minister

Ghosts 9

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“Well, I am glad that is settled.”  They saw a man sitting on the park bench, their park bench, and he kept reading the newspaper.  Nathan did not have to guess who it was, and when the man lowered the paper, Nathan saw that he was right.  “So, the terrorist does not understand why he is not in paradise, and Mister Thomas thinks God owes him, and the little old lady has vanished to who knows where, no great loss there, so, what is your problem?”

“None,” Nathan answered honestly.

“We’re just great,” Mya said.  She stepped up and took Nathan’s arm for the first time.  She grew tall enough now that she could do that, and as she placed her other hand on Nathan’s bicep, she glanced down at her own breasts.  She thought they were turning out just right.  She imagined they were not even finished growing, and she was still smiling about being called beautiful and attractive and sexy.  It felt like heady stuff for her.

“Nothing?’  The minister asked, skeptically.

Nathan felt surprised to see that the minister had hardly changed at all by the experience.  He appeared a good-looking man with a full head of black hair that was just beginning to gray a bit at the temples.  He looked fit besides, like he ate all the right foods and worked out regularly at the gym.  Indeed, Nathan got the impression that this was just the sort of man who would actually go to the gym.  Nathan shrugged as he spoke.

“I was thinking that there have been a lot of cultures throughout history that believed the spirits of the dead could not pass fully over to the other side until they were properly buried.”  He could think of no other reason for their still being there.

“Not catholic, huh?  This is not purgatory, you know.  There is no such thing.”  The minister sounded like he knew all about it even though Nathan guessed it was his first time being dead.  “So, don’t you wonder why you are not in heaven, or someplace else?”

Mya and Nathan both shook their heads and laughed a little about sharing the same response.  Then Mya spoke.  “I assume when God is ready he will take us to where he wants us to be.”

“Blind faith.”  The minister looked disgusted with that idea.  “It is just one step before ignorance.  I spent my whole life fighting blind faith and trying to educate the ignorant masses about the ways of God.  I regularly made profound statements from the pulpit, most of which would probably go right over your heads.  And then I lived it out.  That is very important, too.  I fed the poor and clothed the naked and visited those who were sick or in prison.  Let me tell you, the only question anyone should be asking is why I was not translated instantly to heaven to receive my reward.”

Mya cocked her head to the side a little in a very teenage maneuver.  It looked like she was trying to get a different perspective on the man as if that might make things clearer.  “Maybe God wanted something else from you,” she suggested.

The minister got agitated.  “I’ll have you know I was called to ministry at a very early age.  I have given my whole life to God since that day.  Who are you to question my calling?  Young woman, I’ll have you know there is probably a whole book in heaven listing the names of people that have been brought to the faith by my work alone.”

Nathan interrupted.  He felt close enough to Mya by then that he imagined he could understand some of the ways she thought.  “Oh, she is not questioning your calling, and I take nothing away from all of your good work and all of the names written in heaven’s book.  Nor is she questioning your intellectual honesty and no doubt brilliance.  I am sure all of that is very important, and I am sure God is grateful.  No, I believe she was thinking of God maybe wanting something entirely different.”

The minister’s face reddened a bit.  He seemed to be getting beyond agitated, but he refused to show it, which in its way was less honest than the young man they left by the gate.  Nathan thought steam might come out of the minister’s head at any minute.  “Like what?”  The man spoke through his teeth and barely slit his lips in the process.

“Like your love,” Mya said in all sincerity as she straightened out her head.  Nathan nodded his silent agreement.  He could see that.

The minister turned pale for all of a minute before he responded.  “Now that just proves your ignorance,” he said at last as the color began to return to his face.  “We cannot love God, you see?  At least we cannot love God the way he has loved us.  We are not going to die for him.”

“But haven’t you just said you did that?”  Nathan asked, but it sounded like a genuine question.  From Mya’s teenage lips it would have sounded flippant.

“In a sense, yes, but what I mean is the way we show our love for God is in doing what is right and good and true according to his divine will.  You see, that is why I said that I lived out my faith.  A faith that is only words and a matter of the mind is really no faith at all.”

“So, what you are saying is it is impossible to love God, directly, I mean,” Nathan said.

“I know love by the way I feel,” Mya interrupted.  “I feel my love for God.  Isn’t that the way everyone knows love?”  Mya’s simple innocence caused her to look up at Nathan in case she had it all wrong.

“That is exactly how we know love, sweetheart.”  He patted her hand on his arm and began to move her away from there.  The minster swallowed, and Nathan felt quite sure without asking that the man had spent his whole life trying not to feel anything at all.

Mya looked up at Nathan and opened her big brown eyes even bigger than usual.  “You called me sweetheart,” she said.  It sounded almost like an accusation.

“Because you are,” he said.  “I think you have the kindest and sweetest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, and I am beginning to believe the adult world would do much better if we listened to more seven year olds.”

Mya frowned on hearing that reminder of her true age, but then she sighed and laid her head against Nathan’s arm.  She had grown almost big enough by then to set her head against his shoulder, the place where she slept so comfortably in the night.  Nathan responded by giving her hand another fatherly pat.

Ghosts 7

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“I have a daughter, Lisa, and she is basically a good girl, or she would be if she would just let go of her Jezebel spirit.”  Nathan talked as they walked.

“Her what?”  Mya asked as she chose to let go of Nathan’s hand and walk at his side.  She felt like she was getting too big to be hand holding like that, and anyway, he said she was growing up so she decided she had better start acting more grown up.

“It means she always has to be in charge and control everything,” he said.  “She has driven out three of the last four preachers at the church.”

“I thought priests got appointed,” Mya said.  She did not understand.

“Not in the Baptist Church,”

“Oh, we’re Episcopalian.”

“I’m sort of a mix myself.”  Nathan let out a little smile.  “I guess that is why I fit well with the Baptists.”

“I’ve always been Episcopalian,” Mya said in all honestly.

“Anyway, I have a daughter, Lisa, and she is all right I suppose, but a hard woman.  She does not put up with any nonsense and does not have much of a sense of humor.”

“So, you are married?”  Mya said, seriously, but it was like a question.

“Was married.”  Nathan answered and came to a stop.  He stooped to pick up a stone from the curb and tossed it into someone’s yard.  He missed the tree he was only half aiming at.  “Mildred ran out on Lisa and me when Lisa was about your age, seven I mean.  Actually, she was eight.”

“I’m not eight anymore.”  Mya said with a grin.  Once again, Mya had accepted all that was happening to them.  It was Nathan who had a hard time thinking of her as anything other than a crippled seven-year-old.

“So, she abandoned us.”  Nathan went to pick up the story but he felt Mya’s hand on his cheek and in his hair.

“Poor baby,” Mya said, softly and with all gentleness.  Nathan turned, and there must have been something in his eyes because the girl quickly withdrew her hand and looked almost like she got scolded, even without a word.  “It is what my grandma always says.”  She cringed a little in defending herself.

Nathan softened.  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”  He did not want to upset her because after all, she was only a child.  “I got over it.  What?”  He asked what because she started staring at him.  Her hand reached very hesitantly for his hair again, and he did nothing to stop her, so she combed it behind his ear.

“You have brown hair.  It’s nice.  You know it isn’t so gray anymore.”  He did not know, but to be sure, he found the whole idea of getting younger a bit disturbing.  He felt glad for her, that she was growing up, but he was not sure he wanted to get much younger.  He lived a good long life and he felt sort of afraid he might start to forget who he was.  He decided that he needed to get them back on the subject so he started to walk again and she walked at his side.

“Anyway.”  He exaggerated the word.  “I have two grandchildren.  My granddaughter, Susan, is twenty-eight and lives in California with her husband and two perfect children.”  He rolled his eyes for her and that made Mya giggle.  “My son, Stephen is local, and still married, sort of, and they have a daughter, my great-grand Emily.  She is eight.”

“What do you mean, sort of still married?”

“Separated.”  Nathan shrugged.  “But they are in counseling so who knows?  Maybe they will reconcile.  Personally, I am not holding my breath.”

“You don’t sound very happy with any of your family.”  Mya thought hard about it.

Nathan shrugged again.  “I suppose I blame myself.”  He held up his hand to keep her quiet until he explained.  “I am the one who raised Lisa to be the way she is.  I don’t know, but I think she needed her mother, a mother, any mother.  I worked way too much and I put too much on her shoulders at too young an age.  I made her grow up too fast, you see?  That is my only real concern for you.”

“I will be fine,” Mya said quickly and took his hand once again to reassure him.  “I don’t need to be in charge of anything.”

He glanced at her.  “You say that now, but wait until you’re a little older.”

“You mean ten minutes from now?” she asked, and they both laughed a little.

“Anyway.”  Nathan stressed the word again.  “I’m the one who made Lisa into a hard woman, and she raised Susan and Stephen to be warped in their own ways.”

“I think your wife might be blamed for some of it,” Mya suggested.

Nathan shook his head.  “I can’t blame her.  She wasn’t there.”

“Exactly,” Mya said.  “My mother and I are alone, too.  I know that is not the way it is supposed to be.  My father should be there.  I am sure I missed out on lots of things because he was not there.”  She paused and wondered ever so briefly if she might be clinging to this man because he could maybe be the father she never had.  “I am sure my mother has had me take responsibilities that I should not have to take, or have taken, back, you know, when I was seven.”

Nathan let out his breath in what sounded almost like a little growl.  “Parents talk all of the time about raising their children, but I think most of the time all we do is ruin them.  We fill them with our disappointments, our anger and frustrations with life, and twist their little minds until they become something they were never meant to be.  I suppose that is the nature of sin.  I never realized it before, the way the sins of the fathers keep getting passed on from one generation to the next and twisted in the process until it becomes something downright wicked.”

“Stop it.”  Mya interrupted his tirade.  “I am sure you did just what you told me to do.  I am sure you did the best you could and my grandmother used to say you can’t expect to do any better than your best.”

“I suppose,” Nathan said, but he became quiet for a time.

“How come you never remarried?”  Mya asked at last.  Nathan looked at her for a minute before he answered.  He wondered what might be going on in that little mind of hers.

“Because it never seemed the right time or the right woman, I don’t know.  It had to be right for Lisa, you know. Not just for me.”  He shook his head and looked away from the girl.  He took a deep breath before he spoke again.  “I guess I did not want to go through all of that again.  I was thirty-four when Mildred left, but I still feel the sting of her rejection.  She ran off with a minister, though how you reconcile infidelity with ministry, I – I.”  He shrugged again, and did not have the words.  When he looked again at Mya, she looked deep in thought.  He nudged her rather than ask what was on her mind.

“Uh?”  She looked up.  “I was just thinking that I hope my mother remarries, especially now that I am, you know, gone and all.  I think she needs a chance to start over, and I was thinking that maybe I was kind of standing in the way of that, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan said.  “I can’t imagine you standing in the way of anyone’s happiness.”  He smiled and she did too, drew a little closer and tried to match his stride as they walked.  Nathan noticed that Mya now stood as tall as the half-way point between his elbow and shoulder.  She was certainly growing.  Her bumps were getting bigger, too, and she showed more curves in that figure. She appeared to be turning into a beautiful young woman and he felt happy for her. He put his arm around her in his happiness and in true affection.  “You’re as tall as my heart now.”  He said and sounded very much like the grandfather that he thought of himself, or the father Mya presently imagined him to be.  She stopped and gave him a big hug.

Ghosts 1

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Nathan managed a foot on the platform, but he had to hold on to the rail to drag the rest of his decrepit body up the steps.  It always took too long, and though the bus driver never said a word, the other passengers always gave him hard and cruel looks.  He couldn’t help it.  He was eighty-four and no longer allowed to drive, so it was the bus or nothing.  He feared soon enough it would be nothing.  God knew how his knees hurt.  He sat heavily on the bench just behind the driver where there were plenty of metal bars to hang on to in the turns.  Once he was settled, his lower back shivered as the muscles let go of their great effort to keep him upright against the hard pull of gravity.  Of course, Lisa, his nag of a daughter wanted him to take the metro, but there were steps there, too.  Besides that, even if the walls were white and the lights were bright, there always seemed to be something of a going-down-into-the-pits-of-Hell about the place.  Nathan preferred the sun, even if the bus windows were terminally dirty and it looked like rain.

Nathan looked down at his suit jacket.  It appeared terribly wrinkled.  He supposed he could have it dry cleaned and pressed, but he had long since given up getting to such places on his own.  He knew he could ask Lisa.  She would do it, but she would also pay for it and more important, he would pay for it because she would use that as an excuse to start going through all of his things and weeding out what she did not like or what she did not think was important.  His hand came up to smooth out some of the worst of the wrinkles, but all he saw was age spots and more wrinkles where his hand used to be.  Getting old felt as hard as gravity.  He let the winkles lay, like sleeping dogs, and decided that no one would notice an old man in a disheveled suit, and if they did, they would not care.  He might have sighed, but he used up all of his sighs ten years earlier.

Nathan looked at the other passengers to pass the time.  He saw a young man about mid-way to the back.  Ha! Young?  He had to be forty even if he still clung to the outrageous clothes of youth and still projected the attitude of the disaffected and disenfranchised.  Nathan could read it in the man’s eyes.  He felt sorry for the man who had probably been convinced from a very young age that he was incapable of doing anything.  Ha!  He should not feel incapable of doing anything until he turned at least eighty!

With that thought planted firmly in his mind, Nathan turned to look at an elderly woman who was probably older than he was.  She was smiling, for Christ’s sake!  Nathan remembered the ninety-three-year-old he found in the supermarket the other day.  When he remarked on the two gallons of cherry vanilla ice cream while they waited in line, her response sounded interesting.

“Two scoops doused in two jiggers of brandy is really good.  How do you think I got to be ninety-three?”

Nathan had not thought.  He just smiled and she checked out first.

Now this elderly woman was smiling like that one.  Nathan decided it must be the brandy.  He could not imagine any alternative that would cause such an old woman to smile.  He concluded the little-old-ladies club must pass around recipes.  Nathan rubbed the back of his hand as if the age spot might be a bit of dirt.  Then he rubbed the back of his stiff neck and held on while the bus came to the next stop.

“Stupid car!”  The man virtually swore, and Nathan heard.  Everyone heard, before they saw the man.  Nathan noticed the collar right away, and supposed the man was a priest or a minister.  He shouted the words “Stupid car!” as he dug for the cost of the bus ride and made everyone wait and dig out their hard and cruel looks in response.  Evidently the man wanted everyone to hear and see.  Nathan understood.  It was the man’s way of saying that he did not normally ride a bus and he would not be caught dead on one now if his car had not behaved stupidly.  Nathan was not sure it was just the car behaving stupidly.  He watched as the man looked down the aisle, noticed the young man and the old lady, looked at Nathan, and took the seat in the front, opposite.  Before Nathan could speak, just in case he had something on his mind to say, the minister pulled the Washington Post from under his arm and ignored everyone.  The bus started again.

Nathan coughed and produced a large bit of phlegm.  He even disgusted himself, but he had a handkerchief in his suit pocket so he kept the disgust to a minimum, and while he was at it he rubbed his nose before putting the handkerchief away.  He imagined it a remarkable thing he did not embarrass himself more often.  He had lived alone for too many years and was of an age where he should not care, yet he did care about others—not what they thought of him, but to not disgust them if he could help it.  Too many men, once alone, went to pieces.  At least most of Nathan’s dishes were currently clean and put away.

Nathan straightened his shirt collar and sat up straighter for a minute.  He had not worn a tie, of course, since he retired all those ages ago.  He leaned out to look down the aisle once again and noticed the minister with the newspaper slid a little closer to the window, beyond touching distance, just in case Nathan wanted to touch.  The man turned the newspaper page as if to say, “I’m busy, leave me alone.”  Unfortunately, there was little more to see beyond the young man and the old lady.  There were other passengers, but they were hunkered down to where Nathan, with his not so good eyes, could hardly catch their hair color.

A man stood.  He was a big, burly kind of a man; the kind of man Nathan never was.  He staggered a little in the sway of the bus and jerked forward a bit as the bus came to a stop.  He sat behind Nathan and Nathan guessed he would be getting off at the next stop.

The air whooshed and the bus door opened.  Nathan turned to see a little girl come slowly up the steps.  Nathan waited for the mother or father to follow, but none came.  The bus driver asked for his money.

“Please, sir.”  The little girl spoke softly, shy or embarrassed.  Nathan would have had to turn up his hearing aid if he had not been sitting so close.  “I missed the school bus, but I have to get home.  My grandmother is very sick.  My mother will pay you when we get to my stop.”  That took real courage.  Nathan admired the little girl

“Sorry kid.  You’ll have to walk.”  The bus driver looked sympathetic, but it was his job, and Nathan wondered how many rotten things were committed in the name of doing one’s job.  He hated that expression.  “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”  Here is the little secret, business or not, everything in life is always personal.

The little girl looked ready to cry.  “I can’t,” she said and both Nathan and the bus driver were drawn to her feet where one shoe looked stiff and metallic.  Nathan did not know if it was a club foot or the result of some disease or accident, but come to think of it, the girl did limp up the steps.

“Listen, kid.  I’ll lose my job.  I’m sorry.”  The bus driver spoke kindly but shook his head before he looked back into the bus as if to suggest that someone from the city might be there spying on him.  Nathan knew no paper pusher would leave the warm security of an office to ride a bus, but he allowed that the bus driver might have thought this was a set-up to see who they could fire, given the current state of the economy.  “I need my job.”  The driver said honestly enough.

The little girl began to cry, softly.

“Look, I’ve got family too.  I have to get home.”  The burly man spoke over Nathan’s shoulder.

“Yes, can we get on with this?”  The minister spoke up from behind his newspaper.

Nathan glanced back.  The young man turned toward the window to ignore the whole scene.  The old lady began to dig through her purse, but Nathan preempted her.  He pulled a bill from his pocket.  “Here, child.  You sit right up front with me and sit by the window so we don’t miss your stop.”  Nathan pulled himself slowly to his feet while the bus driver made change.  The little girl hesitated.  She looked once into Nathan’s sad, old eyes while he looked into her sad, young eyes and they understood each other in that moment.  The girl scooted past him to sit next to the window.  Nathan barely got his change pocketed and sat down again before the bus driver shut the door and took off.

After that, Nathan put the rest of the bus out of his mind.  He looked at the back of the little girl who dutifully stared out of the dirty window.  He judged her to be about seven or eight and he wondered what kind of world we had become to have school busses leave without their passengers accounted for.  Surely the school had some resources for those inadvertently left behind; and especially for a little girl like this, lame as she was.  Nathan understood being lame even if both of his feet were normal for his age.

“Do you know which stop is yours?”  Nathan asked, not certain if he would get an answer out of the child.  She had to be scared, all alone with strangers as she was.  He was pleased to see her able to respond.

“Yes, thank you.  I have ridden this bus before, with my mother.”  The girl gave up on the dirty window and turned to face front and the hard-plastic translucent board that separated her from the bus driver’s back.  “And thank you for paying.”  She added as if remembering her manners.  She looked up into Nathan’s old face, seeking his adult approval of her polite words and Nathan, who caught that look in her eyes, smiled in response.

“So, what are you, eight?”  Nathan asked.

“Seven,” she said.  “I’m in the second grade.”

“Second grade.”  Nathan repeated as he thought a long, long way back.  Fortunately, the ancient days were easier to remember than that morning’s breakfast.  “So, you know all about reading and writing.”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said.  “I love to read, but my writing needs some practice.”

Nathan nodded.  “Do you stick out your tongue when you write?” he asked.

“No.”  The girl shook her head.  Clearly, she did not know what he meant.

“Like this.”  He let his tongue a little way’s out of the corner of his mouth and pretended to have a pencil in his hand.  “You see?”  He pretended to write on the translucent plastic in front of them.  “A-B-C.”  He spoke as he wrote.

The girl put her hand quickly in front of her grinning mouth.  “That’s silly.”

“But it helps,” Nathan insisted.  He did it again.  “D” he said, and he pretended to have trouble with the letter and let his tongue move as his hand moved.  The little girl giggled and Nathan smiled again.  He had a grand-daughter—no—a great-grand daughter that was seven.

“My name is Nathan.”  He introduced himself.

The girl paused to examine his face before she spoke.  “Mine is Mya.”  And she lifted her little hand up to touch his wrinkled, craggy face.  “You are very old, like my grandmother.”

Nathan lost his smile, but slowly.  “You grandmother is not well.”  It was a question though he said it like a statement.

Mya nodded.  “She is in the hospital.  My mother is going to take me to see her tonight.  I think Grandma is dying.”  Mya took her hand back and straightened up.  Her eyes looked once again near tears.  Nathan thought we are all dying; only some of us are closer to it than others.  He forced a smile.

“Now, enough about dying,” he said brightly.  “You just give her a big hug when you see her and tell her that you love her.  That is all that really matters.”  He wanted to hug the little girl himself and pat her hand to comfort her in her distress, but he did not dare.  Surely someone would accuse him of terrible things, and he wondered again what sort of world they had become.  All he could do was lift his heart in a kind of prayer for this little soul while the bus brakes brought them to the next stop.  The big man started to get up as the doors opened, but before he could move far, someone jumped in and ran right past the driver babbling something about paradise and Satan and you demons.  The minister hid behind his paper.  The Bus driver grabbed and missed.  The big burly man also made a grab, but it was too late.  Nathan instinctively threw himself over the little girl like a shield of flesh and blood.  He heard the deafening sound, felt a moment of pain, saw a brilliant, blinding light, and then nothing.