Talia got out of the tub and wrapped up in the big terrycloth robe hanging on the door. She went into the bedroom and sat on the bed. Outside her room a thump … thump … thump drew her across the hall into Joana’s room. Mr. Bradley came out of his room, but she waved him back and went inside. Joana lay in the bed, alternately swinging her left hand and left foot and now and then managing to strike the wall.
“Hey, are you okay?” Talia whispered, crouching down by the bed. Tears ran down Joana’s face and Talia quickly wiped her face with one of the clean cloths that sat piled by the bed.
Joana rocked her head back and forth. Talia grabbed her headrest and powered up the synthesizer.
“We need to pray for your class and about finding those testaments,” the artificial voice said. “I was trying to do it by myself, but you know what God says about two or three together.”
Talia curled up in the armchair beside Joana's bed and held Joana's hand. They both prayed about the class, the students, and for Uncle Naddy and Aunt Sophie.
“That's better,” Joana said. “But...I'm sorry, I know you're tired...”
“What is it?”
“Popcorn and a movie,” Joana replied.
“Can you … can you eat popcorn?” Talia faltered.
“No, but I can watch you eat it, and I need me some Princess Bride.”
“I love that movie!” Talia exclaimed. “I’ll be right back with the popcorn.”
Talia could hardly stifle her laughter by the time the final credits of the Princess Bride came up, she had such a bad case of the ‘late night giddies’. Joana had a oneliner for everything, and they were all hysterical.
“Go to sleep, Joana,” Talia sighed, stroking her head.
“OK.”
Talia returned the headrest to the wheelchair and slipped out. She glanced in the bathroom mirror at her matted hair. Ohhhhh. She shut out the light and crawled into bed.
Talia staggered down to the kitchen in the morning in her hoodie and sweats. She had pulled her still-uncombed hair up in a Scunci. Sunlight barely peeked through the blinds. She started coffee and began hunting for breakfast ingredients.
“Oh, my, somebody knows how to make Saturday smell fine.” Joshua Bradley came into the kitchen dressed in a polo shirt, jeans, and scuffy slippers.
“Good morning Mr. – Joshua.”
“What can I do besides send you back to bed? I know Joana kept you up watching a movie. Thank you, but are you all right? Are you sure you don’t want to catch a little more shut-eye?”
“I’m fine.” Talia laughed. “She really wanted to pray for the class first, and that was such a blessing. Where do you keep the flour?”
“Uh … Over here.” Joshua pointed out the canisters. “Cooking I do, but baking, not so much. You need – what? Bowls, spoons, measuring cups?” He started dumping items on the counter.
“Wait, I have to have room to knead the dough.”
“Knead the dough? I think my wife had a bread maker that’s still around here somewhere.”
“No, kneading is therapeutic.”
“Oh, so you need to knead.” Joshua shoved things aside.
“Exactly.” Talia heated milk, cracked eggs, poured sugar, mixed yeast, and those oh, so comforting smells started to overcome her tiredness.
“What are you making?”
“My Aunt Sophie calls it Whatever Bread. She says, ‘Sweet dough, cinnamon, and whatever else you can find to chop up and pour in’.” Talia pushed the mound of dough into a neat round and set it in the greased bowl, spreading a towel over it. “I need to run to the store and get some dried cranberries and nuts. I have to have some fruit and nuts in my Whatever, or it’s just cinnamon bread.”
“Now wait a minute,” Joshua protested. “If it’s Whatever Bread, you’re supposed to find stuff on hand to put in it, right? Going out and buying stuff is cheating. Let’s take another look around here.” He pulled open a drawer. “Ah, look here under the potholders. A bag of walnuts.”
He tossed them on the counter near the dough bowl. “Hmmm … Well, I have some dates here in the refrigerator. Could we use those instead of cranberries?”
“Oh, Aunt Sophie made it with dates lots of times. Sure, we can do that.”
“Good. We can sit down and have some coffee. I am glad Joana’s not an early riser.” Joshua poured himself a cup and took a long whiff. “Ahhh, I can tell Keith did not make this coffee. I apologize for taking advantage of you this way.”
“It’s okay. I had such a good time with her, and I’m sure she gets lonely.”
“I know she does. The caregivers who come in are all sweet ladies, but they’re not like friends. You two did hit it off. It was so good of you to take time with her.”
“It’s been a long time since I had a sleepover and popcorn movie-thon,” Talia confessed. “Joana has such a great sense of humor, and I loved that she wanted to pray together.”
Keith arrived an hour or so later. Talia fed Joana breakfast while the men oohed and aaahed over the Whatever Bread. Talia checked with Joshua and added a little spice to Joana’s gruel. Her eyes lit up and she quipped, “Please, ma’am, I want some more.”
Everyone laughed. After breakfast Talia coaxed Joana back into the bathroom and locked the door.
“What are you doing?” Joana asked. “I don’t need another bath.”
“Nope. You need a makeover.” She set her makeup bag on the sink and got to work.
“Talia? What’s going on in there?” Keith called through the door an hour later. Talia flung open the door and Joana rolled out.
“Wow!” Keith exclaimed. Talia had swept Joana’s hair up into a tiny French roll and pinned it with a couple of jeweled clips. She had used some mascara, a touch of blush, and lip gloss. She had also given Joana a manicure and pedicure with sparkly pink polish. “Oh, Jo-Jo! Don’t you look fine?”
Joshua came to see and approved also.
“How can we thank you, Talia?” Keith asked as Talia gathered her things to go.
“You know I don’t need any thanks. I thought I was going to minister to her, and she ministered to me. Take care of her, Keith. She’s a precious jewel.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re another one,” Keith grinned.
Chapter Ten – Big Changes
Keith walked through the school building early on a Monday morning. A work crew came around the corner, pushing their way through their plastic screens, startling him.
“School starts in half an hour, Mac. You’re cutting it close,” he said to the foreman.
Mac made a face as he wiped sweat from under his hard hat. “Yeah, no kidding. Your dad said those gripers have already filed papers at the courthouse about unsafe conditions here, though, so we ain’t got no time to screw around. We spent all night jack-hammering all the old concrete out so we can put in the forms tonight when the building’s clear again.”
“I thought at the last board meeting they were satisfied when we showed them the plans and the work schedule. You were supposed to be able to start concrete work at Thanksgiving break.”
“C’mon, you think people like that are ever satisfied?” Sam Ewing brushed cement dust off his pants before stepping off the dropcloth and ducking under the “No crossing – Work Zone” signs. “They move into a town and start makin’ trouble. We oughta make trouble for them – move ’em out.”
“Take it easy, Sam,” Keith looked around. The “people like that” – the Holden, Sheldon, and Gregory families, to be exact, had inserted themselves into the whole school scene, volunteering as teacher aids, bus monitors, cafeteria helpers – he had been seeing them everywhere, all times of the day. Sure enough, Mrs. Holden came in the front door across from the latest construction project. The five men on the crew all made zipping motions across their mouths and stood up a little straighter as the impeccably-dressed woman stopped short and stepped back away with a look of disgust.
“Be careful with that cement dust!” she chided. “My s
on Ruan has terrible allergies.”
Sam glared at her and beat on his pants, sprinkling white all over her perfectly-creased black slacks. “Oops,” he said, and walked off.
“I want that man fired!” Mrs. Holden snapped at Mac.
“If I fire him, your unisex bathroom won’t get done til January, ma’am,” Mac replied. “I’ve already lost three men from my crews because you and your friends snipe at them like they was your personal enemies, keepin’ them from doin’ their work. They got other jobs to go back to. They wanted to help the school. So I suggest you re-route yourself and your son and steer clear of this-here high-allergen zone. Or should we put up warning signs, in international symbols? Would that help?”
“Very well, I will simply share my concerns with Mr. Bradley.” Mrs. Holden crossed her arms and spun on her heel.
“Mrs. Holden,” Keith called out, catching up with her, “I’m sorry about Sam. He’s kind of hard to get along with to begin with. But he’s a good worker. They’re all good men. I’ve known them since I was a kid. You have to have a little patience and understanding.”
“Well, you’re not the Mr. Bradley I meant, but I suppose I can speak to you about this, since you seem to have much more influence around here than those of us poor new parents whose concerns are being ignored.”
“We’re not ignoring your concerns at all. The crews are working as fast as they can. We have three different construction projects going on, but we have to have school, and that brings everything to a halt.”
“I’m not just talking about the construction. Mr. Sheldon is a registered Dietician, and his wife is a yoga vegan health practitioner. They have both spoken to that cafeteria manager repeatedly about how unhealthy your lunches are here. She refuses to change the menus at all, and keeps saying she’s ‘fed children for fifty years’ and doesn’t ‘need them sticking their noses in’. Mr. Sheldon would be an excellent replacement for her. She ought to retire anyway.”
“Mrs. Hendricks is a registered dietician also. She gets her menus straight from the state. They’ve changed a lot just since I was a student here.”
“You see? That’s exactly the problem!”
“The problem is that Mrs. Hendricks is a dietician also, so you can’t shove her aside and get Mr. Sheldon into her job?” Keith was starting to lose patience.
“How dare you accuse us of trying to shove people aside? You’re prejudiced because these people are familiar and we’re strangers. The problem is this cronyism; this good old boys mentality. You people all know each other, you’ve never been out of this stupid little town, and when new people come here you all close ranks and spew hate at us. Our suggestions are ignored, or we’re told to be patient, but this town’s people have put up with dinosaur methods too long.
“For another example, I keep hearing that your PE teacher also works at the vo-tech. He isn’t able to get to school for all the days he should have classes. I’ve heard you miss classes you should be teaching to cover for him. Mrs. Sheldon could fill that gap with yoga classes. No one has even thought of asking her. There are others here who would embrace change if you people didn’t keep getting in the way.”
“Mrs. Holden!” Talia came in the front door, dressed in a dark turquoise suit, her hair in a French braid, wearing her black-rimmed glasses. Keith wanted to laugh at her transformation. Joana had given her a lot of tips, since she had been a chief financial officer for a bank before her illness. Talia had become quite a terror in the classrooms, and if she wasn’t still so for cryin’-out-loud cute behind those glasses, Keith would be afraid of her too. She marched up to the woman, swinging her briefcase.
“Ms. Ramin!” Mrs. Holden turned, startled.
“Your daughter Lynette was late for my first period class twice last week,” Talia said sharply. “She told me it was because you kept her waiting when your yoga class ran over. Your home is outside the bus route, which you knew when you moved here, so you are responsible to see to her timely transportation to school. How can your yoga class be more important than your daughter’s education?”
“But I – I have to bring Carol – I mean, Mrs. Sheldon – because we carpool on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she was getting us in the zone with our meditations. You should come to the class! I’m sure you have as many stresses in your life as we do! Yoga expands your mind to so many possibilities!”
“How would it look if I was constantly late for my own classes? I only wanted to be sure you know why she has to serve detention today.”
“Detention? Lynette? She can’t stay after school today. I have to go straight home to prepare for the dinner party I’m hosting. I can’t wait here to drive her. You never sent a notice home, so we will have to reschedule her detention to a time that’s convenient for me.”
“Lynette just told me when I saw her outside that she forgot to give you the notice. She was practically crying. But I told her it’s perfectly okay. Kids forget things. It’s a good thing I left you three voicemails, and you have messages in the volunteer center as well. I checked. You never picked them up.
“Lynette had better be in the detention room at three, or she will have more consequences. She told me it wasn’t fair, since you were the one making her late, but I reminded her that life sometimes isn’t fair. Mr. Bradley, aren’t you supposed to be down with the buses?” Talia turned on Keith, looking positively fierce.
“I am,” he admitted, and strode off, listening to Mrs. Holden splutter to nobody as Talia went off in the opposite direction.
Keith marveled at how the Bible as Literature class had become the talk of the school. Kids were begging to sign up, even though drop-add was long over. It certainly wasn’t all smooth. The kids wanted to argue their opinions of what Bible passages meant, or reject and deny anything that they didn’t agree with. They thought they knew all about the myths in the ancient literature examples Talia brought up. The problems arose when they kept trying to make backwards comparisons, saying things like Samson was the same as Hercules.
“Most of the ancient world religions were made up by secularists,” Talia explained one day.
“What's a secularist?” a student asked.
“Someone who says he doesn't want religion to have anything to do with his life,” Keith supplied.
“You mean an atheist?”
“No,” Talia corrected. “A secularist is a person who wants to have complete control over people. He conquers people and invents a religion that has a hero-king-god at the head. He makes them all worship the same way. He uses priests to help control people. He won't tell anyone this openly, but he gets people believing that he is that hero-god, or descended from him. Nimrod was probably the first secularist after the Flood. He's most likely responsible for inspiring the myths about Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia, Herakles in the Indus Valley, and other hero-ruler-gods around the world.”
“Religions are fake? Some guy just made them up to get people to worship him?”
“Look at Plato's Republic, just as one example,” Talia said. “He told how to set up the perfect government. The most important part, he said, was to tell children stories about gods and goddesses and heroes that taught exactly what would make people grow up as perfect government servants. And he said it was vital that the government keep their plans a secret from people so they wouldn't have a chance to rebel until it was too late. It was all about making the government into god for the people.”
“Doesn't that apply to the Bible too, though?” someone asked. “It has all those laws, lots more than the ten commandments, and said people had to keep them. Who's to say Moses didn't make all that stuff up so he could control people?”
“That idea didn't work out too well for Moses, did it?” Keith asked. “The people kept telling him he wasn't going to rule over them, kept complaining, kept rebelling, kept failing to keep the law, long after Moses' time.”
“God wrote the Bible because He loved us and wanted to teach us the best way to live,” Talia said. “He wanted u
s to know what was best for us and help us learn to love Him.”
Keeping up with their sometimes left-field questions and earnest concerns was exhausting as time passed. Keith and Talia had adopted a tag-team approach, where they would switch up the discussion leader unexpectedly. Sometimes that was enough to throw the kids off guard. Keith was surprised over and over again at how any trace of Talia’s first week scatter-brained behavior had vanished. He had seen this girl – this woman – burst into tears praying for these kids with Joana, but her resolve never cracked in the classroom.
“Mr. Bradley, you can’t say there are no contradictions in the Bible!” LeAnna exclaimed during a Monday class in October. “Look right here! People say Paul wrote a whole bunch of the Epistles, but right here in Romans 16:22, it says, I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.”
“And what does it say in Romans 1:1, LeAnna?” Talia countered.
This girl was ready. “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God. But that don’t mean he wrote it. It means … like … from the office of Paul, like those paintings that were from the school of Titian, but Titian’s students painted them. People trusted Paul, so other people could write stuff and say it was from him, and everybody understood. Then at the end, they explain that somebody else wrote it.”
“Do you know what an Amanuensis is, LeAnna?” Talia asked.
“Amanuwhatsis?”
“An amanuensis is a person who writes things down for another person. You’re right about Paul’s letters being ‘from the office of Paul’, because he was rarely able to write them himself. But that doesn’t mean Tertius was the author of Romans. Paul was. Some scholars believe that Paul wasn’t physically able to do much writing himself. If you carefully study the epistles, you’ll find places where Paul says he wrote a letter himself. In one place he says you see how large a letter I have written to you with my own hand. Many people believe that the thorn in the flesh Paul wrote about was that he was legally blind. He could see some, but if he wrote for himself it was going to be in big letters.”
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