White Oleander

It wasn't surreal anymore. What Reverend Thomas was saying was true. I had contracted the virus. I had been infected all the while. There was blood on my hands. I thought of my beautiful mother, sitting in her tiny cell, her life at full stop. She was just Jike the Manson kid. She didn't believe in anything but herself, no higher law, no morality. She thought she could justify anything, even murder, just because it was what she wanted. She didn't even use the excuse of who was she hurting. She had no conscience. I will not serve. That's what Stephen Dedalus said in Portrait of the Artist, but it meant Satan. That's what the Fall was. Satan would not serve.

 

An old lady stepped forward from the choir and began to sing, "The blood that Jesus shed for me, way back at Calvary ..." and she could really sing. And I was crying, my tears coming down. We were dying inside, my mother and I. If only we had God, Jesus, something larger than ourselves to believe in, we could be healed. We could still have a new life.

 

IN JULY, I was baptized into the Truth Assembly of Christ. It didn't even matter that it was Reverend Thomas, how fake he was, how he looked down Starr's dress, the way his eyes fondled her when she walked up the stairs in front of him. I closed my eyes as he laid me back in the square pool behind the Assembly building, my nose filling with chlorine. I wanted the spirit to enter me, to wash me clean. I wanted to follow God's plan for me. I knew where following my own would get me.

 

Afterward, we went out to Church's Fried Chicken to celebrate. Nobody had ever given me a party before. Starr gave me a white leatherette Bible with passages highlighted in red. From Carolee and the boys I got a box of stationery with a dove in the corner, trailing a banner in its beak that said, "Praise the Lord," but I knew Starr must have picked it out. Uncle Ray gave me a tiny gold cross on a chain. Even though he thought I was nuts to be baptized.

 

"You can't really believe in this crap," he whispered in my ear as he helped me put the necklace on.

 

I held up my hair so he could fasten it. "I've got to believe in something," I said, low.

 

His hand rested on my neck, warm, heavy. His good plain face, sad hazel eyes. And I realized he wanted to kiss me. I felt it inside me. And when he saw that I felt it, he reddened and looked away.

 

Dear Astrid,

 

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?? You may not 1) be baptized, 2) call yourself a Christian., and 3) write to me on that ridiculous stationery. You will not sign your letters "born again in Christ"! God is dead, haven't you heard, he died a hundred years ago, gave out from sheer lack of interest, decided to play golf instead. I raised you to have some self-respect, and now you 're telling me you've given it all away to a 3-D postcard Jesus? I would laugh if it weren't so desperately sad.

 

Don't you dare ask me to accept Jesus as my savior, wash my soul in the Blood of the Lamb. Don't even think of trying to redeem me. I regret NOTHING. No woman with any self-respect would have done less.