I WAS BRUSHING MY TEETH when she started in again. “I want you to be in Paradise with me,” she said, leaning her long blond hair so close to the sink it was hard not to get toothpaste on it. “I was praying for it when I woke up.”
“Jocelyn,” I screamed, foaming Crest going everywhere. “You are a little eleven-year-old Methodist in a small town in the Ozarks. You are not a television evangelist. Now get the hell out of this bathroom before I kill you.” I turned and glowered at her. She is almost as tall as I am now. She is growing extremely fast for eleven. She has reached back into the gene pool and brought up some of Dad’s old Scandinavian genes from when his ancestors lived in Wisconsin and fought the snow. Now we are in Fayetteville, Arkansas, fighting madness, low IQs, and Christians. Dad and I are fighting them. Mom and Jocelyn have joined up. They go to church about five times a week. Jocelyn is a Christian Scout and wears a blue vest with a flowered cross embroidered on the pocket and another on the back that she added just to be different.
“Don’t you respect me?” she says. “If you curse me that means you don’t respect me.” This is one of the things they teach the scouts to say.
“No, I don’t respect you. I don’t even like you and if you don’t get out of this bathroom I’m going to have to kill you. I’m giving you three. One, two…”
She moved back three paces and stood in the doorway looking sad and sadder. They teach her things to say but they don’t teach her what to say next if the person she is working on doesn’t respond with guilt or fear.
I pushed her out the door and shut it. I finished my teeth and started putting on my makeup. I had a meeting at eight o’clock with the other editors of the literary magazine. We were trying to find a way to pay for a field trip to SEFOR, a breeder reactor in Strickler, Arkansas, which is only twenty miles from the town where we live. A breeder reactor so hot a Geiger counter goes off as soon as you get within two hundred yards of the silo. It was built in the 1960s by a consortium of German and American utility companies to see how much uranium 235 and plutonium 239 they could squeeze into a building and not have it go critical, melt down, or, in other words, turn northwest Arkansas into Chernobyl. We were lucky. One melted down in Detroit, Michigan, first, and after that the consortium cooled SEFOR down with liquid sodium, one of the most inflammable things in the world, talked the government into taking most of the uranium and plutonium up to Hanford, Washington, and then gave the reactor, the visitors’ center for the reactor, and the six hundred acres of land around it to the University of Arkansas. The university took it. Can you believe that? And my dad teaches at the place.
“You didn’t have to curse me,” Jocelyn says when I sit down at the kitchen table to eat my scrambled eggs. For whose benefit, do you suppose?
“Aurora,” my mother begins, getting her pitiful oh-how-can-this-happen-to-me-so-early-in-the-morning, why-is-my-life-this-way, where-did-I-go-wrong, why-am-I-here-in-this-terrible-family-when-I-meant-to-be-a-sculptor look on her face.
“I didn’t curse her. I told her to get her goddamn hair out of the sink while I was brushing my teeth. It’s okay with me if she wants to go to school with Crest on her ponytail but I bet old Jerry Hadler will want his friendship bracelet back if he sees it.”
“Please don’t turn this into an argument.”
“Please tell her to stop pushing Jesus at me. She’s out of control, Mother. You really ought to think of getting her some help.”
“You’re the one who killed your baby,” Jocelyn said, so I got up and slapped her in the face with my napkin and went into my room and got my backpack and went out the side door and got into my car and drove off down Lighton Trail to school. I used to have a Camaro but it was wrecked when a truck ran into the side of it at the corner of Maple Street and University Avenue. Then my grandmother died and willed me her Toyota so I put the insurance money for the Camaro in my college fund and have been very happy driving Grandmother’s baby blue car with leather seat covers. It’s like having her around to get into her car every day. She adored me. She knew who I was. Sometimes I think she loved me more than anyone else ever will. The day before she died she got me in her bedroom and told me I was the only one in the family who had the genes. She didn’t call it genes. She called it spunk. “I thought your daddy had it but then he married your mother and sank into stone,” she said. “I love him. Don’t get me wrong, but you’re the one who has the strength to make something of yourself, Aurora. Thank God for you. I’m leaving you my car.”
I never thought she’d die but she did. At eight o’clock the next morning, while putting on her makeup. She was living out in Cassandra Village where the rich people around here stash their parents while they wait to die. So, anyway, I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about the goddamn abortion and get it off my mind.
I did not kill a baby. I aborted a six-week-old fetus that would have ruined my life. I’m not cut out to be a mother. Sixteen-year-old girls with high intelligence quotients have no business having babies they don’t want. I guess I’m not as rabid about this as I used to be. All the goddamn anti-abortionists have planted doubts in my mind. They keep the balls in the air. They keep it on the table.
I stopped on my way to school to pick up my boyfriend (my new one, not the one who got me pregnant), Ingersol Manning the fourth, six feet five inches tall, completely sane in every way. What does he see in me? You aren’t the first one to ask that question. He was walking to school because his Pathfinder is in the shop getting repaired. He worked all summer to make the money to have it fixed. Now it’s taking two weeks and he’s walking.
He climbed in the passenger side of the Toyota and wiggled around until there was room for his head. “What’s going on?” he asked and handed me a strawberry toaster pastry.
“We have to do something about Jocelyn,” I began. “She’s gone crazy down at the Methodist church. They’ve captured her, Ingersol. She’s completely lost it over Jesus.”
“It’s the music,” he answered. “Bach. She’s an artist. The music gets them every time. It happened to me when I was thirteen. It was several months before I stopped having talks with the air.”
“You were wonderful when you were thirteen.”
“I was fat. I was shaped like a pear.”
“I don’t remember you fat.”
“You wouldn’t even play with me that year. One Saturday I came over and you wouldn’t let me come in.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.” He reached over and put his hand on top of mine to let me know he forgave me. He was right. There had been a couple of years when he was in the sixth and seventh grades when his jokes were too childish and disgusting for me. He had this friend, Charles Barton, who was on prednisone and would curse in strings of really gross, disgusting, bodily function words. Ingersol would egg him on to say them. Then he would die of laughter. I couldn’t put up with that even if Charles Barton did have cancer. He lived, by the way. He is completely in remission and recovered so I don’t have to feel guilty about thinking it was disgusting.
“We could get her to read Malthus or Darwin or Desmond Morris or Nietzsche. We could invite her over to my house and trick her into watching my new Creation of the Universe tape by Timothy Ferris.” Ingersol was sticking to the subject, a great gift of his.
“Oh, yeah, as if she can read. This is all my mother’s fault. She thinks the reason I’m not homecoming queen is because they quit going to church. She joined the church to get Jocelyn a social life. Now Jocelyn’s bought the program and from the way she’s acting Mother’s bought it too. So what am I supposed to do? Move out or fight?”
“First we think,” he said. “Then we act. If it’s social, I see why she’s drawn to it. She’s a social creature. She loves the world. All we can do is hope to plant some doubts in her mind.”
We weren’t getting any help from chance or luck. That very night our old brown Labrador retriever began to gasp for breath and fall down every other step. Dad put him in the back of the Explorer and took him to the vet and left him there. Jocelyn disappeared into her room. When I found her she was on her knees by her cedar chest, crying and praying. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m asking Jesus to save Bill Bailey,” she said through her tears. “I’m asking that he let him live until it’s spring and he can run after the squirrels and bark at them. It’s the wrong time for him to die, when it’s cold outside and we couldn’t even find a pretty place to bury him.” She cried on and I didn’t try to say anything to make her feel better. She was having a ball, kneeling on the floor like the virgin of the spring or Joan of Arc or someone. As if it was up to her to save a dog.
About twenty minutes later I went back in her room and let her have it. “If Bill Bailey lives it will be because an army of atheist scientists and biochemists have been going into their labs every day of their lives and believing in science instead of superstition and religion. It will be the techniques and drugs they developed that save his life, if it gets saved.”
“And who made the scientists and biochemists?” she answered. “Who gave them the brains to find the drugs? God did. It’s God’s world and He made it all.”
“So you like a God that would kill a poor old dog right at the beginning of winter? That’s your hero?”
“You’re the devil’s advocate, Aurora. You’re as evil as a black star.” She ran from the room and found Mother and told her some blown-up version of what I’d said and I ended up having to go to Arsaga’s coffee shop to get any studying done.
The next day Dad picked up Bill Bailey and brought him home. He had been pumped full of anticoagulants and antibiotics and put on a strict diet of low-fat dog food. He was going to live. Jocelyn gave thanks to God and asked Mother to donate her allowance for two weeks to the United Way.
“It’s hopeless,” I reported to Ingersol. “She has been programmed past all repair. ‘And who made the scientists and biochemists?’ she told me. ‘God did.’ ”
“Maybe you should just ignore her,” Ingersol suggested. “Just try not to notice her for a few years.”
“That’s easy for an only child to say. She’s in my face with it. She prays over every bite of food. Three-paragraph prayers for cereal at breakfast.”
“We must record this time in her life. Why didn’t I think of that sooner!” The year before, we had won a home video award at the Walton Arts Center with a video we made of Jocelyn drawing one of her welcome signs on the street in front of the house. It was a life-size colored chalk picture of a maple tree in full autumn colors. Underneath the tree it said, WELCOME TO THE FALL.
Ingersol had interviewed her while I held the camera. He had gotten her to say some amazing things about why she painted the street and if it bothered her when the rain washed it off and how long it took her and things like that. She was so cute that year. I have to admit she really is a pretty little girl. “Why do you think you paint the street?” he asked her. It was the end of the video.
“Because it looks so pretty when it’s done and people like it and it makes them feel better to see a painted tree.” She stood up with the brown chalk stick in her hand and beamed into the camera, so sure of herself and of her world.
We had won second place but still it was a triumph. We had been wondering if we’d enter the contest again. Now here it was, right before our eyes, Jocelyn’s conversion to the Methodist church.
“If we get it right,” Ingersol said, “this could be the one we send to the competition at the Museum of Modern Art. They love stuff from the South. This will fit right in with their preconceived notions about what goes on out here. If she will let us interview her.”
“If she will? She wants a podium more than she wants God. Besides, she loves you. She’ll do anything for you.”
“I love her,” he answered. “I think she’s the cutest little girl who ever lived. Oh, God, I hope she doesn’t lose her faith before we get it on film.”
“Don’t worry. Jesus spared Bill Bailey due to her intercessions. This has months to run.”
We waited until an afternoon when Mother was gone. Then Ingersol brought over the video camera and Jocelyn put on her Christian Scout uniform and sat on the piano bench and I filmed while Ingersol asked the questions. We got some good stuff but nothing noteworthy. I think she has become suspicious of our motives. Also, she kept making us run it back so she could see what she looked like on the monitor. We wanted her to wear the hat but she wouldn’t because she said it squashed down her hair.
We wasted two hours and a lot of film. The next Saturday we tried again in Walker Park with her sitting in one of the swings. Still, nothing good enough for the Walton Arts Center contest, much less the Museum of Modern Art.
Then we had a stroke of luck. A girl in the scouts got the flu and the Monday-night meeting had to be moved to our house. It would have been Jocelyn’s turn sooner or later anyway, but the way it turned out there was only a day’s notice. All day Sunday she was in fury trying to get our house cleaned up enough for her new friends at the church to see. I called Ingersol as soon as it began and he came over and filmed the whole thing. He filmed her cleaning up the bathrooms with a towel tied around her head. He filmed her vacuuming the living room rug and behind the sofas.
He filmed her pushing poor old Bill Bailey out into the garage and yelling at him not to come in. He filmed her throwing her cats out the back door. He filmed her yelling at me to clean up my room. He filmed Mother coming in the door carrying sacks of groceries. He filmed the blueberry muffins being baked and Dad sweeping the sidewalks and the carport and trimming the hedges. ALL IN THE NAME OF JESUS, we called it. We got some great audio bits. We got the best one at five the next afternoon.
“Get out of the way,” she yelled at me. “I’ve got to get this table set. Get your books out of here.”
“Can’t I do my homework first? It’s only five o’clock.”
“They’re coming at seven. These are rich girls, Aurora. They live in rich houses. I have to get this place fixed up. And get rid of that dog. Every time I put him out he comes back in. I don’t want that old sick dog lying around the living room.”
“Could I help?” I volunteered, knowing Ingersol was getting every bit of it on tape and she was so stupid she had forgotten he was there.
“Put the bikes away. Go shut the garage so they won’t have to look at Mother’s old car. Then go get dressed. Put on some nice clothes for a change and some makeup. Please get dressed, Aurora. Don’t embarrass me to death.” She stood with her hands on her hips. Poor little Christian martyr, little social climber, little artist trying to make the world a more attractive place.
She was about to cry. Ingersol caught it all. Afterward both he and I helped her as much as we could and then we left while she got dressed and only came back and filmed the part of the meeting where they do the prayers and the pledge of allegiance. I have to admit they looked adorable all lined up in their uniforms and sashes with their hats on their heads.
Needless to say this video is going to make our reputations when it’s edited and finished. I know I should feel guilty about taking advantage of Jocelyn and using her pitiful little life as material for our work, but I don’t really have any choice in the matter. If she does these things in my presence, she had better watch out. I’m a creative person on my way to fulfill my destiny in the world. The Jocelyns of the world are here for me to plunder.
Besides, what do you think the chances are of her being at the Museum of Modern Art next year when they give out the prizes? Zero. My mother is a classicist. She doesn’t even like modern art.
Let’s say she was there, sitting in the audience watching herself on the big screen. Would she recognize her obsession and begin to doubt it? I doubt it. She’d be thinking about the opening scenes when she was sitting on the piano bench looking like a child movie star and reeling out the party line about love and service to the world. There is one thing I must admit, and Ingersol admits it too. Christianity is a force for good in the world in many ways. It is a civilizing force in the midst of chaos. Not everyone is able to look out over the chasm of space and time and say, that’s it, that’s how it is, maybe it’s even beautiful. Some people have to have the Pope or the Methodist church. They can’t all worship Freeman Dyson and Timothy Ferris like Ingersol and I do. We are studying like crazy. We can’t wait to get to Princeton or Harvard or Stanford or wherever those guys are teaching. We are going to be happy just walking around a town where great minds live. Meanwhile, we are doing the best we can with Fayetteville. More later.
Aurora Harris