneeling next to the towel, as if that cemented the inevitability of this ritual. The girl looked over the beauty lotions as if they were wine and wafer.

“Do you want a beauty treatment too? I know a recipe for hair conditioner. You use half a can of beer and two raw eggs.”

Ginger shook her head.

“Then you'll be the beautician?”

It was hard not to get caught up in the girl's goofy web of excitement. And besides, Ginger remembered when she was this age,
how she'd heard that in the sixties women burned their bras. She was shocked and appalled. Bras, lipsticks, rouge, compacts, lacy nightgowns, and high-heel shoes, these were objects to wish for and revere. Ginger knelt down beside the towel.

The girl took off her quilted robe and sat up on the edge of the tub, spread her bare legs out in front of Ginger. She wore a tank top smattered with tiny red hearts and matching underwear. When she arched back, ribs striped her chest.

“Do it like the magazine says,” the girl said, pointing at the lotion, “first a layer of this and then the shaving cream.”

Ginger pumped the rose-scented lotion into her hand and spread it thickly over the girl's warm leg.

“Now the foam,” she said, pointing at the can. “Don't you just love that stuff?” the girl said as foam piled up in Ginger's palm and she spread it over the cream, making sure every bit of skin was thoroughly covered. The pink razor pulled easily over the girl's skin. Ginger turned the tub water on and rinsed the blade. Greasy foam mixed with tiny blonde hairs splayed around the silver drain that reflected back a pockmarked picture of Ginger's face.

“Have you ever worn false eyelashes?” the girl asked as Ginger pulled the blade up again, careful around the nuance of ankle bone. ‘'I'm a summer, don't you think?” her fingers stretched the skin over her cheek bones, “a summer with an oval face.”

Ginger rinsed the blade again, glanced at the back of the girl's neck where a stork's bite splattered pink and the chain of her birthstone necklace lay delicately on her neck bone. She flexed her toes so Ginger could slide the razor around the tendon at the back of her foot. The dense foam, the rose-petal lotion, the double blades, and
the cool pink skin put them both into a trance. Ginger threw her body forward as if experiencing a tiny electrical shock. The girl gave a puppy yelp and said accusingly, “You nicked me!”

“Shush,” Ginger said, “I heard something.” And there it was again, a passionate thump on the sliding glass doors downstairs.

“I told you this place was haunted,” the girl said flatly as she examined the cut on the back of her foot, then pressed toilet paper over the wound.

It was alarming how much time lapsed between the thuds, enough time to run down a vagrant memory, to take a quick shower, or pour yourself a drink. Then the muffled thump happened again and the girl lifted her foot, blood gently soaking through the blue tissue paper.

“You better go down there and check it out.” She said this so casually that Ginger thought for a moment that the girl had gotten a friend to pound intermittently on the window. She'd seen movies where the hero's mother, father, even sisters and brothers were all secret Satan worshipers, or cyborgs, or unfeeling aliens hatched out of space pods.

Up the hall and down the stairs, she started. The beige carpet had gray spots as if paper plates tipped and greasy hamburgers had flopped onto the synthetic shag. The mammalian scent of middle-class families floated in the hallway—over boiled broccoli, fabric softener, and the accumulated sweat of sleeping children. She stood in the middle of the rec room, a dark subterranean landscape populated with a Lazy Boy, vinyl dry bar, and the smelly couch where family members laid around like dogs in a cardboard box.

She waited, eyeing the framed poster of Monet's lily pads, the insipid colors and pretty flowers no different than Hallmark Easter
cards. Nothing was down here, though as she turned, she saw a spot of red, a candy wrapper caught on a branch. Animated by the wind, it rose and sped directly toward her face. Like a shooting star with a mind of its own, like a lie come back to torment. Then the familiar thump and Ginger saw the cardinal, crazy eyed, hair stuck up on its head in tufts like a punk rocker.

The girl came down the stairs limping. Using scotch tape, she adhered a wad of Kleenex to her ankle. A thread of blood trickled over the pink arch of her foot.

“What was it?” She flopped her thin, ever-lengthening limbs onto the smelly couch.

“A bird,” Ginger said.

The girl raised her eyebrows, her features rearranged to look incredulous. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Ginger watched the girl lose interest.

“Let's pluck our eyebrows.” She leaned forward. “I've read how if you use an ice cube to numb them it doesn't even hurt.”

Her father's car was parked in Sandy Patrick's driveway, the light green Chrysler with the tiny Bibles in back, the box of Sunday school supplies, pipe cleaners and construction paper, Elmer's glue and Popsicle sticks. His clergy emergency sign was tucked up under the visor. He used it whenever he parked illegally. Thick gray cloud cover made the sky feel too close and there was a pathetic splattering of rain, drops so cold they reminded Ginger of the tin notes of a music box.

She crouched below the bay window, stood in the wood
chips beside a boxwood bush, and spied inside. Her father sat with Mrs. Patrick on the couch. Spread over the coffee table was a jelly glass glazed with Coke mist, an empty yogurt cup, and a Styrofoam take-out tray. Her father looked calm as he arranged the communion implements, and Ginger realized for weeks he'd probably stopped here on Mondays as part of his sick calls and hospital visits. Nearest Ginger's eye on the floor, a box overflowed with baby things, corduroy jumpers and little sweaters, a zip-lock bag of yellow hair and tiny baby teeth.