“Fifty jumping jacks!” Bruce yells, when we finish the push-ups.
Janet’s boobs flop obscenely under her nightgown and Tiffany’s is so short you can see her teddy bear underwear.
As we pant, Bruce rages.
“I am sick and tired of the negativity in this household! I should send the lot of you back to Level 0, eh? All I get from you girls is ingratitude! But things are going to change around here, eh? I want to see PRO-gress and I want to see it now!”
Who does this Canuck think he is, anyway? He’s not even an American, and here he is, he’s in charge of us American girls!
His hands are balled at his sides, and his face looks ready to explode.
“You have lost enthusiasm for The Program!” he shrieks. “You have no respect for authority! You are not right with God!
“Thirty-five leg lifts!”
It’s true that some girls have gotten more depressed since Jolene’s botched escape. Her ravished head is a constant reminder of how hopeless our situation is, and there’s been a lot more snuffling under pillows at night, a lot more sour faces at the dinner table. But then again, we’re in reform school. How can we not be depressed?
“I can’t do it no more!” Jolene wails after three minutes of running in place. She falls to the floor and curls onto her side, rocking herself like a baby. The rest of us continue to jog, our bare feet slapping the tiles.
Becky crouches over Jolene and rubs her back.
“Jolene, do you want to go back into The Hole?!” Bruce shouts.
Becky looks up at him with hard eyes.
“I think Jolene should rest,” she says. They regard each other for a long moment before Becky turns back to Jolene, who’s still rocking and moaning.
“It’s not fair!” Susan gasps as she jogs. “How come she gets a break?”
She starts to cry.
“Mind your own business, eh?” Bruce shouts. “Twenty suicides!”
Soon we’re reduced to a blubbering mass of snot, sweat, and tears. Bruce makes us promise we’ll show him PRO-gress and that we’ll try harder, really think about what we’re doing.
Afterward, we kneel on the floor in a circle, sweat pasting our nighties to our bodies, and hold hands. Bruce leads us in prayer, asking God to forgive us our trespasses against Him, but what exactly those are, I’m not quite sure.
We wake the next morning transformed into godly women, adorned with meek and mild spirits from sleep deprivation. We brim with enthusiasm for The Program. We are happy to be here. We are grateful for this opportunity. We sing hymns during House Jobs, as we walk to school, during Work Time. We bring Bruce tea during Free Time, massage his doughy shoulders and clean his shoes without being asked. We are models of Christian femininity.
As we wash up that night, Susan informs me that a session can occur at any time, for any reason. Past reasons have included low points on House Inspection, general mopiness, and a perceived lack of respect for Bruce.
“You never know when one’s coming,” she whispers into the mirror at me. “That’s how they keep us on our toes.”
For the next week, if a girl so much as stops smiling, all we have to do is hiss the word “Session” at her and she gets right back with The Program. One person’s bad attitude can drag the entire house down, and no one wants to be responsible for a loss of dream time. Sleep is everyone’s favorite Time, for it is Divine Nothingness.
On Saturday, there’s an all-school outing to Salto de Jimenoa, but I’m not grateful for it. I’m angry. I failed my Room Job because my panties weren’t folded right, and when Bruce told me my score, I rolled my eyes, prompting him to give me a 1 in the Courtesy and Respect box, as well as a 2 in the House Job box. So I have two casitas to look forward to after the daylong hike.
I lag behind the other kids on the trail while Becky tries to distract me with small talk about the flora and fauna. I grunt responses to her observations, and after a while she moves on to someone else.
I want to focus on my misery. I want to roll around in it like a dog in a pile of shit. I want to claim it as my own. Right now, it’s all I have. I still can’t believe that a place like Escuela Caribe exists, and that I find myself enrolled in it. All I did was try to wring some happiness from life, a little fun and a little affection, and as a result I was banished to an island colony ruled by sadistic Jesus freaks. Mother says the greatest thing you can do in life is die for Jesus Christ, but all this suffering for Him had best score me some major brownie points, too.
My mood gets darker as the waterfall gets louder. Why does God always have to make everything so difficult? I know we are put on earth to test our faith, but why can’t He make our time here a little more enjoyable? Why does everything have to be such a cross?
We hike farther than the last time, and the boys rush forward, jostling each other to be the first to reach whatever lies ahead.
The trail ends and the guide rope ends, and we climb onto a crown of bald rock. A few of the boys throw themselves to the ground and belly crawl to the lip of the gorge, and soon everyone’s lying down and peering over the side, staff and students alike.
Everyone but David and me. He’s leaning against a solitary pine tree, eyeing me warily, aware of my foul mood. Everyone’s so preoccupied with the view that I could easily flash him a forbidden smile to let him know I’m okay, but I don’t because I’m not. I’m forced to playact with everyone else here, but I refuse to playact with my brother.
I turn away from his concern and walk toward the cliff, treading carefully on the mist-slick rock. I crouch on the curved edge and hug my knees. On either side of me, prostrate boys shout into the canyon, but the waterfall drowns their voices, reducing them to red faces and ranting mouths. They might as well be shouting profanities into the cold mist and thunder. They probably are.
I decide to try it myself.
“Fuck this place!” I scream. “Fuck you all! Fuck you, assholes!”
I scream so hard that my throat gets scratchy, but I still can’t hear myself over the catapulting water.
“Fuck!”
“Fuck!”
“Fuck!”
It feels good to be profane. I smirk and gaze down at the river, which lies at a dizzying distance below. I close my eyes against the wet wind churned up by the fall, and cold dew collects on my face. I can feel the hugeness of the void before me; it would be so easy to slip into it and disappear. One slip and it’d all be over: casitas, sessions, Escuela Caribe.
I’m moving.
I open my eyes, and I’m moving, slipping over the wet rock into the abyss. I arch my back away from it and flail my arms, every atom in me roaring stop! Not yet!
Two brown hands slap down on my shoulders, forcing me to sit down. I turn and scramble up the rock on my hands and knees to level ground, and when I stand, there’s David, sauntering back to the pine tree. No one has seen what happened; they’re all still peering over the ledge.
David goes back to leaning against the tree, and we face each other with astonishment. My brother was watching over me. Gratitude floods my eyes and I sit at his feet, craving his presence like solid ground. We stay like this for a long time, watching wispy clouds move across the sky over the canyon. My skin is covered in goose bumps, but I’m sweating, and as I sit there, shivering and sweating, I feel a connection to my brother that is physical, as if his hands were still on my shoulders, protecting me.
When Ted blows his whistle to round people up to hike back down the mountain, I reluctantly move away from him, lest anyone think we were communicating.
Two days later, I walk up to David after the morning prayer meeting.
“What’s up, bro?” I ask him, punching his arm.
It’s the first time I’ve spoken to him in a month, and he looks at me as if I were brainsick and creeps backwards, glancing about the courtyard.
I grab his wrist and pull him back toward me.
“It’s okay, I made Second. We can talk!”
I show him
the medal Bruce gave me for my promotion. “Integrity,” it says.
His face softens and he clutches me against him, and I pat his back awkwardly. It’s the first time we’ve ever hugged each other. After a few seconds, I tighten my grip on him, and the sensation is both comforting and queer. He feels so fragile. My eyes start stinging, and I pull away and punch him again, and he puts his hand on his arm and pretends it hurts, and everything’s back to normal.
There’s a shush in the courtyard and I look up to see people staring at us.
“So, what’s new with you?” I ask loudly.
“Not much.” He shrugs, glancing around. “You?”
I shrug back.
“Same old, same old.”
We sit at a picnic table grinning at each other. We’ve got only a few minutes before class, and there’s too much to say.
Our classmates sit at the other tables and watch us.
We’ve both been warned: Mind what you say and do when you’re together. No negativity. No cursing. No check topics. If you disobey, we will find out, and we will separate you again.
They fear us because they know we are above The Program’s petty narking strategy. We will speak with honesty and won’t betray each other for it. We are family. We are indivisible.
After a few days it becomes apparent that we can’t talk freely; our classmates see us as a potential gold mine. There’s always some kid lurking on the fringes of our conversation, waiting to hear something check so they can tattle on us for points. And keep us apart.
We have to prove that we’re not a negative influence on each other by allowing anyone and everyone to listen to us, so we develop a new code to deal with spies.
“Look at that bug!” we’ll say when a suspicious character sidles into view, pretending to read with their heads pointed our way. We’ll crush the imaginary insect, pointing a shoe in the direction of the intruder, and switch our conversation from secular things to Jesus-approved things, such as the weather or homework or what we ate for breakfast.
Eventually, the intruder will get bored and leave, but the constant fear of getting busted is enough to prevent us from talking about anything meaningful.
Our only hope is for me to make Third Level, so we can volunteer at the village orphanage together. During the thirty-minute walk there and back, we could talk privately.
The rejection was limited to insults and cold shoulders until the summer we were eight, when we were physically attacked.
It happened on a July afternoon when our fifteen-year-old sister Debra escorted us to Kingston Pool. While she slathered herself with coconut oil and slowly toasted under the white glare of the Indiana sky, David and I dunked each other in the pool and did the Nestea plunge. The other kids our age were playing Marco Polo at the other end of the pool, and we longed to join in, but didn’t dare ask—they were the same ones who yelled the “N” word at us.
Deb gave us money for slushees and flaky jakes, which we munched sitting side by side on our towels, watching the game. When our bellies were full of sugar, we napped with the sun drying our backs, the shouts and splashes fading to a comforting hum, the summer scents of chlorine and wet concrete thickening the air.
We woke to the lifeguard’s whistle burst—the pool was closing— and dragged ourselves to the dank locker rooms to rinse off, reluctant to go home after so much brightness. As usual, we were the last kids to leave.
The Johnsons were waiting for us on the other side of the fence. There were four of them, three boys and a girl, older than us, younger than Deb. They waited until we crossed the clover patch between the pool and playground before jumping us.
“Stay out of our pool, Niggers!” they yelled. “You’re polluting it!”
As Debra got into a shouting match with the oldest boy, the three youngest kids bore down on David and me. My ponytail was yanked, ripping hair from my scalp. We scrambled up the monkey bars and perched on top with our backs together, screaming and bawling and kicking at the white hands that tried to grab our ankles and pull us down. Our flipflops fell into the sand and we continued kicking, bruising our feet on the metal bars.
It ended when a minivan pulled into the parking lot.
“Mom’s here!” one of them yelled, and suddenly they had retreated and it was quiet and the sun blazed red and purple on the horizon.
We ran all the way home through the darkening woods, but still got in trouble for being late for supper. Mother had no patience for childish brawls.
Turn the other cheek, she scolded.
CHAPTER 13
PRO-GRESS
“Now inhale and hold it!”
The fumes sear down my windpipe into my lungs, and I count to five before blowing them out of my pursed lips in a blue stream.
“Excellent!” Susan says, as I start to hack. “But you’d best tie your hair back, cuz it about caught afire.”
We’re in the bathroom, smoking matches. It’s Free Time, and everyone else is downstairs, writing letters and listening to the new Keith Green album, Jesus Commands Us to Go! If you use your imagination, you can make him sound a little like Paul McCartney. As we listen to the title track, Susan and I slow dance together under the gas lamp:
Jesus commands us to go,
but we go the other way.
So He carries the burden alone,
While His children are busy at play,
Feeling so called to stay.
“What do you think?” Susan asks after the song ends.
She hops up on the bathroom counter.
“I like The Prodigal Son better,” I say.
She nods her agreement, and lights another match.
They think we’re giving ourselves facials, and indeed, we’ve mixed bowls of sugar water and placed them in the twin sinks, just in case someone checks in on us or wants to use the toilet. As an added precaution, Susan has taken off one of her sneakers and wedged the toe into the gap at the bottom of the door; the only doors with locks in Starr are on the houseparents’ and group leader’s quarters. At night, we hear them slide their deadbolts shut against us as we lie in our bunks. We are fornicators and druggies and Satan Worshippers and prostitutes, and we outnumber them.
I’m on my third match and Susan’s on her tenth. Sulphur smoke hangs in the air. Her skills are superior to mine because she was a smoker in real life—she can do the French Inhaler and blow rings and talk and exhale at the same time. I’m still learning not to gag; it’s like learning to give a blow job.
My throat is raw and my mouth tastes foul, but I’m in a rare good mood. Susan and I are friends.
“I need to score a sixty-five tomorrow, or I’m fucked for Third,” she says, smoke curling from her mouth. She scowls at the rusted ceiling. “If I don’t get out of here by the end of summer, I’ll kill myself.”
Susan’s parents lied and told her she’d only be down here a couple weeks, until the troubles back home blew over; she’s been here seven months. It happens to a lot of kids. Parents will say anything to get you on that plane—they know that once you’ve landed on the island, you’re as marooned as Gilligan.
My own parents, for example, told me I’d be going to the beach every weekend and we haven’t gone once yet. When I asked Susan about this, she snorted and gave me a pitiful look.
“Nah,” she said. “This ain’t no beach.”
Downstairs, the music stops and we freeze and stare at each other and then at the door. A second later, Keith Green starts up again—someone flipped the tape over—and Susan lights another match.
“Maybe you should try confronting someone,” I say with a sly smile. “There’s always Jolene.”
Confronting is a nice word for narking. Confront someone about their bad attitude or behavior, and you get a 5 in the Being a Helpful and Positive Influence box. But the staff have to see you do it, or it doesn’t count. Jolene’s an easy target because she still pouts and curses under her breath when she gets angry.
“Oh, you are too good,” Susan says
, exhaling. “Jolene it is.”
Footsteps start up the stairs and Susan flicks the match in the toilet and we rake our nails over our faces to make them glow. The door is pushed, then shoved, and Susan’s sneaker is dragged inward across the cement.
It’s Becky. She looks at us, and then down at the sneaker.
“Becky, Hon, may I please have a Band-Aid? I done got a blister,” Susan says without skipping a beat. She lifts her bare foot and rubs the heel. The room is cloudy with smoke; Becky sniffs the air.
“Susan here has got a bad case of diarrhea,” I tell her. Everyone uses matches to mask the stench. It’s a common courtesy and a plausible explanation for the fumes.
“Okay, I’ll get a Band-Aid,” Becky says. “But then it’s Bed Time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Susan responds in her best southern belle voice. “Straight away.” When Becky tucks back out the door, I high-five Susan.
“We are too good,” I tell her.
Downstairs, we hear chairs shoved across the tile floor and realigned precisely along the edge of the dining room table.
“If dumb was dirt, she’d cover about an acre,” Susan whispers.
Right as I’m chugging along toward Third, I hit a snag that threatens my PRO-gress toward freedom.
After Bruce dumps my underwear drawer on the floor for the fourth day in a row without an explanation, I ask him for one.
We’re standing beside my bunk bed, my panties scattered like used Kleenex at our feet. He jots a 2 on my score chart, then looks at me to gauge my reaction. I put on my humble face.
“Please, Bruce, will you tell me what I’ve done wrong?” I ask. “Please, just this once?”
He considers this request for a long moment, tapping an index finger against his fat lips, before exhaling sharply and bending to snatch a pair of panties from the floor. He kneels beside the bunk and motions for me to join him.
“Watch carefully,” he says, gripping the cotton in his hairy fingers and stretching out the SCHEERES on the inside back waistband. My cheeks burn at seeing my underthings in his woolly grasp, but this is important: I cannot let a pair of panties stand between me and Third Level.
Jesus Land Page 22
