Sweet Jesus

by Christine Pountney

  Maybe it’s good not to get so attached to that kind of thing, Hannah said.

  Well, of course I was attached! I know that’s hard for you bohemian types to understand, but I was very attached to the way things were. My house, and my family in it. It took me years to collect all that stuff, my artwork, my furniture, my rugs. I don’t care if it seems shallow and unenlightened, but it really hurts to lose it all now. I used to look around the house and think, oh yeah, this is who I am. This is what I’ve built with my life.

  So do you think people who haven’t amassed all that stuff haven’t built anything with their lives?

  No, all I’m saying is that, for me, it was reassuring.

  Hannah had, on more than one occasion, rolled her eyes at her sister’s big house and fancy cars and closet full of expensive clothes. She’d once stood in Connie’s closet and stroked one of her folded cashmere sweaters and heard the muted crinkle of tissue paper beneath the exquisite wool. The price tag was still on. Connie’s lifestyle was excessive, and Hannah felt her sister wasn’t even aware of this. And it seemed odd, especially in light of her Christian faith. But, in fact, Hannah was sympathetic to the material – the need for embellishment, to make things beautiful – and often found the most heartbreaking vulnerability to be expressed through the material, especially when money was scarce. In the acquisition of a thing that had no intrinsic value but could cause such joy. Her mother had once made a special trip to IKEA to buy some pretty paper napkins that were on sale for half-price. It was a trivial gesture pinned to the hope of something small and sweet, to be available at some future opportunity for hospitality. This was the kind of thing that made Hannah want to weep. I mean, Hannah said. And then she didn’t know what to say.

  Connie felt unfairly criticized and had retreated into angry silence. Why did her sister insist on challenging her, and at such a low point? Her anger kept ricocheting between what she knew to be Harlan’s failure and what she perceived to be her own. She was angry that the man she had chosen to marry had screwed up so badly, but what did it say about her own judgment? She had tried to avoid weakness, but that’s exactly what she’d married into. And she was at a loss now to explain how she could have been so wrong about the quality that lay barely beneath the surface of her own life. Look, Connie said, I just want to meditate quietly on the landscape, if that’s okay with you.

  I never said it wasn’t, Hannah said and wondered why she couldn’t be soft.

  I’m trying to get the colours right, Connie said, and it took all her concentration not to cry. The late October sky was like milk with a drop of blue paint in it. The ground scrubby, the fields shaved and corrugated. Buzzed rows of mustard-coloured stalks. Last night’s rain had left ribbons of bright water in the furrows, like incisions revealing another sky that lay beneath the earth.

  They drove on broodingly, past some crows yelling at each other in a field. I made a road trip CD, Hannah said and reached for her bag. Can you get it for me?

  Nick Cave sang a woeful, gritty ballad.

  Hannah took a quick look at her sister. She was tolerating the music. I had a dream last night, Hannah said, about Emma.

  Connie closed her eyes.

  I dreamt she was having a baby.

  Do I want to hear this?

  No, Hannah said, probably not. And it was true, the dream had been lurid. There were some body parts in a bag, a T-bone steak, which was part of the new baby. Emma was giving birth and her little right leg was deflated like the finger of an empty rubber glove. She was holding her hands above her head and trying to squeeze the baby out. The dream had made Hannah feel dirty, for having such thoughts about her niece, with their implication of sex and adult behaviour, but then she’d realized what it was all about. Of course the dream had nothing to do with Emma, Hannah said. It’s about my own thwarted desire to have a baby, that’s all.

  Connie was silent, then said, I can’t be casual about my children, okay? I just can’t be. And I would like you to exercise some restraint about the things you tell me on this trip. I want you, just a little, if it’s possible, to take my feelings into account. I mean, my situation – is that going to be too hard for you?

  No, Hannah said. I just keep forgetting, okay? Her sister could be so severe. You know, Harlan doesn’t need to be damned, she said. He’s not a bad man.

  I’m not even thinking about him, Connie said, and again she felt the painful vulnerability of talking about her intimate life, and yet she was compelled. It had something to do with a desire to be known. To be known. Now that would compensate a little for this feeling of fear. It’s just that being a mother is so terrifying at times, she said, and as soon as she did, she was flooded with the reassuring confidence of love. That’s what being a mother was like too, she thought, overruled constantly by love. Emma’s getting really independent, she said. She’s so headstrong. I overheard her talking to some of her little friends recently about how she crosses the street with her eyes closed and that she’s never been hit by a car. This totally freaked me out, of course, but it also made me think how for some people the prospect of opening their eyes is more terrifying than keeping them shut.

  Sometimes I think we all live by faith when we’re children, Hannah said, and then spend the rest of our adult lives trying to regain that trust.

  The sun had punched through the clouds and the sisters drove through a pulsing corridor of tall dark trees and came out along some more shorn fields. Long, straight alleys of bright yellow stalks slid and stretched, then flashed by, one after another. They stopped for tea at Tim Hortons and Connie wandered out alone behind the squat, brown-brick building. The back half was made of grey cinder blocks. Beyond it, an empty trailer park, the grass wet and shiny like fish scales. A little mirrored pond where the ground had been flooded, yellow leaves in the clear water, still as fossils. Her best audience wasn’t there to witness this and somehow that’s what made things real, was sharing them with Harlan and the kids. Without them the world felt insubstantial, made of theatrical sets and facades. Like this building, the best bricks reserved for the front, the rest just cinder blocks. Cinder blocks! They might as well have been selling doughnuts out of a bunker. She looked up and the landscape looked stripped and abandoned. Would she ever get her family back together again?

  They got back into the truck and the sun was dazzling overhead. Silver flashed off the chrome parts of the cars on the highway. The woods looked purple and rust-coloured, the grasses brown and ochre. The zinc dome of an old silo flared like a lighthouse in the distance, marking the end of the fields. The sisters were coming into a suburb. They got off the 401 and took Highway 3. After a while, Connie noticed a sign for the American border at Ambassador Bridge.

  They drove past the duty-free shop, then Hannah slowed the truck to get in line. She reached for her bag. Connie, too, was getting her passport out. They pulled up to a booth and a border guard stepped out. Where y’all headed?

  Chicago, Hannah said.

  What’s in Chicago?

  Our brother, she said and it felt strange. She wasn’t in the habit of mentioning a brother.

  The border guard requested their passports and handed them to another officer sitting in the booth behind him. He put his hand on the roof of the truck and stooped to look into the cab at Connie. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking across the pavement at a young couple with a child. They were standing next to an old, dark green Volvo while four officers pulled the seats out of their car.

  The border guard straightened up. He was broad in the middle, and around his waist he wore a black belt with pouches, nightstick, and gun. He strolled down the length of the truck and back again. You carrying any firearms?

  Hannah shook her head.

  What’s in the storage box?

  Nothing, as far as I know.

  Is it locked?

  Hannah pulled the keys out of the ignition and handed them over. It’s that one, I think. There was a small key for a padlock on the ring. When t
hey’d rented the truck, they’d put their bags behind the front seats and neither of them had checked the storage box.

  The border guard stayed where he was, leaning up against the truck. He sucked on his teeth, then sauntered to the back, pulled down the tailgate, and got up onto the bed. The truck dipped and bounced. He unlocked the storage box and lifted the lid. The sisters sat still and sullen, as if they were strangers to each other. The border guard got down and the truck rocked like a small sailboat. He took his time talking, with his back turned, to the other officer in the booth.

  Okay, he said, handing the keys and their passports through the window. You’re good to go.

  There was exhilaration and relief as they drove into the States, and towards their imminent reunion with Zeus, but immediately there were roadworks, so Hannah took a marked detour around Detroit – following a long, sweeping curve of orange pylons – and slipped under a railroad overpass made of iron panels, rusted a solid reddish brown and covered in graffiti.

  Why did you say Chicago? Connie asked her sister. And not Wichita?

  I thought the Global Kingdom of Salvation Center would be harder to explain than going to visit our brother, if it came up, she said and followed the arrows onto Warren Street and soon they found themselves driving through a residential neighbourhood. It was cloudy again now, grey and cold.

  It was weird hearing you say our brother, Connie said.

  It was weird saying it.

  I still can’t believe we’re doing this.

  I know, Hannah said. I’m surprised Zeus agreed to be picked up at all.

  Zeus, Connie said. What a name to have.

  We gave it to him, don’t you remember?

  No.

  When he first arrived at Mom and Dad’s, that first Christmas he was in Toronto. We told him he had to change his name or else the kids at school were going to call him cheeses. Hey, cheeses! But he kept insisting, do you remember this? My name’s Jésus! And he’d pronounce it the way you say it in Spanish. And that’s when I said to him, Zeus! That’s what you’ve got to call yourself. Then it’ll be like, hey, Zeus, in the schoolyard, and the kids would be pronouncing his name properly, and they wouldn’t even know it.

  Connie gave a huff of recognition. Oh yeah, now I remember.

  They were still following the detour, and the houses along the street were old, red brick. Large houses with gabled windows and gingerbread trim and wide, flat overgrown lawns. Some of the houses were boarded up, others had broken windows, caved-in porches, mossy roofs. It would have been a well-to-do neighbourhood once, but it was derelict now. It went on for miles.

  What if he’s chickened out, Connie said, and he’s not there when we get to his place? What if he lives in a neighbourhood like this – look.

  Connie pointed to a house. One side of it was charred and the sky was visible through an upstairs window, but the house still looked inhabited. A stained mattress hung over the porch railing. A small carved pumpkin on the front steps. At the next red light, they watched a grey-haired black man, in blue sweatpants and a mustard-coloured trench coat, push a rusty lawn-mower across an empty lot. Where the engine would normally be was what looked like the white perforated tub from a washing machine. Through the pattern of holes, the orange flames of a small fire flickered on and off. It was a portable campfire and the man was wheeling it somewhere as it burned.

  Connie hugged herself, feeling a chill. Hannah turned the heat up. Two women on the sidewalk trying to carry a broken-down sofa. A young man with a skinny dog walking slowly, as if he had no place to be. All this poverty, Connie said.

  They passed the side of a building that had a weathered mural of a Latino-looking Jesus.

  Remember what it was like when Dad decided to move us all to Montreal? Hannah said. I sort of fell in love with it the moment I saw it, which is kind of weird. I mean, for a kid to fall in love with a city?

  It’s a decadent and historical place, Connie said. Of course you loved it.

  It was a new kind of vibe for us, wasn’t it? Suddenly, we were hanging out with kids whose parents drank and smoked, and ate hotdogs that got delivered to their door in little white paper bags. And their fathers probably went to those strip clubs Mom and Dad objected to so strongly. Didn’t they organize a protest through the church once?

  The signs were too graphic, Connie said. That’s what they were trying to get changed.

  I remember sleeping over at this friend’s house, and in the morning her mom made me a baloney sandwich on white bread to take to school and when I ate it, it tasted like cigarette smoke.

  They got back on the highway and the world appeared unthreatening again. Connie took out her cell phone. I just found all that stuff kind of intimidating, she said, calling their parents’ place to speak to her kids. You guys all sorted out with your costumes? Connie said. Well, why don’t you ask her that yourself? I love you too, sweetie pie. And remember, no candy until you get home and Nana’s checked it for you, okay? Her voice was so tender and affectionate towards her children that it gave Hannah a pang.

  After another half-hour or so, they passed a large, unpainted wooden church with a wide, uneven strip of green down its side. One man at the top of a ladder, with a single can of paint. That’s a totally ridiculous way of going about painting a building that size, Connie said.

  Maybe, Hannah said, he considers it to be an expression of his devotion.

  I think faith is the best expression of devotion, Connie said.

  Of course you do.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  Well, maybe we’re not all equally predisposed to having faith. Maybe it’s predetermined by our character.

  No, Connie said, it’s about choice and free will.

  Maybe it’s about temperament, Hannah said.

  Faith has nothing to do with temperament. Faith overrides temperament.

  Are you kidding me? Faith is an outcome of temperament. You’re religious, Connie, because you have a religious temperament, and I’m not because I don’t. We’ve got no choice in the matter. And it drives me crazy how often faith gets disguised as a kind of humility.

  Connie threw up her hands and gave a little growl of frustration. It’s not your temperament, Hannah, it’s your pride. That’s what’s standing in the way.

  In the way of what? Being grateful for having a flawed design. Look, she said, if God created me, then he planted the idea of immortality in my head – he made me at least smart enough to imagine it – but he didn’t give me the means of achieving it, unless I confess to being a worthless sinner and needing him. What kind of glorious creation does that make me?

  Connie was shaking her head. None of that has anything to do with faith.

  You shoplift a chocolate bar when you’re five years old, Hannah said, and there goes your perfection and immortality right there.

  You know, Connie said, combing her hair back with her hands, you can intellectualize until the cows come home, Hannah, but faith is a mystery. That’s why it’s so impossible to describe, and why it transforms those who have it and baffles those who don’t.

  Connie was looking at her sister’s profile, so foreign and familiar at the same time. It was a face she loved and could provoke such annoyance. Maybe you keep having to walk through doors all your life, she said. Because I feel like I’ve walked through them before. But then maybe I haven’t. Maybe this trip is going to be a chance to do what I’ve only thought I’ve done in the past. Leave everything behind – my fear and all my security? My wealth? Connie said and her voice was pleading. Because I’m right here, aren’t I? Out of my depth. Out of my comfort zone. Riding in this ridiculous pickup truck with you, and I’m sitting here and it’s hot and stuffy now, and it stinks because I think you just farted, and all you see is some kind of giving over on my part and not the courage I feel this requires.

  Hannah lowered her window and felt bad. She didn’t want to be cynical, but still she had no compulsion to cross over into her sister’s
camp. If at any point in her life she’d had any certainty about it, she would’ve been a Christian in a heartbeat.

  On the dashboard, next to the stereo, was a button with the little symbol of a smoking cigarette. Connie pushed it in and when it popped, she said, I didn’t think cars still came with these things. She held the orange coil under her palm and felt the warmth of it.

  Connie and Hannah drove all day and into the evening, pushing to get to Zeus’s place by when they told him they’d be there. From a distance, the glittering mass of Chicago’s skyline gradually rose up out of the earth. Connie read the directions to Hannah that they’d printed off the internet. Otherwise, the sisters were quiet, concentrating on their new surroundings, taking in the details. After the darkness of the countryside, the city looked artificially bright. They took the exit for Augusta Boulevard and everything seemed to wind down, unnaturally slow, after the highway. West Town looked a little rough, but there were kids still out trick-or-treating with their parents. They found the right street after two wrong turns and sat idling the truck across from their brother’s building. A screaming pack of older kids, in masks and army boots, carrying bows and arrows, tore down the block. One boy wore the American flag as a cape. They were only twenty-five minutes late. Not bad, Hannah said.

  A brown metal door at the bottom of a brick tenement. Connie blew out her cheeks and thumbed his number into her cell, leaning forward to look up through the windshield. Before there was an answer, a bald head appeared in a window on the third floor. He waved. Is that him? Connie said, snapping her phone and waving back.

  Hannah blurted the truck horn.

  I guess we should wait here, Connie said.

  A few minutes later, the metal door opened and out he came, carrying a coat and a duffle bag. He was a small man and, at twenty-two, looked younger than his age. He paused in the doorway, and in the light of the entrance, they could see that his head was shaved and he wore pale green cotton pants, like scrubs a surgeon would wear, tucked into red high-top sneakers and a grey sweater with sleeves so long they hung to his fingertips.