Jesus Land

by Julia Scheeres

  “Jesus wants you!”

  “Praise God!”

  I’ve heard tell of such caterwauling and carrying-on by Pentecostals, but such behavior would be considered obscene at Lafayette Christian Reformed, where standing to recite the Apostle’s Creed is as exciting as it gets. I smirk, wondering what Mother would say if she knew we’d been exiled with a bunch of “Holy Rollers.”

  I turn to see my amazement reflected on my brother’s face. We’re the only two people still sitting; this is not good. I slowly rise, and so does David. Stick my arms in the air, and so does he. I turn to face the front of the chapel, close my eyes, and lightly bump against the bodies on either side of me in the sultry heat.

  It’s been a long time since I had touching like this, soft and gentle, and my mind wanders back to Scott. I remember how he’d skim his hand over my stomach and breasts, barely grazing me. My skin would become electrified, every nerve standing on end, craving contact. He’d skim me until I could no longer stand it and arched my back against the mattress, thrusting myself into his hand.

  All this soft bumping reminds me of my arching desire, even as The Pastor continues to bark from the pulpit.

  “Come to Jesus!”

  “Yes, Lord!”

  “Surrender to Jesus!”

  “Glory be!”

  “Give yourself to Jesus!”

  “Amen!”

  I squeeze my eyes shut tighter and try focus on his words, but the image that comes to me is not of Jesus nailed to the Cross or kneeling in a field surrounded by multicolored children. It is of Scott, stripped naked and walking toward me as I lie in my bed at home, his stiff penis wagging back and forth like a chiding finger. I fling open my eyes and gaze about in terror. But no one has seen my thoughts; the bodies around me continue to groan and sway.

  I close my eyes again, and Scott kneels between my legs, then lowers himself into me. His hot tongue swishes into my mouth and I grab his butt and pull him deeper. His curved brown shoulders dip and rise in the slanted lamplight, his eager skin bumps mine. His salt taste and beef bouillon smell, they envelop me. His heat and his desire, they comfort me. I shall not want.

  A spark flares in me and swells into a flame, and I sweat and sway and whisper “Yes, Jesus.”

  Suddenly, there’s a commotion and I’m shoved aside. I open my eyes to see Jolene rushing toward The Pastor.

  “I want to be saved!” she yells, throwing herself into his arms. He catches her and lowers her to her knees on the cement floor.

  “Praise the Lahd!” Becky shouts beside me.

  And then other kids are rushing the pulpit. The Pastor lays a hand on each one as they kneel before him. The school therapist strikes up “Have Thine Own Way, Lord” on the piano and we open our hymnals to page 68, still swaying. Some of the kneeling kids are stone faced and others cry hysterically. I consider going to boost my points, but am too full of Scott to fake it right now.

  When he finishes praying over these questionable converts, The Pastor dabs his face and neck with a white hanky.

  “What we’ve witnessed here tonight is nothing short of a miracle,” he says, the kids still bowed before him. “Our Lord moves in mysterious ways. He has shown love and compassion even unto these filthy sinners, and has accepted them into His fold. It is now our duty as fellow Christians to keep them steadfast in their journey toward Heaven.”

  He nods at the therapist, who launches into “Just As I Am, Without One Plea.” The new believers stand with their heads bent piously and their hands clasped and filter back to their pews. When Jolene walks by me, she raises her head and smirks at me. She’s finally gotten with The Program.

  Later, when I’m lying in my bunk surrounded by the mute shapes of sleeping girls, I reach under the sheet with a bottle of nail polish, spread my legs, and slide the fat glass bottom over my panties. Over the place where, earlier, the flame grew, then flickered out.

  I think of Scott and his musk and his meat and how I’d shudder with pleasure when he sank into me. Slow, soft. Fast, hard. When the wave of fire crashes through me, I bite one hand and clamp the other over my swollen flesh, trying to keep it in.

  Sweet Jesus.

  A school van pulls into Starr’s driveway during supper the next evening and Ted Schlund gets out. Bruce walks out to meet him on the patio with his napkin still tucked in his collar like a bib, and they confer in hushed tones before Bruce turns to call my name.

  “The Pastor wants to speak with you and David,” Bruce says after I excuse myself from the table and join them. I glance back at my half-eaten plate of tuna and carrot bake. I’m hungry, as usual, and won’t have another chance to eat until tomorrow.

  “You can finish your food when you get back,” Bruce assures me.

  I follow Ted to the van; David’s already inside. When I look at him, he shrugs. He doesn’t know what this is about either.

  As we speed downhill, my hunger is replaced by fear. Maybe something happened to Debra! . . . Or Laura! . . . Maybe our parents want us back! Fat chance.

  The school is dark except for a light streaming from Ted’s office.

  The door is open, and The Pastor is sitting behind Ted’s desk, leafing through a three-ring binder. He doesn’t look up when we enter.

  Ted leaves, closing the door behind him.

  David and I exchange nervous glances as The Pastor takes his time reading a handwritten page in the binder, grunting now and then and shaking his head.

  After a few minutes, he closes the binder with a swipe of his hand. JULIA SCHEERES is written on the cover. I gulp nervously.

  He raises his head and looks at us.

  “Good evening,” he says, sliding his bifocals up his long nose.

  “Good evening,” we mumble back.

  “You have been summoned here tonight because I have a message for you,” he says in his preacher voice, his eyes latched somewhere above our heads. “A message from Dr. and Mrs. Jacob Scheeres, your parents.”

  He pauses. A giant green bug slaps against the window behind his head, trying to reach the gas lamp on the opposite wall.

  “And that message is this: Your brother, Jerome, is in prison.”

  He tilts his head and regards us as we sit frozen, waiting for more. But he doesn’t speak.

  “What’d he do?” David finally blurts out.

  “He was charged with corruption of minors.”

  “With what?” I ask.

  “He inducted a group of minors into the life of crime.”

  David and I exchange a blank look.

  “Um, what does that mean, exactly?” I ask.

  “They burglarized a business or something,” he says, flicking away my question with his hand. “You’ll have to get the details from your parents. What’s important is that he’s paying for his sins. Six years in the state pen.”

  David gasps and falls against the back of his chair. Part of me is shocked, too, but the other part knows Jerome’s whole life has been leading up to prison. I look down and count the years on my fingers: Jerome will be locked up until he’s twenty-four.

  “I have personally assured your parents that you two kids will NOT follow in your brother’s footsteps,” The Pastor says, his voice rising. “And by the Grace of God, I intend to keep that promise!”

  He slams his fist on the desk again, but this time I don’t jump.

  “I intend to keep you both in The Program until I’m convinced you’ve turned your lives around. Until you’re eighteen, or older, if need be. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

  Anger washes over me and I glare at The Pastor while David gazes into his lap. Why does he think Jerome is someone we’d want to imitate? And they can’t keep us down here once we’re legally adults! No way.

  “You can’t . . . ,” I start to say.

  “Can’t what?” The Pastor interjects, leaning forward. “I can do anything I want. It’s my program.”

  The buzzing starts in my ears. They could imprison us down here forever if
they wanted; we have no money to leave. I watch the tapping green bug, insane with its desire to fly into the gas lamp, where it will burst into flames. I so want to open the window and let it in.

  David traces a finger down the ladder of scars he cut into his forearm last Christmas. I nudge his leg with my knee, and he shifts away from me.

  “And now, young man, I’d like a word with your sister,” The Pastor says, smiling broadly at me.

  David gets up and shuffles out of the room like a sleepwalker, leaving the door open.

  The Pastor gets up to close it, then perches on the desk in front of me.

  “I once knew a girl like you, a real smart aleck,” he says. “Only fifteen years old, and already a whore, fornicating left and right. Her daddy was dead, so her mother called me for help. Would you like to know what I did to her?”

  He bores into me with his steel gray eyes and I want to shake my head “no,” but know he’ll tell me anyway. I look at the bug, at the felt banner over the desk. I am the Potter and You are the Clay. If I look at him, something bad will happen. If you stare down a growling dog, it will bite you.

  The Pastor leans forward until his face is a few inches from mine, blocking out the rest of the room. His breath smells of boiled cabbage. I stare at the stubble on his chin. Some of it white, some of it gray.

  “I took that little whore, and I stripped her naked and I beat her black and blue,” The Pastor says, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Beat the Devil right out of her. And believe you me, I would not hesitate to do it again.”

  He straightens and pulls a hanky from his breast pocket. Takes off his glasses, huffs on them, and rubs slow circles into the lenses, and all the while his eyes boring into mine. A thousand tiny bells start to chime in my ears and I watch him from my numb space as if he were a television commercial that would segue into the regular program at any second. Blip off the screen so The Waltons can continue. He’s not real.

  He puts his glasses back on, walks around the desk, sits down.

  “You are dismissed,” he says, opening the binder with my name on it.

  Outside, David sits on a concrete bench in the middle of the courtyard. I sit next to him, shaking and concealing my anguish from him until Ted pulls up to drive us back to our residences.

  In the van’s dark interior, I wrap my fingers around David’s thin wrist. Through his warm skin I can feel the steady tap of his pulse, and I focus on his heartbeat, taking deep breaths until my own heart slows to match his beat for beat. This comforts me. I am not alone; I have my brother. And he will not forsake me.

  I’m one of the girls chosen to clean The Pastor’s house when he leaves, although I no longer consider this an honor. We lug our cleaning supplies to the top of The Property and enter the foyer quietly, as if we were entering a house of worship. His residence is much nicer than ours, with tall windows peering over the valley and normal living room furniture instead of metal chairs. It’s a lot of space and comfort for one person.

  Becky assigns me The Pastor’s bedroom and I climb the stairs with heavy feet, not wanting to be alone in the private space of the man who threatened me with unthinkable things. His bedroom is large, with paintings of tropical beaches and waterfalls on the walls and an overstuffed chair under a picture window, and I feel a flash of envy as I think of the dark cramped space down the hill where I sleep every night.

  I walk to the window and crank it open to drive out the real or imagined boiled cabbage smell and any evil spirits The Pastor might have left behind.

  As I rip the dirty sheets off the bed, I notice the mattress is real as well. A thick, soft, normal mattress of the kind used in the United States, not the three-inch foam pad on my bunk at Starr. I contemplate stretching out on it for a moment just to remember what a real mattress feels like, but then imagine The Pastor lying on it in his soiled old-man pajamas and resolve instead to finish my chore as quickly as possible and wash my hands in bleach once I’m done.

  As I shove a broom underneath the box springs, a bottle rolls out and clinks to a stop against the opposite wall, a urine-colored liquid swaying in the bottom. I pick it up. Ron Bermudez, the label reads. Bermudez Rum. I stare at it for a long moment and consider taking it downstairs to show Becky, but chuck it out the window instead. It sinks soundlessly into the jungle carpet, where it will never be discovered. What good would it do?

  It’s his program.

  Confronted with racism, David and Jerome had opposite reactions. Jerome was tall, muscular, and mean, and kids didn’t dare insult him to his face. David was slight and mild-mannered, hunched with insecurity. He was an easy target.

  While Jerome’s response to adversity was “beat ’em,” David’s—for a period of time—was “join ‘em,” and he excelled at self-denigration.

  In junior high, David had this friend who called him monkey. “Hey, monkey! Wanna play ball?” the boy would yell across the gym.

  David would lope across the polished wood floor, swinging his arms and grunting like an orangutan, and everyone would whoop with laughter. When I saw him do this, I’d fight an urge to run over and knock him to the ground.

  He’d also entertain our classmates by performing tricks with his face. He’d distort his African features, pushing out his full lips, flaring his nostrils and bugging out his eyes and rolling them around. A black boy in black face. They watched, laughed, asked for more. And he gave it to them.

  It took him a while to figure out that gaining an audience was not the same thing as gaining friends.

  CHAPTER 17

  TURKEY

  Thanksgiving morning breaks dark and wet. Raindrops drill Starr’s metal roof with the force of marbles, and I lie on my back watching rivulets of rusty water run down the metal slab a few feet from my face.

  The dormitory is sour with mildew. Nothing dries since rainy season began; our clothes are stained with webs of green mold that even bleach can’t erase and our clean towels smell like sweaty socks. The rain has driven hordes of cockroaches and tiny black ants into the house, where they lurk in the hampers and closets and between our sheets.

  Thanksgiving. My mind reels back to this day last year. Jerome in the pole barn, hungry and shivering in his nest of rags, trying to thaw a bowl of dog food. Now he’s in his prison and we’re in ours, and our parents will eat Thanksgiving dinner at the MCL Cafeteria. Mother will be thankful that she doesn’t have to play-act the part of the happy mom and housewife for the guests and the camera. God is her only family now, just like she always wanted.

  Becky unlocks her door and lights the gas lamp. Light floods the room.

  “Happy Thanksgiving!” she shouts over the drilling rain.

  “Can’t we just sleep today?” someone shouts.

  “It’s Thanksgiving!” Becky shouts back. “We must celebrate!”

  “Celebrate what?” someone else shouts. Becky doesn’t respond.

  After Room Jobs, Breakfast Time and House Jobs, we change into our Sunday best for the “Annual Escuela Caribe Thanksgiving Holiday and Worship Celebration.” The rain has stopped, but the sky swirls with dark clouds and bursts of wind tug at our dresses. We walk down the hill hunched over, our hems gathered in one hand, to avoid getting our points docked for immodesty.

  The boys have formed a circle by the banyan tree and I spot David across the grass in a light blue suit. In the tumult of the wind and our arrival, I venture a quick smile at him, and to my surprise, he smiles back. And for this small gift I am thankful.

  Yesterday afternoon he forgot his Spanish book on the TKB picnic table and I managed to slip a note into it. I’d watched him get permission to stand, walk, and enter his next class then spotted it on the bench.

  REMEMBER FLORIDA I’d scrawled in my notebook, drawing a heart beneath the words. I ripped the page out and stuck it in his textbook when no one was looking.

  I think we both realize that the chance of us moving to Florida together at this point is slim. I’ve decided to go to college to become a social wor
ker and David wants to become an actor and work on TV.

  But I wrote REMEMBER FLORIDA anyway, because for years, it’s what we’ve done when things get tough. Anymore, Florida is not a place, it’s a concept. It’s freedom and happiness and being in control of your own life. Remember Florida: Remember there’s a better place than this.

  Ted walks into the circle and reads passages from the Bible that contain the words “thanksgiving” and “thanks” and compares us kids to the Pilgrims because we “also have voyaged from afar to be free in Jesus Christ.”

  When he finishes preaching, Ted instructs us to join hands and share something we are thankful for. And while the other kids dutifully thank The Program for a “second chance in life” and for “saving them from Hell” and even Boy 0—who’s now on First Level—thanks the staff for “curing his rebellion,” I refuse to engage in such bullshit.

  When my turn comes, I look directly across the circle at David.

  “I’m thankful for my brother,” I say in a loud voice. “Because in the end, family is all you got.”

  I hear the kids around me scoff with disdain because family is what got them into this hellhole, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Bruce scrutinizing me to figure out whether my words could be construed as communication with my brother. I don’t pay him any mind. I stay focused on David, and David on me. We know our truth.

  After everyone says their bit, we sing “Now Thank We All Our God” and then Ted steps forward with a big grin on his face.

  “I do believe there’s something missing from this Thanksgiving celebration,” he says. He lifts his whistle and blows into it and a moment later the Dominican guard jogs into the circle with a large package under his arm. He sets the package on the ground and it unfolds into a turkey the size of a coonhound. Everyone applauds with delight as the massive bird flops about in a circle with its bald red head listing to one side as if it were concussed.

  Ted motions at the Dominican, who pulls his machete from his waistband and hands it to him.

  “Jesus said the first shall be last, and the last shall be first,” Ted says, striding across the circle. He stops in front David and hands him the sword and David accepts it with bugged-out eyes. Everyone laughs. Ted points at the turkey and David’s actor side kicks in. He raises the machete over his head and charges the gobbler with big loping steps as the bird screeches and runs in larger circles, flapping its useless black wings. David stops and pants when the bird stops, and shambles forward when it moves, like some retarded detective. Everyone howls. But he keeps the blade raised over his head, and it’s clear he has no intention of harming this animal, but is merely performing his clown act.