Invisible Boy, page 8
Then she took me by the hand, beyond the bathrooms, to the tantalizing door opposite the sanctuary, which led to the rest of the school. This one was padlocked as well. She headed next for the gymnasium, but that’s where my mother was, so I went boneless. Mrs. Van Asseldonk wasn’t taking me outside or into a bathroom, so I did not resist when she tried the only other door: a storage room between the toilets, with extra toilet paper and two columns of stackable chairs—one yellow, one blue. She couldn’t find the light switch, so she propped the door wide open with a wedge of wood above the upper bracket, and she left me standing there. As soon as she was gone, I scaled a stack and from my seat on high, I pulled the stopper out and let the door slam.
For forty-five minutes, I sat in the dark, singing songs to myself. When the foyer got noisy, I followed the other kids back to the gym, still determined to befriend the boy from earlier.
But I walked into a spiderweb of fingers.
Aren’t you adorable, said a woman with a handful of my hair. I wish I had these curls. I have to pay for mine.
Help yourself, I said, half-joking. People never asked permission but I didn’t mind a touch from time to time, so I shrugged and let the scalp massage continue.
A second woman joined us, and she bought my compliance with butterscotch candy—a Werther’s Original. I thanked her, untwisting the wrapper, and that’s when she snatched at my hair. It’s so spongy, she said, and she asked if I’d ever heard of Buckwheat from Our Gang.
Although the Little Rascals movie was in theatres that summer, I’d known about the character before, which impressed her.
You’ve seen it? That’s precious, she said. Who’s your mother?
I pointed her out.
Why, that’s wonderful, both of the women agreed, and they rested their palms on my head and began speaking over me.
Did you know that Aberdeen Elementary is over one hundred years old? It opened in 1890, after the gold rush, when there were more whites than Natives all of a sudden, so we needed a school up here. The Natives went to St. Mary’s Mission. They were always running off, and you would find them on the bridge and take them back. But that place closed ten years ago and now you’ve gotta bring them to church yourself!
None of this made sense to me. But here’s what they were on about:
St. Mary’s was the residential school across the Fraser, and the reason that the town was known as Mission. The mission was cultural genocide. In 1894, an amendment to Canada’s Indian Act made attendance at these spaces compulsory for First Nations children. Roughly 150,000 Indigenous kids were forced to leave their families. They were transferred to the care of nuns and rectors, to be raised exclusively on Christian values, and deprived of the identities, communities, and languages that kept them from becoming good Canadians.
When the school is on the reserve, explained the country’s first prime minister, the child lives with his parents, who are savages. He is surrounded by savages. He is simply a savage who can read and write.
A former rector of St. Mary’s once explained that residential schools were meant to train the Indians and half-breeds to lead an industrious and Christian life. But this is only sugar-coating violence. The true purpose, according to a quote whose attribution changes constantly, for no one wants to wear it, was to kill the Indian in the child, addressing the so-called Indian Problem without getting any more blood on the hands of the settlers.
But killing is never not bloody. Residential schools were awful places, born of hatred, full of horror. There were kid-touchers everywhere. Pedophilia was all but institutionalized. Murderers too, for murder was a matter of opinion in these places. Whole generations were dumped into holes in the ground, acknowledged as mass graves a century later. Thousands perished in these hellhouses, branded as hallowed halls, and thousands upon thousands more were destroyed on the inside and sentenced to die, sometime later, from wounds left untreated.
The project was formally ended around 1950, but progress is never that swift or undeviating. St. Mary’s closed in 1985, the year that I was born, and I was caught up in the aftermath: private adoptions that served the same sinister purpose. The Sixties Scoop era saw some twenty thousand Indigenous children delivered to God-fearing homes before policy changes diminished the practice, and white couples coveting children began to look elsewhere. By the eighties, the Baby Scoop era was said to be over. In fact, it was off to the races. Indigenous kids became yesterday’s news, and adoptions of Black babies skyrocketed.
But I didn’t know that then.
The women stopped groping me, finally, and the crowd had thinned enough for me to know the other brown boy wasn’t there. I hung my head and went outside to play with Ben and Mike and Tom. That’s when I spotted my target, at long last, scaling the jungle gym, all by himself. I dashed across the playground and met him at the top.
Hello, I said, I’m Harry.
He dropped into the cage without a word.
And so I did the same, and I landed in a Spider-Man pose. Miniature pebbles spilled into my socks, but the rocks in my shoes were a small price to pay. The free fall impressed him because we were children.
I’m James, he responded.
And we became friends.
James’s parents were not in attendance. He came with his uncle, the Bunyanesque Pastor Mark. Westside had four ushers; each was enormous. I remember them even now as giants, ten feet tall at least, with baseball mitts for hands and pumpkins for heads. I couldn’t imagine going home with one. They frightened me. But James stayed at his uncle’s house on Saturdays and came to church with Pastor Mark on Sunday mornings.
The boy was not Saved, however, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be Saved.
This was exciting. No wonder I felt so attracted to him. The Spirit was shining a light on his soul. Here was my chance to put a jewel in my crown, to do something for the glory of God, and maybe even score a little glory for myself.
Then and there, I set my mind to making James a Christian.
At some point, it occurred to me that Pastor Mark was white. James was obviously not, so I reasoned that the boy must be half-Native, not full, which excited me too. I had never seen another kid who was half-anything, not even on TV, and I had some questions for him. I wondered if James ever felt like he didn’t belong, if he felt like he didn’t make sense. I wondered if James ever felt a suffocating pressure to disavow his heritage, to snuff out half of who he was, like being strangled unconscious, but not quite to death.
So I asked: Are you half-Native?
James said no. The question appeared to offend him.
I’m sorry, I said. Are you adopted?
The boy shook his head.
I got the sense that he was sensitive, like Ben, so I dropped the identity questions, and we didn’t talk at all. We played. We scrambled all over the jungle gym pretending to be lizards until our guardians arrived to round us up. My father was with Pastor Mark. My mother was having a chat with the Werther’s lady, who saw us and said: Why, aren’t you two a natural pair!
* * *
—
James and I became inseparable on Sunday mornings. I asked if he could sit with us the week that Pastor Don arrived. My mother wasn’t happy, but I promised to behave. She let it happen. So we sat down next to her, and when nobody took up the rest of the row, we slid over, to give ourselves space.
Attendance was dwindling by then. The interim Man of God, Pastor Van Asseldonk, wasn’t a riveting speaker. His delivery was dry, and he went on too long. His three-week discussion on Genesis cost us a few dozen bodies, I guessed, but I had to imagine that Pastor Don’s preaching would be a game-changer at Westside and bring them all back.
Everything was different for the Man of God’s Canadian debut. The Crock family seized every role for themselves. The new worship leader was Pastor Don’s oldest son, Jameson Crock, who was nineteen or twenty, impossibly handsome, with spiky blond hair, a gold earring, good posture, a fabulous tan, and a wonderful voice, above all. Jameson Crock played a synthesizer like Michael W. Smith, and he lent a rock star swagger to the praise band.
Mrs. Crock was taking over Sunday school, it was announced, and this was a certain improvement. Officer Frost was intense, and her patience with me was already exhausted. The woman agreed to stay on as a helper, but I was delighted to see her demoted.
Sunday school was cancelled for the day. The Man of God had brought a word for everyone that morning.
Pastor Don was enormous—a pot-bellied man. If he weren’t the preacher, he’d have made a good usher. He wore an expensive suit and shiny shoes. His brown hair was frosted at the tips. He had a tan, just like his son. It was as if the Crocks had visited a tropical island on the way to Canada. But California was known for its sunshine.
The Crocks had been held up at immigration. Apparently, the customs agents thought it was unusual for a man to uproot his entire family, sell his house quickly and at a loss, and leave a well-paying ministry job in San Diego to plant a new church on the outskirts of Abbotsford.
It looked to them like he was fleeing the country.
But Pastor Don explained that it was not unusual to heed the call of God, or to obey the angels who nudged him awake, late one night, and commanded he go up to British Columbia.
I told them, gentlemen, don’t worry, I’ll be back, he said, and I won’t be alone. I’ll return with an unstoppable army of the Lord, singing glory-hosanna to God in the highest! You think your badges permit you to stand in the path of righteousness? When that day comes—and it will come, for it’s been prophesied—you’ll fall to your knees and worship the Father in heaven, who parted the Red Sea and the Jordan River, and offers you eternal life, even now, as you blaspheme his name in your disbelief! And then the one agent turned to the other and said: I haven’t been to church since I was just a little boy. I’ve wandered away from the Lord. Now I’m living in sin with my girlfriend and our child, who was born out of wedlock. But I feel the Spirit all over this man. I believe him. I know that the Son of God died for my sins. Pastor Don, will you pray for me? And Church, I led that lost soul back to Jesus, right there in the little office at the Peace Arch border crossing, and I told him about the revival that’s coming to Abbotsford, British Columbia, and he said, Pastor, I’ll bring my whole family.
I looked around for a man dressed as a customs agent, but I did not see one. Still, it was an incredible testimony, and the place erupted with applause and amens.
Pastor Don switched gears. But I don’t know about this name, he said. Westside…Westside? He leaned back and said it like a brotha from the ’hood, and people laughed, so he flashed a fake gang sign and said it again—Westsiiii-eeeeed—and the people laughed harder.
It was indeed a silly name for this church, especially in 1994. By then, even I knew the word was a rap word.
Pastor Don asked: Is this that kind of church? Because I’m looking around, and I really don’t think so.
He had me in stitches, but then our eyes met and I froze.
There you are, my man, he said. I see you hiding over there. God’s got big plans for you, brotha. Who brought you to the House of the Lord this morning?
He’s my son! my mother shouted, proud to claim me, in that moment.
How old?
He just turned nine.
Hallelujah, Pastor Don responded, chuckling. Get ’em while they’re young, that’s what the word says. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Amen, several people responded, including myself, and I sat up straight, eager to show I was well-trained already.
Westside, Pastor Don said again, with a smirk. Forgive me, but I think it makes the wrong impression, people. This is not a hideout for thugs. This is the house of the Lord!
More amens.
Man looks at the outward appearance, Pastor Don said. But the Lord looks at the heart. God doesn’t see colour! Not even gang colours. He only sees lost souls, crying out for living water in the wilderness!
Pastor Don was really cooking now.
And I’m not saying we don’t need a little flavour in the House of the Lord, he said with a swagger. We have to reach out to these people. Remember: To those outside the law I became as one outside the law. To the weak I became weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. We don’t just need ushers and tambourine players. We need singers and dancers and rappers, and we need a choir! If you build it, they will come, and when they come, they’re not just coming to church—they’re entering a gateway to heaven. Forget about Westside. Thus saith the Lord: I have given you a new name! Like Saul became Paul and Simon became Peter, my disciple, you shall now be known as Gateway Christian Centre!
The congregation formerly known as Westside erupted as Mrs. Crock fired up the overhead projector, revealing our new name and logo.
Right around then, I discovered a big bag of Werther’s Originals in my mother’s purse. I showed it to James and we opened it, overexcited, and spilled the whole bag on the floor. We laughed to ourselves and collected the ones we could reach, making two little piles, and soon we were playfully bickering over which one of us had the most butterscotch candy.
My mother pinched me and I snapped to attention, but James swiped my Werther’s when I wasn’t looking. I swatted his arm away, smirking, and once I was certain my mother had moved on, I reached across, casually, grabbing as much as I could. He punched my outer thigh; I slapped his wrist. The sound was a little too loud, so we giggled and sat up straight, hoping that nobody noticed.
People think God is up here, at the altar, said Pastor Don. But that’s not true. That’s just where I am. God is everywhere, and the Bible says his blessings descend, equally, on everyone. This means they fall from the centre. So where is the presence of God strongest? Right there, in the middle of everything.
And every eye landed on James and me, horsing around in the fullness of God’s divine presence.
Mrs. Van Asseldonk was indignant. She left her seat and crossed the aisle to sit between us, silently.
Unbelievable, my mother whispered. And right in the presence of God.
James wanted nothing to do with me after that. When the heat died down, I tried to reconnect with him. I tapped his knee. He wouldn’t so much as acknowledge the touch; the boy was as distant and sullen as when we first met. We didn’t speak again that day. Pastor Don dismissed us and I rushed outside to find my friend, but James was in his uncle’s car, and Pastor Mark was pulling out.
He was in trouble. I could tell. I blamed myself.
My mother did too. Driving home, she was livid.
I knew I shouldn’t let you sit with James, she said. The Lord told me not to, but I didn’t listen. Now everyone at Gateway thinks I can’t even control my son. We’re getting McDonald’s, but don’t think for a second you deserve it.
* * *
—
All week, I assumed that the friendship was ruined, that James wouldn’t sit with me ever again, and my hope of redeeming his soul was long gone. I was back to square one, stuck at zero.
On Saturday morning, however, he called, out of nowhere, inviting himself to sleep over. Delighted, I asked for permission, but my mother invoked the Fun Limiter, complaining that she hated being made to be the bad guy. So I begged her, and I promised to be extra good on Sunday. She reluctantly agreed.
Pastor Mark dropped off his nephew sometime after lunch.
James could hardly believe our house. To him, it was a mansion. He was in awe of the Super Nintendo, the cabinet of games and the four televisions, the toys and the stuffies, and the big box of guns, and the trampoline blew him away. There was so much to do, and he wanted to do everything. We played in the yard until dark, then we came in, had dinner, and played in the Big Room until bedtime. When everyone else went to sleep, James insisted we sneak back outside, so we tiptoed downstairs, and when the trampoline got cold, we crept back to the Big Room to watch Superbook and play Super Mario World. We pulled an all-nighter and rescued the princess at dawn.
We left for church early. Upon learning that he had a team of Prayer Warriors at his disposal, Pastor Don had promoted the trio to helpers and invited them to set the tone each Sunday with an hour of pregame prayer. They met at the back of the gym, skipping small talk completely and speaking in tongues from the jump.
With time on our hands, James and I went outside, and we sat on the swings, looking back on the playdate. We were both so exhausted, our memories failed us. We couldn’t quite recall how we had spent the sleepless night. Our speech was disordered. We stopped making sense. We spoke to each other, unguarded, uncensored, and suddenly James hung his head, and his shoulders turned inward. He made himself small like he meant to disappear, and he told me about Pastor Mark, what the usher had done to him time and again in the bath, and explained why he’d called me, so eager to spend the night anywhere else but his uncle’s apartment.
I didn’t understand him. Pastor Mark had touched his private parts, he told me, but I wondered what that meant. I had no context for the claim. I only knew that James was so ashamed he wasn’t swinging, so I slowed myself, and tried to meet his gaze.
In that moment, I saw the look of a boy who needed desperately to be Saved. This was my moment. I told him: God can take that from you, James. That’s His promise. It will be like it never happened. Whatever you’re feeling will just float away.
He stared at me, surprised, and I imagined it was good surprise, like maybe he was pleased by my response. I wonder now if what surprised him most was my conviction that salvation could erase a molestation. I was hopeless.
James put a toe in the pebbles and drew half a circle. He told me: I want to be Saved.
