Jesus Land

by Julia Scheeres

  At supper, I keep waiting for David to say something. I watch him intently as he picks at his Salisbury steak TV dinner. He’s wearing a long flannel shirt, so I can’t see his arm. How badly was he burned? Did those boys get expelled? What did the teacher do? After several minutes, he looks up.

  “What are you staring at me for?” he asks testily, interrupting our parents’ discussion of the church budget.

  “I’m not staring,” I say, my cheeks reddening.

  “Yes, you are,” David insists.

  I turn to Mother.

  “May I please be excused to get some more water?”

  “Yes, you may,” she says.

  As I press my glass against the refrigerator water dispenser, I feel betrayed. Our whole lives, David has always confided in me, and now this horrible thing happens and he goes to Jerome instead. Jerome, who we’ve always regarded as a third wheel, an interloper. I long to ask him what happened in metals class, but if I do, he’d know I was spying on him and get angry. Then he’d go outside to talk privately with Jerome, just like he and I used to do to get away from Mother.

  I look back at the table, at my parents on either end discussing churchy matters, at my brothers sitting side by side between them, their cropped hair identical, comrades in color. Where do I fit in this setup?

  Jerome. Who else could David turn to when he’s attacked by a classroom of racists? I certainly couldn’t protect him, and our parents would just repeat their weary, useless advice: “Turn the other cheek.” Jerome—with his size and his fury—is the great equalizer. Jerome’s good for something after all.

  When I return to the table, Dad clears his throat. He’s still wearing his dark suit and his hair is greased over the bald spot, not a strand out of place. He looks like he’s about to rush back to work.

  “We have an announcement to make,” he says, his fork poised over fluorescent orange cubes on his tinfoil tray.

  “Your mother and I are going to California for a board meeting of the Wycliffe Bible Associates this weekend, and we trust you kids are mature enough not to require the services of a babysitter.”

  Mother chimes in. “Because if you do, we’ll find one,” she says.

  They look sternly at us, and we look sternly back at them.

  “Oh, please!” I say, acting insulted. “We’ll be fine.”

  Oh, the possibilities! I’ll stay up all night watching television, try on Mother’s clothes and makeup, blast WAZY on the great room stereo and dance across the wood floor . . .

  “We’ll be fine,” Jerome says.

  David glances over at me and I can read the excitement in his eyes. This is a first. Whenever they’ve gone on trips before, they’ve left us in the care of some church person or a nurse from Dad’s office.

  “There’s enough frozen potpies to last until we get back,” Mother says. “And on Sunday, you may watch church TV instead of driving to town; we’ll be back Sunday night.”

  Dad forks a carrot cube.

  “We don’t want you to have any visitors over while we’re gone,” he says.

  “And,” Mother says, “I want the house spotless when we return. Understood?”

  “Understood,” the three of us say in unison.

  I’m allowed to drive the Corolla to swim practice now that the weather has turned, and when I pull into the driveway Friday afternoon, Jerome’s waiting in the driveway.

  “Give me the keys,” he says as I get out of the car.

  “What for?” I ask.

  “I need to run some errands,” he says.

  He was forbidden from driving the car after he stole it, but he’s in my face with his nearness and smell, so I drop the keys onto the gravel and walk away.

  An hour later, I find him unloading cases of beer into the refrigerator. He’s moved the eggs, orange juice, and milk onto the counter to make room for the silver cans.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “The food will go bad.”

  “Oh well,” he says, dumping the vegetable drawer into the sink. His mail-order ID—”Tyrone Jefferson, DOB 1-19-62”—is on the counter right under Mother’s “Missions to Africa” calendar. November features a group of ragged black children smiling as they hug Bibles to their bony chests.

  I run downstairs and fling open the boys’ bedroom.

  David’s hunched over his desk, peering at the top of his head in a hand mirror and holding a sewing scissors. He’s got a row of small bald spots lining one side of his scalp.

  “Ever heard of knocking?” he says, dropping the mirror and scissors into an open drawer. I step over to him and sink my fingers into the soft wool of his hair. They are bald spots.

  “What’d you cut bald spots into your hair for?” I ask him. He jerks his head out of my hands.

  “They’re not bald spots, it’s a part!”

  “David, you don’t cut a part into your hair, you comb a part into your hair.”

  He takes the mirror out of the drawer and strains to look at the top of his head, swiveling his eyes from side to side.

  “But it looks okay, right?”

  Something crashes onto the floor above us.

  “It’s fine,” I say impatiently. “What’s Jerome’s doing with all that beer?”

  “He invited some people over,” David says, still peering at his head.

  “What people?!”

  “Some dudes from school. I told him it wasn’t a good idea, but he doesn’t listen to me.”

  Great, my evening is ruined. I had it all planned out—The Facts of Life at eight P.M., then Star Wars—at nine P.M., spumoni ice cream in the freezer.

  “I invited Kenny since people are coming anyway,” he says. “Why don’t you invite Elaine . . . or Mary?”

  He says this casually, but I know he’s got a crush on Mary the size of Texas. He’s tongue-tied whenever she comes over, and she treats him like an oversized puppy, patting him on the head and teasing him. David’s always after my friends, but they don’t take him seriously. He might as well belong to another species.

  “My brother likes you,” I once told a friend on his behalf in sixth grade. “Do you want to go with him?”

  “David?” she replied, scrunching up her nose. “He’s nice enough . . . but he’s black!”

  When David asked what her answer was, I lied and told him she already had a boyfriend.

  “Elaine’s out of town, and Mary’s with her new boyfriend, some varsity wrestler from Central Catholic,” I lie, again.

  It’s true that Elaine is gone, but Mary doesn’t have a boyfriend; she’s grounded for the weekend. David’s face falls, and he stands.

  “I’d best call Kenny and see what time he’s coming over,” he says, leaving the room.

  Plan B: I’ll barricade myself into my room and drink. It’s Friday night, my parents are gone, and I want to party.

  When I hear Jerome roar off in the Corolla again, I rush to the kitchen to extract the pantry key from Mother’s hiding place, under the pen tray in the phone drawer.

  I pour myself a Comfort and Coke (½ bourbon, ½ pop) and sip it while taking a twenty-minute shower, luxuriating in the heat and steam without Mother banging on the door (That’s long enough!). Afterward, I wrap a towel around myself and fetch another tall drink, then lock myself in my room.

  WAZY is playing Van Halen’s “Pretty Woman,” and I prance naked in front of the dresser mirror, trying to grind my hips in circles and jiggle my boobs like those girls on MTV. Problem is, I have no hips to grind, no breasts to jiggle. But those boys must have found something about me attractive; why else would they want to pull off my clothes? Maybe I have that “special something that drives men wild” that Glamour talks about, I think, smiling slyly at the mirror.

  I hear the Corolla race into the driveway and double-check the lock on the door, my head spinning pleasantly with alcohol, before pulling the December Glamour from under my mattress. David’s been nice enough to hide my subscription from Mother for me when he gets the mail aft
er school.

  I lay belly-down on my bed and open it to the book-marked page:

  Do’s & Don’ts for the Man Hunt:

  Don’t put out too fast—he’ll think you’re a slut.

  Don’t make the first move—men want to be conquerors.

  Do smile and be sweet—dazzle him with your femininity!

  Do learn to converse intelligently—men don’t like a chatterbox.

  If Mother could only see me now: naked, drunk, listening to rock music and reading Glamour magazine. For shame! she’d say, and the thought of her pinched face makes me laugh.

  I hear deep male laughter rumbling in the great room and stiffen, glancing at the door. Yes, it’s locked. Who are Jerome’s friends? The hoods he hangs out with at school? The laughter goes outside and a basketball slaps on concrete.

  As I pull on the track suit, there’s a knock on my door.

  “Hey Ju-la-la, open up!” David calls.

  He’s smirking when I open the door, holding a glass of grape Kool-Aid in his hand. Kenny Mudd hangs limply beside him, dressed in funeral black, bug eyes staring at the carpet. What a dork.

  “Kenny here wants to say hi,” David says. I give him a dirty look; yesterday he told me that Kenny thought I was cute.

  “Hi, Kenny,” I say. “Nice you could make it.”

  “Hi!” Kenny shouts, thrusting a hand in the air, still staring at the carpet. I turn to David.

  “So who are we tonight? The good guys or the bad guys?”

  “The Dark Cleric knows not morality!” David says in a raspy voice. “He is the Master of the Mountain Minions, and he shall be feared.”

  He raises his left hand, Pope-like, to be kissed. A piece of metal winds around his middle finger, and I pull it to my face; it’s a nail, hammered into a circle.

  “Are you supposed to be some kind of religious figure?”

  Kenny snaps to life.

  “He’s a barbarian from the Kingdom of Ork!” he barks, lifting his eyes to the knees of my sweat pants.

  David makes a fist with the ring hand.

  “It’s the Band of Iron,” David says in his queer voice. “No harm shall befall me as long as I wear it.”

  “He’s aligned himself with the forces of Edgar!” Kenny blurts out. “Blood will spill, I tell you, and mightily!”

  I raise my eyebrows at David and he smirks; Kenny entertains him.

  “O-kay,” I say. “David, who’s out there?”

  He shrugs.

  “We’ve been downstairs,” he says. “Why, are you expecting someone special?”

  At this Kenny finally looks up. I glare at him, and his gaze falls again.

  “They drinking yet?” I ask David.

  “There’s some hard stuff in the kitchen,” he says. “But I don’t think anyone’s boozing it up yet but you.”

  David has developed a sixth sense for when I’m drinking, and he doesn’t like it. He could smell it on my breath when we walked to the bus stop, even though I’d brush my teeth and chew gum. He says liquor makes me stupid and worries I’ll become an alcoholic.

  I put my hand on the doorknob; I don’t need him to ruin my party.

  “Well, you kids have fun playing make-believe.”

  “And you,” David responds, as I close the door. “Party hardy—all by yourself.”

  Next to the spoiling food in the kitchen is a gleaming cluster of green and brown bottles. Four Roses. Night Train. Ever Clear. I grab a bottle of Bacardi Spice. This I know from the Home Hospital doctors’ lounge at Christmas; David and I dumped it into our eggnog last year when no one was looking.

  He took a couple of sips and gagged, so I downed both of our cups. As I’m filling my glass with Bacardi, the front door blasts open and smashes into a clay platter hanging on the wall behind it. The platter, which depicts the Aztec calendar—a gift to my mother from missionaries in Mexico—falls in pieces to the floor.

  “God damn it,” Jerome says.

  I freeze, the bottle still pouring into my glass, and look over at the entranceway. Brad MacIntyre is beside Jerome, and they’re both studying the broken shards. Through the open door, there are more male voices, and the sound of the basketball.

  “That’s gonna be fun to explain,” Brad snorts, deliberately crunching a piece of clay under foot. He’s wearing the same Big Boy T-shirt he wore the day he tried to stick his hands down my pants. He looks up and sees me.

  “Well, look who’s here,” Brad says. I swallow, and Jerome pushes past him to snatch the bottle from my hands.

  “You’re wasting precious fluid, fool!” he shouts, exhaling sour beer breath. I back away from him and look down: the rum has spilled across the counter in an amber rush.

  “I don’t mind if she drinks my liquor,” Brad says, winking at me.

  We haven’t spoken since the day I kicked him in the nuts, and the one time I saw him walking down a hallway toward me at Harrison, I ducked into a bathroom. I never told anyone what happened that day; how could I begin to explain why Jerome set me up?

  Brad’s eyes graze my body top to bottom, as if I were the centerfold in a dirty magazine.

  “You up for some more fun tonight, angel?” he asks, grinning.

  He can’t do this to me in my own home. I walk to the sink and pour the rum into the silver basin, glaring at him. His smile disappears.

  Jerome walks between us to the refrigerator.

  “Dude, what’s your poison?” Jerome asks, yanking open the door. “We got Bud, Michelob, that shitty malt stuff Whitman brought . . .”

  “How about your little sister?”

  Jerome straightens and looks at Brad.

  “Afraid she’s not on the menu tonight,” Jerome says, holding out a beer can to him.

  Brad ignores him and grabs the Bacardi Spice bottle from the counter. He tilts back his head and swigs rum into his mouth, gulping rhythmically for several seconds before slamming the bottle back on the counter. He wipes his wet mouth with the back of his hand and belches.

  “How ’bout that, little sister?” he sneers.

  “Leave me alone,” I say, striding past him toward my room.

  “Leave me alone!” he whines in a high-pitched voice, before growling: “You got it coming, you know.”

  The door’s pounding. The alarm clock says it’s almost eleven, and it takes me a second to realize why I’m lying on top of my bed fully clothed and Duran Duran’s “Reflex” is thudding on the great room stereo. Oh yeah, I’m partying.

  The door continues to pound.

  “Who is it?” I call, my voice scratchy. The music is too loud to hear a response. I stand and my bedroom swirls like a merry-go-round. Close my eyes and sit back down.

  The doorknob twists back and forth; the lock holds. It’s probably David.

  I stagger to the door and crack it open. Scott’s leaning against the hallway wall across from me, two tumblers of honey-colored liquid in his hands.

  “Truce!” he yells over the music, offering me a glass. He smiles, and his brown eyes are dreamy with alcohol. He’s wearing his signature satin shorts, red this time, and a “Boilermakers” muscle shirt. Dressed for summer, despite the freeze outside. The arm offering me the drink is curved and tan and I stare at it. Despite what he tried to do to me that night in the school basement, I still find him hot. I know I’ve got some booze in me, but it’s true. He is hot. The hottest boy who’s ever shown interest in me.

  “What do you want?” I yell back.

  When we cross paths at school, he smiles and I scowl.

  My hand is on the doorknob; I can slam it shut anytime. I have a sharp letter opener hidden in my pillowcase. David’s right downstairs.

  Whoops of laughter roll down the hallway from the great room; how many of them are there? I circle the doorknob with my fingers and eye the offered glass. I’m thirsty and could use a drink. I take it from him and sniff it—whiskey—and gulp a few swallows. It warms my throat. Scott takes a step toward me, and I start to close the door. He
drops to his knees holding his glass.

  “Please, please, please,” he prays, and by the way he wobbles, I can tell he is drunk, harmless. “I want to talk to you.”

  The mighty Scott Cooper is kneeling at my feet. This is highly entertaining. Finally I’ll have something interesting to tell Elaine and Mary on Monday as we sit on the floor next to the locked gymnasium, eating our junk food picnic.

  I walk past him down the dark hallway, then turn and beckon to him like a femme fatale in an old movie. He’s in my power now. He lurches to his feet.

  The ghost of Mother’s Enjoli perfume lingers in the air of the master bedroom. I turn on her bedside lamp and shiver with excitement as I sit on the spotless white bedspread of my parents’ bed, sipping whiskey and waiting for Scott to walk through the door.

  He sets his glass on the King James Bible on Mother’s night-stand, and I move it to the carpet and put mine beside it. The Fixx’s “One Thing Leads to Another” is now blaring from the stereo, and I giggle at this as I close the door and sit back down on the bed.

  I turn to face Scott in the quieted room and his shorts shimmer red in the lamplight.

  “Julia,” he says, breathing out the three syllables of my name in a deep voice. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

  He sits heavily beside me, his leg brushing mine, and suddenly I feel shyly stupid in his presence, my tongue big and sloppy inside my mouth. His breath is warm and yeasty on my cheek.

  “You’re so alone,” he says, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear, his fingers brushing my cheek. “You and me. We could be friends.”

  His hand slides down my neck to my shoulder, where it rests. He starts to fall back on the bed and steadies himself by tightening his grip on my shoulder.

  “Your hair is beautiful. It’s like . . . like . . . corn silk. Long and soft.”

  He pets the back of my head, a little too hard, but I yield to his hand and close my eyes. No one’s ever talked to me this way before.

  “Sorry ’bout the other day. Got out of hand. Jerome . . .”

  “I hate Jerome!” I say, opening my eyes and leaning away from him.

  “Shh, I know,” he says, rubbing my back. No one’s ever touched me this way before.