If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go

by Judy Chicurel

  Still, Casey did get Ginger to quit drinking. Drinking and drugging. He did it slowly and skillfully. He’d go over to her mother’s apartment on Gull Lane and sit and listen to Ginger talk, nodding thoughtfully, and then very gently take the bottle of Old Grand-Dad from her lips and set it on the coffee table and begin talking to her about quenching her spiritual thirst. The first time he said that, she told us, she laughed in his face, told him he was full of shit, but he just kept nodding and smiling, his eyes locked firmly on her face. She’d never had that kind of attention before, not even when she was balling somebody, or really, especially when she was balling somebody; they weren’t looking at her face, then. And he’d ask her questions about herself, her life, like what was it like living in the city when she was little, and did she miss having a father, and one day, she put the bottle down on the coffee table all by herself and began crying. Casey just kept talking in soft, comforting tones, urging her, believing in her. He never put his arm around her, but he would lay his hand on Ginger’s and hold it while she cried, a strong and steady presence. He asked her to come to the Holy Light of Heaven Spiritual Sanctuary one Sunday morning in mid-July and she described it to us like she’d been to a Jethro Tull concert and made out with Ian Anderson on the stage. “That whole thing where you see the light?” she said. “Like in movies or something, where you’re supposed to get hit by a bolt of lightning or some shit? It’s not like that at all, man, like you’ve failed if you don’t get the shivers or start foaming at the mouth. It’s like, it’s gradual, you know? Like you have all this time. Jesus doesn’t keep a stopwatch.”

  “Maybe it is a good thing,” I said one night, when we were hanging out on Liz’s porch before heading out. “I mean, she does seem happy. Happier than she’s been, for sure.”

  Liz snorted. “And you think she’s really not balling this guy?”

  Nanny shrugged. “She says no. And why would she lie? She’s never lied before.”

  I couldn’t fathom Ginger wanting to ball him. I thought Casey resembled something sleazy and reptilian; his bones seemed oily, fluid, as though any minute he could sink into the sand and slither away. His eyes were dark and wallowing in salvation that made him appear humble, but I remembered the sound of his laughter the night that Ginger had thrown herself at him, the way he had flung her off and turned his back. For all his talk of light, there seemed to be shadows everywhere.

  Ginger begged us to come to the Jesus freak church and hear Casey preach, and though we never did, we heard plenty about his sermons because she couldn’t shut up about him. She called him her savior. “But he says it’s really not him, see, he’s only Christ’s vessel. Jesus used Casey as the vessel to come to me, to take me into his loving arms.” She couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t give him a chance. “He’s a man of God,” she said in her new serene voice. “You all go to church, you worship Jesus and his father and Mother Mary. How is it different?”

  “Because we’re not a bunch of lunatics walking around town all hollow-eyed and shit, putting up signs that look like they were drawn by a second grader,” Liz said. “Dig it, there’s a reason they call them freaks.”

  “But why are you so angry?” Ginger asked, wonder in her voice. Her eyes were clear, dedicated. She was sitting on the couch in her mother’s apartment with her legs tucked underneath her dress. It was a pretty dress, pink with faded green stripes across the bodice; she’d bought it at the Thrift Shift up on Buoy Boulevard. That’s where all the Jesus freaks shopped; they had no money for the other stores in town. “You shouldn’t be so angry,” she continued. “What Casey’s preaching—it’s the way it’s really supposed to be. Like—in regular church, right, it’s all about robes and the gold on the altar and how much everyone gives when they pass the basket. But that’s not how it’s supposed to be,” she said gently. “The simple life, the one where you give up—worldliness, when you—live simply, without possessions. That’s the life worth living.”

  “How can you give up worldliness when you live in the world?” Liz asked. I looked around the living room of Ginger’s mother’s apartment. That’s what the Jesus freaks always talked about, renouncing material possessions, but it was different for the Dunes girls at school, giving up their cashmere sweaters and shag carpeting and Princess telephones. What did Ginger have to renounce besides the rickety staircase in the hallway and a lopsided coffee table?

  “You just don’t seem to—how can I make you understand?” Ginger spoke sadly, shaking her head. “I mean—maybe you do have to see it, man. Like I—I’ve seen all this new stuff lately, things I’ve never—okay, like last week, right, Casey took me out to this place, all the way out in Suffolk County, and there was this guy, right, this preacher, and all of a sudden, he starts speaking in tongues—”

  “Speaking in tongues? What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It’s like—at first you think it’s gibberish, like he’s just spouting nonsense, but then you can see—you can tell it’s—it’s the language of God!” Ginger’s eyes shone, but she wasn’t looking at any of us. She was looking at some private vision over our heads, out the window. “He’s going to teach us how to listen,” she said. “How to listen and learn—”

  “Oh, for chrissake,” Liz said, disgusted. “You flunked English and beginners’ Spanish, now you’re talking in tongues?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Ginger said suddenly, sounding like the old Ginger. “All of you, just shut the fuck up! How come, yeah, how come when I was drunk and stoned all the time, screwing anything that moved, no one said a Goddamned thing? Stumbling around the corner like a—a—a common tramp? Or when I got pregnant? Or when I dropped out of school? How come none of you had anything to say then?” She was standing up now, glaring at us.

  We stared at her, openmouthed.

  “Ginge—” Nanny started, but Ginger cut her off.

  “Don’t fucking ‘Ginge’ me,” she said. “Just don’t, Nanny. Your mother always called you home for dinner. All your mothers. You always had to be home for dinner. That’s the difference, that’s the whole difference right there.” She sat down again and folded her arms across her breasts.

  Liz said, “What the fuck does that have to do with—”

  “Liz,” I said. She stopped. Nanny was wiping tears from her eyes. I remembered the times we’d all head home from Comanche Street, bitching about having to set the table, cut up iceberg lettuce for a salad. Ginger would be sitting in the doorway of Eddy’s, smoking. We’d wave good-bye, calling, “Later, man,” envying her freedom, her not having to be anywhere to straighten the napkins, lay the forks to the left of the plates.

  “I asked you home for dinner,” Nanny said. “Plenty of times, I—”

  “It’s not the same thing,” Ginger said through clenched teeth. “It’s not the same thing at all.”

  Suddenly her face relaxed back into a tranquil mask. Her eyes became hooded and her mouth turned upward at the corners.

  “But I don’t know what I’m getting so upset about,” she said, her voice filled with false brightness. “Casey said this would happen. He said this was just what would happen.” She clasped her hands in her lap. Her knuckles looked smooth and strong.

  “What did Casey say would happen?” Nanny asked, curious.

  “He said my friends would try and talk me away from the light,” she said. “He said you would try and keep me in a sinful state so you wouldn’t feel so bad about yourselves. Ginger, the whore. Ginger, the slut of the earth.”

  “Jesus, Ginger—”

  “Please don’t,” Ginger said quietly.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Take his name in vain,” Ginger said, bowing her head. I could see Liz getting ready to explode.

  “Ginger, the guy’s a skeeve,” I said, and when everybody turned to look at me, I went on, “He is, Ginger. Every time he’s around I get these vibes—he gives me the creeps, for re
al, man. I’m sorry, I’m sorry for saying it, but—I think he’s a—a false prophet.” I was afraid Liz and Nanny would laugh after I said that, but they just nodded in agreement.

  Ginger smiled sweetly. “Peace, sister, you’re allowed to speak your mind. And if that’s the way you feel, then it’s very, very fortunate for you that you’re not the one moving in with him.” She stared straight at us, her smile never wavering.

  “Whoa! Say what?” Liz asked, putting her hand up to her ear. “You’re not moving into that—”

  “Yeah, I am,” Ginger said firmly, staring Liz down.

  “Ginger,” Nanny said softly. “Why?”

  “To be closer to Jesus,” Ginger said. “Closer than I am in this friggin’ apartment, that’s for sure.” She stared at us, looking like a mannequin in a storefront window, until we got up and left.

  That was really the beginning of the end, though no one wanted to admit it.

  “Oh, man, where were we?” Nanny mourned, as we walked back up to Comanche Street. “Where were we that we didn’t see this coming?”

  Liz leaned her hand on my arm as she stopped to pick a piece of glass from her foot. “Where was Jesus?” she asked, throwing the shiny sliver into the gutter.

  Nanny kept trying. She even enlisted her mother to call Mrs. Shea and intervene. They weren’t friends, but they’d all known each other since they lived in the city and Mrs. Devlin didn’t like seeing Nanny so upset.

  “So she’s moving in with this preaching joker into a—what? One of those communes, is that what it’s called?” Mrs. Devlin asked.

  “It’s an unsavory situation, Ma,” Nanny said.

  Mrs. Devlin looked hard at Nanny. “It’s a what situation?” she said.

  “Ma, I’m telling you,” Nanny said, and Mrs. Devlin went to the telephone in the kitchen and dialed. She and Mrs. Shea chatted awhile and we could hear her saying, “It’s an unsavory situation, Didi,” and finally, she hung up the phone, shaking her head.

  “I tried, doll,” she said to Nanny. “But let’s face it. Didi Shea was never the brightest bulb in the chandelier when it came to mothering those pups.”

  “What’d she say?” I asked.

  “She said Ginger was free, white, and of legal age to do what she wanted. And finding Jesus was better than a lot of other things she’d found these past few years.”

  “She is not legal,” Nanny pointed out. “She won’t be eighteen until November.”

  “Well, there you go.” Mrs. Devlin sighed.

  “Fuck her, that’s the way she wants it,” Liz said when Mrs. Devlin left the room. Even Nanny finally gave up, and I thought Ginger moving into the peeling yellow bungalow would make her disappear into a new kind of life we’d never be able to follow.

  But even though we rarely saw her after she moved in with Casey, it didn’t feel like Ginger was really lost to us until she left Elephant Beach for some Jesus ashram in a place called Lubbock, Texas. The landlord was tossing them out of the yellow bungalow because they hadn’t paid the rent in like five months. How could they? No one worked; they just hung around the rocky yard watching the baby toddle across the cracked grass, looking stringy and saved. I’d wondered at first if the baby was one of the attractions, if Ginger wanted to be a part-time mother and atone for giving away her little son. But she never mentioned it, and the few times we saw her in the yard with the other women, she made no move to pick the baby up or play with it. Casey had people in Lubbock, Ginger explained. Family? Other Jesus freaks? We didn’t ask and she didn’t elaborate. She told us there was a post waiting for him and they could live far more cheaply and apparently Lubbock was closer to Jesus, populated with good, simple folk who were righteous and down-to-earth.

  “Not like us sinners,” Liz said, raising her eyes to the sky like she was looking for heaven.

  On their last day in Elephant Beach, when they were loading up the truck in full view of everyone at Eddy’s, Nanny, Liz and I walked over and begged Ginger to let us buy her a farewell egg cream for old time’s sake. She was wearing a faded blue-and-white housedress and scruffy shoes that looked like bedroom slippers. She went over and spoke to Casey, who was tying mattresses to the roof of the van with one of his pale disciples. Casey turned to look at us, then back at Ginger, then back at us.

  “He doesn’t want her getting too close to the devil worshippers,” Liz whispered. “He’s afraid we’ll steal her away.”

  Finally, we saw him nod, and Ginger came over and we crossed the street and went into Eddy’s and ordered chocolate egg creams all around. At the last minute Ginger ordered a double vanilla fudge ice-cream sugar cone with sprinkles. She laughed nervously, sounding very young. “What the—I mean, my last cone at Eddy’s for who knows how long,” she said. “How do I know they even have sprinkles in Lubbock, Texas?”

  Behind the counter, Desi took a paper toot he used for snow cones and filled it with sprinkles. He handed it to Ginger. “My going-away present,” he said. “Knock yourself out.” She leaned forward to kiss him, as she would have in the old days, then caught herself and bowed her head in thanks. Desi sighed and moved to the other end of the counter.

  “But what am I worrying over?” Ginger said, sounding like a television housewife. “We have Jesus on our side. He’s always been faithful. He will provide whatever we need, no matter what.”

  “Then why didn’t he provide the rent money for that rattrap across the street?” Liz snapped, and when we all looked at her, she said, “Sorry, man, I just—it just seems so sudden, you leaving like this. I mean, summer’s not even half over.” She reached over and put her arm around Ginger’s neck, pulled her close and kissed her cheek, loud and wet and sloppy.

  “What’d your mother say?” Nanny asked. “When you told her you were going?”

  Ginger shrugged. “She hugged me good-bye and wished me well,” she said, her voice even. “Actually, she said, ‘I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.’ Told me to keep in touch.”

  Ginger kissed us all good-bye and we stood in front of Eddy’s, watching the Jesus freaks load themselves into the white van. Casey was already in the driver’s seat, waiting. Ginger turned back and waved to us, once, before disappearing into a small sea of clamoring bodies. As we watched the truck pull away from the house, Liz began crying. Nanny and I looked at each other over her head; Nanny’s eyes shrugged. We were the emotional ones, sniffling at movies and sad songs, with Liz usually rolling her eyes, saying, “And now, for the next performance of the sob sisters.” She loved Ginger like we all did, but they hadn’t been tight enough for her to be weeping so bitterly. In the distance, church bells chimed a christening at St. Timothy’s, or maybe a midweek wedding. Father Tom said they were popular lately because they were cheaper than on the weekends.

  Liz let out a strangled cry. We waited, me and Nanny, for the sound of her tears to stop filling the air. Above us, a flock of seagulls cawed loudly, aligned in a circle of sorrow.

  TEN

  for catholic girls who have considered going to hell when the guilt was not enough

  Today

  The woman who answered the door could have been any one of our mothers. She had the kind of ashy blond hair that could have been Clairol Nice ’n Easy, or she might have had it done at a beauty parlor, like Antoine’s on Main, where our own mothers went to get dolled up for weddings and holidays. Her skin was sun-washed and creased around her eyes, which made her look older than she wanted to, because she dressed young: faded straight-leg jeans rolled into cuffs above her ankles. A white Indian shirt embroidered with gold thread. Hanging silver earrings. Bare feet, with coppery polish on her toes. I tried to get a good look at her fingernails, because that’s the first thing they always tell you: dirty fingernails, after you pass through the dark alley to get to the dirty table in the middle of the night. But she was holding the door halfway open and her hands were hidden.

 
We were standing in front of a three-story brown wood house with carved white shutters and a wraparound porch with wicker rocking chairs and a widow’s watch that looked like the top tier on a wedding cake, at the high end of a road where you looked down at the ocean. Below us, the dunes rose up like small mountains and the sand really did have a silver cast, lighter and finer than the sand we were used to; that was how the town of Silverwood got its name. The houses here were farther apart than the ones in Elephant Beach, and the street was bathed in milky quiet, that special, hot summer afternoon stillness where everyone’s either at the beach or huddled up inside with their air-conditioning.

  “I’m—I’m here for my two o’clock appointment,” Liz said. That’s what Beth had told her to say. No names, no phone calls. No checks or credit cards; cash only, in an unmarked envelope.

  “Come in, please,” the woman said, smiling. Her voice had a lilt, like she was singing the words. She held the door open wide. Muted sunlight streamed through the windows; the gauzy curtains lifted in the breeze. In the foyer we glimpsed the living room, which had a fireplace that took up almost a whole wall, filled with egg-shaped urns of flowers. Bunches of dried starfish hung from the walls. There were window boxes on the porch as well, filled with red and purple pansies. There were candles on the mantel, on the coffee table; votives, tapers, tea lights, covered in glass and pewter.

  The woman closed the door behind us, turned the lock, shot the bolt. She then opened a door on the left side of the hall and motioned us to go in. It was an office with a big desk, bookcases lining the walls, dark, slanted shades at the windows. A cushiony red love seat and chairs clustered around a small table covered with seashells of all sizes.

  “Sit down, please,” the woman said, sitting in the fat red chair that faced the windows. Liz sank into a corner of the love seat and I sat down next to her.

  “This house, it’s like spectacular, man,” Liz said in some new bright voice that didn’t sound like her own.