JOURNAL

First Glance--September 5, 2005
Driving through upstate New York, Geneseo to be exact. The valley on my right is astounding, rich and multicolored with textures that look almost edible. Wide fields tilled and planted and silos like giant chess pieces scattered across the landscape. The air looks and smells good here, like Indiana air, Kansas air after a rain, like Nebraska in the morning. Farm land looks and feels the same all over this country, I guess. The empty winter trees are just beginning to give up their grudge against god and put out timid buds. The forsythia hurts my eyes it's so bright, and for some reason, I am tempted to do what I am always tempted to do: lose love for what's right in front of me by longing for what is not. Curving through these sleepy little towns, past farms and schools and old men driving lawn mowers, run-down city parks and VFWs, the scent of grass like a drug in my nose, I wish I were settled, anchored like a little church in a snow globe, immobile and charming, static and protected. I wish I could plant a garden, go to town meetings, have my neighbor cut my grass or borrow my sugar or back into my car or swear at my dog, whatever it is these nameless people in these nameless towns do each day. I have never been good at change, but I have always been doing it, fluttering about to tidy today what will be uprooted tomorrow, and while this is not the farthest I have stepped away from the life I most recently occupied (getting married was and will always be the craziest thing I have ever done), the risk involved feels larger. Here I am, one part itinerant preacher, one part reluctant whore, wandering around a countryside I do not know inviting people I've never met to come close, to test the water I am stirring, to step inside the inner chambers of my heart, to hear and speak so that maybe we can commune together, learn a little, love a bit, and remember the world and one another in a way we hadn't done before. And except for that secret fear in my bones (that I am not cut out for this), it does feel like a good day to try it out, to try to love and be loved, to make good music, and offer what I have. There is no snow globe, only the work of my hands and my heart, Phil and Mel trying out this life and time with me, the endless road, farms and cattle and little boys on bikes hollering their heads off into the cool air, supper and sky and a million other things to be thankful for.

My name is Gula. My mother called me this because an angel came to her in a dream when she was nine months pregnant and told her that my sins would be great. To prove his point, he took her to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. My mother watched in horror as I ate the entire range—trees, wildlife, streams and all. She immediately fell to her knees, grabbed the angel around his holy ankles and asked how she might control such a voracious appetite. The angel recommended staying out of Colorado. When my mother awoke, she recorded the highlights in the front of her Bible along with the date. She drew a picture of a rocky mountain and captioned it, “Unless the Lord build the House, the workers labor in vain.” Three days later she birthed me by caesarean section. I was and still am, the biggest baby ever born in our county hospital—twelve pounds, two ounces and twenty-six inches from top to bottom. If she’d pulled me out of Wilson Lake, she would have been proud.

I am the fourth of five children—the only girl. My mother breast-fed my brothers, but thought it in everyone’s best interest to bottle-feed me. She swears that the one and only time I took her breast in my mouth, she felt a mortal fear.

“None of your brothers had that look in their eye. That look of insatiability.”

She says Dad took a second job to pay for the formula I ate. It was there on the nightshift at the IGA that he met the Delilah who tore our family apart for the next six and a half years—an acne-scarred brunette named Helen, who didn’t have a high school education but knew to smoke menthol Parliament cigarettes to keep her breath minty and her teeth white. They finally ran off together when I was seven, after Dad was fired from and kicked out of the pastorate at The First Baptist Church by a unanimous vote that included my mother’s resounding “Aye!” even though she wasn’t allowed to have a vote that counted on account of her being a woman. My dad came back three months later on a Greyhound bus, without his credit cards and car, and blind in his left eye. Helen had hit him with a Gideon Bible and the drawer that held it, while they were reassessing their relationship in a motel room in El Paso, Texas. While he was on the floor bleeding and wondering what he’d done to deserve such harsh treatment, she twisted the knife by taking his wallet, keys, and car. When my dad rolled back into our town, he went straight to the IGA, got his old job back, came home, and begged my mother’s forgiveness. He called on her to look deep into his left eye, the eye the Lord had blinded in order to help him see the folly and wickedness of his ways, and he asked her if she was willing to tell the Lord that she could not forgive a man He had already chastened and brought to his sense. She bought it, and when I came home from school that day, Dad was sleeping on the couch.

That was ten years ago. My father now pastors the Holy Gospel Bible Church that he founded when he received his second call to go into the ministry. Every Sunday morning and Sunday night you can find my parents and me and my younger brother Jacob and twenty or so other people—mostly recovering alcoholics and Mexicans—in the basement of the bowling alley down on 12th street. We sit on folding chairs and sing praise choruses. Last summer, someone donated a guitar amp and a microphone so the sermons can be heard even when you’re in the bathroom and even when the fan’s on. Dad still works the nightshift at the IGA, and my mother still dreams dreams. I weigh myself every morning and record my findings on a chart over the toilet that my mother put up five years ago to “help me overcome my fleshly desires”.

Last year for New Year’s, I resolved to lie to that chart every day. For two weeks straight, I penciled in “125”. On the second Sunday after my resolution, my mother stood up and gave a testimony as to how the Lord kept bringing her to Revelation 21:8 in her morning devotions because a liar in danger of the fires of hell was in her midst. I was the featured illustration. I cried at the altar—a card table up at the front of our meeting room with a green, plastic tablecloth draped over it and a ceramic cross on top—for half an hour, confessed my sin to the congregation and resolved to be truthful to the chart. I started lying again a couple weeks later, and I still do, but since the lie lacks drama, I don’t feel so bad. This morning I weighed in at 196. I penciled in 185. Sometimes, when my mother thinks I might be losing weight, she’s more inclined to be generous, and I’d asked her the night before if I could get my driver’s license. She said she needed to sleep on it. When I sat down at the kitchen table, she was ready.

“It came to me in a dream, Gula. I asked him, ‘Why, Lord? Why can’t she get a license?’ and he said to me, ‘Darlene, broad is the path that leads to destruction,’ and he pointed his finger into the pit, and I saw a highway filled with cars, and every one of them was driving straight into the fires of hell. I will not have you going to hell.” My mother was spreading peanut butter across whole-wheat toast. “Not while I have breath in my body.” I was eating yogurt. Banana. Fat-free and sweetened with aspartame.

“You let all the boys get their license. Jacob’s almost two years younger, and he gets to take the car out.” I was using a soupspoon. When I focus, I can finish off a cup of yogurt in three bites. I took bite #1.

“Well, he has his learner’s permit, now.” She looked up from her toast. Her eyes are gray like cement that won’t set. I have never seen that color in another pair of eyes—not one of us kids has gray eyes. They blink less than normal-colored eyes, and they seem transparent, like you could look right into her head if you really wanted to. I have never wanted to. I dropped my eyes back down into the creamy yellow of my yogurt cup.

“Why won’t he go to hell because of the car? Why just me? And how do you go to hell in a car, anyway?” My voice was too high and loud. I spooned bite #2 into my mouth, squished it out of my teeth and into my cheeks before swallowing.

“Gula. We have been over this. I don’t know why. The Lord works mysteriously, but no matter how mysterious, I will not go against The Word of The Lord.”

I could feel her eyes on the top of my head. I knew what was next. My oldest brother Peter calls it The Almighty Argument-Ender—it was one of the top ten reasons he joined the Navy right after he graduated high school. My mother delivered it soft and slow like she was dutifully rocking to sleep a baby that she didn’t like.

“Are you not concerned about your own salvation?”

I threw bite #3 in the trash.

My mother is skinny. She wears little jeans and little bras, and people always guess her age as being younger than it is. Always. She eats carrot sticks for lunch. Sometimes, she dips them in low-fat ranch dressing. Once, I saw her dip them in Miracle Whip. She polishes them off with a hard-boiled egg—unsalted—and she drinks unsweetened iced tea. Even in the winter. My mother claims to have a natural, and superior, aversion to soda. That gene was not passed on to me.

“It was okay, but I didn’t think she was pretty. I think I would like it more if she was pretty.” Carolyn bit into her bean and cheese burrito.

Becky scowled at her. “You’re worse than a dude.” Becky isn’t much to look at, but she tweezes her eyebrows and highlights her hair, which helps. She turned to me.

“You should come with us tomorrow night. It’s Regionals.” Becky didn’t eat. She moved here two years ago, and I have never seen her eat anything. She drinks a lot of Mountain Dew, though.

“I don’t know. What will I do when you go off with that high jumper?”

“I probably won’t. He started dating one of the runners.”

Carolyn asked which one and what did she look like. I ate my carrot sticks until the bell rang.

“Ask your mom if you can come. Say I have questions about Jesus that can only be answered while people are jumping over hurdles.” Becky sniggered and drank the last of her Mountain Dew.

I said I would see, but my mother doesn’t let me go anywhere near the Community College.

When I was a sophomore, I carried my Bible to school. At church camp the summer before, a college boy with wavy brown hair and a dimple in his chin told us we should since we were not to be ashamed of the gospel. His name was Stanley Derringer, and we called him “Stanny D”, and he was our lifeguard and campfire speaker. He was studying to be a youth pastor at the Bible College in Manhattan, and he said it was a sin to masturbate or listen to secular music. Every day until Christmas that year, I kept my Bible on the edge of my various desks, so people could ask me questions about how to be good or how to be saved or what was my secret for why I was so happy and content with life and all its ups and downs. Carolyn was the only one who asked me anything.

“Do you read that thing?” She asked me at lunch one day.

I lied to her. I was eating a salad with Italian dressing on it, Baco’s, and Parmesan cheese.

“No.”

Over Christmas Break, I went to a high school lock-in at the Stockton Christian Church with my brothers, Daniel and Jacob. While we ate pizza, Haley Mangum told us that Stanny D had gotten a woman in his church pregnant who wasn’t even his girlfriend.

“Are they getting married?”

“I don’t think so. He got kicked out of school for it and had to move back home to New Jersey. I guess she’s going to give the baby up for adoption.” Stephanie picked up her paper plate and stood up.

“I’m getting another piece. You want anything, Gula?”

“I’ll take another pepperoni.” I never took my Bible to school again.

My mother tells me that one of these days I need to start exhibiting the fruit that is in keeping with repentance or else it might mean I’m not saved.

“We are to judge a tree by its fruit, Gula.”

I think she means the kind of fruit that is small enough to fit into a size 12 pair of pants.

Sometimes, during my free period, I walk across the park to Chinese Express. A Korean family runs it and the breakfast place next door. The buffet lasts until 3:00 PM. Yesterday, I ate two plates full of Crab Rangoon covered in sweet and sour sauce, and a big bowl of egg drop soup with fried wontons. Today, I am aiming for the General Tso’s Chicken and those little sugar-covered fluffy rolls. Because I’m a senior and on the Honor Roll, I get a free hour to study each day. I’m supposed to be in the library, but no one notices as long as I end up in Calculus for last period. If I don’t go to Chinese Express, I usually sit under the bleachers in the gym. I keep chips and Rolos in my locker. And Capri Sun pouches. I don’t really like the way Capri Sun tastes, but I like that if you squeeze your hands around it, your mouth doesn’t have to do anything but swallow.

Lately, when I sit under the bleachers, I have been thinking about Becky and her high jumper. I’ve never even kissed a boy, so a blowjob seems really ambitious. Don, a junior who sits next to me in my Calculus class, is quiet and smart. He asks good questions and reads Isaac Asimov novels. I’ve tried to picture his penis and think about what it would feel like in my mouth, but I don’t have anything to go on other than the drawing in my ninth grade Sex Ed textbook. There were so many words and arrows all over it, besides the fact that it wasn’t actual size, that I don’t think I have a good idea of what’s really going on down there. No matter what route I take, my brain can’t get past his underwear. Then, I feel bad and pray to God to forgive me for my lust, and I beg Him to keep me a virgin until I get married, but who would want to have sex with someone as fat and big as me, who smells like Chinese food anyway?

“Becky wants me to stay over at her house tonight and watch all the Indiana Jones movies in a row and in order. Her mom says she’ll teach me how to knit if I want, and we can go to Perkins for breakfast in the morning.” I read once that if you tell two or three details in the midst of a lie, it will sound more believable.

My mother was sitting on the couch with her Bible opened to the book of Jeremiah, toward the end, when things have gotten as bad as the prophet had predicted, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. She was underlining things and writing in a notebook.

“Where do they go to church?” She didn’t look up, just kept reading and making notes here and there.

“They don’t. You know that.” My stomach felt cold and empty. Maybe I was hungry. I thought of the General Tso’s I’d eaten yesterday, and my mouth watered.

My mother looked up from her Bible and stared into my face with her two grey eyes. I tried to look bored. She sighed and looked back to her notes.

“You’re going to stay in?”

“Yeah. We’ll eat popcorn and watch the movies.”

“Is your babysitting money gone or do you need some?”

“I have a little left.” My heart was beating hard, and a small school of fish seemed to be swimming up from my legs and threatening to turn my head into a whirlpool. Lying to my mother’s face should not be entered into lightly. My older brother David had been forced to volunteer at the Senior Center every day after school for a whole semester after she found out that he’d spent a Sunday afternoon at the arcade with Billy Reynolds instead of studying like he’d promised. A stray skee ball ticket had come out of his pants pocket in the laundry and given him away.

She pulled a ten-dollar bill out of her pocket and pressed it into my hand.

“Don’t go crazy at Perkins.”

My heart threw up. The fish exploded, and my face went hot and red. I looked away and tried to shrink. I whispered through my teeth, with as much fierceness as I could muster, but I’m sure she heard it as a whine.

“I won’t.” I went up to my room and cried.

I used to play clarinet. My middle school band instructor, Mr. North, told me I had a real talent. At our eighth grade Christmas concert, he picked a medley of traditional carols that featured sleigh bells and clarinet. I stood at the front of the stage and played from memory. My mother made me a red dress out of a material that looked like real velvet, and I wore black panty hose and black pumps. She put mascara on my eyelashes and rouged my cheeks so everyone in the auditorium would be able to see my face.

“Your face is so very pretty, Gula.” She used to say that a lot. I kept my eyes closed through the whole song and didn’t make a single mistake. My family clapped like crazy in the third row, even my brothers, and my mother was smiling and crying like somebody had just been baptized.

That night after the concert, I had a dream that I was a giant red cat. I sat by a fireplace in a huge dark room full of books and old furniture. Lines of well-dressed people shuffled past me.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” They would say as they ran their hands from my head down my back. I purred and smiled and paid them no attention. It was the best dream I’ve ever had.

I quit playing clarinet the next year because of the marching band uniforms. They looked stupid, and none of the pants fit me. Mrs. Hager, who taught the high school band, said they could order some, that it would only take six weeks, and in the meantime, the XXL’s didn’t look so bad. I turned in my instrument and took Study Hall instead.

Jacob dropped me off at Becky’s house a little after 7:00 PM.

“Are you guys really just watching movies?” Jacob is short, but his shoulders are broad. He usually has a girlfriend. He leads a Bible Study before school that a lot of the freshmen girls go to.

“Yeah.” I pulled my bag out of the backseat.

“That’s pretty lame. Just the two of you?” I didn’t answer.

Becky stuck her head out of the front door and yelled, “Jacob! Omigod! They gave you a license?”

He revved the engine, grinned across the front seat to her and squealed the tires for half a block before running the stop sign at the end of her street. I prayed for a cop to catch him on his way home.

“He’s a dumb ass,” Becky said, and I think she smacked her lips. “But he’s cute.” She took my bag from me and dropped it inside the front door and pulled a tube of lip-gloss out of her front pocket and smeared it across her mouth. “You ready to go?”

I nodded. My jeans pinched in at my stomach more than I remembered, and I could smell my armpits through my deodorant.

“Can I borrow some lip gloss?” She handed it over and tightened her ponytail. I glopped it on and handed it back. It smelled like watermelon.

“We’ll still make the running events.” Becky was rubbing her lips together enough to start them on fire. “That’s when the action starts anyway. Carolyn went early to watch that girl shot put.” She held a pair of car keys up in front of my nose. “Mom says we don’t have to be in until midnight, so if there’s an after-party—” She trailed off, raised what was left of her eyebrows and squealed before bouncing off toward the garage. My stomach turned over a half-dozen times.

“Help,” I prayed. I said it out loud and tried not to think about how many times a day God must hear that from people in much more dire straits.

And then, to show I’d been properly raised, I added, “Please.” And I headed toward the garage.

When Becky and I pulled into the gravel parking lot next to the track, the sun was setting, and the sky looked like orange and pink sherbet. Carolyn was propped up against the concession stand talking to a round woman with a short black ponytail and big, white spandex under her big, red shorts. Becky waved her arm out the window as she turned the car off.

“The shot putter.”

“The one she kissed?” The shot putter’s hair was bouncy and shiny.

“One and the same.”

We climbed out of the car and walked over to the concession stand. The stadium lights were already on, and the whole place smelled like popcorn and dust. Everybody was wearing shorts. I wondered if the concession stand had nachos and whether they carried Coke or Pepsi products and what they would charge me for extra cheese. Carolyn looked up from the shot putter.

“Hey. You made it.” Becky winked at her and turned to the shot putter.

“Hey, Jennifer. This is our friend, Gula.” I stuck my hand out, and she shook it.

“Nice to meet you.” Her voice was light and soft, like a public service announcement. Not at all what I expected from a lesbian shot putter.

“Thanks. You too.”

“Jennifer won the shot put earlier.” Carolyn looked a little proud.

“Good job.” I was impressed.

“That’s great.” Becky smiled and waited her customary 3-count before changing the subject.

“Where the fuck is the after-party?”

The after-party was in some guy named Glenn’s basement. He wasn’t part of the track team, and he was a bit older, but he had his own place not far from campus and could be counted on to get a couple of kegs according to Becky.

“He’s kind of creepy. Tried to kiss me once, and he is not cute. Just be nice, though and he’ll let you drink for free.”

I wanted to ask why he was creepy and did I have to drink, but I kept my mouth shut. Becky was hoping to find some college boy to replace the high jumper for at least fifteen minutes at that party, and I was hoping not to look or act like a virgin, a Christian, a minor without even a driver’s license, or the kind of girl who bought and ate two orders of nachos with extra cheese at the track meet, while secretly wishing she had enough money to order a third.

When we pulled up to Glenn’s, I thought I was going to be sick.

“You ready?” Becky was all teeth. My head was a parade of drugs and penis drawings and vomit.

“I’m fine. Let’s go on in.”

When we got to the basement door, Becky put on more lip-gloss and fluffed her hair. We stepped into music and smoke and a smell I couldn’t identify. Someone said Becky’s name, and she headed for a dark corner. A guy with a moustache put a cup in my hand. It was hard to see and hear and think straight, but I found Carolyn and Jennifer in the kitchen by a table that had some chips on it. They were both drinking from red, plastic cups like the one I was holding. Jennifer was smoking a cigarette.

“Hey, Gula. Do you like the beer?” I took a drink and kept from grimacing.

“It’s OK. Are these chips up for grabs?” There were Doritos—Cool Ranch flavor and Sour Cream and Onion Pringles.

“I think so. Isn’t this cool?” Carolyn beamed at me, and Jennifer took another drag from her cigarette. I thought about how my clothes would smell and my hair. I stuck my hand into the Doritos bag.

“Yeah. I don’t really know anyone, but I guess it’s cool.” Jennifer put her arm around Carolyn’s waist. I touched my own and winced. It’s true that Jennifer wasn’t very pretty, but her hair was so shiny and dark.

“We’re gonna step outside for a while. Is Becky somewhere?” Carolyn didn’t wait for me to answer. I sat in a chair next to the sink, pulled the chip bag into my lap and tried not to cry.

People came in and out of the kitchen looking for food and napkins and water. I ate all the chips. A tall black man with an accent I'd never heard before came in and asked if I knew where the bathroom was. He was wearing a blue sweatshirt, and he smelled like lotion. He asked my name and then reached out and touched the hair just behind my right ear before sitting down in one of the folding chairs at the table.

“I like your name, Gula. What does it mean?” He looked right into my eyes. So, I lied to him.

“I don’t know. It’s a family name. And from another country.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” He turned his head to the side and leaned in. I thought about the Doritos and the nachos and beer all mixing together on my breath. I put my hand in front of my mouth.

“No. Not right now. I mean, not officially or anything.”

“You go to the college up here?” His hand was on my hair, again. My whole head was hot from it.

“I’m still in high school, but I graduate next month.” I wanted to scream from the pressure, from the attention.

“You’re eighteen though, right?” He moved his hand to my neck, and I almost passed out. I squeezed the empty bag of chips in my hands and tried to keep my voice even.

“No. This summer. June.” He took his hand off my neck and stood up.

“Too bad. You’re pretty, and I do like a big girl.” He left the kitchen. No one spoke to me the rest of the night until Becky came and found me to go back to her house. She chattered all the way home about the boy she made out with, who was the brother to a girl long jumper, who only lived in Hoisington and didn’t have a girlfriend.

I slept with Becky in her double bed. She smiled herself to sleep. I laid awake for a long time and thought about the party and how no one had even looked at me except the man who touched my hair and neck so he could have sex with me. I thought of his mouth and his dark skin and his low voice. I fell asleep when the sky was turning gray.

No one was home when Becky dropped me off the next morning. I washed my clothes and took a shower and went to bed without supper before anyone came home. I slept until Sunday morning. When my mother came into my room, I said that I didn’t feel well, that I needed to stay home from church. She got me two Tylenol and felt my forehead.

“Do you need something to eat?”

I wanted to lie. I wanted to tell her that I would never eat again, that I would never have sex with boys or drive a car, and I started to cry.

“Gula,” her voice was tight and worried. Her eyes were full. “What’s wrong, honey?” She stroked my hair. She kissed the top of my head and picked up my hand. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I thought of a million lies. I thought of pestilence and demons and rabid dogs and homework. I thought of brimstone and stomach flu and generational sin, but all that came out of my mouth was the truth.

“I’m hungry, Mom.”