Sandra Jones

            Waiting for a break in the rain, Caillote looked down at the one hole in her faded blue canvas sneaker where a brown toe poked out.  She stood near the entrance to Elma’s grocery, a single story shack with one large window and a small porch, with a tote bag with peppers and rice for the meal her grandmother was planning.  Everyone had run for cover when the sky opened up and it was just her and the clerk at the grocery left in view.  His thick black rimmed glasses reflected the fluorescent lights above him as he peered out the fogging window at the downpour.

            Caillote had no where to be soon, and this afternoon shower gave her the opportunity to plan her escape.  She couldn’t bear to sit through another dinner with her grandmother, uncle, and cousins who fought constantly.  Her uncle eyed her with what seemed like contempt while trying to start small talk and ask what she likes to do.  Her grandmother wore a slight frown as she sheepishly went about the cooking and arranging the house that occupied her day.  Her silence was unnerving.   Every word that was spoken was muttered in a sing song voice that trailed off at the end into a sigh.  The house was full of noises from her two boisterous cousins, Jean and Pati, and her grandmother just seemed to wring her hands at their every bad behavior and look to Caillote’s uncle Dennis to do something.  He, however, was busy, working on a bottle of beer, or rather several, throughout the morning.  Caillote was overjoyed to have the opportunity to get out, so she offered to run the errands for her grandmother. 

            All she had to do was leave the bag in the kitchen and get out before anyone saw her.  If everyone saw the groceries she bought, they would think she’s back and not think anything of it.  Until then, they’ll wait for her, eyeing the minced onions and garlic and oxtail hocks that are useless without the ingredients she was bringing.  They needed them more than they did her, and she couldn’t wait to get out. 

            The rivulets turned the street into mud while Caillote wondered where she could go.  This was a harder question.  She resented the neighbor, who always told her grandmother when she was hiding in the lean to out back in the woods, so she mustn’t be seen by her either.  She could go to Sami’s house, but her hateful brother might tell just to piss her off.  Realizing that she must make a decision soon, she chose to plan for Sami’s, and to do this while it was raining so that she was least likely to be detected. 

            Caillote pulled her sweatshirt hood over her head and splashed into the street. 

            A quarter of an hour later, Caillote ran the slick muddy streets unburdened by her bag of groceries.  She had barely opened the door, left the bag just inside, and run away, hidden by the bars of rain that pummeled down on her.  Now the rain was starting to let up and the sky was brightening.  She was also sufficiently far enough away to not be noticed by grandmom or the nosy neighbor.  Sami’s house was just around the next corner but something else caught her eye and made her question her decision. 

            There was a dead dog at the corner of Sami’s street.  Caillote noticed the red streams before looking further up ahead to find the source.  Red rivulets spread out down the street from the wiry haired mutt, who must have stood no higher than Caillote’s knee.  It lay there on its side, mouth agape, with bloody gashes on its cheeks and head.  It must have been in a fight with another dog because the injuries were to its face and front chest.  There were, however, no other dogs to be seen as she scanned the environs through the now misting rain.  Caillote wondered if it was someone’s pet or a stray.  No one seemed to even notice it there, which made the scene all the more heartbreaking for her.  It was a dark brown terrier type dog, and Caillote wondered what its name would have been.  She decided it was Pepe, because it looked like it had some spunk to its step like a Pepe would.  She remembered when she asked if she could have a puppy and both her grandmother and uncle yelled at her simultaneously “No!”.

            Caillote walked firmly and with purpose past the dog so that the people now beginning to reappear in the street wouldn’t notice that she had run away from home and didn’t know where to go.  Her purposeful walking had brought her near a church, the pink stucco building standing out among the greying houses.  A painted cross marked on the white triangle above the door is all that designated it as such, and the white door was slightly open.  Curious more than anything, Caillote pushed the door open and walked into the cool dim interior.

            Inside, on straw seated chairs, were three people; one full figured woman in a cotton dress and two slim men, one noticeably taller than the other, and both well dressed with long pants and button up shirts.  They all sat in a circle holding hands and mumbling to themselves.  Caillote was learned enough to know they were praying, but beyond that she knew nothing of scripture or what everyone called “The word” in that cryptic way religious people talk as if everything has a double meaning.  In a blend of curiosity and fear, Caillote stepped forward quietly believing that they didn’t know she was there.   

            She traversed half of the space between them when the shorter man said suddenly “Welcome, sister,” from behind closed eyes.  He opened them and turned toward her, “Would you care to join us in prayer?”

            His formal way of speaking made Caillote giggle out a “No, thank you,” which was the most polite she knew how to be.  She sat on a straw seated chair a few feet from their prayer circle and stared straight ahead of her at the table that served as an altar.  On it was a statue of a cross with ornate edges, and a book opened to a page with a ribbon marking the place.  They had turned back to their prayer and their mumbling.  Caillote wondered what was in that book that was so important to them.  In school, she was told that her reading was good, but whenever she looked at the books in church it was all like a different language where only a few of the words made sense.  She figured this book was the same as all the other church books. 

            Caillote took in the soothing atmosphere of the dimly lit church and thought about the places she would rather be than her grandmom’s house where there were no rooms you could be alone and quiet.  There was always someone else there and they were always making noise.  She felt at ease, and more at home, in this boxy little church.   

            When the prayer was over, when the mumbling ceased, the short man turned again to her to ask if she would like to come back for a service where there was music with singing and clapping and even dancing if you wanted to.  Caillote could tell he was trying to lure her in, so she played along and agreed enthusiastically. 

            “You got a nice church,” she said, trying to show her appreciation.  The three all together smiled and looked down their noses at her in that “bless your heart” kind of way.  Caillote knew when other people thought she was stupid, and this was one of those times. 

            “We call this a meeting house,” the taller man said in a baritone voice.  “It’s just the place we meet to praise God, no more.” 

            “Oh so you live here, too?” she asked.  “Cuz I’d like to live here.  This nice.” 

            They chuckled and looked at her in that same way.  She was getting tired of them already.

            “Do you live around here?” the short man asked.  “We’d like to meet your family if they’d care to come to the service tonight.”

            “No” was all she said.  If they won’t answer her questions seriously, she won’t answer theirs nice either.  She didn’t want her family to ruin the quiet of this church and they’d never want to meet these people anyway. 

            “You hungry?” asked the woman, unfolding a napkin she had pulled out of her tote bag next to her chair, producing a square of coconut bread.

            Caillote ate that coconut bread with no water even while the short man talked about the service that was happening tonight after dinner.  Caillote had to echo his enthusiasm because he was just so into it, she couldn’t bear to let him down.  Yes, she would be there.  She wasn’t planning to leave at all.

            The straw thatched chairs were lined up neat when Caillote came back inside from chasing lizards behind the building.  Some people were already there, scattered around the room, fanning themselves with leaves of paper, all looking lazily ahead of them at the white cloth altar that attracted Caillote’s attention earlier. 

            While she sat in her own straw seat, and alternately kicked her feet, Caillote wondered if they were waiting for Jesus to come out the cross up there, but she thought it better to not ask any more questions.  Every time she did, they would smile in that I-feel-sorry-for-you way that she couldn’t stand.  She remembered her uncle complaining about “church folk” and how they always put on airs that they’re better than, when “they the ones don’t wash they ass” he would keep saying.  That was his favorite way to insult someone, or just try to prove that they have no room to insult him, because he washed his ass.  Apparently. 

            Caillote was wondering when the dancing would begin when the short skinny man from before came out and stood in front of the altar table. 

            “Good evening.”

            “Good evening Rev. Jacobs” the group responded in turn.  There were no more than 15 of them.

            The pastor began by thanking them and announcing a pot luck later in the week.   Everything was pretty boring to Caillote except when the taller skinny man from before would start playing on the piano.  The heavy set woman from before, who introduced herself as Thelma, sang the first note and the rest followed suit. 

            Caillote stood when they stood and sat down when they sat, this seeming to be the most important process to follow in a church service, or, rather, meeting house service.  She never felt the itch to dance, but she did see Thelma swaying and clapping with vigor. 

            When everyone sat after the second song, the pastor stood in front of the altar table and cleared his throat.  He began by asking everyone to thank God with him and began discussing salvation.  Salvation from temptation and salvation from the fires of hell.  He repeated again and again how we were the chosen few (Caillote thought he said “frozen few” and was terribly confused for a minute) and everyone around her where she looked was dead serious. 

            Thelma leaned over to her and said “Pay attention, now.  This important.” 

            The salvation Rev. Jacobs was describing sounded lonely and awful to Caillote.  The world will burn, so he says, and only the chosen (not frozen) will ascend to heaven with God. 

            So that’s why church folk look down on everybody, Caillote thought.  They think we all burning while they get to paradise.  Caillote wanted to be in the in-crowd.  She asked Thelma how to do it, and Thelma shushed her and just said “You gotta serve the Lord,” at which Caillote balked because she didn’t want to serve anybody.  Being chosen seemed like the thing to do, however, so she tried her best to do what everyone else was doing so that she too could serve the Lord. 

            After the sermon, they sang one more time and then the service was over.  Caillote stayed in her seat until someone came up to speak to her.  It was Thelma.  “Chile, where you going now?” 

            Caillote responded that she didn’t have anywhere to go, which was a lie, but it was for a good reason so she thought it would be OK.  Thelma declared, “Then you coming with us, then,” and she took Caillote by the arm and led her toward the Rev Jacobs.  “Reverend, we got ourselves an angel with us.” to which the Reverend replied ‘Praise God, Thelma.  Let’s draw up a bed for her.” 

            Thelma led Caillote out the door of the meeting house and up to a small house next door.  It had three rooms and Thelma pointed to a mat in the corner of the main room where Caillote could lay.  So she did.  She did her best, from this day forward, to serve the Lord the way he wants so that she gets to stay in this nice, quiet house.  There was no one fighting, no angry uncle breaking dishes, no sad grandma to look at, and lots of quiet “prayer” time.  Caillote didn’t mind following Miss Thelma and Reverend’s orders because she knew it got her into this nice house. 

            They did a service every day!  Caillote couldn’t believe that people were that crazy about God that they worshipped him every single day.  She had a lot of work to do.  She handed out the song sheets before the service and collected them when it was over.  She swept the floor after everyone left and put the chairs in order.  She even got to touch the white cross on the altar table before the Reverend told her not to touch the altar; that it was holy.  So, she diligently cleaned around the altar and only rustled the white tablecloth just a little when her broom passed by.

            Miss Thelma got into the habit of collecting Caillote after supper to have her read the Bible and practice her spelling.  It was during one of these sessions, when Caillote was stuck on a particularly difficult word – righteous – that the rumble of a rumor had begun to spread.  Excited voices sparked up outside in the darkening street and turned into a full-fledged blaze.     

            “The great house” they kept repeating “The great house is burning!”

            “Mmm if that ain’t God’s will” Thelma said to herself while Caillote’s distracted attention was now on the hurried voices outside.

            “They finally did it” one man said laughing as he passed by.  All of the people passing in the dusky street were looking up the road in the same direction.  Much to Thelma’s dismay, Caillote ran into the street to see where everyone was going and saw it.  A glow in the distance beckoned her as the people pushing past her to run toward the blaze were all overjoyed.  They were not running toward the house with water, mind you.  They were running to spread the fire. 

            At one point in time, the great house was the height of luxury in the middle of a sprawling sugar plantation.  It was the only place anyone around could work and the work was scant wages.  The shanty town Caillote stomped through was the former slave town for the sugar harvesters.  They lived for that sugar cane and that cane eventually killed them because it just kept growing, generation after generation.  The work to turn that cane into sugar, to sweeten the fine treats of the white folks who lived up there, that work ate up whatever little sweetness was left in shanty town life.  Caillote’s uncle used to work on the sugar farm until he made the decision that his time was better spent drinking and yelling at his mother who cooked and cleaned for him.  

            Caillote’s small feet could carry her quickly because she could easily weave in and out of the crowd that was now flowing up the hill toward the house.  People were chanting, sometimes singing, sometimes screaming in excitement.  She had never seen this house so close before, having been forbidden to go near it for fear of being arrested for trespassing.  The house has sat unoccupied, it seemed, for many years, but Caillote remembered the stories the old folks would tell about the flashy parties the white folks would hold there where people wore giant jewels and shiny dresses with wide skirts and would sip bubbly wine from crystal glasses. 

            When she arrived at the top of the hill, Caillote saw what they had done.  They had broken into the unlit parts of the great house and set them alight.  When she arrived at the front door, there were people running out with arms full of whatever they could find.  Rioters, as they would later be called, stormed from room to room, taking clothes and jewelry and even furniture before the rest was destroyed.   Caillote wanted to see the inside before it was ruined, and for now the fire was in the north wing.  She ran into the front door and down a hallway that flickered with torchlight from outside.  At the end of the hallway, where it turns toward the north wing, two pocket doors opened wide into a den, a private drawing room for the master of the house, a place where he told stories about hunting conquests to his associates, surely masters of other great houses.  Each preserved trophy told a story, he would probably have said, and each one told another silent story of their depravity.  The walls were wood paneling and large books lay open on several tables and leather armchairs sat there stately as if they held an old white captain looking over his map of the world.  Caillote stood there in awe, transfixed by the blank gazes of the various animals that had the misfortune of also becoming the prey of the white folks here.  They sat there looking out at Caillote and she looked back at them.  

            It was time that they paid for it.  Seated up above the rest on a seemingly eternal perch.  So it seemed no more.  Caillote thought that, like the glass eyes of their trophies, the white folks eyes looked right through her, just like they looked without seeing the people that crowded jostling around beneath them.  They lived with the people but above them, around them but never seeing them or their faces, their expressions.  So they sat preserved and perfect, in their most fashionable, bon vivant posture that some subordinate could muster up for them.  This facade of simple hearted goodness was peeling off.  They were no longer the caricaturized children masquerading as angels; Caillote saw that they were nothing but hungry animals already dead. 

            The green parrot sat there facing the left wall but staring at the brown girl entering with one glass eye, the side eye as if unsure of her credibility or reputation.  Its beak was just a tiny bit open as if he’s about to speak and repeat the rote with that robotic blank stare.  Its position in the center top of the shelf made this whole room seem like an altar to this bright green messenger bird, as if he repeated the words of God to the humble beings below. 

            The other animals in the den were looking in different directions.  The deer head on the wall stared right at the door, a soft welcoming gaze with those long eyelashes despite the 8 pointed antlers.  It was turned just slightly so that from the other side of the room on the perpendicular wall it seemed as if the deer were just grazing when one entered his space and he turned to notice them.  Except when she moves further into the room, the deer’s gaze stays fixed on the place where she entered as if her entrance made time stop.   Frozen in motion, the room of creatures was like a fabricated Frankenstein world about to be re animated.  

            Before time stopped, the fox must have walked nimbly toward the window where his gaze was fixed.   Looking up, with the front paw raised as if to take another cautious stride toward possible small prey just on the other side of the glass.  The full furry tail slanted slightly downward trailing after his back paw about to lift and continue the next step. 

            The dark wood paneling of the room almost obscured the crow perched on a piece of driftwood, its body tilted forward and beak just beginning to open as if it was mid- squawk when it was so rudely interrupted with death. 

            Above the crow, a horned owl meditated in preparation for a midnight meal, its heavy brows hiding the glass eyed stare that makes even real flesh and bone appear like a partial cartoon character as if the eyes were doodled over the image with pen.  So it is when you’re a being frozen in time.   

            Suspended between life and death, crouched as if ready to pounce, a white and grey lynx watched the fox intently from behind her whiskered face.  In the corner by the door, she kept a wide-eyed watch over the den community, biding her time until the right opportunity presents itself. 

            The lynx waited too long, actually.  The carpet was smoldering for just a moment before flames formed under the shelf across from the door and licked up the tiers toward the parrot at the top.  Like a spider’s web, the hot whisps bloomed outward touching the crow, fox and owl.   Meanwhile the lynx sat wide eyed like a little kitten whose round eyes glowed a flickering orange and yellow light.  Like a little girl in awe at the destruction she created, the cat watched intently, unmoved that the flames were easing their way toward her. 

            The side eyed glare of the parrot, sitting in final judgment of the creatures below, formed the god head of an apocalyptic vision where glowing parallel lines of rejoicing angels are manifested in moth eaten hunting trophies turning black and deformed from the flames.  Caillote imagined that the parrot would be preaching right now, repeating a mindless rote with woodland animals flaming in adoration. 

            One half of the owl’s thick plumage sizzled to black dust while the eye remained intact and the burnt half of his face looked like a black skeleton peeking out from behind a cloud of feathers. 

             The crow seemed to reach out to taste the flames as the tip of his beak was reduced to a stub until the black marbles looked out at her from behind a tangerine veil. 

            The same vibrant light caressed the neck of the deer sitting high to the side as if on a balcony, a lamb of God crucified and come back to rule over the new world under the ashes.  Poking his head through a wall of gold and amber he looked at the door exit he could never reach and his dark eyes seemed to long for the space beyond the inferno. 

            The parrot, beginning to be consumed by the fire he seemed to have maliciously set himself, with a single glowing eye of retribution, seemed to be laughing, the convulsions appearing in the flickering shadow and light of the golden wall closing around him. 

            Out of revenge for having been hunted, the glass eyes, slowing falling in the melting structure that was their faces, glowed an angry orange like cats’ eyes reflecting what little light there is in a deep dark night.  The heads seems to tilt to the side questioning their fate, perturbed at their deterioration. 

            When the parrot was all but ash, the invisible shield of heat singed the front paws and nose whiskers of the lynx.  The kitten frozen in shock as a stripe of orange and a screen of black stretched across the body of the cat, from its face, to its head, to its chest, shoulders, down to its tailless haunches. 

            When the deer head had fallen, confused, from the crumbling black wall and had landed on its side looking crookedly up at the ceiling, which was covered with bulging waves of yellow and orange flowing toward the center, the lynx was gone.  Caillote had to run out while the lamb of God lay in the embers, its innocent black nose slowing growing to turn its whole face to soot.  She left it looking up at the opening roof, uninterested in whatever new world awaited. She imagined all those blank, hieratic eyes melting into crystal pools that reflected the sky, the limitless possibilities that grow out of dead masters. 

            Caillote knew at that point, as she backed up and ran down the hallway toward the open front door, that she was one of the chosen.  She didn’t need Rev Jacobs or Thelma anymore.  She sprinted squealing out of the door possessed by a new spirit, a spirit she considered holy, a spirit that told her that there is no one above her, not even church people.