American Afterlife, page 17
She told me about the meetings—not everything, but enough. She told me about the video releases, how on the first day of each month they would all go early to the meeting, how the deacons would lock the congregation inside the church, how no one was allowed to come into the building or go out during the entirety of the video’s running time. No one was allowed in late either. They had to be on time and all in.
She also told me about the first time she was blessed by Witness Andreas, how he smiled at her, how he closed his eyes to say the blessing, and how the warmth of his small hand spread throughout her entire body.
This was last year. There had been so many strange churches during my lifetime, but this one sounded like the weirdest of them all. She told me I was required to go on the next Saturday night, that everyone would bring their family members, but I refused to go. I was beyond all that with her. She couldn’t make me anymore, and if she tried—if I actually went—she knew I wouldn’t stay silent. She knew I would embarrass her.
Before this, I had endured a different church that was similar: Women were not allowed to show their ankles or bare their wrists, a church where they called me “Sister Wagner” as if I were a nun, but when I made a joke about being a nun, everyone frowned at me, and an old woman narrowed her eyes and took a step forward. She said, “Satan is in the Roman Catholic church. Satan has led that congregation for a thousand years.”
So now there was The Collection and its weekly video releases that I knew to avoid. I was hoping that something made my mother move churches again, something that wouldn’t seem right to her. But nothing changed. She kept going.
We grew further apart. The garage space was so small with both of us in it, me doing my homework as my mother sat on the floor and memorized verses from The Collection’s new translation of the Bible. If I caught her eye, she would stare at me and shake her head.
Then—so many evenings—she was gone. The services lasted for hours, so I had our small garage space to myself. It was like I was living alone even before I was actually living alone.
CHAPTER
49
CHOSEN
SOMEONE ELSE COMES into the room, not the big man who set the cigar box down, but someone shorter, and I recognize him. He’s the leader person I saw in the neighborhood many times.
He holds his hand to his chest. Says, “Let me introduce myself. I am Witness Andreas. I am The Witness to The Collection of Redeemed Souls. And as its witness from God, its guide, I lead my brothers and sisters in the circumspect reverence of the Lord Almighty, the God of all eternity.”
The white cat is in the room still. I see it rub against the man’s leg, wend a figure eight around his ankles. Witness Andreas bends down and runs his small hand over the cat’s body. The cat’s mid-back bows, and it purrs loudly.
Witness Andreas stands back up and takes a deep breath. Reaches toward my face, but I flinch, pull my head back as far as it can go, turn away from him.
“Shh,” he says, and takes ahold of my head with his two hands. “I’m only removing this.” He holds the back of my neck firmly with one hand as his other hand pulls a big wad of wet cotton out of my mouth, sets it on the empty chair next to the cigar box.
“I’ve seen you,” I say. “I know about you. You’re the creepy leader person.”
Witness Andreas smiles at me. His smile is the smile a person might make when talking to a very small child. He says, “You will learn to understand things—maybe—but not all at once. I won’t give you a long speech. But there are those who choose, and then there are those who are chosen. But in reality, both are one and the same. Who can tell which one is first? And even a choice …” He makes a motion with his hand, a circle in the air. “Well,” he says, “even that is of God. He chooses whom he will redeem, and I am happy to bring you the good news that you have been chosen.”
“No,” I say, “I haven’t.”
“Hmm,” he says, and his index finger makes another circle in the air. “It has been revealed to me that you have indeed been chosen, whether you know it or not. To be clear, anything revealed to me is of absolute truth. The Lord reveals. But this is also true: the chosen must make a first act—a sacrifice, something visible, something tangible—even if they don’t understand what they’re doing or why. Maybe your ears aren’t open yet, but we could pray for that together?”
I struggle against my bindings, try to wiggle my arms to see if there’s any chance of getting free, but there’s no point. I’m bound too tightly. My chair doesn’t even move. I say, “I don’t want to pray for anything with you. I’m not doing any sacrifices either.”
Witness Andreas bends down and pets the white cat at his feet once again. He runs his hand over its sleek head, and its purring is loud.
“Because you are young,” he says, “you think that what you say is true. And I was foolish when I was young as well. I believed in my own understanding, in what I said, in what I thought I saw. But I didn’t know that God had chosen me.”
“I don’t care about all that,” I say. “I don’t care about this or about your religion. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Religion?” he laughs. “Religion is for the small-minded. Religion isn’t of God. Religion is of man. It’s a warped thing. There’s nothing in religion, but we all do—however—need to know the Lord, and there is a God-sized hole in all of us that the Lord can fill.”
I shake my head. I wish my thoughts were clearer. I say, “Did you drug me?”
Witness Andreas smiles again. “You do seem”—he makes a circle motion in front of my face—“unclear.”
“Listen,” I say, “I don’t believe in your religion. You can’t make a person believe.”
“No, no, of course not. People who call themselves religious do not understand anything. Even people who call themselves Christians are not true believers. They are not the chosen people of the Lord.” He shakes his head. “People who go to their little churches on Sundays, people who read other people’s translations of the Bible.”
“So do you read your own?”
He taps his fingers against his chest. “No,” he says, “I don’t trust other men. I’ve translated the entire Bible myself, Old and New Testament. I am called to be The Witness to the Lord God of all eternity.”
He takes a breath. Says, “But that’s enough for now.”
He smiles again, tilts his head and looks at me. Then he walks past my chair, and I hear him close the door behind me. The latch clicks. Then I’m alone with the cat again. It hops up on the chair opposite me. The cat smells the saliva-soaked cotton ball, then the box.
CHAPTER
50
THE COLLECTION
I’M SO UNCOMFORTABLE—MY whole body cramping—but whatever drug they gave me was strong. I fall asleep again.
When I wake up, it’s dark, none of the candles lit. I wonder if someone came in the room and blew the candles out or if they burned out on their own. I wonder how long I’ve been in this chair. My lower back is aching. I try to arch and shift, but nothing feels good.
I stay awake for a long time. My back throbs. I try to imagine my escape, try to picture some way that I’ll leave this place, get out of my chair, and I remember the girl I saw at the Hendrix house the night when they caught her on the porch, how I listened to her screams, how I didn’t help her, how I couldn’t help her or how I chose not to.
I’m thinking about her when I fall asleep again.
I dream about the bear.
* * *
Something slides underneath my left hand and I jolt awake.
It’s not Witness Andreas in front of me, but a much taller person, a spiderlike man with long, thin arms. He’s younger than Witness Andreas but with the same type of beard. He’s sliding a wooden cutting board underneath my left hand.
I say, “Wait … no! Hey, stop!”
The man doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look me in the eye.
He picks up the wad of cotton from the other chair and grabs my face. He tries to stuff the cotton in my mouth, but I keep my jaws clenched, my lips sealed. I shake my head, and he waits for me to stop. Then he grabs my face harder, stabs into the side of my cheek with one of his thumbs, gouges hard into the muscle on the side of my face, and my mouth pops open. Then he stuffs the cotton into my mouth, and I gag on it. I try to bite his fingers, but he pulls them back.
He stands again, walks past me out of the room, but doesn’t close the door behind him. I don’t hear the door creak, and there’s no click of the latch. So I know the door is open behind me.
I try not to cry, but tears spill down my cheeks as I hear footsteps behind me once again. I turn my head, but I still can’t see.
Then Witness Andreas is in front of me again, and he taps the cutting board with the tips of his fingers. I try to scream but it’s muffled.
“This is a good choice,” he says. “It will hurt of course, but then you will be redeemed. You will be collected by the Lord, and we will welcome you among us.”
That’s when I see the wide-bladed kitchen knife in his other hand.
He adjusts the cutting board once more, slides and angles it so it’s centered underneath my smallest finger, the pinky of my left hand. The bindings are too tight for me to pull away.
I shake my head and cry even harder. My vision goes blurry.
But I feel the blade of the knife against my skin—at the joint where my pinky connects to my hand—and I open my eyes wide, shake my head to stop crying. Feel how sharp the knife is. Witness Andreas puts his other hand on the back of the blade for leverage.
I wiggle my finger just a little bit, and feel the sharp edge of the knife.
Witness Andreas says, “We are allowing for the eternal.”
Then he pushes down on the back of the blade.
CHAPTER
51
HOW IT WAS EVERY DAY
WHEN YOU HAVE nothing. When you don’t fit into any culture. Middle school and you can’t tell people that you live in a one-room converted garage. That your mom doesn’t own a car. That you sell Marinol and Xanax, Valium and Ritalin to anyone who will buy them. Percocet when you can get it. That every stray purse in every restaurant or coffee shop has pills like these. That a quick dip of your hand is all it takes.
This is how you bought your first iPod and—later—your first phone.
You can’t afford popular clothes, so you steal those as well. You’ve been practicing invisibility your entire life, so this is not as difficult as it sounds. You are a ghost on a foggy day. You are the background extra in a movie scene. You are a droplet in a glass of water.
You walk into the Valley River Center mall with a messenger bag slung on your hip. The bag looks like a purse but will hold more stolen items than anyone could ever imagine. You buy one T-shirt as cover, and walk out with a full wardrobe. You do this three more times at three other stores to begin ninth grade.
You study hard in school and your A and B grades keep you out of trouble with your teachers and the school counselors. Staying out of trouble is your cloak. The principal walks by you in the hallway and doesn’t know your name. That is important. The assistant principal points at you one time and says, “Um …,” then snaps his fingers and smiles. “You go here, right?”
You nod and smile back. Say, “Of course!” But you don’t offer your name. You turn and keep walking.
Even if you want to, you can’t afford to join the soccer team. You can’t afford to join the chess club. But you have a library card, and you take the maximum number of books each month—ten—and those books are your world. You lie on the roof of your garage and read novels as the daylight fades into evening. And on weekends, you sit up on the roof and read in the sunlight.
You see your mother come back from a full day of cleaning houses. The big house on Monday. Other houses in a rotation—one each day—Tuesday through Friday. Your mother’s ankles look swollen, and she sits on the floor, leaning back against the wall, eating a 7-Eleven hot dog. She hands you the other hot dog (mustard, no ketchup). She rolled your dinner in a double napkin and stuffed it into her purse for the bus ride home. She says, “I don’t like you to stare at me after work. Déjame sólo.”
So you don’t look at her as you eat your hot dog. You give her space.
A moment to relax.
She takes a shower in the zinc stall in the back of the garage, the showerhead a cut length of garden hose. She puts on a long-sleeved dress, long socks, no makeup. Covers her head. Walks around without talking to you because you have told her—finally—that you will never go to another church with her ever again. You told her that all of her churches are nothing like your Tío Pablo’s church in Mexico where you went when you were little, where the family was all together, and they smiled at the priest, who also smiled back at the family, and everyone made the sign of the cross, and everyone ate food together when mass was finished. But she was never with you.
CHAPTER
52
METAPHYSICS
WITNESS ANDREAS SAYS, “This will be an addition to The Collection,” as he drops the lid on the red cigar box.
I glance down and see the blood run off the edge of the cutting board. I feel light-headed. Black coming in from the sides of my vision. Dreams of beauty, the past, kaleidoscope twists, one and then the next:
Catching a gopher snake in a company field near K-59, the quick flick of its black tongue against my palm as I sit among the bright green heads of lettuce.
Holding a bottle of Coke on a summer day next to the sheet metal of the tienda, Tío Pablo smiling at me, the smell of cane sugar as he tilts his Coke bottle and the glass clinks against his silver front tooth. He says, “Cuando el sol brilla, siempre es un buen día.”
I felt bad for thinking, “Pero el sol brilla la mayoría de los días, y la mayoría son …” I mean, how could all sunny days be good days?
But he was still smiling, and his smile was always good.
Sitting on the roof of the garage as the constellation Orion rises in the east, the Pleiades above it, putting on my black hoodie after I shiver for the first time.
The night Aadita and I skinny-dipped in the eddy pool below the Wave Train on the Willamette River, the way water beaded on the curve of her naked back, both of us laughing as we pulled our T-shirts back on.
I take a sudden breath and open my eyes.
The weight is heaviest where the pinky used to connect. I hear a click. Look down. Witness Andreas has a Butane lighter, the blue flame steady and straight next to my left hand.
CHAPTER
53
IN THIS CHAIR
I WAKE IN THE daylight, my left hand throbbing. There’s a white bandage over the hand, one spot of blood on the gauze. I’m so thirsty. My throat feels like it’s lined with steel wool. My pants are wet and my legs itch where I peed myself.
The candles are out, but light is coming into the room. I see where someone has peeled back the foil that was covering the window. I’m still tied to the chair. The empty chair is still facing me, but the red cigar box is gone.
The white cat leaps from the side table, walks up to me, and rubs against my leg, purring.
I realize that I’m not gagged anymore, wonder if I have a chance of someone hearing me if I scream. Somebody not with them. So I yell, “Help me! Is anyone there?! Help me!!!”
No one answers.
I scream again. “Hello?! Anyone?! If you can hear me, help me!”
I hear something move in the house above. The sound of a chair scraping across a floor. Footsteps. The door opens behind me. Then closes.
Witness Andreas sits down across from me. He says, “I’m glad you’re awake. I was waiting for that. We need to talk through our possibilities.” He leans forward. His robe is newly cleaned, incredibly white.
I yell again. “Help me! Someone please help me!”
Witness Andreas sits and looks at me. Doesn’t speak.
I stop yelling. Wait and listen for anyone else, anyone who might help.
Witness Andreas blinks and shakes his head. “There’s no one who could hear you. And—anyway—we need to talk more productively. We need to discuss a plan.”
“What are you talking about?”
“About what you are going to decide.” He presses his palms together. Puts his lips to his fingertips. “Your future,” he says, then he stretches his arms wide. “And about God.”
I say, “About God?”
“The only thing that matters … the one, true thing in this universe. God is waiting for you, either in this life or the next, but you have to call out to him. You have to choose wisely.”
I say, “That’s where people like you are so stupid. Before, you told me that I was chosen. Now you’re saying I need to choose.”
“Well, of course,” he says, “it’s really simple.” He smiles again, like he’s a grade school teacher and I’m a child who doesn’t understand a math problem. He tilts his head. “But now you have to respond. With God, it is always about the call and the response.”
I look at the bandage on my left hand, the blood spot on the gauze, and I think about my missing pinky. I start to cry. I don’t want to cry—I don’t want to give him that—but I can’t stop myself. I look away and close my eyes.
Witness Andreas waits. He doesn’t say anything.
I keep my eyes closed and think. Force myself to stop crying. Then I clear my throat, gather phlegm in my mouth and open my eyes. I lift my head and look at Witness Andreas. Then I spit, and the wad of phlegm hits him on his robe, high on the right side of his chest. He looks down at it—the spit yellow with a line of red in it—a chunk dripping from one fold of his robe to the next.
