Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Holy

2013; Wiley; Volume: 63; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cro.2013.a783329

1939-3881

Laura Bernstein‐Machlay,

Catholicism and Religious Studies

Holy Laura Bernstein‐Machlay Jesus freaks Every few weeks I hide from my neighbors, the Jesus freaks, wanna‐be denizens of the unfinished super church slowly rising at the end of the street. The size of an airport terminal, a football field, a family farm, its bones, its blond walls and cross soaring eighty feet into the sky, claim the once‐abandoned Detroit fields in the name of the Lord. Holy holy. And my neighbors who contribute dollar by dollar to the monolith, building it prayer by prayer—they come like motifs in a recurring dream, knock knocking at my door to implore God on behalf of my untethered soul, to drop off pamphlets and sing hallelujahs for me with their whole hearts. I say I'm Jewish, and on the spot become a challenge. Now we play this game: I pull the curtains and ignore them. They know I'm home, know I'm going to hell, but leave pamphlets anyway. When with my husband and daughter in tow I see them wandering the neighborhood over the next days, all of us wave like we have some news, any news, to share, the lie that we'll be back to chat after this errand. The dad always in his Sunday suit, the mom, some other ladies, with their cheap corsages as though they'll be attending prom right after these social calls, two pretty girls wearing Value World finery, all of them cradling Bibles, tenderly, like small dogs in the crooks of their arms. They always wave back, diamonds glinting in their eyes, smiling like certainty. Mad Dog I've never been certain of anything. At thirteen I go looking for truth with my beautiful friend Mari and her neighbor, a burnout‐boy named Jim with soft, ash‐colored hair that droops like a handkerchief over his eyes, Jim who will morph into a Jesus freak just a few months later. It is Jim who, through methods never fully clear, procures us the bottles of Red Grape MD 20/20, a vicious, viscous fortified wine preferred by underage drinkers and bums everywhere—twenty ounces, twenty percent alcohol, in a cough syrup base. MD stands for Mogen David, but most people call it Mad Dog. Mogen David, the winery, also produces slightly higher‐end vintages preferred by my Bubby, along with lots of other people's Bubbies, which she serves in teeny‐tiny fairy glasses for Passover and Rosh Hashanah, two of the only three holidays she observes—all depressing. For the third, Yom Kippur, she atones with the resigned patience of a tortoise, but I have no doubt she and Zaidy enjoy a celebratory thimbleful upon each year's completion of the fast. And I have even less doubt that later, perhaps while preparing dinner the next day—something fried in schmaltz as she is no chef—she sneaks a nip straight from the extra bottle always nestled back of the Pasach dishes. MD 20/20 is mouth‐achingly sweet and utterly palatable to my thirteen‐year‐old self. It goes down like candy, like Faygo Redpop, smooth as marshmallow fluff—add the kick at the back of the throat. The rest of the night goes like this: step by creaking step down to Mari's mother's basement, Jim slightly hunched as we pass the bottle hand to hand, me drinking after him, tasting his breath. All of us silhouetted against the walls, white and unbroken, but for our shadows and the face of a Latin Jesus drooping mournfully on his cactus‐cross. Jesus, whose black eyes follow us around the room with something like reproach. To escape, we go outside where the stars appear painted onto the flat sky. There's Mari's licorice hair, a cloud down her back almost to her ass, Jim's red lips moving as he whispers in her ear. The bottles empty. We lay them like offerings among the roses. Next come needles in my fingers and toes, wrench in my belly, prickle of shrubbery against my skin. The bony shape of Jim's shoulder lodges beneath my arm pit as he hefts me upright. The fall back to earth. Cool...