Jesus Land (39 page)

As Jay vomits evil at my brother, I stand and bear witness. Jay seems to be demanding some kind of answer from David, who remains bent and mute, his hands hanging limply at his sides like small dead animals.

His numbness, his refusal to accept what is happening by refusing to react—all this is familiar. Things are done to you and you can’t do anything back. And so you play dead. Because if you don’t acknowledge something, it isn’t real. It doesn’t happen.

But this is happening, it’s happening to my brother.

Becky falls back to where I’ve halted and says something I can’t hear. My eyes, ears and every fiber of my being are pointed to what’s happening to my brother. The words “idiot!” and “now!” slap into my ears and I wince as Jay shoves David; he staggers backward and continues to stare at the ground, frozen. When Jay slams his fist into my brother’s stomach, my own breath is punched from me.

I stumble forward, and Becky yanks on my arm.

“NO!” I bellow.

David looks up from his doubled-over position and feebly lifts a hand, palm out, everything’s fine.
No, it’s not
!

Jay turns toward the road with his fists on his hips and I bare my teeth at him.
How dare you?

I let Becky drag me up the hill backwards, her words as blurred as the cement road, the dried weeds beside it, the dark clouds churning overhead. I hold David’s eyes for as long as I can and promise him that someday, we’ll be free. Free and happy. Free together.

According to the Escuela Caribe doctrine, situations that push your ability to cope beyond the realm of everyday experience “build character.” These situations include being rousted for two
A.M.
sessions, spending Free Days on your knees scrubbing floors, and apparently, watching your brother get sucker-punched in the stomach. The fact that Jay hit my brother in public makes me wonder what horrible things are done to him behind closed doors.

After having a staffer tell me for the umpteenth time that such-and-such hardship will help me “build character,” I look up “character” in the Starr dictionary, because I’m no longer sure what it means.

Character: 1. the qualities that distinguish one person from another. 2. a distinguishing feature or attribute. 3. moral or ethical strength. 4. reputation. 5. an eccentric person.

I figure it must be the third sense of the word because it’s got the words “moral” and “ethical” in it. But in my experience, making people suffer doesn’t make them more virtuous, it just makes them despise you.

The numbness that sheltered me from Jerome’s nighttime fumbling has become my sanctuary at Escuela Caribe. I don’t get excited by my advances in The Program or disappointed by my setbacks, because such emotions are simply manifestations of the staff’s control over my mind. Happiness, anguish, fear—these are all fake emotions here, products of their manipulation. It’s
better to be numb and prepared for the next “opportunity” to build character than to get your hopes dashed repeatedly.

Anger is now the only emotion I allow myself. Anger and hatred, which is simply anger boiled down to its core element. I hate this place and I hate these people and I hate the God that allows these things to happen. I go through The Program like a circus tiger, obeying commands and concealing my true nature. Knowing that someday, my fangs and claws shall be useful once more.

But every now and again, some whispered reminder of Freedom weakens my resolve. The fresh perfume of crushed green grass. A love song hurled over the barbed wire from a passing car. A warm breeze that lifts my hair and caresses on my neck. These things make me bite my lip and dig my nails into the scarred grooves in my palms. These things ache. These things can wound you.

Jerome shook off Father’s beatings with a sneer and a curse, but they chipped at David’s soul bit by bit.

I tried to be a good big sister to him. When he returned from the workshop or pole barn with fresh welts on his back, I’d sit beside him on his bed while he curled into a ball and stuffed a fist in his mouth. I’d sit there in silence, not touching him, not knowing what to say, what to do, who to tell.

There was a 1-800 number printed on the inside cover of the phone directory to report child abuse, but belting your kid was hardly considered abuse in that time and place; students were spanked in principals’ offices across the Midwest. There was no 1-800 number to report emotional injury.

All I could do was bear witness as his body shuddered and tears seeped out under his long lashes. When he reopened his eyes, I wanted to be the first thing he saw. Me, gazing down at him with a fragile smile. Asking if he’d like a glass of water.

Another preacher arrives a few weeks after Preacher Stevie departs, only this one is referred to as “The Pastor” with a capital T and P. He’s Gordon Blossom, the man who started this place.

The Pastor—as we’re repeatedly told to call him—founded New Horizons Youth Ministries in 1971, when he began sending teens from his church on summer mission trips to separate them from the “negative influence” of American culture. The strategy proved so successful that he built Escuela Caribe, a place where disgruntled parents could dump their kids year-round if they had enough money. Eventually, The Pastor’s reform school empire grew to include Escuela Caribe, a sister institution in Marion, Indiana, and a survival camp in Canada, where teens are sent into the wilderness to tough it out alone.

I didn’t know about the Indiana school—a mere two hours from Lafayette—until I was already down here. My parents must have deemed it was too close to home.

One morning during chapel we are informed that The Pastor will be dropping in for a visit that evening, and the campus is turned upside down in preparation. The unexpected news makes the staff jittery, which makes us kids doubly so, because we bear the brunt of their mood swings.

Class is canceled and the student body is divided into regiments to spit-shine The Property. One group is handed machetes to mow the “lawn.” Another is armed with bleach to scour the classrooms. A third tromps up the hill with brooms and mops to clean “The Pastor’s Place,” a small house tucked behind a screen of trees at the top of The Property. I long to glimpse its interior, but am assigned the school toilets instead.

After a day of frenzied cleaning, we don our Sunday finery to reconvene in the chapel after supper. Ted steps behind the pulpit and the school therapist strikes up “Onward Christian Soldiers” on the piano. As Ted’s gaze scrapes over us, we quit slouching and magically transform into redeemable teenagers, our faces bright, our hymnals high, singing our lungs out for Jesus Christ.

Halfway through the fourth stanza, a tall man in a tan suit marches up the center aisle, and excitement ripples through the room. It’s The Pastor. Ted shakes his hand, then cedes the pulpit.

The Pastor joins in the hymn, his scarecrow body bobbing to the beat. He looks like any old churchman you’d see back home: 60s, gray hair greased over a large bald spot, bifocals, abbreviated Hitler mustache. Wattle spilling over shirt collar. Dried out and severe. The reason we’re all here.

At the hymn’s refrain—
ON-ward CHRIST-ian SOLD-iers, MARCH-ing as toWAR—
The Pastor jerks his arms up and down like a manic choir director, bifocals flashing like strobe lights. I twist round to look at David and we goggle at each other, our mouths twitching with swallowed laughter. Surely, this is a man possessed.

After belting out the last stanza, we remain standing until the piano strings cease their vibrations before folding ourselves back onto the wooden pews. The room falls silent except for the low hiss of the flickering gas lamps and a palm branch scratching at the metal roof in the breeze.

The Pastor stands as erect as a general. I stare at The Pastor’s mustache, which is thick and black and reminds me of the marker that conceals the sex in Scott’s letters. He sweeps his eyes over us, pausing on every face; I look down when his eyes land on mine. When he speaks, his voice is as low and gravelly as a smoker’s.

“‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’”

He peers down at us through the bottoms of his bifocals.

“You kids were sent to Escuela Caribe to put away childish things,” he says, his voice rising and falling in preacher speak. “To put away your rebellion and come clean with the Lord. To surrender to Jesus Christ and become his faithful servants. To humble yourselves before God.”

He bangs his fist on the pulpit and I jump.

“You kids don’t know how good you have it!” he shouts. “You should be on your knees right now, thanking God Almighty for the opportunity to be here! For the loving parents who made the financial sacrifice to send you here! For the dedicated staff who see beyond your filth to your true potential!”

He leans back, gripping the pulpit with long fingers and sucking in his cheeks. Heads droop before The Pastor’s fiery gaze like wilting flowers.

“Do you know why I started New Horizons? Let me tell you. Because I, too, was a filthy sinner! Caught up in the pleasures of
the flesh! Of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll! But places like Escuela Caribe didn’t exist when I was young, oh no!

“I did
hard
time. My body was beaten into submission, but my soul remained depraved. And when I finally found Jesus, I promised Him I’d do better. I vowed to build Him a place where dirty sinner kids would be cured by discipline, hard work,
and
the Blood of the Lamb!”

The Pastor again pounds the pulpit.

“Hallelujah!” cries a female voice behind me. I turn to see Debbie standing in a back pew, slowly swaying in a pink sundress with her arms over her head and her eyes closed, as if she were listening to music only she could hear.

The Pastor nods at her and continues in his loud hypnotic voice.

“The Lord Jesus brought you here! To rescue you! To save your souls!”

“Amen!” yells another voice, male, this time. I turn. It’s Steve, TKB’s group leader. He’s also popped up from his pew and is swaying with raised arms. David, seated next to him, looks at him with open-mouthed astonishment, as if he’d just dropped naked from the sky. People don’t do such things in church back home.

“Will you continue through life as filthy little sinners? Or will you choose God? Which is it, Satan or Jesus?! Eternal Life or Eternal Damnation?!”

One by one, staff and students rise from their pews as The Pastor sermonizes with upheld arms and sway like seaweed tugged by an ocean current. Many of the teachers’ upturned faces are split in grins of ecstasy, while most of the students look down, their arms hung limply overhead as if someone were forcing them down a dark alley at gunpoint.

The collective exuberance has made the chapel’s temperature rise, and the bitter smell of sweat clouds the stagnant air.

The Pastor barks from the pulpit and the voices yelp back.

“Jesus died for you!”

“Amen!”

“Jesus will make you clean!”

“Yes, Jesus!”

“Jesus forgives you!”

“Hallelujah!”

“Jesus wants you!”

“Praise God!”

I’ve heard tell of such caterwauling and carrying-on by Pentecostals, but such behavior would be considered obscene at Lafayette Christian Reformed, where standing to recite the Apostle’s Creed is as exciting as it gets. I smirk, wondering what Mother would say if she knew we’d been exiled with a bunch of “Holy Rollers.”

I turn to see my amazement reflected on my brother’s face. We’re the only two people still sitting; this is not good. I slowly rise, and so does David. Stick my arms in the air, and so does he. I turn to face the front of the chapel, close my eyes, and lightly bump against the bodies on either side of me in the sultry heat.

It’s been a long time since I had touching like this, soft and gentle, and my mind wanders back to Scott. I remember how he’d skim his hand over my stomach and breasts, barely grazing me. My skin would become electrified, every nerve standing on end, craving contact. He’d skim me until I could no longer stand it and arched my back against the mattress, thrusting myself into his hand.

All this soft bumping reminds me of my arching desire, even as The Pastor continues to bark from the pulpit.

“Come to Jesus!”