I found a friend in Jesus.
At Sunday School, Miss Tibble clutched a lace handkerchief and told us all about him.
He walked on water, turned water into wine and healed the sick. I prayed to him to make me beautiful so that all my problems would disappear. If anyone could perform a miracle it was Jesus.
I wasn’t as fond of God. Miss Tibble said that if children disobeyed Him there’d be reckonings. My temptations and trespasses were noted on a celestial register. Getting through heaven’s pearly gates depended upon my good behaviour.
‘Look to your roots so that ye may rise above them.’ Miss Tibble said. ‘At thy roots Evil must be vanquished.’
One night when my breathing was short and sharp and I had no voice beyond a rasp, I rang the silver bell on the headboard. The bell tinkled into a chasm of night silence. The cold, metal hull warmed in my hand as I waited. Forehead slick with perspiration. A suffocating stillness pinning me to the bed. The distance between life and death a matter of seconds. All it would take was one skipped breath.
I closed my eyes and counted the reasons for dying. The ethereal light of God’s giant hand lifted my body. I was momentarily infused with sweet relief.
I heard my mother sigh. The springs of a mattress complained. Slippers scuffed lino. The snap of a switch in the hallway. My mother glowed, reminding me of an image in a stained-glass window. Another wheeze escaped my lips.
My mother tipped the contents of a small bottle into my palm. A single pill fell out. Yellow. Ovoid. Weightless. How could something so small save my life?
I placed the pill under my tongue and remembered not to swallow. Grit tickled my throat.
My mother withdrew to her usual position at the end of the bed. She sat and waited for the pill to work. She listened to my cryptic breathing. The symphonic wheeze modulated then moderated: an acapella whistle, an intermittent phrase, a plaintive note. Death slunk away like a vampire at dawn.
I sank into the pillow and released my grip on the bell. Without a word, my mother drifted back to her bedroom where my father snored. As she went, she turned off the hallway light, her duty done.
My hands shook. I knew it’d take a while to pass. I dozed and dreamt of a spiral staircase suspended in a starry night sky, stretching into infinity. Connected to the staircase were a series of doors that represented things I would learn when I opened them. I was reassured by a voice, which wasn’t really a voice, that even though the flesh was weak, the life of the mind was strong. Then the tip of a finger pressed the centre of my palm and woke me. My heart skipped. I opened my eyes and blinked several times. Had Jesus, in his white robes and halo, tapped out a Morse-Code message?
At Sunday School, Miss Tibble said that only the meek and the mild were truly blessed. Or poor souls in real need. Miss Tibble’s eyes trailed down my plump form to my brown shoes from Olga Ashner’s Shoemart where my mother took me for fittings. I knew that my feet would turn black if God was angry enough to send a lightning bolt.
Miss Tibble often bellowed, which made the children cower. A pool of saliva gathered along Miss Tibble’s bottom lip, between her crooked yellow teeth. When she raised her fist and gave a sermon, droplets scatter-gunned the air. I watched their frenzied flight.
I met an angel in hospital. One morning she hovered over my ravaged ten-year-old body. She gently placed a hand on my bandaged hand where an intravenous needle was delivering fluids from a drip to save my life. The angel wore pink and had a halo. Light streamed around her, and her wings were silvery and translucent. Shiny hair swirled in a bun at the back her head. I felt warmed right through when the angel smiled.
‘You’re an angel,’ I said.
‘How sweet,’ the angel said as she stroked my bare arm with a sponge. Only angels touched patients that way.
‘You’re not supposed to tell?’ I asked her.
‘That’s right,’ she said, and winked. ‘It’ll be our little secret.’
The next morning a nurse told me to get out of bed and have a bath. Before I could ask where to go, she vanished. I struggled to loosen the tight bedsheets. I walked a few steps and collapsed. Unable to stand, I wondered if the angel would return but the nurse did instead. I thought she’d be angry. She helped me stand, and half carried me to the bath. The water scolded my skin.
If the nurse hadn’t kept a steadying hand on my back, I’d have dissolved and drowned.
When I graduated from Sunday School, I went to church with my mother. I sat on the hard wooden pew cataloguing all that I knew about God. On His throne, I saw Him leaning on a wooden staff, asleep? Awake? Who could tell? Absently scratching His beard, picking His nose, patting His pot belly… was I confusing Him with Santa Claus?
I thought about the Voice of God, The Call, The Summons to The Cloth. He shook The Firmament, said The Word, gave The Nod, stamped The Grand Plan with approval and Bang, Kazam, Kaboom – Earth!
My heart thumped and bounced as I contemplated God’s almighty power. When would I be worthy of His love? Had He forsaken me?
I grew restless in church. The adults standing around me were old. The music archaic. The wooden pews, harder and harder to withstand. What was I doing here in this stuffy building with its sour smells? I wanted to be good for God and for Jesus but where exactly were they? What if they were nowhere and praying wouldn’t change that? Had they abandoned us all? Were we not worthy?
If only the statue of Jesus would move. A sign. Something. Something real. Something special.
When I blinked, the statue blinked too.
Disappointed I went home, looked in the mirror and saw that Jesus had not answered my prayers. I was still ugly, and life was as problematic as ever.
Jesus and I parted ways when I left the church at the age of twelve. For a while I missed Jesus. He didn’t miss me because he had far more important concerns.
My life changed a few years later when I went to see the stage opera, Jesus Christ Superstar. Riveted, I sat in the audience with my sister. The songs vibrated along every nerve, sinew, synapse of my body. Excitement lifted the hair on my head. I forgot where I was. I forgot that the actors were acting. I forgot to exist. There was my friend Jesus, with Judas and Mary Magdalene. They were real. They lived and I, up until then, had not. Heat spread throughout my body. I was a cup being filled and spilling over. I saw a boundaryless horizon. I was enmeshed in the fabric of life. I could have laughed and cried at the same time. Everything around me felt new and fresh and pure and united. Ecstatic, I was at home in the vast, eternal universe.
The natural high lasted for days. I returned to earth with a thud.
I never prayed again, and Jesus remained an enigma. I sought earthly friends singing the song of exile. As I was tone deaf, I doubt I sang in tune.
I’m curious to know if you’ve experienced a natural high and what prompted it? How long did it last? What changed afterwards, if anything? Have you encountered an angel? When did that happen? What was it like? Do you think there are angels walking this earth?
Thank you very much for joining me on this explorative writing adventure. I’m so glad you’re here. It means the world.
With love,
Lil X
PS As far as I know, my asthma attacks were treated with a slow-release theophylline pill. Ventolin Inhalers became available when I was about twelve years of age. I thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t born in the era when asthma was treated by drinking the blood of wild horses, eating twenty-one millipedes soaked in honey, inhaling the fumes of hydrocyanic acids, or having my lungs inflated with a bellows.
Gifted Friendships (Part Two)