Estar roto

(To be Broken)

For the first time in its history, since Pastor Bert Shipworth began his ministerial service with his nascent congregation, the doors to the white clapboard church were bolted shut. He locked himself inside. Forsaking all food, only drinking water when parched, praying for guidance, devouring the Bible for clues, and kneeling on a bed of rice until the small grains became deeply embedded in his flesh. He focused on the agony of the rice pellets lodging in his skin and the pain of his widening hunger. Then he forced himself to let go, to rise above human experience, beyond suffering. Decades upon decades of a carefully structured belief system were being challenged, and to his alarm, the beams were falling all around him. He was desperately seeking answers, within and without.

****

Maria moved through the house, turning off the lights in preparation for bed. Earlier, she had dutifully prepared dinner. When Bert did not show, she put his meal in the oven, warming, waiting. As the hours passed, the food wilted. Her husband had yet to return. She knew where he was, of course. He always retreated there when he needed to think. But he never missed a meal without letting her know he would be late, and he had never stayed away this long. Tonight would be the first time since their marriage, shortly after graduating from high school, right before Bert started his Biblical seminary courses, that he would not be on the other side of their marital bed. His expansive body and his intense energy consumed the space around him. Now, with him gone, the displaced atmosphere closed in. Around her, found in the light dust on the knickknacks and coffee table, gathered in the folds of the cumbersome curtains, lying in the thick piled weave of carpet, were remembrances of their life together. There was a slight torsion in her gut, a pervading sense that something was missing–her husband, her son. She searched the empty home for that which could not be found.

As she waited for the tea kettle to scream, she recognized the same feeling she carried throughout her childhood as an invisible, powerless little girl.

Enough, she thought. Fortified by her commitment to the military support group, tired of feeling helpless, Maria turned off the kettle and did something unthinkable. An act she knew would cause her husband consternation, one he would see as interfering and disrespectful, but he wasn’t around, was he? She picked up the landline and called Bert’s mentor, the minister who changed the course of his life. She got a machine instead.

“Pastor Goodwin, this is Maria Shipworth. You told us that if we ever needed anything, to call. Your congregation is in Texas now, and the drive is long. I know you have so many other obligations, but I’m desperate. Bert needs your help. So do I. If possible, could you come?” She hung up and turned the kettle back on.

During freshman year in their natural science class, the teacher assigned Bert as her year-long lab partner. Maria surveyed all her other classmates, the countless possibilities, and thought, how did I get stuck with this scrawny boy wearing high-water jeans and a T-shirt with stains underneath the arms? He had the dank, musty smell of furniture stored away from sunlight, stuffed into a moldy basement for decades, the smell of disuse. His eyes were nervous, mistrustful, and darting.

After extinguishing the first-floor lights, Maria climbed the carpeted stairs. Her sleepy-time tea warming her hands, her footsteps heavy. In high school, they both were outcasts, loners of sorts. She knew he was probably thinking the same thing when he looked at her for the first time. How did I get stuck with that? Through his eyes, he probably saw a reclusive, plump, nondescript adolescent girl who never had a professional haircut, whose current style looked as though a madman had taken a pair of pruning shears, closed his eyes, and haphazardly carved away. In desperation, wanting a new look for high school, Maria had cut her curly locks, chopping them shorter and shorter, trying to even everything out until she had run out of raw material. He would also see a girl whose eyes reflected a lifetime of learned timidity. Thus, sitting next to him on that first day, she resolved not to write him off the way she had been her entire life. She knew how being dismissed felt. Maria started their partnership with essential human consideration, asking questions, listening, and then thoughtfully responding. Her lab partner had done the same.

Maria stepped out of her everyday clothes, put them in the laundry basket, and slipped on her white flannel nightgown, the worn cotton touching her skin, as familiar as his hands. She curled on the chair by the window and drank her tea; the curtains drawn against the dark. When did that subtle shift in their relationship happen? Maybe when she realized how turbulent his home life was, how the only peace he had was at school, within an institution’s solid, uncaring walls. As she smoothed the fabric over her pulled-up knees, she remembered how, over that first year, as they read lessons and did the corresponding lab work together, Maria learned about her partner. He’d grown up with a father who, when he drank, became abusive. His alcohol-fueled temper was explosive, and no one in the household was immune. If you were in his way, watch out. Bert had spent most of his childhood hidden. His older brother Gus had taken the brunt. But he was gone; his number had come up. He was drafted and serving in Vietnam.

Maria could hear Bert’s voice, rising from a chest racked with grief. “I never realized how much he held us together.” She could see her husband as a teenager, silent tears running down his face, their course altered by puckered pockets scarred from his struggles with acne. He kicked his legs back and forth over the railroad bridge they were sitting on, the sun making a rapid descent. She scooted closer to him, their sides touching, looking at him while he stared into the deep ravine. “My brother took the heat from us, Mom and me. Whenever Dad was drinking and railing, Gus would appear and make some kind of smart-mouthed remark, which redirected Dad’s anger. Then, I just thought he was stupid, but I can now see what he was doing.”

Maria reached over and wiped a tear away. He no longer flinched when she touched him. He looked at her, his small eyes full of deep sadness. “But I can’t do that for my mother. I can’t stand up to him as my brother did. When I hear him losing control, I find a way to disappear, to act like I never heard what was going on. What’s wrong with me? Why am I such a coward?” He took both her hands in his and promised, “I will not let them take me away from you. I can’t let you down too.” And so, he began to eat.

Bert ate out of the pain from his childhood, out of fear of an unknown, unpredictable future. Food provided reliable comfort. He also ate, knowing on one level that if he were grossly overweight and developed diabetes due to his girth, he would be disqualified from the draft when he became of age to register, should his number be drawn.

In the bathroom, Maria rinsed out her tea mug, then brushed her teeth. The sink beside hers, where he usually stood and scrubbed his mouth with such ferocity, remained unblemished. The scrubbed porcelain gleamed, though she could sense him there, looking at her and smiling as he did every night of their marriage. The paste lathered around his mouth. His smile said everything; we survived another day together.

Maria pulled back the multi-colored, cross-patterned quilt and slid into their shared berth contemplating the hesitant way they started their journey. There was never an electric type of attraction the way you read about in books or saw in movies. There were no sparks or juiced hormones. They were merely a product of assignment, of necessity, of survival. As their worlds grew increasingly volatile and unreliable, leaving them isolated in a widening sea, clinging to each other became a last resort, a way of staying afloat in the currents that threatened to pull them under. Over the years, even when life got more manageable, they had not let go. Our desperate adherence might have been our only way out then but look at what our union has wrought. Her mind brought into sharp focus the images of her loved ones, Ray, Hope, Gabrielle, and Bert. Maria closed her eyes, and she prayed. Petitions for her children, parishioners in need, and finally, her husband, who was in deep metaphysical pain. Be with him, please, she offered into the closed-in night, mi marido esta roto, and pulled the covers over her head.

****

Bert was in the throes of a spiritual crisis. He had sequestered himself in the sanctuary for four days and nights when memory-laced visions began to appear. His older brother Gus’ face resembled his son Ray's. So much that, at times looking at him was painful. Now Gus was holding him at arm’s length. “You can do this, bud. You got to be the strong one for Mom now. Being drafted sucks, but that's how it goes. My tour will be over before you know it. Hang in there and keep the family together.” Bert was fourteen years old. “No, No, you can’t go, Gus!” he cried into the darkness, tears stinging the corner of his eyes, and his brother’s face faded. Bert knew how this was going to end. He wanted to stop the reel and leave before the movie finished. He would have done anything in his power to alter the course of events, but he couldn’t. The past paralyzed him.

The summer before Bert’s senior year of school started, Gus returned from the war as a soul rearranged. His shell looked roughly the same, but that was all. The light in his eyes vanquished. Bert watched in slow-motion horror as a spiral of destruction took over. Within six months, Gus was dead.

Bert didn’t sleep or eat; days passed, and the fervor consumed him, an aggressive cancer ravaging his belief system. He kneeled, prayed, read, chastised, and flogged himself. He stood before the cross, suspended by wire over the dais. He bellowed into the blackness, his voice filling the rafters. “I’m sorry, Gus, I let you down. I wasn’t what I was supposed to be. I was weak when I should have been strong and a coward when I should have been brave. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been able to save you, to steer you into a field where you would have been safe. But now, what am I going to do? Everything is falling apart. I lost you, and I’m losing my family. My son is at war—I couldn’t stop him. What if he dies overseas? What if he doesn’t, and the experience crushes him the way it did you? And there is my daughter, my wife. I cannot—”

“Stop. Bertrand Shipworth, get a hold of yourself.”

He must be experiencing an auditory hallucination. The voice was no longer that of his brother. The cadence was of his mentor, someone he looked up to and deeply respected, whose advice he had repeatedly sought over the years, Pastor Goodwin. The voice was calm and clear; the words flowed over him. Pastor Shipworth stilled his monologue and listened. “Tell me,” the voice continued, “what are your truths?”

Bert opened his swollen orbs. The night was everlasting; when was the last time he saw the light? A shadow moved in the corner of the sanctuary. There was his advisor and friend, the flesh and blood version, who was let into the building’s side kitchen door with a key from the head of the cooking committee, Maria. On day five of Bert’s fasting journey of penance, Pastor Goodwin arrived. He eased a bewildered Bert into a pew. And with his finger-worn, dog-eared Bible on his lap, he probingly asked the question again. This was the nature of their relationship. “Bert, tell me your conflicts. What do you see before your eyes?”

Bert gathered his thoughts and spoke. “I see an insolent son whose defiance led him into a world of violence, one who blatantly disregarded me and the Word. I see a conniving, disobedient wife, ignoring her responsibility to support me, one who is so ashamed of her activities that she conceals her actions. She is incapable of telling me the truth. I see a wandering, wayward daughter, allowing herself to be distracted and pulled off the path of righteousness.”

Inner torment rapidly filled the pit of hunger in his stomach and the blood in his veins. Why was this happening to him? Hadn’t he been an obedient and long-suffering servant? Pastor Goodwin gave him the space of experience, allowed him to dwell there momentarily but then steadily led him back. Bert knew Pastor Goodwin could not provide the answers he sought. That was not his role; he could only guide someone experiencing internal conflict to a place where self-analysis and extended mindfulness are critical to finding solutions, a deepening drawn from despair. As Pastor Goodwin began to speak, Bert struggled. He forced himself to quiet the fury, then to let go like the agony from the rice needles driven into his knees. You have to be able to receive that for which you are asking. Listen to his words; he has never let you down before.

Pastor Goodwin was patient, and he was kind. “What you have just described, what you see, is based on fixed doctrine and ego. Did you hear that, Bert? Ego. I want you to close your eyes and let go of your self-pride, open your heart, tap deeply into that source, and let the power fill you. After intense reflection and introspection, expose your heart’s vision, speak your truths, and tell me what you see. Then you shall have the answers you seek.”

Pastor Goodwin spent the next hour going over sections in the Bible that Bert could turn to for thoughtful deliberation. He led him in prayer, then as silently as he arrived, he slipped back into shadow, leaving his protégé alone. Bert fell to his knees in the silent chapel, and underneath the suspended cross, he let the dagger of darkness and doubt break him open.

There is a tenant hard and fast which you have been taught, which you firmly believe to be true, then there is evolving evidence before your eyes, exposed by expanding awareness, a higher consciousness, and backed by a clear, prayerful understanding of Biblical teaching. And on the sixth day of his soul-searching journey, Pastor Shipworth emerged from the locked chapel doors. His body was slick with porous weeping. Dried and fresh blood alike soaked the knees of his khaki pants. His clothes hung a little more loosely on his still sizeable girth. And if you could peel back the disheveled exterior, you would see a flicker of a reenergized light burning within. He flung open wide the doors to his church with an expansive smile, welcoming his wife and waiting parishioners, and standing on a pulpit of burnished wood, he gave a sermon unlike any they had ever heard.