Sumiko

January 1980
Indianapolis

In our absence, Carl and Nina and Louise have been painting the prayer room where Father will stay during his visit. I wish I could have been here to do it. I spent my summer after high school painting houses and I would have done a much better job. These guys just slapped it on, and that pisses me off a little. There’s nothing to be done about it now, though, so I don’t say anything.

Carl is disappointed by our fundraising result, but to my surprise Suzy defends me. She insists we got snookered by MFT, because South Bend had been fundraised just days before our arrival. Carl doesn’t really care. All he wants is the money, which he can’t wait to spend.

He takes me and Suzy and Nina to a furniture store where he shows us an expensive but hideously tacky black-lacquered, gold-trimmed Oriental style headboard with matching night stands and dresser he has picked out, plus a couple framed prints of Chinese cranes. I wonder to myself: Why not throw in a black velvet painting of Jesus with a crown of thorns for good measure?

I’m further dismayed when I learn the furniture will cost almost everything we made on our fundraising trip, with almost nothing left over. But Carl is excited and has his mind made up, so I watch silently as he hands over our hard-earned cash. We arrange to take deliver the following day.

I thought I’d be excited about Father’s visit, but at the moment I’m distraught over all the repairs needed around the center. Now there’s no extra money to do any of that stuff, and time is running out.

I do the best I can over the next several days, but the fixes are merely cosmetic and I feel bad I am not able to do better for Father. I secretly think the bedroom suite looks satanic, but Carl and the sisters love it. I hold my tongue.

Two days before his expected visit, we're told Father won’t be coming after all. He has decided to go deep-sea fishing down in the Florida Keys. I don’t know whether to celebrate or shoot myself.

A funk immediately settles over us and I deeply desire to have my Pink Floyd tape back. Carl tries to put the best face on it, but he’s the most disappointed of all and disappears for hours at a time into his office. Things soon change, however, with the arrival of a Japanese sister.

Sumiko is one of a small cadre of elder Japanese sisters known as itinerant workers, or IWs, who move around among church centers and MFT teams as morale boosters. The presence of an IW always has an immediate uplifting effect, no matter how miserable the members might feel. In addition, Sumiko is very pretty and I fall head over heels in love with her immediately.

Like all American brothers, I hold Japanese sisters on a pedestal. I regard them as mystical, holy beings who can read my thoughts and communicate telepathically with Father. I imagine that Sumiko will divine my situation and report back to Father how unfair it is that I must live under such a poor leader as Carl.

Having Sumiko here momentarily takes my mind off the daily routine of negativity and recrimination I’ve fallen into during the past two years. Instead she makes me think about marriage and a family, especially the possibility of an Oriental wife. That certainly would make all my suffering seem worthwhile.

As much as I enjoy Sumiko’s presence, Suzy does not. Jealousy is etched all over her wrinkled brown face. Sumiko has temporarily replaced her as the spiritual mother of our home, and Suzy doesn’t quite know how to act. She tries to hide it behind a façade of exaggerated support for Sumiko -- publicly testifying to Sumiko’s deep love for Father, her exemplary life of faith, her sacrificial spirit -- even though Suzy has never met Sumiko before now. We all know it’s bullshit. This is the kind of crap people say when they hate somebody’s guts. Seeing Suzy struggle so much gives me a perverse amount of joy.

To get over this emotional hump, Suzy has undertaken one of the most difficult conditions of all, a seven-day fast. Nothing but water for a full week. It’s only Day Two and already she is weak, ill and grumpy -- made all the more painful by the knowledge that it only gets worse. I’ve done several seven-day fasts, and they’re a bitch. But I always managed to keep going, fundraising and whatnot. I’ve never been totally wiped out like Suzy is now. Then again, she’s a lot older than me.

One evening Sumiko gives us her testimony, recounting how she met and joined the church in Japan some 15 years earlier when she was just a school girl. All of us are seated on the floor Oriental style except Suzy, who is stretched out flat on her back on the sofa, arm draped over her eyes. She’s obviously in a lot of discomfort, like a woman in labor. The week of fundraising aggravated the inflamed disk in her lower back, and fasting has magnified the pain. If she has to go to the bathroom, she crawls slowly across the floor on all fours like a crab, which strikes me as oddly befitting her personality.

I am totally enraptured by Sumiko. My depression over Father’s canceled visit completely evaporates in the presence of this Asian angel. She’s only a couple years older than me, and I’m surprised she is not married yet. As she speaks to us in lilting broken English, I can’t resist undressing her with my eyes and making love to her. My God she is gorgeous.

Sumiko enjoys our attention, but she is far too humble to concede she’s any better than the rest of us, which goes to show how superior she truly is. She assures us she struggles with her fallen nature just as much as we do. This is perhaps the most beautifully told lie I have ever heard. Apparently Suzy isn’t buying it either. She lifts her arm just enough to shoot a glance at the heavenly being before us, then lets it fall heavily back across her eyes with a soft groan.

After everyone else has gone to bed, Sumiko and I sit up in the kitchen, drinking ginseng tea she has brought with her. We don’t often have ginseng in the house because it’s so expensive. It tastes like dirt, but I have acquired a taste for it. It is considered a cure-all in the Orient. I started drinking it on MFT for my legs, not that it helped much. But I’m always happy to drink it anyway, especially because it gives me an excuse to spend ten more minutes with this lovely Japanese sister. Alone.

“How come you’re not married yet?” I ask her.

“I have many chance, but not ready yet I think.” She seems embarrassed by the question. “Soon I think.”

“Well, that brother will be very lucky,” I say, trying to put her at ease again.

“Some sister lucky to have you for husband too. You strong handsome brother.” The word “brother” buzzes off her teeth as “bra-zuh.” I think it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. Her flattery sends me soaring.

“You MFT?” she asks, eager to shift the focus off herself.

“Yes. Until recently. A couple months ago. I’m still getting used to the slower pace of the center. I’m accustomed to being on the go all the time.” Lest I create the impression I’m slacking off, I hasten to add: “Of course, we’re always on the go, too. It’s just different, that’s all. Not quite so intense as MFT.”

She makes a sad smile that simply melts my heart. “Always I am center member. Never I fundraise MFT. Father love MFT bra-zuh and shis-tah very much. You very lucky.”

I don’t feel so lucky. Most of the time I’m miserable and depressed. I tell myself it’s indemnity -- reversing the course of my fallen nature. It’s similar to, but not the same as the Eastern concept of karma. I can’t really explain it. But the practically reality is this: All the evil crap I did in my life before joining the church? Well, I can expect to have to undo all of it -- and a whole lot more on behalf of the world and spirit world. If this is luck, it sucks.

“What wrong,” she asks. “You no like ginseng?”

“The tea is great. I was just thinking I don’t feel so lucky. About being on MFT, I mean. I used to. I was a pretty good fundraiser and team captain. But then something bad happened to me in Texas. Something that wasn’t my fault and shouldn’t have happened. No one believed me and that sort of killed my spirit and I had a nervous breakdown. It took me a long time to pull myself back together. I’m better now, but I’m not the same. I’m still very sad. I lost something valuable, something that was important to me. I don’t think I’ll ever get it back, and that’s a pain that won’t go away. You know how if someone loses a child they never get over it? That’s how I feel. Someone inside me died, and I miss him. I want him back but I know he’s gone.”

Sumiko’s face radiates pure love and genuine concern. Deep midnight eyes convey more compassion than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I am dying to spill my guts across the clean kitchen table. But I can’t. It’s not her problem. I would rather kill myself than tell this beautiful creature such an ugly thing.

“Maybe engagement soon,” she says, hoping to cheer me up.

Ah, yes. The matching. It and the blessing hang out there in the indeterminant future like a giant golden carrot, and that keeps me going day after day. Even stupid oafs like Carl get a wife, and middle-aged hags like Suzy get a husband. But along with the carrot comes the stick, which I feel up my ass all the time.

“Yes,” I say. “But I don’t think I’m eligible yet. I’m still too young.”

“You ask for Japanese wife?”

Her question surprises me, as though any American brother in his right mind might give an answer other than an emphatic yes. So much for my theory about her being able to read my mind. Of course I would never say so, not out loud. After all, that decision is not for me to make. It’s up to God to choose my mate, through Father. So I say what I always say when this comes up: “I only want someone who needs a lot of love. I feel I have a lot of love to give, so anyone is okay. Even an ugly sister shaped like a potato.”

Sumiko giggles like delicate tinkling bells. Her tiny porcelain hand covers her mouth, as all Japanese sisters do when they laugh. Her eyes crinkle beneath gently bouncing bangs as she pictures me marrying a potato. I can’t help but laugh too. It makes me feel so good to have made her laugh like this. She is so adorable I can hardly stand it.

“You great bra-zuh,” she says, and then another fit of giggles overtakes her.

Unlike American sisters who chop off their hair, Sumiko’s flows down her back in a shiny raven river. A tiny wall lamp frames her head in a halo. Her elbows rest upon the Formica tabletop, slender forearms and hands entwined in an exquisite ivory helix. She is smiling. I silently pray to God to let me die right now. I want this to be the final thing I see. 

Left Behind

January 1980
Indianapolis

A brother named Paul passed through not long ago, on his way to Seattle. He told me he had been on MFT in Florida for a few months and hated his team captain and hated his commander and he had ended up at a workshop in Tarrytown for problem members at Mr. Kamiyama's house and hated that too and got into a screaming match with Mr. Kamiyama one evening and got thrown out. So he was on his way back to the Pacific Northeast to find his spiritual mother and try to find someplace to fit in other than MFT.

I told him I totally understood what he had been through, and then I told him about W, my nervous breakdown, and ultimately my own showdown with Mr. Kamiyama two summers ago. Paul laughed at that. He said he had met some other members, including a sister in Philadelphia, who had also had dramatic confrontations with Mr. K over how they were being treated on MFT. Paul said Mr. K really didn't give a shit what happened to individual members. He only cared about monetary results for Father. That's what made him such an effective MFT leader. As far as Mr. K was concerned, if someone couldn't hack it on MFT, he didn't need them and he didn't care what they did.

That certainly summed up my experience with him. Mr. K came to visit Indiana last year, the first time I had seen him since our showdown in the yard, and he acted like he had never seen me before. For all I know he may have had no recollection of that day. I think now, based on what Paul said, that maybe our confrontation wasn't so unusual for Mr. K and that's why he was able to forget it so easily. It's funny how something that could be such a big deal in my mind could be totally insignificant to the other person. Or maybe it was simply Mr. K's way of "fixing" the problem. He deliberately provoked me to stand up to him, because that was how to make me better. Either that or I would back down and shut up.

I'm only mentioning this because Mr. Sawamukai, who was also there that day I cussed out Mr. K, arrived in Indianapolis today to install a new MFT commander over Indiana and Kentucky. He didn't seem to remember me either. To him I was just another nameless, faceless center member of no value to MFT, and therefore of no significance to him.

A new commander was a disturbing new wrinkle to the tenuous fabric of my spiritual life. Larry Krishnek, probably my best friend in the church, was leaving Indiana to become commander of Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota. This new order was simply a further modification of the subdivision of the United States into geographic fundraising regions, a nationwide mechanism that has been fully operational and lucrative for many years.

Except for heavily populated urban centers like New York and Los Angeles, the typical MFT region comprises several states. Each region is led by an MFT commander, who has under him four or five team captains, who in turn have under them up to eight fundraisers a piece. Each team has its own van -- bought and owned by headquarters in New York -- and its own assigned area within its region. Cross-border raids, even within a single region, are deeply frowned upon, but otherwise the competition to outdo each other is fierce. Hence, MFT is almost always in some level of competition, with each team trying to be the best in the region, and each region trying to be the best in the nation. It’s a very effective strategy for raising money, but hell on the members over the long haul.

It’s a huge honor and a sign of Father’s trust to be chosen as an MFT commander, because the amount of money generated is phenomenal. Even when teams and individual members are struggling, the cash piles up very quickly in the vinyl bank bags that each van carries. Thick stacks of ones and fives, with smaller stacks of tens and twenties, plus fifties and hundreds and a ton of coins -- all must be wrapped and counted twice a week to send to headquarters.

Every Monday and Thursday, without fail, each team captain is responsible to wire his team’s result from the previous several days to the Chemical Bank in New York, where the church’s MFT account is set up. One team captain in Texas had the account number engraved on the inside of a Western-style belt buckle so he wouldn’t forget it. I had it memorized. Bank wires were almost never less than $2,000 and often quite a bit more. Twice a week, 52 weeks a year, times 60 or so teams across the country. It adds up pretty quickly. Most of the money, from what I gather, is put into the New York real estate market.

Larry Krishnek had been in the navy and had a panther tattooed on his upper arm. It caused him a lot of embarrassment after he joined the church and a few weeks ago he decided to have it removed. It was horrible. The doctor scrubbed his arm with salt until it bled, leaving a nasty wound. Even after it healed, the panther was still visible, although much paler. To get it completely removed, he’ll have to go through that painful process three or four more times, and it will leave a scar. But Larry is willing to do it.

It was Larry who rescued me down in Texas and then kept me going here in Indiana. Now he was leaving. My apprehension over his imminent departure was growing by the hour. He was the only leader who knew my secrets, and these secrets are too big for me to bear alone. Who will I turn to if things suddenly get hairy?

I needed a new anchor, someone who could help me fight the spiritual disease I contracted down in Texas. Unfortunately, Carl was my only option. He only knew very vaguely that I had a falling out with W. But he hadn't asked many questions, and I hadn't volunteered much information. Our relationship was still too young and untested to be burdened by so much unpleasant personal baggage. Besides, Carl had done nothing to earn my trust and respect.

To mark the occasion of installing a new commander in our region and of sending Larry to a new one, Mr. Sawamukai took all of us -- both center members and MFT -- to Shoney’s for dinner. More than 40 people were seated at two large banquet tables in a back room. Suzy was the only one who was not there. She was bedridden with one day to go of her week-long fast. It would have been cruel to bring her here to watch us eat.

“I’m going to miss Larry,” I said to Carl.

“I understand you two go back a long ways,” he replied.

“He was my captain down in Houston, before he became commander up here.”

“He seems like a good guy, a good leader. But I don’t know him very well.”

“Larry’s the best. I got very sick down in Texas -- physically and spiritually -- and if it weren’t for him I might have left.”

“Really?” Carl seemed surprised. “You always come across as very strong and together.”

“Trust me, those were the darkest days I could ever imagine. Our MFT center was a little wooden house on stilts in a swamp in a poor Mexican neighborhood. It was really cold and damp in the winter. I wasn’t there in the summer, but I’m told the mosquitoes were unbearable. Right after I got there I came down with the flu. The whole house was freezing all the time. My fever was over a 102 for five days, and my eardrum almost burst from an infection. It was awful," I said. “We only had two rooms, one bath and a kitchenette. I never imagined that Houston could be so cold in the winter. We had a couple electric space heaters, but we stayed bundled up all the time. I was never warm in that house. It was better to be out on a team than to be stuck in that dump, but I was so sick I couldn’t move."

I paused. Carl only seemed to be half-listening. Nothing I was saying was making much of an impression. “Without Larry, I don’t think I would have made it. Spiritually, I mean.”

“What happened with you and Commander?” Carl asked, slicing into a steaming T-bone.

The directness of his question knocked me back a bit. “It’s not easy to talk about.” I stared at my food, wondering what to say next. For the first time, I was actually warming up to Carl a bit, because for the first time he is paying attention to me as a living, breathing person and not just some mindless member.

“Larry was the only person who believed me,” I said finally.

“I don’t understand. Why would anyone not believe you?”

“Because what happened was unbelievable. If it had happened to someone else and they had told me, I would have said no way. It’s impossible.”

“I’m confused,” Carl said, jamming a piece of red meat into his pink face. “What’s impossible?”

I needed to tell him something, but I didn't want to say too much. I was beginning to regret even bringing the subject up. I didn't trust Carl. I stalled for an answer, fluffing my baked potato and piling on butter and sour cream. I stabbed a bit of salad with my fork -- a piece of lettuce, a bit of cucumber, a cherry tomato, a little dressing -- as though trying to spear just the right combination of words to satisfy Carl’s curiosity without getting into really weird territory.

I decided to take the hypothetical route. “If you committed a sin, some sort of chapter two problem, do you think you could keep that hidden from Father?”

“No, of course not. Father would know immediately.”

“That’s what I thought too. It would be impossible to keep that kind of secret. And if you tried, Satan would attack for sure.” Carl nodded. What I was saying was obvious to anyone in the church. “Anyway, the problem I had with W was along those lines.”

Carl stopped eating and stared at me. It’s the exact same reaction I got from Dale Garratt two summers ago. “You had a chapter two problem with Commander?”

“I didn’t have one with him. He had one with me.”

Carl shifted nervously in his chair. I could tell he didn't believe me either. “You shouldn’t talk that way about another brother, especially an MFT commander.”

“See? I told you it was unbelievable. You don’t believe it either.” When faced with the option of believing an esteemed MFT commander and a lowly problem member, who's going to get the benefit of the doubt? I wouldn't have believed me either if I hadn't experienced it myself.

I decided to drop it. There was no point in discussing it any more. Carl had his own emotional problems -- that was clear enough to me -- and he didn't need my horror stories, whether real or imagined, to burden him further. Both of us returned to our meals.

“Suzy and I will be going to next matching,” Carl said. Both he and I were grateful for the change of subject. “You’ll be in charge while we’re gone.”

“Why does Suzy get to go? I’ve been in the church longer than she has.”

“Older sisters get special dispensation. It’s important they not get too old to have children, and she’s nearly 35. She might be almost 40 by the time the blessing rolls around.”

We didn't speak anymore during dessert. I was neutral toward Carl and Suzy getting matched and me staying behind. I didn't feel like I wanted to deal with that yet. I was secretly glad my time had not yet come.

As we left the restaurant, I asked Carl: “Do you think the blessing wipes the slate clean, like starting over with your life, no matter what happened before?”

Carl didn't look directly at me, and it seemed he was talking more to himself than to me. “I hope so. I’m really, really counting on it.” 

Doris Orme

February 1980
Indianapolis

“Father would never sleep in that…that…monstrosity!”

Doris Orme howls from the prayer room. “Only Satan himself would sleep in that!”

She viciously stabs a trembling scarlet fingernail in the direction of the black-lacquered headboard with gold-trim that Carl picked out just two weeks ago when we thought Father was coming to visit.

Mrs. Orme, a legend in the church I had only heard about up until this moment, has come crashing into our tranquil lives like a Technicolor cyclone. She’s been in the center but a few minutes and already the heavens are raining fire and brimstone all around us. I’ve never seen anything like her. She’s 200 pounds of orange hair, thick makeup and heavy perfume -- a stinking, whirling, screaming banshee. I don’t mind saying I’m scared out of my wits.

“Carl!” she bellows. I’m certain everyone on the block can hear her. “What’s the meaning of this? All of you! This is outrageous. Un-ac-cep-ta-ble.” She draws out each syllable to dramatically magnify her already overflowing indignation. Her face is flush with rage, as though an entire container of rouge weren’t enough. I expect her to scream “Off with their heads!” at any moment.

She slams the door to the offending room and stomps down the hall toward the sisters’ bathroom, where she launches into another tirade. Louise squeaks like a mouse and dashes into the sisters’ bedroom to hide. Mrs. Orme’s expansive vocal judgment continues from room to room until she’s toured the entire house. Carl is as white as a sheet. I’ve never seen him cower like this. The rest of us are motionless with mute terror.

As we are learning in a very vivid way, Doris Orme loves to make a dramatic entrance. It must be her theatrical background. She’s a mythical figure in the church, one of the first Westerners to follow Father. That was some 30 years ago, and time has not mellowed her at all. Rumor has it she was once an up-and-coming opera star in her native England but gave it up for the higher calling of disciple. Judging by the full-throttle squall emanating from her throat, I’d say she never really left it behind.

Mrs. Orme, and her lamb-like husband, Dennis, blew into town a short time ago. Supposedly it’s some sort of consolation prize for Father canceling his tour of the state centers. She has been the national leader of Britain for many years, and Father recently ordered her to travel around the United States and kick up some dust. So far as I’m concerned, she’s doing a bang up job here in Indianapolis.

In a patriarchal society like ours, Doris Orme is an anomaly. She’s a big-boned woman, in her late fifties, with brass balls and iron tits, one of the few women in the church, besides Onni, who can rightfully claim to be part of Father’s inner circle. She speaks and acts with absolute authority, subservient only to Father himself.

For reasons I cannot fathom, Mrs. Orme paints herself up like a cheap, aging hooker. Perhaps it’s her stage persona. In any event, she’s the only woman I’ve met in the church who wears makeup, and she wears enough to make up for all the rest of them. Thick mascara, fleshy jowls glowing red with rouge, and hair dyed bright carrot orange piled atop her head in a beehive. She is a fright to behold.

Dennis, on the other hand, is about as bland and meek a fellow as I’ve ever met. He barely utters a peep, totally content to live beneath the spiked heels of his overbearing wife. Every time I glance at him, he has the same moronic expression. He looks like the happiest imbecile on the face of the planet.

Doris Orme has an annoying habit of referring to herself in the third person -- the imperial “we.” I suppose, combined with her heavy British accent, this is intended to effect an air of aristocracy. Her freakish appearance I can suffer, but the exaggerated pomposity makes me want to puke. I dislike her immediately and intensely. I imagine Father must find her amusing, like a court jester.

Her tantrum gradually subsides and a weird, surreal calm settles over the center. It’s like the quiet stillness following a killer tornado when all you’re left with is splinters and rubble and bloody corpses. Her face registers supreme satisfaction. She has accomplished what she came to do.

My beloved Sumiko left several days ago for St. Louis, and Suzy, now recovered from her fast, is back in form. She serves Mrs. Orme tea and cookies like a doting daughter. She seems to be the only one among us who enjoys this bizarre visitation.

“Mother Suzy,” Mrs. Orme says. “Your spirit is aglow with the Holy Spirit. We can see you have suffered much for heaven. Just finished a seven-day fast, did we? My, my. You are blessed. A true daughter of God! We’ll make sure Father picks you a strong, handsome husband at the matching, you can be sure of that! Someone who will be a real man in the boudoir and not disappoint, eh?” The sisters all blanch at the blunt reference to ramrod sex. Suzy, however, is beaming like a lighthouse. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she just had an orgasm.

It’s a nauseating display, and just when I think it can’t get any worse, it does. For the first time all afternoon, Dennis Orme suddenly pops his head out of his shell and pipes up: “Dear, I bet these brothers and sisters would love to hear you sing. Your voice is like a choir of angels. Grace us with a hymn or two, won’t you please?”

Oh God, please no. I can see what’s about to happen. I’d rather drag a rake slowly across a blackboard.

“Now pet,” she demurs with much-practiced reluctance. “These young people don’t want to hear an old lady sing.”

“Sure they do!” Dennis cries. It’s clear to me now why she drags this nitwit around with her. “Wouldn’t you love to hear Doris sing? Her voice is a heavenly treasure. It really is. Come on, love!”

Carl and the sisters all begin pleading with her until she finally relents, but there’s no doubt in my mind she was going to sing anyway, even if we had begged her not to.

Her voice is worse than I feared. It’s not just bad. It’s shockingly bad. Loud and off-key and florid. Hideous comes to mind. I’m embarrassed for her, because she has no idea what she really sounds like. I try hard to keep from laughing. Everyone else is lapping it up, Suzy most of all. And at the end of each mutilated hymn, they all implore “One more!” with Dennis leading the charge.

The impromptu concert ends mercifully an hour later, but not before I have a splitting headache. I long to listen to Pink Floyd, but that’s impossible so I settle for a couple aspirins.

“Come dear darling daughters of God,” Mrs. Orme warbles to the sisters. She leads them into their bedroom and shuts the door, no doubt to gird their tender loins with yet another verbal chastity belt -- just in case any of them are nursing impure thoughts. Which I seriously doubt. In my heightened awareness of the female vibe, I’m pretty sure I’d have picked up on that right away.

Frankly, I wish I were in there with them rather than be stuck out in the living room with Carl and Dennis. Dennis is too simple-minded to have any great pearls of wisdom for us. So he entertains us with tales about the church’s epic legal battles with the British government.

“Jolly good persecution,” he calls it. I’m at a loss to see how the full weight of the crown aimed at legislating the Unification Church out of existence in Britain is “jolly good persecution.” I conclude Dennis is every bit the village idiot he appears to be.

Meanwhile, from beyond the forbidden bedroom door I can hear the missus making her points with passionate intensity, her voice rising and falling with the cadence of an evangelical preacher on a roll. I would love to know what she is saying about us brothers. No doubt she’s explaining in graphic detail how to neuter a male when the messy business of procreation is finished.

I look at Dennis. He’s wearing the same blank smile he has had all day. Clearly Doris knows what she’s talking about. 

Pie in the Sky

February 1980
Indianapolis

Against all expectation, my harsh opinion of Doris Orme softens over breakfast the next morning. No longer needing to scare the bejesus out of us, she seems almost, well, normal. Even her makeup is toned down. Over corned beef and poached eggs she regales us with funny stories, like the time she was forced to go fishing with Father out in the English Channel.

“We don’t like the ocean, no not one bit, but how can one say no to the messiah, eh? So out we go and the weather is dreadful as always and the boat, this leaking old wooden thing we rented, is going up and down, up and down, up and down on the waves. And Father loves it. He’s right at home on the ocean. But we’re beginning to feel a bit woozy, you know, and before you know it we’re holding onto the railing for dear life, throwing up all over the deck. And Father and everyone else on the boat think this is very funny and are laughing, and Father says, ‘Puke over the side, Doris! Chum the waters! Puke over the side!’ So we made it our heavenly duty to vomit a blue streak into the English Channel, and Father catches a huge fish, don’t you know. And Father said, ‘Doris, this fish thought your puke was manna from heaven.’”

I'm laughing so hard I'm crying, thinking of the matronly, aristocratic Doris Orme in her Sunday best tossing her cookies in the middle of the English Channel, chumming the waters so the messiah can catch a fish.

Dennis, who has heard the story a million times, each time a bit more embellished than the last, gazes at his wife like a lapdog. In return, she dotes on him like a mother. Which is sort of true. She explains how Dennis was a low-level State Department employee at the U.S. Embassy in London. She says the moment she met him she made it her mission to bring him into the church so he could be her husband.

“Of course, I had to raise him up in the ways of our church first, which took a good number of years,” she says, “but I never wavered from the goal. Just like Eve should have done for Adam. Isn’t that right, dear?”

“Right as rain, pet,” he says. “You did a first-class job, if I do say so myself.”

Her story makes me think of Leslie, whom I still daydream about frequently. I’ve often wondered if I could do the same thing with her, bring her to the church so later we could be married. But I haven’t heard from her in more than a year. I toy with the idea of writing to her, inviting her to Indianapolis, but I don’t. I know in my heart she would never come. There’s no point in tormenting myself about it.

A couple days later, Doris takes me aside. I’m half expecting she's suddenly going to start screaming at me about something, but she is very sweet and motherly. “Let’s go someplace to talk, just the two of us.”

I take her to one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants, the Illinois Street Emporium. She has tea, I have coffee. We share a piece of cherry pie, the house specialty. I love their pie.

In a very matter-of-fact way she says, “You know, we” -- meaning her -- “can see into the spirit world and know many things ordinary people don’t.”

“So I’ve gathered. Are you psychic?”

“We’re clairvoyant.” I suddenly realize why she speaks in the plural. She believes she is surrounded at all times by legions of angels and high spirits and that she speaks on behalf of all of them. It's a revelation to me that she’s not being conceited. She’s trying to be honest, to acknowledge the presence of these spiritual beings in everything she says and does. “We don’t listen to the low spirits," she says. "Just the angels. Jesus. Spirits from the higher realms.” She says this in such a matter-of-fact way that I almost believe her.

“I wish I could.”

“It’s a burden, child, not a pleasure. Be grateful you don’t. These beings are tormented because all of them failed somehow in their earthly lives, even Jesus. Only Father totally succeeded at defeating Satan. But much remains to be done. Father is counting on all of us. You don’t need to see or hear the spirit world. You just need to accomplish your mission.”

“And what exactly is my mission?”

“To unite with Carl as your Abel.”

“But I hate him. He’s a terrible leader. He’s such an idiot sometimes. Just look at that hideous bedroom suite he picked out for Father. You saw it. It’s satanic.”

“That’s true, but that’s not the point. The point is Cain hated Abel and murdered his brother. You’re indemnifying Cain’s failure to overcome his hurt feelings and sense of injustice when God rejected his offering but accepted Abel’s. He was supposed to love his brother anyway. Up until now you’ve only had Abel figures who were easy to unite with. There’s not much indemnity or growth in that.”

“I try. Everyday I try to love Carl. I pray about it, and still he just” -- I stop myself before saying “pisses me off” -- “makes it so difficult.”

“The same way Cain must have felt toward Abel. But think what would have happened if Cain had overcome his jealousy of Abel -- had not murdered his brother -- and instead humbled himself and accepted his younger brother as his elder. Christ could have been born almost immediately, and Adam’s family could have been restored.”

“You’re right, of course. But…”

“But what?”

“Sitting here with you in this place, it seems so clear cut. But every day is a huge battle. I’m unhappy almost all of the time. I’m depressed. I miss my family. I want to go home. A few years ago I was gung-ho -- excited and committed. Nothing could stop me. Then something happened and it’s as though a wonderful spell was broken and everything became difficult and dull and boring. All I feel is tired and lonely, and nothing I do seems to change that. I feel I’ve failed already.”

“Father was extremely unhappy throughout much of his life, yet he never gave up. He found joy in comforting God’s broken heart. Our path is one of tears and sorrow. There is no other way. But Father has already accomplished everything. What remains for us to do is very small by comparison. Our path is much easier. And soon you will receive his blessing, a wife, and together you will have children born free of the Original Sin. That is Father’s gift to mankind, but only a chosen few will receive it, those who successfully walk his course.”

“I know.”

“Listen to us carefully. Carl needs you as much as you need him. He doesn’t have your charm or good looks. He needs your support. And you need his, because without it you are in great danger of falling. Your unity with him is your only possible shield from the trials that lay ahead before you. You are a handsome and righteous young man and many women, both sisters in the church and women in the fallen world, will try to seduce you, just as Eve seduced Adam. You must not let that happen. You must be on guard at all times. Once you start down the path of sexual temptation, you can almost never turn back. If you fall, Father will have no choice but to turn away from you.”

It’s not her words but her demeanor that terrify me. I feel her looking into my heart and seeing all the lust and selfish desire I keep there. I have a strange feeling she could know all about Texas if she wanted, but chooses not to, perhaps out of respect for my privacy, I don’t know.

I have a profound sense my spiritual life hangs in the balance. I can go either way. The choice is mine. I can fight on and remain celibate until I’m blessed, or I can give in to sex. There is no middle ground.

As if reading my mind, she says: “To be offered this fabulous blessing from Father and then throw it away on cheap sex -- for that there is no forgiveness.”

“What about our sex lives before the church?”

“Father forgives those transgressions conditionally. That’s why if you were married before, you must leave your family. Or better yet, bring them along. But still husband and wife must separate and remain pure until the blessing. And then by fundraising and raising up spiritual children, you indemnify the past. When you are finally blessed in holy marriage, then all is forgiven and the stain of Original Sin is removed. The first generation of sinless children. That is your ultimate mission and legacy.”

“But what if the temptation -- or impetus -- to fall comes from a church leader?”

“The coldest, blackest part of hell is reserved for them,” she says darkly. “The space occupied by Satan, where Father has him bound in a giant lake of ice. Anyone who turns another away from the truth ends up there.” Her eyes are shiny and distant, as though she can actually see it.

“It’s funny how the Bible depicts hell as fire and brimstone, like a volcano,” I say.

Doris snorts. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Hell is like the remotest part of Antarctica in the dead of winter at midnight, absolutely dark and frozen. Only much, much worse. You’re totally naked, and can only curl up in a fetal position. You can’t imagine such burning cold slicing through you for eternity. Not a single solitary soul around to even comfort you. Nothing. Just cold, black, painful nothing. That’s hell.”

“How do you know this?”

“We have journeyed to the heights and depths of the spirit world.”

She makes it sound so real. I almost believe her. But I know in a few days she’ll be gone and the sexual thoughts will start up again.

“Will Father forgive me if I made a mistake but it wasn’t my fault?”

“Only you and God know what you did and what was in your heart. All of us feel Satan’s accusations about many things. The question you really should ask yourself is this: Even if you are turned away from the Kingdom of Heaven, will you still follow Father?”

I never thought of it that way. I had always considered my life in the church as an either / or proposition. I was either on the bus or off the bus. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I should just accept that I’m doomed and quit worrying about it. Maybe I’ll end up in hell. So what? I’m getting to the point I don’t care anymore. Maybe that’s just where I need to be if I’m going to stay in this crazy church.

In a very weird way, Doris Orme has turned my hopelessness into a source of comfort. 

Mice Wars

April 1980
Indianapolis

MFT moved out of the center a few weeks ago. The new commander and Carl didn’t really get along. It seems commander felt the atmosphere of the center was too laid-back for MFT, so he moved the MFT operations to a farm on the highway to Terre Haute, near the truck stop. It will probably be more convenient for them anyway, being so close to all the major highways. Commander did let us keep the old MFT van we had been using, so I’m glad about that.

The weather has finally warmed up and the long, dreary winter is over. I feel better emotionally than I’ve felt in years. It’s been a couple months since the Ormes were here, and last I heard the holy terrors were still crisscrossing the country and striking the fear of God into everybody. From time to time brothers and sisters from other parts of the country pass through and spend a day or two. We swap war stories about the Ormes and have a good laugh. But the bottom line is I really got to like the old gal and I was sorry when she left.

The oddest part for me is my spirit has been totally calm. Ever since Mrs. Orme and I had the talk in the pie shop I had expected her spiritual inoculation, if I can call it that, to fade away after she left. But it didn't. So I tried to take full advantage of the renewed energy and clarity. This is probably as close to happy as I can realistically expect. Or to put it another way, I've pretty much quit thinking about W or Texas or what happened.

My body is changing. I’m a little bigger and a little heavier. I look more like a man and less like a kid. I've been working out with the weights and eating well and getting more rest. I’ve settled into a comfortable routine. I don’t miss MFT anymore. I’ve adjusted to center life.

Even my relationship with Carl has improved. I no longer see him as a pompous asshole, but rather a guy not much different from myself who’s wrestling with his own demons. I still don’t think much of his leadership abilities, but at least we’ve become friends.

The turning point was when Carl got a letter from home, from his mother, in California. She told him his father had moved out of the house and was living in a mobile home along the Russian River with some waitress he met at a truck stop. Thirty-eight years of marriage -- swept away in an errant beat of the heart. Carl was devastated by the news. He tried hard not to show it, but it really ate him up. At night when the sisters would go to bed, he and I would sit up and talk.

Until now he’d never said a word about his life before the church. I was shocked as hell at how much we had in common, and I was stunned when he told me he had once been an aspiring rock musician with long hair who had jammed with some semi-famous people in the Bay Area. I had always assumed Carl’s interest was folk music, probably because he sort of looks like Art Garfunkel and knows all that music by heart. I had always admired Carl’s enormous talent as a guitarist, but I never would have guessed he had once been an in-demand player in San Francisco’s psychedelic music scene.

Under the circumstances I told him about my lifelong obsession with the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd, and he was extremely understanding. He said his idols had been Paul Butterfield and Jimi Hendrix. I was absolutely green with envy when he told me he had been to Woodstock, just before he joined the church.

Carl said his dad had always been a bit of a rascal and a free spirit, but he adored him and desperately wanted to go to California to talk some sense into his dad and to comfort his mother. But he said his responsibilities were to Father first, so he refused to go, instead choosing to try to handle the family crisis as best he could by letters and phone calls.

Apparently his dad’s infidelity was short-lived, because about three weeks later his mother wrote that he had come home, realizing he’d made a mistake and begging for forgiveness. His mother said she was still angry and hurt and undecided about taking him back, but Carl was relieved all the same. He seemed confident they would work it out.

Since then we’ve spent a lot more time together, especially playing guitar. I’ve been playing on an old 12-string I found last winter in the storage room and he’s been teaching me. Already I’m getting to where I can play most of the major chords without looking. Sometimes he and I go downtown and play on street corners and then witness to people who gather around to listen. Lately when people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I'm a writer. I don't know why. The only thing I write is this journal, but for some reason it feels like the most honest answer.

Carl also let me buy an old 35mm camera and an old enlarger at the pawnshop down the street, and then I turned the laundry room in the basement into a crude darkroom. It’s been fun having a little hobby. We also bought a small aquarium and some angel fish for the living room. And I built a table saw out of scrap parts I found in the basement. One day while I was out fundraising a guy in a motor repair shop gave me a small electric motor, and somehow I managed to get the whole thing put together. The first time I turned it on it scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t believe how well it worked. I didn’t really need a table saw -- or a camera or aquarium or 12-string for that matter -- I just needed to make things, to do something with my hands. All my years on MFT, my only creative outlet was this journal.

We still do a fair amount of fundraising and witnessing, and in a few months we’ll begin our 40-day pioneering conditions. I can hardly wait. I just want to go someplace by myself and see what I can do, without having a central figure to answer to. I have no idea where I’ll go, but Carl seems to think we’ll each be sent to Ohio. It doesn’t matter much to me. I just want to get out in the real world for a while.

In the meantime, I keep busy, and derive much of my personal satisfaction, from mundane chores like mowing the grass and painting the outside trim on the house, which badly needs it. For a house of God, it’s kind of shabby. The yellow brick façade and terra cotta roof are fine, but the paint is peeling and the windows need re-glazing. And since these are things well within my expertise, Carl gives me time and money on most days to work on these improvements. I painted the trim and windows white, but I chose a Wedgwood blue to complement the pale yellow brick for the stucco.

On an inspiration, I decided to paint the background of the decorative bas-relief on the front of the house, to make it stand out. I swear to God it actually looks like Wedgwood pottery. It totally transformed the appearance of the house. Even an elderly neighbor from across the street came over to tell me how elegant it looks. He says that’s how it appeared 40 years ago when the house was new.

So much for the exterior. We have a serious rodent problem. At night I can hear mice racing back and forth in the ceiling between the first and second floors. There must be dozens, maybe hundreds of them. The only access is in the closet in the prayer room, where a panel opens to the bathtub pipes in the sisters’ bathroom. I opened it up and put a trap baited with peanut butter in the space and then put the cover back. I wasn’t even down the hall when I heard it snap. I set it again, and again it caught a mouse within moments. I did this several more times, then I ran down to the hardware store and bought several more traps, plus some poison.

For a few days I caught between 25 and 30 mice a day, sometimes even getting two in one trap. Then it tapered off to about a dozen a day, and after two weeks the body count was down to about one or two a day.

As the mice war was winding down, a new brother arrived at our center temporarily. It was a refreshing change to have some male companionship besides Carl. Greg was on MFT like me, though never a captain. He simply fundraised, year in and year out, mostly around Chicago, until his physical health gave out from two much junk food and not enough rest. He’s probably going to go to New York to help start “ocean church,” Father’s new tuna fishing business. I wish I could go, but I doubt that’s in the cards for me.

In the couple weeks he was with us, Greg decided to help me in my restoration projects by tackling the broken tiles in the sisters’ bathtub. Neither of us had done that type of work before, but we figured it couldn’t be that hard. Next thing I knew he had pulled all the old tiles off and cut out the rotten wood, leaving a gaping hole in the wall.

But before he could finish the job, Carl sent him out fundraising for a few days to make the airfare to New York. The delay pissed me off, because now it looked like one more thing to add to my list, and it was turning into a bigger job than we thought. Greg covered up the hole with clear plastic and promised to finish when he returned in a few days.

The next day, while most everyone was out of the center, I was huddled in the prayer room closet checking the mousetraps when I heard the bathroom door close. My heart started pounding. I knew I should leave immediately, but I couldn’t move. A coldness covered me like an icy blanket and I began to shiver. I felt paralyzed. And through the plastic I saw Nina. I had forgotten she was in the house. I watched her undress and get into the shower.

For twenty minutes I trembled at the forbidden sight of her beautiful, smooth skin. Whatever it was that had been shielding me from sexual temptation these past couple months, it was literally being washed down the drain.

When she was done, I quietly left the house. After the intense cold that had enveloped me in the closet, the warm spring air was soothing. I’m not sure how I felt. I knew I should have been guilt-ridden, but I wasn’t. I felt excited and, I don’t know how else to say it, fortunate. I felt like the luckiest guy alive because of a chance encounter that I had no control over.

I decided to walk it off, so I headed over to Butler College, where I spent the rest of the afternoon in the student union. I like it there when I want to hide out because I can blend in easily. I look like just another undergrad. “M*A*S*H” reruns were showing on the projection TV, as they always do at that time of day.

A girl with long blonde hair kept looking at me, but I was too engrossed in reliving the memory of Nina in the shower to pay much attention. All I could think about was hot foamy water cascading over Nina’s gorgeous cunt. 

Home Church

May 1980
Indianapolis

I’ve decided to volunteer at the Red Cross. I use one of their white Chevy station wagons to transport paraplegics to their physical therapy sessions. It provides me a tiny bit of spiritual fulfillment, serving people who really need my help. But I can’t really witness to them. None of them could join if they wanted to. But I like hanging out with the other volunteers. Most of them are retirees. We sit in the break room and drink black coffee and talk about the weather and politics. They are curious why a young man like me has so much time on his hands that he can volunteer at the Red Cross a couple mornings a week, but they don’t ask too many questions. They’re just grateful I’m there.

I arrived at the chapter house this morning to find the Red Cross was closed. Then I realized it was Memorial Day. So I wandered over to the library, hoping to meet someone to witness to. I didn’t find anyone interesting so I took a nap on the lawn in the sun. It was so soothing and warm. I knew I should be witnessing or fundraising or doing something productive, but for a little while I allowed myself the luxury of doing absolutely nothing and enjoying the rare solitude.

While I was lying in the fragrant grass, the image of Nina’s perfect nude body floated on my eyelids. I feel weird every time I see her. I’d be mortified if she or anyone ever found out what I did. I know I should repent, but I don’t regret what happened. I’m glad I saw her naked. She was beautiful -- heavenly -- just like Eve in the Garden of Eden. I can’t feel guilty about my sincere appreciation of the naked female form. God made it very appealing to look at, and I for one think He did a perfect job with Nina. I wholeheartedly approve.

Luckily, there’s no possibility of anything like that happening again. Greg returned a couple days later and patched up the hole and retiled the bath and thereby removed any further possible temptation. I am grateful for that too. Once was enough.

Since the beginning of the year we’ve had new witnessing direction from Father. Instead of trying to persuade strangers on street corners to join, we’re to adopt whole residential neighborhoods as our spiritual responsibility. It’s called “Home Church.” Our mission now is to live in those neighborhoods, visit all the people who live there, get to know them, serve them as best we can, and eventually witness to them and teach them the Principle. No one has to move into the center or join MFT. Those days are past. The goal now is simply to teach as many people about Divine Principle and True Parents as possible.

It’s still a tall order. Most people are extremely negative toward the church. But the new directive makes me hopeful anyway. I’ve already met some elderly people in my Home Church area who seem very receptive, and with enough time and effort, I feel confident I can make it work. The area I’ve adopted is in Broad Ripple, a section of affluent older homes just a few blocks north of the center. I figure if I’m going to live someplace for the rest of my life, I’d rather it be where people have money.

Until now we haven’t had much time to do Home Church. I got out a few times during the winter and shoveled snow for people in my area, but that was about it. Springtime is the first real opportunity I’ve had to introduce myself and try to get to know some people. What I’ve learned almost right away is that my path into this community -- my Home Church -- will come first through elderly residents. They are most in need of the physical labor I can offer. And they are extremely lonely. They long for human contact. Almost invariably they welcome me into their homes without knowing who I am. They desperately want and need love.

Around noon I got up from my nap on the library lawn and took the bus up to Broad Ripple. I figured I’d use the time to visit my Home Church area. My first stop was Dr. Masters. But he was on his way out and didn’t need any help. So I went over to the Ransels. A few weeks ago I had put in a garden for them. Thank God for all the hours my dad had me out working his garden in Dover when I was a kid. I didn’t care for it much then, but all that practical experience was coming in handy in my Home Church. Mrs. Ransel was so worried that she was taking advantage of me, but I tried to make it very clear that it was my choice to help her. She need not feel guilty or that she owed me anything.

Of course, Mrs. Ransel found a way to pay me. She started lending me interesting books to read, historical novels. I just finished one about Marco Polo that was fascinating, and before that she gave me one about George Rogers Clark. Some of his story, especially the Battle of Vincennes, was right here in Indiana. It was so interesting how he tricked the British into surrendering without firing a shot. This sort of knowledge just makes me want to learn more about history. Ordinary people who profoundly affect the future because of some seemingly random choices they make. That fascinates me.

I see the deep satisfaction on Mrs. Ransel's face when I return a book and we talk about it and she can tell I actually read it and absorbed it. Then she goes rushing to the bookshelf and pulls out another and shoves it into my hands.

But on this day the Ransels were not home. So I went over to the Porters. He is a former tax attorney, but both he and his wife are invalids now and growing senile. Apparently they have plenty of money though, because they have a full-time nurse who cooks for them and takes care of them during the day.

They wanted to hire me as a nurse too, to help them bathe and so forth. They even have a lift installed on their stairs to take them up and down. I talked it over with Carl and we both agreed it probably wouldn’t be a good idea because the Porters would end up taking up all of my time and the rest my Home Church area would suffer. So I told them no. They were very disappointed, but I couldn’t help it. Besides, I really didn’t want to. I knew it just wouldn’t work out. But I promised to keep coming to see them, and that seemed to make them happy.

On this Memorial Day the Porters were where I always will remember them: dressed in plush bathrobes in front of the TV watching game shows, with glass patio doors behind them. Just beyond, in the yard, a small flower garden had worked up a full head of steam and was trying very, very hard to get their attention. But they were too engrossed in “Let’s Make a Deal” to notice or care. A black woman was in the kitchen making their lunch. I sat and chatted with them awhile, but their minds were too feeble to have a real conversation. I think Mr. Porter already has one foot in the spirit world. Most of what he says to me makes no sense.

I stayed only a short time with the Porters, said goodbye, and then went over to the Clingmans. They were surprised to see me, being that it was a holiday, but I assured them I had no obligations and was eager to help if they had any work to do. So they asked me if I’d be willing to take out their storm windows and put in the screens, which I said I would.

Mrs. Clingman had been out of town for a week or so, I think to visit her sister, and just got back this morning. I never thought about elderly people having sex, but as I was outside taking down the storm windows on the dining room I heard Mr. Clingman say to his wife, “Wanna roll in the hay, little girl?” Judging by the girlish giggle, I’m guessing she did.

When I was done, they invited me inside. Mr. Clingman seemed especially jovial, and Mrs. Clingman, a short, round woman, was her usual cheerful self. I like them both very much, and they like me. They gave me lemonade and asked me questions about the church. They were neither for nor against. I guess they felt if the Unification Church could inspire someone like me to come to help old people like them and not ask for anything in return, then the least they could do was listen to what I had to say. And that’s all I wanted.

I’d been in the Clingmans’ house before, but it always unnerved me. Their living room and dining room were filled with dolls. Not just any dolls. Expensive ones. Alexanders. Antiques. Occupying every square inch. Some sat it antique high chairs. Others sat in children’s chairs. The rest filled up the sofa and chairs and shelves and mantel and tables. I don’t mind saying it was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever experienced. It was like a thousand tiny, unblinking porcelain eyes staring at you from every direction.

I harbored no illusions the Clingmans were going to join the Unification Church. That was absurd. They just wanted to know why I was in it, so I told them the one point that even in my most difficult struggles always resonated with me: Jesus didn’t come to die. On this one point I was absolutely convinced that Christianity had it wrong. The crucifixion was a mistake. I spent about 20 minutes explaining it, focusing mostly on the Bible passages about John the Baptist and why he was supposed to be Jesus’ first disciple. They agreed that what I said was perfectly logical and made sense, and I figured that was probably the best I could hope for.

By now it was getting late and I needed to get home for dinner. I said goodbye. As I turned to leave, I felt a thousand porcelain eyes push me out the door. 

Eleanor Lockwood

May 1980
Indianapolis

Of all the people I’ve met doing home church, Eleanor Lockwood is by far the most interesting. Technically she’s in Carol’s home church area, which borders mine. She’s literally one block over. But the truth is Eleanor and I have become good friends. I’m not sure why that it, but she is a dear and lovely woman.

Eleanor lives alone in a fashionable two-story brick home, just like all the others in the neighborhood. She has a small tidy yard with a one-car garage in the back. Everything from the outside looks as plain and ordinary as every other house for blocks around. There’s not a single outward clue about the surprises and treasures that await beyond the front door.

I don’t know how old Eleanor is, but probably in her early seventies. She’s skinny as stick, not very tall, with short white hair. But her eyes are bright and she’s physically very active. She never stops moving. The treadmill in her living room logs five miles a day. I glanced at the odometer and I was astounded how many miles it had. I believe her.

In the dozen or so times I have been to Eleanor’s house so far, usually for several hours at a time, I never saw any food except a box of Wheat Thins. But in the kitchen and on the back porch she has cases and cases of Coke stacked up, the small green bottles. She must have them delivered by truck. I never saw so much soda in one person’s possession. There is always one open on the kitchen counter or on the kitchen table or wherever she was. And next to it is an assortment of pills: vitamins and herbs that she swallows periodically. Perhaps she eats real food, but I never saw it. Only Coke and vitamins.

By all appearances, Eleanor is a recluse. Yet she's not at all antisocial. The first time Carol and I met her she invited us right in. She seemed totally laid back, not uptight in the least about two strangers in her house.

What I noticed immediately is Eleanor has a lot of time and a lot of money that she doesn’t know what to do with. She spends almost every waking moment poring over stacks of catalogs and buying page after page of collectibles. Within just a few minutes of meeting her I understood this wasn’t a mere hobby. She was obsessed with buying stuff. It was an addiction. She was single-handedly keeping the Franklin Mint in business.

Her house was filled -- stuffed -- with expensive knickknacks. Hummels, antique spoons and thimbles, rare coins, miniature pewter cars -- you name it. All kinds and descriptions. Her house was like a museum. Every room and bedroom was dedicated to something she had collected. She had very little furniture, but the walls were lined with shelves, and glass display cases filled the floors. In one upstairs bedroom was nothing but dolls of all kinds: Everything from Barbies and Kens and all their friends, all of them originals and still in the boxes, to ultra-expensive Alexander dolls. There were so many I couldn’t take it all in. It wasn’t like Mrs. Clingman’s collection though. I didn’t feel creeped out, just overwhelmed.

Across the hall in another bedroom was the music box collection. There were hundreds of them in all shapes, sizes and descriptions. Some looked very fragile and expensive. On the day Carol and I first met her, she took us into this room and waited a minute for it all to sink in. Then she said, “C’mon.”

She began winding them up, one after another, just a few cranks each, as fast as she could. Carol and I joined in, racing along the shelves, winding them up as quickly as we could. Within moments the room was filled with the most incredible sound I could ever imagine. You would think it would be a cacophonous mess, but it wasn’t. Somehow all those little music boxes going at the same time produced a sound I’ve never heard before. I can’t even describe it. Eleanor just looked at me and Carol. She was beaming. The stunned amazement on our faces was exactly what she knew it would be. Clearly she derived a huge amount of joy in sharing this rare experience with other people, something she probably hadn’t done in a very long time.

But what gave me pause, made me think Eleanor was perhaps losing her grip on reality, was the stuff she was collecting now. After years of accumulating things of obvious value, now she was obsessed with collecting cheap plastic toys. She had all kinds of “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” action figures and currently she was hunting down every available “Battlestar Galactica” toy. She had all the action figures and a whole lot of paraphernalia. All this stuff occupied the dining room table, along with unopened boxes that had just arrived in the mail. I couldn't imagine any of this crap ever being worth anything, but she was totally into it and unapologetic.

This bizarre dichotomy ran through the house like a schizophrenic child. Alongside museum-quality displays, she now proudly showcased cheap merchandizing spin-offs. Yet there was no hint of embarrassment or irony in Eleanor.

She showed me her latest art project: She’d been gluing pennies to the inside of an egg carton, which struck me as nonsensical. All alone in this big house with no family or relatives nearby, with way too much time and money at her disposal, and her innate creative energy had been reduced to gluing pennies to egg cartons and calling it art.

After that first visit I started going over to visit Eleanor by myself. Carol had other people in her home church area that she was more comfortable hanging out with. I felt Eleanor needed more human contact, so I tried to get over to see her at least once a week.

Eleanor had a painting project for me, so of course I immediately thought it would be something I could do. She took me upstairs to the bathroom. The room had not been updated since the house had been built in the 1940s. At that time the puke green of the accent tiles and fixtures was probably considered very tasteful and elegant. But now it looked ugly and tired. Eleanor asked me if I could paint them blue. She had even bought epoxy paint to do the job -- two cans that had to be mixed together. It would be a tedious job that would take several days, because I’d have to use a fairly small brush and paint each tile individually and not get any on the grout.

I knew I could do it. She asked me if I needed tape or something to cover up the white grout, but I said no. I promised her I would be very neat. For several days I went over to her house for a few hours at a time, painted the offending tiles on one bathroom wall, cleaned up, and then left. By the end of the week it was done. Eleanor was thrilled. It looked exactly the way she had hoped, and I admit it looked much better than I had imagined when she first proposed the project.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Surely I can give you something. You did a beautiful job.”

“I really don’t want anything,”

“You must need something. Think.”

She was very serious, so I thought about it for a second and it hit me. Street skates. For weeks I’d been wanting skates so I could get from the center to my home church area faster.

“Well…”

“What? Tell me.”

“I was thinking of getting a pair of roller skates so I could get around the neighborhood easier.”

Before I knew it, Eleanor had me in the car and we were at Glendale Mall with a pair of street skates on my feet. Blue with white stripes and fat yellow wheels. I propelled myself sluggishly across the carpet. I couldn’t wait to try them outside.

“Are those what you want?” Eleanor was standing by the cash register with her purse open.

“Yes, ma’am. These are perfect.” I tried to pack as much sincerity and gratitude as I could into five words.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” I dared not tell her I could not skate.

When we got back to her house, she told me to run along and enjoy the rest of the day. I thanked her again and she went back inside her house to pore over more catalogs to buy things she did not need but felt she must have.

For reasons I cannot explain, I headed directly to Butler College. Specifically, I was heading to the paved road that leads down to the school’s carillon. I was a little shaky at first, but gradually I gained my confidence and balance and I managed to make the trip without falling.

Now I was poised at the top of the steep driveway leading down to the botanical garden. I knew I was about to propel myself down the asphalt hill, but I didn’t know why. Logically it was suicidal. Yet something compelled me to come here and do it.

The sum total of my roller skating experience prior to this moment, besides the halting journey from Eleanor’s house to here, was when I was eight. I had attended a birthday party at a roller rink. I thought it would be a blast and I couldn’t wait to go, but when I got there and put the skates on I discovered I was terrified. I spent the next two hours on the verge of tears, a death grip on the railing, cursing the smooth wooden floor and the wheels that just rolled too easily and wouldn’t even let me stand up. All the other kids just zipped by me over and over, having the time of their lives. They didn’t even care if they fell. They laughed maniacally the whole way down and then jumped back up like there was nothing to it. That was the worst birthday party I ever attended. I hated it. I never went roller skating again.

Until now. No helmet, pads, gloves, and apparently, no common sense. Just gravity and my new skates. I leaned forward and in the blink of an eye I was speeding dangerously fast down the hill. If I were to fall, it would be a nasty, bloody wipeout. But I didn’t think about that. I just crouched lower and by the time I got to the bottom I was streaking.

It never occurred to me how to stop, and there was a greenhouse coming up on me very quickly. I didn’t think slamming into glass would be a great way to end. So I steered to the grass and ended up running at top speed in my skates across the lawn until I could stop. I looked back up the hill. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. I was still standing. I didn’t wipe out.

It was a crazy, foolish stunt. I should have left well enough alone, but I didn’t. I went back to the top and went down two more times, making it to the bottom each time without falling. It was a miracle. There were lots of little stones and cracks and other hazards that could have easily tripped me up and sent me face-first into the street. But nothing bad happened.

On my way home, I skated over to the Illinois Street Emporium for a celebratory piece of cherry pie. And when I got home, I spent the rest of the evening in the center parking lot. By the time I went in, I had taught myself to skate backwards in a tight graceful circle.

I proved something. I don’t know exactly what. 

Sylvia and Elwood

May 1980
Indianapolis

“Sylvia! Come here!”

I had been going door to door in my Home Church. It was really the first time I had been out to try to cover all 360 homes in my area. That was Father’s magic number: 360. A full circle. I had mapped out 360 homes and now I was going to start the process of adopting these people as my family, of becoming their mini messiah, and restoring this one tiny section of Indianapolis for heaven.

I had been having mediocre results all morning. Some elderly people were glad I had come to visit, but everyone else was not interested, negative, or not home. The door I had just knocked on was a simple green ranch with a nice yard and a few large shade trees. It was just like a million others I had fundraised at over the years. I wasn’t expecting anything.

An elderly man had answered the door. Even stooped with age, he was still tall. And I could easily see that for most of his life he had been very handsome. Those days were gone, but the spirit of a vibrant younger man greeted me behind the veneer of years.

I introduced myself, explained I was a missionary who lived in the neighborhood and I was going house to house to let people know I was in the area and could help them with yard work or chores or anything else they might need. It was truthful as far as it went. Of course I had an ulterior motive; I wanted to teach people the Divine Principle and help them understand that the Second Coming had taken place, that Christ was alive on the Earth, and that his name was Sun Myung Moon. But getting to that point would take a long time and much work. I had to start by letting them get to know me. I knew no other way to achieve this lofty goal.

“Sylvia!” But she was already there. A mere wisp of a woman, but still lucid.

“Elwood, let him in! Let him in!” I thought her enthusiasm a bit odd, but I was glad to be welcomed into someone's home for a change, rather than having the door shut in my face.

Elwood opened the storm door and Sylvia reached across the threshold and took my hand and gently guided me inside. Her waif-like hand was so soft and frail, and she was so tiny, especially next to her husband.

The living room was dim. All the shades were drawn to keep out the bright daylight, but there was no feeling of disease or death around them, which for me was a relief. Old people were often so busy dying that I couldn’t stand to be around them very long. Sylvia and Elwood, however, though very old, perhaps the oldest people I had met, were still very much alive.

Sylvia looked at me and teared up. “It’s you. You’ve come! Elwood, it’s him!”

I glanced at both. I was thoroughly confused. But Sylvia was beaming, and because Sylvia was smiling, Elwood was too.

“I knew you’d come,” she said. “I’ve been dreaming about a doctor coming, and now you’re here.” She turned to her husband. “Elwood. He’s here!”

I felt there had been a terrible mistake. They mistook me for a physician. I felt so badly, but I had to correct the misperception. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m not a doctor. I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else.”

The smile briefly left Sylvia’s face, and Elwood closely studied her to see what she would do. Clearly, in this moment at least, he took his cues from her. Whatever she said was the law.

Sylvia looked into my eyes, then held both my hands. “No. I’m not mistaken.” And she started sobbing.

Elwood never took his eyes off her. If she said the word, he’d throw me out. No questions asked. Her wish was his command. I stood there like a mute, not sure what I was supposed to say or do.

Sylvia quickly regained her composure and invited me to sit in the darkened living room. “Elwood, ice tea for our guest.” For being so old, Elwood moved surprisingly quick. I could hear him in the kitchen, ice cubes tinkling into glasses, liquid being poured.

“My dear…” Sylvia started, but then stopped. “I’m sorry. Tell me your name again?”

“Glenn…”

“Glenn. Beautiful.” It was as though she were tasting it on her tongue. “My dear, I’ve been expecting you. I’ve been dreaming of a young doctor who would come and make me well again.”

She watched my face for reaction. She could see I was confused. Elwood returned with a small tray with three glasses of ice tea. He was at the age where every movement was shaky, and I don’t know how he managed to bring them from the kitchen without spilling. But he set them on a small table and offered me one. Still, he was watching Sylvia closely. When no further signals were forthcoming, he sat down too.

In fairly short order I learned that Sylvia and Elwood were in their nineties, that they married young and never had any children. As a young woman Sylvia had once lived in France. She loved all things about it: food, language, culture. "I'm a Francophile," she said proudly.

But a few years ago something had happened to Sylvia. A nerve disorder in her face erupted that caused intense, constant pain. “It’s like a red-hot poker on the side of my face all the time,” she cried. She traced a bony finger from her right ear along her translucent jaw to her chin, wincing with pain. Elwood’s face registered the unspeakable agony of seeing the love of his life suffer and being unable to do anything.

Sylvia tearfully recounted how countless tests and X-rays and CAT scans had failed to find the cause of her pain. She had become addicted to narcotics to deal with the unrelenting torment, but they hardly helped. So as a last resort, the doctors had suggested surgery to sever the nerve to her jaw. Out of desperation, she agreed.

Tears filled her eyes. “They cut the wrong nerve. Now it hurts twice as much as before. Ooohhhh!” Her thin voice registered pure pain, and Elwood and I both felt helpless to do anything. Her suffering was awful to witness.

I don’t know why, but I reached over and with the back of my fingers I laid them gently on her cheek. It was on fire. “Ooohhh!” she whimpered. I held my hand there for a few seconds and I felt the heat begin to flow into my hand. Frightened, I pulled away.

In that instant I had a disturbing revelation. I don't know if this was literally true -- logically it didn't seem possible -- but I felt if I were to touch her right now, I would absorb all of her pain. She would be healed. I didn't feel it had anything to do with me, because I certainly didn't have any sort of healing powers. It was her. She had absolute faith that I could, that I had come to heal her.

I didn't exactly believe it, but I believed it enough to ask myself if I was willing to take the chance. Anybody else might have said of course, but for me it wasn't that simple. I knew that if by some miracle I were able to heal her simply by laying my hand on her cheek, then her affliction would become my problem. Not necessarily the same kind of problem, but something equally bad.

That is the nature of miracles. The indemnity transfers from one person to another. One person gets well, and the other person gets hell. When Jesus performed miracles, he did it to convince the simple-minded people of that time who he was. But he paid a terrible price. Miracles don’t come free. Someone pays the freight. It’s the law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Now it could be that her agony was nothing more than what I would consider a minor annoyance. Perhaps she simply had a very low threshold of pain. In that case, the affliction for me might be nothing more than a head cold or stiff neck. That wouldn't be so bad. I could easily handle that.

But what if the source of her pain were actually something big and serious? If I took it from her, it could give me cancer, or debilitating migraines, or God only knows what. Sylvia might be better, but for me it could be very, very bad.

I probably couldn't have actually healed her if I had wanted to. But I couldn’t take the risk. I had definitely felt negative energy begin to flow into my fingers when I touched her. I couldn't take the chance that I might be about to complete some spiritual circuit that would allow Sylvia's painful condition to flow into me.

It seemed cold and heartless, but I forced myself to be rational. She was old and her suffering would be relatively short-lived. If I did this thing and by some miracle it worked, even out of the purest empathy, I might pay for it for the rest of my life, which could be a very long time. It was too high a price. I had to find another way.

“Tell me about Paris.”

For the next hour we traveled back in time to when she was carefree and pain-free and strolling down the Champ-Elysees as the prettiest girl in the whole of France. She temporarily forgot about her burning jaw. It was the best I could do for her.

Elwood looked at me. His lips moved silently. “Thank you.”

For the next several weeks I visited them every chance I could. Some days were better than others. When Sylvia had a migraine, I did yard work, mowed the lawn, raked out the ivy, cleaned out gutters and helped Elwood. Anything that wouldn't disturb Sylvia. On days when she was up and about, we would sit in the living room and talk about France and she would once again become young and vivacious and beautiful and her life was perfect. I didn't even try to witness to them. I didn't need to. My presence was enough.

One day Sylvia was in an especially good mood. She mentioned she’d like to get the kitchen painted. I surveyed the small room and estimated it would take only a few hours. I told her I could do it on Saturday. We discussed it further and they wanted to pay me. I refused, of course, but I told them if they bought the paint, I’d be back on Saturday to do it. I told them two gallons was enough and not to buy more.

I returned on Saturday. There were two gallons of what Carl would call “canary shit yellow.” It was obscenely bright, but remarkably close to what was already on the walls. As always, Sylvia knew exactly what she wanted, and the men in her life made it happen and rejoiced in making her happy.

Sylvia was down with a migraine and in bed. Elwood suggested I come back another day, but I assured him I could do the job quickly and quietly and wouldn't make a mess. I said when she gets up, the kitchen will be a bright, fresh shade of yellow, like Provence, and she will be happy. Elwood agreed and left me to the task.

I started clearing the kitchen counters. Sylvia’s medications were there, dozens of them. I looked at the labels. All were heavy-duty opiates: Demerol, Percodan, even Dilaudid among them. I held them in my hands, felt their energy, and pondered the possibilities. I could take one from each bottle and it would never be missed. I could get high any time I wanted for months if I rationed them. I mulled it over. It was tempting.

Then I thought about Sylvia and her severe, depressing pain. These narcotics could not erase it. Even heroin itself might not be enough. The only thing that would ease her suffering would be if I healed her -- if I could even do that -- and I was not willing to try.

Yet I would be willing to steal an old woman’s painkillers? If I were to do that, and I really wanted to, maybe I shouldn’t even be alive. A chill came over me, that same icy blanket I've felt whenever Satan was near. I quickly put all the prescriptions in a small box and placed them on the dining room table, where Elwood could see them. If the fox were to get weak and try to sneak an egg, Elwood would be there to guard the hen house. At least I hoped so.

I set to work painting the kitchen and forgot about the drugs. A few hours later I was finished. It was as bright as a French sunrise. I quietly called Elwood to come look. He was very pleased. Sylvia would be thrilled.

Elwood just turned 92. He still drove an old Belair and he wanted to treat me to lunch at Waffle House. Afterward he insisted on taking me home, even though I would have preferred to walk. I knew it was because he wanted to pay me back somehow. So I let him drive me. Along the way, to make conversation, I casually mentioned how he and Sylvia were the most wonderful and welcoming people I’d met, that not everyone seemed to like having me in the neighborhood.

This infuriated Elwood, which certainly wasn’t my intention. Now I was sorry I had said anything, or at least I wish I hadn’t said it like that.

For 20 minutes Elwood drove up and down the streets and made me point out every house where someone had been mean to me. He has this hard look on his face like he was going to come back and kick their ass. He was so serious and upset about it. He took my persecution very personally. He wanted to protect me, because Sylvia needed me.

I did a lot of quick talking to assure him everything was all right and he didn't need to worry. No one was going to hurt me.

I hope.