Jesus Land

by Julia Scheeres

  He doesn’t invite us to sit on the metal chairs in front of his desk today, so we stand stiffly behind them. Sweat trickles down my ribcage under my T-shirt, tickling my skin, but I keep my eyes locked on Ted’s; adults tend to believe you if you look them in the eyes while you lie.

  But my lie pours out in a squeaky gush.

  “We tried to teach those kids ‘Take Time to Be Holy,’ but the lyrics were too hard for them, so instead we . . .”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about!” Ted roars.

  He drums his fingernails on the metal desktop and glowers at me, and then at David, before swiveling around to a tall bookcase behind him. I turn to glare at David—this is all your fault— and he frowns at the floor and chews his lip.

  Ted pulls several thick books from the bookcase, then walks around the desk and stands in front of David.

  “Hold your arms up at your sides,” Ted commands, towering over him.

  David glances at me before slowly raising his arms.

  “Palms up,” Ted says.

  He places a World History textbook and a Child Psychology manual on David’s right forearm and a Teen Devotional Bible and a Spanish-English dictionary on his left forearm. David curls his fingers over the covers to keep them from falling, his head listing to the side with the effort. He looks like some modern art project: Black Jesus, Crucified with Books.

  I can’t see the names of the books Ted piles on my arms, but I can sure feel them. I press my elbows into my hipbones to counteract their weight and Ted barks at me to straighten my arms.

  “You’re going to hold those books until someone tells the truth,” he says. “Drop them, and it’s back to Level 0 for both of you.”

  When Ted turns to sit back down, I curse David with my eyes and he apologizes with his. Ted drums his fingernails on the desk and watches us with a bored expression.

  After a couple of minutes, I can no longer stand the pain screeching up and down my shaking arms and I gasp sharply. The books on my left arm shift and I dig my fingernails into them, but still feel them slipping in slow motion.

  “Yes, Julia?” Ted asks.

  Bitter tears dribble down my cheeks and my face burns with shame at them. I shake my head at Ted and blink at the green felt banner hanging over his head. On it, two hands clutch a red bowl. “I am the Potter and You are the Clay” it says in gold letters beneath the hands.

  “It’s not her fault!” David suddenly cries. “It was all my idea!”

  I turn to him; his face is also glazed with sweat, his arms also shake.

  “David, don’t . . .”

  “Silence!” Ted bellows. “Let him talk.”

  “She didn’t want to go,” David continues, panting out the words. “But I convinced her.”

  David looks at me, and his face is so full of bravery that I begin to sob. My arms collapse and the books bang to the floor, their crisp pages crushed against the cement. I bend to pick them up.

  “Get out of here, Julia,” Ted says. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  I take one last look at David before backing out the door. He’s trembling under the weight of the books, but his eyes shine with determination. He gives me a tight smile. Everything’s fine. I sprint uphill to Starr and don’t speak to anyone for the rest of the afternoon.

  I know that if I open my mouth, there will be no way to stop the venom pooling in my mind from spilling out.

  My punishment: a week scrubbing floors. I spend every evening on my hands and knees scouring tiles during Free Time.

  David’s punishment: He’s booted back to Level 0. This despite telling Ted the truth.

  And once again, we are forbidden from communicating.

  Unable to use words, David and I hold entire conversations with our eyes. In a glance, he tells me the state of his mental health, and I reassure him that we’ll be okay. I tell him that I will always be his big sister and take care of him and love him. I tell him these things with my eyes that I’ve never told him with my mouth.

  But as the days wear on, I watch hope fade from his warm brown eyes. He’s no closer to leaving The Program now than he was when he entered it, a year ago. He’s the lowest ranker at the school, outranked even by Boy 0.

  I cringe when I see him slumped in a doorway waiting for permission to move, or hunched over the TKB picnic table waiting for scraps as Sam stuffs his face across from him, enjoying his recent promotion to high ranker.

  I should be on 0, too, but once again, I’m the privileged one, the white one. The white daughter who sleeps upstairs while the black sons share a room in the basement. The white student who slips unnoticed through the halls of her new high school while the new black student is assaulted. The white girl who breaks a rule and is slapped on the wrist while the black boy who commits the same transgression is shoved back to the starting line.

  What am I supposed to do about it? Hate myself for being the same color as the people who hurt him? I can’t help being white.

  Sometimes when no one’s looking—as I run past him in P.E. or skirt his picnic table at lunch—I sneak out a hand to touch him, in an attempt to reignite some fire in him. But he won’t react, won’t even look at me. And it makes me wonder if he hates my whiteness and if I can be a true sister to him without sharing the trauma of his skin color. If we can ever be more than black and white, more than the surface of our skin.

  The Sunday David starts his second week on Level 0, I obtain Fourth Level, becoming Starr’s second-highest ranker. Janet reached Fifth and was sent home, so only Tiffany ranks higher than me now.

  Some of the other girls are mad because I’ve only been here four months and have ascended so quickly. But I’ve worked hard to get where I am, fronting my ass off and getting good grades. And I haven’t stooped to narking on anyone. I’m going to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible and nobody will stand in my way.

  Except David.

  How can I leave him alone down here?

  I can’t.

  This becomes perfectly clear to me one afternoon after yet another Group spent kneeling before abortion posters. I’m trudging back up the hill with the rest of Starr when there’s a commotion behind the school. I turn and see David. Jay, the economics teacher, is screeching in his face. Jay’s got his back to me, but it’s clear that he’s worked himself into a frenzy; his arms thrash at his sides and his hands are balled into fists.

  I stop walking.

  I can’t quite make out the harsh torrent of words spewed from Jay’s mouth, but I know they are wicked from David’s bowed head. Jay is notorious for hissy fits. For the slightest perceived offense—an “irreverent” look or attitude—he’ll have you doing suicides while he lectures you about respecting authority. Escuela Caribe is full of his type: adults who seem to hate teenagers and enjoy making them suffer.

  As Jay vomits evil at my brother, I stand and bear witness. Jay seems to be demanding some kind of answer from David, who remains bent and mute, his hands hanging limply at his sides like small dead animals.

  His numbness, his refusal to accept what is happening by refusing to react—all this is familiar. Things are done to you and you can’t do anything back. And so you play dead. Because if you don’t acknowledge something, it isn’t real. It doesn’t happen.

  But this is happening, it’s happening to my brother.

  Becky falls back to where I’ve halted and says something I can’t hear. My eyes, ears and every fiber of my being are pointed to what’s happening to my brother. The words “idiot!” and “now!” slap into my ears and I wince as Jay shoves David; he staggers backward and continues to stare at the ground, frozen. When Jay slams his fist into my brother’s stomach, my own breath is punched from me.

  I stumble forward, and Becky yanks on my arm.

  “NO!” I bellow.

  David looks up from his doubled-over position and feebly lifts a hand, palm out, everything’s fine. No, it’s not!

  Jay turns toward the road with his fists on his
hips and I bare my teeth at him. How dare you?

  I let Becky drag me up the hill backwards, her words as blurred as the cement road, the dried weeds beside it, the dark clouds churning overhead. I hold David’s eyes for as long as I can and promise him that someday, we’ll be free. Free and happy. Free together.

  According to the Escuela Caribe doctrine, situations that push your ability to cope beyond the realm of everyday experience “build character.” These situations include being rousted for two A.M. sessions, spending Free Days on your knees scrubbing floors, and apparently, watching your brother get sucker-punched in the stomach. The fact that Jay hit my brother in public makes me wonder what horrible things are done to him behind closed doors.

  After having a staffer tell me for the umpteenth time that such-and-such hardship will help me “build character,” I look up “character” in the Starr dictionary, because I’m no longer sure what it means.

  Character: 1. the qualities that distinguish one person from another. 2. a distinguishing feature or attribute. 3. moral or ethical strength. 4. reputation. 5. an eccentric person.

  I figure it must be the third sense of the word because it’s got the words “moral” and “ethical” in it. But in my experience, making people suffer doesn’t make them more virtuous, it just makes them despise you.

  The numbness that sheltered me from Jerome’s nighttime fumbling has become my sanctuary at Escuela Caribe. I don’t get excited by my advances in The Program or disappointed by my setbacks, because such emotions are simply manifestations of the staff’s control over my mind. Happiness, anguish, fear—these are all fake emotions here, products of their manipulation. It’s better to be numb and prepared for the next “opportunity” to build character than to get your hopes dashed repeatedly.

  Anger is now the only emotion I allow myself. Anger and hatred, which is simply anger boiled down to its core element. I hate this place and I hate these people and I hate the God that allows these things to happen. I go through The Program like a circus tiger, obeying commands and concealing my true nature. Knowing that someday, my fangs and claws shall be useful once more.

  But every now and again, some whispered reminder of Freedom weakens my resolve. The fresh perfume of crushed green grass. A love song hurled over the barbed wire from a passing car. A warm breeze that lifts my hair and caresses on my neck. These things make me bite my lip and dig my nails into the scarred grooves in my palms. These things ache. These things can wound you.

  Jerome shook off Father’s beatings with a sneer and a curse, but they chipped at David’s soul bit by bit.

  I tried to be a good big sister to him. When he returned from the workshop or pole barn with fresh welts on his back, I’d sit beside him on his bed while he curled into a ball and stuffed a fist in his mouth. I’d sit there in silence, not touching him, not knowing what to say, what to do, who to tell.

  There was a 1-800 number printed on the inside cover of the phone directory to report child abuse, but belting your kid was hardly considered abuse in that time and place; students were spanked in principals’ offices across the Midwest. There was no 1-800 number to report emotional injury.

  All I could do was bear witness as his body shuddered and tears seeped out under his long lashes. When he reopened his eyes, I wanted to be the first thing he saw. Me, gazing down at him with a fragile smile. Asking if he’d like a glass of water.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE PASTOR

  Another preacher arrives a few weeks after Preacher Stevie departs, only this one is referred to as “The Pastor” with a capital T and P. He’s Gordon Blossom, the man who started this place.

  The Pastor—as we’re repeatedly told to call him—founded New Horizons Youth Ministries in 1971, when he began sending teens from his church on summer mission trips to separate them from the “negative influence” of American culture. The strategy proved so successful that he built Escuela Caribe, a place where disgruntled parents could dump their kids year-round if they had enough money. Eventually, The Pastor’s reform school empire grew to include Escuela Caribe, a sister institution in Marion, Indiana, and a survival camp in Canada, where teens are sent into the wilderness to tough it out alone.

  I didn’t know about the Indiana school—a mere two hours from Lafayette—until I was already down here. My parents must have deemed it was too close to home.

  One morning during chapel we are informed that The Pastor will be dropping in for a visit that evening, and the campus is turned upside down in preparation. The unexpected news makes the staff jittery, which makes us kids doubly so, because we bear the brunt of their mood swings.

  Class is canceled and the student body is divided into regiments to spit-shine The Property. One group is handed machetes to mow the “lawn.” Another is armed with bleach to scour the classrooms. A third tromps up the hill with brooms and mops to clean “The Pastor’s Place,” a small house tucked behind a screen of trees at the top of The Property. I long to glimpse its interior, but am assigned the school toilets instead.

  After a day of frenzied cleaning, we don our Sunday finery to reconvene in the chapel after supper. Ted steps behind the pulpit and the school therapist strikes up “Onward Christian Soldiers” on the piano. As Ted’s gaze scrapes over us, we quit slouching and magically transform into redeemable teenagers, our faces bright, our hymnals high, singing our lungs out for Jesus Christ.

  Halfway through the fourth stanza, a tall man in a tan suit marches up the center aisle, and excitement ripples through the room. It’s The Pastor. Ted shakes his hand, then cedes the pulpit.

  The Pastor joins in the hymn, his scarecrow body bobbing to the beat. He looks like any old churchman you’d see back home: 60s, gray hair greased over a large bald spot, bifocals, abbreviated Hitler mustache. Wattle spilling over shirt collar. Dried out and severe. The reason we’re all here.

  At the hymn’s refrain—ON-ward CHRIST-ian SOLD-iers, MARCH-ing as toWAR—The Pastor jerks his arms up and down like a manic choir director, bifocals flashing like strobe lights. I twist round to look at David and we goggle at each other, our mouths twitching with swallowed laughter. Surely, this is a man possessed.

  After belting out the last stanza, we remain standing until the piano strings cease their vibrations before folding ourselves back onto the wooden pews. The room falls silent except for the low hiss of the flickering gas lamps and a palm branch scratching at the metal roof in the breeze.

  The Pastor stands as erect as a general. I stare at The Pastor’s mustache, which is thick and black and reminds me of the marker that conceals the sex in Scott’s letters. He sweeps his eyes over us, pausing on every face; I look down when his eyes land on mine. When he speaks, his voice is as low and gravelly as a smoker’s.

  “‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’”

  He peers down at us through the bottoms of his bifocals.

  “You kids were sent to Escuela Caribe to put away childish things,” he says, his voice rising and falling in preacher speak. “To put away your rebellion and come clean with the Lord. To surrender to Jesus Christ and become his faithful servants. To humble yourselves before God.”

  He bangs his fist on the pulpit and I jump.

  “You kids don’t know how good you have it!” he shouts. “You should be on your knees right now, thanking God Almighty for the opportunity to be here! For the loving parents who made the financial sacrifice to send you here! For the dedicated staff who see beyond your filth to your true potential!”

  He leans back, gripping the pulpit with long fingers and sucking in his cheeks. Heads droop before The Pastor’s fiery gaze like wilting flowers.

  “Do you know why I started New Horizons? Let me tell you. Because I, too, was a filthy sinner! Caught up in the pleasures of the flesh! Of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll! But places like Escuela Caribe didn’t exist when I was young, oh no!

  �
��I did hard time. My body was beaten into submission, but my soul remained depraved. And when I finally found Jesus, I promised Him I’d do better. I vowed to build Him a place where dirty sinner kids would be cured by discipline, hard work, and the Blood of the Lamb!”

  The Pastor again pounds the pulpit.

  “Hallelujah!” cries a female voice behind me. I turn to see Debbie standing in a back pew, slowly swaying in a pink sundress with her arms over her head and her eyes closed, as if she were listening to music only she could hear.

  The Pastor nods at her and continues in his loud hypnotic voice.

  “The Lord Jesus brought you here! To rescue you! To save your souls!”

  “Amen!” yells another voice, male, this time. I turn. It’s Steve, TKB’s group leader. He’s also popped up from his pew and is swaying with raised arms. David, seated next to him, looks at him with open-mouthed astonishment, as if he’d just dropped naked from the sky. People don’t do such things in church back home.

  “Will you continue through life as filthy little sinners? Or will you choose God? Which is it, Satan or Jesus?! Eternal Life or Eternal Damnation?!”

  One by one, staff and students rise from their pews as The Pastor sermonizes with upheld arms and sway like seaweed tugged by an ocean current. Many of the teachers’ upturned faces are split in grins of ecstasy, while most of the students look down, their arms hung limply overhead as if someone were forcing them down a dark alley at gunpoint.

  The collective exuberance has made the chapel’s temperature rise, and the bitter smell of sweat clouds the stagnant air.

  The Pastor barks from the pulpit and the voices yelp back.

  “Jesus died for you!”

  “Amen!”

  “Jesus will make you clean!”

  “Yes, Jesus!”

  “Jesus forgives you!”

  “Hallelujah!”