Beauty of the Broken

by Tawni Waters

  Church night. As if this day could get any worse.

  • • •

  The sun is just starting to sink low over the hills when we enter the little white church we’ve gone to for forever. Momma and Daddy got married here, but of course I wasn’t there for that. Several hundred of Barnaby’s residents attend, though attendance on Tuesdays is a lot lower than on Sundays. Sometimes Reverend Winchell gives sermons about not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. Most people stay home on Tuesdays. But not us.

  Reverend Winchell is at the door, shaking hands and smiling, wearing that same ugly striped suit he wears every time he preaches. Daddy leads us to the pew where we always sit, third row back, out of the “splash zone,” as Daddy likes to joke. Reverend Winchell has a tendency to spit when he gets riled up, which is often. We file into our seats, Daddy first, then Momma, then me, then Iggy.

  “My collar itches,” Iggy complains.

  “Hush, Iggy!” Daddy snaps.

  “Hush, Iggy,” I whisper. “You don’t wanna make Daddy mad.”

  Thankfully, the choir starts to sing, distracting Iggy. Iggy loves the church songs, and so do I. “I’ll fly away, oh glory. I’ll fly away!” Me and Iggy belt it out, big grins on our faces.

  When the song is over, Reverend Winchell, puffing and red, heads for the pulpit, like the walk to the front of the church is killing him. He takes his place and starts in on some long-winded prayer that I don’t hear. I bow my head while he’s talking, but I don’t close my eyes. Instead I study my hands and the chipped, dirty nails. The dry patches on my knuckles. The nicks I have from whittling wood sculptures. Then Reverend Winchell launches into his sermon.

  “New Orleans,” he says, and lets the words just hang there. Some lady behind me says, “Ummm hmmm,” in a meaningful way, like she knows what’s coming. Reverend Winchell explains (for those of us who have been living under rocks) that what happened in New Orleans was that a hurricane wiped it out, and now it is just bones stripped bare, a skeleton of sin. He says it’s Sodom and Gomorrah all over again, filled up with dykes and fairies and faggots. While I hate Reverend Winchell, I appreciate his alliteration. I’m addicted to poetry. Sometimes I memorize it just for fun. I love that language can sound so musical even when the words are so mean.

  The only pretty thing about the church is the stained glass window, which sits just over the pulpit. A crying Mary Magdalene kisses the feet of Jesus. You’d never think tears could be so pretty, but in that picture they are. It’s like Jesus is wearing diamonds on his toes. He looks at her, smiling softly, as if he loves her. There are angels all around, little, fat ones, not the fierce, fiery ones I hear about in Sunday school. The angels look mostly sad and some of them, bored. Seems to me angels—real angels—would never be bored with someone else’s pain.

  When Reverend Winchell starts talking about abominations, my mind slips away into the scene in the colored glass. If I could, I’d kiss Jesus’s feet with Mary. Reverend Winchell once said she kissed his feet because she was anointing them for burial, and I feel sorry for Mary, knowing those beautiful feet were gonna get holes in them soon.

  Studying her soft, brown eyes, I wish I could tell Mary the rest of the story. “It’s okay,” I’d say. “He’ll get nailed to a cross, but then he’ll be back.” I wouldn’t tell her the part about folks like Reverend Winchell turning Jesus into a reason to hate and kill people. I wonder, looking at the Jesus in that window, how he has anything to do with the hateful hypocrites who go around wearing his cross on their necks. They’re so mean. He looks so gentle. Why’s this world gotta put nails in everything that’s beautiful? Why’s the ugly gotta take all the pretty and swallow it whole?

  “God hates homosexuals!” Reverend Winchell shouts. He smiles, like it is good news. Little bits of saliva spray in every direction when he says it, and my daddy shouts, “Amen!” and slaps his knee.

  I look back up at Jesus, thinking I’d like to introduce myself to him, explain my side of the story, let him know how nice I am. I can’t imagine those gentle eyes looking at me with anything but love, no matter what Reverend Winchell says.

  “Abominations!” Reverend Winchell says, pounding the pulpit, and again Daddy shouts “amen,” along with fifty other people. Old Mrs. Blackwell gets up in the corner and does a little dance, waving her lace handkerchief the way she always does when the spirit moves her.

  The pew is digging into my back. Reverend Winchell opens his Bible. “Who brought their Bible?” he shouts. Reverend Winchell can’t just talk. He always has to shout. Some people get ear damage from going to rock concerts, but I’m the lucky girl who is going to go deaf from listening to this old, fat fart with his slick hair, shouting about “the damned.” Reverend Winchell waves his Bible in the air enthusiastically. “What, you didn’t bring your Bibles to church? That’s like showing up to army training camp without your gun!” His reprimand complete, Reverend Winchell starts in. With every breath he takes, his fat belly strains under his shirt. I watch the buttons, hoping one will pop. Now that would be entertainment.

  “This story is about a vipers’ nest called Sodom and Gomorrah. It was a den of depravity. A sanctuary for sinners.” Again his alliteration isn’t lost on me, but my heart’s pounding now. I’m starting to sweat. I feel like I’m going to be marched up to a bonfire and burned at the stake. Barnaby hasn’t had any witch hunts lately, but I wouldn’t put it past them.

  He pauses for effect, letting his beady eyes sweep the room. “And what kind of sin was it?” he asks. Apparently it’s not a rhetorical question, because he waits for an answer.

  Finally someone in the back calls out. “It was a town full of faggots and dykes!”

  And Reverend Winchell points a fat, quivering finger at the back row. “Yes! A town full of deviants overtaken by the demon of lust—so much so that when the angels came to their town, all the people could think about was raping them.”

  I examine the angels in the stained glass, wondering why anyone would want to rape them. They look like those fat, plastic dolls you can buy at Walmart, only with wings. The angels from Reverend Winchell’s story must have been the tall, sexy, fiery ones we learned about in Sunday school.

  Reverend Winchell continues. “Every man and woman and child in Sodom and Gomorrah had been infected with the disease of sin. All, save one. A righteous man named Lot.”

  The preacher goes on to say how Lot and his whole family were actually good, and I have to wonder why he used the phrase “all, save one,” when clearly Lot had quite a few people in his family, which is more than one. But in the Bible only the people with manhoods (that’s what Momma calls boy parts) win the prizes. Girls don’t count, except when they eat apples and screw paradise up for everyone. That much I learned a long, long time ago.

  “So Lot took the angels in and fed them, as we should—as we would—were angels to come to our town,” Reverend Winchell says. Sweat pours down his fat face, and he mops it away with the yellowed handkerchief he keeps in his pocket. “But these homosexuals, they go to Lot’s door, and they pound on it.” Reverend Winchell pounds his microphone against the pulpit twice, and the noise is so loud I jump.

  I look up at Jesus’s beautiful feet, think about the two nails being driven in. Bang. Bang.

  “Lot tries to cut a deal with them. He says, ‘Look, my daughters are beautiful virgins. Do whatever you want with them. Spare the angels.’ Now, any normal man would be enticed by this offer.” Reverend Winchell gives a sneaky smile, and some of the men in the church make hooting noises. “But these deviants are not men, never mind the color of their blood. They are cancer.”

  I stare again at the window, at the crying Mary with her long, shiny hair. Suddenly she reminds me of Xylia. I wonder why raping women is any better than raping angels, but it must be, because the reverend says so. Lot is a good man, and here he is, offering his daughters to save the angels. I wonder if my daddy would offer me up to rapists if it came
down to me or the angels. I don’t think so. Even he couldn’t be that bad. But Lot is supposed to be good.

  This is what the Bible stories do to me: get me all mixed up in my head, because what seems really wrong is supposed to be good, and what seems right is wrong. The confusion hurts me inside. Why is Lot good, and I’m bad, even though I’d never let anyone get raped? I’m so busy trying to figure this out that I miss what Reverend Winchell has to say. When I tune back in, fire and brimstone are raining down on Sodom and Gomorrah, and the one good man, Lot, (and his good family that doesn’t count) are running as fast as they can out of town.

  “God tells them not to look back!” Reverend Winchell shouts. “But Lot’s wife is weak willed, as women are, and she does the unthinkable. She has pity on the objects of God’s wrath and looks back. This, my brothers and sisters, is a sin just as vile as sodomy. And for this sin, Lot’s wife is punished along with the homosexuals. She is turned into a pillar of salt. And the city burns. And the children scream. And the deviants die in their fiery beds, finally understanding, too late, the ways of the good Lord.

  “Do not sin, as Lot’s wife did. Do not pity them. When you see the news footage of devastation and destruction, fall to your knees and thank God for removing a pocket of disease from our planet. Let us pray.”

  I close my eyes, hoping not to cry. I try to imagine Jesus from the window looking at me with love, but instead I see Xylia’s eyes. My sinful thoughts make me sure Reverend Winchell is right about me, and after that all I can see is fire raining down on me in my bed. All I can think is I deserve whatever hell I’ve got coming.

  • • •

  We drive home, all squished together in the cab of Daddy’s truck, and I look out the window, watching Barnaby pass me by. I make myself stop thinking about eternal punishment and lose myself instead in the familiar landscape around me. We drive by the boarded-up Friendly Store, where Momma used to buy her groceries until the new supermarket moved in and shut it down. Miss Mattie, who used to run the Friendly Store, works at the supermarket as a checker now. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” she always says, shrugging. I admire her spunk.

  Down the road is the new McDonald’s and the ancient Dairy Queen, which has a big sign advertising that they have live rattlesnakes. But the sign is faded and peeling, and there haven’t been rattlesnakes at the Dairy Queen for a good ten years.

  Then comes the town’s one bar. Al’s Roadhouse. The parking lot is filled to bursting, and I figure Reverend Winchell will notice too and give some sermon on Sunday about drunkards who value their sin more than God. Daddy spends enough nights at Al’s for me to agree with Reverend Winchell on this particular subject. Whiskey is the devil’s brew, and if you don’t believe me, just look at my brother’s broken brain.

  Town turns to farmhouses and horses and cactus, and in the distance I see the beautiful, black outline of the mountains, which somehow feel sacred to me, even though Reverend Winchell says it’s a sin to worship the creation and not the creator. All the farms are surrounded by barbed wire, and I wonder about the rest of the world beyond these barbed-wire fences, those majestic mountains. I wonder about places where fairies and faggots and deviant dykes live, where the roads are mostly asphalt instead of dirt, and cows are never seen.

  I’d like to see all that someday. I’d like to cut through the wires, scale the mountains, go somewhere where there are other people like me. Hell, I’d run off to New Orleans today, hurricane or no hurricane, if only it weren’t for Iggy. But I know I can’t go. I can’t leave my broken brother, who sits next to me picking his nose, humming “I’ll Fly Away.”

  • • •

  The stairs are cold, and my room is so icy dark, I almost knock over the lamp in my hurry to switch on the bulb.

  The ghosts are out tonight. I thought they went away when I grew up and stopped believing in monsters, but I can feel them hovering, hissing, slipping through my skin and into the marrow of my bones, filling me with fear. I don’t take off my clothes. I don’t want the ghosts to see me naked and eat my flesh, leaving me lying there on my quilted bed, nothing but a pool of blood. So I leap under my blankets and wait to hear the reassuring pound-stomp of Iggy’s boots on the stairs.

  I consider going back down and getting a glass of orange juice, but I hear Daddy’s voice get loud, and even though it doesn’t sound mad, I don’t want to take the chance. I’m more scared of him than the ghosts, so I stay still and wait for Iggy. At last I hear his footsteps, and even though he’s a retard now, with him is the one place I feel safe. As he passes by my room, I call out his name. Iggy’s face peeks around the corner and chases the ghosts away.

  “I’m scared, Iggy. Sleep on my floor.”

  He shrugs and smiles. When he disappears from my doorway, I feel the ghosts all over again. But he comes back quick, carrying an armload of blankets and his favorite pillow, the yellow one Momma made him when he was a first grader. He doesn’t ask me why I’m scared, and I’m grateful for that. He throws the bedding on the floor and switches off the lamp.

  “Did you have a good day at school?” I ask.

  “Good as any,” he says, copying the way Daddy answers when Momma asks him how his day was. Iggy’s voice is sleepy.

  “Missy Larington busted her kneecap,” I say. He doesn’t answer.

  If you’ve ever been visited by ghosts, then you know that talking keeps them away, so I try again. “Mr. Farley gave us this stupid lecture about worms today.” No answer. “Can you imagine that? Thinking we’d care about worms?” No answer again. “You asleep, Iggy?”

  I judge from the quiet that he is asleep. I lie there silently, staring up into blackness so thick, it hurts my eyes. Finally I reach out and touch Iggy’s back, feeling his shoulders rise and fall with his slow, steady breathing. In the darkness Iggy’s light still chases the ghosts away. My bones warm up, and my heartbeat slows. Momma and Daddy go to bed. There’s no grunting tonight. I’m grateful for that. When Iggy starts to snore, I bury my fingers in his hair.

  “I love you, Iggy,” I whisper, and I do, because if it weren’t for him, the ghosts would’ve eaten me alive on nights like tonight. I close my eyes and think about Xylia, about her pretty lips and her sparkling sandals.

  “Iggy,” I whisper, so quiet that he couldn’t hear me even if he was awake. “I got a secret to tell you. Remember what you said on the bus today?”

  He doesn’t answer, so I decide to go ahead.

  “I think you were right.” Outside, a barn owl hoots and the corn plants whoosh in the wind. “Iggy, I think I’m an abomination.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THERE’S A NEW FRESHMAN NAMED Henry at our school. He’s an Indian who moved from the reservation. His father came here to work at the prison, not as a guard, but as a janitor. Henry has no mother. No one knows why for sure. Some people say she drowned herself when he was little, right after his baby brother drowned in the tub. But I don’t know if that’s true. People talk a lot, and only half of it has any basis in reality.

  What I do know is that Henry has long braids, black and shiny like licorice whips. Daddy said Henry’s father fought the school for Henry’s right to keep his braids, and they agreed because they needed his tuition money. That pissed Daddy off so bad, he drank all night and punched out a window. “It’s a disgrace for a man to have long hair!” he bellowed. “It says right there in the first Corinthians. They call that place a Christian school? The little fucker probably worships rocks and trees and wolves and shit.”

  Daddy isn’t alone in his convictions. All the boys at school hate Henry. Especially Elijah Winchell. I heard that in the bathrooms, they shove him up against the wall and call him gay. Also, people say he wears tighty-whities, which is weird because, apparently, most boys wear boxers these days. Not that I’d know from personal experience, but everyone seems to agree on it.

  It makes me mad the way people treat Henry. Most days he eats his lunch alone, staring down at his ugly pile of white-brown mashed
potatoes. If I ever saw people call him names, I’d probably punch them, but I’m never in the boys’ bathroom.

  Today, as always, Henry is by himself in the corner of the lunch room. I watch him, wondering why his brown shirt has white spots all over it. He looks sad, but also smart. His thick glasses have black rims, and beneath the lenses, his small eyes shine deep brown.

  I wonder if he’s really gay. It makes me happy to think he might be, that maybe I’m not alone. It’s not like I’m the most popular kid in school either. Maybe I should make a friend. So I pick up my green tray, with my corn dog, French fries, and banana pudding, and I walk to Henry.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I ask.

  He looks stunned. “Um, yes, yes,” he says, and he moves aside his books. “Of course. Sit.”

  He talks funny, more slowly and carefully than most teenagers I know. “I’m Mara,” I say, and I stick out my hand.

  He shakes my hand, but his grip is loose, like he isn’t too sure about me yet. No wonder. He probably thinks I’m gonna start saying “how” and calling him “chief” any second now. That’s what most of the kids do. “I’m Henry,” he replies. “Henry Begay.”

  Begay. Poor kid. As if those braids weren’t bad enough.

  He must know what I’m thinking because he says, “It’s a pretty normal last name on the reservation.” He says it defensively, like I’ve made an accusation.

  I shrug. “I didn’t say anything. And hey, I mean, even if you were gay, I wouldn’t care.” I try to sound casual as I say it, but I wait for his answer, my heart pounding. I set my tray down and sit beside him.

  “Well, I’m not,” he says.

  I try not to look disappointed. “That’s cool.”

  We sit there moving our pudding around with our spoons until finally I feel like I gotta say something. “So, why does your shirt have white spots?” Great opening line, I think. But he doesn’t seem offended.

  “My dad bleaches me,” he says.