by Aaron Gwyn
“Kathy,” he said, after a while, “you need get a hold of yourself.”
The suggestion only caused her to sob louder. Chris closed his eyes and tried to sleep. The bed began to tremble. Without the use of her voice, the noise sounded as if someone were attempting to strangle her.
“Really, now,” he told his wife. “That’s not going to help.”
“Jesus,” said the bird.
SHE DECIDED, IN the days following, she would have to make a stand. No more lying on the sofa cradling the remote, calling work at the last minute, telling them she’d not be able to make it. She had the impression she was beginning to sink, that if she closed her eyes, the recliner would make its way gradually through the floor. It was time, she thought, to stop feeling sorry for herself. It was time to engage with life. She felt like the curator of a forgotten museum, walking corridors and silent halls, occasionally dusting a sculpture, stooping to polish a fingerprint from glass, quiet caretaker scanning obsessively her collection, waiting for the day she would be replaced.
She started by returning to the gym, two hours a day, three on weekends. She did treadmill and weights, swam and tried step aerobics. Her back had begun to ache once more, but the exercise seemed to help this, and her mood improved greatly as a result of being on fewer pain pills. In the evenings, she and her husband would go to the park—something she’d rarely done since her daughter had been born. She had gone back to using the tablet, and it seemed more natural somehow, allowing her to articulate herself with precision. In support, her husband bought a notebook as well, and most of the time they would conduct their exchanges purely in writing. He claimed he felt guilty speaking.
Besides, he wrote, I enjoy the quiet.
And yet, despite the fact she’d recovered her morale, despite the improvement in her relationships, Kathy was increasingly plagued by the desire to perform. She could avoid the feeling for several days, and then she would hear a song on the way to work, see a singer on TV or at church, and there would be a sudden throbbing at the back of her skull, a sensation she would have to clench her teeth to avoid. It was not, Kathy would admit, that she was no longer able to minister. Neither was it about accomplishment. She came to understand that in singing, she received validation, a sense of being accepted. Only in that instant could she be, in any way, spiritual. It was her primary link to something larger, her only proof of the divine.
At the start of the next week, she met her pastor in his office. In times past, the man had been her biggest supporter, someone who had encouraged her to pursue singing as a career. After they’d exchanged pleasantries and she had scribbled answers to questions about her health, Kathy slid a note across the desk that expressed her desire to begin, once more, performing.
The pastor gave her a kind, confused look.
“Exactly what,” he asked, “do you mean?”
She slid another note across, saying she had something in mind.
“What kind of something?”
Again, there came another note, telling him it was a surprise.
Kathy would never decide if it was mere pity on his part—or perhaps a vague desire to exploit the situation, to present this woman as someone who, despite her hardships, refused to be silenced, would express her thanksgiving even if she had to do so with sign language—but by the time she left his office, Reverend Hassler had agreed that a week from the following Sunday he would introduce her just before his sermon, provide whatever accompaniment she required. She told him she would need someone on the piano, that she would be in touch regarding which song.
Over the next two weeks, Kathy devoted several hours a day to practice. Her husband and daughter agreed during this time to remain in the living room, to make sure the television’s volume was loud enough that they could hear nothing of her rehearsal. When, out of utter curiosity, Chris asked what it was she’d planned, Kathy smiled broadly and indicated that the secret nature of the enterprise would cause him to be all the more impressed when the day of her performance came.
He shook his head and told her he was impressed already. After all, it had been weeks since she’d broken into tears, and the parrot, having kept them awake several nights with its outbursts, seemed to have forgotten its new vocabulary altogether.
THE FIRST SUNDAY of July was hot and bright, Oklahoma summer, surprisingly humid. Kathy stood in the mirror, adjusting her dress, her sleeves and collar. Though her face had tightened a good deal since the stroke, she could still detect a slackness. She put a hand to her cheek, pulled the skin to achieve a tautness proper to her age, pulled more, hoping, in this way, to see back through the years. There was forty-two and, stretching further, there were her thirties—this was how she looked at nineteen. She let go her face and stepped backward. Taking up a large purse, she put an arm through its strap and turned to leave.
Her nerves were such that on the way to service she drummed her fingers in continuous motion on the armrest. At one point, she glanced over and caught her husband smiling. He reached, put a hand to her knee, and gave a gentle squeeze. In the backseat, their daughter asked if she could go to a friend’s house for lunch.
By the time they arrived at the First Pentecostal, Kathy had fully installed herself in the mind-set of performance, a curiously numb state wherein she felt her muscles begin to contract, a means she’d devised of keeping anxiety at bay, failure from drifting into her thoughts. The family made their way through a barrage of handshakes and hellos, went to the sanctuary’s far right, and seated themselves at the front. Smoothing her dress beneath her, Kathy caught sight of Reverend Hassler sitting on the platform. The man glanced over and cast an inquisitive look whose slightly raised eyebrows seemed to ask whether or not he was to go through with the plan as they’d discussed it, two days before. Kathy nodded.
She would never be able to recall the first part of that morning’s service, though she knew the ceremony by rote—the ritual of hymns and offering, testimony and announcements. It had not been altered for as long as she’d been a member, and it suddenly occurred to her what she and the pastor had planned would constitute an extraordinary moment in the church’s history. When he left his seat and approached the podium, Kathy’s attention snapped to, the anxiety once again present. She raised a fist to her mouth and forced a cough.
“Brothers and sisters,” the reverend began, “most all of you know Kathy Olaf, and you also know the incredible trial she and her family have weathered this last year. Sister Olaf has been with us for almost three decades now, and she’s performed more solos than I can remember. When we heard of her stroke—when I heard of it, at least—I knew we’d lost something very special. I think, for many of us, it was one of those times that I spoke about last Sunday, one of those times when even those of us with great faith start to question things. I know I did.”
The man paused, let his gaze sweep the congregation. Kathy watched intently, pleased with where this introduction was headed. She shifted in her seat, brought her purse onto her lap, and looked inside.
“But,” the man resumed, “we have a real treat for you this morning. Sister Olaf approached me a few weeks ago, expressed how badly she wished to continue her ministry of song. And when I heard how she was planning to do it, I can’t tell you how I felt. I guess, at that moment, I realized not only her dedication, but that her willingness to serve God and her refusal to accept defeat would continue to bring us blessing, perhaps even more than it did before her sickness. It gives me real pleasure to introduce Kathy Olaf to you and to announce a new era in her service of the Lord.”
Kathy rose from her seat and was met with a roar of applause. It continued as she climbed onto the platform and stepped to the pulpit, as she brought the microphone to a position almost touching the lectern’s surface. Even when she stood there motionless, smiling and raising a hand to the audience, the applause took a full minute to die down. She reached into her purse, removed the machine her husband had bought her, and slid it between the podium and microphone
, and at this moment, understanding her intentions, the congregation began to applaud once more, some to whistle and cry out. When, finally, they had settled, she glanced to the pastor sitting behind the piano and motioned that she was ready. He began to play the intro, cautiously striking each note as if he were drawing the rhythm behind him on a string. Kathy nodded once or twice and then started rapidly to type.
She had chosen an older hymn, part of her repertoire from the days when she’d first begun to perform. She pecked out the opening verse, scarcely hearing the sound she made or even looking to see the crowd’s reaction. I come to the garden …, she typed, While the dew is still on the roses / And the voice I hear falling on my ear / The Son of God discloses. Kathy had practiced many hours just to get to the point where she could make the machine keep tempo, and since she had no control over its pitch or tone, this was where she devoted her attention. As she worked her way through the lines, that feeling that was now a part of memory began steadily to return; for an instant she was transported, forgetting she had been the victim of a stroke. It was ecstatic—a sense of being controlled by something from outside, of herself being the machine on which another force was typing. She had never before felt so like an instrument.
When the song turned to the chorus, she took her eyes from the keypad, glanced briefly up. She was smiling, but the expression was quick to fade. All around the sanctuary, people were wincing, sitting with heads lowered, faces plastered with agonized smiles. It was then that Kathy heard the noise she’d been making—He walks with me, and He talks with me / And He tells me I am His own—noticing, for the first time, how the PA amplified the metallic speech, changed its pitch, added a slightly guttural distortion. She’d never found the tone pleasant but had, after a while, grown used to it. Now she heard it as a sound completely alien, as if her illness had discovered its perfect articulation, an ideal voice.
Kathy began the second verse, trying to focus on the performance, on the idea that her attempt alone was important, that this is what would astound. Her fingers began to feel like they were operating independently of her body, each digit under separate command. She knew she was falling behind, losing rhythm and her place in the song. The sound of His voice, she hurriedly typed, Is so sweet the birds hush their singing. She tried to start the next line, but at this moment her hands seemed to lock, the muscles to freeze. She stopped in midstroke, her fingers balanced over the keys, lifeless almost, as if afflicted with palsy. Drawing them into fists, she blinked several times and then looked toward Hassler, abruptly aware that he too had stopped playing. When she glanced back to the audience, she saw her husband and daughter were staring at the floor.
In a matter of seconds, the crowd would begin sympathetically to clap, their applause rising louder as they attempted to drown the note of humiliation that somehow lingered, sustained by the burgundy carpet and curtains, the padded pews and offering plates. Kathy knew the ovation would come, that eventually the disaster would be pardoned, smoothed over, utterly forgotten. She knew that people would extol her courage, congratulate the performance as an obvious success, perhaps even, one day, ask her to repeat it. But now she looked out over the heads of these churchgoers, not only hearing but, in actuality, feeling the silence, noting it as a palpable, even substantial entity, a concrete and sentient force.
It was this, more than her illness or embarrassment, that she found terrifying. That sense of quiet that seemed to turn the congregation sitting before her into an enormous painting, she the lone visitor to some museum where humanity was framed, placed under glass, hung in perpetuity. Or maybe she was the canvas. Perhaps it was her on the other side of the velvet rope, watching as tourists walked continually past. KATHY OLAF, read the small brass plate, people nodding to partners and stroking their beards before moving to the next installation, leaving only the silence, wide and infinite—miles of it, centuries. It wasn’t calm or tranquillity, the peace that an irksome voice encouraged her to be mindful of, let grow and develop, even welcome. For Kathy, it was merely silence—a quiet that would remain undisturbed until that day she heard the click of the Curator’s heels, impeccable suit and tie, flashlight in his grip. He would arrive one afternoon with his assistants, pace the room and then pause, turning his beam squarely on the glass behind which she stood. Without further consideration, he would speak to the helpers, or even lift a hand and point, his voice quiet as a whisper, saying, That one: take it down.
AGAINST THE PRICKS
GABRIEL TOLD HOW for months he had lived in the anguish of sin and depravity. How he’d sold out his calling and the gifts of his calling and the price of his redemption. That he’d crucified the Son of God, put Him to an open shame. And though it was past, though he’d received forgiveness and had been washed by purest blood, he would confess it. He’d confess as it was ever with him.
It was two years ago—he was twelve then, the age of accountability—that the yearning first began, that he caved to it, sinning against his flesh. He’d be at his studies, after church, having memorized at that time up to Leviticus 5:3, and he would feel the craving like a sudden flame beneath his eyes. Clenching his jaw, he would grit his teeth, but there was no victory, and closing the Bible, he would rise from his chair, shutting the door, locking it behind him. He did not imagine a woman, nor did he think of Amy. He stood naked in the center of his room, his eyes fixed only to the ceiling’s blankness.
Immediately, he began to pray against it. He would lie in the floor with praise music on the stereo, praying till he shook. Lord, he would pray, take this evil out of me. I don’t want it. I want to be clean and pure and walk forever in the Spirit. My soul is dirty and my heart is foul. Cover me with Your wings. Take my sin and make me like a child.
He’d be clean for days, and no untoward thought would afflict him. Then, before he knew, it would be time for service, and afterward he’d be in his room with lotion in his hand and the door locked. The Spirit burned him to where he thought he couldn’t take it, but he did not listen. Not until everything had come and gone. Not until he stood with his face drained and his eyes wet, feeling like he’d died again and risen.
SOME OF THIS, he said, had been his own nature and failing. It came from looking at catalogs and from hearing others on the school bus and from thinking on lust. It was sin carving him out, hollowing him so he’d be useless to God.
But a great deal had been because of Amy. Since nine years old she’d cast her widened eyes at him. She was one year older—large in the bosom and hips. No makeup, homemade dresses draping against her ankles and wrists, she had waist-long hair braided in a thick, blond rope down the middle of her back. She’d watch him at the altars while he was praying and often would stop him in the foyer to talk about his faith.
There were times he would labor to understand why it was she bothered him, whether the way she looked or the way she looked at him or the expressions of others when she walked along the pews, unaware. Always with Amy the sense that she did not know, did not want to impress, could only be impressed upon, like thumbprints in candle wax. Whatever she was or felt, he knew it before she spoke, and there was a softness about her, as if seen constantly through a smeared pane of glass.
He tried to tell her how she tormented him. He’d tried at camp meeting and church camp and at dinner on the grounds. One afternoon—it was the summer he turned fourteen—while out in the parking lot waiting for their families, he decided he would explain how he needed to be left alone.
“Amy,” he said, leaning against the trunk of his mother’s car.
She turned to face him, and he began playing with the zipper on his Bible case.
“What do you think we are to each other?”
“We?”
“Me and you.”
She smiled, squinted her nose. “What’d you mean?”
“Like—”
“Like a couple?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know,” she said. “What do you think?”
“
About us?” he stalled.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Being a couple?”
“Right.”
He dropped his eyes to his feet and stood a few seconds, neither of them saying a word. When he looked at her again, she had leaned back her head, the sun lighting the transparent hair along her neck and cheeks.
He zipped his Bible shut, told her he had no idea.
IN HIS SPIRIT, he knew he shouldn’t be entertaining such conversation. His mother said Amy was sweet and dedicated now but, like any woman, could one day turn loose and follow the path of sin. They’d talk about it when he was helping her fix dinner. His father had left a few years before. Since then, it was just he and Charlotte.
He could remember sitting on the kitchen step stool after church, chopping vegetables for stew: celery and carrot slices stacked alongside the cutting board like coins.
“Gabriel,” his mother was telling him, “you need to watch that sort of girl. I’ve seen them ruin men. Completely ruin them.”
He kept chopping.
“Your uncle Richard married a woman who seemed nice. After six months, none of us could be around her.”
He quit chopping and looked up. “Aunt Connie?”
“No,” she said. “This was his first marriage. This was Donna.” Charlotte took the cutting board away from him and scraped celery into the pot. Frowning, she gave it back.
“I didn’t know Uncle Richard was married before Connie.”
“It wasn’t good for him,” she said. “When Richard got saved, we all decided not to talk about it. There’s no need to bring up the past once it’s under the blood.”
“How long were they together?”
“Once it’s under the blood it does not even exist.”
“How long?” he asked.
“Three years,” his mother told him, stirring the pot. “It nearly drove him to the madhouse.”