I Want to Show You More (9780802193742)

by Quatro, Jamie

  24

  Former members and clergy from around the city sent letters. On Mondays, the postman carried them down the trail, leaving them on a flat rock beside the mouth of the cave. We knew what was in the letters, especially those that arrived certified mail.

  There were legalities.

  The South would not long stand our debauchery.

  25

  Have we reached it? we asked each day. Claire no longer translated. Our voices, weak from disuse, were difficult to distinguish from the wind in the Georgia pines.

  26

  Sarah Taylor achieved stillness for five days straight. We rolled our heads to admire the placid way she allowed insects to scurry across her naked torso. When on the sixth morning it was discovered she was dead, we observed her body as it appeared in the early morning light: face gone blue, eyes sunk in their sockets, cheekbones thrusting out. We covered her feet, legs, and torso with earth and rocks and leaves. When we reached her face we noticed her parted lips, tongue swollen and protruding slightly, her brow furrowed, as if death had caught her in the act of tasting something she didn’t like.

  27

  When Earnshaw disappeared (Claire said he had moved on but many of us said that, like Elijah, he had been caught up), we knew we’d arrived.

  Thank you, we whispered into the space around our heads.

  We returned to stillness. Watched the letters pile up at the mouth of the cave.

  28

  A restlessness remains in our children. They gather fallen branches and carry them into the surrounding woods. We suspect they’re building shelters. In the afternoons we hear a rhythmic scraping, the sound of dirt floors being swept. We conjure images of their improvised hovels, their rudimentary fires; we imagine the ways in which they might divide their tasks—food-gatherers, fire-tenders, storytellers. At night we hear them singing, hymnlike strains bright with major harmonies.

  All of this we will teach out of them.

  How we’ll lisp to our children—softly, softly.

  When they come back from the world they’ve made without us.

  Holy Ground

  Goodbye, I say to my husband and children. I’m going for a run and won’t be back for a few days.

  They’re sitting on the couch in the formal living room, all five in a row, arranged oldest to youngest.

  I mean it, I say. Days. Maybe weeks. You might miss me.

  The four-year-old starts to cry, and the sister beside him puts an arm around his shoulders.

  Go on, my husband says. We’ll be waiting for you when you get back.

  Where? I ask. Where will you be waiting?

  Here. We’ll stay on this couch until you come back. You won’t have to worry about our physical safety.

  Thank you, I say, kneeling to kiss the tops of his leather loafers. I’ve needed to do this for quite some time.

  You have our support, he says. He elbows the daughter at his side, who nods and elbows her brother. This continues down to the youngest.

  I go into the kitchen and fill the center pocket of my anorak with protein bars, then remove a water bottle from its rack in the fridge—this I will carry in my hand. I slide my toothbrush down into my sock like a splint. I set the alarm, lock the back door, and head straight for God.

  The church parking lot is empty except for the cars in the spaces marked Seniors Only. It’s Thursday evening, night of the Caring and Sharing Dinner for Ambulatory Seniors. I jog into the courtyard—the maple in the center of the grass is topless, sparse yellow leaves on its lower half—and through the double doors of the Fellowship Hall.

  White-haired folks are seated around glowing candlelit tables. The women wear red hyacinths on their wrists or tucked behind their ears. Old men in sweaters make eyes at the women. They raise their wineglasses with bent hands. A wiry chap in stocking feet plays footsy with the bright-eyed woman beside him, her nostrils flaring around an oxygen tube.

  The shoeless man notices me and winks. Like to join us? he asks.

  No, thank you, I say. I’ve come to see Pastor Robinson.

  God bless the man! he says, raising his goblet.

  God bless him! say the others, glasses aloft. One woman drops hers, spattering the sweater of the gentleman next to her.

  The wiry man drinks until his goblet is empty. You oughta heard his sermon Sunday, he says to me. Man preached salvation by grace using the text of Abraham and Isaac . . .

  I know, I say. I was there.

  Remarkable synthesis of the Old and New Covenants, the man says. Theology like that makes you want to get up and dance. Makes you want to mount up with wings like an eagle!

  He takes a large sideways bite of ham, showing all his teeth when he chews.

  How lovely, the women exclaim. Marvelous, those strong teeth.

  Baking soda—straight from the box since I was seven, the man says.

  I find Pastor Robinson in his office.

  I hear you’re leaving us, he says.

  I kneel and encircle his calves with my arms. Can I do this with impunity? I ask, looking up at him.

  He strokes my hair.

  I mean, it’s nothing against you, or your theology. I’m just worn out from thinking all the time.

  I place my cheek on his knee. He is a large man and his thighs are soft. His gray wool pants sprout tiny white threads like curling hairs.

  How do I worship with heart, soul, mind, and strength? I ask, when I keep privileging the mind and saying no to the body?

  His legs make a sharp movement; I’m forced to sit back on my knees.

  It’s not what you think, I say. I only want to go down and do some work among the poor.

  Then, because I have decided to be honest in this endeavor, I say, I would like to confess something, before I go.

  He pulls my head back onto his knees.

  I breathe in, once. Long exhale. And I say: I’ve been having an affair with a man I’ve never touched. For almost a year now.

  An emotional affair, Pastor Robinson says.

  Yes. Physical, too.

  He frowns.

  The sharing of ideas, I say. The composing, together, of an elaborate fiction.

  Pastor Robinson recedes into the cushions behind him.

  It’s why I’m leaving, I say. I’m afraid if I don’t get away it’s going to undo me.

  Leaving isn’t the answer, he says.

  Listen, I say. There are days I let my six-year-old surf the net, unsupervised, while I compose e-mails in the den. Nights I put the children to bed, come downstairs, and realize I can’t remember a single thing any of them said to me.

  Repent, Pastor Robinson says. Before it’s too late.

  I’m no longer making love to my husband, when we make love, I say.

  Tell him, he says. Let him see your remorse.

  I used to feel remorse.

  You’ll lose everything, he says. Wind up inside a living hell.

  Oh, I’ve been living there a while, I say.

  Pastor Robinson shrinks farther back into the cushions.

  I’m not the person I thought I was, I say. I might be capable of anything.

  I can recommend several good marriage counselors.

  I need to get some distance from it, I say. See pain and suffering, poverty and loss. Serve the poor in some way.

  Immerse yourself in charitable works? Attempt to overcome evil with good? You know better. Your graduate studies in divinity . . .

  They’re doing me no good in this case, I say. Look, it’s a last-ditch effort. But can I have your blessing?

  There will be healing only in renunciation, he says. In turning away from sin and toward God.

  I don’t have it in me, I say. Not yet. Do I have your blessing?
>
  Pastor Robinson stands. His oxfords are worn and rumpled leather, tiny pinprick holes patterning the toes.

  I will pray for you while you’re gone, he says. At length.

  Running downhill on Hardy Road is the easy part. It’s twilight, the sky blue-gray with only the planets out. The street is wet from the day’s rain and the air smells like damp leaves and wood smoke.

  I turn onto Fleetwood, run past Rock City with its ten thousand Christmas lights already glittering along the Enchanted Trail. I run past the Witch’s Cabin Hotel, where Fleetwood begins to circle the Lookout Mountain golf course.

  Here is something I’ve discovered: if you cut through the bramble and thick Chinese privet hedge across from the ninth tee, you will find yourself on an outcropping of rock above Flintstone, Georgia. Chattanooga to the left, Georgia directly in front of you, to the right Alabama picking up where the mountain begins to drop off. Everywhere, ridges cresting and cresting all the way to the Smoky Mountains in Kentucky, the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. Some mornings a cottony fog lies over the ribbed land below, and to look across it is like looking out across the sea. But on a clear day, they say you can see seven states. No one believes it, but the claim brings tourists up to our town.

  I cut through the hedge in the place where I’ve been forging an opening and run out onto the rocks. Depressions in the limestone, filled with rainwater, look like tidepools. In a cleft between the rocks is a Moses bush, leaves brilliant red in the near-dark. Take off your sandals, Moses, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. Usually, when God shows up in the Old Testament—a theophany—people die. Or else they fall facedown as if they’re dead. There are two exceptions: Moses and Hagar.

  Hagar, where have you come from, where are you going?

  I stand, breathing long and deep, the watery lights of Chattanooga coming on below me. I consider the city. I want to see it like this, whole and from a distance; to see, before I go down, the signatures of the things I am about to read.

  Running down a mountainside is hard. There is much slipping at a sideways angle. Your bottom gets wet and all exposed skin is painfully raked. It is not good exercise.

  When I reach the base of the mountain, I eat half a protein bar and drink some water. The backs of my hands are crisscrossed with scratches, bleeding delicately, and I wipe them on my running tights. It’s dark now and the wet asphalt reflects the orange streetlights. I take Broad Street all the way downtown, where, in the colorless window glass of the Sheraton Starbucks, my reflection stops me.

  You look hot, babe, it says. You could pass for twenty-five.

  Quintessence of dust, I say. The reflection turns to preen its backside, taut in black spandex.

  I quote First Peter: The holy women of the past used to adorn themselves with a gentle and quiet spirit.

  Women over fifty, the reflection says, are the only ones who believe that. I know why you’re down here. You’re looking for some action before you get old.

  That’s not it, I say. I’m trying to mortify all that.

  Two college-aged boys—men?—are looking at me through the window. One of them is frowning; he watches me from beneath dark brows. He is beautiful—curved top lip, defined cheekbones, long hair in a ponytail. Small hoop earring.

  You know they’re checking you out, the reflection says.

  Doesn’t matter, I say. Now listen: Injustice. Oppression of the poor. Mistreatment of the uneducated.

  You want the one with the earring.

  Racial unity, I say. Single black mothers and well-to-do white mothers forging genuine friendships. In organic settings.

  You sure that’s all you’re after? The reflection stretches its calves.

  It’s the only thing left that might still save me, I say, letting my shoulders slump.

  The reflection jogs in place, then sets her watch and takes off down the sidewalk. I need to get my heart rate up, she calls back over her shoulder. Goodbye and good luck.

  I run after her. Her blond ponytail sweeps the empty space just behind her neck. I sprint to catch up with her, because she is beautiful, and has an excellent stride.

  I run east on Martin Luther King, between the old stone buildings on the UTC campus. My hip flexors burn and I can’t feel the second and third toes on my left foot. I’m not sure I will make it all the way to the poor. I finish the protein bar.

  College girls with slouchy bags strapped across their chests walk past me, checking me out. In the darkness next to the alumni house, a black man sits on a metal bench.

  Hey, he says as I run past. Lady. I know you.

  I stop and turn. I don’t think so, I say.

  Bring your kids to school there, Tuesdays. He points across the street to the Conservatory of Music.

  Used to be true, I say. Won’t be true again for a while.

  He sits with his legs spread wide. He has a thick throat, shaved head, rings on all of his fingers.

  I’m beat, I say. Mind if I sit down?

  He moves and I sit beside him. Aren’t you cold? I ask. I touch his bicep with my index finger. You should have a coat on.

  Ain’t never been cold, he says, pressing my whole hand against his warm armskin. Never in all my life.

  I pull my hand away. You will be someday, I say. Better buy a coat while you’re young.

  He grabs the sleeve of my anorak. Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim, he says, and I flee, pulling out of my anorak, leaving it hanging there in his fist, heavy with the protein bars.

  The business district is dark. Doors and windows are barred. I pass small white churches on almost every corner. Because I am exhausted, because my food is gone and the bottoms of my feet are numb, I ask the Baptists for a ride. I pick the Second Street St. James Missionary Church—its doors are open and the lights are on in the sanctuary. The pews are unfinished pine. There is no altar, only a long table with a white tablecloth, behind which are seated two white girls who look like college students.

  Are you here for the interview? one of them asks. Her bangs are streaked red and orange.

  I’ve come to help the poor, I say. Actually, I’d like to just sort of hang out with them. But I think I need a ride.

  She does look exhausted, says the other girl, who wears her hair in long braids. Can’t we just skip the interview? The girl has a teardrop hanging from the end of her nose. When she turns her head I see it’s a silver nose ring.

  How do we know what skills she has to offer? the girl with streaked hair says.

  I’m good with kids, I say.

  What else?

  I can recite many of the Psalms besides the twenty-third. If you call out a verse, I can find it in under ten seconds.

  Is that all?

  I can recite the Westminster shorter catechism and explain Calvin’s TULIP, though of course Calvin himself didn’t use the five terms represented in the—

  Is that all?

  I can sort of read Hebrew. In fact there was a man who spoke to me in Hebrew just now. He quoted Song of Solomon . . .

  Perfect, the girl with bangs says. Hebrew lessons in detox.

  I’m sorry, the girl with braids says. We know it’s not your fault.

  Wait, I say. Are you looking for experiences of the supernatural variety? Once I saw the clouds open up in the shape of a five-point star.

  It’s a start, says the girl with bangs.

  How’s this? When I was little, maybe seven, I heard a voice outside my window one night. It was one voice but sounded like thousands of voices. Like the rush of a mighty waterfall.

  The girl with streaked hair leans forward and readies a pen. And what did the voice say?

  I wish I could remember, I say.

  The two of them stand to leave.

  For the third time that night I fall
to my knees. Please? I say.

  The girl with bangs turns and looks at me again. Well, now that’s something, she says. On your knees like that. There might be a woman you could help.

  Take me to her, I say. I’ve been running for such a long time.

  The girl with streaked hair is driving. Her name is Jade. Her friend’s name is Mimi. I’d be certain they were lovers if they weren’t Baptists.

  It’s going to be crowded, Jade says to me. They’re serving Thanksgiving dinner.

  That’s today? I picture my husband and children on the couch, microwave dinners balanced on their knees.

  Next week, Mimi says from the backseat. Tonight’s the meal with just the Oak Project girls. They kicked us out of the house so they could set up.

  Jade looks at Mimi in the rearview, then at me. It’s the name of our ministry, she says. The Oak Project. It’s from that verse in Isaiah, about the oil of gladness—

  They will be called oaks of righteousness, I say, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor?

  Sweet, says Jade.

  We turn into a neighborhood off McCallie Avenue. The houses are two-story bungalows, set close together, grimy, with gaping doors and warped porches. There are no streetlights. We park across from a house with Snoopy sheets hung for curtains. A girl squats on the stoop, while a young woman—older sister? mother?—picks through her hair with a comb. A cop car passes, slowly, its lights turned off; when we get out of the car the air is thick with cooking smells. An elderly black couple is walking arm in arm on the sidewalk next to us.

  This is it, Jade says when we cross the street. She’s standing in front of a clapboard bungalow with peeling paint, pale yellow in the light of the single bulb above the front door. A strand of small paper lanterns hangs from the porch rail.

  When Jade opens the door I see green: the walls of the living/dining room are painted Granny Smith apple. There are no couches, no chairs or end tables, just a small computer desk pushed up against the side of the staircase, with a grouping of thick galvanized metal crosses arranged on the wall above the monitor, and three foldout metal tables covered in paper tablecloths with a fall-leaf print. The tables are set with paper plates, Styrofoam cups, clear plastic utensils. The centerpieces are pinecone turkeys with construction-paper feathers.