The fall leaves, rotted black from the winter formed a cesspool of budding life. Jenny strolled in the soaking soil. It ate her toes. The bluejays and chickadees were back on the clock again, their tropic ballads were over and the sweetest bards were collecting hookups. She idly followed the jays and the robins, praying to God that ‘when they hop to the trees further away, it’s because they’re trying to lead her somewhere ‘like in the secret garden.’
The church bells rang over the hills from miles away.
Mom pulled her into the car, hollering about how disrespectful it was to be late for the lord. Mom carried towels under her hunched back and lined them over the seats and the floor before she let Jenny in. Slick Slock, socks running on rocks in the rain in Mary Janes. By the time she buttoned the last button of her last clean play dress she was singing the beach boys on her way to the last Sunday school before regular school again. They never missed Sunday, even on rainy days. Under her hunched back, bettween her armpits, she smuggled a copy of “A Little Princess.”
It was a clammy Baptist Church where the walls might as well have been made of paper. with oak baseboards and trim stained dark to look like mahogany. It held the world's plainest fake brass chandeliers with bulb that somedays barely lit the congregation and others bleached them out. The organ played, the pastor chanted. No matter what season, it felt the same. Either a blandly warm clammy or a chilled clammy-
The scratchy forest green rug burn chairs had pockets in the back of them for hymn books and welcome newcomer pamphlets. She would draw crystals, roses, mountains with caves, fountains with swans for as long as she could get away with it. Mother put a hand over her drawing hand, and took the pencil. After Jenny found another one, her mom snatched it and took her drawings and put them in her purse.
“Fold your hands”
“Why?”
Mother gave her reason this and reason that. Mostly it amounted to “To show God that you love him.”
Jenny learned fast it was useless to ask questions in church. Everything amounted to “To show God that you love him.” and “To show me that you love me.”
“The children are released for Sunday School.”
Queen Esther, the most beautiful Hebrew in the land of Persia was a felt puppet cut out.
Put on the full armor of god
“Now memorize that verse and you’ll get candy.”
Thankfully she never had to worry about getting a poor grade in the academy’s Bible class. The teacher just talked for an hour, ended it with something along the lines of “And this interpretation from the Catholics, Methodists, Jews, and adventists are all wrong and this is why we are right and that is why you should listen to us and listening to us is how you honor God.” then they’d test you- not on morals, but by your ability to repeat back everything the book said. A lot of notes were taken of course but nobody cared about notes until notebook examination day- judgement day, the day that made grown boys cry.
“Everyone open your Manilas and get out your Monday Memos, and come up to the desk for the teacher’s signature.”
“Math class” she wrote at the top of her notebook. kids snickered and sniffled and scribbled. Her pencil fell idle. “Take this divide by this, carry the hanging number.” The chalkboard, the smell of after shave and chalkboard cleaner, the stout rector with that new trend of socks and sandals for the active elderly who couldn’t afford retirement. Grizzled. And the rocking fear. Her jail cell: the desk, pale wood glowing glossy under new fluorescent lights. (They always refurbished the useless) Her savior, her weapon: the book which she filed away at the metal bars of her consciousness. The hand came out of nowhere, snatched it. Stupid. The kids chortled. A girl rubbed cherry chapstick. History, There they taught the history of the world, literature, grammar, art ethics, There was, instead of a Stone Age, the Biblical times which also included ancient civilizations except for every asian non-egyptian african, western european, native american, and nordic culture. Christians were persecuted in Ancient Greece until Constantine made Christianity the national religion. they had skipped billions of stories. They never talked about Victorian times or Vikings but a twist: everything always came back to the bible, the Magna Carta to the Mayflower was all a trumph of Christianity.
Lunch. Pacing in the hallway line, whispers from the third graders, corrections from the teachers. “Don’t stray, keep still.” “We're going to the moon.” “Hooray” “Listen, children should be seen not heard.” “Did you know we’re going to the moon?” “That has nothing to do with your disobedience.” pulling her hair, head down, eyes on the carpet growing blurry like glasses in hot summer rain.
On the margins of her schoolwork, she drew maybells, daisies, daffodils, horses, mermaids, lions, tigers, bears, the occasional rabbit or sheep. On the margins of reality, thinking in Venn Diagrams. Ballets swam in pastel technicolor. Dancing animals, broomsticks, oceans swam into her memory, on the margins of reality, she would fabricate castles, glittering oceans, dragons, fairies, all the above mentioned, and anything that had newly intrigued her. On days she was especially bored, There would be a small dragon that would sit at the teacher’s desk like a lap dog, snoring puffs of smoke no thicker than vapor. She read more advanced unabridged books at seven. Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson,
A mumbling came from up front. Just above the rind of Jenny’s book, a massive dark figure paced back and forth between the chalkboard like a saggy wrinkly pool table ball. “Prepositions… ”. “i before e except… Please Excuse My Dear Aunt” “Jenny, put the book away.”
The class memorized the books of the bible through song, the ten plagues, the ten commandments, the judges, the twelve disciples, summaries of the “Romans Road” Ephesians 4:13, John 3:16, the entirety of 1st Corinthians 13.
One time Jenny went on summer vacation to Myrtle Beach, she had been very proud that she had memorised the entire chapter on love. She politely waited her turn after service to pipe up her offering to the pastor: A full recitation for the congregation next Sunday.
“Alrighty, Go on and show me,” He said with genuine interest.
She started speaking it out fluidly as if she wrote it herself but had barely gotten to verse three before he stopped her.
“What version is that?”
“NIV, sir.”
“I’m sorry dear, We only read from the purest manuscript, the King James Version in this church. Why don’t you memorize in that version and I’d love for everyone to hear it.”
“Okay.” She said blandly, already forgetting she ever cared.
Bible verses were useless except for getting As. After third grade neither the Sunday school or Private school teachers gave candy any more.
Private school was just Sunday school for eight hours.
Every Friday at the Academy was Chapel. Every Friday a fifth grader would scream in a sing-songy whine like a baby marine. “Color-Guard Atten-tion! Forwarrrrd March!” and the ten year olds marched the American and Christian Flag down the aisle. All the teachers and students and the principal rose from their seats, laying their balmy hands over their Woolworth uniforms, over an embroidered badge- a crest with a torch and bible and a scroll inscribed ‘Veritas et Lux’ and would recite the pledge of allegiance to the American and Christian flag. The principal would with a grandiose southern gent gate, stroll up center stage and as either a nod to or mockery of Virginian mountain folk music would pick up a guitar and softly sing something like ‘read the bible and pray everyday’, or the famous tune ‘I just wanna be a sheep ba-ba-ba-ba, praising the lord my soul to keep.’
Jenny climbed the monkey bars, not like a spider monkey, but like a spider, not like spiders gracefully climb, but like humans climb if they had arms as thin as a spider’s. Jenny was thin in the wrong places and chubby in the wrong places so at age eight, she was already misshapen like an elderly woman. She snatched the second metal bar, grasping it. Her entire body weight plopped, and the strain shot from her legs to her arms clenching the steel with rage. She barely reached the third bar. The weight pulled her to the ground. She dropped onto the mulch, climbed back, clung to them again, fell, then walked away in defeat.
In the middle of the school playground She ambled around the roots of an oak tree like a maypole. She sat beneath it, slightly swishing her ankles inward outward inward outward, waving her toes to the leave's percussion lullaby ‘Shhh...Shhh,’ they whispered. The lulling, restless, quietly rustling leaves snare drum. Winds woodwinds. Had it been more windy, she would have been able to smell the mulch factory, which smelled like rotten wood, the facially disfiguring scent that informed her she was not in Greece, especially not ancient Greece with Mount Olympus. At the top of the hill, she could see the grey highway with cars moving along like red, green, and blue ants. If she looked away from the highway, just a few inches turn of her head, she would see patches of forest. The last of the untamed frontier. In a neatly ironed academy uniform, she leapt up and began to dance. With a gallivanting bob in her head, down to her body she skippingly ran. She liked to run like a horse. When she wasn’t a horse she would stretch out her wingspan arms and fly down the hill like Peter Pan. She ran towards the woods to look for forest creatures. Songbirds flutes and waterfowl brass. ‘Farewell’, ‘Goodbye’, and ‘Adieu’ each sang at they fell off. Intermittently a curious pluck of harp, piano, or gong came out of a droplet of rain plopping on leaf, pavement, or shingle. ‘Are you there?’ asks the curious melody. the song of nature
The kids played recorders to give glory to God. She knew that he would have a hard time listening to them. They were told to practice even after their last performance of school ended for the summer.
Sometimes even she couldn’t help but admire life’s mediocre little pieces and crumbs. The imitation mahogany baseboards looked warm and alive, they shone like the sun was still inside their photosynthetic bodies. To be truthful, sometimes that chapel glistened with white glow, sometimes just as polished were the glazed greetings, sometimes the rote ‘it’s good to see you’s were recited so sweetly. Sometimes the dullest of days, places, and people, the glassy eyed people, shimmered like broken wine bottles in the sun.
But those were the most minimal of pleasures and her family acted like they were the magnum opus of divine providence. “God has blessed us with these salamis, peas, and potatoes bought from the supermarket.” Hamburgers with ketchup and mustard, Little Fucking Debbies.
It was horrifyingly pathetic when it was the only beauty: And oh how jubilant her family was at the table! Even more worshipful than at church! Adding bells and whistles to their endless lifestyle of food and talk. They talked about their shelters, their sleep, their doctors, lawyers, recipes, places where they bought all their eating, sleeping and talking needs. They loved those things and not much else. But oh they hated much more than they liked, they hated a whole universe of things… in fact they refrained from liking something too much, they hated a lot of things but never dared say it.
One Sunday lunch, the Carters, Powells, Moguls, and Hoguls talked about fondue for an hour, not about techniques or recipes, just about the materials.
“The best pot I ever bought was a copper pot that was wrought in Germany.”
Did they ever eat fondue? Did these people?
Then someone would say like they were revealing a secret ‘Oh my yes, I think VanMartin or Von Werner ate fondue’ (Von Werner was the school Janitor.)
“Sure enough, sure enough.” Patronly (geriatric) Pop Pop would say.
‘Who’d he marry? Whose daughter married the janitor?’ came the new mystery. Round the table they went every Sunday.
Sure, yes, she was very very happy. She and mom and the aunts played mini golf and swam in the community pool every summer, and the neighbors had a kid who went off to college and she was allowed to jump on their trampoline. But something was missing, out of place.
For Easter Sunday she learned the maypole is a pagan symbol and one of the types of idols the Judges would smite down when vanquishing abominations for the glory of God. And just like the maypole Jesus Christ smote the grave so we could live forever. And because of that we honored him with communion.
“You have to drink the blood of Christ.” Rosalyn chided with a hiss. “What are you staring at me like that for? That’s rude.”
Jenny hated grape juice.