The End Is Her

by H. Claire Taylor

  “You mean to say you care about her enough that they could leverage her against you?” She chuckled. “What, like, take her hostage?”

  “No, no. I’d like to see someone try to take her against her will. Poor sucker.”

  “Then why are you worried someone will leverage her against you?”

  He shook his head. “You’re worse at this than I thought. No wonder you need a whole team to help you.” He leaned closer. “If word got out that that was my mother, it could damage my reputation.”

  She took a step back. Perhaps it was the part of her that understood that dynamic all too well that left her bubbling with rage for him. “Right. Not coming from a place of concern for her, but a place of concern for your almighty reputation.”

  “Exactly. It takes years to build a reputation and one moment to ruin it.”

  “You mean, say, a moment where one of your congregation is balls deep in a pig? A moment like that?”

  She hadn’t wanted to say it, especially not like that, but she knew seeing his reaction would be worth it. And she wasn’t wrong. He cringed.

  Then he reached in the breast pocket of his pearl suit, pulled out his shades, and slipped them on. “I’m going to leave now, and I suggest you don’t leave right after me. No one should know we were in the same building together, let alone speaking with one another. And remember: tell no one.”

  She already had a mental list going of a few people she was looking forward to telling. Destinee, Quentin, Wendy …

  She nodded. “Right. Of course. You can trust me.”

  It was the last bit that gave him visible pause, but then he pressed two fingers to her forehead before she could knock them away, said, “Sumus omnes Porcos,” and left.

  She watched him go, wondering who she would tell first.

  Sooie!

  “I can’t stop thinking about it!” Jessica let her flailing arms fall onto the decorative pillow in her lap.

  Destinee sat on the other side of the couch in her and Rex’s living room, nodding along in a stunned awe. “Yeah, baby. I just figured his mom was dead.”

  “Killed herself? I would have guessed killed herself.”

  “His memoir says the last time he saw her was when he was a kid and she left with that Reverend.”

  “We already know his memoir is mostly lies.”

  “Maybe the details, but I have a feeling the general idea holds, especially for his childhood. He didn’t paint his ma in a great light, and from what you said, she ain’t exactly a saint.”

  Jessica grabbed her longneck Dos Equis from the coffee table. “She’s horrible, Mom. So bad, it almost makes me feel sorry for him.”

  “Yeah, life ain’t easy for anyone, but it’s even harder with a shitty mom.”

  “To be fair,” said Rex, who’d been watching the Texas Rangers play on mute for the duration of the conversation, “while our patriarchal society values women most highly when they subscribe to the role of mother, it doesn’t exactly go out of its way to make motherhood easy. We’ve created a system in which we deprive women of the necessary knowledge of their own bodies to adequately family plan, and then we outlaw any sort of pregnancy termination, thrusting motherhood upon the masses without providing any meaningful assistance or social support, so as to make it an uphill battle to be a mother, let alone a mother and a working woman.”

  “The fuck?” said Destinee. “Did you just lecture me on how hard it is to be a mother?”

  “Sorry, D. I didn’t mean to explain your own experience to you. I just wanted to show support.”

  She nodded slowly, staring horrified at her daughter. “No problem. But maybe focus that support on baseball.” Once he was absorbed in the game again, she leaned forward and said, “I’ll train that feminism out of him if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Do you think I’ve got him all wrong?”

  “Who?”

  “Jimmy.”

  “Wrong how?”

  “I mean, he’s Jimmy fucking Dean, sure. But what if I’ve been too harsh to him? I mean, my life hasn’t been easy, but at least I have a great mom. What if I— Stop. No, that’s not—”

  “Sorry, sorry.” Destinee wiped a tear from her eye.

  “I’m just saying, does a person stand a chance with a mother like that? Maybe it’s just not his fault?”

  Destinee wiped her leaky face on a pillow, sniffled, then said, “What difference does that make?”

  “All the difference? No difference? Some difference? That’s the thing. I can’t decide if it’s worth considering.”

  “It’s a good question. But I will say growing up with a ma like mine wasn’t exactly the cotton candy at the county fair on a sunny day. But I didn’t end up deciding to ruin some innocent kid’s life because of it.”

  Fair point. The last time Jessica had seen Grandma McCloud, she and Destinee had fled the old woman’s beach house and not looked back. It had been Jessica’s first and last visit to the Gulf Coast, and maybe she’d go back some day once Grandma McCloud was no longer a presence there.

  “You know I ain’t much of a philosopher, but it seems to me that you can understand why a person does something without givin’ them the go-ahead to keep on doin’ it.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Jesus.”

  “Well, he’s a smart dude. Weird. I don’t reckon hangin’ around Jeremy is the best for him, but he knows a thing or two about people, I’ll give him that.”

  “When we work with the homeless, he always gives me their stories. Fucking tragedies, all of them. But knowing their stories doesn’t keep them from kicking the shit out of him every so often. And it sure as hell doesn’t keep them from jumping on a table and whipping out their junk.”

  Destinee shook her head. “Man, that fool sure does love the homeless.”

  “Right! But how? And should he? I know he thinks so, but I just can’t get on board with it. Should we love people who don’t behave right no matter what? Who constantly make the world a worse place for others? And does it matter if they had a rough childhood if they spend their entire adulthood being an absolute piece of garbage? Does a shitty mother excuse it?”

  Destinee’s eyes were wide now. “Oh, hell, baby. I don’t have a fucking clue. I doubt I’m the person to ask. If Jimmy Dean walked through that door right now, I’d put buckshot in him where the sun don’t shine. You know, I had myself a damn fine laugh when I heard about Eugene Thornton. No, I’m not the one to ask about all this.”

  “Then who is? Jesus? God?”

  Maybe it’s you, baby. Maybe you’re the one to answer all these questions.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  309:08:06:46 until Doomsday

  Without a facility to call her own yet, Jessica was forced to find somewhere else to hold her first priestess training. A co-working space seemed like a good place to set up shop, so the only question then became which one? There were so, so many. Did she pick the one with the sleeping pods and free artisan donuts or the one with table tennis, a plasma TV, and hammocks?

  In the end, she chose one with none of those things. It had a common area and a few private conference rooms off to the side, and no “bonus features” or “perks.” She liked it because it was empty when she’d toured it. That would do nicely as an impromptu HQ when she needed it.

  Jessica sat at the head of the table overlooking the five woman who’d made the cut.

  There was Courtney Wurst, who Jessica regretted choosing more and more each day at no fault of Courtney’s. It was simply existential dread brought on by repeated childhood trauma. No big deal.

  Beside her was Tamara Shilongo, Jessica’s former sorority sister who she’d wanted to hire for something since she’d brought her on at It is Risen only a few short months before she’d been forced to let her go. Tamara had always straightened her hair and pulled it back in a tight ponytail, but sometime in the last few months, she must have gotten tired of suppressing it, and wore it in a glorious afro that Jessica kn
ew better than to touch, no matter how much it beckoned her palm toward it. Tamara had been an easy choice as priestess because Jessica already trusted her implicitly. She’d joined Nu Alpha Omega before it even was that. She’d taken a risk on Jessica, and Jessica owed that trust back.

  Next to Tamara was Natalie Goldman, who Jessica couldn’t imagine doing this thing without. Jessica had recruited her former sorority sister directly. The process had involved a dogged courting stage, as the notion of priestesshood had seemed to Natalie “limiting and objectifying.” That was just that sort of take that solidified within Jessica’s mind the need to have her among the elite. The woman was the bluntest advocate for feminism Jessica had ever known, and if this was going to work, she needed someone like that around who would speak plainly about the inevitable fuck ups. Time and energy to guess what someone really meant behind their gentle phrasing was no longer a luxury afforded to Jess.

  Across from Natalie was, and this one was as big of a shock to her as anyone, Stephanie Lee. Mooretown’s single Asian student had come a long way from her dangerous binge drinking and ruthless conniving with Sandra Thomas. Jessica had nearly rejected the application upon registering the familiar name. Though they’d run in the same circle in middle school, high school hadn’t exactly brought the two closer, as Stephanie had joined the high school paper and written a handful of less than flattering articles about the daughter of God. Was she just trying to get the scoop now? It’d taken some sleuthing, mostly by Cash Monet, but it looked like Stephanie had satisfied her journalistic impulses back in high school and had since begun more hands-on work. She’d dropped out of college, a move Jessica had to respect on its own, and had busied herself with volunteering internationally.

  But this was where it got weird, because Stephanie Lee had spent the last three years in Southeast Asian countries helping with earthquake relief. It was a passion that, and Jessica really couldn’t believe this shit, had been passed down from Stephanie’s parents, who had died doing the same thing when she was only five years old.

  And when Stephanie Lee was five years old, Jessica had already begun asking God hard questions that He would literally move mountains to avoid answering.

  So, refusing to make the last remaining mental connection there and risk an avalanche of guilt falling upon her head, she had instead accepted Stephanie’s application.

  And finally, sitting next to Stephanie, was the only highly educated person Jessica had selected for the position: Dr. Victoria Bell. The woman hadn’t applied for the position, didn’t even know there was an application process—clearly she wasn’t subscribed to the email list—but when Jessica had clicked through her five hundredth or so application, she had begged Wendy to make it stop. Couldn’t four be enough?

  “No. It has to be five. We’ve gone over why. If you don’t want to keep looking at applications, then you’ll have to recruit directly.”

  And so it was that Jessica had called her former professor. Not to recruit her, though. Simply to ask her for help in brainstorming what kind of person would be right for the job. But in the end, it became clear—Dr. Bell was angling for herself to take the position.

  “It’s not paid,” Jessica had said, following Jimmy’s advice.

  “That’s fine. I’m tenured. I don’t even have to show up and I keep this job.”

  “It would take a lot of your free time.”

  “I’m single. All I have outside of teaching is free time.”

  “You really want it?”

  “Yep. Sounds like a nice change of pace. Maybe people will listen to what I have to say for once.”

  “Okay, it’s yours.”

  “Great.”

  “And it is paid.”

  “How much?”

  Jessica told her.

  “Fantastic. I’ll retire.”

  “You … what?”

  “You just offered me three times what I’m making. Why would I work two jobs?”

  It was a solid argument, and so here she was, her cardigan pulled tightly around her stout body and thick arms, staring expectantly at her former pupil.

  “Right,” Jessica said, “I apologize about the temperature. It’s always cold in here.”

  Stephanie Lee said, “You could make your churches a comfortable temperature for women.”

  “Great idea. Judith?”

  Judith scribbled it down.

  “Okay, where were we?” She looked back at the agenda on the whiteboard behind her. They’d already knocked out “complete introductions” and “talk about religious history,” which meant they were at item number three. “Okay, this one’s important. We need to discuss the new rites of passage.”

  “What were the old ones?” asked Courtney.

  Jessica frowned and shrugged. “Mostly being sexually assaulted. So, we’re going to do something better.” She let the suspense build. “Menstruation parties.”

  “Ew,” said Tamara.

  “Absolutely not,” said Natalie.

  “Huh?” Jessica looked around, saw that her excitement wasn’t mirrored back to her, and said, “You don’t like it?”

  “No,” said Judith, “Not at all. That’s weird and gross.”

  “Yeah,” said Stephanie. “I remember when I first got my period, I thought I was dying. I wasn’t in the mood for a party.”

  Dr. Bell was silent, but Jessica suspected that was due to her agreement with the rest of the group and her lack of desire to take a side.

  “Well, shit. Yeah, I guess my first period was pretty terrible, too.”

  Courtney said, “Right. I remember that. That was terrible.”

  Jessica refrained from shouting, “Fuck you, Wurst!” at her priestess in training, and simply remained silent. “Okay, well, if you think of a better rite of passage, let me know. We definitely need something.

  “Okay, next item. Consent. This is important and, apparently, complicated for some …”

  The women gathered their things after Jessica had concluded day one of training. With the exception of the period parties, which had been destroyed so thoroughly not even Jessica could resurrect it, the topics had gone smoothly, especially the part about consent, which everyone seemed to get without much explaining. A more suspicious and cynical messiah might conclude that the concept was, in fact, quite simple and easy for anyone to understand but that some feigned confusion so as to justify rape.

  Training was scheduled for the next week straight, and then she would have to move to the next stage: figuring out what precisely to do with all these priestesses.

  As she was powering down the projector, Courtney approached tentatively. “Jessica, can I talk to you?”

  Her knee-jerk reaction of telling Courtney to go die was fading with each interaction. It was still there, and quite strong, but she was making progress. “Of course.”

  Courtney’s gaze darted over to Tamara and Dr. Bell who were chatting jovially as they made their way slowly toward the exit, and only once they’d left did Courtney finally spit it out. “I just feel like I should tell you something. And if you want to kick me out of this because of it, I understand.”

  Oh no. What had she done?

  “What have you done?”

  “Nothing! I promise! I know you still don’t trust me—no, don’t argue, I can tell—so I’ve been doing everything I can to earn your trust. But I can’t say the same for everyone else in my family.” She paused, and Jessica held her breath. Was Mrs. Wurst at it again? But no, what could she do, align with Jimmy Dean? Jessica was aligned with Jimmy Dean, so that would make them partners in a sense, wouldn’t it?

  Courtney said, “It’s Trent.”

  “Oh.”

  “He, um …” She grimaced and stared vaguely at Jessica’s naval before meeting her eyes. “You know the scandal in White Light Church?”

  “The pigfucking, you mean?”

  Courtney cringed. “Yeah, that.”

  “What about it?”

  “Trent … he’s caught up in
it. There’s footage of him with a … It hasn’t come out yet, but it will soon.”

  Jessica felt the Holy Spirit of Shadenfreude flow through her just before the full implications of Courtney’s confession landed. “Wait, that’s not great. He had sex with a pig? And it’s on camera?”

  Courtney nodded.

  “For fuck’s sake! Are these people paying someone to record them?”

  “It was the farmer. He heard his sow squealing and came out.”

  Jessica held up a hand. “Okay, that’s enough. I really don’t need details. It was more of a rhetorical question.” She massaged her temples, trying to work through all this. Could she have a priestess whose twin brother was a pigfucker of White Light Church? Would that association be too close and bring the scarlet letter over to Jessica’s cause? Or could this be twisted to her advantage?

  She knew what Jimmy Dean would tell her, because she knew what he’d already done in a similar circumstance. He thought his mother could be a liability for his reputation, so he’d dumped her in Waverly Hills and pretended they weren’t related.

  Did that mean that Courtney had to disavow Trent, or did it mean Jessica needed to disavow Courtney?

  Things sure did become complicated quick when people were held responsible for the actions of others.

  “When it does come to light,” Jessica said, “when the video starts circulating, can you denounce him?”

  “All of him?” Courtney asked, looking pained. “I can certainly denounce what he did.”

  “Right, but he’s kind of been a dick his entire life, so are you really losing that much?” One look at Courtney’s face, and she backpedaled. “Okay, you probably think he’s fine. But—”

  “No, you’re right. He’s an asshole. My mom said he used to punch me in the head when we were in the womb. But he’s my brother.”

  “I’ll take your word for it that that matters at all.” She inspected Courtney, and it was clear from her expression that she was genuinely struggling. What would Jimmy do here?