Early Warning

Cat was harder. She had grown up in an all-black town in Texas and moved to California against her parents’ wishes. She had then done a few things she now regretted. But she was devoted to the Temple, and to Jones. She saw herself as Janet’s “sponsor,” and Jones had given her some responsibilities that she took very seriously, including looking after his small children two days a week. Cat was vague about who the mothers of these children were—“We are all their mothers” was what she said, “and Reverend Jones is their father, as he is our father.” When she wasn’t talking about the Temple — who was in and who was out, who was betraying and who was loyal — she loved to talk about cooking and jogging, two of Eloise’s hobbies. Cat also liked Janet very much, and did not like Lucas very much. Eloise could not understand why, but she thought it had something to do with the Temple.

Eloise loved Lucas. Of course, she loved Janet, too — Janet reminded her so much of Rosanna, though her hair was dark and she was five seven, not five two. She had some of Rosanna’s mannerisms: when she had said something she really meant, she stood up straight and flared her nostrils, and she always sat with her knees together and her feet together, never slouching. Eloise, who had spent years refusing to let Rosanna tell her what to do, but admiring her older sister’s looks and self-assurance, was always struck by the resemblance. When Lucas was onstage, she watched the women in the audience staring at him. He was like Cary Grant. There was a being inside of him that was a version of himself; that being was so charming that you could not help being attracted to it, but it had a separate existence from his everyday self. The question Eloise worried about was whether the Stalin from Indiana had noticed the charismatic Lucas, and marked Lucas as a threat or a rival. If so, Eloise thought, Lucas might be in danger, but when she said this aloud to herself, she laughed. Everyone else in town, it seemed, saw Reverend Jones as a powerful force for good in the community. His followers loved him, spoke well of him, reported over and over that their lives had changed under the influence of his loving congregation. They’d found friendship, self-discipline, hope. If they revered him, what was the harm in that? If race was the most important divide in America, then why should Eloise be suspicious of a man who had been more successful than any other in bringing black and white together under one roof, and making them comfortable and accepting of one another?

—

JANET WAS GLAD in spite of herself that she and Lucas didn’t own much, because she saw how difficult it was for some of the Temple members to turn over their possessions to communal ownership. There was one couple she was watching when they donated their house on Potrero Hill. The house was to be set up as a commune. The man had a look on his face like he was happy to get rid of the thing, but the woman cried. Janet watched her; she cried for a long time, and the man just glanced at her every so often, as though he was disappointed in her and waiting for her to stop. When children were turned over to communal care, there was a lot of crying; Janet didn’t think she herself would be able to take that so she was glad she and Lucas didn’t have children. She also didn’t agree with the paddling, but in that she thought she might be wrong, since just about everyone she knew had been spanked or whipped as a child by their own parents, so why not by their caretakers at the church? Reverend Jones was sympathetic but strict — you had to start the new world sometime; eventually, sometime became now. Didn’t those who worshipped Jesus suffer for their revelations? No one was asking the members of the Temple to be flayed alive, shot with arrows, or broken on the wheel (Reverend Jones laughed aloud). Only to share. Only to understand that there was plenty to go around, no matter what it was. Only to give up the onerous responsibility that was possession and take up the freedom that was connection.