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Maranatha: Chapter 9.

to catch yourself up, get into the archives.

– Chapter 9 –

She was distracting. Did she realize how gracefully she walked, how squaring her shoulders once and for all would be all it took to make her formidable? Did she know how closely she resembled an editorial fashion spread with her angular movements, the abstract slope of her arm on her desk as she propped her chin in her hand, and the sharp juts of her jittery legs as she sat? Was he obvious when she strode by his desk in the morning and he quickly inhaled, like someone had just lit incense?

Of all the things Gideon had fantasized about, coming back here—storming the administrative offices and staging a coup or throwing copies of I Kissed Dating Goodbye out of his classroom windows or burning a bottle of Pompeian Extra Virgin in effigy or planning a field trip to a Unitarian church with a lesbian pastor—attraction to a student had never crossed his mind.

For one, church girls weren’t his type. He didn’t like their clothes, the ill-fitting skirt suits with boxy shoulders and overlong hemlines or the unfortunate floral patterns on all their dresses. Even when they wore something normal—a pair of jeans and heels, for instance, or a form-fitting frock—he hated the way they fancied themselves quietly revolutionary for it.

Their conversation also wearied him. They were so much more preoccupied with what other people were into, since they considered so many things sin themselves—so many things, besides gossip, of course. And worst of all was their preoccupation with marriage. When would they realize that, “I’m believing God for a husband” was second-date Kryptonite?

The dating venues were so limited. Restaurants. Bowling alleys. Museums. Movies were an option, but with anything rated R, a church girl might make a show of cringing at all profanity and looking away during any sex scenes or, worse yet, covering her eyes. Then later, when Gideon asked if she liked the film, he’d likely be forced into a lengthy conversation about the uselessness of onscreen nudity, or else she’d clam up and treat the whole outing like some kind of spiritual betrayal. She’d side-eye him, accusingly, like he was trying to coax her away from her salvation or, worse yet, her virginity.

Gideon couldn’t take the constant edge, the endless, dogging worry about shocking a date or knocking her off her evangelistic square.

He preferred women who’d grown up only attending church in passing or irreligious women who conceded belief in God but didn’t need to discuss Him on their dates. His favorite type of all was a woman who’d been devoutly raised with any religion—Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam—but had, for whatever reason simply stopped practicing.

They seemed best able to understand him.

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Maranatha: Chapter 8.

catch yourself up with a visit to the archives.

– Chapter 8 –

This was Maranatha’s summer: sharing a bedroom with Anne at her nana’s apartment in Ridgewood; rabidly scanning the face of the driver in every car she passed, looking for signs of Gideon, on those rare occasions when she left the house; scrambling to write as much as she could before she was due back in Grand Rapids for the start of the fall semester, and preparing for the possibility of testifying in a class action suit against her alma mater.

It started slowly, as Ridgewood summers do, with steamy air clinging to her bare arms like cellophane and, in the wake of her recent breakup with Elias, a torturously silent Blackberry. But there were some perks to her lazy Maryland hometown, like the dollar-sales on plump, tart blueberries at the local produce stand all summer and the endless supply of dark, sweet cherries swollen with juice. There were the cheap matinees at Ridgewood 8 where the air conditioning kicked up to Icelandic and made you forget how sweaty and clammy and gross you’d felt before deciding to catch a movie.

“Look up in that cabinet and get me the vanilla extract.”

She spent most of her time with her mom, their minds elsewhere. It was curious to Maranatha, how painstakingly they avoided talking about the lawsuit or the complicated past that had precipitated it. She shouldn’t have been surprised; there were far more things Maranatha didn’t discuss with Anne these days than things she did. But it was still odd to dance around the details that loomed and the choices that would have to be made concerning them.

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Maranatha: Chapter 7.

catch yourself up with a visit to the archives.

– Chapter 7 –

Maranatha decided extracurriculars were pointless in middle school, when she tried out for gymnastics. Another team hopeful told everyone there she was gay and none of the girls would volunteer to spot her. But now that she was a senior with a tepid GPA, she needed all the help she could get. College application deadlines were looming and for the opportunity to skip town, possibly for good, she was willing to make sacrifices.

Three weeks into the school year, she began noticing new flyers plastering bulletin boards, hallway corridors, and empty lockers. The blue ones announced the revival of the school paper; there hadn’t been one in years, ever since the alleged “budget cuts” of five years ago, the ones that just happened to coincide with the “renovation” of the nurse’s suite and the installation of surveillance cameras in the classrooms and halls.

The other flyers, gold ones, announced the launch of Holy Pentecost’s first literary magazine, The Manna Quarterly. Maranatha made a mental note of the date for the combined informational meeting.

But as she approached the cafeteria after school that Friday and heard far more voices than she’d anticipated, she considered bailing. Sweat pulsed into her palms. Her teeth began to chatter like she was cold, even though the hall was stuffy and unseasonably warm.

It’d be easy to just head home. Maybe should manage a few undisturbed hours while her mother prayed and studied for upcoming speaking engagements before her stepfather got home. She thought of her CD collection, of the journal tucked under her bed, of the Oreos she’d bought at the grocery store two days ago. But home’s creature comforts paled as she imagined a faraway dorm room and a major that didn’t require her to memorize psalms.

She steeled herself, creeping up to the massive, closed double doors. Through the window in one of them, she saw that of the twenty-eight round tables in the cafeteria, ten were filled. The size of the crowd confused and intimidated her. Jake Rich was there with his wide-eyed freshman girlfriend. Cammi Shaw was sitting a table surrounded by her usual coven. Cosi whispered something to Demetria that made them both turn and grin idiotically at Ben Waldron, the best artist in school. And there were clusters of underclassmen she didn’t know, milling around their own social whirls.

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Maranatha: Chapter 6.

get caught up. visit the archives.

– Chapter 6 –

Gideon found himself zoning out quite often: in the morning, as he waited on a slice of bread to leap up from the toaster; at stop signs on near-empty residential streets; in showers, where he stood under the steaming deluge until he exhausted his hot water; in roundtables at the agency, while his colleagues cooked up copy for new ad campaigns; in restaurant booths sitting across from lovely women he’d rather drop off than dine with.

But it was particularly bad in churches, where the entire setup—half-hour of praise and worship, twenty-minute pre-offering sermonette, forty-five-minute sermon—seemed designed as a license to let his mind wander.

This was why he still went.

He’d chosen a place that didn’t remind him of home, an emerging church with all-White members, lax interpretations of biblical edicts, and a name ambiguous enough to belong to any number of businesses. It was the kind of place where you’d attend men’s bible study and, afterward, meet back up at bar for beers. Sometimes, rather than preaching, the pastor would screen a short film, shot by his Visual Arts Ministry, and the congregation would laugh and gasp and lift its hands, as actors played out some hardship on a scripture could fix. Once there was even popcorn.

They liked Gideon at The Lighthouse. When he wasn’t there, a twenty-year-old hipster whose actual birth name was Megatron shot him the occasional “Where ya been, bro?” text. When he was there, they worked hard to include him, asking him to offer his opinion on the design of their promotional material or trying to convince him to create an oversee a “Marketing Ministry.”

Gideon assumed the attention had to do with him being Black. This had happened to him a few times since he’d moved to Bellevue. He’d enter an all-white setting and either people were overly enthusiastic about his presence or they averted their eyes when he entered. The Lighthouse seemed really eager to have him there. Sometimes, if he stuck around long enough to have a conversation, he’d zone out while the person was talking, imagining himself grinning on their next brochure, standing between Tron and some bright-eyed girl with pink lip gloss and long blonde hair.

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Maranatha: Chapter 5

get caught up with a visit to the archives.

– Chapter 5 –

The summer between junior and senior year had been serene and inspiring. Maranatha spent it visiting her great-grandparents in Michigan. They lived in a sleepy town called Jackson, best known as the birthplace of the Republican Party and home of the nation’s first penitentiary. But despite those morose distinguishers, Jackson had always been a haven for Maranatha. She spent countless afternoons curled on the swing on Grandma and Grandpa’s enclosed porch, reading a small stack of novels and, at night, she’d walk to her cousins’ houses, the harmless streets lit with yellow lamps, to catch a Mason jar full of fireflies. Sometimes, the air was so thick with them they felt like pelting rain. In Jackson, the sky was a colander, crowded with tiny spots of light. It was nothing like the near-black nights back home in Ridgewood, where the air was too polluted to see the constellations.

There were no chores, no snaps of parental complaint, no sudden yells. She wasn’t dogged by complicated rumors here or due in the house at exactly 3 pm. In Jackson, she was free. She could wander off to cookouts or the county fair that featured a double Ferris wheel and deep-fried Oreos.

She could do anything.

Despite her own diminutive frame, Grandma constantly clucked her concerns about Maranatha’s weight (“Girl, you bout thin as a sheet!”) and pushed chicken and cornbread and pound cake and pie at her all summer. She seemed pleased, as Maranatha had rolled her suitcase to the door to se that the girl had gained at least ten pounds. You could stand a few more, Grandma chided, as she shoved a fold of money into Maranatha’s palm when they hugged goodbye.

She’d been in no rush to come home. Relief washed over her, when she left baggage claim for the pick-up curb and realized her mom and stepdad weren’t there yet. One final, perfect hour passed before they pulled up to the curb. She spent it listening to her discman and pretending she was waiting on a car service that would take her to the home of the foreign diplomats who’d be sponsoring her education abroad through the rest of high school, college, and grad school. Straightening her spine, she folded her hands in her lap and turned her face to the sun, pretending to be a royal awaiting tea service. But her good posture and temperament were fleeting, as within minutes, she saw her stepfather’s old, diesel Mercedes hugging a curve and careening toward her.

Nothing of consequence happened in the week between her arrival from Jackson and her first day of school. She and her stepfather had one of their customary arguments in her mother’s absence, the kind where he could accuse Maranatha of “insolence” and Maranatha could insist that she’d done but defend herself and her mother would throw up her hands and walk off, calling them both childish, the kind where later in the evening, Anne would crack open her daughter’s bedroom door and softly insist that she work harder at keeping the peace when she wasn’t home to play moderator: “It’s his house, after all….”

She’d gone to church, of course, and watched as her stepfather danced his praise jig on the front row, while her mother offered slightly more reserved applause or swaying hands beside him.

Her nana bought her new school clothes: itchy cardigans and plaid pleated skirts, a heavy, turquoise ankle-length sweater dress, and blessedly, one pair of Gap jeans. She also stocked up on purple ballpoint pens and Mead Five-Star notebooks, determined to be a better student this year than she had been in years past. A passing student, at least.

On her first morning as a high school senior, she hiked the straps of her lavender Jansport further on her shoulders as she took the front steps two at a time. Septembers weren’t that bad. She was always still coasting on the placidity of summer when school started. It was the other eight months that proved problematic. But this was senior year. There was an end and it was near. College was on the horizon—secular liberal arts college, prayerfully in a city far, far away. Not only that, she could say with absolute confidence that she wouldn’t be darkening the doors of Holy Pentecost Academy after they awarded her diploma. The resolute comfort of that was all the motivation she needed to barrel through to graduation.

The front hall hummed with electric chatter. There was an excitement far more palpable than there’d been in years before. Several of the familiar faces she saw positively shone with the radiance of imminent liberation. This, Maranatha thought to herself, was the only thing that linked her to them; even the students who didn’t mind the school were eager to leave it.

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Maranatha: Chapter 4.

just tuning in? go here, then here, then here.

–  Chapter 4 –

remember:

we were savages

obsessed with each other’s scent

you: all starfish and pollen,

an allergen ever causing me to swell.

you said i smelled gamey,

like goat w/ its pelt pulled away.

a trapper, i captured the essence

of kola nut in my hair.

you sounded

like the crest of seas,

inhaling each loc,

exhaling sated.

Gideon tore the page from his spiral notebook—quietly, so as not to wake the woman gently snuffling under the sheets on his bed. It was bogus. They all were. He stared at the words for a while, just to make sure there was nothing there that he could salvage, then balled the paper up and let it fall to the floor beside his desk.

He hoped the woman—Naomi, maybe?—would sleep another hour, at least. He wanted to pray. Was it prayer, to sit alone silently monologuing toward God? Gideon rarely said anything aloud during his “prayers,” just willed his thoughts toward the general vicinity of the unseen. Whether the musings were heard was anyone’s guess, but he felt better for casting them toward a destination. When had clarity become so elusive?

He wrote that down: clarity has become elusive. No.

You’ve rendered clarity elusive. Yes? No.

clarity has become elusive. You’ve rendered clarity elusive.

Clarity, fickle consort, quit

eluding me.

He was sick of himself.

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Maranatha: Chapter 3.

if you’re just joining us: go here, then here.

– Chapter 3 –

The random “chastity checks”—a concept that, even now, sounded alien and nefarious to Maranatha whenever she tried to explain it—began during her junior year. It was February and things were already at an all-time weird by then.

Back in October, Jacob Rich, who’d sat behind her two years ago in French, had been held after school in a private detention for a full week, just before Thanksgiving break. No one had ever been pre-assigned a week’s detention. Usually, when you were written up for disobedience in class, the penance for most infractions a simple hour or two of eraser-clapping and bible verse memorization.

Jake had found a letter from Principal Harris in his locker. No one knew exactly what it said—Joe never told—but everybody around him in the hall noticed the way his olive skin flushed as he read. And after he finished, he shoved the leaf of school letterhead between his jacket and backpack, slammed the locker door, and fled to the nearest bathroom.

Maranatha had always liked Jake, with his soft voice and fluttery fingers. She liked how easily he blushed and how he seemed to always be near to help her scoop up her books when someone deliberately bumped her hard enough to knock them out of her hands. His long eyelashes reminded her of perching butterflies. A tiny mole inked his right cheek, like a drawn-in beauty mark.

She couldn’t imagine him doing anything that would warrant a week’s detention.

After Jake got the letter, Maranatha noticed a few immediate changes. He stopped wearing the sweater vests he’d favored, in lavender and sea foam and peach, and took to sporting blacks and greys and Rockport boots. His full loose curls had been cropped much closer. Stubble sprouted on his usually clean-shaven face. And within a month of his detention, he’d asked some freshmen to be his girlfriend.

Maranatha was perplexed, almost enough to risk public humiliation by asking Demetria if she’d heard anything. But  answers came soon enough. During the basketball unit of gym, she overheard the girls who’d faked periods gossiping about Jake on the bleachers.

“… but I thought he was gay.”

“He was, but Principal Harris and some other teachers and church elders prayed it off him.”

“Why would that take five days, though?”

“I heard it was seven—the number of completion.”

“He must’ve had a whole lotta spirits on him.”

“’Legion, for we are many….’”

The basketball walloped Maranatha’s bicep. She stumbled and the group of girls swiveled at the thud. Hurriedly scooping up the ball, she kept her head down and shuffled back to the fold of players.

That night, Maranatha didn’t sleep. Her mind was too busy conjuring images of Jake, surrounded by crusty old faculty insistent on loosing him of the gaggle of green gargoyles clinging to his argyle sweater vest. She asked herself where in the building would their teachers have most likely staged a seven-day exorcism, and after careful deliberation, she decided it’d all gone down in the band room where, when the demons trembled at the name of Jesus, all the cymbals on the drum sets would clatter.

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Maranatha: Chapter 2.

for those just joining us: start here.

– Chapter 2 –

Holy Pentecost Academy hardly seemed the same place, with its potholes in the sidewalk, flimsy plastic flapping across broken windows, and ripped flag sagging at half-mast. Maranatha parked her car and sat for a minute, half-debating heading back home. Just being here, outside but on the grounds, made her feel defensive and nauseous and ashamed.

The postcard on her dashboard noted that she only had five minutes before this thing got started in earnest. Her decision needed to be quick. She grabbed the card and her patented leather clutch and stepped out of the car.

She’d known all along she’d go in.

The side door truants used to use to dash was locked, so she navigated a slalom of orange cones, nestled in ditches of crumbled concrete, to the front entrance.

Her skin prickled. Holy Pentecost still chilled her to the bone upon entry. The sickening scent of cheap cleaning solution, reconstituted meats, and powdered eggs still wafted right up to her from the cafeteria. But there was another smell here, too, something like vinegar and mold.

She looked at the banners hanging from the ceiling above the main office. State Girls Volleyball Champions, 2006, Division C. Pastor’s Award for Excellence in Stewardship, 2008. 2001 Winners of District Youth Evangelism Challenge. Oratory Competition 1998 Runner-Up.

There were others, but she moved on, almost stumbling into a sign taped to a music stand. It read, Town Hall Meeting, Auditorium, 7:30 pm. And underneath, a big red arrow, like anyone who’d be here wouldn’t pivot left by rote.

She heard the screech of a microphone, then keened her ear to see if she recognized the voice mumbling, “Testing, testing.” She didn’t.

A group of women swanned out of a door 200 feet ahead and she froze as they filled the hallway. From here, they looked to be about her age. They were well-dressed, in silk blouses with skirt suits or swishing wide-legged slacks. Their clacking heels rang in her ears. Sweat beaded in her palms. What if she knew them? What if they were former tormenters, like Patra Davis—or worse yet, what if one was Demetria Simmons who had, by graduation, become a kind of frenemy?

She hadn’t seen any of these people in twelve years. Occasionally, in her desperate attempts at holiday small talk, Maranatha’s mother had leaked a few updates about alumni here and there. She knew, for instance, that Cammi Shaw, who barely waited till eighth grade to have sex, then swapped Maranatha’s name for hers when recounting her grand tales of exploit, had recently bought a three-bedroom townhome in Owings Mills. Demetria married a surgeon. Bryce Hall, the cutest boy in their graduating class, was a recovering alcoholic who lived with his mom. Some other boy whose name she hadn’t retained had beaten some type of rare cancer.

Maranatha wasn’t ready for any of this. She tried to square her shoulders, as the cluster of ladies approached. Then she saw them squinting and whispering, trying to place her. Panicked, she turned on her heel and headed for the bathroom at the other end of the hall.

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Maranatha: Chapter 1.

in the past, when i’ve posted excerpts of longer works of fiction, i haven’t prefaced them with any type of summary. a friend of mine told me this was a problem for him and deterred him from reading. so, in an effort not to deter you, here is yet another excerpt and the summary is as follows:

this is the story of maranatha miller, a lifelong loner at a private, pentecostal school who, at the age of seven, has a chance encounter with a troubled graduating high school senior named gideon. years later, gideon returns to the school as a teacher, when maranatha is a senior herself. forbidden, mostly repressed romance ensues as the two forge undeniable bonds, in spite of themselves.

their story is set against the backdrop of a larger scandal, as parents and former students form a class action suit against the school for unethical policies and abusive practices, and maranatha and gideon–both victimized by these practices over the years, in different ways–are called upon to testify.

the story spans three decades and each chapter represents a different period in time. this first chapter is the chance encounter i was telling you about. enjoy!

– Chapter 1 –

Whenever the primary-schoolers made their way to the Main Building, they were dwarves in a city of giants. The second grade class at Holy Pentecost Academy clasped hands so tightly they dampened and it became trickier to keep their slippery grip on one another. The wanton giants tromped about, jostling them without ever looking down. The tots trembled, inching through the halls of the Big Kid School, where assemblies were held in a massive, musty auditorium.

They should’ve been beside themselves with glee and anticipation. It was Friday, October 30: Hallelujah Day. Every year, the whole school gathered for candy, costumes, and a fantastical filmstrip about druids, witches, and all the satanic trappings of Halloween.

It was one of the most exciting days on their academic calendar.

But first they had to get past their initial ten minutes in Main, all of which they spent in wriggling in taut-eyed, primal fear. Usually, a third of the kindergarten class wet itself in anticipation. Then, slowly, as they made their way toward their candy-paved utopia, everyone settled down and suddenly, sharing space with students three times their size wasn’t such a Herculean feat, after all.

Maranatha smiled at the littler kids. She remembered kindergarten fondly. When she was five, she blended in. The other children shared their pipe cleaners and tissue paper in Arts & Crafts; and no one spread the word that her PB&J was covered in cooties when she tried to lunch-swap.

But now that she was seven, everything sucked. By second grade, all the kids knew what it meant to have a mom and dad who’d never married. Just yesterday, Demetria Simmons leaned over and hissed, “You were conceived in sin,” during story hour. Maranatha’s cheeks had raged, her eyelids hot and wet, as she looked around at the nodding heads and giggling lips. Everyone had heard.

Lately, she’d been learning to keep her head down. She knew the number of stitches in her sneakers. She knew how many Formica tiles stood between her and the cafeteria. It was comforting to focus on her own her footsteps, so comforting that when she really thought about it, the big kids bumping her on their way to the auditorium had never really frightened her at all. Maranatha felt dwarfed, no matter where she was and the size of things couldn’t bother you if you never looked up and noticed them.

*  *  *

The boy was like other boys his age. There was nothing special about him. He was tall and thin and the color of brown M&Ms. His close-shaved hair had been trained by a barber to swirl counter-clockwise at the crown. As a senior, he was immune to the lures of candy and conscience-pricking. He’d stopped caring about Halloween when he was 11. Getting out of class for the assembly didn’t especially excite him, either. He cut class at least once a week, anyway.

That afternoon, he smelled like Gain and Newports. He and his boy, Gerald, were fresh off a smoke break out behind the softball diamond. Now, in the crowded hall, they were tossing a ball of foil back and forth, pretending to be Jordan and Bird. Since they were charming and popular, the other kids and even a couple teachers simply laughed it off when they stumbled into them.

No one ever told them to stop.

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They Got Down, Ramsey and Safiya.

They got down, Ramsey and Safiya, like their fathers had before them. They weren’t stars, but they were hood-revered (inasmuch as such status is achievable). In their early twenties, after Safiya got back from college in Vermont and Ramsey finished his second bid, they’d stalk the streets together, passing liquor stores and chicken shacks, and the corner boys nodded their respect, and the hoe stroll became a chorus of, “Hey, girl!”s for Safiya, and the cops stopped them regularly on the grounds of general suspicion.

But then Safiya began to die and they learned that respect was not the currency it used to be.

Ramsey and Safiya met in a dampened sandbox, when Safiya pointed a pudgy finger at Ramsey and christened him Pee-Pee Boy. The name stuck till sixth grade, when Ramsey lost his virginity to Big-Boob Tina in the closet of the classroom where Miss Griffiths kept her albino chinchilla. After that, nobody said anything about Ramsey that wasn’t prefaced with dap—nobody, of course, except for Safiya, who had to remind everyone that Big-Boob Tina was supposed to be in ninth and was therefore too dumb to be discriminating.

“You were cold back then,” Ramsey chuckled, hovering over Safiya’s hospital bed.

“Don’t you have a life you need to tend to?” she muttered.

“… and not much has changed.” He smirked before backing away from her and settling into the chair closest to the window.

They were squad and had been for all 28 years of their lives. But to Ramsey’s chagrin, that was all they were. A Black Forrest-and-Jenny: Ramsey, simple and pining; Safiya, callous and deigning to let him pine.

A nurse in teddy bear-laden scrubs flounced in to take Safiya’s vitals. Her blonde ponytail bobbed and swung like a bungee cord as she moved from the saline drip to the monitor that displayed Safiya’s blood pressure.

“116 over 78! Not to worry; that’s perfectly normal,” the nurse chirped, patting Safiya’s shoulder. “Dr. Daniels says your T-cell count–”

“He doesn’t need to know all that,” Safiya snapped, nodding her head in Ramsey’s direction. “They’re my vitals.”

“Oh! I know, but–”

“Isn’t there some kind of… confidentiality thing in place here?”

“Well, yes, certainly, but–”

“We’re not related. I don’t need you disclosing private medical information to him.”

“I’m very sorry. I–”

“Look…” Ramsey cut in, reading the whiteboard where Teddy Bear Scrubs had written her name during shift change. “Kimmie. Could you get Miss Turner some water, please? With extra ice?”

When she was gone, Ramsey laughed. “Yo,” he said, shaking his head. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a chew stick, shoving it between his right molars.

“Did she touch me?” Safiya demanded. “Did she have her hand on my shoulder?”

“I’ll tell her.” He used the voice that soothed her: firm, even, baritone.

She nuzzled her head into the flattened pillows. “I hate when they’re chipper.”

“I know.”