Jesus Land

by Julia Scheeres

  Bruce moves to the deck to continue his love story, looking up now and again to roar “faster!” but I can barely walk up the hill, much less run it. I pump my arms to make myself look faster, and it seems to work because he stops yelling.

  At supper, I stare into my Velveeta casserole and wonder where I’d be right now if I’d run away with Scott. Staying with his cousin in Kentucky? Living out of his car in Happy Hollow Park? In his backyard tent? We couldn’t hide forever.

  After supper, Becky is teaching me to fold clothes when a whistle blows downstairs.

  “Time for the meeting,” she says brightly.

  I look at her warily.

  “This isn’t a ‘special function,’ is it?” I ask, thinking about the “special function” boxing match.

  “No, it’s Starr Family Unity,” she says. “It’s a good opportunity for you to get to know the other girls.”

  She gives me permission to walk downstairs, enter the living room and sit on a metal chair. Everyone’s already there, arranged in a circle. Bruce sits across from me with his butt pillow. Beside him, RuthAnn embroiders a dish towel.

  After I sit down, Bruce lifts his chin and peers around the circle.

  “I’d like some water,” he announces.

  Hands shoot into the air. “I’ll get it, Bruce!” “Oh, pick me!” “Please, Bruce, let me!” high voices plead.

  I look around in disgust; even Susan’s hand is raised, although she waves it with a little less vigor than the others. Bruce considers each girl in turn, tapping an index finger against his mouth.

  “Umm . . . Tiffany!”

  The other girls fall back against their chairs in disappointment as Tiffany sprints to the kitchen. She returns carrying a tray with a single glass of water, smiling triumphantly. Bruce takes it from her without a word.

  “Carrie, you start,” he says. “Tell Julia your story.”

  Carrie inhales sharply and frowns down at her nails, but when she speaks, her words are loud and slow and clear:

  “I smoked pot pretty much every day. I couldn’t stop. Got so bad I was getting high before church and flunking school.”

  A drug addict?! I look around the circle in astonishment, but no other face mirrors my alarm. I’ve never met a druggie before.

  Janet’s next: “I snorted cocaine and hit my mother when she tried to take away my stash.”

  Again, no one’s face registers alarm. One by one, the girls gaze into their laps and tell their stories. From their steady voices and polished lines, it’s clear they are called upon to do this often.

  Tiffany: “I stole money from my parents to buy clothes. And sometimes I shoplifted.”

  Rhonda: “I ran away from home and sold my body for money.”

  A prostitute?! She’s not even sixteen.

  When Susan’s turn comes, she glances at me, and her eyes now contain both shame and sorrow. She pulls at the hem of her T-shirt and mumbles something.

  “What?” Bruce says loudly, cupping a hand behind his ear. “We can’t hear you!”

  Susan pinches her lips together before speaking.

  “I was a member of the Church of Satan,” she says mechanically. “I renounced Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and bowed down to Beelzebub.”

  I gasp. A devil worshipper?! I’d heard rumors of such activity back in Indiana, of animal sacrifice and orgies and possession by demon spirits. But Susan seems so normal, so nice! How could she possibly choose Satan over Jesus Christ?

  I lean away from her and look around the circle; blank faces gaze back at me. I sweep my eyes back and forth across the orange and green tiled floor. What am I doing here, among these criminals? Something large screeches in the darkness beyond the patio door. I am surrounded by danger. Tonight I’m to sleep in a roomful of druggies and whores and Satanists! At least in jail, everyone had their own cage.

  Bruce clears his throat, and I look up. All eyes are on me.

  “So, what’s your story, Juliar?” asks Becky, sitting beside me. She smiles warmly. “What brought you to Escuelar Caribe?”

  I study the floor, the traces of “Love’s First Blush” still stuck beneath my cuticles, the red high-tops Mother bought me at Kmart a few days ago, when I was still free. Bruce taps his foot impatiently.

  “I . . .” I fall silent, wondering which “behavioral problems” my parents listed on the school application.

  “I left home.”

  “Correction!” Bruce says loudly. “You ran away.”

  I stare at the tiny green seeds clinging to my shoelaces. Dominican seeds. I hate that term, “run away.” Dogs run away, people don’t. I walked away, slowly, deliberately, with a suitcase in each hand.

  “Say it!” Bruce orders.

  “I ran away.”

  “What else?” he prods.

  I shrug; those seeds are going to be a real pain in the ass to pick off.

  “You drank alcohol,” Bruce volunteers.

  “I drank alcohol,” I repeat, still staring at my shoes.

  “You were an alcoholic.”

  I jolt up my head. A drink now and then before school is not alcoholism.

  “I was not!”

  Bruce goes rigid on his butt pillow.

  “Will you defy my authority?!” His voice booms off the flamingo pink walls. RuthAnn pulls a purple thread through her embroidery hoop, and in the abrupt silence you can hear the sssss of the silk slicing cotton.

  Becky turns to face me.

  “Juliar, admitting our faults is the first step toward recovery,” she says. “And confessing our sins is the first step toward forgiveness.”

  “But I didn’t . . .” I start to protest, but stop short when I notice Bruce leaning forward with his hands planted on either side of his butt pillow, as if he were preparing to spring from the chair. Don’t make a fuss, David said. Keep your head down. I ball my hands into fists.

  “I was an alcoholic.”

  “What else?” Bruce demands, still on the edge of his seat.

  I remember the word “condom” in the letter from my mother that Debbie had at the picnic table.

  “I made love with my boyfriend.”

  “You fornicated. You had unholy sex.”

  I clench my fists tighter.

  “I fornicated . . . I had unholy sex.”

  “You were an alcoholic and a fornicator.”

  “I was an alcoholic and a fornicator.”

  I see Becky pat my arms with her hand, but I don’t feel her touch. My pulse pounds in my temples. Boom boom boom.

  Bruce nods at me before saying “Let us pray.”

  I bow my head and stare at my fists.

  “Heavenly Father,” Bruce prays. “Thank you for bringing Julia to The Program. Please open her heart and her soul to receive Your rich blessings, and forgive her rebellion. Let her know how much You love her, and how much we do. In His name, Amen.”

  When he finishes, Bruce stands, his palms lifted heavenward.

  “Let us make a joyful noise unto the Lord!” he shouts.

  Becky gives me permission to stand, then reaches behind her chair to pick up a guitar leaning against the wall. She strums it with twiglike fingers as we sing all five stanzas of “Kum Ba Ya,” each girl hugging herself tight and wailing at the floor.

  ESCUELA CARIBE

  WEEKLY RECORD OF POINTS

  Life becomes a loop of school, chores, and punishment.

  All the things I took for granted just last week—listening to the radio, talking on the phone, or simply walking into a bathroom and closing the door behind me—seem like a wonderful dream. I never knew how good I had it, even when I was eating off room service trays at Howard Johnson’s.

  Bruce stops explaining my housework deficiencies, and simply goes about destroying my work.

  “Wrong,” he says, as he upends a drawer of clothes onto the floor.

  “Wrong,” as he rips the foam pad off its frame.

  “Wrong,” as he tears clothes from hangers.

>   Afterwards, he studies my face for signs of disrespect, but I’ve learned to hide them well; my brain curses him out even as my mouth apologizes for my inadequacy.

  When he tells me to get down and do push-ups, I dip low and count loud.

  When I finish hauling the rock pile to the driveway and he orders me to move it back downhill, I say, “Yes, sir, right away.”

  When he’s thirsty or he sneezes, I join the “me, me, me” chorus for the privilege of fetching him water or Kleenex.

  I have gotten with The Program.

  As I haul rocks, run casitas, and scrub toilets, I’ve got a big “fuck you” smile on my face. It scores me high points in the Courtesy and Respect Toward Authority Figures box. Academics are another area where I shine. School is easy when you have a compelling reason to pay attention.

  David and I develop a code language to check in on each other when no one’s watching:

  An upward jut of the chin means “How are you doing?”

  A shrug: “As good as can be expected.”

  A nod: “Okay . . . for the moment.”

  A head shake: “Bad.”

  Raised eyebrows: “You don’t look too hot” or, when something weird happens, “Can you believe this?!”

  A combination of crossed arms and a loud sigh: “I hear ya. Hang in there.”

  Once when I was having a particularly rotten day and arrived at school snot-faced and raw, he left me a yellow hibiscus on Starr’s picnic table. I watched him from where I stood in a doorway, waiting for permission to cross the courtyard to my next class. There were a lot of people milling about, and nobody noticed when he laid the flower at my place at the table. Hibiscus, a Florida flower.

  I wore it in my watchband until Debbie said it looked like I was wearing jewelry—a privilege I haven’t earned—and told me to take it out. By then, half the petals had fallen off, but I pressed it inside my Geography book anyway.

  At Starr, Tiffany narks and brown-noses her way to the top of the trash heap and becomes high-ranker. She ratted out Janet for sneaking a piece of bread between meals because she was hungry, Susan for using a kitchen rag to clean the dormitory, and Carrie for yelling “shit!” when she jammed her thumb during dodgeball—that’s what got Carrie demoted from the top spot.

  That’s how The Program works. Snitch on people, and you score big in the Being a Helpful and Positive Influence box. Susan is the only girl I trust; I avoid the others as much as possible. You never know who will betray you.

  After she busted Susan, Tiffany walked into the bathroom as I was scrubbing the toilets, and I glared at her in the mirror.

  “Live and let die,” she said, bending back the tip of her cheerleader nose to check for buggers. She now spends all her time primping—rubbing sugar into her face and lemon into her hair and filing her toenails—in preparation for her release.

  “I’ll be playing tennis at the Hartford Country Club next month while the rest of you rot down here,” she said, picking up a bar of soap and streaking it over my clean mirror.

  By the time I realized what she’d done and scrambled to my feet, she was already out the door, flashing a fake smile.

  On Saturday, Starr takes a field trip to a waterfall on the outskirts of Jarabacoa. We drive through the center of the village— past plywood shacks and trash fires and open sewers and malnourished children with swollen bellies and blond-streaked hair and women carrying baskets on their heads and men who yell “Americanas!” at us—and bump up a narrow dirt road until we reach a dead end. SALTO DE JIMENOA says a hand-painted sign at the edge of the jungle.

  We line up by rank outside the van and Bruce leads the way up a muddy path as the dense vegetation whirs with hidden birds and insects. Above us, the sapphire sky glitters through the high lattice canopy and the smell is green and living. The steamy air clings to us as we brush past giant ferns, and for a few moments I forget where I am and feel excited about being in a foreign country.

  I roll up my jeans to keep them from dragging in the orange mud and watch a blue parrot swoop up the trail ahead of us. When we reach a wide shallow stream, we ford it by hopping over moss-covered rocks, tic-tac-toe, racing to see who reaches the other side first.

  “Wait for me!” a man’s voice shouts when we’re halfway across. I turn to see Bruce teetering between two rocks at the lip of the water, his arms spread out to steady himself. Janet rushes back to guide him across, and Susan and I exchange a sneer because he’s such a Canadian pansy. All the girls secretly despise him; they giggle at his jokes and fall all over themselves to fetch his water, but roll their eyes as soon as he leaves the room.

  After Janet leads him safely across, Bruce strides to the front of the group.

  “Let’s go!” he commands with a forward wave of his arm, The Man once again. Susan and I exchange another look, and I lean over to hawk my disgust into the weeds.

  Becky turns to scowl at me as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “Pardon me, I swallowed some crud,” I tell her as Susan smirks.

  As the roar of the waterfall gets louder, Susan and I lag behind the others. RuthAnn stayed at Starr and Becky is ahead of us talking abortion with Rhonda, and finally, we can talk privately.

  We swap information about the events that got us here. Susan tells me she’s not really a Devil Worshipper, but joined a clique called the Squires of Death after the preppies and the New Wavers turned her down. The Squires held meetings in the town graveyard, where they recited the Satanic Verses dressed in black choir robes that they found at a secondhand store. Afterward, they’d drive through town in their pickups, blaring Black Sabbath and chugging Apple Slice and Everclear and stopping to spray-paint 666 on churches.

  “Wasn’t like we was fixin’ to sacrifice babies or nothin’,” she says as the trail steepens. “Although we did catch this stray cat this one time, but we were too scared to kill it.”

  She inquires after my alcoholism, and I tell her about the Comfort in my closet.

  “Guess they found it after I left home,” I shrug. “That, and my stash of condoms.”

  She asks if I love Scott and I tell her no, but that he was fine to pass time with. She tells me she had her share of boyfriends back in Texas too, but none more special than the others.

  We climb a ramp of slippery rocks, then wind through car-sized boulders before the waterfall roars into view ahead of us, catapulting through a crack in the mountain and smashing into a pile of foam on the river below. A cool mist billows from the thundering ejaculation, which drowns out all other noise.

  The group stops to take pictures at an overlook, and Becky and several girls lean over the guide rope, craning their necks to watch the water disappear below. Bruce stands behind them, clinging to a tree branch and shouting something no one can hear, and we laugh openly at him.

  Neither of us is in a hurry to catch up to the others. As we watch them from a distance, she grabs my elbow. I turn to her.

  “I ain’t no virgin neither!” she yells. “But that’s one thing they never learnt. That’s one thing that’s all mine.”

  When she says this, her eyes are shining, and she is not sorrowful.

  When the word “nigger” crept into the vocabulary of exclusion—yelled by public school kids at the bus stop and roller rink—I had to look it up in the dictionary. It wasn’t in the Webster’s, so I asked Mother what it meant. She said it was a bad word for a black person, and that if we heard it, we should ignore it and turn the other cheek.

  But it was hard to ignore a word that was suddenly everywhere.

  “Nigger cooties!” they’d screech when we jumped into Kingston pool, fleeing before us as if we were Jaws.

  “Nigger alert!” they’d yell as we climbed onto the Witch’s Hat at Happy Hollow Park.

  We’d pretend not to hear them, but of course we did, loud and clear. I’d look over at David and see a cloud wash over his luminous brown eyes and his little boy smile.

  Those kids didn’t even know h
is name. They didn’t know that he was a champion ping-pong player, or that he knew the best places to hunt salamanders or that he could pop a wheelie for an entire block.

  When he got braces in sixth grade, a boy in a grocery store hollered at him: “Black people don’t wear braces, only whites!”

  The more they cut us off, the more we clung together.

  CHAPTER 12

  NEW GIRL

  A new girl arrives from eastern Kentucky. This means I’m no longer the lowest ranker in Starr. This means that I no longer scrub toilets. This means I have a better shot at a second helping of dessert. I welcome her arrival.

  Her name is Jolene and she’s fifteen. She’s got bleached, permed hair that cascades to her skinny butt in straw-colored coils and at night, she sits in her bunk and combs it out with a special rubber-tipped pick, one coil at a time. It is her pride and joy.

  Jolene’s taken hard to the loss of freedom and often plunges her face into her hands with a small moan, as if all this were a thing too ghastly to behold.

  When Bruce gives her push-ups, she chews on her bottom lip a few seconds before lowering herself to the ground, and all his tomato-faced shrieking won’t speed her along. Sometimes I catch her staring at me with confused eyes, as if she were waiting for an explanation. I look away; she’ll soon find out there’s none to be had.

  On a Sunday before Vespers we learn why Jolene is here. Bruce picks me to fetch his water, and then we sit in the metal circle to tell our stories.

  I now know my line by heart, as I am called upon to repeat it often.

  “I was a fornicator and an alcoholic,” I say whenever a staffer asks me what brought me to The Program. As I say my line, I gaze at my shoes, striving to appear humbled. I do this well, and get consistent high points for Being Totally Truthful and Honest, Facing Reality.

  When it’s Jolene’s turn to confess, she looks around the circle blankly.

  “Ah honestly don’t know why I’m here,” she says in a hillbilly drawl so backwoods it makes Indiana rednecks seem positively citified.

  Bruce narrows his eyes at her response, and the girls around me shift uneasily on their patio chairs.