Kiss the Morning Star (10 page)

I break away at last. “I couldn’t do it, though,” I say. “I mean…I don’t want to be with
him
.” I know the words I should say next; I can feel them rattling in my mouth like steam building up, knocking about in an old radiator, but it’s no use. I can’t even whisper them. Instead, I sit here, looking at her helplessly.

“I know,” says Kat softly. “Let’s get moving.”

I stand up, looking back the way we came. “Actually…” The idea forms slowly. “Let’s go this way.”

“No freaking way, Anna. I am not breaking into a
church.
”

“Not
breaking
in, Kat. More like…sneaking in.”

Kat raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, I’m sure God is making those fine distinctions in his notes.”

I roll my eyes. “We’re just getting to church early, that’s all. There has to be some little room somewhere that we can duck into and sleep, and lots of times there’s food served in between services, you know? At the very least there will be coffee.”

Still, I feel like a creeper watching an older man get out of his van, whistling in the soft glow of early morning. He retrieves what looks like several cake pans from the front seat of his car and disappears into the church.

I lead the way, acting like I have every right to be there. This is no big deal. Once inside, Kat pulls me down a set of dark stairs, and we tiptoe along a tiled hall lit only by a red Exit sign at the very end.

I try one of the doors leading off the hall. The room is dim, and I’m barely able to make out the shapes of low tables and tiny chairs in the growing light shining through the small windows near the ceiling. The walls are painted with animals, two of every kind. “Definitely a classroom,” I say.

Quietly, we examine each of the rooms leading off the main hall but find only identical classrooms, which will soon be filling up with little children watching Bible stories play out on flannel boards while drinking grape juice from tiny paper cups.

“Upstairs, then.” We slip up the stairs. At the top of the first flight, near the door to the sanctuary, is a coatrack, an elevator, and another flight of stairs, leading to either a balcony or maybe another wing. I hesitate, then take the stairs up.

Kat nods. We’re not quite to the top of the stairs when suddenly the side door swings open and pale morning sun floods the entryway. We freeze.

I hear a rustling of coats and hangers and a woman’s voice. “Here, Richard. I’ll take the cake downstairs if you want to go up and fetch the bulletins. Michael folded them all yesterday evening, but you’ll have to show the ushers what to do.”

Heavy footsteps approach the bottom of the staircase, and Kat’s eyes grow wide. If we move now, the man will see us for sure, but if we don’t, he’ll run right into us! “Act pathetic,” I whisper. It’s a church; churches are supposed to welcome the needy, the afflicted. Still, we’ve been sneaking around like thieves. Maybe I should have asked someone for help in the first place. My heartbeat is so loud, I’m sure he’s already heard us.

“Richard? Wait, Richard, I completely forgot about the offering envelope. It’s sitting in the car. Be sure to get that first, so we don’t forget.”

I let out my pent-up breath as Richard turns away from the bottom of the stairs and sighs. “Yes, dear,” he mumbles as he steps back out the door. We race to the top of the stairs and run blindly through the first door we see.

“What the hell is this room for?”

“Anna! We’re in a church!”

“So?”

“It’s…
rude
to swear in church.” Kat flips on the light switch.

“It’s just a building.” My own home had once been attached to a church, and it certainly hadn’t been sacred ground to me. “But seriously, did they make this room just for us, or what?”

The room is small—one long narrow expanse, like a hallway with big aspirations. The walls are covered with faded yellow wallpaper, and there are framed prints of vaguely pretty scenes. At the end of the room is a small window, trimmed with gauzy white curtains. But the most interesting features are the lock on the door and the two plush couches lining the walls.

Kat grins. “Thanks be to God.” She kicks her shoes off and collapses on a couch. “Hallelujah! Turn off the light and lock the door!” I think she’s sleeping by the time I turn the lock. I smile at the sound of her measured breathing, but I can’t sleep, not yet. Being here, in this church…I am haunted by memories of my mother.

A man sits cross-legged beneath a tree. He is weaving a small mat out of long grasses, which he pulls strand by strand from an old plastic bucket of water that sits beside him.

“Jack?” I say. He doesn’t look up, his eyes fixed on the work in his hands.

A desperate need crushes me. “Please.” I kneel beside him, plunging my hands into the bucket. The water is shockingly cold; it freezes around my hands, and I can feel the edge of the ice biting into my wrists as I struggle to pull out a handful of reeds.

Blood from my wrists pools on the ice, sizzling where it touches.

“Open up,” says the man, pointing to my fists, which still clutch the reeds. He moves his hands like a magician releasing a dove. And then I am alone. The bucket is gone, and my hands rest in my lap, clutching a scrap of green cloth. A green silk scarf. Mom?

I open my hands like he did; the fabric lifts in a sudden breeze and floats up, a spiral above me, and I watch it rise, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun, until it disappears—a tiny dot—and my neck aches and my eyes hurt and the ground is soft on my cheek when I collapse.

The first sound that trickles into my consciousness is a sort of droning voice, a man’s voice, chanting something. I lift my head and wince, my neck muscles pinching. What is with that voice?

I try to get a handle on the juxtaposition of images in my head—forest glade to bloody ice to yellow wallpaper. Across the room Kat is curled up on a pastel-striped couch, her dark hair hanging over her face.

The voice drones on, and then it stops, followed by the sound of a whole group of voices repeating the chant, or answering the chant. It sounds…familiar. A lullaby I’ve almost forgotten. I rub my eyes, and I’m startled to find my cheeks wet with tears. I wipe at them with the edge of my sleeve and roll my head from side to side, rubbing the back of my neck with one hand.

In this way I spy the source of the voices: a small set of speakers mounted near the ceiling. Ah, yes, the church service. I wonder if this is the first service or the second, and I attempt to judge by the amount of light coming in the window and by whether it feels like I have slept for one hour or three all squished up on this short couch. Probably three. I reach for my notebook to capture my dream so I will not forget it.

I walk a little circuit of the room, which contains only the two couches and the window, plus the speakers. My legs are sore, and shaky, as though I’ve just finished a marathon. I sit on the rug and stretch, leaning back against the couch where Katy still sleeps.

She’s so peaceful, so untroubled. The strong angle of her narrow nose, the thick line of lashes against her cheeks. The plum of her lips. She looks younger when she’s sleeping, like a child fiercely guarding her secrets.

I ponder the dream again, holding my arms in front of me, examining my wrists for marks, but all I see is pale freckled skin. I can still feel the bite of that ice, though, can still see my blood spreading in a dark stain.

The cloth, the green scrap of fabric. In my memory, it flits just out of my reach; I can touch its shadow but not the thing itself. “That’s all anything is,” I say, my voice hoarse and raspy. “Empty shadows, like Kerouac says.”

Katy stirs, twists on the couch a little, and opens her eyes. She sees me and smiles. “Hey,” she says, her voice just as ragged as mine.

“Hey.”

“You all right?”

I smile. “I’m okay. You?”

“You’re crying.”

“No. I was, I guess, but I’m okay now. I had this crazy dream…” I’m gathering my thoughts to explain the dream, to speak it out loud and disperse some of its power, when I’m interrupted by the sound of someone twisting the handle of the door.

Jiggle.

Twist.

My heart triples its pace, and Kat sits up stealthily. There’s not much we can do, trapped as we are in this room, except try to be quiet and hope this person will not persist.

A light rap on the door. A woman’s voice. “Hello? Is someone in there?”

I don’t dare breathe, don’t move a muscle.

I hear the sound of an infant fussing, and again the woman raps on the door, calling out a little louder this time. “Hello? Can you unlock the door?” She jiggles the handle a couple more times, and then I hear soft rapid footsteps heading away.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!”

“Anna!”

“I told you! It’s just a building.”

We burst out of the room. “Please God,” I mutter under my breath as I try the knob of the first door I see. Locked.

The knob on the next door turns, and I open it a tiny crack, peering in. An empty office. It will do for the moment.

“Excuse me!” A man’s voice calls out from behind us. “That’s the pastor’s study!”

“Goddamn it,” says Kat.

“Now there’s a word you don’t say.” I smile, but it’s the resigned smile of the condemned.

We face our accuser. Katy turns on the charm.

“Oh, sorry?” she says, smiling sweetly. “We were just looking for the restroom, that’s all.” She waves her hand toward the door of the room we slept in, which I notice bears a yellow stenciled sign, Nursing Mother’s Lounge. “We thought that was it, but we were wrong, I guess.”

I wonder if we look like homeless people who have slept a maximum of three hours on a couch. I run my hand nervously over my hair, adjusting my scarf.

“Are you with Pastor Shepherd’s group?” the man asks, veiled suspicion in his eyes. “I didn’t remember anyone so young.”

Kat and I exchange a look. “Pastor Shepherd? We’re meeting him here,” says Kat.

Could it be the same Pastor Shepherd? What are the odds? And if it is him, are those odds in our favor?

The man still looks uncertain. “Well, you’d better come back downstairs,” he says. “The service for blessing the mission is just about over.” He turns to the woman standing behind him, the one holding and rocking a fussing infant. “Looks like it’s open now, Jeanne. Sorry for the inconvenience.” He nods politely to the woman as she slips into the nursing lounge, shooting a scathing look at us before she does.

What will happen when it becomes apparent that we are not, actually, members of Pastor Shepherd’s mission trip? We should have told the truth. “Um, the restroom?” I’m looking for a chance to stall, to escape.

The man presses his lips together, still looking at us somewhat dubiously. “Oh, right,” he says. “Well, I’ll show you the one right outside the sanctuary. I’m not sure how you missed it, actually.”

We follow him obediently down the stairs and enter the restroom, which is, like he said, plainly visible from the main door of the sanctuary. Once inside, I set my backpack down on the floor and go immediately to the sink, running my hands under the cool water and splashing it onto my face. It feels good; it clears my head.

“What should we do?”

“Do you think it’s
our
Pastor Shepherd?” Kat says.

“Katy, you can’t seriously think we’re going to walk in there and pretend to be a part of this mission trip.”

“Well, but I
told
you. I had a feeling we would see him again, that we met him for a reason.” She runs a brush through her hair, watching her reflection. “I think we should figure out a way to talk to him.”

“I’m not going to Mexico.” I have such a terrible feeling about all of this. Goose bumps rise up across my neck.

Kat’s brushing stops for a moment, and she glances away from the mirror to look at me. “Anna. I didn’t say we were going to Mexico.”

“But you thought it.”

“I did not.”

“Well, you were about to think it, then. And I’m not going.
You
can go, if you really want to. I’ll hitchhike back to Gillette all by myself, I don’t care. I’m not going to Mexico.” I can feel myself digging in, setting my jaw.

Kat shoots me a look. “Anna, relax, hey? Nobody has said anything about going to Mexico.” She throws the brush back into her bag and moves to put her arm around me, but I pull away.

“Don’t tell me to relax,” I snap. “This whole thing is all your fault. I never even wanted to come on this stupid road trip.” I always get irrational when I go without sleep. “Plus, you never listen to me.” I wince inwardly at my petulant tone, but I’m powerless to stop. “If you would have pulled over when the oil light came on like I told you, we could have fixed the car problem before getting stranded in the first place, and I’d still have my wallet and we wouldn’t have gotten busted sleeping in a church breast-feeding room.” The cold tile digs into my knees as I kneel down and furiously pull things out of my backpack.

Kat laughs, but her eyes are sharp. “Oh, this is all
my fault
, is it? What the hell, Anna? You’ve been calling the shots all along, and I haven’t complained once. What is your problem?”

“I’m not the one with the problem.” I continue emptying my backpack onto the bathroom floor.

“Like it would be so awful to go on a bus trip to Mexico for a couple of weeks. Do some hard labor. Church and old people, Anna. That’s two things on our list.”

“No. Stop trying to change my mind.” I hate it when she does this. She knows I can’t refuse her. But I don’t want to do this. Do. Not. Want.

“You’re every bit as afraid of living as your father is, Anna.”

I glare at her. Staying angry is the only way to keep from crying, and I am
not
going to cry. “No.” My quiet voice walks the edge of desperate. My hands tremble. My head aches.

Kat shakes her head. “Whatever. You know what, Anna? I’m sorry for not stopping when the oil light came on. What else do you want me to say?”

My anger wilts. “I’ve had enough church people to last me my entire life, I swear.” I’ve been surrounded by church since birth—church people feeding me, caring for me, praying for me, but above all making every moment of my life their business.

Kat picks up the
The Dharma Bums
from the pile on the floor. “Well, let’s see what Jack says.” She flips the pages, and I stab my finger into the book, praying for something that makes sense, something she can’t twist to mean what she wants it to mean.

Kat reads. “‘It don’t make a damn frigging difference whether you’re in The Place or hiking up Matterhorn, it’s all the same old void, boy.’” She nods excitedly. “See? What difference does it make, Anna? A free trip to Mexico and back? No paying for camping every night? Looking for God?”

“I told you this was going to happen. I
knew
you’d start in with this Mexico idea.” I grab
The Dharma Bums
out of Kat’s hands and open it up angrily. “‘I climbed up the arroyo, so finally when I turned and looked back I could see all of Mexico, all of Chihuahua, the entire sand-glittering desert of it, under a late sinking moon that was huge and bright just over the Chihuahua mountains.’”

Fuck this. I snap the book shut. “I don’t like it,” I say.

Kat gathers my things and shoves them into my backpack. “Why are you taking all this stuff out, anyway?”

“I thought maybe if I looked again, I’d find my wallet.” My phone beeps, a text from my dad.
Erica Randall brought over her new kittens yesterday afternoon,
he says. Erica Randall? That was the woman with the SIDS baby the year my dad started up the church. So sad. She has a son, a couple years younger than me, I think, and a bunch of girls younger than him. “My dad texted me about kittens,” I say. Who could be afraid of life when faced with newborn kittens?

“That guy is going to wonder what we’re doing in here,” says Kat. “Let’s go out there and say hello to our old friend.”

He stumbles midsentence as he recognizes us. Actually, it’s less of a stumble than an all-out speechless pause, during which every head in the congregation turns to stare.

“As…as I was saying,” he continues, “God has called us on this mission because He knows that lying dormant within each of us is a strength untapped, a strength of spirit and love that is waiting for circumstances to present themselves that will challenge that strength to rise up.” His voice again. Is it like my father’s?

Kat elbows me, frozen in the stares of the room full of people, and we move toward a seat near the back of the group, about halfway up the aisle. “Sit down,” she hisses, and we do.

“I have to stop for a moment and tell you all something, something extremely important to me.” Pastor Shepherd advances as he speaks, his eyes never leaving us. The people all twist in their seats and follow him as he moves.

“These two young girls that you all watched enter the room, these are two friends of Jesus whose paths crossed my own two nights ago as I was sitting at Celeste’s Diner, preparing my sermon, as many of you know I am wont to do.”

There are murmurs of assent in the crowd; heads nod.

“Well, I’m not going to lie to you, I was having a difficult time that night, trying to prepare words for you—for you wonderful believers who are following the call to Mexico with me, going into what hardships I cannot imagine. My words fell flat on the page. I couldn’t seem to find the passion.”

The people shake their heads sadly. I feel my face burn, and sweat forms between my breasts, though I’m inexplicably shivering. I want to disappear. If there is a God, he certainly hates me.

“But then I looked across the back of the booth behind me, and here were two lovely young ladies, their heads bent over an atlas, their hearts so pure and loving I could just feel the divine light streaming from them.” Okay, no. My father never spoke with such…melodrama.

I jab my elbow hard into Katy’s side. Pure and loving hearts, yeah. We were only arguing about whether or not we had killed several people and abandoned their bodies in the middle of the wilderness. I cover my mouth with one hand and bow my head, hoping I look pious instead of rude.

“These two young women are on a remarkable journey, my friends, a pilgrimage across America, looking for proof of the existence of God’s Unconditional Love.” Pastor Shepherd takes a deep breath and holds the room in the center of his own dramatic pause before he continues, his voice (which is
nothing
like my dad’s golden voice) rising up a notch with a hypnotic zeal.