THE COPS MADE the procession exit the park at 72nd Street and proceed down Broadway to 65th, where the Garden was. It was a Sunday evening in late May—Pentecost, someone told me, though I’d long forgotten which feast that was or what it meant.
When Jay left his mom’s place to head downtown, hundreds of vehicles—most as battered as his—had followed, festooned with flowers and streamers and balloons, José-istas, as some were calling themselves, hanging out the windows, blowing and banging various musical instruments, honking their horns and generally finding a way to make as much joyous noise as possible.
The cops were in a tolerant mood. Ignoring the dozens of city ordinances and traffic regulations being violated, they gave the mile-long procession an impromptu escort as it moved in a surprisingly orderly fashion onto the Henry Hudson and drove in tattered stateliness down the mighty river with the late-afternoon sun turning its waters to beaten gold. It exited at 125th Street, passed through Harlem’s whooping go-Jay! crowds, and flowed into Central Park in all its spring glory, countless cherry trees with their earthbound cumulus clouds of pink and white blossom stirring in the evening breeze. They were like giant pom-poms lining Jay’s path, cheering his team on to certain victory.
On the home stretch across 72nd and down Broadway, the Bronx vehicles peeled off and disappeared, their occupants swelling the crowds along the route. It had been noticed that when Jay got into his van at home he was carrying a ficus plant, and somehow along the route this word had magically spread and other plants had been acquired, some still in their pots, some being waved with their roots dripping potting soil. There were rubber plants and spider plants and ferns of a dozen species, wax plants and umbrella trees and philodendrons; even in springtime, people had found banana leaves.
Broadway was a tropical river of huge green leaves waving their welcome, awash with people shouting for Jay, straining for a glimpse of him, holding out babies and kids to him, weeping and cheering. Eventually, a couple of blocks from the Garden, driving became impossible; we stopped and Rufus and Charlie took the van off to park it and guard it, so relic hunters wouldn’t strip it to the chassis.
Jay and María were in the lead, holding hands, pushing slowly through the rapturous crowd, me next, behind me Angela and Kevin, holding hands also. I felt odd man out, no one’s hand to hold, sandwiched between apostles and the messiah like a prisoner, a hostile protected from the crowd. Just my usual hyper-egocentricity, I suppose, worrying about myself and how I looked when this moment, more than any yet, was Jay’s and Jay’s alone. Mea culpa.
But I did feel like an outsider. The Garden was my idea, my vision for Jay’s next step up the ladder of visibility and credibility, but I didn’t know what he planned to do. Nor did I really know what to expect from the audience.
Jay had insisted that half the tickets be free to those who couldn’t afford them, the rest sold at usual prices. This had been honored, and both kinds of tickets went within hours, but I knew that the scalpers’ prices were into four and even five figures. Many people with a free pair succumbed to the temptation of getting half a year’s salary for them. The Garden would be packed, but it was impossible to say how many of the kind of people who were ecstatically welcoming Jay outside would also be inside.
As for miracles, who knew? When I brought the matter up earlier, Jay had said, “I’m almost done with miracles. Miracles alleviate pain, but only the healed know that. For everyone else, miracles are a fantastic trick, a momentary proof of the divine. I knew that before, but I’d forgotten it. Anyway, miracles aren’t proof, are they, Johnny?”
And he smiled a slightly mocking smile, the same smile I got when I’d asked him if Angela’s wild story of the night before was true or just a hallucination? A smile that said, If you have to ask, there’s no point in answering.
He knew I wanted him to do a miracle, here in the Garden. Just one, to wow the opinion makers and movers and shakers. Or was it something else? That I wanted to see one myself, find out if it was proof? After all, unless you count the miracle in Metuchen, which I didn’t quite, I’d never witnessed one. I was always somewhere else or listening to someone else’s astonishment, someone else’s moment of wonder, useless to me.
Jay turned to me as he went up the steps to the entrance, ficus plant still cradled in one arm, the crowds knowing he would soon be gone beyond their reach, their fronds still wildly celebrating his flesh-and-blood presence, adoring faces pressing in on him. He said, “This I remember.”
We were taken downstairs to the dressing rooms by security, and standing by the NO ENTRY ARMED ENFORCEMENT sign was a short-haired familiar-looking woman in jeans and a baggy sweater. She was holding a brown-paper supermarket bag and looked a bit scared as we approached. Jay gave her the one-arm bear hug: “Bobbi! You did it?”
She nodded. I wouldn’t have recognized her, though I’d interviewed her for an hour. Stripped of the Grecian ringlets, the plastic mask, the body armor of designer clothes, she was a person, not a billboard. Instead of Chanel, she smelled of peace.
She handed him the bag, which was stuffed with bundles of C-notes. My guess was it contained at least a hundred grand. Without even looking at it, Jay gave it to María. “Now I can follow you,” said Bobbi.
“You sure can.” Jay laughed, hugging her again. And in we went.
The galleries rose to their feet. Fifteen thousand throats welcomed him. From the sound of it, a goodly percentage of them were Latino. But the well-heeled were there in abundance too, especially down nearer the stage where we were. They rose to their feet also as Jay walked briskly down the aisle, delighted faces glowing with admiration and anticipation. Perhaps my message had finally gotten through to the people I most wanted to hear it: that we were about to see the debut of a great leader.
Jay ran up onstage and deposited his ficus plant in the middle. I hadn’t been able to persuade him to use a radio mike, but every square inch of the stage was audio-sensitive and he’d compromised on this—on the rationale that he could speak naturally. But I knew what he didn’t: there were hundreds of pocket- and palm-cams poking out of handbags and jackets by now, recording his every word and move for the webs. There was supposed to have been a total embargo on cameras, but this was the sort of opportunity that the underpaid Garden staff lived for. A lot of dough had changed hands.
Twenty or so men and women, in two rows, were right next to stage front and center. They had bribed their way into these seats, often for as much as ten or fifteen thousand dollars. Several were in wheelchairs. They were all well-heeled (obviously) and all suffering from a major illness. These were the miracle seekers.
Jay introduced himself, matter-of-factly stating his mission: that he had once been Jesus and had come back as José to refresh the message, to set people straight about what he’d really meant the first time.
“Here’s one of my central messages,” he said. “The best path to salvation is to sell all you have and follow me. It wasn’t too popular the first time around, and it isn’t now. It’s hard for people to free themselves from their possessions. But someone is here who did it!”
He called Bobbi up onstage, who told her story of being unable to get through a day without buying something new and said how free she felt now. Jay promised her he would be with her always and hugged her again, and the Garden, with the huge head of goodwill it had built up, gave her a thunderous hand.
Jay segued—most professionally, I thought—into a familiar theme. “How can anyone shop till they drop in a world where three billion people live on one dollar a day? A country that doesn’t do everything in its power to alleviate that reality can’t speak of its moral values. My enemies are not who you’re told they are: this country or that, one group or another. No human being alive is my enemy. My enemies are poverty, injustice, untreated disease, violence, and greed. Nothing justifies any of these crimes against humanity, especially not my words in the Bible. And none of these enemies of God can be defeated by war. The only war that must be won is the war on war. Love your enemies. I’m only going to say this twice.”
The Garden gave him a solid laugh.
He spoke of things we’d spoken of in our first meeting. That without love the Ten Commandments were mere regulations. He spoke of technology and loneliness and community. He spoke of payback and retaliation, of how his words had been corrupted beyond recognition to justify these outrages against the miracle of life.
He mentioned the Reverend by name, wondering out loud what a Risen Lamb was, exactly, whether there was a recipe for it. He spoke of “Disney salvation,” in which all you have to do is listen to a hymn and watch a video of grass waving in the wind to be saved. “Sorry, folks, but feeling saved is not being saved.” He had a word or two about the Rapture—“Frankly, it’s Crapture”—and the Final Days—“sounds to me like a fall sale.” He announced that no one should expect the Second Coming because it had already happened: “You’re looking at it.”
The Garden gave the Second Coming a rousing ovation.
He introduced his audience to the real Trinity: God the Father, God the Mother, and God the Child. “We revolve around each other, One and Three. We are love eternal and incarnate. Between us we begot and hold together every atom in existence. We are the ultimate nuclear family.”
He said that last time he came in the name of his Father, but that this time he’d come in the name of his Mother. He moved to the edge of the stage and looked up into the galleries. “Let me tell you about my Mother,” he began.
A visible ripple of anticipation went through large segments of the crowd.
“From Her all love comes. Ella está aquí, ahora mismo entre nosotros. She is here, moving among us. ¡Mi madre! ¡Tu madre! Sé su hijo! Abandon yourself to Her! Ella es amor. Puro amor.”
From thousands of Latino throats came a humming sound like bees in a sunny meadow, people murmuring their approval.
“No me refiero a la madre que tengo ahora—my sweet mother, María.” He pointed to María, sitting a few seats away from me. “Me refiero a mi Madre del cielo. Todos conocemos a Dios nuestro Padre. But God is Mother too.”
As he spoke he moved slowly around the stage, including everyone now, in the galleries or on the floor, his hands moving with the rhythm of his words. I’d never seen him in action before. He was riveting. What had I been missing?
“She is the mother of all existence. La razón por la cual todos nosotros existimos. The Mother of every child that was ever born. De ella procede toda dulzura. Ella es amor. ¡Puro amor!”
This time many people echoed him. “Ella es amor. ¡Puro amor!” The words went around the Garden and rose into the rafters. Heads were nodding, bodies beginning to sway.
“Ella es el hombre que amas. ¡Oh, sí! Ella es la mujer que amas. ¡Oh sí!”
“Sí, sí!” answered the Garden, like waves on a seashore.
“She is the lips you kiss! Ella es la mano que sostienes. Ella es el cuerpo que acaricias. She is the love you make! ¡Oh, sí! ¡Ella es amor! ¡Puro amor!”
At least three quarters of the audience chanted the refrain this time. It was as if Jay was singing a hymn, a hymn with its own music and lyrics and long supple rhythms, and they were his chorus. A hymn as far from the Reverend’s bellicose war chants as one could possibly be. It was sad and joyful, evocative, regretful, deeply comforting. Even down among the well-heeled where I was, people were beginning to be borne away by the surging sea of emotion. It was impossible not to be. Eyes were closing, coiffed and shaven Manhattan heads were beginning to sway. Some faces seemed swept by grief, but others were transfigured by delighted smiles, ecstatic recall.
Suddenly I saw my own mother’s face, her brown eyes smiling as she kissed me good night, the auburn waves of her hair brushing my cheek as I sank safe into the pillow. My mother young and tan from the summer day, years before the evil spoor consumed her from within. If there was a God, a God of love, why wouldn’t God be a mother? What strong force in the universe was stronger than a mother’s love? In Jay’s soft incantatory words, it made utter sense. Two seats from me, a woman in a designer gown that must have cost thousands, with jewelry to match, was rocking gently back and forth, holding her hands to her face, tears seeping through her fingers, murmuring over and over, “Momma . . . momma. . . .”
Jay began moving again, his whole frame pulsing as he walked the perimeter of the stage.
“No seas orgulloso, o inflexible, o duro, porque te sientes solo. You are not alone. Tu madre está a tu lado. If you are sick, if you are empty, si estas perdido, no te asustes. See your Mother waiting for you at the door. . . . Ella es amor. Puro amor.”
Every human being in the Garden repeated the refrain with him now, well-heeled and welfare case alike, the Bronx and Manhattan one vast swaying, living thing. The soft Spanish words rolled around the stadium like honeyed thunder. Jay circled back to the center of the stage.
“¿Sientes su beso en tu mejilla? Do you feel God’s softness? Do you feel God’s warmth? Do you feel God’s tenderness? Ella es cielo. ¡Ella es morada! Ella es donde tú perteneces. Here, now, forever. ¡Dios tu madre! ¡Ella es amor! ¡Puro amor!”
He was done but they were not. Five times the Garden repeated the refrain. Fifteen thousand voices in unison celebrated mother love and then broke into cheering, whooping, weeping, stomping, joyful applause.
If only he’d left then.
But he knew as well as every other person in the place that there was some unfinished business. As he stood in the center of the stage, solid and silent, with that intense stillness of his, smiling and acknowledging the crowd but seeming not to move, completely at rest, the applause and cheers began to fade and soon the place was deathly quiet. I realized that fifteen thousand fickle brains had returned to feverishly anticipating what they’d really come for.
He played the moment.
“OK, I know! What’s the damn plant doing there?”
“Yessss!”
“I figured people would come to see miracles. You’ve heard about some of them. My friend Johnny, the guy who wrote the stories in the newspaper, doesn’t believe in miracles, even though he described a lot of them. He thinks there’s always an explanation. He may be right. From God’s point of view, miracles are tricks. Something medicine can do or will someday, but that we do quicker now to make a point.
“The problem with miracles is they’re like drugs. People always want more. People say, Wow! that’s amazing! Then they say, Now do a more amazing one. I don’t want to get into that game. I want you to believe without miracles.
“There was a miracle I did last time that stuck in people’s minds. I got annoyed at a fig tree because I was hungry and it had no figs. So I withered it. Like this.”
He pointed at the ficus plant, and before fifteen thousand pairs of eyes it died. Turned brown. The leaves were suddenly so dry and brittle a couple fell to the floor of the stage.
I have no idea how he did this. The stadium was absolutely quiet.
“If your faith is only based on a miracle, that’s what will happen to it. It will wither and die.”
He had them in the palm of his hand.
“A great English writer named C. S. Lewis said miracles are just speeded up versions of the miracle of existence. Existence is my Mother’s greatest miracle. Not the amazing, miraculous universe—that’s my Father’s work—but the fact that it exists; that it is when there is no need for it to be. That miracle is thanks to Mom.
“I’m no different than before: an ordinary man from an ordinary place. I am not nor was I ever a demigod, a saint, a mighty conqueror, a king, a prince, a lord, or a pretty-boy soap star, as you can see. Above all, I am not you in a mirror. I am God and I am an ordinary man. The ordinary reveals God. The ordinary is a miracle, just because it is. Instead of not being. All existence is a miracle. Especially you. Every one of you is a miracle.”
Then he added, “You know, I feel bad for that poor old ficus.”
There was a palpable rustle throughout the stadium as thousands of palm-cams and cell phones focused on the ficus. He pointed at it again, and it revived instantly, putting out fresh new green leaves that pushed the dead ones off the revived stalks to the floor.
Led by the Spanish cheering section, the place burst into wild applause. This time he could have left. Instead he said, “OK. Any questions?”
There was a long line of questioners at the mike. Some questions were idiotic: What’s Hell like? (“Driving through the Lincoln Tunnel for all eternity”); Did the Big Bang happen? (“Yes, but it wasn’t very big”).
Then up to the mike stepped a geeky-looking type. Late twenties, designer glasses, uncertain gender, from downtown, Tribeca or somewhere, just the kind of person I was hoping to reach politically . . .
“How do we know the miracle you did on the little tree wasn’t some advanced holographic technique?”
. . . and precisely the kind of post-lefty who couldn’t see beyond his own knee-jerk prejudice against religion.
Jay said, “You don’t. What you’re thinking right now is what I warned of. The ficus plant is sitting there, alive and fine, and you’re beginning to forget how you felt when I withered it. So you want me to do another miracle, one that will really convince you. There’s no such thing.”
“You have these very sick people down in front,” said the voice of Tribeca reason. “Couldn’t you heal one of them? Wouldn’t that prove that you’re who you say you are?”
“You tell me.”
“I think it would.”
There was an uncomfortable silence for a beat or two. You could feel that people were waiting again; one part of their brains knew Jay was talking sense, but mostly they wanted to see another miracle. I was one of them. Already my internal explainers were wondering if the withering and unwithering of the ficus plant had indeed been a miracle or was just a demonstration of the same powers other guys use to bend spoons.
“OK,” said Jay, “but there’s a lot of sick people here tonight as well as these good folks in front. There’s a little boy called Rodrigo up in seat C448. How about him? Come on down, Rodrigo.” He pointed to the topmost gallery. There was a sudden commotion where he was pointing, a lot of unintelligible Spanish excitement.
“Rodrigo is seven,” said Jay. “He has severe cortical visual impairment that makes it almost impossible for him to see. He was diagnosed three years ago, but his parents can’t afford treatment so he’s been getting steadily worse.”
“How do we know he’s not a plant?”
Shut up, Tribeca, I said to myself. Why was he still at the mike? There’d been people behind him, but they’d gone.
“You don’t,” said Jay. “But I can assure you that I picked him at random out of the hundreds of people here tonight who could use a miracle.”
“Then how do you know his diagnosis?”
“Because I know all things.” He turned to the Garden. “Would you like me to try and heal Rodrigo?”
The geek said something but he was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. By this time, Rodrigo and his mother had reached the stage. Jay took the little boy from her and led him to its center. He was a cute kid, small, dark-skinned, tight curly hair; he moved his head back and forth constantly, as if he had to scan things and people, to see them. He certainly seemed to have a vision problem.
I was gripped by an unnamable emotion, like fear but darker, more opaque. Had the moment arrived? Was I finally about to see an incontrovertible miracle? Would my entire belief system—or lack of it—be thrown into chaos?
Jay squatted down by the little boy’s side. “Rodrigo, how much can you see?”
Rodrigo’s barely audible little voice said, “It’s like I’m looking through Swiss cheese.”
Jay said, “How you know what Swiss cheese is?”
“It’s my favorite cheese,” Rodrigo answered. “I stick my tongue in the holes.”
Jay said, “There’s your problem, see? Nothing wrong with your eyes. Your head’s full of cheese! We gotta get that cheese outa there. Ready?”
He covered the boy’s eyes with his thumbs and wrapped his big hands around the little head. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. There was a moment of utter silence.
Rodrigo said, “Did it come out?”
“Not yet,” said Jay, “but it’s coming! Get outa there, cheese!” Another moment of silence; then Jay opened his eyes and took away his hands.
I was close enough to see that Rodrigo was blinking rapidly. And smiling. But most people couldn’t see those details. I wished we’d had the overhead screens on, but Jay had forbidden it. Rodrigo looked around. Was he scanning or just trying to find his mom? She came from the side of the stage and he walked toward her, without apparently scanning. When they met, he said, “¡Mama, puedo ver!” It could have been genuine excitement, or he could have been coached. “I can see! No more holes!” he said, but his words were lost in the swelling applause.
It sounded as if every Spanish-speaking person in the Garden had gone crazy. They lifted the roof for Jay. People surrounded the boy and his mother, yelling and waving and clapping and praising God. A whirlpool of excitement followed the two as they went back up to their seats.
But an awful lot of people were sitting on their hands, including most of those around me. They weren’t sure what they’d seen. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. Had it been a miracle and I was just congenitally unable to believe it? Or had nothing happened? Or—worst of all—had something been set up? I couldn’t believe Jay would do that. But I wasn’t the crowd around me. And, as the cheering died, here was Tribeca back again.
“Come on!” he yelled. “We’ve seen cures like this for years from these Christian phonies. It proves nothing.”
He was loudly booed by the Latinos. Why was no one doing anything about this guy? The mood in the stadium was deteriorating fast.
“Why don’t you cure one of these desperately sick people down here in the front?” yelled the spoiler. “Cure this lady with MS! Show us you’re who you say you are! Prove it!”
A section of the audience picked up on this and began chanting, “Prove it! Prove it!”
Jay was saying something about another miracle proving nothing, but the noise was too much. He shook his head. It certainly looked as if he was refusing to help the aforementioned desperately sick people.
The geek bellowed into the mike, “Is it because they’re White? Is it because they’re rich?”
Things were getting ugly. The Spanish speakers were now chanting back at the chanters. “¡Callate, callate!” People were getting up all over, and some were scuffling. Security guys started moving up the aisles. The Garden was engulfed in bedlam.
Jay bowed his head and left the stage.