Anatomy of an Honors Student: Cross and Double Cross

When I was young, elementary-school age, I dreamed of the end. I read Revelation and Job and imagined the leviathon and Godzilla in the same frame. I planned for the worst, for what I knew was coming, and in my dreams, I always hid under a desk at armageddon.

I knew the desk wouldn't save me, but as with children in 1950s post-atomic filmstrips, it was my only cover. I clutched at its legs desperately, with chaos circling around and above me.

I see myself now in my memory, small and all elbows, peering out through bedraggled bangs at the swarm of dragons and black smoke and stars swirling above, and I think that I will never be that safe again.

*****

Some childhood nights I pray a bubble around my bed -- every night for weeks, sometimes, ritually -- so the Freddy Krugers and soul-sucking monsters won't be able to get me. The membrane, hard and slick, that keeps me from their evil scissor-hands and claws, is impermeable. Only God can pass through.

The bubble is as translucent and pearlescent as a soap bubble, though, and I can see them staring, leering, scratching at the outside. They grind their knuckles against each other and plot.

I grip the piles of stuffed animals around me, pulling them in tighter. Sometimes their pyramids are so high that the blankets don't touch me at all, and I have to make adjustments.

I don't touch them to comfort my fears. I pull them to me to protect them, keep them firmly inside the bubble. I touch them to save them.

*****

I shift uncomfortably, putting my weight on one socked foot, then the other.

Brad has been crying for ten minutes now.

His back is hunched over, sobs pass through him in waves, and I can't help but think of Quasimodo. Brad's seven-foot-friend Rob stands sentinel beside him, on Brad's right, and I flank his left. It is my fault he's here.

It started as an online diary, where I met Hamlet. True to his name, Hamlet was a never-acting, always-pontificating "emo" type diarist, spending his words on vague accounts of his personal struggles and philosophies. I commented on the philosophy, and he referred me to Brad, his cyber-space friend.

Brad had a precision I would appreciate, Hamlet said. I do.

We trade emails, Simpsons quotes, thoughts on faith. Brad believes in God, was converted late, but does not believe in hell. Our debates flare up quickly and fade slowly. Brad decides to visit.

Before he comes, I warn him: I am not domestic. I am not the woman he is looking for. I'm involved with someone else.

He hesitates. But he comes anyway.

We watch Trekkies. We see the train and he stands as if crucified, arms out, in front of it. I look away, embarrassed for him. He drove thirteen hours with Rob to get here.

On Sunday, the last day, I take him to church. He sings; he sits; he cries.

I don't know what to do. I should put my hand on his back, make some kind of contact, but I don't want to. Touch implies empathy, responsibility, and I have none and take none.

I stare at the projection, a praise chorus in light-and-black on the white wall, and pretend to sing. I pretend I am caught up by it, too involved to see, peripherally, what is happening. I pretend not to notice.

It doesn't matter. Brad changes without me -- believes in hell, begins attending church in Ohio, meets and marries a "domestic woman."

She wants to thank me, he says in a later letter, for my influence on his life, for pulling him to heel, for making him orthodox.

She wants to thank me.

*****

I stand waiting for hours in the cold, with Christina, with Debbie, with Matt: The train will always come if you wait long enough.

You can hear it from far off enough to get there before it arrives, if it whistles at a distance. If you run, flat-out, you can get there from the field in time to be there at its heartbeat and giant, shuddering run through the edge of campus. But you wouldn't need to -- the echo of the whistle in the field vibrates through the grass and the one dead tree and comes back to you from the sides of houses and the forest-edge of the field loud enough to make you feel like you're there, anyway.

The train is like God. The train is evidence.

Stacked two-high, cargo cars crashing past are the largest thing I've ever seen -- they're large in spirit, large in intent and execution, and their mechanics (so industrial) provoke a visceral reaction. The train could crush me; I feel crushable.

But I understand it. This train only travels on tracks. I can get as close as I dare if I keep my feet and fingers away from the meeting of steel-to-steel. One foot or inch removed is enough, and I can feel the train's pulse and my own in tandem.

I love the train, for three years. I run anytime it calls.

*****

God is like a stranger. I look for God and find walls and walls and walls, unfamiliar ones, ones I can't break. I wonder if I built them in days of lying and busying myself, or through neglect, or whether they came from my stubborn Sundays in bed, my head on my pillow until it was just-too-late for church, my heart pretending to reject guilt.

I wonder who is rejecting who -- me, God, or God, me?

One day, it will stop and I will stop. I suspect I will see again what I always do: that it has always been me, rejecting myself, and that I do not understand God.

I can't.

And I won't.