Rapture Practice

by Aaron Hartzler

  Mom doesn’t buy sweetened cereal at home. “You can concentrate better at school if your blood sugar doesn’t crash midway through the morning,” she tells me. The Cheerios and Wheaties on our breakfast table never have special prizes in the box, but at Nanny’s house Mom makes an exception, and the milk in our bowls turns brown with chocolate or pink with food coloring. “Every now and then won’t hurt,” she says, smiling.

  Each of us gets to choose a box of any kind of cereal we want. The Apple Jacks have a rubber stamp set that comes with every letter of the alphabet and an ink pad, so that’s what I pick—I’m seven now, and know how to spell better than Miriam or Josh. When we get home, Nanny pours it all out in a big Tupperware container so I don’t have to wait for breakfast to play with the prize, and I set to work hand stamping a copy of the Bible verse she has pasted on the refrigerator door: Ephesians 5:18: “Be filled with the spirit.”

  The next morning at breakfast, I fill up on a bowl of buttery grits with salt and pepper while Nanny makes eggs, biscuits, and gravy for Papa, Mom, and Dad. Grits are my favorite, but I finish them fast so I can move on to Apple Jacks. Mom smiles and nods at my empty bowl, then Nanny rinses it out and fills it with Apple Jacks. The crispy coating on the bright orange cereal scrapes the roof of my mouth. The taste is so sweet it’s like having dessert for breakfast.

  Nanny kisses the top of my head as I crunch, then sits down at the table with a cup of fresh coffee. Her lipstick leaves a red smudge on the rim of her mug. She doesn’t wear any other makeup on a daily basis, so the lipstick is important. “I need just a touch,” she says, “so folks won’t think we’re Pentecostal.”

  Nanny winks at me and squeezes my hand. “Your uncle Bill is bringing Sadie over later.” Sadie’s my favorite cousin, but we only get to see each other a couple times a year—usually over Christmas and during the summer. “Last week Sadie had this little brown stuffed animal with her,” Nanny says. “It was a doll of that E.T. fella from the new alien movie.”

  E.T. is everywhere. He was all over the cereal aisle yesterday at the A&P. He smiled down from every bottle of Pepsi when we walked down the soda pop aisle. He was on all of the backpacks and notebooks up at the front of the store by the register, and on the billboard in the parking lot.

  Nanny shakes her head. “Aaron, I declare that little creature is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. I said, ‘Well, Sadie, did you tear all the feathers off that poor bird?’ She said, ‘Oh no, Nanny. This is E.T. He’s from space.’ ” Nanny laughs and takes a sip of coffee. “I told her he looked like a plucked turkey.”

  I picture E.T. with a large, feathery tail and think about that boy on the bicycle flying toward the moon on all the backpacks and Pepsi bottles. He doesn’t look like a Pilgrim to me, and I’m confused about how he fits into the Thanksgiving story.

  Uncle Bill and Aunt Janice arrive that afternoon, and I give Sadie and her sister a big hug. When the adults go inside to chat, I boost Sadie up to the lowest branch of the middle tree in Nanny’s front yard.

  Nanny sees us from the kitchen window and pokes her head out the storm door. “Children, y’all be real careful climbing that tree. Don’t want to end up in the emergency room.”

  We smile and call out, “Yes, ma’am,” then climb to the highest branches that will hold us, far from the reach of our younger siblings. This is the perfect place for trading stories and telling secrets.

  “Have y’all seen E.T. yet?” Sadie gushes. “Daddy might take us again next weekend. Are y’all still gonna be here? Maybe we can all go together!”

  I’m quiet for a second. “We don’t go to the movies.”

  Sadie frowns. “You’ve never been to a movie?”

  We’ve never talked about this before. The whole idea of a movie theater is still new to me, and Sadie’s disbelief makes me feel ashamed somehow. My cheeks get hot. I bite my lip and shake my head.

  “Why?” she asks. It’s as if I’ve told her we live in an igloo on Mars.

  I shrug. “Dad says even at good movies there are advertisements for bad ones before it starts. You never know what’s going to pop up on the screen.”

  Sadie frowns. “I’ve never seen a preview for a bad movie when I go to the theater.”

  “You haven’t?”

  Sadie shakes her head, and for the first time, I wonder if my parents might be wrong about this.

  “What’s it like?” I ask her.

  “Going to the movies?”

  I nod. Sadie cocks her chin to the side and purses her lips. I can tell she’s thinking about how to explain it to me.

  “Well, it’s sort of like church,” she says, “only there are no windows, and instead of a pulpit at the front, there is a giant screen where they play the movie. Everybody has their own chair with a cushion on it instead of sitting on the same pew, and when they turn off the lights, it gets real dark—like on Sunday nights at church when the missionaries bring slide projectors to show us pictures of the little huts where they live in Ecuador.”

  Sadie smiles, like she has saved the best part for last. “Plus, you can get a big Coke and a bucket of popcorn or some candy from the snack bar,” she adds.

  This is a brilliant plan. I imagine the ushers at church putting down their offering plates and passing out buttery popcorn and cold sodas instead. Sitting through a long sermon would be so much easier with concessions.

  After dinner, I am still thinking about E.T. and the movies. Uncle Bill and Aunt Janice are Christians, and I know Sadie loves Jesus, but she can do things Mom and Dad say aren’t pleasing to the Lord. Nanny is working at the hospital tonight, and Dad is helping Mom give Miriam and Josh a bath. Papa is sitting in his recliner, watching wrestling on TV and crocheting.

  “What are you working on Papa?”

  “I’m making an afghan,” he says with a wheeze. His breathing is heavy. Papa smoked cigarettes for a long time until he asked Jesus into his heart a few years ago. The doctors say he has emphysema now.

  I sit down on the couch, watching Papa’s nimble fingers work the little hook. It flies in and out of the blue yarn, creating delicate loops that form intricate chains, all linked together and spilling across his lap onto the parquet flooring.

  “How did you learn to crochet?” I ask.

  “My sisters taught me,” he says. “When I was a little boy up in the mountains, we’d get snowed in for weeks.” He pauses to catch his breath. “Didn’t have a TV back then.”

  We don’t usually have a TV at our house, either. Besides being a teacher at the Bible college, my dad is a minister, and every now and then he’s asked to preach a sermon at different churches. Sometimes he preaches about ways we can keep our thoughts pure, like not watching television.

  “We pulled the plug on our TV when Aaron was a toddler,” Dad says from the pulpit. “Sesame Street was sponsored by the letter G for ‘Go-Go Dancer,’ and when my wife turned it off, Aaron cried like we’d stabbed him.”

  I always laugh along with the audience when Dad tells stories about us kids. He’s pretty funny when he preaches, but he’s not joking around when it comes to TV.

  Last year, Dad rented a television set for several weeks at Thanksgiving time so we could all watch the holiday specials. We had to ask permission before we could turn it on, and he or Mom always watched it with us. We got to see The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins, and Dad watched a lot of football and basketball games with Josh and Miriam. I wanted to watch figure skating on ABC, but Dad kept clicking back to the games. He said the female figure skaters were immodestly dressed.

  I glance up from Papa’s afghan and see a woman wearing a bikini on the screen. She is walking around the wrestling ring in high heels. I feel a little bit guilty for staring. Dad wouldn’t want me to look at her, because she’s not wearing enough clothing. When there were girls on the beer commercials during the games, Dad would always say “sick” under his breath and change the channel.

  Papa doesn’t seem to notice that the woman in the bikini
is immodestly dressed. A large man wearing tight red underwear struts into the ring. He has dirty blond hair and yells into the microphone through a shaggy mustache. His muscles remind me of Randy’s He-Man figures, but he’s different somehow—sweaty, angry, loud. Something about him is scary. I’d rather watch figure skating, but it’s summertime, so there probably isn’t any to see.

  From my blue schoolbag in the corner, I pull out the pot holder loom I got for Christmas last year, and then I sit on the end of the couch closest to Papa’s recliner. My loom is a square, plastic frame with little pegs that stick up on all four sides. I stretch brightly colored nylon bands across the frame from left to right, then weave other bands over and under from top to bottom with a little hook that looks a lot like Papa’s crochet hook. I gave Nanny the first pot holder I made last Christmas, and she hung it up on the cabinet door because she said it was so pretty she couldn’t bear to use it. Papa says I have a good eye for color.

  Papa and I work with our hooks while the loud men on TV toss one another across the screen. When I finish my pot holder, Papa helps me weave the edges as I slip each loop off the loom.

  “Will you teach me how to crochet?” I ask him.

  “I reckon,” he says with a pant. “Tomorrow, I’ll see if I can find another hook.” He smiles at me, and I smile back. I feel like I belong, sitting here next to Papa. This is what men do together—watch wrestling and make things from string.

  “Hey, Aaron.” Dad’s voice makes me jump. He is standing in the hallway behind where Papa and I are sitting. “Will you come back here a minute, please?”

  I put down my pot holder and follow Dad back down the hall. Mom is in the back bedroom putting Josh and Miriam to bed. Caleb is already asleep, so Dad whispers.

  “What are you doing out there with Papa?”

  “He’s crocheting. I’ve been making a pot holder.”

  “What are you watching on TV?”

  “Whatever Papa’s watching,” I hedge. Dad’s not a fan of wrestling.

  “Well, I don’t want you watching wrestling,” he says. “It’s not pleasing to the Lord.”

  “Then how come Papa is watching it?”

  “This is his house, and Papa is in charge of what he watches,” Dad says. “I’m in charge of what you watch.”

  I know better than to talk back, so I don’t argue when Dad walks me out to the living room to say good night to Papa, then helps me run a bath. By the time I’m clean and ready for bed, Papa has turned in for the night, and the TV is turned off.

  Mom comes to tuck me in on the couch with a big red pillow and an afghan with zigzag stripes that Papa crocheted.

  “Can we go see E.T. with Uncle Bill and Sadie?” I ask her.

  “No, sweetheart. You know we don’t go to see movies in theaters.”

  “But E.T. is a good movie.”

  Mom runs her hand over my forehead, pushing my bangs over. Her hand is cool on my skin and smells like the gold Dial bar soap in Nanny’s front bathroom. “Last time your dad and I went to the movies was right before you were born,” she explains. “It was a John Wayne film, and it was supposed to be a good movie, too.”

  “But it wasn’t?”

  She shakes her head. “There was so much cursing and fighting, and women who weren’t wearing any clothes.”

  Mom says God’s Holy Spirit convicted her heart in the theater. “I sat there thinking, ‘If Jesus came back right this minute, I would be so ashamed for him to find me watching this.’ I promised the Lord right then and there I would never go to see another movie in a movie theater, because I don’t want to bring dishonor to the name of Christ.”

  I don’t want to see a movie that dishonors Jesus, either. I want to figure out how the little Pilgrim boy on the bicycle rescues the alien turkey. It doesn’t seem to me like this is going to hurt anybody.

  “Can I ever go see a movie?”

  “Aaron, one day you’ll be all grown up, and you’ll have to decide what is right for you.” Mom’s voice is low and serious. She looks directly into my eyes. “I hope when that time comes, you’ll make the decision not to go see movies, but it will be up to you. One day when we get to heaven, we’ll have to give an account to God for each thing we’ve done—every word and thought and deed. You’ll have to answer for yourself then.”

  The idea of talking to God about every single thing I’ve ever done worries me. Mom kisses away the frown on my forehead. “We will always love you, honey. No matter what.” Mom prays with me. She asks God to give me sweet sleep, then tucks me in and goes to bed.

  Now it’s only me in the living room in a race against the clock to see if I can stay awake until Nanny gets home from work. If I’m still up when she arrives, she’ll make us a snack in the kitchen. As I try to keep my eyes open, I hear the ticktock of Papa’s clocks. There are several in the living room and kitchen that he winds every few days with a little key, and now, in the stillness, I can hear their steady rhythms in the air. It sounds like a countdown.

  As all of the clocks chime the half hour at eleven thirty, I hear Nanny’s car pull into the carport. She opens the front door, puts down her purse in the kitchen, and peers around the corner into the living room.

  “You awake, sugar?” she whispers.

  “Yes, ma’am!” I say softly.

  She comes over to the sofa in her white uniform and kisses me on the cheek. She smells like coffee and Oil of Olay.

  “You want to come down to McLemore’s market with me? We need some milk for breakfast tomorrow.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but I need to get dressed.” I am wearing one of my uncle’s old T-shirts to sleep in. It is bright green, with the 4-H cloverleaf on the front, and hangs to my knees.

  “Oh, you’re fine.” Nanny grins. “We’ll wrap you up like a papoose.” She pulls the afghan around me like a cape, and we laugh in the car all the way to the market. “Your mama would kill me for not putting shoes on you,” she says.

  Nanny carries me into the corner store and sets me down on the counter. She grabs a gallon of milk and a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies (“mud pies,” she calls them), pays for both, and then bundles me back into the car. My feet never touch the ground.

  We eat mud pies and drink milk at the kitchen table. I love talking to Nanny, especially when it’s just the two of us. Even when it’s late at night and she’s worked all day, she’s never too tired to talk with me. She tells me stories about her grandma back in the mountains of Virginia, and how when Nanny was a little girl, they used to talk together like we do.

  “You’ll be all grown up before you know it,” she says. “That’s why we’re makin’ memories now. You and I will always be close, no matter what, ’cause we’ll have our memories right here in our hearts.” She pats her hand on my chest, then pours some more milk as I finish off my mud pie.

  When Nanny tucks me in on the couch, she says a prayer.

  “Father God, I ask your blessing on Aaron. Keep him safe, and let him know how special he is to me. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen.”

  She kisses my cheek. “You are so precious to me, darlin’. I’ll never stop loving you.”

  As I drift off to sleep, I think about Nanny and Mom. Both of them said they’d always love me, but Nanny didn’t mention anything about hoping I wouldn’t make bad choices. Papa and Nanny love Jesus, and they don’t think it’s wrong to have a TV set or watch wrestling, just like Uncle Bill doesn’t think it’s wrong to take Sadie to the movies. It seems like other people love Jesus in lots of different ways and have different rules about what’s right and what’s wrong.

  Nanny asked Jesus to “come quickly” when she prayed, and as I listen to the seconds tick off around the dark living room, I hear a different kind of countdown. I feel like I’m in a hurry to grow up—a race against the schedule of heaven. For the first time, I hope the Rapture doesn’t happen too soon. There are so many things I want to do before I go to heaven, like drive a car, and act in another play, and go to the movies.
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  I whisper one more prayer to Jesus before I drift off to sleep: “Please don’t come back too quickly.” Then I pull Papa’s afghan tight around my shoulders and close my eyes.

  CHAPTER 4

  Four years later, Jesus still hasn’t come back, and I still haven’t been to the movies. I am, however, on my way back to church for the second time today. My family goes twice every Sunday, and usually once again on Wednesday night.

  I’m eleven years old, and this morning I got all dressed up in a tie and a blazer for an hour of Sunday school followed by the worship service. It honors the Lord to dress nicely for church. Dad calls it “looking sharp,” as in, “Wow, Aaron. That tie looks sharp!” When we finally got home a little after noon, we changed out of our sharp clothes into something softer. There was roast beef, potatoes, and carrots in the Crock-Pot, and Mom’s homemade rolls for lunch.

  This afternoon, I practiced the piano and read a book Mom gave me for my birthday. It’s a novel about a boy named Alexi who lives behind the Iron Curtain in Russia. His family has been exiled to Siberia for believing in Jesus. Alexi is trying to decide whether he should help smuggle Bibles from a secret printing press to other Christians around Russia, or hide his faith and become the school’s star hockey player. As he sets out with a suitcase of contraband Bibles, I hear Mom call up the stairs.

  It’s time to get dressed for church. Again.

  The best part about Sunday night church is that I don’t have to get as dressed up as I do on Sunday morning. I don’t have to wear a tie, only a collared shirt, and usually khakis or, once in a while, jeans if they don’t have patches or holes. Tonight I put on the blue corduroy pants and matching argyle sweater vest I got for my birthday. They go perfectly with my boat shoes. Dad is knotting his tie in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs, and as I walk past him toward the front door, he calls my name.

  “Aaron, where are your socks?”

  I look down at my feet, then back up at him, like he’s asked a trick question.