Anna understands what’s coming.
“With sword,” he says. “And with hunger, and . . .”
“With death,” Anna says. The seven years of scarcity and hunger that followed seven years of fertility and plenty. The fools who wasted the surplus. The wise ones who held back, denying themselves because they understood what lay ahead.
Lars reaches out with his left hand and touches Anna on the arm. Just once. He pulls away. Then he comes at her again. She’s still unprepared, still shocked. This time he takes an unresisting hand away from Anna’s side. “And their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes,” he says. “Their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.”
Vile words, vile thoughts. A vision of hell on earth. Yet music is there, also. Anna’s hand being held, sweetly. An unresolvable paradox. She takes her hand back. She resolves to regain control. She resolves to leave. To end this.
And then it happens. Anna’s hands begin to tremble. A twinge that starts in her chest ignites and spreads to her face, out to her limbs, her fingers and toes. She’s still clutching her book bag, but barely. She’s still standing, but only just. Fighting to remain upright. She loses the battle. She falls. She’s now lying on the ground on the grass next to the sidewalk, Lars kneeling beside her. He is touching her again. He is stroking her arm. He is speaking words she can’t hear. Then the sun darkens. The empty street pulses with a reddish hue. A buzz as if an army of cicadas was descending, an interior pulsing of the earth. The light fades, all feeling fades. She is losing contact. She understands that her world is now inexorably divided in two: before and after.
“For His sake,” says Lars, leaning over Anna, taking her hand again. “To Him alone.” As weak as Anna is, she shudders as Lars finishes. “For we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
When Anna returns to herself, Lars is smiling. Anna sits up, far enough above the ground to read the entire name carved into the sidewalk in front of her, the large unsteady letters. C-A-R-O-L-I-N-E. I live in S-A-R-A-H, Lars in K-A-R-I-S. As the world comes into focus, Anna turns to look at the house behind her. She sees the curtains on the downstairs windows of C-A-R-O-L-I-N-E move slightly, a hand adjusting them. Then everything tips back into place.
Yet the familiar, dull suburban neighborhood is now anything but. All is strange, magnificent. The indifferently constructed houses dazzle. The spindly maples extend a rich dark canopy over her head. Even the clouds that threaten rain are glorious, their full, pregnant darkness illuminated from the sun hidden within their depths. They have a holy purpose. Everything does. Everything its own purpose and place. Clutching Lars’s hands with hers, Anna knows she is both cursed and blessed. For she has been smitten.
Anna’s mother senses the change at once. She is packing her bag for her day’s work when Anna bursts in. Anna can only manage, “The bus never came.”
“I suppose you need a ride?” her mother asks. She is focused on her tools.
“I suppose I do,” Anna says, and her mother must hear something in Anna’s voice, because she looks up, her face a mix of suspicion and hope.
“Well, let’s get going. We’ll both be late,” she says. She is pretending to be casual, but she is watching Anna closely.
They walk out to the car together. Across the street, a rare daylight glimpse of Jim Fulson, his strong ex-football-player’s arms flexing as he carries the garbage to the curb. She strains to see his face, overshadowed by a baseball cap. Anna hasn’t seen it in full light for more than six years.
Despite the dark morning, the clouds thickening, everything is still aglow for Anna. She watches Jim Fulson walk slowly back into the house, his broad shoulders relaxed, like someone with no plans, nothing to do. He is wearing a simple white T-shirt, jeans that fit him well.
Anna rejoices in lifting her feet off the ground, one after the other. Her sweatshirt hood is down, its zipper open.
“So you’re back?” her mother asks. Anna can see she is holding her breath.
Anna nods. She feels as though she can’t trust her voice.
“Well, thank fucking God.”
“Yes,” Anna says. “Thank Him.”
10
ANNA’S MOTHER DRIVES HER TO school. On the way, they see Lars trudging along the sidewalk.
“It’s two miles,” says Anna’s mother. “It’ll take him forever.” She stops and beckons for Lars to get into the backseat.
“Thank you, ma’am,” says Lars.
“You’re welcome, but drop the ‘ma’am.’”
“Yes, ma’am,” says Lars, then apologizes, but it seems rote rather than sincere. He is looking at Anna and smiling as he speaks.
“I see you’ve been brought up a certain way,” says Anna’s mother. She doesn’t say what she thinks of that method of child-rearing.
“Yes, I certainly have,” Lars says with an uplifted chin.
“How are you liking our town?” Anna’s mother would of course have noticed the bruises on Lars’s neck, the ones his T-shirt can’t quite hide. She is the noticing kind.
“Not particularly friendly, is it?” Lars asks.
“No. That we aren’t.” Her voice is softer, kinder. “Where did you live before?”
“Across the bay,” says Lars. “Fremont.” He shuts his mouth in a way that signals the topic is off limits.
After that, silence until they reach the school. Anna is acutely aware of Lars’s presence, but then she is acutely aware of everything at this moment. She thinks of all the reading with her mother, how the words have been transformed from metaphors into truths. Daniel in the lion’s den. Jonah and the whale. More than just tales. Vivid truths to learn from. She finds herself trembling at her awareness of His power. She realizes His strength, His benevolence. She is breathing deeply, there is richness in the air, she feels as though she could extract nutrients from it. She feels reborn.
“I want to get baptized,” Anna says just as her mother pulls up to the school.
Her mother nearly drives onto the pavement. “What?” she asks. She regains control of the car.
“Yes,” says Anna. “Baptized.”
“We can arrange that,” says Lars, from the backseat. Anna’s mother looks at him in her rearview mirror.
“You stay out of this,” she tells him. To Anna she says, “We’ll talk about it later.” She doesn’t speak another word, not even to Anna’s “goodbye.”
“Don’t worry,” Lars tells Anna as they walk into the building. “She’ll come around. She’ll eventually see the light.” Anna seriously doubts this but is struck by Lars’s confidence. They part to go to their respective classes, only to Anna they are more like animated tapestries, so lush are the colors and textures of the day. She can almost see the words coming out of her teachers’ mouths; they hang in the air, solid as the clothing the teachers are wearing, or the chalk they hold in their hands. They drip wisdom, Anna understands now that school, too, is a sacred place. The bang of lockers like the sound of trumpets, the bell signaling the end of class a call to prayer. How could she have missed what was under her eyes the whole time?
Anna can remember whole passages of her biblical reading with her mother. Psalm 96 rings through her head:
Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is herein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice Before the LORD: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth . . .
To judge, Anna thinks. Yes, that will be exciting.
11
WITH ONE HAND HE GIVES, and with the other hand He gives too much.
Several days after the morning at the bus stop, at first, an aura. A strange rosy light emanating from objects. A musty smell, like from the college trunk Anna’s father keeps in the attic. The faint trace of something sweet. Violets or jasmine. Not unpleasant. Not right away.
Then the light intensifies, the soft glow turning harsh, darkening. Then the colors. Starting with slices of deep blue and purple that merge and bleed into a river of vermillion that cracks the periphery of Anna’s vision.
The first time this happens, Anna keeps quiet. She is in her room, awake after midnight, against her parents’ orders. Reading the Book of Daniel. The story of Bel. The story excites her. How furious the duped king! How petulant yet satisfying his slaying of the false priests, their wives and young babies!
Then she is hit hard. By the colors, the smells. The visions. Wild. Unspeakable. Transformational. When Anna comes to, she is sitting on the floor with her back rigid against the bedroom door. She is breathing deeply. She is deeply moved. That night, she dreams of a cow, a red cow. The cow is motionless in a field, alone. Lonely, Anna can tell. But she can’t get to it. Fences, barbed wire, deep ditches all impede her path, keeping the red cow out of reach. What could this mean?
Two days later, Anna is in the bathroom at school. A milder episode this time, but it gives her a bump on her forehead from hitting her head against the stall. Ignoring the stares, she tells Lars about the episodes at lunch, becomes uncharacteristically annoyed that he doesn’t understand the color of the aura, which is the same color as the cow itself. “No, not just red. Vermillion. Pay attention, it’s important.” She had looked it up after the initial incident, so deeply had the particular color impressed her. The deep crimson color named after Kermes vermilio, the insect from which red dye was made in ancient times.
Anna dreams of the red cow every night. Every week, she has more of what she calls “the episodes.” No less frightening than the first. But the visions! The visions she lives for. She would even die for them.
12
ANNA IS SITTING WITH LARS in the back of the Goldschmidts’ Civic. The seat belts are broken, but they’re holding them across their laps in case they pass a cop. They’re on their way to church. Today is not Sunday. It is not morning. It is none of the things Anna associates with churchgoing. Saturday 8 pm, the San Jose city sidewalks and avenues busy with weekend celebrations.
A balmy evening for early May. The car passes men and women in evening dress, the women’s bare shoulders gleaming in the streetlights, thronging around the entrance to the old vaudeville theater that is now the opera house. Anna sees single men and women tapping at laptops through the large windows of coffeehouses. Nail salon after nail salon. Empty storefronts that haven’t been renovated since the 1950s next to gleaming glass skyscrapers, also empty, forty thousand square feet, fifty thousand, and more, available for lease. And on every corner a beggar, inevitably male, holding up a hand-printed sign. Homeless veteran and God bless you and Will work for food and, more originally, Will eat to work. Anna says out loud what she’s always wondered. “Why don’t homeless women ever have signs?” The Goldschmidts continue gazing ahead. Lars simply shrugs. Anna keeps quiet after that.
They’re almost past San Jose’s tiny downtown. Anna thrills at everything she sees, although she knows all that is considered elegant, edgy, or hip lies fifty miles north. Even the homeless would rather be there than here. San Francisco or bust reads the sign held by a man at the corner of First and Santa Clara.
The car enters a more dubious neighborhood, full of bars and churches. Over the past year, the places of worship in Silicon Valley have multiplied. Churches, everywhere: in defunct movie houses, in abandoned drugstores of ghost strip malls. They even see a night service being held in a bankrupt Ford auto dealership, the backs of the worshippers visible from the street.
Anna’s mother has expressed her impatience with this explosion of churches. Anna’s father calls her a fundamentalist secularist on jihad. She still has her Noam Chomsky poster tacked on her office wall. He says she’ll end up on the terrorist watch list.
“Are you crazy?” her mother had asked when Anna told her she wanted to accompany the Goldschmidts this evening. Then, after a look from Anna’s father, “Okay. Okay. I guess it’s good you want to get out.” Both of Anna’s parents have been walking on eggshells since that Tuesday morning. Exchanging looks. Giving Anna more hugs than usual. Clearly relieved but also puzzled, unsure of what to expect next.
The streets are growing wilder, more chaotic. Fewer viable businesses, more graffiti, more unsupervised children running into traffic without looking. And more churches. Anna counts the churches on one block, two, six, eight, no nine. Most church signs are hand-painted. Few are in English. Anna recognizes Chinese and Japanese, but many scripts are unfamiliar. The streets are packed with cars, some double-parked. No one has called the police. No one is getting ticketed. This evening is full of celebration and song, for singing can be heard everywhere they go. Anna keeps her window rolled down despite the growing chill.
“We don’t sing,” said Lars.
They drive into a residential neighborhood. The Goldschmidts’ church is in what looks like a private home, the yard has been paved over for a parking lot, but the house gives no indication that it is a place of worship. No sign. No crosses. They park next to the chain-link fence that separates the parking lot from the neighbor’s rosebushes, and enter through the front door without knocking. No altar, no statues, no paintings, no banners proclaiming His love. No furniture except for two large trestle tables groaning under the weight of casseroles, meat loaves, platters of pasta, and salads of all colors. The rooms are so full of people that they can barely squeeze their way in. Mr. and Mrs. Goldschmidt are greeted with hugs and quick kisses to the cheeks. Lars’s hair is rumpled more than once. Anna reaches out and clutches the back of his shirt so as not to lose him as he weaves his way through the crowd. She is being led somewhere, through what must have been the original living room to the dining room, into the kitchen. She is brought to an older man, maybe sixty. He takes up a lot of space with his bulk, yet is otherwise undistinguished, his voice thin and weedy.
“Hello,” he says to the Goldschmidts, then he turns to Anna. “I’m so glad you’re here.” He possesses none of the smarmy charm Anna associates with religious leaders. This man holds her attention with his stillness, his ability to tolerate silence. Anna hasn’t dressed for this occasion, is wearing her standard uniform: jeans, Stanford sweatshirt, and sneakers.
The man extends his hand. “Reverend Michael,” he says. Anna is surprised by the coldness and sweatiness of his grip. A tight one.
“So you’ve joined us,” he says.
“Not necessarily,” she says. She wants to make this clear. Whatever has happened to her, whatever was triggered at the bus stop that morning, she’s unsure whether that entails joining anything. She is her mother’s daughter, after all.
“Why so cautious? Lars says you’ve seen the Way.” He says Lars’s name with slight distaste.
Anna shakes her head. “I don’t know enough about your . . . group,” she says. Her voice is less hostile than she’d have liked. She doesn’t want him, or anyone else, to take her acquiescence for granted.
“We’re not a group. We’re a congregation,” Reverend Michael corrects her. “We are the true faithful. Some of us will be martyrs. All of us will be saints and reside in His house upon the Second Coming. But you must know all this. More importantly, Lars says you are a believer. And Lars says you are gifted. You have visions, I understand?”
Anna sees that she has been discussed. Presented and judged, without her knowledge or permission. “I have no idea what he, or you, could possibly mean by that.” This time Anna succeeds at making her voice as rough and uncooperative as intended.
He doesn’t answer at first. Then, “You’ve borne witness to the Red Heifer?” he asks. “You are having the visions?”
“Yes,” says Anna, after a pause. Lars has been indiscreet, she thinks. Then she asks, as if casually. “You know what the dreams mean?” For although Lars has been strangely excited about them, he has declined to explain why.
“Of course,” says
Reverend Michael. “When the Red Heifer appears, that is the beginning of the End. This is extraordinarily exciting news.” And indeed he looks thrilled, so much so that Anna feels it herself. She notices Lars’s face. He is intent upon her. He nods, and smiles. It is a complicated smile: it communicates apology, sympathy, and encouragement all at once.
“The Red Heifer,” pursues Reverend Michael. “Don’t you know how important your visions are?”
Anna shakes her head. She resents being put in this position, to be forced to acknowledge ignorance of something that is apparently of such importance.
“No matter,” he says. “I have some materials I can give you. And you can find it online. You will soon know.” He turns to Lars. “Keep bringing her.” With one last smile for Anna, Reverend Michael greets some new arrivals.
Anna wanders out of the kitchen through a different door than the one she came in. This room was probably the former den of the original home. Thick red shag carpeting, not in the cleanest state. Wall paneling. Filled with people, none of whom look like the fanatics Anna had been half expecting. A gas fireplace. She feels a touch on her arm. It’s Lars. “Let me introduce you,” he says, and pulls her into the throng. His first stop is by the side of a middle-aged couple, each holding a glass of what looks like ginger ale.
“Tom and Marci, I’d like you to meet Anna. Tom and Marci are both deacons for our community.”
Tom is tall and fleshy, Marci about Anna’s height and weight, wearing thick glasses, her hair in a neat pixie cut. They are dressed in what Anna’s father calls the Silicon Valley uniform: khaki pants and blue button-down shirts. Marci also wears a blue-and-gold scarf, but otherwise their attire is identical. Anna wonders if this causes problems on laundry day.
She shakes hands with both Marci and Tom. “This is Anna’s first visit,” Lars tells them. “She’d be interested in hearing about your preparations, either physical or spiritual.”
Coming of Age at the End of Days Page 4