Short People (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Joshua Furst

  Please, Jesus, make Mom and Dad feel bad for being so mean. Make them know that I just want them not to go to Hell. Tell them I’m right and it’s bad to covet and it’s even badder to poke fun at me if they really love me which I think they don’t. Cause, otherwise, why do they do things You don’t like that might make it so that they won’t go to Heaven? Make them please be better so I don’t have to be mad at them. Thank You. A-men.

  Throughout the rest of the meal, his parents chat about the chair, what it looks like, where to put it, did she get a deal. Refusing to eat is the only expression of protest Shawn makes. He shoves the food on his plate from one pile to another, building geometric sculptures with it, chopping the meatloaf, potato and broccoli into tiny fragments of fiber.

  His father reaches over him to take a forkful from the pile. “Remember the rule, Shawn. Don’t take more than you’re going to eat. Or else you have to sit here until it’s gone.”

  He suffers the penalty glumly, all the more so because it’s his mother who, as bedtime draws near, takes the plate away, scraping the cold landscape of mush into the garbage disposal and releasing him with a good-night kiss on the cheek.

  The chair arrives at the house a week later. Shawn’s mother loves it so much she decides not to take the plastic off, for fear that without it the fabric will wear thin and pick up stains, turning tawdry within the year.

  To his consternation, Shawn likes the chair as well. Worse, as he enters puberty, urges he didn’t know even existed start crawling inside him like viruses. He knows they’re sins—virtuous thoughts don’t make him feel clammy. Confused and afraid, and mostly ashamed, he carves God’s rules deeper into his brain. He hoards and displays the parts of himself that exemplify his moral fiber. He fidgets and hovers over his good deeds, as if he’s afraid they’re going to break. He scares himself with Scripture. This is the Shawn for the world to see: Shawn the literal interpreter, for whom actions, thoughts and beliefs have palpable, cut-and-dried consequences; Shawn the trooper, who, beacon and map in hand, patrols his life and the lives of everyone else he knows, prodding the Evil out of the kingdom of Good; Shawn the player with action figures, who instead of staging intergalactic battles walks his dolls through the Passion, Crucifixion and Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he’s able to sustain this level of intense devotion to the Christian life, Shawn knows God is walking beside him. But more and more often, God allows the Devil and his minions to intercede. They pluck him off of the gleaming prairie of God’s country and carry him piggyback into dark places where Evil hangs in the air like car exhaust. Shawn breathes it in and becomes someone else. This Shawn steals snacks between meals. This is the Shawn who, at Camp Corinth, lies silent in his bunk, staring at the springs above him, and wonders if the defiant boys boasting about the girls they made out with, the girls whose breasts they touched in the woods, are lying. This is the Shawn who, wishing he knew what a girl’s breast felt like, caresses his nipple until it’s sore and inflamed. This is the Shawn who wishes to know that of which he condemns. The Shawn who, back home in bed, has been touching his thing, trying futilely to make it grow.

  As if reading his mind, Shawn’s mother leaves a book on his bed: Wait . . . Until You Hear This: A Christian Kid’s Guide to Sex. The very first chapter explores the topic of onanism. It can make you crazy; if you do it long enough, you become addicted and unable to think about anything else and then you stop washing and stop getting haircuts and flies and worms and things start growing in your head and you finally stop wearing anything but long trench coats and gloves to cover the hairy warts on your hands, and there’s a 97% chance that if you start out onanizing—it’s also called self-abuse—when you’re young, you’ll become a dirty-magazine reader and a premarital sex offender and start showing your member to people you don’t know on the street and this can escalate to things like rape and murder and serial killing. The book has examples, stories from real people who fell into the world of sex sins before they found Jesus and were born again. Shawn reads it so many times that the pages come unglued.

  Still, late at night in his room, he can’t stop the minions from pouncing on his bed and insisting that just one more time won’t hurt. Put off righteousness till tomorrow, they say, tonight, they have something to show him. They remind him of the part in Wait . . . that describes in scientific terms what happens to you when you onanize. You’re overcome with impure thoughts and your member grows heavy and firm with sex. Once the thoughts have taken complete control of your body and mind and soul, you enter a trance and your member rejects the sex from your being, leaving a gooey white stain on your hand. They remind Shawn that he’s never seen this stain, he’s never felt the sex take hold of his body, that all he’s ever done is yank on his thing until it’s chafed, red and bloated. Shouldn’t he just once find out what he’s missing? He tries to resist them. He protests, “It’s a sin. I don’t believe in sinning.” They laugh at him. They say that it’s a sin because it’s such fun, he’ll see. The stauncher his will, the more conniving the minions become. They open The Way to the Song of Solomon. What are those vineyards in bloom? They ask. Can you imagine them? He can and he does. They wear down his will. Don’t you want to arouse and awaken love? This is the Bible, they remind him, that makes it okay. Can’t you see those two breasts like fawns? Come, browse among the lilies. He reaches down and his beloved— whoever she is—dances blurry and half-formed in the olive grove of his imagination. He lets her kiss him and massage him and other things that get hazy because he’s not sure what they are. He lets himself study the way his thing changes shape. It grows and shrinks and grows and shrinks. Later, when he’s exhausted and all that’s come out are clear little teardrops that thread like corn syrup on his finger when he touches them, he wonders if he made the stain. He flips through Wait . . . in search of the description. He knows he’s failed—in God’s eyes and Satan’s—because he’s sinned, but not even correctly, the wrong stuff came out, he’s still doing it wrong. And he lies awake, feeling unclean and inhuman, wishing he could die instead of sinning like this. Wondering what God does to sex addicts like him. Terrified of the rapist serial killer he will become when he grows up. Promising God yet again that if He forgives him, just this one more time, it will never happen again. That’s lying, too. It gets so bad that one night—a night when he is actually able to resist, though in order to do so, he has to make a rule that his hands stay above the covers—he wakes up with teardrops all over his underwear.

  Convinced that if he doesn’t change his ways soon, his chances at a conversation with Jesus—forget getting into Heaven—will be lost forever, Shawn reads the Christian comic books from Shepherd’s House and listens to Small One and The Kids’ Praise Album and the whole Monarch collection of children’s records that teach the Fruits of the Spirit and the Ten Commandments and the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse. He asks himself, about once every minute, What Would Jesus Do, though with no word from the Man Himself, he never comes up with an answer. He tells himself it’s not too late, that if he does everything so right that he becomes the rightest person on Earth, God might still catch him in the floodlight He uses to peer into people’s souls and say to Himself, “Gosh, that boy, Shawn Casper, he’s really something. Look at him, Saint Peter. Moses, come see this. He’s only in fourth grade and he’s already the best Christian ever. You don’t see him? Right there. The one with the halo. I’m shining My light on him. It tickles Me all over when I see a kid like that.”

  But Shawn knows he’s no longer a kid like that.

  On Wednesdays, the Casper family’s busy day, when Shawn’s mother and father both go straight from work to their evening meetings—he’s on the church council, she’s in the choir—Shawn rides his bike home from school to the house he must inhabit until nearly bedtime, long after dark, alone. He tries to remember that God will protect him, but each Wednesday as he pedals slowly home, he remembers the Wednesday last week, when he hid in the hall closet, or two weeks ago, when he cowered
in the shower staring at his hands, or the one before that, when he curled in a ball beneath the covers of his parents’ bed and cried. He remembers all the Wednesdays since his parents stopped hiring sitters last year, each one so much like the others—him shivering, shaking, afraid of he knows not what. Each new Wednesday picks up where the last one left off. The minions just keep getting stronger.

  Please Jesus, please let me get through this hump day without doing anything to make You mad at me. I promise I won’t watch the TV shows Mom and Dad don’t like me to watch. I won’t turn the radio to the bad stations. If You please help me, I won’t do anything wrong. Let me not have the bad thoughts that I sometimes have. Let me pass through the darkness and into the light. And, Jesus, can You let me not be scared, never again? Thank You, Jesus. A-men.

  This Wednesday, the minions are especially active. And worse, Shawn suspects his father of conspiring with them. Last night, even though he gave up smoking for Lent and promised this time it would be for good, Shawn saw him sneak a cigarette out in the garage. How could he do this? It’s horrible! Not only does smoking disappoint God, but to make a promise and then break it is basically the same as lying. It’s a big sin, and Shawn’s father didn’t seem apologetic or remorseful at all; he was defiant and edgy, seemingly more scared of disappointing Shawn’s mother than of being condemned by God. If Shawn had caught his mother sinning, he would’ve lectured her on right and wrong and God’s plan for her life, but his father’s a stern man, a Promise Keeper; challenging him leads to extra chores, raking the lawn again even though there aren’t any leaves left, washing the car with a toothbrush. At bedtime, Shawn prayed for the strength to calm down, but this morning he was even more upset. He tiptoed into his parents’ room while his father was in the shower and his mother was making breakfast and dug around for his father’s cigarettes. They were in the sock drawer, barely even hidden—a soft new green pack, only two smoked. Shawn took them out one at a time and destroyed them. Then, regret and panic burning on his skin, he shoved as much of the evidence as possible back through the hole at the top of the wrapper and returned it to its hiding place. Sweeping the loose tobacco into his hand, Shawn ran to the half-bath by the laundry room, where, as his father yelped at the suddenly ice-cold water, he flushed it down the toilet.

  The worst of it, though, was that next to the cigarettes in the drawer Shawn found a box of condoms. He knew what they were, but never having seen one up close, he stole a packet for future examination. He’s been asking God for forgiveness all day, two, three, four times an hour and he plans to confess as soon as he can and be punished and start over, but what good will it do? He’ll never be an extra-good Christian. The evil is creeping around in his body.

  He sits in the new chair now, gazing out the picture window. He does this every Wednesday because his mother’s not there to tell him the chair’s too expensive and guests-only for him to crud up and also because there’s some power in the sky, something invisible, something directly connected to his fear. The ritual does nothing to calm him down, but he is compelled to go through with it anyway, to watch the sun disappear and the streaky red and purple clouds change shape and hue, all the while monitoring the movements of his stomach muscles. They contract, squeezing out his goodness just like the sky does the sun.

  The poplars and the cars, even the contents of the living room—his own skin—lose their color. The world goes black and white, a million shades of gray. He doesn’t turn the light on. To do so would mean to move and he must remain very still. Something might see him and catch him if he moves. He won’t even scratch his cheek; when it itches, he grimaces, clenches his eyes shut, works his mouth like he’s chewing cud, anything to keep his hands frozen beneath his thighs.

  Then, when he can’t stand it one second longer he jumps up, his arms outstretched, ready to flail. Light from the streetlamp in front of the house slices a jagged triangle into the room; it ghosts at the edges and quivers as if it’s afraid. He peers at the fire poker, the cd rack, the plants on their stands, the little things that move in the dark, slight vibrations when he stares straight at them, but when he’s not looking, huge jerky shifts in the corner of his eye that halt abruptly as he tries to catch them.

  Did God send the word down to Hell, “Hey, Satan, you know Shawn? Shawn Casper? He’s done it again, and I’m getting fed up. This time he not only sat in the chair, he vandalized his father’s cigarettes and stole a condom. He’s a bad boy. He knows it. There’s no excuse. Do you want him? He’s kind of bony, but once you’ve got him, you can give him Gluttony, butter him up. He’ll be nice and juicy in no time.” Shawn dashes from room to room, pounding buttons and flicking switches. He taps the two lamps in the living room one, two, three times each, to their brightest brilliance. Even the bare bulbs in the basement have to be burning. He jumps, sometimes over and over, for the cords.

  The whole house ablaze, he loops back to the bathroom and begins washing himself. The water steams as he thrusts his hands in. Whimpering, he holds them there until his skin goes numb. He scrubs with the antiseptic soft soap, with the lava soap, with the pumice stone his father uses on his feet. He rummages under the sink until he finds the can of petroleum hand gunk, scoops up half of it, and twists each finger until the joints ache. When the hot water begins to run out, he pumps some more soft soap into his palms and washes away the germs from the other soaps. He studies his face in the mirror and wishes he could see a good boy there.

  He rushes to the kitchen and knocks the scrubbing powders and spray bottles and sponges and boxes of soap-caked steel wool under the sink around in search of cleaning supplies. He clutches the Windex and, banging his head on the plumbing, spins out of the cupboard. Yanking, he pulls three, four, five yards of paper towel off the roll. He runs to the new chair and touches it for the absolute last time, then he wipes all his previous touches away.

  If only he could burn the book the minions tempt him with, but it’s the Bible, and even if his intentions are good, it’s the word of God. God wrote it. Better to continue cleaning, clean away all the oily fingerprints of the bad boy he’s been up to now. He’ll start where he is, wash the windows, the end tables, the lamps—that’s tricky because when he touches them, they turn off. He has to dart in, pat, retreat, pat, retreat, pat, and there’s light again. Find the next target and hit it three times. Daubing in inches until the whole lamp has been wiped clean. Every cd case and every cd, the TV set, the stereo, the whole entertainment center, even the TV Guides wedged in the cracks. He pulls the cushions off the couch and scoops out the rotting mints and cat-food crumbs and the lost Yahtzee dice, the paper clips and plastic half-inch guns. He cleans all four remote controls and the coffee table his father made during the year he tried carpentry. On to the fireplace. He cleans the poker, the prongs, the shovel. He cleans the rack that holds them. He scrubs the stone lip that juts out from the hearth. He scrubs the six logs waiting nearby for the night when they’ll be ignited. The hearth itself, with its four inches of soot and its iron bars caked in spongy black gunk, with its dark chimney chute and the sharp tin sheet that bangs when you close it, is too scary to touch. What a great place for the minions to hide. He skips it, moves on to the mantel.

  The crèche and the Jesse Tree have been replaced by a photo of the family, casually dressed but posed stiffly, and a decorative box his mother bought last year at Kmart. The one thing that stays all year long is the cross Shawn made out of burned wooden matches a few years ago, back when goodness came easy, in Sunday school. As he sprays and washes the cross, the matches begin to fall out like hair; the whole stupid thing breaks apart in his hands. While he cleans the photo, Windex creeps under the glass and attacks his family. He has better luck with the wooden box, scrubbing its inlaid surface and picking at the gunk lodged between the tiles—he has better luck, that is, until he opens it.

  Inside the box, Shawn finds a zip-lock bag, and inside the bag is an inch-deep layer of crushed, dried leaves—at first Shawn thinks it’s oreg
ano, but it’s clumpier, with seeds and stalks—and an unlabeled bottle with a dropper cap. Squeezing some liquid into the dropper, he notes its brown color, its sickly sweet smell, like molasses or medicine. Drugs.

  Please, Jesus, please, please, make something bad happen to Mom and Dad so I can be orphaned and sent somewhere else. And make the place you send me be a good place with good Christian role models. Or at least just please, take me far away from the bad things here. What did I do, Jesus, that made You do this? Why did You make me have drug-addict parents? Please, Jesus, talk to me just once, just please. Then You never have to talk to me ever again. Cause I’m really a good boy, Jesus, and I tried to get born again and I tried to do everything You want me to and it’s not my fault that Mom and Dad are like they are. How come You won’t ever talk to me and comfort me like the Bible says You will? I want to talk to You more than anybody has ever wanted to talk to You in the history of the world. Just this one time, please, will You do what I ask You to? Please? Please, Please, Please?

  Splayed on the floor, the drugs spread out in front of him, Shawn bawls. His thoughts coalesce into this single word— Please—repeated and ceaselessly repeated. No response booms from on high, and as the seconds tumble and slow into minutes, as the minutes stagnate and Shawn wallows in them, lukewarm and numb, his mind wanders. Silence—Please—that’s what God is. God is—Please—this lack at the center of things. The nothing that—Please—defines everything else as real. Please . . . Please . . . Please. The thought that he will wait forever without hearing one word from Jesus flits through Shawn’s mind; it squirms away before he understands it, replaced by an empty awareness of himself, sitting cross-legged on the floor, then lying flat on his stomach, alone. But being alone is as meaningless to him as everything else now. He no longer cries. The ringing in his ears is self-created and it’s the only thing that breaks the silence.