Chapter 1
I find that I’ve waded through the crowd to the front. Now, he looks directly at me and says,
“Corianne Bennett, tell them about life with Jesus.”
My heart hammers my ribs as he steps forward and holds out his left hand. I feel everyone clear a space around me before I see them move. My head starts to bounce about like a row boat on the ocean.
“Corianne?” he says, as if he really expects me to comply.
Somewhere in my mind a black chasm opens and I watch myself fall into it. Everything gets foggy as the snickers and murmurs fade away.
He had introduced himself as Lenin Markus Roberts the first time I stopped by the Anthropology Department this summer. The students have gotten to know him well already, as he holds a Teaching Assistantship in the department and has proven to be very resourceful. We enjoyed a great conversation the day I met him.
I would never have expected to see him like this, though. When I came over to the crowd initially, he held a Bible aloft and gestured to the crowd with his left hand.
His words carried well over the space:
“Jesus is indeed coming again! Only He can save you from eternal loss. The Bible says to choose life that you may live—not just life as we know it, but the life that Jesus gives. It is free and immortal through Him. Please, don’t throw your lives away. Don’t lose out on the greatest gift the universe holds: Jesus Christ.”
When the darkness clears, I’m standing in front of the group, which has diminished in size. To my right, a starry-eyed girl I’ve never met gabs on about her Christian faith. One of her arms wraps around me. To my left stands a radiant Lenin. Not soon enough, the whole thing ends. The individuals who had remained to listen walk away bit by bit while the girl turns to me.
“Hi Corianne! My name is Karen. I always love meeting a fellow Christian. I think it’s important for us to encourage each other in our faith. It would be great if you’d come out to a Christian Students’ Coalition meeting.”
I cringe as she continues to chirp.
“We meet mainly on Thursday nights at seven-thirty in the Student Union. Room one-oh-three. We start meeting again next week.”
Lenin ambles over and puts an arm around her shoulders. She gazes up at his face as he speaks. I glare at him.
“We’d love to have you, Corianne,” he says.
Anger rises in me like a cobra. I take a deep breath, then push it through my nose, which helps to dissipate some of the venom filling my chest.
“Is it that you get stage fright?” he asks me.
“No,” I say in muted fury.
That’s not it at all. You can’t force people to talk about their religious beliefs like that.
His eyes settle in their sockets as they cool with understanding. I can almost hear him say, “Oh. So that’s why,” and begin to judge me, class me as a fake Christian for not jumping at the opportunity to go on and on about my faith in front of a horde of strangers and acquaintances.
Well, if you want to go around stumping for the Lord, that’s your business, Lenin. Not everybody’s a preacher.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he says so softly, that if I weren’t watching his lips I probably would have missed it. Then he turns to respond to something Karen says to him.
I pivot a hundred and eighty degrees and march away. For the next two weeks I’m bombarded by people who either want to pull me into their Christian circle, argue with me about why Christianity makes no sense and why they have it right, ridicule me for taking, or not taking, a stand, and even by those who just want to shun me. Since when does shunning mean interaction?
Lenin and I have had occasion to converse since the incident, and we continue to disagree about our feelings. He believes that “a Christian should always be ready to stand for his faith regardless of the circumstances in which he finds himself.” I explained to him that I am not ashamed of my choice; I just think there’s a time and place. His counter? “But do you decide the time and place? Or does God?”
Touché.
Well, touché or not, he’s just wrong generally, and I hate myself for divulging so much about me during our summer chats. Now he’s on my banned persons list.
I don’t know what I would have done if my best friend Rhoda hadn’t chosen to come to the Pacific Northwest with me. We grew up together in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She moved there from Jamaica when she was thirteen, and we’ve been best friends ever since.
I gaze out the huge library windows. Sighing, I turn back to my notes. My stomach flips over in trepidation. I’ve been agonizing over my thesis proposal for weeks.
My cell phone starts to vibrate in my bag. When I see who’s calling, I jump out of my chair and begin to compile my things.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey honey,” Rhoda says. “I should be able to leave work on time today. We still on?”
“Yes. I’m leaving campus now.”
Stuffing the last pen into an outside pocket of my laptop bag, I grab my outer-wear and hurry through the library doors. I’ve been such a bad friend since we moved here. Rhoda called me on it the other day, so I have to make it up to her.
Bright magenta wool whips across my face again. With a sigh I unzip my corduroy coat a bit to tuck the end of the scarf inside, then re-zip it. Most likely sleet will be pelting the pavement before evening. I throw a glance to the bank across the street and catch the time on the digital clock in the window: four-seventeen. I made it to the café in record time.
When the light changes, I jog across the street and enter the shop, which sits right on the corner and owns a one hundred and thirty-five degree view of urban sprawl. More like urban climb. Guess Babel didn’t teach us much.
Karen is behind the counter. I oblige her with a wave. A table at the rear invites me and I beeline for it. Soon I’m seated with my laptop open. The wall of glass on my right grants me a good view of the rush hour traffic that has started to cramp the intersection. I want to pull my thoughts together for the thesis proposal that stares at me from my computer, but they keep going to the blustery late-autumn afternoon outside. I’ve wracked my brain since September to come up with something, but everything I’ve thought of eventually bores me. Karen’s group comes to mind. My soft laughter brings me back to reality. Please. What could I ever find to interest me anthropologically about that group? Professor Ingram would flatten me in his disagreement with that statement—with all due professional respect, of course.
I look at the pulsating cursor and grimace a little. This seemed so much easier in college; but then, I hadn’t needed to create projects over such a long term. Most projects could be completed in a few weeks, or a term or year. This project needs to have the potential to be used towards a doctoral dissertation so that I can keep my options open for my graduate education. The possibility still exists that I’ll want to go on to a PhD after I finish my Master’s, and I’d like to build on whatever niche I discover now.
“Still at it, huh?”
The softened Jamaican accent identifies my friend, and I look up as she sits across from me.
“Hey!” I say, surprised to find myself feeling relieved.
“Hi. You and that proposal. Why would you pay money for all that sufferation?”
I chuckle without reserve. “You’re just in denial about the fact that you’re terribly in love with learning and would give anything to be saddled with the rigors of educational discipline.”
“Touché.”
Regret jabs me in the belly. I shouldn’t have said that.
She hangs her sturdy tote on the back of her chair and slides out of her red suede jacket.
“Maybe something will grab me during vacation next week,” I say as I allow my eyes to trail back to the laptop screen.
“Yeah. Right. You’ll be too busy stuffing your face with turkey and enjoying the ethnic fatigue after.”
I enjoy a hearty laugh. “Well at least I won’t have to eat tofu turkey.”
“I have no reservations about being vegetarian, thank you.”
We look up as Karen stops at our table. “Hey y’all. Have you decided what you’d like to order?”
“I’ll go,” Rhoda says, after she sees my mental fumble. “I’d like the rose ginger tea with a cinnamon stick and two cranberry lemon scones.”
“Ooh, nice combo,” Karen says as she scribbles.
“Thanks. That’s what I love about Uma’s Café.”
I finally settle. “Okay. I’ll have peppermint tea with vanilla soy milk and . . . a blueberry bagel with cream cheese.”
“Want your bagel toasted?”
“Yes, please.”
“Okay. Be back in seven.” With several brisk steps she disappears behind the counter again.
The laptop holds my attention for a second before I swallow and fold it closed. “Rhoda, I’m sorry.”
Her eyes linger on the frozen-rain scene as she angles her face towards me again. “What for?”
“What I said about your love for learning.”
She looks at me now. Her dark orbs smolder a little. I had touched a nerve.
“That was thoughtless of me.”
Her hand reaches for her jacket pocket to remove her cell phone. She fiddles with the keypad. “As you said, you weren’t thinking when you said it.” She looks at me again. “I know you didn’t mean it.”
“So what are you doing about that?”
“About what?” she says, as the phone goes back into her pocket.
“Going back to school.”
“Oh, sweetie. That’s what you call an old dream. Don’t go pulling it out now.”
“What do you mean ‘old dream’?”
“Meaning, I’m working on a different plan now. I’ve got an amazing job, among other things, so I’m happy where I am.”
“So why did you seem angry?”
“Core, just let it go. Please. I have.”
“No you haven’t. It wouldn’t upset you so much if you were over it.”
“Stop acting like you know me.”
“It’s not acting.” I look down at the table, then back at her. “You should do anthro.”
She rolls her eyes.
Karen steps from the server area with a large, dark brown, oval-shaped plastic tray and a folded metal stand. My mouth starts to water and I realize I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I lift my laptop off the table and put it in its case.
“Here you are, ladies,” she says as she sets the stand on its feet and rests the tray on top. She proceeds to put the various parts of our order on the table. After she walks away, I ask Rhoda what we’re doing for dinner.
“Your dad said he’s cooking tonight. You know, I don’t know what we’d do without him. At the end of a long day, I’d most likely end up just ordering Chinese or something. And you know what would happen to my drop-dead figure.”
“Ha. You and your figure. If you spent any more time at the gym you’d become an exercise machine.”
“What are you saying, girl? I am an exercise machine!”
“Okay, okay. You are an exercise machine.”
She picks up a scone. “I’m still waiting,” she says, her focus intense on the pastry.
“Waiting for what?”
“For you to say something about not needing your dad.”
“Rhoda, it would be terribly ungrateful of me to say that now. I couldn’t believe mom would be so mutinous, but I do appreciate that she called dad when I got my acceptance letter, and that he was willing to put me up during my program.”
“There’s no way you’d want to be burdened with rent and the responsibility of all your meals and laundry and everything, plus classes, assignments, the commute. . . . And who knew my summer job would turn into such a lucrative thing? I’m glad he’s let me stay till now. He really isn’t as bad as you make him out to be.”
The milk bleeds out of line as I pour it into my tea. My feelings about dad have peaked and troughed so much over these last few months that I seldom want to delve into them.
I take a breath and smile. “Hey Rhoe, wasn’t that something driving out this summer?”
“Yeah. Pennsylvania to Oregon is quite the feat.”
“Come on, you’d do it again.”
“I would. In a heartbeat.”
She studies me for such a short moment that I almost believe she didn’t. Almost. I take a bite of my bagel.
A few minutes later, I count out the money needed to pay for my part of the order, then take out an extra bill to leave on the table for Karen. Rhoe follows suit. Before long we’re standing at the cashier. While she pays, I mull over my project. If I could just get a starting point I could do some research this week, rest over break, then attack research and the proposal draft before Christmas. My peripheral vision catches Karen as she steps to the counter again. I walk over.
“Hey Karen?”
“Hi Corianne, what can I do for you?”
“When is the next get-together for your group?”
Her eyes brighten as she smiles. “You gonna come?”
“Yes, I believe I will this time.”
“Great! Um, we’re meeting tomorrow night at seven-thirty in the Student Union, room one-oh-three.”
“One-oh-three. Okay, I guess I’ll see you there.”
“Sure thing!”
I smile back, then turn to walk out with Rhoe. Karen probably thinks I’m some kind of heathen since she doesn’t see me at those meetings.
“She probably just wants to be your friend, Cori.”
“Huh?”
“Karen. I don’t think she thinks you’re a heathen.”
“Did I say that out loud?”
“Yes, you did.”
I glance around at Karen, but she seems oblivious as she attends to another customer.
Rhoda laughs. “I’ll see you at home,” she says.
