The Wreck Emerged

by Joseph Webers

  Those authorities met them at the door and escorted Mikhail to join his wife. The eight teams made their way to a door marked “Britannia Airlines Personnel Only” to change out of the BA uniforms into something more in keeping with their security mission.

  As the door closed, there was an announcement over the airport loudspeaker system that anyone at the airport here to meet the Britannia Airlines flight from Chicago due to arrive at 10:45 p.m., should make their way to Gate Eleven or Zone F for some important information concerning the flight.

  45

  The cleansing of Jenny’s face, mouth, and throat now complete, Matt tenderly replaced the pink blanket over her wispy strands of freshly cleaned hair, leaving her increasingly bloated face exposed, and gently laid the body in a crevice to Maggie’s left, between the coffins that were their lifeboat. “Now it’s your turn,” he whispered, not wanting to disturb the solemnity of the moment. “You need cleansing too, to get you ready.”

  Matt looked at Maggie. She was struggling, her brown eyes suddenly filled with trepidation and a desperate pleading. “I can’t bear this,” they seemed to be saying. He started to say something, then closed his mouth. He opened it again to speak, but closed it a second time. And a third. Silently imploring God to give him understanding, he could see pain wracking her soul.

  Then in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he saw, as real and vivid as if he were there watching. She was twelve…

  Then he understood. He saw no details, but perceived horror. He heard her crying, then screaming. He saw blood, a lot of blood, hers. Doctors scurried about. Suddenly a large plank was thrown upon the scene and a great iron hammer nailed the plank in place. The hammering and the plank faded away, and she was still there, her eyes still imploring as if no time at all had passed.

  He stared purposefully at her chest. “Maggie,” he started slowly, “did you vow a vow?”

  She burst into tears as he shifted his gaze to her face. Compassion for her, both in her present being and as a child, rolled over him, swirled around them both, and settled in his eyes. She didn’t see what he had seen; all she saw was God’s love for her streaming from his whole being. Through his eyes. Through his tears.

  It was her eyes that gave her away. Yes, they whispered. The memory of it presented itself to her for inspection. Yes, they said. The horror he had perceived settled itself over her like a shroud. Yes! they shouted. Through her tears, she saw Matt lean forward and open his arms toward her. She grabbed at him like she had grabbed at him in the water.

  He held her briefly, then she swung around with her back in his chest. He leaned against the upper coffin and they both relaxed. He wrapped her tightly in his arms. Next to them both, on their right side, Jenny’s lifeless body, still swaddled in her pink blanket, twitched and gurgled in a random fashion, as the decay processes were eager to return this little one back to the dust from which she came.

  “Tell me,” he said softly, and waited. Maggie stiffened up, then relaxed. Sobbed some. Tried to move her arms, but he was holding her. He couldn’t see it, but her eyes were closed. It seemed to Matt that she was reliving the horror. “You’re safe,” he said. “I’m holding you.”

  He could feel he was being a comfort to her. He rocked her, ever so slightly and ever so slowly.

  As she told her story, she broke down at times. Sometimes she paused, to regain her composure and strength, to remember more of the details. “I was twelve. It was my birthday. I was reaching puberty earlier than my friends, and was starting to develop. My brother Charles and I were at home by ourselves. He was sixteen at the time. Shortly after lunch, a couple of his friends came over, Billy and Ted. I was in the living room reading a Nancy Drew when they came in. Charles said, ‘It’s time for your birthday spankings.’

  “I had never heard of birthday spankings, and said so. Billy, or maybe it was Ted, said, ‘We’ll show you.’ At that, Ted, or maybe it was Billy, grabbed both my hands. I tried to get loose, to get away. I told him to leave me alone, but he just laughed. I got real scared. I struggled, but all I was doing was wearing myself out. They grabbed me by my belt, and I was on the floor. They pulled my shorts down to my ankles. I was petrified. Then they took turns sitting on a chair, and I was draped over their laps with my bum in the air.

  “They got a ruler out of the desk and each one gave me twelve hard slaps with it. My underpants didn’t soften the slaps at all. It hurt, it really stung, and I cried. After the first or second slap, I begged them to stop. I knew threatening them with telling on them would be to no avail, but I did it anyway. They just laughed at me, a kind of cruel laugh, like when Ted had crushed a frog in his hands, and laughed about it. After the first one finished, the one holding my hands had his turn. Charles took over for him, so he must have been first.

  “Since I was still struggling, Charles decided to make his turn easier, so before the other boy let go, Charles pulled my shirt over my head and wrapped it around my arms, around my elbows and forearms. After the last one finished, they joked about how hot my bum was. ‘Feel it,’ they said, ‘you’ll burn your hand!’ I tried to get off his lap, but he held me there. Suddenly, the last boy gave me a very hard slap with his hand. It was such a surprise that I peed on myself and screamed.

  “At that point I just thought this was a cruel way to do birthday spankings. I didn’t know. I was only twelve. But then they put me back on the floor, on my back, with Charles still keeping the shirt wrapped around my arms. One of them knelt down over my legs, and sat back on his heels. I couldn’t move. I was pinned to the floor. One said, ‘So you think it was funny to pee on me? We’ll teach you what funny is!’

  “Then they started to tickle me. I was very ticklish. I thought I would throw up. I laughed so hard. I couldn’t help myself, of course. I wiggled and squirmed and thrashed about on the floor. Then I couldn’t get any air. So they’d ease up till I caught my breath and start again. I almost passed out several times. Sometime during the tickling, my bra came loose, so they started pinching me. They would say things like, ‘Laugh if you want me to pinch you.’ Then they would tickle me and I would laugh. I couldn’t help it, so they would pinch me. Hard.

  “This went on until my laughs turned to screams. Everything ached so badly: my bum, my breasts, my tummy. Then they said, ‘Okay. Now the birthday spankings are almost done. Just one last step.’ I tried to throw up but couldn’t. I retched but nothing came out. I was still trapped on the floor. They got the ruler out again. ‘The grand finale, a pink-belly!’ Thirty-six more hard slaps, this time to my tummy. Me screaming the whole time. Then they all three jumped up and ran out the door to Ted’s car and off they went, leaving me still on the floor.”

  Maggie paused in the story. Matt held her firmly but tenderly. As she told the story, Maggie grew more and more determined to tell it all, nothing held back, no matter how much the memory hurt. Her bum hurt again; her tummy hurt again; everything came back into sharp focus.

  Matt marveled at her lack of reluctance to omit anything, and knew she wasn’t done. “When you’re ready, tell me about the vow.”

  Maggie nodded, and a glance at the little still body beside them gave her renewed purpose. “I feel like I’m dying inside, but I have to tell it. I’ve never told anyone before, not even my parents. But you’re different. I’m feeling your tears for me.

  “I finally was able to get up, and I ran to my bedroom. I had run out of tears. I looked at myself in the mirror. My bum was striped every which way, and there were welts on there and my tummy. My breasts hurt like hell and I was bleeding. My parents got home about that time. I could hear them moving around downstairs. My breasts started to swell and they became numb. I touched them and couldn’t feel anything.”

  Maggie paused again and Matt waited. After a while, she went on. “I knew what I was going to do. I put on a shirt and went downstairs to my dad’s toolbox and got his utility knife. Nobody saw me. I came back up and took off my shirt again. My breasts were still numb. I touched
them but it was like touching a stone.” She paused. “I was twelve. Happy birthday to me.”

  “Then,” she choked up and had to breathe deeply for several moments. “Then, I looked in the mirror and said aloud to myself in the mirror… I wasn’t thinking clearly, you see.”

  Another pause, another choked up spell, another glance at Jenny. “Then I said, ‘No one will ever enjoy these breasts again, FOREVER!’

  “And I took the knife and cut myself across my chest, from one side all the way to the other.”

  She shuddered convulsively at the memory. “I thought because my breasts were numb that I wouldn’t feel any pain. And that was true, but just for an instant. Then the pain came like a tidal wave. I screamed, dropped the knife, and fainted. Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital with wires and tubes and stitches and a crowd of people wearing masks and gloves.

  “I was so emotionally spent that I was like a zombie. The doctors were able to fix my skin, but I have no feeling there to this day. My breast development died, and what was already there dried up. At least a half-dozen people asked me what happened, and I gave them all the same story. I said I couldn’t remember a thing. That the last thing I remember was eating breakfast that morning. But it was a lie.

  “The doctor who sewed me up told me he was able to reattach everything. I didn’t want to kill myself. I had adjusted the knife blade so not much was sticking out. I don’t understand why there’s nothing there.”

  “It wasn’t the knife, Maggie, it was the words of your vow that dried everything up. It was a curse you put yourself under.”

  Exhausted, Maggie leaned back and promptly fell into a deep sleep. Matt began to sing softly, starting where he always started, with his favorite worship song. “Holy, holy, holy,” he began. Although it was his favorite, he knew only the first verse. “Are you Lord God Almighty!” He felt the vibrations from his chest coming through her body into his arms. “The whole earth is full of your glory!”

  Then, as before, he launched into a language known only to God. The melody and tempo morphed and became a long, drawn-out, almost dirge-like funeral hymn. Something was dying. The words were heavy, guttural, hard to pronounce. Words he could feel in his arms. Words that were going through her, penetrating, cleansing, purifying, liberating. They woke her up. A breeze played with them, warm and cool at the same time, refreshing. Only a few minutes had passed.

  “Okay, I think I’m ready now. What do I need to do?” She reached for the water bottle Matt had used for Jenny, and swung around to face him again.

  “No. Not yet. We have a big chore ahead of us. Do you remember what God said?”

  They both looked at Jenny, whose whitish skin was beginning to look mottled. Only her lips looked intact. “She is ready,” Matt said, “and will stay ready. But you are not. Definitely not.”

  She attempted some playfulness. “Well, make up your mind!” Then she perceived the gravity of the situation. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. What is it?”

  “Do you know the Bible story about Jesus raising the little girl from the dead?”

  “No. I don’t know much about the Bible at all. I don’t know much about Jesus at all. I do know, though, that he has come to me and has received me. All I really know about Jesus is what you have told me over the last few hours. That, and, as you know, how he personally revealed himself to me.”

  “One day, Jesus was asked to heal a man’s daughter who was very sick, near death. He went, but when he got there, she had already died. He raised her from death, just like he will do with Jenny, and what do you think was the first thing he said to the parents after that?”

  “I don’t know. What is her name? Don’t let her get sick again?”

  He shouldn’t have played this guessing game. “No. Jesus said, ‘Get her something to eat!’ The poor girl would be hungry. So it will be with Jenny. But you have nothing to feed her. The vow you made is making it completely impossible to provide her any nourishment.”

  He could see the anguish rising up, so he softened his tone. Or at least tried to. “Don’t you know that generally both the mom and baby both find the nursing to be quite pleasurable? But you have, by your words, negated that, and not only that, eliminated the possibility of keeping her alive.”

  Matt’s words were harsh, and Maggie knew that every word was true. Although the delivery was full of compassion and love, she was nearly inconsolable. Glancing around as if looking for a way out, Maggie grabbed his left hand in both of hers, and looked up into his face. “What are we going to do?” her eyes seemed to be asking, desperate to the point of despair. His countenance softened, and it appeared to Maggie that he knew a secret he was about to share with her.

  “You have to break your vow, cancel it, make it null and void. Without doing this, God will be bound to honor your words that you spoke many years ago.”

  “I thought God could do anything. You told me that, and you were talking about Jenny.”

  “Yes. He can do anything, but there are things he won’t do. God gave us the freedom to choose, to make moral choices. In other words, he gave us free will. But there are always consequences to our choices. If there weren’t, then it wouldn’t matter what we chose. God bound himself to never do anything to make us do something or not do it. He can lead us, he can show us the consequences, he can arrange circumstances, he can get us information to help us, but in the end, the choice is ours. We can choose the good or the evil. Why do you think he did that?”

  “Why do I think he gave us free will?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know, Matt. Sometimes I wish other people were prevented from choosing evil, though.”

  “God is looking for a specific choice you make in your life, and he will not make it for you.”

  “Does that choice have to do with him?”

  “Yes, exactly! He has given you complete freedom to choose him. Or to not choose him. He has an infinite desire for you to choose him, but he will not make you, because then that choosing of him would be meaningless.”

  “I think I get it. I can accept him or reject him. I’m glad I chose to accept him.”

  “Let’s go back to your vow, Maggie. You have been suffering the consequences of that for over sixteen years. God is allowing the consequences because it was your choice. The bad news is that it is impossible to break the vow in our own strength. The good news is that God has provided a way out. It is not easy, and it is very costly. But in your case, the reward is very great. It is Jenny and more. I saw you on the plane, how you love and cherish her. I made a vow once and I learned there are steps to take to break the vow.”

  “You made a vow too?”

  “Maggie, I’m not an angel. I’m not God. I’m just like you in my humanity. Maybe that’s why God picked me to help you. … Yes, when I was nine or ten, I realized one of my parents’ ways of punishing me was to take away things I had fun with. So my vow was, ‘I will never have fun again!’ And I didn’t, not for a long, long time. Oh, I pretended sometimes, but it just wasn’t there.

  “After a while, I forgot about the vow, but could never understand why life was so boring, why nothing was ever satisfying, why nothing was ever fun. After I received Jesus as my Lord and gave my life to him, he came in and started making changes in me by his Holy Spirit. He reminded me of the vow I had made, and yes, I sure wanted to cancel it. There was obviously not as much riding on mine as yours, but still I was pretty intensely eager to break that thing.”

  Maggie interrupted. “Oh, I remember another vow, and maybe it’s part of the same one. Or maybe it’s not even a vow. I blamed those three boys, my brother and his friends. I blamed them for disfiguring me. I hated them! I hated them with a furious hatred. Every time I saw my scars in the mirror, I would plot my revenge. When the other girls were getting nice figures, I would cry myself to sleep sometimes, thinking about how I would get even. I always thought I’d get back at them through their children.”

  “What happened
to them? How did they turn out? Do they have children?”

  “Charles started out in the tin mines, like my father. Then he went to school to become an administrator, and went back to the mines to work in management. Ted became a sports announcer, and Billy is a schoolteacher like me. I’ve never seen Ted or Billy again. I ask Charles sometimes, so I’ll know when they have their children.

  “To this day, Charles doesn’t know I remember the whole thing, or even parts of it. I don’t think Billy is married. Charles and Ted have children, and they are all older than Jenny. After she was born, I realized, how could I ever do that to their mothers? I love Jenny so much, and I’m sure the boys’ wives do too. It makes me sick, thinking about what I was planning to do to their kids.”

  Matt thought a moment. “Yes, it’s all part of the same vow. At least, dealing with it will be a package deal. Let me tell you how I was able to break my vow, with the Lord’s help. Without the Lord’s help, it will be impossible, as I mentioned.

  “The first step you’ve already done, and so had I. That is, I had to become a new creature, a new being. The old being, my old self, your old self, had no desire to break the vow, only to wallow in it. But the old self was dead.

  “The second step is a toughie. It involves forgiveness. You must forgive Charles. You must forgive Ted. You must forgive Billy. That’s why I said it was a package deal. Finally, you must forgive yourself. Did you ever blame your parents for not being there for you, for not protecting you?”

  “No. I blamed them for a lot, but not for that. I realized they were incapable of wanting to help me, anyway. I don’t know if I could ever feel any forgiveness for the boys. They were so mean, and I was so unable to protect myself. They deliberately wanted to hurt me, to humiliate me.”