genesisSpring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 13 When my dog is sick, I regret not being clos- er to Jesus. The way I see it, there’s starvation, homelessness, disease, terrorism, and genocide all over the world, so you have to be pretty damned tight with Jesus if you want help when your dog - teen-year-old kid who walked the halls with me every day went to bed and never woke up. They said an aneurysm. He was a healthy weight, ac- tive, no prior heart-related issues. His heart, a year younger than my own, exploded without warning. And if that kind of thing happens, how does Ruger, all ninety-eight pounds of American Bulldog, with his dizzy spells and head tremors, stand a chance? It’s October 2004. A few friends invite me to A Trip to Hell, my hometown’s alternative to wait in line. There’s hot chocolate, popcorn, and caramel apples. When our group gains the front of the line, a grim reaper ushers us onto a dirt path surrounded by tall trees about a hundred a deadly car crash – teenagers sprawled lifeless, scene is without sound. The driver, recognizable because he still inhabits the battered driver’s side, stirs. He wakes; he takes in the scene; he shakes his lifeless girlfriend, her bloodied head now one with the windshield; he screams. When he stumbles out the driver’s side, he runs from friend to friend until it becomes clear that he’s the sole survivor. If the dead bodies of his closest friends aren’t enough, his guilt steals his breath, brings him to his knees as his eyes fall on the drained bottle of whiskey, thrown from the car unharmed. We trudge on. Farther back in the woods, a pregnant teenager cries voicelessly. She is alone. She walks into the abortion clinic. The sound screams. Is she in pain? Or just overwhelmed by her choice? When she attempts to reconcile with God, He doesn’t recognize her. I love you my child, but I no longer know you. You have turned away from me. The grief-stricken divinity casts her lost soul to Hell with the others where it belongs. And we walk on. In a makeshift liv- ing room, a working mother dresses for her night Hello? God, It’s Me, Mercedez Mercedez Schaefer 14 genesis spring 2016 shift at the local hospital. Her young daughter need the money. Please, stay home, Mommy. Aw hon- ey, don’t be ridiculous. I’ll be back in time to make you breakfast before school. She has barely started her car to leave when the stepfather, thus far an in- animate part of the backdrop, crumples his beer can and pulls the small girl violently into the bed- room. Hell on Earth. As I write this, more than ten years later, other details have become fuzzy. I recall a sui- cide scene. In my mind, the scene is connected to this girl, this preteen raped in her own home, struggling to tell her mother something she can- not dare let pass her bruised lips. This girl who is without hope. This girl who is empty. This girl who is victim. She attempts to clean what can never come clean, bleach to a blood stain. She takes her own life. But there is no mercy in her act, no release. Our group walks into a mock steam blinds me. Fire dances on the walls. De- mons screech and wail into the heat, yanking at heavy chains that will never come loose. Among them, the child with child, the girl with nothing but self-disgust and a razor. Reapers claw and shout at us; it is their mission, their sole purpose, The trip ends with three doors. Choice, a dis- tinguished man upfront bellows. Then, Christ himself walks through our midst, battered and bloody, staggering under the weight of a giant cross. We part quickly, arms tingling, eyes down- cast, trying much too hard to swallow. A few of us check our phones. I suppose there is a lesson in here somewhere. One door is marked Heav- scrawled across the top – for the irrecoverably lost. The last is the ever-popular question mark door. I wonder how many smart ass teenagers have walked spitefully through the Hell door. I - ward the familiar punctuation mark. I pick up a glossy pamphlet, pray with a grey-haired strang- er, and arrive early for Sunday’s 10 a.m. service at Church on the North Coast. I have since heard that the trip has improved its marketability, add- ing a school shooting and an Ariel-Castro-like hostage scene. I appreciate the church’s attention to current events. hairdresser sitting three rows from the front. She contoured cheek. Monday through Friday, and every other Saturday, Jess worked eight-hour shifts in 4-inch black stilettos, carried a $400 bag, and listened to underground hip-hop. Although I have never seen her place, I bet it’s the sort of lofted apartment with white carpets, glass tables and modern artwork adorning the walls – is that an original Warhol? She was – still is, I’m sure – delightful. And not just her hair and shoes. On each of the twenty-two days of the month that Jess worked at the salon, she convinced no less than ten clients that they were somehow as fab- ulous as her. Certainly, they were not. Certainly, Mercedez Schaefer genesis spring 2016 15 Sunday, and I get it. She has Jesus. I decide right then that I too will have Jesus. I had no interest in doing hair. I would write – and Jesus and those stilettos and that white car- pet would all be part of my aura. People would think, , in the same way that my cousin had once wondered aloud, how do you party as much as you do and still get straight A’s. I’d never be rich, but I’d be well - sy”). I’d never be beautiful, but I’d be intriguing. I would never rock a Honk If You Love Jesus stick- er on my bumper, but I’d hang a cross from the rearview mirror of my spotless Lexus. How I’d get these things was irrelevant; these things were merely attached to an idea of myself, an idea that occupied a better part of my young adult years. At one point, I became consumed with a vague notion of doing third-world humanitari- an work. The church helped fund an orphanage in Haiti. I’d be helping poor children, traveling, writing, adding “international experience” to my resume – talk about a grand slam. Perhaps the stilettos and white carpet would be put on hold momentarily, but the path to cosmopolitan- ism demanded travel – did it not? All the better I adored the people I traveled to Haiti with; young, ambitious, thoughtful, and high on Jesus, they all held romantic notions of who they would become. Even better were the Haitians I met: full of energy, life, compassion, and empathy de- spite extreme poverty and hardship. Before we’d boarded the plane, the group leader had prom- ised each of us that this trip would change our lives forever. He was right. write that besides the mysterious climate, Haiti is exactly what I expected. The poverty of the kind you see on CNN. I note the scraggly dogs, ribs protruding, hair matting, nipples dragging the dust. Suddenly, Ruger doesn’t seem that bad from the naked toddler, reddish hair and bulging stomach, tossing himself in the muddied water of a street ditch.” There is a charcoal boy with us, a translator with a wide smile and choppy En- glish. He has no parents. He too grew up in the orphanage. I want to ask him a question, but I don’t know which one. We travel to a nearby village. We hear that it is worse than the others. The villagers are always without enough food, often without drinkable water. We give bread from our truck. Another then there is disorder; soon, they pummel each other for precious seconds and thirds. Mothers send their youngest up again and again, knowing we won’t turn away those small, bloated bodies. I wonder how long it will be before they eat again. One woman with a naked infant on her hip kicks a toddler repeatedly in his stomach until he re- leases the soccer ball we’ve just tossed him. We have turned them into animals. And when our supplies run out, there are still too many hungry mouths. We’ve failed them, given them nothing Hello? God, It’s Me, Mercedez 16 genesis spring 2016 that will last until tomorrow, next month, next year. They chase after our trucks for miles, Blah Blah gimme un doller. Our reply is a chorus: Jezi ren- men ou, Jesus loves you. We brandish our trip with Jesus’s name and promptly return to the states to indulge in burgers and fries and report on the great change we’ve made, the souls we’ve saved. make. Hallelujah. As I write this, I’ve stopped attending orga- nized churches. After Haiti, I asked an elder of the church whether he, whether the church itself of people who identify with Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Vodoun, etc. will burn in Hell eter- have an answer. It was one of those our God is a merciful god, but the Book says…. He navigated skill- fully around the question as Christians often do. In this Christians closely resemble politicians. I “Jesus is love, right? It doesn’t seem to me that it matters what we call Him so much as we spread love, don’t you think? Seems way too human for God to be so overly concerned with whether we get His name right.” My twenty-four-year-old self, and now my so- phisticated quarter-of-a-century self, still cannot make sense of it. Seems so imperialistic. Believe this. Repeat after me. Don’t question it. Our way is the right way. Everything else is wrong, inferi- or. This bread is for you, but only after you say Jezi renmen ou access to those needs with your ability to repeat after the white man. Doesn’t sound like love to me. These days I try to write more. I read often. I travel when I can. I own three pairs of black stilettos. My carpet is beige, and my car’s market value is well under $20,000. In an ode to Emily Dickenson, I search for Jesus out in the world, in people, in nature, in words. I direct my prayers to Jesus – old habits die hard I suppose – and I pray daily. Jesus and I laugh at the idea that humans have fucked up love so monstrously, as if it could ever be so conditional. Call it only this; love only this type of person; change who you are; change everyone else around you. That can’t be right, right? And just when I feel like I’m getting somewhere, like I might be onto something, my dog gets sick. I drop to my knees and hurriedly text my church-going pals: put in a good word for me. Mercedez Schaefer