Chapter 15 — Clinging to Light

When I got home, I couldn’t wait to tell my father what happened.

“Dad, guess what happened in church?” I asked him.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “You know that I don’t believe in that shit.”

“Well today, I got saved!” I told him, my face still beaming. “I got saved and now I’m going to heaven!”

“Well, that’s nice,” He said. “Send me a postcard.”

Things didn’t go much better at school.

“So not only is Pam in the retard class, but she’s also hanging out with all of the holy rollers.” I heard some girls in Drama class saying.

“Well, you can all go straight to hell!” I told them. “It’s the perfect place for bitches like you.”

Back at home, Susie and Michelle were doing everything that they could to make my life miserable. Sometimes we’d be at the table eating and one of them would throw something at me.

“Hey, knock that shit off!” I’d tell them as a dirty napkin would land on my plate.

Other times a pea or a carrot would hit me on the top of my head and stick in my hair then fall to the ground when I stood to get up. I told Loretta, but both girls denied that they did anything.

“Pam doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Besides, she can’t even see!” Susie told her mom when she asked her what happened. One day I finally got up and smacked her, but Michelle and Susie snitched to my dad and he got really pissed then sent me upstairs to my room. Then there was the constant smell of weed in the house when my father and Loretta weren’t there.

“Smoking that shit will send you to hell!” I would shout as I’d bang on their door while both of them just sat there and giggled.

I also tried to get my dad to stop drinking and going out to bars to meet women with similar threats of eternal destruction.

“You know the bible tells us not to get drunk.” I told him when he came home late on a Saturday night.

“Yeah, and didn’t your Jesus also turn water into wine?” He mocked.

“But he didn’t tell them to drink it then get in a car!” I scolded then walked up stairs to my room.

Other times when I talked about God, he would stick his fingers into his ears. When that didn’t work, he would just sit there and hum until I was finished. Once, he got so mad that he threatened to have me committed.

“In my house we do not ever talk about God!” he warned me. “You keep this up and I’ll have you locked up in Fairview!”

“So, I can’t even say ‘God bless you’ if you sneeze?” I asked him.

“No!”

“But the bible says.” I tried to respond, but he kept on shouting.

“The bible is just a collection of fairy tales. Just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”

Then Susie and Michelle both chimed in. “Not to mention the tooth fairy.”

“Shut up, Sue!” I shouted back. “Both you and that drug addict whore!”

The next thing I knew, there was a loud smack and a brief flash of light in front of my face as the sting of his hand throbbed on my cheek.

“Now look what you went and forced me to do!” my father shouted then he started pacing and taking deep breaths. “Goddamn it, I can’t fucking believe it!” Then he walked to the kitchen, got himself a drink and sat down in his chair. “It’s not you, it’s not you, okay? It’s what you’ve become after that nosy old bitch started taking you with her to that cult she’s a part of.”

“But daddy, Ruth is my friend.” I objected.

“Friends wouldn’t turn you against your own family! He got up and started screaming again. “You tell her next time you see her that she is not to set foot in my house!”

The next week that she took me to church Loretta had to walk me outside to meet her in front of our garage. Then when I told her what happened at home, it didn’t surprise her.

“You know the bible says, those who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution,” she said. “Pam, this means you’re on the right track.”

“Well, I still don’t like it!” I told her.

“No one does, honey. But remember darkness cannot comprehend light,” she said then quoted some verse in the bible.

“There’s still so much that I don’t understand,” I told her. “It’s like I’ve not only lost most of my friends, but I’m starting to lose my family as well.”

“Then you need to make new friends,” she said then thought for a second. “Hey why don’t you come with us to the Harvest Festival next week in the park? They’ll be lots of new people for you to talk to.”

It was the Sunday morning before Halloween. The day was crisp and bright, but by the time that Ruth and I got to Craig Park over in Brea, a cool autumn chill had begun settling in. We took a seat by the lake, then Ruth returned to our table with hot dogs, chips, and two tall glasses of lemonade. Then she spent the next hour or so introducing me to all of her friends and apologizing that Mike and Betty were unable to make it.

The people seemed nice, but there weren’t that many my age and the ones who were had boyfriends and girlfriends. When I started to tell them about my accident, most of them would tell me “how sorry they were” and that “God has a plan” then get up and leave. Then when Ruth excused herself to go to the bathroom no one else even bothered to come to our table, just the trees all around and the sound of the ducks waiting for everybody to leave. I picked up my cane, got up from the table and tried to find my way to the car.

As I looked up, the sun was sinking beneath the hills and the wind grew cold against my face. Soon, I started losing my breath, then braced myself against one of the trees and fell down in the grass and started to cry.

“I don’t want to do this anymore!” I wailed to everyone and no one at all. “Look at me! My God will you look at me now? I’m a cripple, a fucking cripple! My God why did you do this to me? I was always supposed to be a dancer, a dancer and maybe even an actress, but fuck that idea! What, am I supposed to dance with a cane in my hand or act when I can barely see the director? Not to mention I’ll never be able to learn how to drive!” Then I pulled off my wig, threw it down on the ground and used it to wipe the tears from my eyes. “I’ll always need to rely on others to do everything for me, to help me get dressed, get me to school, and walk me to class. Poor little handicapped girl! A bother! A nuisance! A pain in the ass! My God, I just can’t take anymore!” And there, under a cathedral of trees, no family or friends and a God who seemed as remote as the cold western sky, I imagined that I was abducted by an Indian chief whose family lived on this land before the Vaqueros chased them away. He gave me a knife that I put on my keychain and kept it hidden inside of my purse. Running my hand along on the ground, I pulled open the zipper flipped open the blade, and started making cuts on my wrist, releasing my bondage with each drop of blood. Within minutes I could hear their voices as the grass under my arms was splattered in small beads of red that fell down like drips from a faucet. “There she is! There she is! Somebody get an ambulance!”

“I’m okay! I’m okay!” I insisted. “Just leave me alone.”

Then the paramedics came and bandaged both of my wrists as Ruth stood beside us and talked to our pastor.

“The cuts appear to be superficial ma’am,” One of the paramedics said as he explained to Ruth what had happened. “She said that she wants to go home.”

“Well, I think she still needs to go to the hospital.” Ruth disagreed.

“Ma’am we can’t take her without her permission. That is unless you’re her legal guardian.”

“I’m just a good friend.” Ruth told him. “I’ll make sure that she gets home safely.”

“One more question, ma’am.” The paramedic asked her, a troubled expression etched on his face. “Has she ever done this before?”

That night I stayed with Ruth then went back to my house the next morning when my father had already left for work. Susie, Michelle, and Loretta hadn’t noticed what happened, nor did they ask. Later that day I told them I fell when they saw the bandages on my wrists, but nobody asked me anymore questions. When I talked to Ruth, she told me our pastor had said that she shouldn’t bring me to anymore functions until I got some professional help. But I told her that I no longer wanted to go since nobody there even gives a shit anyway.

“It’s all like my dad used to tell me,” I said, “All of those people are nice to you when you’re in church, but as soon as you walk out the door, they couldn’t care less.”

I didn’t see Ruth for a while after that. Sometimes she’d call me, and we’d talk for a while, but I no longer went with her to church every week. That year before Christmas, I started hanging out with my friend Christina, and soon she invited me over to her friend Fred’s apartment where he, his wife Carol, and their friend Bob had weekly bibles studies.

“I didn’t even know that you were a Christian?” I asked her.

“I’m trying,” was all she would say.

“Anyway, I tried going to church, but there’s so many cliques. It’s like high school all over again.”

“Well Fred and Carol are really cool,” she assured me, “and Bob is a cop right here in Placentia. Their fellowship is really small, so everyone gets to know one another. Why don’t you just come by and hang out?”

The first night when I showed up at Fred’s there was only a handful of people, but everyone there was so friendly. Each meeting would start by each of us giving our testimony and when I told them my story, they all got up and embraced me. There was also another young man who was legally blind and went through a lot of the same shit as me. After the study, Darren and I spent the night talking, then before we left, he gave me his number. Each night before Christmas when school let out, he’d call me at night, and we’d pray on the phone. That New Year’s Eve we went over to Fred and Carol’s apartment and we prayed and sang hymns as midnight approached while the TV in the other room showed the large white ball slowly begin to descend on Time Square.