World and Town

by Gish Jen

  None of them could believe Sophy had never been to a Bible study class before, or that she hadn’t even realized that that was where she was going, really. But they were excited she was going to be in their group! They got her a pamphlet about their church that said “Where friends become family” on it, and they got her a Bible to keep too, and made her put her name in it. Then they showed her how it had two halves, the Old Testament and the New, and explained how even though the pages looked really thin, they didn’t tear as easy as you’d think. Class didn’t start for another half hour, so they just hung out for a while, and that was fun, because the three of them were already, like, a team and did what Kate called zone defense. That meant that you didn’t follow your kid around, but just kept an eye on any kid that was near you. Like you tried to notice if someone had a smelly diaper or was acting funny—like if they were taking a nap under the picnic table or something, the way one of Kate’s twins was one day. That turned out to be a virus, but there were all these other things it could have been, Renee said, like a staph infection, or meningitis, stuff Sophy had never even heard of. And that alone was probably a reason to come back to the center, to find out about viruses, and how it was bad to put soda in Gift’s bottle. Like Renee said that right away, that juice was one thing but soda was bad, and that Gift shouldn’t be eating so much candy either. And Simone said that if he was a boy he should probably wear boys’ clothes, and not just any clothes because that was confusing for Americans. And Sophy figured that Simone could probably say that about what was confusing for Americans because she was Vietnamese and had been through it herself. Of course, Sophy wasn’t going to go telling her parents she’d learned anything from a Vietnamese! Though now that she was talking to Simone, she could see that every Vietnamese was different, the same as Cambodians. Like wasn’t Sophy different from her mother and father and brothers and sisters even though they were a family? She was, she was different.

  And it was a good thing she liked Simone, because people put them together right away. Like when the short lady came down, she said, “I see you’ve found Simone”—because somehow Sophy was meeting Kate and Renee, but was finding Simone. And they really did have a lot in common, because they both had black hair and so on, but Simone was actually a lot older than everyone else. Like she was nineteen. She looked sort of like Sophy and Kate and Renee, but they were all fifteen or sixteen, and Simone was hipper, that was the other thing. She did her nails, and her hair was feathered, and she carried these cool silk bags in beautiful colors that her aunt sent her from Vietnam, Sophy could never look at those bags without thinking what it would be like to have an aunt back home who sent you things, and to get little silk bags in the mail. Like that just seemed so great.

  She was lost in that first class, and a little worried whether the short lady could really watch Gift and all the other kids by herself even for just an hour, but she liked it. Like she liked the room, which was originally the dining room of the house, they even sat around the original dining room table, like a family. The leader was this woman named Ginny, who had blond hair and wore a chain with a cross draped over the collar of her turtleneck like a lot of the girls did. And everyone was really nice, but especially Ginny. Like she would always make sure Sophy was on the right page, and she would look at her special a lot, so that Sophy would know if she had any questions, she could just ask. Sophy didn’t ask any, though, because the whole thing was, like, so surprising. Like she thought it surprising that someone who looked like Simone would hunch over a book like that, so studious. And that the class would spend so much time talking about just, like, a couple of sentences—that was surprising too. And that they talked about all these people—like Paul and Peter and Jesus—like they knew them, even though they were all dead. Or at least she thought they were dead. Anyway, the time went by fast, because the story was interesting. Like they were talking about some king named David, who promised a cripple he was going to give him back all the land he had lost, and told him he’d be welcome at his table forever, only to have the cripple say, “What is thy servant, that thou shouldst look upon such a dead dog as I am?” And the group all agreed that that was probably how they would feel if someone said that to them. Like dead dogs, and like they just couldn’t believe it.

  “Except that you can believe it,” said Ginny, looking at everyone with her green eyes. “You can. Believe it. You don’t feel worthy, but you are. In God’s eyes you are worthy.”

  After class, the center had a singing group back in the basement, where the kids played in the middle and their caretakers sang songs about lambs. It wasn’t as interesting as the Bible study class, and Sophy could hear what Sarun would have to say about that kind of song almost more than she could hear the song itself. Like she knew how he’d sing the words his own way and roll his eyes and say, They are, like, on something. And she felt funny because she didn’t know the words, and Gift wouldn’t stay in the middle the way he was supposed to either. But still they stayed the whole session because Lynn was expecting them to stay, and because the room was so much nicer than the trailer, and because of the doughnuts and the soda and the cookies. The cookies weren’t as good as Hattie’s, but they were good enough that Sophy started going twice a week after that, on Mondays and Thursdays. And she really looked forward to it, and found that even when she went home she could still see the center in her mind—like she could still see that arched window, with this little crystal ball that threw rainbows all over, and she could still see the neat little entrance area where people stashed their stuff. On rainy days all the kids’ rain jackets would be hanging there, and that just amazed her, because some of the kids had such beautiful little jackets, with ladybugs and cats on them. She tried not to stare at them, the same way she tried not to stare at the special bags people had for their baby stuff. But after a class where they talked about prayer and the part of the Bible where it says, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss,” she tried praying, not with evil, selfish motives, but with right purpose, the good purpose that Ginny talked about. And right the next day, the most amazing thing happened. Like Sophy came into the center and this lady just walked right up to her and said, “Would you like a jacket for your baby?” And even though Sophy said he’s not my baby, the lady reached in her bag and said, “Please take this. I was about to give it to the church to give away.” And it was this yellow jacket with a patch pocket like a bumblebee, just the right size for Gift. Sophy was so amazed, she couldn’t even say thank you. It was just, like, so wack! But the lady didn’t seem to mind, she just smiled and left.

  And then Sophy found out that her Bible study group leader was not just any Ginny, but Hattie’s friend Ginny! Not that Sophy guessed, Ginny was the one who asked, quiet-like, “Aren’t you Hattie’s new neighbor?” And when Sophy said yes, Ginny said she had kind of thought so, and that she had been sending a car for her for some time, and had been filled with gladness when she heard that Sophy had finally started to use it.

  “You sent the car?” said Sophy.

  And Ginny said yes, and smiled, and said, “Of course, you didn’t have to use it. But I knew you would someday.”

  And when Sophy asked how she knew, Ginny said she just knew. “Don’t you ever have things you just know?” she asked. And when Sophy said she couldn’t think of one, Ginny said that if Sophy ever did, she should write it down and tell her. And Sophy laughed and said okay, she would write it down. And Ginny said if it wasn’t a Bible study day, she could still find her in church. “Do you know where the church is?” she asked. And when Sophy said, “In the living room?” Ginny laughed as if Sophy had said something funny. “Yes,” she said. “It used to be down in the basement, but we’ve grown so big, we had to put an addition onto the living room. Now it’s right down the hall. Have you been there?” And when Sophy said no, because she thought it was for Sundays, Ginny said, “Well, I go there pretty much every day just to sit and pray. It’s been the saving of me. So when you think of something y
ou just know, you can come have a look there.” And Sophy said, “Okay.”

  It’s been the saving of me.

  Sophy didn’t go right away. Like she couldn’t think of something she just knew. But then one day she went to take a look, and as soon as she walked in, she did know something. Like as soon as she walked in she knew she just wanted to sit there and look up at the windows so bad, and maybe Gift knew she wanted that too, because he was quiet for a change. So quiet, that she could actually sit down with him in her lap for a few minutes, and let him play with her buttons and put his fingers in her mouth while she looked around. Probably if anyone had asked her before that whether she cared about rooms and whether they could change her being, she would have said no, especially since she had never even thought before about whether she had a being. But sitting there, she suddenly knew that she did, she had one, and that it was being changed. It was. The church wasn’t fancy. But she loved the windows all around, and she loved the mural up front with, like, these purple-blue mountains dipping down to a bright bright river that wound around to a big glowing cross. She loved the airiness of the space too, and she loved it that it wasn’t crammed full of gold statues. Like she loved it that there wasn’t incense burning and making her cough, and that it wasn’t full of Cambodian women afraid of k’maoch either. It was different here. Like everyone at the temple in her old town was suffering so bad inside, but couldn’t do anything but suffer and be good and wait for their next life, while here, people were being reborn, like, right away! In this life! They didn’t have to build up their good karma little by little, never knowing if they’d built up enough. They could be saved today, all they had to do was accept that Christ had died for their sins. And that was it! In fact, there wasn’t anything else a person could do, really—they couldn’t save themselves, no matter what they did. Because that’s what it said in Ephesians, that no amount of good deeds would help, that people are saved by faith, and faith alone. So that, like, the only thing that would work was accepting Christ’s sacrifice and love. Which was hard for Sophy to really get, in the beginning. Like it almost seemed like cheating.

  But that’s why the Bible was called Good News! And it wasn’t even in, like, one passage in the Bible, it was in a million of them. How the Lord knew everything about you, like your downsitting and your uprising and all your thoughts and ways to begin with, and how He didn’t look on outward appearances, but on the heart. So that you didn’t have to undo anything bad you’d done, you just had to be truly sorry. Like King David had an affair with Bathsheba, and before he repented, all he could do was groan and lose weight. But once he repented, God forgave him just like that! Just like that, his transgression was removed as far as the east is from the west, and he wasn’t the only one who started all over. Paul did too, and a lot of other people. They were all reborn in Christ, Ginny said, as they had to be, because new wine needs new bottles. Then she asked if people knew other people who had been born again, and they all did, except Sophy. And that was embarrassing until she remembered that her dad had been reborn, in a way—not into a brand-new life, but into his brother’s life—and that his first wife had sort of been reborn out of the mud, but then died. She didn’t really expect them to care, but they listened like it was the most interesting thing they’d ever heard, and finally someone asked if she wanted to be reborn like them, or in a different way. And when she said in a different way, they cheered, and when Ginny said, “It says in John 3:3, ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,’ ” Sophy started crying. Because she did so want to be reborn. She wanted to be reborn into the right life, her real life. Her old life was just so wrong.

  “I don’t know why I was born,” she said. “I am so ashamed. Sometimes I think I should kill myself.”

  She couldn’t believe those words came out of her, but they did, and what happened next was, like, even more unbelievable. Because right then and there Ginny made everyone bow their head and pray for Sophy.

  “She is crying out like Jonah, Lord, she is crying out of the belly of hell!” said Ginny. “Hear her! Hear her!”

  And they all held hands and prayed that God would hear her, and when Ginny asked Sophy if she felt the power of that, she said yes, because she had. It was like having her sisters back, she wasn’t alone anymore.

  A couple of weeks later, the church had this special camp meeting like they did every year. They got together with two other independent churches, and rented a campground, and organized all kinds of special things. Like they had activities and food, and were giving out devotional books for free. Sophy couldn’t go for the whole time, but she came for some of it, and brought Gift, who loved the children’s group. And she loved everything!—starting with how you crossed this little bridge over a stream to get to the campground, and how the first thing you heard was the ringing of a bell to call people to service. She loved the Ping-Pong tables and the dining room and the first-aid building, and she loved the smell of the barbecues and the pines. The pines were these big round trunks rising right up out of the ground, with nothing else growing around them—like the floor of the forest was all just clear and open and bouncy with pine needles. And the meeting hall was cool too, this big huge building, with enormous flap doors on three sides of it. The doors were propped open on poles, so that they made these covered entrances that made you feel like you were going inside, except that inside still felt like outside because there were so many doors, and what walls there were had these big windows. There was a pop-up in the middle of the roof too, with windows all around it, so that the light just poured in, and you could feel Jesus looking down. And everything was, like, old. Like the wood and the windows with their little panes were old, and the organ and piano up front on kind of this open stage were old too. There was a big plain cross just standing up there by itself, and a long long altar, kind of like an eternal bench, along the whole front of the hall. And there were these huge hangings with quotations from Galatians and Hebrews that looked like they had been there for even longer than the pine trees outside, and were going to be there until the end of the earth. Of course, there were some new things too, like a projection screen and a computer, and a tilted table with buttons and lights for the sound system. But everything else was old, even the hymnbooks piled up at the end of the pews were old. It was cool.

  Sophy loved it that there were all these strangers mixed up with people she knew, because somehow that made it even more special to see Kate and Simone and Renee, like they were old friends. Renee was having trouble with her knee, like don’t you know it would be God’s plan for her to tear her meniscus, she said, complaining-like. But Kate and Simone and Sophy helped her around and brought her drinks and carried her backpack, and that made her feel better. And Sophy loved that as much as Kate, probably, she loved being able to help a friend. The four of them sat together through the songs and announcements, and through some sermonizing Sophy didn’t understand but didn’t mind listening to because it was nice to be sitting there in this big open space with the ceiling fans going, and because it was fun hearing other people sighing and saying Amen to things even if it wasn’t their turn to talk, and because the preacher told a lot of funny stories about bad things he’d done, and what Jesus had said to him to straighten him out. The preacher wasn’t from their church and didn’t look like much, just a normal guy walking back and forth with brown hair and a mike in his hand like someone on TV. He had these big half-moons of sweat under his arms even though no one else was sweating, and that was weird, because it was warm out, but not really that hot, and that kind of made you want to laugh at him in a way. But no one did laugh at him, because they liked the stories, even though every one of them started with something like skipping Bible study because of the World Series, and every one of them led to “And Jesus said to me, Bill …” They were all the same, but you really did get the feeling that Jesus talked right to him like that, and that maybe you could get Jesus to talk to you like that too. And that kept you inter
ested, like his sermon, which started out pretty bleak with Job 18, but went on to talk about different kinds of hope and how hope was usually a good thing, but could be a bad thing if it made us blind, like if it blinded us to the difference between a trial and a chastisement, for example. Like if it meant we just started blindly hoping God was going to work everything out for us, and if as a result we failed to change when God was telling us to change. And he talked about how we should welcome chastisement, painful as it was, because it was God’s message to us, and because it was a form of love.

  “For as the Bible says in Hebrews 12:7, ‘What son is he whom the father chastiseth not?’ ” he said. “The Lord only chastises those He sees as His children. The Lord only chastises those who are His chosen. But you know, the chastisement is lost unless we learn from it—unless we learn the lesson He is trying, in His great love, to teach us. The chastisement is lost unless we try to understand what we need to do to get right with God. And that is why I ask you now to look in your hearts, and to think whether God has chastised you in any way. I ask you to look in your hearts and ask if He’s been trying to tell you something, if He’s been trying to teach you. And if He has, I ask you to embrace that, and to turn to the Lord our God now—to embrace the only hope which is true hope, namely the hope in God. In Hebrews 12:1, Paul tells us, ‘seeing … we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight’—and so let us do that—let us now lay aside every weight. Compassed about with our own great cloud of witnesses, let us now accept the Lord’s chastisement and lay our weight aside.”