The Lost Landscape

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Resistance to sin was “Saying no! to Satan.”

  It was amazing to me that Reverend Bender spoke of Satan with as much conviction as he spoke of God and Jesus Christ. Years of comic strips and comic books had habituated me to Satan—“the Devil”—as a cartoon demon clad in red tights with a scaly tail and a pitchfork.

  Amazing too, to realize that for the seriously religious individual like Reverend Bender “religion” wasn’t just a matter of Sunday morning but a matter of every day, every hour—every minute. God is with us at all times awake and asleep.

  How exhausting this was! I could feel something of the pressure of such faith, a vise tightening about a skull. For even if you ran away to be alone, you would never escape the eye of God. You would never escape being judged wanting.

  It was clear to Reverend Bender that if church attendance was low at Sunday service, this was a sign of God’s displeasure with him for not having worked hard enough to bring more people to Jesus. If there wasn’t much money in the collection basket, this was God’s displeasure also. Was there any shame, any hurt, any catastrophe, that wasn’t a sign of God’s displeasure? You had not only the catastrophe to contend with but also the graver knowledge that the catastrophe was a sign of God’s displeasure with you.

  So Reverend Bender broke down in tears at the pulpit, and caused others to weep as well, as if emotion should be allowed to run wild as a burning bush, no matter that we were all flammable.

  (How different, my irreverent father! Fred Oates would have stared at Reverend Bender in contempt for behaving in a way no man should behave in public or in private.)

  Yet, I was eager to tell people that I belonged to the Methodist church in Pendleton, and that I went to services with Jean Grady. I was eager to tell people that I played the organ at church—in fact, I was the “organist” there. Of course I had never played anything like a pump organ, which is a crude, wheezing instrument compared to the far more rarefied and beautiful pipe organ; when I first began practicing, I had very little idea how to “pump” the organ with my feet to give volume to the notes I was playing on the keyboard, though I more or less figured out the mechanism as I struggled along. Each week I took home the heavy hymnal to practice assiduously—“Onward, Christian Soldiers”—“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—“Rock of Ages”—“The Old Rugged Cross”—along with my (secular) piano études by Czerny and Hanon. These were strangely beautiful hymns, pleas of unabashed yearning and abnegation, suffused with a militant righteousness that could cause the hairs on the nape of your neck to stir—

  Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

  With the cross of Jesus going on before.

  Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;

  Forward into battle see his banners go!

  Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

  With the cross of Jesus going on before.

  There was a wild sort of happiness in playing such a hymn, and hearing the raw, untrained yet jubilant voices of the congregation behind me. Almost, you might think—I believe! I believe all that you believe. I am one of you.

  THE FIRST TIME I’D seen a man cry, I would not easily forget. And now I remember that, at the Methodist prayer meetings, other individuals sometimes cried, though not usually men.

  Vividly I recall a woman—a middle-aged woman with short, bluntly cut red-brown hair—removing her glasses in a paroxysm of weeping. (Because Jesus had entered her heart?) Amid the spirited singing of hymns, and Reverend Bender’s impassioned words, there was the expectation that at any moment the miracle might occur: Jesus Christ might enter one’s heart.

  I’d become anxious that this miracle might happen, and that it would never happen. I’d become resigned, that it would never happen; yet childishly hopeful, that it would. At the same time, I had no idea what it could possibly mean—Jesus will enter your heart.

  Jean Grady and I were too shy to speak of such things to each other. It would have required an excruciating effort for me to have asked my friend what it actually meant that “Jesus had come into her heart”—or indeed, whether “Jesus had come into her heart” at all.

  At home, I could not bring up the subject of God. I could not imagine speaking of God, Jesus Christ, “Satan” in the familiar way in which Reverend Bender spoke of these beings, taking for granted that you knew exactly what he meant, and that what he meant actually existed.

  I could not know at the time, but would realize later, how, for most people, certainly for people like my parents who have not had the benefit of much formal education, it is not an easy matter to speak of abstractions. Acquiring an education means, in part, acquiring a vocabulary in which to speak of such matters in a manner that suggests familiarity—(as an academic philosopher may speak casually and with a presumption of authority of “justice”—“infinity”—“the One”—“being”—“nothingness”—as if these were actual entities that existed, and not rather merely bits of language he has picked up in the course of his education)—if not mastery. In the long-ago world of Millersport, which is to say rural, minimally educated and minimally prosperous America, it would have been astonishing for anyone to speak in such a way; pretentious, if not laughable; you would be met with derision, or a blank uncomprehending stare.

  It should not have been so difficult to ask my parents if they believed in God, or in Jesus Christ, but I never did. My mother would probably have frowned thoughtfully and said Yes, I guess so; my father would probably have laughed and said Hell, no. Neither would have elaborated and the subject would have been quickly changed.

  (My father disliked and distrusted all figures of authority whether politicians, religious leaders, UAW officers. Though I think he admired Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his general attitude toward politics ranged from bemused disgust to vehement disgust and grew more pronounced with the passage of time.)

  My grandmother Blanche Morgenstern, the avid reader among the adults in the family, who read and reread all the biographies, histories, and novels on the shelves of the Lockport Public Library about Abraham Lincoln, held the opinion that all religions are more or less alike—“They tell you how to live, and how to be good. But not everyone needs to be told.”

  It was my grandmother’s conviction that Abraham Lincoln was not only a great man but that Abraham Lincoln was also a very wise man who believed in a non-denominational God. If Lincoln appeared to be a Christian, this was just an appearance; in fact, Lincoln believed in something like a God-principle, not in a “savior.” But my grandmother had no interest in discussing religion otherwise, and so far as we knew she never went to church. (Certainly not a synagogue: there were no synagogues in Lockport, or anywhere near Lockport.)

  Trying to feel the presence of God, that “surrounded” me. Trying to feel Jesus Christ “in my heart.”

  Practicing hymns on our piano at home. Playing the wheezing pump-organ at church.

  If I am a good girl, it will happen to me. Whatever it is, that others feel—God will love me. Jesus will come into my heart.

  AND YET, FOR ALL my effort and my hope, my life as a Methodist came to an abrupt end within a year.

  Bizarrely, as I’d been conscripted by Reverend Bender to play the organ at church, so I was conscripted by Reverend Bender to memorize approximately one hundred verses of the Gospel according to Saint John in a regional competition among young Methodists, to determine who could recite the most Bible verses without error.

  I was not the only young adult in the Pendleton Methodist Church to enter the competition, but I was the only one who performed well enough to be passed on to the next level of competition, and to the next. In the finals, held in a church hall in Batavia, I was named one of three winners, all girls, to be awarded a free week at the Methodist Bible camp at Olcott Beach that summer.

  A week at camp! No one in my family had ever seen a summer camp, let alone gone to one. A (cardboard, but sturdy) suitcase was purchased for me from Sears, which I began to pack at onc
e, weeks beforehand. I had never been away from home except for a night or two at the Lockport City Hospital to have my tonsils and adenoids removed, like many children of my generation.

  Of the miserable week at Bible camp I have only vague memories of acute homesickness and of crying myself to sleep in a musty-smelling bunk bed; more vividly I remember another girl in the cabin to which I was assigned, Nedra Fischer, a girl from Depew, as like myself as if she were a twin, wan and tearful, so stricken with homesickness she could not eat the awful food and finally had to be taken home by her parents, to the envy of the rest of us. Pitched in a desolate scrub-acre miles from Lake Ontario, a squalid nest of weatherworn cabins lacking electricity and indoor plumbing, Bible camp had twice-daily prayer meetings, Bible study hours each afternoon, singing of hymns each evening—activities of stupefying dullness which I remember as if they had happened to another person. I was filled with regret for having failed to bring library books with me, in which I might have taken solace when I had some free time; in my naïve excitement about Bible camp I had not even thought of bringing books other than the Bible my friend Jean had given me.

  Strange that so much about that week at Olcott Beach has faded but the verses of Saint John remain, if but in fragments. As there is a kind of memory in a pianist’s fingers after decades, so too anything that has been memorized in childhood is retained somewhere in the brain, awaiting rediscovery and retrieval. The Gospel according to Saint John remains stirring and incantatory—it is what I could not have identified, at the time, as “beautiful prose” with the power of beautiful music. Especially the opening lines, before the narrative of Jesus Christ begins, seem to have entered my imagination on a deep, primal level exclusive of mere meaning and comprehension—

  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

  The same was in the beginning with God.

  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

  In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

  And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

  There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

  The same came for a witness to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

  He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

  That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

  He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not . . .

  IN THE BEGINNING WAS the Word. And the Word was with God. To be a writer is to understand that the Word is primary, even before meaning; and, whatever is meant by “God,” it is the Word that coexists with God.

  “YOU THINK YOU’RE SO smart.”

  My friend Jean Grady, encouraged by Reverend Bender, had hoped to memorize one hundred verses of the Gospel according to Saint John too, but had failed in her effort, and would never entirely forgive me. We’d studied together for a period of weeks and it was clear from the outset that Jean could not memorize the poetic lines of the Gospel, that became confused in her mouth like snarled string. Abruptly, we were not such good friends though we continued to sit together on the school bus making its lumbering way along country roads in the direction of Lockport, and of course I sat beside Jean at church. (It was touching to us, at least to me, that some in the congregation mistook us as sisters.)

  And now what a shock, that Jean Grady seemed to hate me. You think you’re so smart.

  Or did Jean say, mouth twisted in resentment—Think you’re so goddamned smart.

  How do you respond to such an accusation? How can you respond, seeing such dislike in a friend’s eyes?

  It seemed unfair of Jean to blame me for having succeeded in memorizing the Bible verses, and being chosen as a “winner,” for this had brought luster to Pendleton Methodist Church, and had certainly pleased Reverend Bender and his beaming wife.

  Nor was it true that I thought that I was so smart—others had chosen to depict me in this way, and these others were adults possessed of power. (At North Park Junior High in Lockport, to which we were “bused,” I’d been recognized by my teachers as a student who obviously cared much for reading, and for school; out of the miseries of the one-room schoolhouse on the Tonawanda Creek Road I’d arrived in what was a dazzling city school with not one overworked and harassed teacher for five grades but a number of teachers for each grade, and each teacher specialized in a “subject”—arrived, in the eyes of these teachers, not unlike a missile shot from a cannon. A word for me, in those years, might have been zealous. In every course in the public school there was offered “extra credit” for “extra homework” and not once in my life as a schoolgirl did I ever pass up the possibility of “extra homework”—no more than a starving animal would fail to overeat. It did not escape my school-bus companions like Jean Grady that I’d been singled out for attention, but Jean had not seemed to hold it against me until now. Jean was always the better, because the stronger, badminton player; from now on she would be merciless when we played together, and unrepentant at winning every match.)

  After Bible camp, my interest in the Methodist church quickly waned. I had come too close to Methodists, living with girls of my age who were very unlike myself, and did not seem at all “spiritual”—hardly. Jesus’s admonition to love one’s neighbor as oneself had not seemed to impress itself upon these girls and would prove too great a challenge for me, who was not sure that I could love myself.

  2.

  OF BLEEDING LUNGS MY grandfather John Bush died six months later. Of emphysema related to his longtime work at the steel foundry in Lackawanna, that did not pay its employees well but paid better than work elsewhere including blacksmithing and farming.

  To placate my devastated grandmother, in return for the privilege of being allowed to bury John Bush in the Good Shepherd Catholic Cemetery in Pendleton, my parents promised the Good Shepherd priest that they and their children (Joyce, Fred Jr.) would become members of the parish.

  My father would recall decades later being humbled by the priest, or humiliated—“I had to make out a check right then and there to give the s.o.b.”

  S.o.b., bastard—such language, that grates the ear in middle-class and academic settings, was commonplace in my father’s world where it registers as mild profanity and does not signal extreme hostility.

  Soon, my brother and I were taking catechism lessons from the priest who was called, oddly to our ears, Father O’Malley.

  How strange, this purse-lipped stranger was Father!—a word we never uttered, for our father was Daddy and could not be addressed by any other name, by us.

  Strange too, we were attending not “church services” but “mass” Sunday mornings at 10:00 A.M. in the somber dark-red-brick church in Pendleton.

  It was “low mass” we attended whenever possible. For “high mass” was a longer and more elaborate service. In those days, a recitation by the Catholic priest in Latin, translated in our prayer books into English plain and devoid of romance as a lashless eye.

  What a curious episode this was in the life of my family! I have not ever attempted to explain it to anyone, for there was much that was shameful about it, as well as baffling. My father who disliked any sort of organized religion and who was by temperament skeptical and doubting, forced to bring his young family, and his Hungarian-born stepmother-in-law, to Catholic mass at the country church . . .

  How could Fred Oates bear it! But soon, Daddy joined the church choir, with a hope of improving it; soon, Daddy was asked (by Father O’Malley) to be choir leader. Within a year or two Daddy became the church organist, and no longer sat with his family in our pew as he no longer had to wince at mangled notes on the organ.

  Though I loved my parents, and would not have rebelled against their wishes, I could not help but resent them for bringing me to this new and unwanted church—this “religion.” To force me to take catechism le
ssons like a grade school child. (Q. Who made the world? A. God made the world. Q. What is the purpose of the life of man? A. The purpose of the life of man is to know and love God in this world and to dwell with Him in the next. How I yearned to rebel against these prescribed words, with very different words of my own!) Especially I resented being trapped in a crowded pew between my mother and my heavyset Hungarian-born grandmother who knew little English and certainly no Latin, and who seemed often at mass to have but a very vague idea of what was going on; or, as my father would say bemusedly—What the hell is going on.

  Perversely, though I had ceased to “believe” in the Methodist church teachings, I missed the crude foot-pump organ and my participation in the service. I missed the Protestant hymns that surprised you with their sudden swell of emotion. I missed the much-smaller congregation and my feeling of independence—I’d been a girl of twelve attending church services without her family. I missed the more emotionally engaged worshippers at the Methodist church who could not know, as worshippers at Good Shepherd knew, exactly what their spiritual leader would say as he led each service through its clockwork routine.