Read Online Sweet Jesus by Christine Pountney - Free Book Online
Authors: Christine Pountney
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ridiculous.
When a parade of undeserving boyfriends started traipsing through the apartment, expecting nothing less than the fawning submission of his older sisters and trampling on his instinct to be protective, Harlan was too young to object, toopowerless to stop it. When they spoke in lewd terms about his sisters, Harlan felt a thing subside in him like an exhausted muscle, a blueness spreading out. What’s more, his desire to protect his sisters was matched by the embarrassment he suffered, the shame he felt over their poor taste. He couldn’t help confusing good taste with moral superiority, and so there was disdain for his family mixed in with his jealousy and pity, and all of this sat heavy on his love.
He remembered how his sisters would squeeze into the hall mirror, popping their mouths with last-minute lip gloss, while a V8 engine revved at the curb. At least they have each other, he’d think, as they fluttered blue eye shadow and kissed him on the head. He could smell their black-market Poison for hours after they had left. And always they carried these little vinyl purses jammed with menthol cigarettes and spearmint gum and God knows what else. Out the door and Harlan would kneel on the sofa and pull the polyester sheers aside to watch them leave with a mixture of envy and scorn, aware of their own drastic, wildcat need for escape.
And when they were gone, to a tavern somewhere, or a pool hall or a bowling alley, he’d eat a dozen doughnuts. The small cheap ones with the sharp baking soda tang all covered in sweet white powder. They came twelve to a box and you could find them almost anywhere, in the basements of department stores, pharmacies even. He’d eat them until the sting in his mouth and the ache in his gut was a mild distraction to the desolation he felt. Sometimes he’d slip eight doughnuts on the fingers of both hands and make them beg for mercy before he ate them.
One evening, Harlan’s mother surprised him by joining him on the sofa to watch the girls leave the building. Jodie had cut the neck out of her t-shirt and by the time she reachedthe curb, it had slipped down off her shoulder. Harlan’s mother had said, If there’s anything a whore can’t resist, it’s her nature.
Whore
was his mother’s favourite word. It denoted the two things that were missing in her life – sex and money.
But Jodie had looked good that night, he recalled now, in her Santana jeans, Nike high-tops, and peacock-feather earrings. He wished he had told her so. And if that was her nature, so be it, for who can resist their nature anyway?
Harlan was stopped at a red light, sitting at an empty intersection waiting for the light to turn green. The streetlights giving the outdoors an indoor appearance. Not a car or another human being in sight. The pavement light grey. The intersection tidy and the roads straight. Despite his mother’s best attempts to keep him down and close at hand, the first thing he did when he graduated from high school was join the army. He wanted to hear the constant and merciless barrage of commands exhorting him towards his own excellence, bellowed out through the loudspeakers morning, noon and night. He did not improve, he excelled. And quickly acquired the nickname Overkill, for how much time he spent polishing his boots.
He kept to himself and nobody could say of him that he wasn’t a good kid. He seemed to have things pretty well sorted out. His marks were okay. He had a couple of friends. He didn’t binge-drink like the guys in his barracks, though he did like a good all-you-can-eat buffet on the weekends. He spent three years in the military and didn’t think anything was missing until the day he met a girl who took him to a Leighton Ford crusade, where he’d first felt the powerful love of God. How certain he’d been of God’s love for him at the moment of his conversion. He’d been nineteen years old. He was overcome. He found himself on all fours, on a grey meadow of
When a parade of undeserving boyfriends started traipsing through the apartment, expecting nothing less than the fawning submission of his older sisters and trampling on his instinct to be protective, Harlan was too young to object, toopowerless to stop it. When they spoke in lewd terms about his sisters, Harlan felt a thing subside in him like an exhausted muscle, a blueness spreading out. What’s more, his desire to protect his sisters was matched by the embarrassment he suffered, the shame he felt over their poor taste. He couldn’t help confusing good taste with moral superiority, and so there was disdain for his family mixed in with his jealousy and pity, and all of this sat heavy on his love.
He remembered how his sisters would squeeze into the hall mirror, popping their mouths with last-minute lip gloss, while a V8 engine revved at the curb. At least they have each other, he’d think, as they fluttered blue eye shadow and kissed him on the head. He could smell their black-market Poison for hours after they had left. And always they carried these little vinyl purses jammed with menthol cigarettes and spearmint gum and God knows what else. Out the door and Harlan would kneel on the sofa and pull the polyester sheers aside to watch them leave with a mixture of envy and scorn, aware of their own drastic, wildcat need for escape.
And when they were gone, to a tavern somewhere, or a pool hall or a bowling alley, he’d eat a dozen doughnuts. The small cheap ones with the sharp baking soda tang all covered in sweet white powder. They came twelve to a box and you could find them almost anywhere, in the basements of department stores, pharmacies even. He’d eat them until the sting in his mouth and the ache in his gut was a mild distraction to the desolation he felt. Sometimes he’d slip eight doughnuts on the fingers of both hands and make them beg for mercy before he ate them.
One evening, Harlan’s mother surprised him by joining him on the sofa to watch the girls leave the building. Jodie had cut the neck out of her t-shirt and by the time she reachedthe curb, it had slipped down off her shoulder. Harlan’s mother had said, If there’s anything a whore can’t resist, it’s her nature.
Whore
was his mother’s favourite word. It denoted the two things that were missing in her life – sex and money.
But Jodie had looked good that night, he recalled now, in her Santana jeans, Nike high-tops, and peacock-feather earrings. He wished he had told her so. And if that was her nature, so be it, for who can resist their nature anyway?
Harlan was stopped at a red light, sitting at an empty intersection waiting for the light to turn green. The streetlights giving the outdoors an indoor appearance. Not a car or another human being in sight. The pavement light grey. The intersection tidy and the roads straight. Despite his mother’s best attempts to keep him down and close at hand, the first thing he did when he graduated from high school was join the army. He wanted to hear the constant and merciless barrage of commands exhorting him towards his own excellence, bellowed out through the loudspeakers morning, noon and night. He did not improve, he excelled. And quickly acquired the nickname Overkill, for how much time he spent polishing his boots.
He kept to himself and nobody could say of him that he wasn’t a good kid. He seemed to have things pretty well sorted out. His marks were okay. He had a couple of friends. He didn’t binge-drink like the guys in his barracks, though he did like a good all-you-can-eat buffet on the weekends. He spent three years in the military and didn’t think anything was missing until the day he met a girl who took him to a Leighton Ford crusade, where he’d first felt the powerful love of God. How certain he’d been of God’s love for him at the moment of his conversion. He’d been nineteen years old. He was overcome. He found himself on all fours, on a grey meadow of
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