Jesus Saves

by Darcey Steinke

  Pentecostals believed that the end time was near and Ginger believed it too. She heard the universe was expanding and this was why time went forward, but she'd heard too that at some point the universe would begin to contract and then time would start backward. The point of change would be some kind of apocalypse, and then all of history would rewind itself like a video. Jesus had the power to make time go backward, like when he raised Lazarus from the dead. This was what was meant by risen from the dead. The dead would get their flesh back and be born again out of their coffins and lie in the hospital and then they'd open their eyes and their hearts would start and they'd get better and go home and live all the way down until they were children and then little babies and then they'd go back inside their mothers and melt to nothing and this would go on and on until all of history played itself backward, until people lived in caves again, until they evolved back into apes and then to fish and then tiny amoebae, until everything was in that electrified mud puddle and the lightning would take back its kiss of life and the earth would explode and time would be no more.

  Her father was talking in his sleep again, the words muzzy. His mattress heaved sideways like an imbalanced boat and she heard his feet land solidly on the floor and the springs uncoil as he stood. She snubbed the cigarette out against the bed frame, waved her hand to dissipate the smoke, then slid down into the sleeping bag, pressed her head against the pillow and pretended to sleep. She didn't want to talk about God. It was always so humiliating. His footsteps were frantic and reckless in the hall; then the basement door pulled open and his surplice billowed down the stairs. Had he slept in his church robes? But once her eyes adjusted, she saw it was just a pile of dirty sheets draped down the steps and a cold draft caught in the stairwell, shifting and rattling the door on its hinges. He was still in bed, restlessly rolling sideways, yelling out, “Her spilled blood will pass for moonlight.”

  Amen, Ginger thought, crucify the flesh. She reached out from under the flannel and grabbed the lighter, pushed her thumb against the flint; a tiny sunset appeared, blue-green core, the arch of transparent orange and creamy wavering light on top. She brought that flame so close to her eye she felt its moisture heat up and evaporate. Jesus come down, she prayed, and save us from our miserable selves.

  Ginger's T-shirt twisted around her sweaty stomach and blood swelled against her temple. She opened her eyes. In the dream she'd approached the deer in the woods, slowly, with her hand outstretched, like when she was little and wanted to get close to rabbits or birds. The deer reached out its front leg; the black hoof curving around her fingers like soft tar.

  Her father was talking upstairs, practicing his sermon, trying to convert the medicine cabinet. It wasn't eight yet, but he'd been up for hours and she'd heard his footfalls creeping around the kitchen as he had his long meditative breakfast of black coffee and buttered toast. Sometimes he'd sneak cigarettes and play his jazz records, the volume just barely audible.

  Last night's red wine pickled her mouth and she felt fragile. Her breasts were sore and there was that mysterious feeling in her lower stomach. But the blood and the horrible cramps were still a week away. Sometimes they got so bad she felt like she was fighting an invisible adversary, one that punched her in the stomach and then reached up into her gut.

  It was Sunday morning. The air told her, as did the light. Every object looked hollow and inconsequential. Today the material world was little comfort and she felt anxiety rise in her chest until she had to muffle a cough. She couldn't decipher his words, but she listened to his voice rise and fall theatrically, tried to judge if he had butterflies in his stomach. “It never gets any easier,” he'd say to her if she caught him coming out of the bathroom, the blood drained from his face, nervousness widening his pupils.

  She listened to him walk down the carpeted hallway, back into the kitchen, where he paused to put on his long black coat, pick up his Oxford English Bible with the sermon pressed inside, and leave the house through the kitchen door. He started the car, but it wasn't until Ginger heard him back up and accelerate down the road that she threw off the sleeping bag, pulled up her jeans, and climbed the dark stairwell into the light of the house.

  His breakfast dishes sat in the sink and she washed them, gazing out the window through the gray woods to the cars, blurs of metallic color rushed by on the highway. She got a cup of burnt coffee and sat in the family room, used the remote to turn on the TV. There was a fat little man with a lacquered hairpiece saying Be healed on one station and the technicolor Bible story of the ten commandments on another. She looked at the religious paintings behind her. One showed a dank and rotting woods but as you followed the trunks up, the sick leaves turned to Easter lilies and the light was pale and blue at the top. The other was of a little ark, floating on a dark and dangerous river. On a marble shelf below was the soapstone bust of an African woman a missionary had given to her mother.

  She rose in a languid way, like a person morally oppressed by heat, and staggered down the hall to her father's room, layover his unmade bed, then opened his closet. Most of his clothes were black, short- and long-sleeved minister shirts and plain black pants. In the drawers were T-shirts, some with worn logos from former church softball teams, his white underwear, and endless pairs of mismatched black socks. In the top drawer was a leather box, and she took it to the bed and opened it. Inside were horsehide cufflinks from when he was a boy and the Celtic cross her mother gave him for a wedding present, a tiny cross lapel pin he wore in the hospital, and a yellowed newspaper clipping from his ordination, pennies, paper clips, and one German coin.

  She closed the box, careful to return everything to its original place, then walked across the hall to her old room and flung herself onto the bed. The room was painted pale peach and there was a pressed-wood chest and desk, both painted white, and a pink rug in a hue her mother called salmon. While she was sick her mother slept here and the smell of ammonia clung to the curtains. At the very end her mother became sweet like a baby, blank-eyed, talking gibberish. After morphine, her lids drooped and she'd sleep. But an hour later she'd arch her back and scream until the nurse had to strap her in a white muslin jacket with metal hooks that held her to the bed frame.

  At first her father sat at her mother's side, held her hand, sometimes touching her flushed cheek, the edges of his mouth turned down with sympathy and his eyes glassy and red. He'd nod his head, agreeing with everything she said, about how unfair life was, how it didn't seem to make any sense. Sometimes he'd say something about the mysteries of God's Will, about cultivating strong faith, and her mother would get angry and ask him to leave the room, say she didn't like to hear him talk nonsense. Near the end, her eyes grew wild and desperate; she'd called him in to pray, but she wouldn't hold his hand, kept insisting that he grasp the hand of Ginger's old teddy bear. He'd finally relented and bowed his head, his body brittle with embarrassment. Her mother didn't believe in God anymore and she just laughed. After that, he rarely came into the room, just hovered at the doorway, asking the nurse if she needed anything.

  Ginger opened the closet and took down the shoe box from the top shelf that held all of the sympathy cards they received when her mother died. Most had little animals on them, blue birds and bunnies’ or a Jesus in soft focus looking wise and demure. One woman wrote in a shaky cursive script that God needed her mother in heaven, that he'd looked down from the clouds, seen her suffering, and decided she'd be better off with him. She took a skirt from a hanger and pulled it up around her waist, fastened the button. The floral skirt was the one piece of her mother's clothing she'd kept and though she knew the people at the church thought she was crazy, she wore it there almost every week.

  She needed to hurry; if she wanted to get to church before the sermon, she'd have to start walking now. It was late enough to walk along the highway in peace, without members stopping to ask if she needed a ride.

  * * *

  The hymn swelled, one of the old ones, its melody ponderous and Ger
manic. The usher pressed a bulletin into her hand and she slid into the last pew, a position saved for latecomers like herself. She was lucky. There weren't many typos in the bulletin this week. In the announcements that counted—the special thank you to Herb Clayton for making and donating the guest-book stand in the narthex, and the notice for the youth group dinner featuring com dogs, and the Martin Luther movie Wednesday night—everything was spelled correctly. She'd seen that movie a hundred times, always admiring Martin's short earnest hair-do and the part when rain blew in the window and he fainted because he was so afraid of God. The altar flowers, white carnations, yellow mums, red gladiola in a pulp paper vase, were given by Mr. Mulhoffer in memory of his beloved mother, the legendary Eva Mulhoffer, whose sauerbraten was as important to the history of the church as the founding ministers. It was Mulhoffer who put up the money for this new church. He argued in congregational meetings that the downtown area was dead, filled with drug addicts and petty criminals and that the future of the church was in the suburbs, where his pressed-wood furniture factory was located, down the highway, not far from the interstate entrance. He'd made a fortune in cheap colonial bedroom sets, Formica dinettes, couches that looked like overweight lazy-boy recliners. It was junky stuff, but Mr. Mulhoffer was not an unappealing man. He wore his white hair short and his pants pulled up over his big belly, and he was charming and friendly to everyone. But Ginger didn't like him because he believed unequivocally that anything new was better than anything old. His wife shared her husband's fanatical love of the new. Every Saturday she came by the church to urge Ginger's father to wear the new vestments, the minimal alb and the thin red stole with the machine-embroidered Alpha and Omega. Her father told Ginger that in the new vestments he felt like an alien in a bad sci-fi movie.

  She watched him sitting on the wood slab suspended from the white brick wall, jotting down notes on the pages of his sermon. He looked anachronistic in his silk-lined robe, the cuffs edged with ornate lace; these vestments looked better in the old stone church, with the detailed cherry-wood altar and the gold glass lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

  The organist pressed hard on the crescendo shoe and the congregation bellowed.

  And though they take our life / goods, honor, children, wife / yet is their profit small / these things shall vanish all / the city of God remaineth.

  The lights dimmed for the sermon. The stained-glass windows cast red, yellow, and lime green auras over members sitting at the edge of the pews. She'd never get used to the white brick walls and geometric stained-glass windows of the new church. Her father told her the building was modeled after some modern church in France. The original probably had an exotic feel, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern, but this replica, with its track lighting and wall-to-wall red carpeting, felt generic as an airport.

  Her father made his way up into the pulpit, laid down his Oxford English Bible, spread out his sermon, flattened the folded crease with his hand, and put on his half-lens reading glasses. He was handsome in a faded Scandinavian sort of way, with his long face and high coloring. She sat up so the points of her spine rested against the wood pew, aware that she hadn't showered and still smelled of smoke and sex.

  Bowing his head, her father intoned, “Lord, we offer this message in the name of your son Jesus Christ our Savior, Amen.” He looked over the members, his face relaxed, somewhat confessional. “You know, you can learn a lot from studying dreams. Last night I had a dream. I was driving cross-country, my eyes strained by the piercing headlights of cars in the opposite lane and the monotony of the highway. From a thermos I poured and drank one cup of black coffee after another. I had no real idea of my cargo or my destination. Whenever I glanced up through the top of the windshield into the starry night, I saw the silhouettes of ravens curving wide figure eights.

  “In the deepest part of the night, I needed a break, veered off the highway into a rest stop, got out, and walked around the back of the van. As I looked up at the deserted brick pavilion that housed a bevy of snack machines, it occurred to me that I had to be careful, that I didn't want anyone to see my cargo, and that's when I realized Sandy Patrick was inside the van and that it was I who had kidnapped her.” The pews creaked as the congregation shifted uncomfortably.

  “But how could this be? I had no memory of the kidnapping, no memory even of loading the girl into the van. My first impulse was to move away from the van, then run out into the highway, stick out my thumb, and try to hitchhike home. But then a sound came from inside the van; curiosity overwhelmed my fear and I unlocked the back doors and pulled both open. Laying on the cold metal floor was a body. Flesh so pale it glowed a fuzzy blue and seemed to hover in the dark. The white bloodless feet and purple toenails were closest to me, ankles bound with polyester cord. I was relieved, for it was not a woman's body but a man's. Head shaved, one eye badly bruised and swollen shut. Dried blood obscured his features; clear packing tape flattened his mouth and distorted his lips. But the ruined face was familiar and as I studied the features, I realized it was Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Looking at him I had a feeling of such fear and complicity that I woke up screaming.

  “For hours I lay awake, trying to decipher the dream. Am I complicit? Small things happen. We tell fibs, withhold love, cheat on taxes, use condescension and hasty class consciousness to shame both strangers and friends. Do these minor sins multiply and allow evil into our world? Could I be complicit in something as macabre as the abduction of Sandy Patrick?

  “Who here does not know the story of Sandy Patrick?” He looked at the faces in pew after pew as if somebody might actually answer. “Her mother says she has a dreamy side, that she collects stuffed animals, reads fantasy novels where horses fly and fairy princesses wear gowns made from flowers. Neighbors told reporters that she's a shy but loving child, always bringing home stray cats. One lady remembers how she took in a hurt bird, kept it in a shoe box, and force-fed it dog food on a Popsicle stick.

  “But can this sensitive girl be a suitable stand-in for Christ? Must I accept my complicity in her abduction? Does each one of us have to come to terms with the evil that resides within us?

  “The answer to both questions is of course yes. Yes, this girl, all rainbows and unicorns, is Christ. Just as much as that tiny baby in the manger was our savior. And yes, each of us must look into our hearts and acknowledge the darkness there. That's the shocking truth! The evil power that abducted Sandy is not just the exception to the rule but rather part of the fabric of human reality, of our reality, a dark fabric with which we are all clothed and which we cannot cast off. Each of us is scarred with the inheritance of Adam and Eve, that tainted couple who separated themselves from God, who began our long and bloody journey.

  “So let us remember Sandy Patrick in an aura of divine light. Let us pray for her in hope that her pain will not be wasted, that in turn it will work as an elixir, just as Christ's blood does in communion, to turn our black hearts pure and white as the first winter snow. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”

  The organist played the first chords of the next hymn. Ginger watched as Mrs. Mulhoffer moved discreetly out of the front pew and down the side aisle. Several other people edged out of their seats, following her, all their expressions tense with outrage and indignation. She heard a woman whisper to her husband, “How dare he say we killed that little girl.” Ginger'd heard them talk; they said that Ruth Patrick deserved what she got, that she was one of the divorcees that got drunk on singles’ night at the Holiday Inn Lounge and that she took continuing education classes just to meet men. The ushers passed the red velvet offering bag from pew to pew.

  Sandy'd been gone for months. Dread shivered up Ginger's spine. It seemed like bad luck to mention her. The ushers, jovial and unfazed, walked in formation down the center aisle, carrying red bags of green money and checks. All four could be brothers in their dark suits with the brocade Maltese Cross pocket patch. They shared the same temperament too, self-deprecating and funny; Ginger liked
how they joked with her about oversleeping and how during the sermon they slipped outside to smoke.

  Her father took the bags, settling each on top of the other. Then held all four up and with a little prayer, he consecrated the cash for Jesus. She pitied him. This was all he had to offer his God.

  In the Bible, God was famous, as in the story of Cain and Abel, for being more pleased by living animals and their slaughter than by a basket of inanimate vegetables. She imagined a lamb struggling, its little hoofs beating against the slate, her father with one hand holding the frantic animal down and with the other slicing into its throat, blood spurting out, soaking the altar cloth, splattering his linen robes. Everyone would be relieved, grateful and happy to be alive. People would sense that someday they'd witness their own death but somehow still live.

  The ushers returned to the back. One was holding out his hand, welcoming her to line up for communion. The wine would hit her empty stomach like a French kiss and besides, in her mind communion was a paltry and unsatisfying ritual, nothing compared to its precedent, the lush and drunken last supper, where disciples feasted on bowls of olives and roasted chicken and the bread was so delicious Jesus compared it to flesh. No, today she wouldn't go; better to eye the altar from here. She shook her head, but the lady next to her told her little boy she'd be right back and slipped past Ginger. The boy was leaning on a hymnal coloring a Sunday school sheet that read God Made Me. As the line grew she recognized only a few of the parishioners; frizzy-haired Jean Gephart, who was afraid of her dishwasher and fat Mrs. Clayton and her startled-looking husband Herman. There was Ann Heinz, the goody-goody girl in her floral dress with the lace collar and her exhausted alcoholic mother Barbara. Old Klass was here today too; he was the only member left from the old days. Most of the old Germans lived in row houses or garden apartments downtown; they hadn't taken to the new church building. Her father hired a van to go down and get them Sunday mornings, but the only one who ever came, sitting alone in the back, dreaming like a wizened duke, was old Klass. He was tiny now, less than five feet, and seemed smaller still in his three-piece suit. He kept cinnamon candies in his pockets for the children and was always calling himself a Prussian Lutheran and a libertine.