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Hi all,
this is the second excerpt from the first chapter, still in an Evangelical microcosm so I hope it's not too off-putting for anyone who didn't live this, anyway it's part of who the character is so I'm interested in knowing who has the patience for it, or anything else you want to say... sorry it's also a little long...
thanks for reading
cheers
from chapter 1, Fear of Russians (Paranoid Wasp)
She walked down the stairs next to Alice in an attentive way toward the fellowship hall, feeling motherly toward Alice because Alice was a new-comer. The Church basement was cold. Suzie-Q wished she had brought a sweater. She whispered to Alice, “I’m sorry, it’s kinda cold,” smiling as she said it and leaning her face toward Alice. Alice smiled back and shook her head affirmatively. Suzie-Q was relieved they were a little bit late, and had missed all the fun and games. Some people were allowed to come early for fun and games, but Suzie-Q hated that. She felt grateful to have a super serious dad who didn’t make her come early for the fun and games. Besides, Suzie-Q felt timid and awkward at youth group.
The Church basement fellowship hall was mostly empty and cold, but a part was partitioned off with moveable bulletin boards and posters tacked on them that said, “suffer the little children to come unto me” in pink and pastel blue. There was also the twenty-third psalm with sheep that looked like clouds and other sweet things. Suzie-Q thought the posters were mostly silly and bad Art but knew Alice wouldn’t mind. Alice was already a Christian and was used to things like that. Suzie-Q also suspected Alice of having bad Taste, which relieved Suzie-Q in the given context but which thought made her blush from its rudeness at the same time. The youth group was singing. “I am a C. I am a C-H. I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N. And I have C-H-R-I-S-T in my H-E-A-R-T and I will L-I-V-E-E-T-E-R-N-A-L-L-Y-I am a C.” Suzie-Q thought this song was silly but liked singing it anyway. Suzie-Q was self-conscious about being a Musical snob, which is how she thought of herself in her head. This way she could manage to feel appropriately ashamed of not liking youth group Music. She thought bad Poetry with bad Music was worse than silly songs, since with silly songs you could pretend you were surrounded by children.
When the song was over, the youth director noticed Suzie-Q and Alice standing in the corner of the partitioned space. “Well, here’s a first!” yelled Tex. Suzie-Q knew he meant her never being late. He liked to make fun of her dad and call him Big Ben, “just like clockwork.” Sometimes he would whisper loudly and take her aside: “so how’s the old greeting card company treating Big Ben?” with a knowing chuckle. That was an inside joke with people in Maryland who weren’t supposed to tell who they worked for. Suzie-Q thought Tex was too gregarious, but she liked him. He didn’t seem to mind her being shy and a Musical snob.
“So, who’s your friend?” asked Tex.
“This is Alice,” said Suzie-Q, blushing as she said it. They both smiled wide at everybody.
“Well, pull up a floor,” yelled Tex again. Alice giggled, so Suzie-Q giggled to be polite. They sat down on the concrete. The floor was cold and uncomfortable. Tex took his guitar from the corner and said, “this is for the musical snob.” Tex began to play one of Suzie-Q’s favorites. His guitar was out of tune. Suzie-Q winced without thinking, but turned her wincing into a smile. She thought her face must look fake so her smile hurt her, but she couldn’t think what else to do with her face.
Tex started singing and so Suzie-Q did too. This was a relief, even if they were practically singing alone. Suzie-Q made her voice small since they were singing alone, but she swayed to the music. Suzie-Q’s favorite praise choruses were the ones taken straight from the Bible. The Bible had good Poetry, so she always loved that. This one was a Psalm, which was even better. This one also had a pretty tune, kind of Israelite-sounding. Suzie-Q was only disappointed that, since she and Tex were singing alone, they couldn’t do the round. “By--- the wa--ters the wa--ters of Babylon. We lay down and we-pt. And we-pt. For thee Zion. We remember, we remember, we remember thee Zion.”
Suzie-Q’s soul flew away while she was singing this song. The ancient Israelites were for Suzie-Q the fountain of far-awayness. She closed her eyes and swayed to the music as she sang, and imagined that she was laying in green pastures. She identified entirely with the Israelites weeping. She knew the song was sad, but she felt so happy when she sang it. The Psalm opened in her a deep longing, and she imagined that she was in exile and was weeping by the waters of a foreign city. She felt that the song allowed her to feel someone else’s sorrow, and that this was beautiful. She thought she was able to weep for her many sins through the beautiful song, and that she was very close to beauty itself. She didn’t really know where Babylon was, but she didn’t think it mattered. She thought about Babylon like Narnia or Oz. Did Babylonians weep over there? Did Philistines weep by the Chincoteague Bay? Suzie-Q didn’t really think about that.
At the end of the song, Tex put his guitar down with a laugh and said, “Well, there’s participation for you!” Suzie-Q thought Tex’s good humor was admirable, but she also noticed that her ankles were already beginning to hurt from sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor. Suzie-Q wondered whether Tex would surprise them with an interesting, adult-like lesson instead of the usual frivolous stuff. Suzie-Q didn’t feel embarrassed about this thought because she knew her dad had the same one. Tex was talking about "modern heresy", which seemed like it might not be too boring, but when Tex reassured the youth group that it wouldn't be boring, Suzie-Q's hopes fell. Then Suzie-Q had another worrisome thought. She smiled shyly at Alice. Alice believed many modern heresies. Suzie-Q hoped Tex wouldn't talk about one of hers. Suzie-Q suddenly saw that Tex had the potential of being offensive. She hoped he would not offend Alice.
As it turned out, Tex was not talking about any of Alice's heresies, much to Suzie-Q's relief. Instead, Tex explained a heresy about communist Catholics in Mexico. Tex laughed at himself when he called them "communists" even though nobody else really laughed with him. Nobody else laughed because nobody else got it. Suzie-Q thought she got it, but she didn’t think it was very lady-like to laugh like that at other people, especially if they were wrong and might go to hell. But she smiled to show she knew he was just being provocative.
Tex said that calling the Latin American Catholics "commies" was not an exaggeration, since they didn't believe in private property. Despite the drama of it, the youth group seemed to look bored anyway. Tex thought he would have to explain communism more thoroughly in order to interest teenagers, so he said these Catholics justified stealing for Christ's sake. Since he said it in a whisper, everyone leaned forward to hear including Suzie-Q, and even she felt shocked. Tex made a few more jokes about having enough Christian compassion to try to understand them before laughing at them like he did, and then he became very serious in order to present biblical arguments.
Suzie-Q was suddenly very tired. She started to dream and think about something else. She stared at the cinder-block wall. Suzie-Q understood that the Catholic communists were encouraging poor people to steal from rich people like Robin Hood, and she got it. She understood that it must be very tempting to follow a belief like that, and that she couldn’t judge someone who gave in to the temptation. She heard words like “greed” and “materialism” float by her from the youth director, and she thought about how the saddest part was that they were being lied to, and would lose their souls. And she thought about how they were being led to satisfy their needs now but not told how they would suffer later. Suzie-Q felt shocked by this bad doctrine, but found Tex a little silly in his way of talking. Suzie-Q couldn’t help feeling guilty as she thought about the poor. She didn’t think people were starving in Mexico like she thought they always seemed to be in Africa, but she knew that many of them had no house and no shoes. She remembered that some of them had leprosy like in the Bible, even though there was a cure. She felt a mixture of gratefulness and wondering why other people had so much less. She thought about how she was taught to count her blessings, and about how this thought never made her feel anything.
She wanted to concentrate on the problem of Catholic communism and so she thought she would try to feel the problem more fully. She acknowledged that not stealing was one of the ten commandments, and in order to feel what was wrong she tried to think of what could be stolen from her that would make her truly suffer. She imagined that someone stole her lunch, so she would be hungry all day. Only instead of feeling the wrongness, her imagination took her to the feeling of hunger she had every day at 4 pm that practically made her faint. She chided herself for being so frivolous. She forced herself to think about images of real starvation to correct the error, but then she realized she wasn’t any closer to understanding the wrongness of stealing, since no one had stolen from them.
Then she decided to imagine thieves breaking in and stealing her home. She succeeded in feeling genuine horror for a few minutes, as she imagined being thrown onto the street. She felt truly afraid as she saw the night and winter coming. She saw herself sleeping under the bridge for shelter, like the bums she sometimes saw. But then she quickly realized that there but for the grace of God went she. She began to turn around in circles in her mind around the image of street bums under the bridge. She saw clearly that there was no reason she shouldn’t be there in their place, and she even wondered if it wouldn’t be a more Christian way of loving to suffer for them. She knew that this was what Jesus would do, but she also saw it was too hard for her.
She realized that she had failed to evoke an emotional rejection of the Heresy of Catholic communism, so she quickly put it aside by taking refuge in the Law. She decided instead to think about the problem of other people’s suffering. She thought that, even if she wasn’t sanctified enough to suffer for other people on purpose, her many blessings would entail being tested. She thought that people with privilege had to expect to be tested to a higher level than people without privilege, and she wondered what tests God was going to give her in her life. She wondered if she would be able to stand up to the tests. She thought about the Bible saying you would not be tested beyond what you could bear, and then she thought about how that promise had always bothered her, since couldn’t you bear whatever didn’t kill you? or else whatever suffering didn’t turn you from your faith? which bothered her even more, because that would mean the stronger her faith, the more she could bear, and the more she could bear, the more she could suffer, so that if her faith was the faith of a martyr, maybe that meant she was bound to suffer excruciating pain during this life as a test, and at this point Suzie-Q began to feel dizzy and queasy and ill. She got a cold sweat on her forehead and a horrible malaise in her stomach, and she had to uncross her legs because she couldn’t bear the pain that started in her knees, like someone was about to cut off her legs and she was beginning to feel all the pain in her legs before the axe would fall—only she couldn’t sit any other way because her jean shorts were too wide and would show her underpants if she hugged her knees in her arms, so she slid them one on top of the other to the side, like a lady trying to ride side-saddle on the floor, holding the bottom of her shorts up delicately as she shifted position, but the malaise only continued, and became unbearable, so she decided to go to the bathroom and pace.
She got up to go to the bathroom. Her youth director said, “What’s wrong, Suzie-Q?”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” whispered Suzie-Q. She said it looking back like a scared goat, guilty-looking, and Suzie-Q’s face was extra white.
The youth director frowned and said, “Do you feel alright?” Suzie-Q felt embarrassed, like when she had been younger and went to real school and would spend too much time in the bathroom because she was constipated, and when she would come out her teacher would ask her, in front of the whole class, “Suzie-Q, do you feel alright?” and Suzie-Q would blush horribly and wish she could hide. Only now, Suzie-Q wasn’t blushing, she was white like death, and she wasn’t constipated, she was psychologically ill and broken out in a cold sweat and feeling faint and suffering more than she could bear, so she just whispered, “I’m fine,” and turned to walk away without waiting for an answer.
Suzie-Q was able to get over it in the bathroom by pacing back and forth and then by lying down on the cold linoleum floor of the industrial kitchen attached. She realized that she had failed in her attempt to think about the problem of other people’s suffering, and that she would have to stop. When she came out of the bathroom, Tex was just finishing his explanation of this week’s heresy with a concession. “Of course, the first Christians were communists. Ha ha ha!” he laughed, to everyone’s bewilderment. Then he became very serious. “Only problem—a little story we like to tell about Ananias and Sapphira. Sold their house and gave the proceeds to the commune, but kept back a part for themselves. That’s human greed for you! Inherently evil. Which necessarily precludes communism ahead of time. Feeling better, Suzie-Q?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Suzie-Q.
“Can you tell everybody what happened to Ananias and Sapphira, Suzie-Q?”
“God struck them dead.”
“Th-th-th-that’s all folks! Let’s pray now.”
Suzie-Q’s youth pastor began what she knew would be a very long prayer. Suzie-Q often wondered why she couldn’t concentrate very well during prayers. She was fine when she prayed on her own—at least if she had some sacred Music in the background to guide her thoughts, or if she did it outloud. But she often found herself thinking about everything except God during pastoral prayers. She decided that at this moment she really really needed to pray, whatever that meant. She opened her eyes, which made her feel guilty, but she knew that prayer itself was more important than not opening her eyes. She looked around for something to help her fix her thoughts and reach God with her mind. She glanced at the kitsch picture of Jesus with the long hair that Tex called the hippy-Jesus. She had a feeling of strong distaste in relation to this poster, and she thought about how it went against her father’s iconoclasm. But Suzie-Q never felt the same way about pictures. She knew God couldn’t be seen, but it seemed to her that Jesus had had skin and bones, and that if he were alive today there would be all sorts of pictures of him, and maybe even home videos. To her mind, the Art of picturing Jesus was an acknowledgment of the incarnation, and what bothered her really was kitsch. She decided to imagine that the silly picture she was looking at was instead a painting from the high middle ages, with gold and very breathtaking shades of blue. She thought Jesus’ hair could remain long, and then she smiled to herself as she remembered how funny she thought it was although she was a Republican that Jesus was connected to hippies even for preppy Christians like Tex because of the ridiculous culture of kitsch. She smiled at herself and then became very serious as she realized she had little time left to access God. She continued to transpose a gold and cobalt medieval Jesus onto the poster with her imagination. She thought that Jesus must have been darker and more Jewish-looking than the picture in front of her or even the medieval one in her imagination. She wondered if Jesus might have been Black as some people suggested. She decided to concentrate on Jesus' brown eyes so as not to be confused by the details. She began staring at the brown eyes of Jesus in the poster and imagining them looking directly at her. As she stared at the poster, the eyes turned and stared directly back at her. She felt an enormous sensation of love overwhelm her. She felt as if the love of the eyes returning her gaze were the purest love imaginable, and it made her feel whole and alive. She thought that she was seeing the heart of the source of life itself, and that this untouchable strength was able to see her completely. She felt tears well up in her eyes as the eyes of God in the poster diffused for her personally a fountain of fire and affection absent of any aggression. She felt full of life and joy. She opened herself up then to listen to Tex finishing up his youth pastoral prayer, which she imagined must be almost over. Tex was soliloquying and quoting the Bible with the words, “and quicken the day of your coming, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and forgive us our many sins of omission and commission, and help us bring into the fold all the elect of your choosing, and if it be your will, save multitudes of the heathen from the fires of eternal damnation, and bring us all into knowledge of your unchanging truth. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” Suzie-Q felt caught between the teeth of these cold but lofty words, none of which were Tex’s. She thought that in some ways they were beautiful, but that in some ways they were like the cold teeth of God, that she knew she ought to love, but that left her feeling like she was in the belly of a whale, and that she had narrowly escaped being crunched between them, and that it became very difficult to see the eyes of God from that position. But she didn’t have time to complete that thought, because things were disintegrating into fun and games around her, and she became forcefully aware of Alice beside her and of the need to make sure she was okay. She smiled sweetly in Alice’s direction, saying, “Is everything okay?” and nodding up and down as she said it.
“Oh, Suzie-Q,” whispered Alice. “Does your youth pastor always talk like that?” she asked in Suzie-Q’s ear.
Suzie-Q blushed. Suzie-Q whispered back in Alice’s ear in order not to show why she was blushing. “Tex is pretty funny, isn’t he?”
Alice giggled, then whispered with hot breath in Suzie-Q’s ear so it tickled. “He’s so godly!” Alice sounded dramatic, and Suzie-Q felt embarrassed for her.
Tex, who had noticed the two of them whispering and blushing with a male instinct for attention, yelled across the room, “What are you two whispering about?”
Alice giggled, and Suzie-Q turned a darker shade of red than usual. She tugged on Alice’s sleeve and said, “My Dad’s gonna be waiting! Bye-Bye, Tex.” She dragged Alice up the basement stairs, Alice with her neck turned toward Tex the whole time. Suzie-Q opened the door of her Dad’s waiting car and shoved Alice inside.
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