Jesus Land (32 page)

We have to prove that we’re not a negative influence on each other by allowing anyone and everyone to listen to us, so we develop a new code to deal with spies.

“Look at that bug!” we’ll say when a suspicious character sidles into view, pretending to read with their heads pointed our way. We’ll crush the imaginary insect, pointing a shoe in the direction of the intruder, and switch our conversation
from secular things to Jesus-approved things, such as the weather or homework or what we ate for breakfast.

Eventually, the intruder will get bored and leave, but the constant fear of getting busted is enough to prevent us from talking about anything meaningful.

Our only hope is for me to make Third Level, so we can volunteer at the village orphanage together. During the thirty-minute walk there and back, we could talk privately.

The rejection was limited to insults and cold shoulders until the summer we were eight, when we were physically attacked.

It happened on a July afternoon when our fifteen-year-old sister Debra escorted us to Kingston Pool. While she slathered herself with coconut oil and slowly toasted under the white glare of the Indiana sky, David and I dunked each other in the pool and did the Nestea plunge. The other kids our age were playing Marco Polo at the other end of the pool, and we longed to join in, but didn’t dare ask—they were the same ones who yelled the “N” word at us.

Deb gave us money for slushees and flaky jakes, which we munched sitting side by side on our towels, watching the game. When our bellies were full of sugar, we napped with the sun drying our backs, the shouts and splashes fading to a comforting hum, the summer scents of chlorine and wet concrete thickening the air.

We woke to the lifeguard’s whistle burst—the pool was closing— and dragged ourselves to the dank locker rooms to rinse off, reluctant to go home after so much brightness. As usual, we were the last kids to leave.

The Johnsons were waiting for us on the other side of the fence. There were four of them, three boys and a girl, older than us, younger than Deb. They waited until we crossed the clover patch between the pool and playground before jumping us.

“Stay out of our pool, Niggers!” they yelled. “You’re polluting it!”

As Debra got into a shouting match with the oldest boy, the three youngest kids bore down on David and me. My ponytail was yanked, ripping hair from my scalp. We scrambled up the monkey bars and perched on top with our backs together, screaming and bawling and kicking at the white hands that tried to grab our ankles and pull us down. Our flipflops fell into the sand and we continued kicking, bruising our feet on the metal bars.

It ended when a minivan pulled into the parking lot.

“Mom’s here!” one of them yelled, and suddenly they had retreated and it was quiet and the sun blazed red and purple on the horizon.

We ran all the way home through the darkening woods, but still got in trouble for being late for supper. Mother had no patience for childish brawls.

Turn the other cheek, she scolded.

“Now inhale and hold it!”

The fumes sear down my windpipe into my lungs, and I count to five before blowing them out of my pursed lips in a blue stream.

“Excellent!” Susan says, as I start to hack. “But you’d best tie your hair back, cuz it about caught afire.”

We’re in the bathroom, smoking matches. It’s Free Time, and everyone else is downstairs, writing letters and listening to the new Keith Green album,
Jesus Commands Us to Go
! If you use your imagination, you can make him sound a little like Paul McCartney. As we listen to the title track, Susan and I slow dance together under the gas lamp:

Jesus commands us to go,
but we go the other way.
So He carries the burden alone,
While His children are busy at play,
Feeling so called to stay.

“What do you think?” Susan asks after the song ends.

She hops up on the bathroom counter.

“I like
The Prodigal Son
better,” I say.

She nods her agreement, and lights another match.

They think we’re giving ourselves facials, and indeed, we’ve mixed bowls of sugar water and placed them in the twin sinks, just in case someone checks in on us or wants to use the toilet. As an added precaution, Susan has taken off one of her sneakers and wedged the toe into the gap at the bottom of the door; the only doors with locks in Starr are on the houseparents’ and group leader’s quarters. At night, we hear them slide their deadbolts shut against us as we lie in our bunks. We are fornicators and druggies and Satan Worshippers and prostitutes, and we outnumber them.

I’m on my third match and Susan’s on her tenth. Sulphur smoke hangs in the air. Her skills are superior to mine because she was a smoker in real life—she can do the French Inhaler and blow rings and talk and exhale at the same time. I’m still learning not to gag; it’s like learning to give a blow job.

My throat is raw and my mouth tastes foul, but I’m in a rare good mood. Susan and I are friends.

“I need to score a sixty-five tomorrow, or I’m fucked for Third,” she says, smoke curling from her mouth. She scowls at the rusted ceiling. “If I don’t get out of here by the end of summer, I’ll kill myself.”

Susan’s parents lied and told her she’d only be down here a couple weeks, until the troubles back home blew over; she’s been here seven months. It happens to a lot of kids. Parents will say
anything to get you on that plane—they know that once you’ve landed on the island, you’re as marooned as Gilligan.

My own parents, for example, told me I’d be going to the beach every weekend and we haven’t gone once yet. When I asked Susan about this, she snorted and gave me a pitiful look.

“Nah,” she said. “This ain’t no beach.”

Downstairs, the music stops and we freeze and stare at each other and then at the door. A second later, Keith Green starts up again—someone flipped the tape over—and Susan lights another match.

“Maybe you should try confronting someone,” I say with a sly smile. “There’s always Jolene.”

Confronting is a nice word for narking. Confront someone about their bad attitude or behavior, and you get a 5 in the Being a Helpful and Positive Influence box. But the staff have to see you do it, or it doesn’t count. Jolene’s an easy target because she still pouts and curses under her breath when she gets angry.

“Oh, you are
too
good,” Susan says, exhaling. “Jolene it is.”

Footsteps start up the stairs and Susan flicks the match in the toilet and we rake our nails over our faces to make them glow. The door is pushed, then shoved, and Susan’s sneaker is dragged inward across the cement.

It’s Becky. She looks at us, and then down at the sneaker.

“Becky, Hon, may I please have a Band-Aid? I done got a blister,” Susan says without skipping a beat. She lifts her bare foot and rubs the heel. The room is cloudy with smoke; Becky sniffs the air.

“Susan here has got a bad case of diarrhea,” I tell her. Everyone uses matches to mask the stench. It’s a common courtesy and a plausible explanation for the fumes.

“Okay, I’ll get a Band-Aid,” Becky says. “But then it’s Bed Time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Susan responds in her best southern belle voice. “Straight away.” When Becky tucks back out the door, I high-five Susan.

“
We
are too good,” I tell her.

Downstairs, we hear chairs shoved across the tile floor and realigned precisely along the edge of the dining room table.

“If dumb was dirt, she’d cover about an acre,” Susan whispers.

Right as I’m chugging along toward Third, I hit a snag that threatens my PRO-gress toward freedom.

After Bruce dumps my underwear drawer on the floor for the fourth day in a row without an explanation, I ask him for one.

We’re standing beside my bunk bed, my panties scattered like used Kleenex at our feet. He jots a 2 on my score chart, then looks at me to gauge my reaction. I put on my humble face.

“Please, Bruce, will you tell me what I’ve done wrong?” I ask. “Please, just this once?”

He considers this request for a long moment, tapping an index finger against his fat lips, before exhaling sharply and bending to snatch a pair of panties from the floor. He kneels beside the bunk and motions for me to join him.

“Watch carefully,” he says, gripping the cotton in his hairy fingers and stretching out the SCHEERES on the inside back waistband. My cheeks burn at seeing my underthings in his woolly grasp, but this is important: I cannot let a pair of panties stand between me and Third Level.

Bruce executes the Escuela Caribe underwear fold on the tile floor: crotch to waist, right side to center, left side to center. When he finishes, he slowly presses his fist over the white square like an iron, the tip of his tongue jutting from his mouth in concentration.

I grab another pair from the floor and mimic his movements, right down to the fist iron and the jutting tongue. When I lay my pair next to his, they look identical.

“Nope,” Bruce says, shaking his head.

He taps the pair he folded.

“My panty is tighter than your panty, eh?” he says. “It’s tidier. More compressed.”

I look at my panty. I look at his panty. They
are
identical.

“You’re right, Bruce,” I say, shaking my head with feigned amazement.

I must show proper Courtesy and Respect Toward Authority Figures, and part of that is letting authority figures win panty-folding contests.
Yes, Bruce, you do have the tightest panty. You are the Queen of Panty Folders, you Canadian faggot.

We stand and he gives me a sideways smile, then jots a + after the 2 on my chart. A 2+ doesn’t mean squat—I’m punished for any point below a 3. It’s suddenly clear to me that this has nothing to do with panties. It has to do with Bruce provoking me to see how I react. If I break and rebel, or if I obediently swallow all his bull crap.

Bruce is taunting me.

He points at the 2+ and looks at me expectantly.

“Thank you, Bruce,” I say sweetly. “That’s very generous of you.”

When he turns to walk downstairs, I flip him off with both hands.

After school, Bruce orders me to move the rock pile uphill even though I’d just finished moving it downhill yesterday. And I know he’s just doing it to fuck with me, and I’m tired of being fucked with. As I cradle the dusty rocks in my arms and lumber up the hill, a sewer of dark thoughts churns through me.

I wonder if Bruce hates me, or if he hates all females, or if he hates life in general. I wonder how he expects us girls to be positive when he’s always breaking our spirits. He could keep me down here forever, despite superior housework and high grades, just to spite me.

A hot wind sprints up the hillside, blasting dust devils over me and setting palm branches a-chittering at the edge of the property. As I carry a bread loaf–sized rock in my hands, a blister pops on my palm and the rock grinds against the torn flesh. I drop the rock, it lands on my foot, and I sink to my knees howling.

There’s a shout, and I look up to see Bruce standing on the patio with his hands on his wide hips.

“Get up!” he yells.

I pull myself off the ground, grit my teeth, and pick up the rock, cradling it to my chest. My palm oozes pus and sweat runs into my eyes. As I climb the hill, a snippet of a song floats into my head, and I start to sing it:
I don’t care anymore. You hear? I don’t care any mo-oh-ore.

I sing it loud, louder. All I remember is the chorus, which is the only part that matters right now anyhow, and I belt it out, compulsively, angrily, as I dump the rock beside the driveway.

Susan’s on the front patio, knifing mud from her hiking boots, and she lifts her head and gives me a queer look.

She’s pissy because she got demoted to Second after flunking her English and Geometry midterms. She never got a chance to nark on Jolene, who got wise to Susan tailing her around and threatened to “warp Susan upside the haid” if she didn’t leave her alone.

Susan’s fallen into a sorry state, not raising her hand when Bruce wants water or laughing at his jokes. She’s in serious danger of losing Second Level as well if she keeps this up.