I calmed myself to listen to what my brother was explaining. Of course I knew which Bible verse he was referencing. It was from Galatians:
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him directly, my sadness temporarily cured. “Daddy didn’t bring all of this misfortune upon himself. He may have been upset about what happened with you and Heather, but he’s a good man, Aaron. He doesn’t cheat his followers. He’s bringing the word of the Lord into people’s lives.”
Aaron took a deep breath and I knew he was trying to find a way to phrase something so as to not piss me off.
“Why do you think people donate money to The Church of the Spirit?” Aaron asked slowly. “Do you think they intend for that money to feed orphans in third world countries, and clothe abused women and send Christian missionaries to the far reaches of Asia to convert people and treat diseases? Or do you think they intend for their hard-earned dollars to send Chuck and Debbie Mathison’s kids to tony boarding schools and keep our father’s garage stocked with fancy sports cars?”
I was about to argue back at Aaron, but I had no response.
My brother was right.
I had never thought of our family’s wealth before as coming out of the pockets of poor people. Somehow I had always just thought of the main source of my parents’ income as being related to the cable channel. I had been colossally ignorant. Our money came primarily from the thousands of checks that were sent in by followers. It came from internet donations and from little old ladies and hard working families who tithed a percentage of their meager income directly into my father’s coffers. They didn’t fly First Class to South America. They didn’t spend Christmas in the Alps, eagerly waiting for the cameras to stop rolling on Daddy’s Christmas message to his viewers before the best powder of the day was ruined on the slopes.
“Jesus, Gi, didn’t you ever stop to wonder why we live behind two sets of electrified gates with armed guards and razor wire?” Aaron continued.
I was starting to feel sick. Patterns were forming on the inside of my eyelids.
“Because every abortion rights activist on earth wants a bullet in Daddy’s head. Do you think real apostles spreading God’s word have armed body guards with them at all times? Do you think Mother Theresa lived in a palace with a Jacuzzi in her bathroom?”
Memories of all of our trips overseas came flooding back to me. It was true, we often traveled in a caravan, with armored Hummers or inconspicuous SUV’s. My mother never went anywhere without Griffin and Karl. On rare occasions when I helped my mother cook, Anna nervously followed us around, cleaning up our messes as soon as we made them. Sure, we had a huge fence around our property, but I had always naïvely assumed that the fence had something to do with illegal immigration. People on TV were always complaining about immigrants crossing the border and running across their yards.
It had honestly never occurred to me in my whole life that there were people in the world who might come to our property with weapons, intending to hurt us because of my parents’ wealth.
I covered my mouth with both hands and ran to the bathroom, where I was violently sick. I didn’t care that Aaron could hear me as I wretched, but when the waves of nausea finally passed for a moment, I turned the water on in the sink to drown out my heaving as the second round of illness arrived.
My forehead was hot. I was sweating. I don’t know how long I sat in the bathroom on the floor near the toilet but after a long while I heard our front door open and shut, indicating that my brother had left the apartment. He returned a few minutes later with a Styrofoam cup of hot tea from one of the Vietnamese restaurants on our street. He crouched in the doorway of our bathroom and watched as I took a few sips.
“I can’t go back there, Grace,” my brother said, finally.
A long pause followed, during which time I caught my breath and my stomach finally settled down. I wanted to crawl to my room and lie down on my blanket and close my eyes.
“I don’t want to spend my life lecturing to other people about how they should live theirs,” Aaron continued. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I just don’t think it’s right, what Daddy does. He sells hope to people who are desperate for something to believe in. He sells it to people who can’t even really afford it. And I don’t…”
Aaron trailed off, picking at his fingernails and wondering whether or not to continue.
“I don’t believe anymore that Daddy and Mama are honest people,” he said harshly. “I’m not going back. This is my life now, but if you want to go home, I’ll understand. And you’re my sister, I’ll love you no matter what you decide.”
Eventually I made my way to my room and I stared at the ceiling for a long time. I felt like crying all night, but I knew all that would produce was a bloody mess on my pillow. All I could think about were the three places in the Bible where it was written, “It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Daddy was indeed a rich man.
He knew the Bible better than anyone. Surely he knew he was breaking one of the big rules by holding onto all that wealth. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t like the idea of our family being poor. I didn’t have any memories of our house in Arkansas when my dad was just a local minister at a small town church, but I did have memories of our little house in Tempe before Mama and Daddy built the compound. Aaron and I shared a room then. The pool in our yard was inflatable and Mama stayed home with us during the day because my parents used to share one car. We were by no means poor back then – we had everything we needed – but we were certainly not livin’ it up. My parents had both grown up in very low-income families. They both knew poverty, but that was no excuse for not heeding the word of the Lord, when it was written as plain as day in the Bible.
Whatever disregard my parents had for God, I took the business of potentially going to hell for all eternity pretty seriously. Maybe God and I were on the outs, but now that I had really thought through our whole lifestyle, I knew I couldn’t just go home and pretend like it was all right to continue living that way. It was insulting that we would tape charity specials on our network and visit people in need in faraway lands, write them checks that couldn’t begin to address their problems, and then fly home without every following up with them again. I thought about those kids in Colombia with whom I had played soccer. They probably didn’t know I was rich, other than that I was American and to them, that alone probably meant rich in that I lived in a house and had a television. Those kids had no idea how rich. When I thought about how they lived and then about how I lived, I was embarrassed. It broke my heart that I hadn’t sent them a box of books and soccer balls as soon as I’d gotten back to Massachusetts. By that point, I was too broke to even buy a soccer ball for myself if I’d wanted one.
My feelings were far from resolved, because not living like a rich person meant no more True, no more beautiful bedroom with a balcony overlooking the mountains, no more ski trips for Christmas. I kept irrationally trying to justify some kind of middle ground in my head. But it was late at night and I didn’t have to think through all the answers just then; I just knew that I didn’t want whatever my parents were doing wrong to bring me down in the eyes of God.
In the morning, I took off the gold cross around my neck and tucked it onto the tiny shelf in my bedroom closet. I hadn’t taken it off since my thirteenth birthday, but I knew I wasn’t going to feel all right about wearing it until God and I were on better terms again.
Then, I showered and walked to Prekin to start my new job.
Chapter 9
I finally received my first paycheck from Prekin the week before Thanksgiving, paid in cash, as Jim had promised. While it was in no way as grandiose or phenomenal as the box I had envisioned sending to the Instituto Santa Maria, I bought two soccer balls, two baseballs and a soft foam football and carried them to the UPS
store. The clerk on duty kindly went online to look up the mailing address for the orphanage and boxed everything up for me. I enclosed a letter addressed to Martin, hoping he would remember me, but then had second thoughts and slipped it into my canvas bag.
Not only did I not want anyone at the orphanage to contact my parents and tell them I had shipped a box from New York, but making sure the kids knew that I had provided them with these items would have been greedy on my part. Getting credit for the good deed kind of defeated the whole purpose of the good deed.
When Jacinda had first told me about her boyfriend Orlando, she had neglected to mention that he was in his twenties and already had a son with his ex-girlfriend. I listened intently as she explained all of this to me, half-terrified of her. Jacinda was not much older than me but her life was a billion times more complicated. I couldn’t imagine having a boyfriend who was already a father. I couldn’t imagine having a boyfriend at all, especially not one that was practically a man.
Anyhow, the night that the two of us went to her friend Roy’s party in Brooklyn, Orlando was definitely not Jacinda’s boyfriend.
“I have just about had it with that fool,” Jacinda ranted. “I am busy. You know what I’m saying? Busy, for real. I can’t be spending time waiting for him to make time for me. Life is short.”
I nodded in agreement. I really couldn’t offer advice on boyfriend situations. That was so far over my head, I didn’t want Jacinda to have any clue how babyish I was.
Roy was one of the younger stylists at the salon where Jacinda worked. It was his birthday and he was having a huge party at a nightclub deep in the heart of Williamsburg. We had taken two subway trains to get there, and it was so cold outside that my eyes were watering and nose was running. I had met Roy before when we had gone out for Taiwanese food with Jacinda; he was Chinese and impossibly stylish. He called everyone girl including the waiter at our restaurant that night, which had made us all laugh until our cheeks hurt.
My fortune cookie at dinner that night had told me, You will find great love.
I was already experiencing a ton of challenges, so I had reason to believe the fortune cookie wordsmith at the fortune cookie factory was onto something. Since that night, I had been keeping my eyes peeled for love, but had been seeing more challenges than romantic possibilities.
When Jacinda called to tell me Roy had requested my presence at his party I had almost jumped out of my skin. It was a real party, a killer party, packed with hipsters. A real DJ from Detroit had been flown in and he was spinning electronic music that was so loud, the floor was vibrating. Everyone attending Roy’s party had been put “on the list” which allowed us to breeze in through the front door without the meathead guys working security asking us for our ID’s, or for the twenty dollar admission fee. Kids handing out flyers to everyone standing in the freezing cold line outside had told me that the DJ was named JK and he was the next big thing.
I didn’t know how this party stacked up against other nightclubs in New York City, but I was definitely willing to bet that it was cooler than any party that had ever been thrown on the Treadwell campus. Or possibly by any Treadwell student, anywhere, at any time. Except for maybe Ameerah Thompson since her dad knew like, every single major rap star. But, rumor had it that her dad was also insanely over-protective, so it was likely she had never thrown a party of her own.
Somehow, magically, Jacinda and I had become inseparable. As much as I missed Juliette, our friendship had been very different from the one I shared with Jacinda. I had bought a tacky mobile phone on which I texted back and forth with Jacinda all day and night long. When she was at the salon, she sent me hilarious texts about the stupidity of her coworkers and annoying nature of her rich clients. When she was at Timmy’s, she texted me cool songs to download and funny celebrity gossip.
Aaron and I had been in New York just long enough for our new life to actually feel somewhat authentic. I had fallen into a routine at Prekin, waking up every morning when I had a shift, walking to work, getting a cheap coffee at the donut and bagel stand, getting to know by heart many of the prices for commonly bought items at the store. I barely saw Aaron because he slept while I worked mornings, and his shift at the restaurant kept him on his feet for eight hours every night. He came home exhausted, stinking of garlic and cooking oil, with his pockets overflowing with cash. We were still sleeping on the floor, but there was food in our fridge and a frying pan on our stovetop. We had finally been able to afford to start doing laundry at the Laundromat around the corner.
Previously in my life, I probably would have said that God had taken care of things for us. But I had adopted the attitude that Aaron and I had moved mountains on our own to get our lives set up. So, we weren’t rolling in money. Our apartment had tiny roaches under the kitchen sink, and we still didn’t have real furniture. But things were taking shape quickly for us, entirely because we had both worked ferociously to make that happen.
“I mean, can you believe his nerve? It’s Friday night! I can’t sit around in the Bronx waiting for him to decide he wants to see me,” she continued. “I’ve got places to be.”
One thing I had come to understand in getting to know Jacinda was that she and Orlando broke up and got back together pretty much every single day, and it had been that way for two years. It was evident to me no matter how many times she said she was done with him – for real – she was hopelessly in love with him. She never, ever looked at other boys.
We were lingering in the back of the club where I could only just barely hear her over the roar of the music. I had gotten on the train with Jacinda that night a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to get in because of my age, or worse, that Jacinda would insist on drinking. I didn’t drink, not at all. Fortunately, as soon as we entered the club, she informed me that she was straight edge.
“Oh,” I said, dumb-founded.
“What do you mean? Are you surprised that a black girl would be straight edge?” Jacinda accused me, hands on her hips.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what straight edge is.”
Jacinda rolled her magnificent eyes at me and explained that people who were straight edge didn’t smoke cigarettes, do drugs or drink alcohol. Ever. Not under any circumstances. It was a movement to promote a clean lifestyle.
“Girl, sometimes I think you gotta be from Mars,” Jacinda teased. “You can drink all you want, I won’t hate on you. But that’s your choice.”
Unknowingly, I was straight edge, too, I realized with relief! Not because of any particular lifestyle choice I had made, but because I was too chicken to try any of those things and didn’t like the idea of getting drunk and being out of control of myself. It was a major relief to find out I could tell people that I was straight edge, not drink, and still be considered cool.
“Oh girl, eleven o’clock,” she said suddenly, grabbing my forearm and pulling me closer to her. I looked in the direction in which she was nodding her head.
A boy was emerging from the crowd on the dance floor, looking right at me. There was something familiar about him, but then again, I thought, how could there possibly be? I couldn’t have known any cool guys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
“Do you know this tool?” Jacinda asked me as the guy appeared to be walking directly toward me.
“No,” I insisted innocently.
He had black hair, straight and shiny, and wore heavy glasses. He was only a few inches taller than me, which meant by guys’ standards he was kind of short, but he wasn’t unattractive. He was kind of the perfect size for me.
It was when he raised his hand to wave to me that I realized where I knew him from. His forearms were covered in tattoos of spider webs. It was the guy I had seen on the A train on our very first night in the city, nearly three weeks earlier. I had almost not recognized him because his hair had grown in.
“Hi,” he said, shouting in my ear to be heard.
“Hi,” I said in return, completely flabbergasted that our paths h
ad crossed again.
“You look different,” he said, motioning toward my hair.
I was stunned. How had he managed to find me in this enormous, crowded city after so many weeks? It wasn’t as if we had even had a conversation on the train, or like he knew my name or anything. How had he even recognized my face?
“How did you recognize me?” I asked. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
He replied, but I couldn’t hear a word of what he was saying.
After a few minutes of frustratingly ineffective attempts at communication, we both got our hands stamped with ink so that we could get back inside the club, and stepped outdoors to have a conversation.
“I was saying, how do we know each other? I mean, do we?” I asked him.
The music was spilling out of the giant warehouse and into the dark street. Moonlight was reflecting in puddles that were starting to freeze over; it was insanely cold outside for mid-November. There were tiny snow flurries swirling around us, which was kind of shocking. Not like I made a habit of checking the weather report, but it was only November. Too early for snow. It was so much quieter in the street than in the club that my ears immediately began ringing. A few kids lingered around near us, all shivering and smoking cigarettes near the club’s side door.
“I saw you on the train,” he reminded me. I noticed for the first time that he had a slight accent. “That was you, wasn’t it? The uptown train a few weeks ago. It was late at night.”
I nodded, wondering if maybe I should play it more cool and pretend like I had no clue what he was talking about. But I was genuinely curious about why he had remembered me.
“I thought so,” he said, clearly pleased with himself.
“How did you remember me? I mean, why did you remember me?” I asked. I was shivering. My coat was inside at the coat check and it was downright wintry.
“You remembered me, too, didn’t you?” he teased. “I thought you were maybe new in town, or just visiting. You had suitcases. You looked like you had an interesting story to tell.”
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