Kiss the Morning Star (11 page)

“As I spoke with them, it was as though my thoughts became free, and I was able to write the words I have already spoken to you today.”

He raises his arms theatrically. “When we parted ways, my hope for these exceptional young ladies was that they would find the answers that they were seeking, that God would make His blessed presence known to them. I am certain now that they have been placed in my path according to divine design, and I would like nothing more than for them to join us on our mission. In Mexico, I
know
they will find the proof that they seek, and I am sure that their presence will teach all of us a very important lesson on faith.” His hands tremble with fervor. “Anna and Katherine, will you join us in our crusade of spreading God’s Holy Word?”

All eyes are on us. I glance at Kat, only to find that she, too, looks a little stricken. Something has to be done.

I clear my throat; the sound echoes through the church. I search for my voice. I can’t be this person, this tentative person who goes along with everyone even when I know it’s not what I want. My mouth is dry. All those beaming eyes. No. I stand up.

“Pastor Shepherd, we appreciate your invitation, and I’m sure we would find a great deal of inspiration if we joined you on your trip to Mexico.”

I’ve always wanted to go on a mission trip; in fact, my father was organizing a trip to several countries in Africa before the fire cut everything short and sort of put our whole existence into survival mode. But my father’s ministry was gentle and humble, without the spectacle, without the slick smiling rhetoric.

“But we can’t go with you. Kat…Katherine and I are stranded here in Casper, two hundred miles from our car, which broke down in Gillette. We had some things stolen from us, and we only came here for a place to sleep for a few hours.” My voice shakes, but I hold steady. Kat stands beside me and takes my hand.

Pastor Shepherd places his hand on his heart, looking at me with such a sincerely loving expression on his face that it makes me squirm. “Oh, my dear child,” he says, his warm voice hushed, “is there any way we can help you?”

Heads nod around the room. I’m embarrassed. My face feels hot, like it’s stretched too tightly, like if I try to stop this polite smiling I’ll find that my mouth won’t go back to normal.

“Well, the least we can do is feed them,” says a small white-haired lady in the front row, her voice rather indignant. “Let’s go down and have our fellowship meal.”

Voices of assent rise in all corners, and Pastor Shepherd smiles warmly. “We would be honored if you would join us for our meal.”

Downstairs, they have rolled away dividers and converted the classrooms into one large hall with round tables and chairs. There’s a kitchen at the back with a window showing through to the main room, and smiling elderly ladies stand there, ready to put the finishing touches on an impressive spread of pasta salads, homemade breads, roll-up finger sandwiches, and plates full of goodies.

A wave of loneliness for my mother hits me again when I see the food. These kinds of feasts, hosted by the matrons of the church, were always my mother’s favorite kind of church event. She moved so easily among the people, a pot of coffee in each hand, smiling graciously and inquiring about everyone. I usually found a chair in a corner to hide, curled up with my cup of watery Kool-Aid and a book or my notebooks. My mother would eventually give up on trying to get me to play with the other kids, and she would softly tousle my hair and place a gentle kiss on the top of my head before she was off again, beginning and ending conversations effortlessly while I peeked over the top of my book, watching in admiration.

Pastor Shepherd insists that we sit at his table; he ushers us through the line and settles us in our chairs before he goes off to get his own food. I stare hungrily at my heaping plate. Kat sits beside me, also looking ravenous. “Is everyone eating, or do we wait for a prayer or something?” whispers Kat.

I shrug. “I don’t care. I’m starving.” I take a bite, then another. After that, there is no stopping. We almost finish our entire plates before Pastor Shepherd gets back with his loaded plate.

“Ah, you were hungry,” he says. “Please, go for seconds.”

After a while Angela and another woman join us, and I sit in a stuffed daze through introductions and more polite conversation. My belly full, the danger of being discovered already a thing of the past, I feel a strange, achy fatigue steal over me. My head gets heavier and heavier as the conversation revolves around the room in a pleasant low rumble.

It’s only a tiny dream, just a snippet of sleep, but in those few moments I’m falling down, down, spiraling like one of the maple seed pod helicopters Mom and I used to drop from the top of the corkscrew slide when I was a little girl.

“Oh,” I say out loud. The single syllable expresses all my thoughts at once. I spiral, around and around, and then all at once I realize that I’m actually standing still, and it’s something else—something small and green—her scarf spiraling around above me, rising up higher and higher. Or is it falling toward me?

“I’ve seen this before,” I whisper, and then I wake up.

Either nobody noticed, or they are pretending they didn’t. Maybe it was a split second—an extra-long blink. Whatever the case, when I open my eyes, I find Kat nodding and smiling as a woman with ruby lips and an unnaturally white face with black whiskers poking through the makeup on her upper lip talks enthusiastically about her poodle, Windsor. I still feel like I’m spinning. Falling.

Pastor Shepherd holds the hands of another woman—a woman who really does not look well enough to help dig a foundation for a new church in Mexico. None of these people should be working shovels. Like the ancient nodding gentleman propped up next to the piano in the corner. He can’t possibly be going on the trip. Can he? I worry, guilt nibbling away at my resolve. Maybe God really does need us to go on this trip, if only for the strength of our backs. I waver.

No
. No way. I left Minnesota to escape the church people. Even when they’re helping, I can feel the judgments, the unwanted prayers. A church is the last place for me to find God. I know this even if God doesn’t. Besides, our car is to the north; I long for my clipboard, my lists, my neatly organized tubs full of all our things. Nothing good has happened since we left our stuff behind.

“Oh, that’s just wonderful, Maureen,” says Kat to my left. “You must be so proud.” The lady has moved on from her poodle and is now showing Katy photos of her grandchildren, or maybe great-grandchildren. The hubbub of conversation in the room, earlier a source of comfort that had lulled me to sleep, now takes on a more chaotic aspect, and I’m dizzy, claustrophobic. I feel like I am drowning in the mundane. I stagger out of my chair, gasping a little, and try not to run as I head for the restroom.

I make it in time, but only barely. My body rejects the delicious luncheon at the precise moment that I enter the stall. I don’t even have time to gather my hair behind me, and for a moment I worry about getting clean. Then I can’t think at all and only shudder uncontrollably, the cold tile sending chills across my whole body. I shake and shake, my stomach heaving, until finally the spasms cease. I draw a hesitant breath, reaching up blindly for some tissue to blot my mouth. At last I sit back, leaning against the stall divider with my arms clasped around myself, weak and trembling. Tears well up in my eyes, and I’m almost flattened by an onslaught of intense longing.
I want my mother
.

I’m too shaky right now to make it back out to the fellowship hall. I’ll wait here until I either get better or someone comes in and finds me. In the meantime, there’s no reason to stay awake. My eyes drift closed as though I’m drugged, and I feel my body slouch down farther and farther until I slump all the way to the floor. The white tile—with its dirty grout lines spreading out in a million little hexagonal divisions—presses its pattern into the side of my burning face, and I float away.

I wake to shrieking, a horrible sound of the wild turkey variety, and I wince, drawing a hand over my ear. The room spins lazily around me.

“Pastor Shepherd!” shouts the woman, and I watch the skin underneath her chin jiggle with urgency, which only intensifies her resemblance to a turkey. My skin is sewn up with seams that are stretching and puckering and about to burst, and a part of me knows I must have a fever, but the rest of me has a hard time piecing together reality. I shiver on the tile.

A sound. A hundred thousand feet trampling, and I wait, expectant, for a stampede of cloven-hoofed creatures to thunder into the bathroom stall. That would teach me to swear in church. I try to prepare, to be ready for battle, but the first face I see aside from the turkey-lady fills me with joy.

“Katy Kat, you came for me!” She’s beautiful. “I thought you were the devil.” That’s not true. I try to explain, to differentiate, but the words are like sponges soaking up meanings I can’t sort out, so I settle for crying instead. “I want my mom.”

Kat kneels over me, carefully lifting up my head and cradling it in her lap. “Anna babe, you’re burning up.” She pushes several strands of hair back from my face, tucking them into my pink kerchief. I close my eyes. I’m so tired.

“She looks pretty pale,” says another voice. I do battle with my eyelids. Victory brings a vision of Pastor Shepherd’s face next to Kat’s. The thought of us all squeezed into the bathroom stall makes me giggle, and I shake with laughter, which turns to a fit of violent trembling. Kat’s arms hold me close; her dark blue eyes keep me steady.

“Do you think she needs a doctor?” says Kat.

I lurch off of Kat’s lap. “I need to throw up.”

Katy pulls back my hair. The next few moments are nothing, an emptiness extending out of my soul and spewing indecorously into the larger void of reality.

“I’m empty and awake,” I say out loud, when I can talk. The world shimmers and nods, and Kat holds me tight.

I used to joke about how my father could go on about things, how his sermons could stretch sometimes so long that toward the end I could scarcely remember a time when he wasn’t speaking—as though his voice were the voice of Creation Itself. Now he sends me these tiny text messages, as succinct as little Kerouac haiku.

Kat leans over and whispers in my ear as the bus pulls away from the church. “I can’t believe we’re going to Mexico on this piece of shit.”

“I can’t believe we’re going to Mexico at all.”

I was sick for two full days, sleeping alongside the missionary ladies on low cots in a Sunday School classroom, convincing Katy with some difficulty that I didn’t need to go to the hospital. The whole time I was gripped with a terrible fear.

I cling to Katy’s arm. “I thought you were going to leave me, that you had already gone on to Mexico and left me all alone in that church. I felt like everyone would abandon me if I wasn’t careful, only I couldn’t figure out what the key was, what being careful really meant.”

“I hate it when I have a fever and I get those weird ideas stuck in my head,” says Kat. “Everything’s always so complicated.”

“I am empty and awake,” I say. It’s my new mantra.

“I can’t believe this. How crazy is it that we had to push-start our bus?” Kat laughs, clutching her velvet satchel tightly on her lap.

I smile. It was actually kind of funny…especially the sight of all these practically elderly people lined up on a quiet little street, pushing an ancient bus until it got up enough speed to pop the clutch. Something is seriously wrong with the bus; it won’t start once it stops, but the driver assures us that from now on, he’ll leave the bus running at all times. “We are going into a foreign country in a bus that won’t start,” I say. “We’re a bunch of idiots.”

I lean against the window, watching the scenery ripple past. There is a mesmerizing pattern to the mountains and valleys, bright new leaves fresh and bright in the distance. I never intended to be here, on this bus. I must have been still feverish to agree to this; the whole idea has a residue clinging to it—to its every surface—a thin layer of grease on the inside of a drinking glass. Even though it looks perfectly clean, I can feel that there’s something not quite right about it. I can taste it—the something wrong—but I can see how badly Katy wants this, and I can’t quite shake that delirium fear, the abyss of loss when I thought she had slipped away.

My eyelids grow heavy, and I slouch back against the tall seat, letting myself drift. Sleep slips over me quickly, my head rolling gently over and landing on Katy’s shoulder. I guess we both sleep a little.

When I wake, the first thing I notice is our stillness. “Where are we?” I rub my eyes. The sun out my window suggests late afternoon.

Kat doesn’t look up from her sketchbook. “I don’t know. Southern Wyoming, I guess. I haven’t been paying attention.”

“Where did everybody go?”

“Dinner.” Kat turns the book upside down and squints at the page. “Damn it,” she mutters, reaching for the eraser she has wedged between the seats in front of her.

I massage my neck with one hand. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

Kat shakes her head. “Nobody would let me wake you. Not after you were so sick and all.” She laughs. “I think they’re tired of praying for you.”

“Well, I’m hungry.” I fold my arms across my chest, narrowing my eyes at the sprawl of fast-food chains and gas stations out the window. This stupid interstate exit looks like every other exit in the country; if it weren’t for the mountains huddled on the horizon, we might be in Minnesota.

“Angela brought us food,” says Kat, handing over a paper lunch bag. I pull out an orange, and Katy hands me a square of paper towel.

“Are we really doing this?” I work my thumbnail under the skin of the orange, juice stinging a little in a ragged hangnail.

“Really,” says Kat.

“I don’t get it. What’s the big deal here, Katy? Why do you want this so bad?” I suck juice from a segment of the orange.

She doesn’t answer right away, but she stops drawing and studies me for a long moment. Finally she smiles and reaches over to wipe my chin with the edge of her sleeve. “You’re so gross,” she says. “Remember when your mom had to drive me to the hospital from that one weird Bible camp in the woods?”

I remember. “You found out you were allergic to bee stings.”

“I was terrified.”

I nod. “So was my mom.” I remember her talking it over with my dad after the fact—she said she hadn’t ever driven so fast before in her life.

But Kat shakes her head. “No, that’s just it, Anna. Your mom was so calm. She talked the whole time in this really soft voice. She said, ‘Give your fear to God.’ It was so normal for her. Like God was someone real for her, sitting there with his hands held out, waiting to take our burdens.” Katy looks back at her drawing, frowns, and rips the page out of her sketchbook. She folds it in half, once, and then again and again into smaller and smaller pieces. “The stuff in my head never comes out quite right,” she says. “Not on paper, and not in words.”

It’s weird to think of Katy having burdens to bear, quite honestly. I’ve always envied the fact that Kat’s parents are atheists, that they can discuss any and all topics without once referencing Scripture. I open my mouth to say something supportive, but then I notice how quiet it is, how still. There are no vibrations coming up from the floorboards, through the seats.

“I thought they were going to leave the bus running.”

A shadow flickers across Kat’s face, a trace of uncertainty. “It died,” she says softly. “We had to coast in here, which is why everyone decided we might as well stop for dinner.”

I stare out the window, absently licking the sticky orange juice from my fingers. “So. Another push-start, then?”

Kat squirms. “Well, it’s just…we can’t exactly do that here, where it’s such a busy street.”

“Why not?”

“Something about the brakes.” Kat taps the end of her pencil against her bottom lip and turns to a new page. I watch her hands as she sketches in long, confident lines.

“The brakes?” Oh, come on, don’t tell me there’s something wrong with the brakes, too. I wrap my orange peels in the paper towel and study Kat’s drawing. “That’s cool,” I say. “What’s with all the keys you’ve been drawing?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the brakes, not really,” Kat says, closing her sketchbook. “But Michael’s worried about being able to stop the bus with the air brakes or something, and Pastor Shepherd is frustrated with the broken-down bus, and they argued a little. It was unpleasant. You’re lucky you slept through it.”

“Here they come.” I nod out the window, where a fleet of gray heads and pastel polyester advances across the parking lot. “Let’s go talk to them. I want to know what their plan is.” I fold down the top of the lunch bag and gather up my backpack.

We shuffle down the narrow aisle, running our hands along the faded blue seat backs. “What a piece of crap.” I can’t help being contrary. The whole thing is so absurd it’s like a bad joke.

Kat’s answering look is pained. “These are wonderful people,” she says, her tone terse. “Can you just relax?” Kat stands in the center of the bus aisle. “We promised these lovely people we’d help them on their mission, and it’s just possible we could learn something from them. This is the closest we’ve been yet to being true dharma bums. Look, these tattoos?” She pulls her shirt up, still-tender-looking lotus petals visible above the waist of her skirt. “They mark us, Anna. They tie us together. Please, for once, can you just…” She pulls the pencil from behind her ear and bites on the eraser.

“Just what?”

She shakes her head, her dark eyes apologetic. “Just…try being open to a new idea, even if it’s not yours?”

“All right, fine.” I lift my arm, indicating the bus. “But this—this church trip thing isn’t going to prove anything to me. It’s like the last thing on earth I need right now.”

She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes tell me everything. It may not be what I need, but this trip is important for her. I guess I can’t fathom what it would be like if the idea of belonging to a church—the idea of belonging to a god—was somehow extraordinary and new.

For the second time, I hear the sound of Pastor Shepherd clearing his throat in nervous awkwardness. “Uh-m.”

I turn, see him framed in the bus door. “Pastor Shepherd, I—”

“You’re awake, Anna,” he says, his voice light and pleasant. “Feeling okay?”

I nod and step off the bus, Katy behind me. “So what’s our plan? Are we going to call a mechanic? Does the church have some kind of triple A policy or something?”

He chuckles. “We have the best policy of all,” he says, with a smile. “All right, everyone, gather around!” I watch the horde of elderly missionaries form a semicircle in front of the bus. Heat waves shimmer off the blacktop parking lot, as cars and buses and semitrucks maneuver around them.

“Come on, Anna, join us!” Kat drags me toward the group.

“Everyone, please lay your healing hands upon this bus and bow your heads as we pray, Dear Heavenly Father…” Pastor Shepherd’s voice settles into a rocking cadence of bless us and be with us and fix this bus if you love us, God. Alleluia, amen. All around him, pale hands, flecked with brown spots, lift in supplication, touching the bus. No way. This—this is not what I believe.

“Come and pray with everyone,” Kat hisses in my ear. “You’re being disrespectful.”

I shrug. “Come off it, Katy. You know you don’t believe in this. We don’t need to pray for God to fix our bus. That’s why God made mechanics. It is irresponsible of Pastor Shepherd to carry on like this.” I raise my voice above a whisper. “I think we should leave and go back to Gillette. Now.”

Kat shakes her head so emphatically that her dark hair swings out in a spiky circle. “No,” she says, her tone firm. “We gave them our promise. Why would we turn back now?” She looks to the ring of prayer. “And you’re wrong, Anna. I do believe there is power in prayer. There has to be.”

I roll my eyes and listen to the fruitless sound of the ignition with its ragged chorus—alternating between a hoarse, protracted sputter and silence, except for the drone of Pastor Shepherd’s appeal to the divine.

“This is ridiculous,” I mutter, and I turn on my heel. Who knows? Maybe I’ll just start walking down the highway, as much a dharma bum as Kerouac, even.

Just then the sputter of the bus coughs, catches, trembles. Michael revs the engine, and the semicircle erupts into a chorus of cheers and praises. One woman begins singing—an exuberant modern hymn—and the whole group joins in. Kat runs up to me and throws her arms around me tightly. “See? I told you prayer was a force to be reckoned with,” she says.

I laugh. “Katy, seriously, you don’t think that God just took a moment out of His incredibly busy schedule to reach down one holy finger and start the engine of our bus, do you? I mean, really.”

Kat looks at me for a moment, then shakes her head the smallest fraction. “You know I don’t really understand belief,” she says. I have to lean in to hear her. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t think God is possible. And if he
is
possible, well, then, what’s there to stop him from starting a bus if a group of people asks him nicely enough?”

“A waste of resources,” I say, but I climb back onto the bus along with all the rest of them, fold myself into the seat, and tuck my backpack underneath my feet. “If there is a God, he would have learned to delegate.”

There is still snow in the mountaintops, and at first I grip the edge of my seat nervously as the bus twists and turns along the winding roads. This is nothing like Minnesota, not anymore. Michael keeps his promise and lets the bus run the entire time we stop for bathroom breaks and meals. Thankfully, the missionaries are not much into singing; they mostly read their Bibles quietly or talk in soft, earnest voices about their mission. It’s almost enjoyable to be moving again, with Katy sketching beside me.

“Where are we staying?” I lean back in my seat and dab some ointment on my tattoo, which is starting to itch. The light is going all red and slanting, and in this mountain region, the sun sinks quickly behind the horizon once it starts its descent.

“We’re aiming for some religious compound in northern Utah, I think. Outside Salt Lake City.”

I laugh. “What? Seriously? A
religious compound in Utah?
So is it run by a bunch of fundamentalist Mormons with stockpiles of weapons and loads of creepy wives?”

Kat rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure the polygamists are in league with this lot.” She waves her hand to indicate the sea of blue hair and flashing crochet needles.

She has a point. Katy takes my hand and holds it lightly on her lap, and I hope that means she forgives me, for being resistant, for being rigid. It feels comfortable, with the sun slanting ever lower through my window, and before too long, I’m drifting, my eyes falling closed in tiny increments, my head softly lolling and my mind wandering as we drive through the lights of Salt Lake City and turn off onto a small, dusty road.

The bus approaches an uncontrolled railroad crossing, and Michael slows carefully; even with my eyes mostly closed, I notice the bus shudder as he downshifts. The engine sputters. Then stops.

“Oh, shit,” says Kat under her breath.

Silence.

“Well, this is lovely.” I sit up and look out the window. It’s pretty dark out there, but I can just make out the railroad tracks curving out of sight. Wait.