by John Rechy
He looked at her. An aristocrat among new, clowning evangelists! Beyond the edge of encurvated artificial sky, Brother Man thought that with pride. No grotesquerie of halting voices for her—no stupid entertainment, no whining choruses. Those who flocked to Sister Woman came to hear of a real God, a real Satan; to hear powerful mysteries and secrets revealed; to sway in the song of His blessings, tremble in the fear of His wrath-all through her—and to hear of real angels battling every ferocious second for their souls.
In a prism of shadow etched by slabs of studio lights, the tall, slim form of Brother Man was clothed in the usual subdued, tailored suit. Although he would not go on camera tonight, he had been made up as usual, in his own dressing room; that was part of each night's treasured ritual. Then he would go to Sister Woman, cherishing the soft moments when, standing beside her, he shared her mirror, her reflection, and was blessed by her halo of silver lights.
“Fire rages in the city at this very moment, devouring canyons. Ignited winds scour the earth.” Sister Woman clasped her fingers before her eyes, to emphasize the horror of her privileged vision of damnation. “But that is as nothing compared with the rage of souls in the fires of doubt, courting the fires of damnation.” When she delivered her sermons, her exalted sermons—not the lessons she gave most often, almost simply addressed, sitting facing Brother Man, who asked questions for her certain answers—no, when she truly preached, she tantalized with what seemed random themes at first, insinuating evocative words, at times breathing asides to a particular soul in dire need.
In the monitoring room, multiple screens fractured her image—one capturing her intact, a distant white-robed figure against the electric sky, another the abandoned hands, a third the colorless then suddenly black eyes. The director pointed an assertive finger at the framed shot of her widening eyes, a camera moved in on her face. A small, nervous man, a middle-aged cherub in checkered pants and white sweater, he orchestrated and choreographed lights and cameras—sky and clouds—with his own elaborate language of hands.
“For just as when the seventh seal on the Holy Scroll was broken by the Lamb,” Sister Woman began to insinuate her fateful theme for tonight, “when the sun became black, the moon bled, the earth trembled, stars fell like torches—and the earth was blinded!—so we, too, will come to know that the day of wrath is come.”
A sob erupted. A woman in the studio congregation reached for an invisible presence, and staggered into the aisle: “I am born!”
“She's slain in the spirit!” a man in awe uttered Sister Woman's phrase, which described a state of grace wrenched out of spiritual struggle.
A sharp stab of the director's fingers at the screen on the monitor! The ready camera circling like a vulture pounced on the ghostly reconciliation. Within the stare of the camera's trap—the director had locked his fingers—an usher in a tuxedo mantled the crying woman, draping a white cape over her. The director's fingers sliced back toward an image of Sister Woman.
Although her sermon had just begun, off-camera, in a long glassed booth, two dozen or more operators for the Mission of Souls held telephones to their ears, accepting offerings, love gifts, pledges to witness. The last few days’ sermons, tinted with hints by Sister Woman of “something awesome” to be revealed tonight or at the Gathering of Souls—perhaps both days, in stages—had generated a nervous excitement, carried within the urgent ringing of telephones.
Her racked hands assumed the attitude of quiet prayer. She proffered hope: “And on the eve of the Gathering of Souls, let us remind of the eternal offer of salvation, yours to take, like sweet, ripe fruit from the sheltering tree of God.” The blessing of a smile appeared on her reddened lips. Often—like now—she would stop for extended moments, lean back on her throne, eyes closed, as if private voices speaking to her might soon speak through her—or as if to receive divine inspiration. Then words might pour out. Now they devoured each other: “Fire! can! scorch!” Again the words slowed, were extended: “But … the same … fire … can … also … purify.” The last word stretched, was held. Her whole body unclenched—arms, hands, fingers extended to their limits. “Divine fire can purify even in hell!”
There it was, her essential bold promise, what they came to hear. While others offered salvation, she threatened damnation—and then dared to extend the greatest reprieve—salvation within the very smoking flaming depths of hell. Conquering all the raging controversy it aroused, her message assuaged the guilt of the sinful living for the sinful dead.
“I am wallowing in the spirit!” a black woman quivered. She was draped in the white mantle. The moans of the audience rose, their hands toward Sister Woman in her painted heaven. “I am in the spirit!” A man was slain in the same powerful thrust. One of the ushers mantled him, too. The director made a decisive motion—rigid hand slicing his neck: No more manifestations of holy slayings on camera! Only exulting voice-overs would be captured by the roaming microphones now.
“Thus saith the Lord: Assemble yourselves, and come, gather like an army on the mountain.” Sister Woman clenched one fist, raised. “Come, that ye may taste … salvation!” She cupped her hands into a chalice and drank airy benediction. “He is ready for combat!” her voice trumpeted.
“Reveal to us!”
“Let us see Him!”
Watching her reflected on flanking screens, Brother Man realized in constantly renewed wonder that through the miracle of television that same image was this very moment hurtling miles and miles to those who would wait into deep night—and journeying even farther in syndicated segments. Her spirit over electric airwaves was as ubiquitous as the spirit over troubled waters. She was where she belonged—on the throne she had earned from the moment years ago when she descended into hell to war against Satan—and screamed words he would remember forever, words she sometimes used to illuminate her sermons, words he often repeated—but only silently, to himself—to borrow strength out of the turbulent time of her fierce battle: “Blood! White! Red! Black! And the pale rider!” … “Open the door of fire!” … “I am here!” … “Power over thee!’ … “I am slain in the spirit, the Lamb protects me!” … “It is done! I am here!” And out of that battle she had emerged triumphant, God's power flowing through her hands; and her growing congregation called the girl Sister Blessed until she became Sister Woman!
And that man from Massachusetts dared to demand proof.
“Yea, the water is troubled, evil dwells among us,” Sister Woman bemoaned, her head bowed. “Sin reigns—fornication, avarice, greed, lust, adultery, pillage, abomination, pride, blasphemy, lust, envy, covetousness, idolatry, gluttony, sloth, incest!” At each sin, her hands clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched on the curved arms of the golden chair. “I am against thee, Satan! Power over thee!” With a slash of her hand, Sister Woman denounced the invisible demon.
Earlier today, they had walked along the hedged, shaded lanes of their guarded, vast estate, where they were born; they watched the glow of fire gathering miles away above them in these days of auguring wind. Sister Woman told Brother Man that tonight she would go on alone. Brother Man never questioned her wisdom. The Lord did not speak to him, although at times he was bold to think that he heard His sigh.
“Prepare to gather on the hill tomorrow,” she told the cameras and the congregation in the studio, already swaying to her holy rhythms. “Come to the Gathering of Souls!” Her tones were soft. “And they will gather. For in a vision I have seen something awesome soon to come. Tonight? Tomorrow?” She shut her eyes as if to pull out of darkness more of that vision. Her words became a whisper, an intimate reminder. “And after these things have come to pass, I will see four lost angels at peace—and a woman, a woman at rest, at last—and many more souls!—for God shall wipe tears from their eyes and the former things will pass away.”
Two weeks ago a letter arrived in the handwriting that had become familiar, signed by the name just as familiar: Orin. This letter announced the death of the woman in Massach
usetts. It was only one in a series of letters that had commenced after a scandal-tabloid printed an article about Sister Woman's-their—mother and father; a lurid delving into deep wounds. The first letter from the woman in Massachusetts enclosed a sizable donation and began with the words “You know!” Then the letters—always containing a generous gift of love—were written for her by the youngman named Orin… . Soon after the announcement of the woman's death, there followed another letter; the youngman would trek to the city to bring the dead woman's true gift. If! Sister Woman told Brother Man Satan was preparing to wage battle. Through the sorrows of this man and the dead woman he was challenging her—again. She knew the signs. She would fight!
“The Book of Revelation, of what has come to pass and what is to come—the Book of Apocalypse—the last book of the Bible—the Book of John the Divine—to it, to him, to Jesus, who spoke through him—and left pages for us to write on, through his inspiration—to it, to him, let us turn tonight for proof … of promises.”
Proof! Through the preceding days, Brother Man suffered with Sister Woman as she waited for revelation in the vined grotto of their sprawling mansion in the hills. The man Orin wanted proof that the departed soul was saved—she had insisted on it. Oh, Sister Woman had proof, of course; she conveyed it nightly to those who came to her in sorrowful need—and she had conveyed it to the blind woman, assuaging her in letters—“Yes, I know Satan,” Sister Woman wrote her—during her last turbulent days; but this man Orin demanded something definite, unstated—which only he and the woman knew—in exchange for a “great manifestation” of the dead woman's devotion. Sister Woman had more than mystic powers, and she ascertained the veracity of the letters; yes, the Lord guided her to the truth of the woman, her life, her growing illness, the youngman—and the truth of the black sins and of the accumulated fortune, which would allow her to extend salvation to even more souls. For that reason—and because of the woman's urgent need of salvation, and the man's!—their souls in mortal danger—Sister Woman accepted the challenge. Then the telephone calls came; the man was in the city with others, for proof! When Brother Man expressed fear, Sister Woman shook her head—there was no danger. She waited for instructions from heaven. But the vortex of wind muted the voice of divine direction, the hot earth and its whirling elements conspired against it. They knew the name of the powerful conspirator, a presence from their childhood.
Even as children, they had heard his sounds of blasphemy, of madness demanding doom. In the cavernous house those growls of Satan issued from their father and mother—while the somber woman who came to take care of them, the only grandmother they had, read to them from one book, the Book, the Holy Book.
Someone had entered the studio!—a man; another? Past guards! Brother Man knew the ruses Sister Woman's followers managed—to enter once doors were locked. Tonight the invisible powerful presence of that youngman shaded the service. The two figures sat down.
“Proof?” In one movement Sister Woman's hand glided from her heart to a Bible beside her, revealed now in a blazing sword of light. The gold letters on black radiated as if kissed by heaven.
Later, fleeing into hidden rooms, into coves in the wilting gardens, the two children drowned the shrieks of madness by screaming out the words of God the woman taught them. They shouted them against the insanity sweeping the house now like razing fire. The girl's shoulders trembled then—and, once, the boy held her, to still the fear; he touched the tear-moistened face. “No!” she screamed and flung his arm away. She faced the house beyond the maze of gardens. “No!”
“But hear the words of God!” Sister Woman brought the Bible to her lap, her hands absorbing its power.
Then in the echoing house the howls of pain or laughter were throttled. There were two full days of silence. The solemn woman praised God and instructed the girl to go into the quieted room.
With her eyes closed, Sister Woman recited the invocation from the Book of Revelation, the most mysterious book of the Bible: “‘Grace be unto you, and peace … from Jesus Christ—who is the first begotten of the dead.’” She began to gather her proof.
The girl found her father and mother dead in the bed rancid with liquored vomit and among scattered deadly pills and broken hypodermic needles. When she saw the naked bodies, limbs entangled, she fainted—or so the boy thought.
“‘These things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive,’” Sister Woman continued to pick phrases from the strange book. She sat so straight, the folds of satin were like solid liquid.
For seven days and nights the girl thrashed in raging fever. Throughout, a doctor—or several—and aunts, uncles, close and distant strangers—and the somber woman—hovered about the dying child. The boy and the woman kept an unbroken vigil beside her. Desolately he whispered into her ears memorized words from their favorite book of threatened angels.
“‘For he who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.’ Oh, hear it: ‘The first begotten of the dead! Which was dead and is alive! The second death! Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection! And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death’—and hell!—'delivered up the dead!’ Hell … delivered up … its dead!”
On the first day of the girl's fever, she writhed in bed, screaming, “No!” over and over, her colorless eyes opening only to seal, as if to thwart unspeakable horrors flashing before her. On the second day her cries were pierced by clear words: “Blood! White! Red! Black! And the pale rider!” On the third day she was so peaceful, so silent, that the boy thought she was dead. Then she opened her eyes and demanded, “Open the door of fire!”
Behind the throne, twilight darkened her sky as clouds of gray light grappled in the simulated heaven. “Blood! White! Red! Black! And the pale rider!’ Now with those words from the time of her fever, Sister Woman introduced into her sermon the four horsemen of the apocalypse, beginning the orchestrated narration that would bring her to the brutal crescendo of her startling promises: “And in heaven the Holy Scroll containing the mystery of life was sealed with seven seals, which only the Lamb was worthy to break. And on the breaking of the first four seals, the four horses of the apocalypse raged through the devastation of pillaged plains! Four riders! One on a white horse sent out to conquer in war, one on a red horse to bring strife and rob the earth of peace and cause men to kill, one on a black horse wreaking havoc and famine! And the pale rider on the gray horse—the pale horse of Death—was followed by Hell!” Now she roamed over the visions of that most hallucinated book of the Bible, rearranging its sequence into a pageant of her own, rechoreographing the violent events. Those who listened to her did not care, they came to hear her private truths, her revelations—and so the same book's warnings against adding to the words of prophecy did not extend to her inspired interpretations, buried holy truths which she unearthed—and it was that she gave them and wove a complex web of mysteries and secrets—to be felt, not understood—until she wanted to be understood, and was—lashing her meaning in scorched words.
On the fourth day of her fever, her eyes wide open but blind to those about her, even to the boy, the girl shouted, “I am here!”
The director made circles in the air. A cameraman seated on a movable contraption of steel stalked the throne.
In breaths that erupted into shouted ire—symphony of blessings, cacophony of curses—words and phrases that could flow like a river purling comfort in rivulets of surcease or flood wrath in waves of devastation; and with the turbulent dance of her hands, swirling in arcs, gliding like air, crashing like lightning, she evoked now from her throne fire, earthquakes, stalking death, plagues, wars, pestilence, the wrath of God in seven vials, blood, burnt earth, poisoned seas, blinded sun, darkened air, the voice of many waters, seven stars, and— … She wove these words slowly, clearly, words she wanted understood: “… —the punishment of the woman in purple and scarlet, dressed in gold and precious stones of sin—drunk, the mother of harlotries and blasphemies.” I
n hypnotizing rhythms—and the congregation swayed, hummed—she described the Court of Heaven as if she were among the witnesses in white garments about the throne of God, and her hands formed the orbits of planets, earth, sun, stars, and then she destroyed her constellations. “And two more seals were broken releasing the sobbing martyrs and stirring the earth!” Now her voice became subdued, the colorless eyes deepened toward black in shadowed light. Even her satin robe was hushed as she approached the mystery of the seventh seal, as she prepared the cruel images to be clearly understood. Her face was like painted ice.
On the fifth day of her illness her brother saw her thrashing. She sat up and screamed, “Power over thee!” On the sixth day she gasped, “I am slain in the spirit, the Lamb protects me!”
In the studio, guards converged on …! No, just ushers silencing a woman attempting to speak in tongues. Brother Man looked at his sister, so serene on her throne. She was not afraid, and so to be apprehensive was to distrust her, and to him that was blasphemy. Wherever he was, that youngman Orin would soon praise her!
On the seventh day she woke him as he lay on the cot they allowed him in her room. “It is done,” she sighed and fell asleep. A few hours later, she woke again. Her face was cool. The fever was gone. “It is done” the girl said. “I am here.”
