by Beth Goobie
•••
It was the following Saturday night, with a huge rain coming down in sheets that transformed Sinbad into a muffled shell of sound. Huddled in the front passenger seat, Jez fished in her jacket pocket for her lighter and cigarettes. The time was 12:15 a.m.; she had been waiting under the 7-Eleven’s overhang since midnight, and her lime jacket and red and white checked midi, even her oxfords, were bone-chillingly damp.
“Got any dry clothes?” she asked, lighting up.
“Uh-uh,” said Dee, shaking her head. “I checked out the party and it was a bust, so I figured you wouldn’t need any.”
It had been easier than Jez had thought it would be to sneak out of the house. The evening had gone as usual—a Young People’s meeting at the church, which had involved a Bible study and a floor hockey game. Her parents had been at a prayer-cell meeting at another church member’s home; when it had ended, they had picked her up, and all had been home and in bed by a quarter after eleven. Because her mother generally slept heavily until one, and her father never stirred until forced awake by his morning alarm, the only difficult part had been the guilt—sneaking out the back door had felt tantamount to sneaking out of the womb.
“So…if the party’s a bust,” asked Jez, surveying the empty parking lot with studied casualness, “what d’you want to do?”
The car’s interior was full of the small come-and-go shifts of Dee’s perfume. In the dim streetlight, her face was a series of shadows, contained within the sleek fall of her shoulder-length shagged hair. “I dunno,” she said, putting the idling car into gear. As she drove out of the lot, she seemed pensive, moody, her mind on another planet. Reaching for Jez’s cigarette, she dragged deeply. Abruptly, she asked, “You ever been in a backseat?”
Startled, Jez ransacked her brain for possible responses. The last thing she wanted right now was to be forced into an admission of innocence. “You mean a car backseat?” she hedged.
Dee gave a slight hiss and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, a car,” she drawled. “With a guy.”
“Not exactly,” muttered Jez, turning to look out the side window.
Dee laughed. “You mean no,” she said.
“Okay,” Jez said, growing irritated. “So, no.”
“That’s what I figured,” said Dee, her face grim. “Okay, lesson time coming up. Keep your eyes peeled for the first available groping alley.”
Chin resting on the top of the steering wheel, she drove slowly through the downpour, then turned onto a residential side street. Here and there, a post-midnight window could be seen glimmering in the rain, but most of the houses were dark. Killing the engine, Dee coasted in to the curb beside a small park and the two girls sat in edgy silence, outlined faintly by streetlight as they passed Jez’s cigarette back and forth.
“So what’s with this lesson business?” Jez broached tentatively.
Without responding, Dee leaned toward her and Jez jerked away, bumping into the car door. “Lesson number one,” Dee said coolly as she opened the glove compartment. “Don’t act like you’re on electric shock.”
“Yeah, okay, fine,” mumbled Jez, her cheeks burning.
Dee pulled out a beveled glass bottle and unscrewed the cap. “Gin,” she announced. “I diluted it so you could drink some. I figured we could both use a shot. Just don’t drink too much or you won’t be able to concentrate.”
After two expert swallows, she passed the bottle to Jez. Holding it with both hands, Jez sat for a moment staring at it. Her hesitation wasn’t due to a lack of alcohol consumption experience—Waiting for the Rapture was certainly a teetotaler denomination, but teenagers of every stripe could be counted on to sneak booze to summer camp. Rather, it was because none of the beer, scotch, or rum that she had drunk to date had felt like a condemned man’s last drink before facing the firing squad. Cautiously, she raised the bottle to her lips and took a sip. Gin was new to her, its taste like dull fire; not great, she decided, but not too bad. As she took another sip, an image flitted through her mind from earlier that evening—the face of her church’s youth pastor, desperately sincere as he waited for someone, anyone among the bored adolescents staring back at him to respond to his question regarding Paul’s instructions to the church at Ephesus. There was no way on earth or Heaven, Jez thought suddenly, fiercely, that she was going to end up like him. Upending the bottle, she took a deep swig.
“Okay, okay, girl. Enough!” exclaimed Dee, grabbing the bottle.
“Geez,” burbled Jez, feeling the warm fuzzies start to percolate. “Don’t you act like you’re on high voltage.”
“Sure, no voltage,” said Dee, taking an audible breath. “Look, Mom and I talked, and for once I think she’s right. You’ve got to know more. Guys are dogs, man—I can’t just throw you to them.”
“Gosh, golly, darn,” said Jez, sliding down in her seat until she could barely see over the dash. The warm fuzzies were really going now. “Thanks tons, man.”
Dee waved a dismissive hand. “You should hear them talk when you’re not around,” she snapped. “I knew it’d be bad—like Mom said, you’re the angelic type. But they’re foaming at the mouth to be the first to thrust into you.”
Jez’s warm fuzzies went into an unmitigated fizzle. Stunned at Dee’s bluntness, she stared at her. “You are worse than your mother,” she said finally.
“I am just like my mother,” replied Dee. Taking a doomsday gulp of gin, she screwed the cap back onto the bottle. “Okay,” she said, letting out a whoosh of air. “Backseat.” Without another word, she opened the door and ducked through the downpour into the back of the car. There she shrugged out of her black leather jacket, revealing the long bare slope of her shoulders and the plunging neckline of a halter top. In the murky streetlight, her skin ran with the shadows of the rain that coursed down the windshield. Sprawled onto the seat, she lay with her head back, staring at the ceiling. “C’mon, Jezzie baby,” she sing-songed. “I’m waiting for you.”
Mouth open, Jez sat staring at Dee’s reflection in the rearview mirror. Never, never, she was certain of it, had her heart thudded this hard or her knees come so close to complete dissolution. Again the Technicolor memory of the blushing youth pastor flashed through her mind. The guy, she thought savagely, had looked ready to pee himself. Reaching for the bottle of gin Dee had left lying on the driver’s seat, she took her own doomsday gulp, then shoved open the passenger door and stepped through the harsh curtain of rain into the back of the car’s uneasy silence. With a distinct squelching sound, she edged onto the seat beside Dee’s sprawled form. Further squelches followed as she pulled off her soaked jacket.
“Well,” said Dee, looking out the side window. “So, okay. These are the basic rules. You can block moves, but you can’t call them. Which means you have to wait, basically, for the guy to decide what he wants to do or you’ll wither his dick. It’ll shrivel right up on you. Dead dick. Guys are like that. Pathetic. If they can’t get it their way, they turn off, and what you want is a turned-on guy, right? Believe me, a turned-off guy is one complete and utter waste. So, like I said, you can say no, maybe you can say how far or how fast, but you can’t say what. Got it?”
“Seems basic,” said Jez, pulling at the front of her dress. A determinedly practical blend of polyester and acrylic, the damp fabric lifted off her stomach with a distinct sucking sound.
“Yeah, it’s basic,” muttered Dee, still staring out the window. “It’s all pretty basic, isn’t it?” Then, without warning, she was moving—one hand snaking around Jez’s shoulders and grabbing her breast while the other covered her mouth, muffling her startled yelp. Astounded more than humiliated, Jez pushed to get free, but Dee hung on tightly, continuing to squish her breast painfully as she spoke low into her ear.
“That first move’s called the One-Hander,” she said. “This one’s Pin-the-Bitch.” Without hesitation, she swung a leg over Jez’s lap and straddl
ed her, pressing both hands onto her breasts. “And this one,” she added hoarsely, “is called Riding Double. If there are two guys back here with you, the second guy’ll grab your knees, pull you open, and start whamming you.” Curved over Jez, she breathed quickly and intensely. Strands of wet hair fell into her eyes and plastered her cheeks.
“Take your hands off,” mumbled Jez, her eyes downcast, the blood pounding everywhere through her.
“They won’t,” said Dee. With a calculated thrust of her knee, she separated Jez’s legs. “Thirty seconds and he’s into you, baby,” she mocked. “You’re a fucking open door, you’re that easy.”
“Oh yeah?” said Jez, heat shooting through her, a gut-pulsing flame. “And what’s that one called?”
“Open Sucker,” said Dee. “And this—”
With a cry, Jez wrenched her arms free and grabbed the hand going for her crotch, the two girls grappling in grunting silence, a chasm opening beneath them, one of them about to go down. Sharp-edged, Dee’s nails dug into Jez’s wrists. Jerking a hand free, Jez clawed frantically at whatever was within reach and half of Dee’s halter top came loose, drifting downward like a slow-floating leaf. The sight peeled Jez of all resistance. Slowly, gently, Dee levered both Jez’s hands onto the top of the seat, then sat motionless, her eyes closed as she calmed the half-sob in her breathing. Bewildered and trying to mend the violence in her own breath, Jez felt the sweet-sighing inevitable descend upon her as the other half of the halter top slid down, riveting her gaze and trapping her in the song of her skin.
“So where’s your jackknife?” Dee taunted softly, her face filled with absolute knowing. “The one you were always going to carry?”
“I didn’t think I needed it,” mumbled Jez, closing her eyes, “with a girl.”
“You’re such an innocent,” said Dee.
“I am not stupid,” hissed Jez, incensed, her eyes flying open.
“You’re beautiful,” Dee said sadly, ignoring her anger. “They’re gonna tell you that, and it’s true. You’ll forget all about knives, you know.”
Releasing Jez’s wrists, she traced her lower lip, and Jez stopped breathing. “All that time,” Dee whispered, touching and touching her mouth. “Watching me from windows. What were you looking for, Jez? Were you looking for me?”
They stared, the fear huge and delicate in their faces, and then Dee leaned through God, the Devil, and the Apocalypse, and brushed her open-lipped mouth across Jez’s. Siren nerves chorused, tongues touched; Jez’s hands slid like a groan up the wet slope of Dee’s back as they kissed. From somewhere a whimper sounded; rain splashed full against the outside of the car; another chorus of nerves washed all externals away, leaving only lips, tongues, and a deep-beating sweetness—that inner drum of softness reaching deeper, deeper, until gently, irrevocably, it opened into a peach-pink luminosity that rose through Jez and partway into Dee, the two girls together shuddering and crying out as each lip of a glowing orchid unfurled, joining them within its radiance.
“Holy fuck!” Dee whispered into Jez’s damp hair. “Fuck, never let that happen with a guy, you hear me? You let your soul out like that, he’ll suck it right out of you.”
“That was my guardian angel,” Jez said fervently. “Something sent by God, I’m sure of it. I’ve never seen it before, but that must be what it was.”
“Your guardian angel?” said Dee, incredulous. “That was no angel, baby—that was you. Angels!” She gave a short laugh. “That’s cute.”
“Angels aren’t cute,” Jez said stiffly. “I’m not talking cupids here.”
“Jezzie,” said Dee, licking her nose. “That was your one-and-only deep-down soul. You keep it to yourself. Don’t give it away ever—not to anyone. Believe me, that’s the most important lesson of all.”
It was a silent drive back through the rain. Arriving at Quance Crescent, Dee parked two doors down and they sat without speaking, observing the Hamiltons’ darkened house.
“Looks Christian all the way from here,” muttered Dee.
“The Rapture will start on our doorstep,” said Jez. “My mother will be first in line.”
Hands abruptly fidgety, Dee played patty-cake on the steering wheel. “Look,” she said carefully. “I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think you’re ready for guys yet.”
“Open Sucker, eh?” said Jez.
“Yup,” agreed Dee. Their eyes met and she grinned hesitantly. Since returning to the front seat, they hadn’t touched—even their knees were tucked tightly and primly together. Now Dee sat, one hand on the gearshift, her leather jacket zipped shut. The lonely voice of Jez’s skin sang to no one.
“Dee?” said Jez, forcing herself to look directly into the other girl’s face. “Why’d you do that—tonight? Why?”
Head tilted against the side window, Dee stared into the rain-falling dark. When she finally spoke, it was so quiet Jez had to lean forward to catch her words. “Just something girls do when guys aren’t around,” she said dully, almost mechanically, as if reciting something she had heard many times. “What girls do together is just practicing for guys, that’s all. It doesn’t count, not really. Everyone knows that.”
Alone in the middle of the street, Jez stood in the rain, watching the wet blur of Sinbad’s taillights travel away from her. At the corner, the Bug paused without turning, as if in that instant Dee had decided to light a cigarette before going on, or was perhaps rethinking her words, rewriting them, regretting them…the two girls waiting out that single stretched moment of forever, and then the car turned.
Six
Being the Divine Sister’s only child had its drawbacks. If Louisie had been there to share the experience, perhaps the imprint would not have gone as deep—less would have been stolen. As it was, I stood alone in my mother’s reflected glory, the only child who could follow in her footsteps and haunted by what I lacked. Each and every Sunday, the eyes of the congregation settled onto my head, searching in vain for a Tongue of Fire; each and every Sunday, the divine flame failed, yet again, to descend upon me. Still I burned, and for years my bedtime prayers were a variation on a single theme—pleas to the good Lord to send any available Tongues of Fire my way: “Jesus, please make me a Divine Sister like my mother, with a holy burning Tongue of Fire, and please make extra sure there’s some good, loud glory-talk coming out of me that doesn’t sound like English or no one’ll listen. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
The good Lord, however, continued to turn a deaf ear to my requests, so one Saturday morning, I decided to try out the sackcloth-and-ashes approach. Carefully setting fire to a copy of the Eleusis Tribune in our basement, I smeared the cooling ashes onto my nine-year-old arms and face, then crawled up and down the basement stairs in a potato sack, reciting the best mad-prophet, Tongue of Fire Bible verses I had been able to find: “Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God…And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet…”
The detail of the straight feet particularly impressed me, sidetracking my fervor, and I pondered it strenuously as I crawled. Didn’t everyone have straight feet? I wondered. But maybe four-faced angels were different. Maybe some four-faced angels had crooked feet and some had amazingly, astoundingly straight feet. And maybe—here I stopped crawling, struck by the thought—maybe astoundingly straight feet were a sign of being sent by God, of being chosen.
Removing one of my shoes, I examined every aspect of my foot. It looked
straight enough—except for the fifth toe, which angled off to the side. With a scowl, I pushed the fifth in against the fourth and examined my foot again. Now everything looked quite straight, in fact very straight, and that, I decided with enormous satisfaction, would give me bonus points in the Tongue of Fire request department. Quickly, I got back onto my hands and knees and resumed my crawl up and down the basement stairs, repeating my original recitation but throwing in a few pointed reminders in case the good Lord had missed the obvious: “And their feet were straight feet like Mary-Eve Hamilton’s two very straight feet…”
Straight feet or no straight feet, God made no apparent response to my sackcloth-and-ashes attempt, and the congregation continued to send resigned glances my way as, week after week, the Tongue of Fire shunned my head. “Crying shame, isn’t it?” came the church members’ whispers. “Mary-Eve Hamilton didn’t get the Gift.” Strangers, however, who made the pilgrimage to our church to hear my mother prophesy, were oblivious to my shortcomings, and often held cosmic expectations of the Divine Sister’s one-and-only daughter. Murmuring in anticipation, they would surround me—the women heavy with perfume, the men sagging over silver-buckled belts as their tobacco-stained, nail-bitten hands stroked my rag-curled ringlets, lace collar, and white-leather King James Bible. I lost buttons and barrettes to them, strands of my hair, even my Jesus-on-the-cross necklace, and learned to survive their peppermint- and pepperoni-scented kisses by pretending I was John the Baptist calling the unwashed throng to repentance, even Jesus Himself giving the Sermon on the Mount. All it took to get me going were a few Hear ye, hear ye’s and I say unto you’s and I was launched into a fairly good mountaintop sermon, replete with at least one You may now kiss the bride.
It was as close to speaking glory-talk as I got. Inspired by the pilgrims’ devotion, I waxed loud and prolific, but no matter how stridently I proclaimed, I could feel their desperation and it frightened me. Voices were at war inside their heads, and their souls leaned out of their bodies like ships’ figureheads; it was as if these people could not bear to remain inside their own flesh. Though these perceptions were clear to me, I never discussed them with my mother, and I doubt she ever picked up on the distress they caused; instead, she and my father chose to focus on what they called my “attention-grabbing dramatics.” To solve the problem these “dramatics” presented, a sales booth featuring autographed photographs of the Divine Sister was set up in the church lobby. As time went on, the list of purchasable items expanded to include greetings cards that featured the Divine Sister in a variety of poses, as well as photographs of the church, Pastor Playle, and the deacons, plus picture frames, Christian coloring books, T-shirts and knickknacks, and devotional tapes featuring the Divine Sister’s voice. Most pilgrims were satisfied with trinkets, and the booth functioned as an effective decoy. Some, however, continued to corner me and ask for “a little bit of the glory-talk” or a demonstration of the Tongue of Fire—“Just a quickie, love. That’ll do it.” Others requested a blessing, but after my mother caught me standing on a pew with both hands on a woman’s head, calling angels into her soul, I was placed on “Deacon Watch,” and for months following, a deacon and his wife were assigned to supervise me at all church functions.
