Jesus Saves

by Darcey Steinke

  Inside the sleeping bag, she pulled her knees into her chest and listened for what Robin would say next. It was around 8:30, almost dark; through the flannel weave she could see the girls had their flashlights on, were using them to look at magazines or paint their toenails. Sweat rose on her face and behind her knees, and she was grateful for the cool air tinged with pine and the smell of river water that came through the big screen windows as it started to rain. Drops slapped the late summer leaves and bounced across the canvas roof. The cabin was clean like a cave, well swept, but with moss growing on the window ledge and all sorts of tiny bugs crawling up and down the walls.

  “Have you gotten the curse?” Robin asked. She was the meanest girl at camp, wore her hair long with little wings flaring out like steak knives. She had breasts and fresh hickeys on her neck and a story about how she and some high-school boy got drunk on rum and Cokes.

  Sandy's only answer was a little moan to prove she was unconscious.

  “She thinks tampons are to put up your butt,” Robin pointed. All the girls laughed and Sandy felt her mind dissolve into the rapids near the little waterfall where the girls weren't supposed to go. Ghost snakes of white water slithered into one another, then vanished. Her father pounded on the bathroom door and begged her mother to come out; her brother came into her bed and at first they just looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and tried not to laugh, but then her brother put his hands over his face and started to cry. She knew there was something wrong, that she sometimes smelled like pee and couldn't seem to pick out clothes that looked right together. Robin put her foot on Sandy's head, jiggled it so she bit her tongue.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, straightening her back and shooting out of the sleeping bag.

  Robin stood above her with one hand on her hip. “All right,” she said, “you big fucking baby.”

  * * *

  Sandy stood at the edge of the clearing, under the branches of scrub pine and red maple, away from the other campers, watching the first of the floating candles round the bend in the river. She moved up the path; the girls were still singing the camp song, about sisterhood and the splendors of nature.

  Pausing on the steps of the cabin, she watched the little flames attached to bark boats blink through the leaves of the trees, moving like a Milky Way into deeper darkness, away from the lights of the camp. Inside, she hunched over and took off her clothes, the shy way, as if all the girls were already there, pulled her flannel nightgown over her head. It was embarrassing because all the other girls slept in oversized T-shirts.

  She shimmied down into her sleeping bag and tried not to be afraid. The day had been a long one, moving, as they did every day, from canoeing to archery, from swimming to modern dance. She'd felt nauseous and thought every minute of calling her mother. During arts and crafts she started to cry and ran down to the latrine before anybody noticed.

  She pressed the skin low on her stomach and remembered she'd forgotten to pee. It was the fruit punch at dinner. and the can of Diet Coke she'd gotten from the machine afterward. The girls moved up the paths and Sandy knew there was no time to dress again and go to the latrine, so she jumped up and ran outside, walked barefoot along the edge of the cabin until she found the spot of shadowed moss, pulled up her nightgown, and squatted, leaning back so the urine wouldn't bank in the arches of her feet.

  Way back in the woods she heard a breeze blow back the leaves and rattle the branches, and as she finished and stood, someone gripped her arm and jerked her toward the woods. She thought it was Robin, who'd been waiting all day, narrow-eyed and mean, to get her alone and beat the shit out of her, but the figure was thick in the chest; maybe it was the stable boy or one of the guys that worked in the kitchen, maybe they'd noticed how sad she was and decided to save her life.

  Blackberry briars caught on her nightgown, pulled until the cloth strained and snagged; her bare feet hit sharp rocks and broken sticks and strange thorny plants. He yanked her so fast it seemed like her legs would fly up and she'd float diagonally in back of him. She felt rain on her face and started to cry. He turned his head, his features better defined now in the opening of trees, in the sublunary light. His face was round with a long white beard and yellow teeth. Sandy recognized him as the lonely troll in fairy tales. Her head got swimmy and her knees dissolved and he scooped her up and carried her deeper into the forest.

  Sagging burlap grazed the tip of her nose; the coarse threads tickled and she squinched her features and sneezed, soaked her flannel bit with saliva. Not that it wasn't already wet, her tongue rimming around its velvety nuance, until she knew its sinews as well as the geography of her own teeth. The mysterious smell of lust and loneliness seeped through the hotel mattress into the musty box spring. The powerful scent shrunk her tiny as a figurine left under a doll house bed. He wouldn't need the van now; he could carry her in a velvet flute case, or in his pocket, like a Barbie doll, her tiny toes brushing his leather belt, her head resting against a copper penny warmed by his groin.

  Like a searchlight turning figure eights over the highway, she beamed her need out, so the numb drivers in their cars would flash to a girl in a diaper tied diagonally under a motel bed. But even if it worked, they'd just shake their heads, dismiss the image as a half-remembered scene from a bad B movie, assume their mind had lost its way with fatigue and was wandering places it shouldn't.

  Her stomach quivered. He hadn't fed her for several days, just a couple swallowfuls of warm Coke. Maybe he'd bring her back some food; anything would do, a package of chowder crackers or an old candy bar. She wanted french fries, the thin kind, sweet and delicate. Saliva gathered between her gums and cheek.

  At the beginning of summer, before camp, she layout in her bathing suit in the backyard, reading and daydreaming, mostly about the boy she'd gone into the closet with during a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. She'd expected a pretend kiss, but once the door closed he pressed into her with such longing she thought she'd faint. In the hottest hour of the afternoon, the bedding flowers wilted and the sun electrified her dream of a bare-chested boy in white satin basketball shorts lying among her stuffed animals, the pink rabbit with the bow tie, the downy yellow duck. She'd heard her glass of Coke tip over, opened her eyes to a deer's thick tongue licking spilled soda out of the grass, antlers covered with fine white hairs and its eyes dark as corn syrup. A dog barked and the deer jerked its head up, stood perfectly still, then ran back into the woods, its white tail moving as expressively as a face. She'd gone into the house and got lettuce from the refrigerator, spread it out on a gray stump just inside the tree line. The deer came back that day and nearly every other, slowly beginning to rely on the fetid produce. Even now it probably lingered during the day in the woods between her backyard and the highway and at night stepped right up to the sliding glass doors.

  That wasn't the only strange omen. A few days before camp, she'd gotten bored, put a few stale hamburger buns in a zip-lock bag, and walked along the highway guardrail to the park. Mosquitoes hovered like static electricity and the air was so thick with humidity it was hard to breathe. A woman with blonde hair was reading a romance novel and smoking at one of the picnic tables. Her chubby baby lay nearby on a blanket spread out on the grass, wearing only a diaper, its hair wet with sweat. Sandy asked her how old the baby was and the woman said two without even lifting her eyes from the page. Its head was too big, its eyes dull and unfocused. There was something wrong with the baby; it was sick or retarded. She'd walked quickly around the small man-made lake, the dirt path dusted with downy feathers, toward the wooden dock. Opening her bag, she took out the bottom half of a bun and threw it into the water. Mallards swam over to her, but before they got near a huge black carp surfaced, took the bread in its mucusy mouth, and swam backward until she could no longer see its shape in the muddy water.

  Shadowed legs of chairs, the heating panel, the haywire shag carpet might as well be seaweed, rusty cans, and silt-covered stuff found on the bottom of the lake. She po
inted her toes, pretending to wind across the room, belly grazing the carpet, her movements as easy and unhampered as air.

  Back and forth she flipped her wrists until the pins and needles came and then the warm rush of blood. She listened, cars on the highway, a distant TV, and the sweet smell emanating from a spot near the nightstand where someone once tipped over a can of beer. She released her bladder and let pee soak the paper crotch of her diaper. It was hot at first and sort of comforting, but then it turned cool. She shivered, felt goose bumps raise up on the backs of her arms.

  Listening to the motel door shut, to one link rattling against the next as he secured the chain, she flattened her cheek on the carpet, watched his disembodied shoes move, as if enchanted, around the edge of the bed. He clicked on the TV, the screen lit up the bedspread fringe. He walked to the nightstand between the two double beds where the push-button phone and the ugly glass lamp sat silent and the gold Gideon's Bible lay unopened in the drawer below. His toes wilted up like a piece of burnt paper and the frame rocked as he leaned his weight onto the bed, lifted the spread, and poked his head underneath. She saw the white beard strands at the corner of his lips and the whites of his eyes magnified behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He untied the cord around her wrists, swung down to her ankles, then patted her leg to signal she should shimmy out. Sitting up between the two beds she pulled down the gag; it hung around her neck like a wet bandanna.

  He threw a T-shirt into her lap and she put it on, sat up on the bed; a brown paper bag stood next to the phone.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Open it.”

  She lifted out the plastic spoon, the wax paper baggy of soy sauce and fortune cookies, then the warm white carton, and undid the flaps. Thin strips of beef and red pepper floated in a brown curry sauce. He stared at her, as if she'd cast a spell over him.

  “You like it?” he asked, and when she looked up to nod, his eyes were wild and grateful as a stray dog's and she realized all this was happening because he was very drunk.

  One spoonful followed another. She ate as fast as she could, afraid the food would be ripped away. The curry was strong, with lots of gooey gravy. When it was gone, she ran her finger along the sides of the carton, then licked the warm sauce from the tips.

  Still he stared at her with his fishy eyes. He reached across and put his hand on her bare knee. She looked at the hairy knuckles, the sapphire ring. He was dressed in a colorless shirt made of thick white cotton and a pair of khakis.

  She asked if he was going to tie her up again. Things were so much more certain that way. His expression, which she'd catalogued as hopeful, even friendly, turned sharp and he smiled stiffly, called her a stupid bitch, and with the heel of his shoe he kicked out at her. She was so surprised she lost her balance and fell off the bed. Quickly she righted herself, crawled underneath the bedspread, but he grabbed her by the ankle and yanked so her face slammed into the nylon carpet and he flung himself down, strode her chest, like she'd do to her brother when she'd won a fight. He pinned her hands under his knees as she bucked up a few times, arched her back, tried to get him off, but the troll just smiled, reached around for his wallet. It was Western style, with roses stamped into the leather. He flipped it open, took out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. His birth certificate, worn fuzzy on the edges, the typed information fading out.

  “See,” he held it up to her, “it doesn't matter whether you have a girlfriend or not.” Sandy felt herself trembling. It was worse than she thought. The man was completely insane.

  He got off her. Sandy felt her chest expand with air.

  “Stand up.” He yanked her up, his hands on her hips, then tripped her down onto the bed. With one hand he clenched the pee-heavy diaper so the tapes broke, and he threw it against the nightstand, where it fell wet and lumpy behind the bed. Brown sauce spurted up her throat and the sun flared out; tendrils of fire ignited the clouds, violet and bloody blue-red. Fire fell like rain, the trees hissed and smoldered, branches full of dry leaves flared up. If she let him do it this time, the whole world would come to an end. Using the muscles in her upper legs and her knees to push off, she lunged forward and out of his palms’ grip. Her hand was on the chain, the other twisting the doorknob, and she was out. The sweet humid air tasted of car exhaust; white lights and red ones blurred on the elevated highway. Pebbles stuck to the pads of her feet and the asphalt grated her skin; the cement supports were too tall to scale so she ran up the exit ramp and tried to wave down a car on the interstate.

  Five: GINGER

  It wasn't so bad in here since she'd brought a lamp from home, one of the colonial ones from the basement. Now the cement walls of the church office and her mother's huge green metal desk glowed as if the room were continuously held in the glittering palm of God. She pulled out the bottom drawer. It was filled with old stuff: an ancient jar of fountain-pen ink, colored pencils, a blue ball of rubber bands, a booklet of baby Jesus stickers and a plastic container of gold stars. Yellowed business cards with antiquated lettering were scattered on the bottom. Her mother used the stars to distinguish particularly good Sunday school drawings: the divine doves of adolescent girls or the bloody pictures the older boys drew of Jesus on the cross.

  She thought of the old church downtown: plywood nailed over the cracked stained glass and red graffiti tags sprayed over the fieldstone. Stuffed animals dangled from the bushes and trees outside: teddy bears caked with dirt, some missing eyes, and a few naked dolls, noosed like tiny babies with disconcertingly cheerful expressions and hacked-off hair. Across the street, the X-rated theater looked on with sly mastery. Before the church was vacated, crack heads forced open the back door and stole the antique silver communion chalice. The fiends, as her father referred to them, left a dead rat on the altar and with red lipstick wrote fuck you in the margin of the big leather Bible. Together they spent several days cleaning up. Her father used a broom to push the furry body across the marble, over the altar's edge into a paper bag. With a damp washcloth she'd wiped away the swear words, leaving a blotchy red stain over most of the Book of Isaiah. Mulhoffer had been smug about the break-in; her father was crestfallen and contrite. He still hoped to convince the congregation to keep the old building, turn it into a soup kitchen or a shelter for homeless men.

  She peeled the label off a wax paper computer strip and stuck it onto a flier that reminded parishioners membership photos would be taken in two weeks. Already she'd folded and stapled hundreds of them and was almost done with the labels. Encoded in the names was secret information, confided by her father to her about people in the parish. Mrs. Hofner, who told everyone her husband died of a heart attack, had actually nudged an electric radio into his hot bath; or the Koenigs, whose eldest son hung himself in the backyard wearing his sister's prom dress and the Robertson newlyweds, who got involved with cocaine and kinky sex and were still in a detox center in West Virginia. Then there were the more mundane confessions, the loneliness of the older members, the disappointments of middle-aged ones. Sometimes her father saw people in his home office and Ginger would put her ear to the door, listen to a woman complain about her wayward husband and a mother tell how she'd forced her teenage daughter onto the pill.

  Her father was away on Monday making sick calls. First he did the shut-ins, the handful of elderly Germans living in apartments downtown. He sometimes joked about the thick smell of sauerkraut embedded in their forties-style furniture and their knickknacks on pine shelves: dogs and elfish children in lederhosen. He always spent a full hour with Mrs. Mueller, who used to be the most powerful member of the church before Mulhoffer. She donated the money to buy the organ and made a special contribution every summer so the vacation Bible school kids could go to Holyland USA. Mrs. Mueller's grandfather started the glove factory, world famous for making long, elegant evening gloves of silk and satin and short pastel day gloves with pearl wrist buttons. Germans who fled the Third Reich were offered jobs in the factory, and this was how the church downtown got started. Though
bedridden, Mrs. Mueller, a formidable lady responsible for both the expansion of the library and the new community theater building, still lived in an old Victorian on Main Street with a middle-aged nurse and a gardener who puttered around the lawn. Every visit Ginger's father gave her communion; he opened his black leather traveling case with the blue velvet indentations for the decanter of wine, the small chalice, a round tin that held the wafers stamped with lambs. He kept a lightweight tippet in his coat pocket, gold crosses embroidered on either end. Draping it around his neck, solemn as a melancholy magician, he offered up the cup to Mrs. Mueller's thrush-covered tongue, her white hair so thin that as she bowed her head, he could see blue veins through the translucent skin of her scalp.

  Next he went to the Lutheran Home and held a lunchtime service. Organized in the makeshift chapel, a piece of red felt was thrown over a card table below a gold cross made by a resident out of Popsicle sticks. In wheelchairs and walkers they came, expressions ranging from reverence to resolve. Finally he ended the day with a drive over to the hospital, where he'd visit anyone the nurses said needed help. Last week he saw a boy whose face had been messed up in a fireworks accident and a woman who gave birth to a blind baby. He always looked in on the man with the goiter growing out of his neck and the diabetic woman who'd had her legs amputated just below the knees.

  He wouldn't be back until late afternoon, so Ginger could afford to take a little break before batching the fliers. She opened the newspaper and spread it over her desk. That redneck councilman was rallying strong voter support for his theme-park proposal, stating that it would bring thousands of much-needed jobs into the area, and the woman with terminal breast cancer settled her case out of court with the electric company. Company spokesperson Lisa White, conceding that a settlement was necessary to curb bad publicity, continued to deny that power lines have any relationship to cancer. On the religion page, “If the Deerpath Creek mega-church were a business, you can bet people would be clamoring to pick up some shares of its stock,” an article began. Buried near the back by the movie ads was a police drawing of a man with a beard and in small caps: POLICE MAY HAVE BREAK IN PATRICK CASE.