Jesus Land (31 page)

I reread the last sentence and snicker. Scott’s always good at saying what he thinks people want to hear; he likes to be liked. But in this case, he’s wrong. I don’t want to get married. I like boys well enough, but the last thing I need is a husband bossing me around after being bossed around by everyone else my entire life. I just want to be left alone.

The Sandi Patti tape ends, and the player clicks off. The jungle explodes to life on the other side of the barbed wire, buzzing and shrieking. Wild things out hunting at dusk.

In the valley below, the moon lies shattered in the rice paddies.

I tuck the letter back into its envelope and reseal the tape, thinking about the words Scott used to get inside me—
beautiful, love, special—
and wonder if he meant any of them. I miss his touch and playfulness, the way he’d put an ice cube inside me on
hot afternoons and drink the water out of me, the way he’d cover my mouth so my parents wouldn’t hear us having sex. But, then again, he also copied my poems for other girls and visited them when I was busy.

Susan comes out to the patio to sit beside me and we talk about the trip we’re taking to Santo Domingo next month, and what we’ll see there. If there will be McDonald’s and Pizza Huts and places to buy tampons and M&Ms. I long to talk to her about boys and the urgencies they create, but I know that everything we say will be overheard and scrutinized and assigned points.

We veer left on County Road 50, our bike tires skidding across the crumbled pavement. The sky is quilted with low clouds, the air hot and wet.

“Race you!” David yells.

We rise in unison to stomp on our pedals, blasting past Hanke’s Dairy, the Workmans’ cornfield, the abandoned trailer home with the windows smashed out.

David zooms ahead of me and looks back over his shoulder grinning because he thinks I won’t catch up. He’s scrawny, but strong. And a bit too cocksure of himself. I blink sweat from my eyes, lean over the handlebars and click my bike into tenth gear.
Watch out, here I come
.

A shriek rips through the dormitory, one, two, three times. I jolt upright in my bunk, my heart jackhammering, my dream racing away. Bruce is in the middle of the room with his silver referee whistle plugging his mouth. He blows it again, and I clamp my hands over my ears.

“Everybody downstairs, now!” he roars.

Night-gowned bodies rise from bunks like ghosts, and Susan gets out of the bottom bunk and looks at me.

“You’d best scurry,” she says, her eyes sparking with fear. “We’re fixing for a session.”

I have no idea what that means, but her tone prods me into action. I flip onto my belly and slide over the bunk’s metal frame backwards, conscious that my nightie is creeping up the back of my thighs as Bruce watches.

“Get moving!” he yells. I stumble down the narrow stairway and behind me, Jolene, fresh from a week in The Hole, gurgles something and Bruce screams, “Yes, you have permission! Go!”

I join the other girls clumped in the middle of the living room, my eyes still foggy with sleep. Becky sits in a patio chair in the corner regarding us with a grim face. I give her a questioning look, but she turns away. I tilt my watch to the lamplight; it’s two
A.M.
Tomorrow, already. Bruce pads downstairs in slippers.

“Everyone get down and give me twenty-five push-ups!” he shouts.

I drop to the ground with the others and start humping air. We count in unison as the satin and lace of our nighties kiss the floor and Bruce paces between us, exhorting us to get lower, move faster, count louder.

What have we done to deserve this
? I rack my brains for reasons. Bruce didn’t seem grumpier than usual today. No one even got chewed out for an exposed bra strap or spacing at supper.

“Fifty jumping jacks!” Bruce yells, when we finish the push-ups.

Janet’s boobs flop obscenely under her nightgown and Tiffany’s is so short you can see her teddy bear underwear.

As we pant, Bruce rages.

“I am sick and tired of the negativity in this household! I should send the lot of you back to Level 0, eh? All I get from you girls is ingratitude! But things are going to change around here, eh? I want to see PRO-gress and I want to see it now!”

Who does this Canuck think he is, anyway? He’s not even an American, and here he is, he’s in charge of us American girls!

His hands are balled at his sides, and his face looks ready to explode.

“You have lost enthusiasm for The Program!” he shrieks. “You have no respect for authority! You are not right with God!

“Thirty-five leg lifts!”

It’s true that some girls have gotten more depressed since Jolene’s botched escape. Her ravished head is a constant reminder of how hopeless our situation is, and there’s been a lot more snuffling under pillows at night, a lot more sour faces at the dinner table. But then again, we’re in reform school. How can we
not
be depressed?

“I can’t do it no more!” Jolene wails after three minutes of running in place. She falls to the floor and curls onto her side, rocking herself like a baby. The rest of us continue to jog, our bare feet slapping the tiles.

Becky crouches over Jolene and rubs her back.

“Jolene, do you want to go back into The Hole?!” Bruce shouts.

Becky looks up at him with hard eyes.

“I think Jolene should rest,” she says. They regard each other for a long moment before Becky turns back to Jolene, who’s still rocking and moaning.

“It’s not fair!” Susan gasps as she jogs. “How come she gets a break?”

She starts to cry.

“Mind your own business, eh?” Bruce shouts. “Twenty suicides!”

Soon we’re reduced to a blubbering mass of snot, sweat, and tears. Bruce makes us promise we’ll show him PRO-gress and that we’ll try harder, really
think
about what we’re doing.

Afterward, we kneel on the floor in a circle, sweat pasting our nighties to our bodies, and hold hands. Bruce leads us in prayer, asking God to forgive us our trespasses against Him, but what exactly those are, I’m not quite sure.

We wake the next morning transformed into godly women, adorned with meek and mild spirits from sleep deprivation. We brim with enthusiasm for The Program. We are happy to be here. We are
grateful
for this opportunity. We sing hymns during House Jobs, as we walk to school, during Work Time. We bring Bruce tea during Free Time, massage his doughy shoulders and clean his shoes without being asked. We are models of Christian femininity.

As we wash up that night, Susan informs me that a session can occur at any time, for any reason. Past reasons have included low points on House Inspection, general mopiness, and a perceived lack of respect for Bruce.

“You never know when one’s coming,” she whispers into the mirror at me. “That’s how they keep us on our toes.”

For the next week, if a girl so much as stops smiling, all we have to do is hiss the word “Session” at her and she gets right back with The Program. One person’s bad attitude can drag the entire house down, and no one wants to be responsible for a loss of dream time. Sleep is everyone’s favorite Time, for it is Divine Nothingness.

On Saturday, there’s an all-school outing to Salto de Jimenoa, but I’m not grateful for it. I’m angry. I failed my Room Job because my panties weren’t folded right, and when Bruce told me my score, I rolled my eyes, prompting him to give me a 1 in the Courtesy and Respect box, as well as a 2 in the House Job box. So I have two casitas to look forward to after the daylong hike.

I lag behind the other kids on the trail while Becky tries to distract me with small talk about the flora and fauna. I grunt responses to her observations, and after a while she moves on to someone else.

I want to focus on my misery. I want to roll around in it like a dog in a pile of shit. I want to claim it as my own. Right now, it’s all I have. I still can’t believe that a place like Escuela Caribe exists, and that I find myself enrolled in it. All I did was try to wring some happiness from life, a little fun and a little affection, and as a result I was banished to an island colony ruled by sadistic Jesus freaks. Mother says the greatest thing you can do in life is die for Jesus Christ, but all this suffering for Him had best score me some major brownie points, too.

My mood gets darker as the waterfall gets louder. Why does God always have to make everything so difficult? I know we are put on earth to test our faith, but why can’t He make our time here a little more enjoyable? Why does everything have to be such a cross?

We hike farther than the last time, and the boys rush forward, jostling each other to be the first to reach whatever lies ahead.

The trail ends and the guide rope ends, and we climb onto a crown of bald rock. A few of the boys throw themselves to the ground and belly crawl to the lip of the gorge, and soon everyone’s lying down and peering over the side, staff and students alike.

Everyone but David and me. He’s leaning against a solitary pine tree, eyeing me warily, aware of my foul mood. Everyone’s so preoccupied with the view that I could easily flash him a forbidden smile to let him know I’m okay, but I don’t because I’m not. I’m forced to playact with everyone else here, but I refuse to playact with my brother.

I turn away from his concern and walk toward the cliff, treading carefully on the mist-slick rock. I crouch on the curved edge and hug my knees. On either side of me, prostrate boys shout into the canyon, but the waterfall drowns their voices, reducing them to red faces and ranting mouths. They might as well be shouting profanities into the cold mist and thunder. They probably are.

I decide to try it myself.

“Fuck this place!” I scream. “Fuck you all! Fuck you, assholes!”

I scream so hard that my throat gets scratchy, but I still can’t hear myself over the catapulting water.

“Fuck!”

“Fuck!”

“Fuck!”

It feels good to be profane. I smirk and gaze down at the river, which lies at a dizzying distance below. I close my eyes against the wet wind churned up by the fall, and cold dew collects on my face. I can feel the hugeness of the void before me; it would be so easy to slip into it and disappear. One slip and it’d all be over: casitas, sessions, Escuela Caribe.

I’m moving.

I open my eyes, and I’m moving, slipping over the wet rock into the abyss. I arch my back away from it and flail my arms, every atom in me roaring
stop! Not yet
!

Two brown hands slap down on my shoulders, forcing me to sit down. I turn and scramble up the rock on my hands and knees to level ground, and when I stand, there’s David, sauntering back to the pine tree. No one has seen what happened; they’re all still peering over the ledge.

David goes back to leaning against the tree, and we face each other with astonishment. My brother was watching over me. Gratitude floods my eyes and I sit at his feet, craving his presence like solid ground. We stay like this for a long time, watching wispy clouds move across the sky over the canyon. My skin is covered in goose bumps, but I’m sweating, and as I sit there, shivering and sweating, I feel a connection to my brother that is physical, as if his hands were still on my shoulders, protecting me.

When Ted blows his whistle to round people up to hike back down the mountain, I reluctantly move away from him, lest anyone think we were communicating.

Two days later, I walk up to David after the morning prayer meeting.

“What’s up, bro?” I ask him, punching his arm.

It’s the first time I’ve spoken to him in a month, and he looks at me as if I were brainsick and creeps backwards, glancing about the courtyard.

I grab his wrist and pull him back toward me.

“It’s okay, I made Second. We can talk!”

I show him the medal Bruce gave me for my promotion. “Integrity,” it says.

His face softens and he clutches me against him, and I pat his back awkwardly. It’s the first time we’ve ever hugged each other. After a few seconds, I tighten my grip on him, and the sensation is both comforting and queer. He feels so fragile. My eyes start stinging,
and I pull away and punch him again, and he puts his hand on his arm and pretends it hurts, and everything’s back to normal.

There’s a shush in the courtyard and I look up to see people staring at us.

“So, what’s new with you?” I ask loudly.

“Not much.” He shrugs, glancing around. “You?”

I shrug back.

“Same old, same old.”

We sit at a picnic table grinning at each other. We’ve got only a few minutes before class, and there’s too much to say.

Our classmates sit at the other tables and watch us.

We’ve both been warned: Mind what you say and do when you’re together. No negativity. No cursing. No check topics. If you disobey, we will find out, and we will separate you again.

They fear us because they know we are above The Program’s petty narking strategy. We will speak with honesty and won’t betray each other for it. We are family. We are indivisible.

After a few days it becomes apparent that we can’t talk freely; our classmates see us as a potential gold mine. There’s always some kid lurking on the fringes of our conversation, waiting to hear something check so they can tattle on us for points. And keep us apart.