Page 27 - WTP Vol. XI #6

time the thought came to her. She was standing in the skeleton of what would become her family’s church building, following the adults who were being led around the place that would—someday—be righteous, but was now just a construction site.
I want to jump off, she thought, looking at the piles of rebar and spikes of wood outlining the still new-looking foundational concrete. She stepped back, afraid of her own mind, but felt the hands in her gut pull her forward toward the edge. She wrested herself away and prayed, briefly, that she wouldn’t jump, but even then, she heard the unspoken, second prayer, “God, I pray I wouldn’t jump today.” Later, she would punch her thigh over and over, unable to leave the thought that perhaps she was wrong, and that everything would be better if she had leapt. As the walls grew around her, the thought did not leave. When Carly offered to kiss her in the bathroom, she felt it returning from where she’d banished it
during the long run; the calling of the dark was lurking in the back of her mind. When she helped to wipe up messes left by the homeless at the volunteer kitchen, she greedily eyed the bleach. She pretended she did not know how to use a child-safe pill bottle, as the pile in her hands was as tempting as pieces of silver.
~
Now, at fourteen, Allison has no will to fight, but there is a catch: she is sure that she wants to. She falls to her knees in the parking lot and hears the rumbling bass of the worship team meld with the high treble of passing cars and squealing wheels.
“God, I don’t know what to do. But I can’t live like this. I don’t want this.”
She realizes, finally, that she never did put the sheet back. It is bad manners to take the covering with you after you have come back from being slain in the Spirit; others might need it, and the sheet itself isn’t sacred—it’s just a sheet, and all the Aunties think so. She is sure she will get a talking-to if she makes it back inside, and yet somehow, she feels that moving it from her shoulders would leave her naked, as though the half-sheet sewn up into a covering was all that was protecting her from the end of the world. For all her repentance, she is a sinner. Her sin is her fear. And she fears it, and the fear clings to her.
As the sprinklers come on with a violent hiss, Allison realizes she was wrong every day of her life: there were no hands in her body. She understands, now, the squeezing and the pull, the sharp teeth of her shame. The feeling was that of a serpent. There was a snake in
her belly that would never let her go, and now it creeped up through her ribs and whispered in her ear through the soft and deadly spot at the back of her skull. The words were lost to the wind, but she understood the meaning, and could not force her feet to turn around and walk back toward the light behind her. She did not want to move forward. She did not want the headlights. Unable to make her body move, suffocated, she clenched her fists and her stomach and curled into a ball on the grass, hoping the solid thing that filled her at Carly’s touch would not abandon her now.
“Allison?”
~
Esther stands in an empty parking spot, the asphalt closest to her, staring as though she is seeing a wild animal. Allison is too tired to scream, but she screams anyway.
“Don’t look at me!” The words taste like vomit. The taste reminds her of singing with Esther in the backseat on the way to Hana, singing to avoid carsickness. She grinds her teeth, biting back the words that might follow. The scales scratch the inside of her intestines.
“Allison!” Esther repeats, and the voice carries the grace-note of the voice inside Allison. Her soul reverberates. Allison is soaking wet; she has not moved since the sprinklers came on. The water that comes from those sprinklers is not safe to drink, but Allison licks her lips anyway. She is so thirsty. She wonders if her soul has gone rabid.
“Allison, come here.” Esther is crying, but her outstretched hand does not shake.
To her everlasting shame, Allison crawls forward, dragging mud and grass with her, the covering clinging to her skin. When she reaches Esther, Esther’s arms wrap
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