recommended listening: achin’ to be, by the replacements
We’d just finished the second chapter of Acts. And that’s when it happens. At the end of reading Peter’s message, Lauren says maybe we could spend some time thanking God. Phoebe, the most reluctant, most cautious of the group, opens: “God thank you for our clothes. Thank you that we have homes and food.”
There’s a pause.
Then she says, quickly, as if afraid of losing nerve, “Thank you that we do not have to understand it all to believe. Thank you that you called us, so you can save us even when we fall, because you can do whatever you want—even save people,” and she switches into her native language, which only One in the room knows. We only understand the name, “Jesus.”
And when she finishes, Jamie starts, but Mary, who is so afraid of not believing enough, interrupts, in her native language, “And thank you that you planned all of this with Jesus and you said here in the same verse that it was done by wicked people and you planned it, and it’s so clear that you don’t think we have to understand it.”
And Jamie interrupts, in English, “Yes, God, thank you that you made us want to come to you and know you because I didn’t want to; I didn’t even care; but now I do, and I know that I didn’t change on my own. And thank you for how you’re doing the same thing with my husband.”
And Phoebe, this time in English, “Yes, and thank you that you can change my husband too. Please call him like you called us.” It’s the first time she’s said, “us.”
Xena’s not part of the group, so she meets with Lauren separately. I can hear them practicing in the other room: “Controlling,” “dominating,” “rude,” “condescending,” “arrogant,” “selfish,” “inconsiderate,” “self-centered,” “manipulative”…
Lauren’s vocabulary list for the week shows that Xena, has been talking about her boyfriend. Lauren still hasn’t learned all of the nice adjectives of personality, and probably won’t until Xena and Franky break up. That seemed possible at first, since Xena introduced him in conversation as, “my previous boyfriend,” but it turns out the break-up has been going on since they met five years ago.
It was raining. She needed a taxi. He offered her a ride. Then, instead of taking her home, he took her, against her will, to a club to meet his friends. The next day, when she went out to the bus stop, he was waiting and he took her, against her will, into work. After several other encounters with increasingly serious acts against her will, she no longer really had a will, so they began to date and break up steadily.
Xena and Franky are from different races and religions. To make it a little more complex, Franky seems to have access to officials in all branches of government and huge sums of money. He bought her an apartment. He buys her clothes. He comes and goes at will, and is furious if she’s not available. He maintains apartments in Milan, Moscow, and Istanbul. He never went to college, and no one knows what he does for a job.
Xena is smiling, but her face is covered with tears. She found three female names ahead of hers on his speed dial. She wanted to break up. He apologized and said that he wanted to marry her. The tears are of joy. They’re going to the clinic next week to ensure that she’s fertile. Her shawl slips down to reveal four oval bruises on her upper arm. Her lips purse and vertical lines appear between her eyes as she shakes her head and tsk-tsks: “After the abortions, it can be a problem.”
The best part, though, is that he’ll consider taking her as a second wife even if she’s not fertile!
“You read the Bible, don’t you?” she asks Lauren.
“Yes.”
“Would you start reading with me? There’s so much going on in my life, and it might be good if I had more wisdom.”
Sophia’s another seeker of wisdom. In another setting, she might be just another perky, plump young doctor trying to make a difference. But, you know, measles and mumps reports are increasing. There’s the TB scare. Her friend who works in the ER unofficially reported a case of Avian flu a couple days ago. And there are always the usual hassles of orphanage work: colds, diarrhea, nurses, bureaucracy, phlegm, and roaches. And there’s something else.
They’d just about finished for the day, and were passing through the lavish reception area, the one used for photo ops when politicians want to show compassion, when Sophia’s bounce faltered.
“Lauren?” She paused. “I must tell you something.”
She motioned toward the couch. “I don’t know how to say it. I’ve never told others before. But I need to tell you because of what you said about how my country needs me here. I need to go to America so much, and I don’t want you to think I’m a coward or I don’t love my country.”
She had been so young. She partly blamed her mother, and her mother partly agreed. After all, everyone knows that there are good reasons for sending your attractive daughter to the market only in daylight. But it hadn’t been that late, and it hadn’t been that far…
But it only takes once.
She never told her brother, of course. She never told her sister: her sister has a twin brother, and twins don’t have secrets. She never told her friends: girls talk. Her parents separated. “Never tell anyone!” her mother said. “It’s your only hope for happiness.”
A few months ago, after reading about a survivor’s group for women in America, a girl in my class wrote, “Women in America try to begin their life again from Zero. In this country women can’t start their life from Zero. The society doesn’t respect her and doesn’t talk with her, and a married woman’s husband divorces her. If the girl was a virgin, she can’t continue to live. She can’t never, never, never get married. Who would marry her? Nobody. How she can say it to her family? She has to choose one way. I mean, she has to kill herself. If she has sisters, men would never marry her sisters because of her, even though it was her, not her sisters. We have the universal problem, but no one talks ever.” That girl said her dream was to emigrate. Anywhere.
“Please don’t be angry with me, Lauren. Please don’t think I’m being selfish when I want to leave. I just want to begin again.”
Lauren sat with her and listened. They prayed.
A couple days later, Carla sat on the opposite end of the couch, back rigid, hands folded, eyes down, as Patrick gave the news. He has a Master’s in Japanese with a minor in English from a local university. He’s intelligent, polite, friendly, and good looking. The last several years, though, the only way he’s found to earn a living is through working as an embassy guard. Now, he can’t believe his good luck: a visa that will let him work seventy hours a week as a reservation desk helper, busboy, or custodian for a Wyoming ski resort. He found out this morning. He leaves tonight.
His parents are thrilled. His nine-year-old daughter seems all right with it. His four-year-old son doesn’t know yet.
“How do you feel about it, Carla?”
She glanced sideways at her husband. He was asking Lauren how much he’d be able to save if his salary was eight dollars an hour.
“Do you remember, ‘Story of an Hour’?”
The Kate Chopin story is over a hundred years old, but its depiction of the protagonist’s joy at her husband’s death had shocked my short-story class last term.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“That’s how I feel. Almost as happy as her.”
Not all women here are that passive, though. Rachel dumped Joey.
Joey calls sometimes, but he doesn’t come by much anymore. He says there are too many memories of me associated with memories of her, and his ribs hurt too much since he got in a bike accident. He says that Rachel found a new guy. He’s going to focus on starting up a new business, and try to forget about her.
Rachel’s account is slightly different. Joey’s father said it was time for him to get married to a family-approved girl. Joey said no. Joey got on his bike to ride over to Rachel’s, and his father ran him down with the car, and beat him until he needed hospitalization. Rachel saw him a few days later. “We had to break up. I can’t see him like that any more.”
She said she’s just going to focus on teaching, and try to forget about him. Her students, one in particular, Ross, seem appreciative.
I was counting out money for sour cream a few days later when The Grandmother came into the market. I didn’t recognize her at first, without the short stool and curled up posture that seemed so essential for her identity. She didn’t look anywhere. Her hands trembled as she walked. They trembled as they moved toward her pocket. When they found the coins, they calmed. Ten coins, counted slowly. Four cents. They trembled again as she reached toward the counter.
The guy took money from both of us in one move. Another move and he had a glass from under the counter for her. One finger width of the homemade vodka. She said, “Aaaooe. Eh. Eh.” It means the same thing in English. He poured another finger. She drank and put the cup on the table but didn’t let go.
“Pch, pch,” he said, putting his lips together in a kissing shape that, when accompanied by a head shake means, “Sorry, but I doubt it.”
Soft vowels came out, “Eh. Ah. Uh.” She trembled out some more money. One. Slowly. Two three. Four. Five. Six seven eight. Nine.
“Pch, pch,” again.
Her head turned right and left, looking nowhere. She started to turn.
“Grandmother, excuse me.” I gave her the change. Her hand always opens up.
She said some more open-mouthed sounds, still looking vaguely at the floor. She drank again. As she trembled out, a shirtless man of about eighty entered: “Peace of God to you.” Coins were already in his hand. The guy wiped the glass off with a rag from a nail by the wine rack and started to pour.
Phoebe looks so sweet, smiling so thoughtfully with her hands folded on her expanding stomach. She is patiently explaining that the Bible and Qur’an both say that Jesus was more than a prophet, but the section she read from John clearly shows that a Word is not the same as the Speaker, and a Son is not the same as a Father, and a Light is not the same as the Source of Light, so Jesus is not God.
Lauren and I exchange glances, hoping the other will speak first.
Then Mary answers. Mary has been a believer longer than anyone in the group. She was proselytized pretty intensively before we arrived, and she’s more confident in her knowledge than anyone else in the group. “Phoebe, I think you’re missing something. You see, you can’t divide God the Father and God the Son that way.”
I slowly exhale. The other people in the study are addressing the issue without resorting to Americans!
“You see,” Mary continues, “It’s like a family that really loves each other. Remember, God made people in his image, and people are male and female, so God must be a man and a woman. God the Father loves God the Mother, and they can never be separated from God the Son. Jesus is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Mother.”
Uh oh.
There are no vacuums. But what’s the best way to address it? Do you insist on affirmation of incomprehensible or seemingly irrelevant propositions? Do you encourage expression of doubts, even when the expression could weaken the faith of others? What’s the difference between a vocally mistaken student and a false teacher?
Then Jamie, who became a believer only a year ago, speaks: “Maybe we should look at what the Bible says about this. There was something I was reading the other day in Matthew…”
And when she finished, Rachel says, “And look here in First Corinthians, where it says…”
And we’re sitting there thinking of how those passages apply perfectly to the situation, and how we are all teaching and learning from each other, and how, best of all, the passages they’re referring to are things that we have never read as a group, and how Jesus is able to take care of his body.
Phoebe’s husband won’t let her have a Bible, but he lets leave her pregnancy confinement once a week to meet with the group, and she still says she wants to follow Jesus, whoever he turns out to be. Mary’s still struggling, but the group is praying for her. No one is giving them up.
The book of Leviticus has a very long passage on the identification and purification of leprosy. I never understood why, but maybe the point is that sometimes you can’t tell leprosy from a fungus unless you take it to the priest and wait.
