Jesus Land (41 page)

While Jerome’s response to adversity was “beat ’em,” David’s—for a period of time—was “join ‘em,” and he excelled at self-denigration.

In junior high, David had this friend who called him monkey. “Hey, monkey! Wanna play ball?” the boy would yell across the gym.

David would lope across the polished wood floor, swinging his arms and grunting like an orangutan, and everyone would whoop with laughter. When I saw him do this, I’d fight an urge to run over and knock him to the ground.

He’d also entertain our classmates by performing tricks with his face. He’d distort his African features, pushing out his full lips, flaring his nostrils and bugging out his eyes and rolling them around. A black boy in black face. They watched, laughed, asked for more. And he gave it to them.

It took him a while to figure out that gaining an audience was not the same thing as gaining friends.

Thanksgiving morning breaks dark and wet. Raindrops drill Starr’s metal roof with the force of marbles, and I lie on my back watching rivulets of rusty water run down the metal slab a few feet from my face.

The dormitory is sour with mildew. Nothing dries since rainy season began; our clothes are stained with webs of green mold that even bleach can’t erase and our clean towels smell like sweaty socks. The rain has driven hordes of cockroaches and tiny black ants into the house, where they lurk in the hampers and closets and between our sheets.

Thanksgiving. My mind reels back to this day last year. Jerome in the pole barn, hungry and shivering in his nest of rags, trying to thaw a bowl of dog food. Now he’s in his prison and we’re in ours, and our parents will eat Thanksgiving dinner at the MCL Cafeteria. Mother will be thankful that she doesn’t have to play-act the part of the happy mom and housewife for the guests and
the camera. God is her only family now, just like she always wanted.

Becky unlocks her door and lights the gas lamp. Light floods the room.

“Happy Thanksgiving!” she shouts over the drilling rain.

“Can’t we just sleep today?” someone shouts.

“It’s Thanksgiving!” Becky shouts back. “We must celebrate!”

“Celebrate what?” someone else shouts. Becky doesn’t respond.

After Room Jobs, Breakfast Time and House Jobs, we change into our Sunday best for the “Annual Escuela Caribe Thanksgiving Holiday and Worship Celebration.” The rain has stopped, but the sky swirls with dark clouds and bursts of wind tug at our dresses. We walk down the hill hunched over, our hems gathered in one hand, to avoid getting our points docked for immodesty.

The boys have formed a circle by the banyan tree and I spot David across the grass in a light blue suit. In the tumult of the wind and our arrival, I venture a quick smile at him, and to my surprise, he smiles back. And for this small gift I am thankful.

Yesterday afternoon he forgot his Spanish book on the TKB picnic table and I managed to slip a note into it. I’d watched him get permission to stand, walk, and enter his next class then spotted it on the bench.

REMEMBER FLORIDA I’d scrawled in my notebook, drawing a heart beneath the words. I ripped the page out and stuck it in his textbook when no one was looking.

I think we both realize that the chance of us moving to Florida together at this point is slim. I’ve decided to go to college to become a social worker and David wants to become an actor and work on TV.

But I wrote REMEMBER FLORIDA anyway, because for years, it’s what we’ve done when things get tough. Anymore,
Florida is not a place, it’s a concept. It’s freedom and happiness and being in control of your own life. Remember Florida: Remember there’s a better place than this.

Ted walks into the circle and reads passages from the Bible that contain the words “thanksgiving” and “thanks” and compares us kids to the Pilgrims because we “also have voyaged from afar to be free in Jesus Christ.”

When he finishes preaching, Ted instructs us to join hands and share something we are thankful for. And while the other kids dutifully thank The Program for a “second chance in life” and for “saving them from Hell” and even Boy 0—who’s now on First Level—thanks the staff for “curing his rebellion,” I refuse to engage in such bullshit.

When my turn comes, I look directly across the circle at David.

“I’m thankful for my brother,” I say in a loud voice. “Because in the end, family is all you got.”

I hear the kids around me scoff with disdain because family is what got them into this hellhole, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Bruce scrutinizing me to figure out whether my words could be construed as communication with my brother. I don’t pay him any mind. I stay focused on David, and David on me. We know our truth.

After everyone says their bit, we sing “Now Thank We All Our God” and then Ted steps forward with a big grin on his face.

“I do believe there’s something missing from this Thanksgiving celebration,” he says. He lifts his whistle and blows into it and a moment later the Dominican guard jogs into the circle with a large package under his arm. He sets the package on the ground and it unfolds into a turkey the size of a coonhound. Everyone applauds with delight as the massive bird flops about in a circle with its bald red head listing to one side as if it were concussed.

Ted motions at the Dominican, who pulls his machete from his waistband and hands it to him.

“Jesus said the first shall be last, and the last shall be first,” Ted says, striding across the circle. He stops in front David and hands him the sword and David accepts it with bugged-out eyes. Everyone laughs. Ted points at the turkey and David’s actor side kicks in. He raises the machete over his head and charges the gobbler with big loping steps as the bird screeches and runs in larger circles, flapping its useless black wings. David stops and pants when the bird stops, and shambles forward when it moves, like some retarded detective. Everyone howls. But he keeps the blade raised over his head, and it’s clear he has no intention of harming this animal, but is merely performing his clown act.

The turkey darts against the fence of our legs trying to escape, and the girls squeal and the boys kick it. And everyone’s hee-hawing, and dang if this ain’t the most fun ever been had at Escuela. When the bird lowers its warty head and tries to penetrate the space below my dress, I knee its dirty feathers and it yelps and careens away.

After a while, Ted grows tired of these antics and motions to the guard, who shouts in Spanish and tackles the bird. He struggles to his feet with his hands clenching the turkey’s neck and holds it aloft like a trophy as it claws his chest and everyone titters. The Dominican jabbers in his language and grins, but the bird is silent because he is choking it. Ted drags a tree stump into the middle of the circle and the guard stretches the bird’s long neck over it.

“David!” Ted calls, beckoning with his arm.

My brother throws me a look of doubt and apprehension before trudging over to Ted with the machete drooping at his side. They consult over the prostrate bird, with Ted pointing down at
it and murmuring and David standing stock-still. And then Ted barks “now!” and the Dominican leaps away and David raises the machete and turns his head and slams down the blade.

There’s silence.

And then there’s pandemonium.

For the turkey is yet alive.

It lurches to its feet with half its head dangling to the side and blood spurting from its neck like some demonic fountain. As it flails about in a blind bloody circle, there’s a communal screeching and several girls erupt into tears and a boy shouts “holy shit!” and Susan collapses into Becky’s arms.

David stands in gaping horror before this monster he has created, his blue suit splattered red. The Dominican yanks the machete from his hand and swings it at the bird like a baseball bat; its head and a piece of neck soar through the air and ricochet off the trunk of the banyan tree before falling back onto the field. The Dominican kicks the headless body over then stomps on the neck until the bird stops convulsing.

By the time the Annual Escuela Caribe Thanksgiving Holiday and Worship Celebration has ended, the other girls are clutched into a bawling knot and a boy is horking into the dirt. Yep, best darn fun ever.

We eat it in the courtyard. A couple of kids suggest that they’d rather scrub toilets or haul rocks or do anything else besides participate, but Ted will have no such nonsense.

“Waste not, want not,’” he lectures them.

We sit at our picnic tables and the bird reappears on a platter, fat and brown and naked. Ted carves it to pieces and makes sure everyone forks a slab onto their plate and I exchange a grim look with David, who’s changed into a clean tan suit.

After he blesses the food, Ted turns to a jam box set on a cement bench and presses the play button. The high girly voices of the Vienna Boys’ Choir rise from the speakers.

The turkey flesh is pink and spongy and tastes slightly of soap. I hold my breath while I chew, and down the table Susan chews with tears running down her face as Becky rubs her back. Ted gets up and cranks up the volume on the jam box.

The late-afternoon air is damp with the gathering rain and a chill wind rips through the courtyard. I press my goosebumped legs together under the picnic table and shovel the spongy pink flesh into my mouth, chewing as little as possible before swallowing as the queer girly voices scream “Edelweiss” in my ears.

The staff make it clear that I won’t get Fifth until I:

Break up with Scott.

Apologize to my parents.

They don’t say these things outright. Rather, Bruce tells me that he’s concerned about my PRO-gress. He says my parents feel I haven’t internalized The Program’s values and worry that I’m still “under the influence” of a certain young man back in Indiana.

Okay. It’s true that I wrote my parents a letter telling them my sex life was none of their business. But that was back on Level 1, before I’d fully realized what I was doing. We haven’t broached the subject of my deflowering again, either in letters or in my one parental phone call (a five-minute conversation over a buzzing and echoing phone line at Ted’s house where he sat across the table from me, and my mother updated me on the goings-on at Lafayette Christian Reformed and I yelled “what?” periodically for lack of anything better to say).

After Bruce tells me his concerns about my PRO-gess, I sit down immediately at the dining room table to write two letters. One to Scott (“I think there was, like, way too much fornication in our relationship”) and another to my parents. This is the hard one. What, exactly, should I apologize for?

“Dear parents,” I write, before grabbing the pen in my fist and carving a black hole in the page. I rip it from my notebook, crumple it into a ball, and stare down at the blank new sheet.

When I was little and teachers had us make Mother’s Day cards in art class and told us to write “I love you” inside, I’d write “no” somewhere near the phrase. I no love you because I know you no love me.

Is it wrong to dislike your parents? What if they disliked you first?

I scrawl words on the fresh page before I think too hard about them.

Dear parents,

I recognize that I haven’t done the best job in the past, but I’ve been working hard during the past six months to become a better daughter and Christian and human being. I have ended things with Scott and hope things can be better for us. Sorry for everything.

I bite my lip and sign “Love, Julia” at the end, instead of my customary “bye, Julia.”

Bruce and Becky read the letters before I seal them in their envelopes and Bruce nods and Becky pats my back and I look down at the table. This isn’t defeat. This is survival.

I become Starr high ranker the next Sunday, setting a school record for reaching Fifth Level in the minimum amount of time. I stand before Bruce and quote the required Scriptures, then lower myself before him to do the required calisthenics. When
he pins the Leadership medal onto my T-shirt, I beam at the sour faces of the other girls.
Losers
.

Tiffany is especially pissy about my promotion; she recently failed to make Fifth when Becky caught her smoking matches in the bathroom because she’d forgotten to jam shut the door.

That evening, while we are luxuriating in the hot shower that is the foremost high-ranker privilege, I catch a whiff of rank coffee and look over to see her standing with her legs apart, massaging her neck and pissing a dark yellow stream onto the tiles. Her urine merges with the water flowing over my feet to the drain.