Part 14 (2/2)
He had that faith.
Sophy couldn't always come to services on Sunday, but that week she did, and as soon as she sat down she could see that G.o.d meant for her to be there, because Pastor Blake was talking about her, and her struggle. ”Think about what Jesus tells the apostles in Luke 18,” he said. ”In Luke 18:2930, He says, 'Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of G.o.d's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.' There is no man who shall not receive manifold more. There is no man who shall not receive life everlasting. It's a great deal, isn't it? It's the deal of a lifetime, a deal you wouldn't want to pa.s.s up, a deal you couldn't pa.s.s up. Eternal life! Eternal happiness! Naturally you want to take G.o.d up on this special offer. And yet maybe your family of origin is against it. Maybe they're threatened by the idea that you're about to win the lottery. Maybe it makes them feel their own poverty. Or maybe they're Christians themselves, and are mostly happy for you, except for a particular family member who cannot welcome the Good News. Not that he or she is a bad person. They're not. They're good people, who love you. But they're like people who just have to have their coffee in the morning. You know how some people just have to have their coffee in the morning? Because they've been having coffee in the morning their whole lives, and just can't imagine starting their day with tea? They can't change, can they? Of course, if they really wanted to, they could. And maybe there are good reasons why they should. But no matter how good the reasons are, they are going to resist, aren't they? They are going to insist on their coffee, and that you have coffee too. You can tell them, Well, tea has antioxidants. You can tell them, Tea has less caffeine. You can offer them tea every day, just in case they'd like to try it. But in the meanwhile, you've got to drink what's right for you. You can't drink coffee because they can't handle change, even if that's a challenge. Matthew 18:17 tells us that if a brother refuses to listen to the Word, you should tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen to the church, you should 'let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.' In other words, a pagan and a tax collector. You should make him as welcome as a pagan and a tax collector. But it isn't so easy, is it? It isn't easy, and yet we need to understand that this is exactly what Jesus Christ our Savior asks of us. Isaiah 30:13 tells us how important it is to keep a wall around our belief. It tells us how the devil goes looking for weak spots, and how fast the wall can fall, and how important it is to know where the broken-down spots are. And so often we find that it is just one or two people that make up our gap, don't we? It's not everyone. It's just one or two people. And so often we find that if we think about it for a moment, we know who those one or two people are. So let's take a moment today, and look in our hearts, and maybe we can share the names of our greatest challenge with others later, so we can begin to think how to deal with them. So we can begin to think how to close up our gaps and take advantage of the Lord's good deal. Because we wouldn't miss out on the deal of our lives, would we? We wouldn't want to miss out.”
And the next Bible study cla.s.s, that's what they did. They went around the table, naming their persons of challenge. And when they got to Sophy, she surprised herself with her answer.
”Sarun,” she said. ”My brother Sarun.”
Because when she thought about telling her family the Good News, when she thought about telling them about the love and peace she'd found in the Lord, Sarun's voice was the voice she heard the loudest. Like she could hear her mom and dad, but she'd been telling them her whole life about how she didn't know if she really believed in kam and k'maoch anyway. And her sisters were just, like, whatever. Sarun was something else.
”Can you hear him?” asked Ginny. ”Can you hear his voice if you try?”
And sure enough Sophy could, easy. It was easy to hear him laughing and laughing.
”Let's see if you can hear what he would say,” said Ginny. ”What would he say when he was done laughing?”
”You got to be s.h.i.+tting me,” he said. ”You been listening to that superst.i.tious bulls.h.i.+t? That gang be shooting up something serious. That gang be ripping you off.”
But what? What were they trying to rip off?
”They're the Khmer Rouge all over again,” he said. ”They want to control you. Control your mind.” He tapped his head. ”You know those remote control cars, you push the stick left and the thing goes left? You push the stick right, and the thing goes right?”
”Has he ever even been in a church?” asked Ginny. ”Ask him. Has he ever been in a church and really listened, with an open heart?”
”Have you ever even been in a church and really listened, with an open heart?”
”No, and I'm not going to listen to none of that s.h.i.+t.”
”Because you'd rather hang out with your friends and break into video parlors and steal the computer chips out of the machines,” Sophy said. ”You'd rather steal them and fence them so you can buy cars to crack up.”
”That's right, man. You got it.” He laughed. ”I've already got an old man who wants to tell me what to do f.u.c.king twenty-four hours a day. I don't need two.”
”That is so sad,” said Ginny, and the look on her face was truly mournful and sorry-like her eyes were far away, and her mouth was soft, and she held her cross in her hand like it was someone's heart. ”I'm sure it hurts you to know how he thinks. To hear how angry he is. How bitter. How he can't let go of his bitterness and how he doesn't want you to, either. How he doesn't want you to move on. Because you love him, don't you?”
”I do.”
”Matthew 18:9 says, 'If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.' But that's not so easy with someone you love, is it.”
”No,” Sophy said. ”It isn't.”
”It isn't so easy to let him be unto you as a pagan and a tax collector, like Pastor Blake said Sunday.”
”No.” Sophy bent her head then, and probably would have cried, except that Ginny looked at her with such kindness.
”Just know we're here to help,” she said.
Reading the Bible by herself was hard and weird. Like Sophy wasn't much of a reader to begin with, and it sounded so strange, with all the thous and shalts and saiths and begats. She didn't like the cover of the Bible either, with, like, that goth writing. And she didn't like those thin pages, and that tiny print with no pictures. The only thing she did like was the material of the cover, and the way you could kind of bend it in your hand. Like it was so soft, and nice to hold. And she liked the gilt at the edges of the pages, and how it made the edges of the pages soft too, and she liked the way the bookmark hung back behind the book when you were reading-how it was right there to mark your place when you stopped, it was almost like it knew you were going to need it, like it knew you, and was sort of waiting for you. It was, like, the exact opposite of the words, which she could never have read without the Bible study group. But now she read the way they read in cla.s.s, just a little at a time, like it was this million-piece puzzle you worked on bit by bit, or like she was learning a secret code. She marked her Bible up the way other people did, too, with, like, this special highlighter that didn't go through the page. And she prayed all day, the way Ginny said she should, practicing her faith, and increasing her belief. Because she did have doubts, she couldn't help it. Like did she really believe Mark when he said that if you tell a mountain, ”Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea,” it would move? She didn't think that would work, she really didn't. Even if you said that without doubt in your heart, she didn't think it would work. But she thought she might conquer her doubt one day if she tried, and in the meanwhile she thought she should not pray instead of reading, but should, like, both pray and read. Because Ginny said that prayer was like a house she was building, but that the Bible was the rock she was building her house on. So she wrote on a piece of paper, ”And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” and put that in the beginning of the book, to help her get started on days when it was hard. And that helped, she thought, it really did.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
It did.
Hattie II: Rising to Fight Again.
There's a strange van in town-a white van, with more panels than windows. It's the kind of under-detailed vehicle that puts Hattie in mind of fetal pigs-that looks as if it got pulled off the line before it reached full van-dom. A thing designed for equipment, really, not pa.s.sengers. And what a strange way of driving it has, going up and down the road the way it does. Hattie can't help but notice as she crosses the room to wash out her brush: up and down, up and down, until finally it stops at the top of the Chhungs' driveway. Sarun lopes up the hill as the kid in the pa.s.senger seat jumps out to open the tailgate. Maybe four or five kids in there? All black-hairs, and presumably Cambodian, though who knows. Gangs, Hattie knows, can be pan-Asian, mixed-race, anything; even thuggery's multicultural these days. Sarun climbs in; the back doors close; the door-closer hops back into the pa.s.senger seat up front. The van speeds off with a roar. Hattie sits down with a frown.
Did anyone get out?” Sophy asks later. She's brought an old tennis ball for Annie, and is playing fetch in the house-something Hattie would not normally encourage. But how amazed Sophy is to find that dogs will chase things! And what an interesting way of throwing she has-her hand springing open as if she's setting a bird free. She opens her mouth, too, the way Gift would, as if that will help somehow.
”More wrist,” says Hattie, gently.
Sophy adds more wrist. Still, Cato and Reveille barely look up. Only Annie, foolish Annie, scrambles madly after every ball, dribbling or not, her back paws slipping out from under her.
”Did anyone get out?” Sophy asks again.
”No,” says Hattie. ”No one got out. That is, except to let Sarun in.” She thumbs through their textbook, undoing some dog-ears. She irons out the creases with her thumbnail.
”Sarun got in?”
”He did.”
Annie catches a ball on the fly, leaping up gracefully into the air, but Sophy doesn't notice. Neither does she see how though Annie lands ker-plop on her hip, the ball's still in her mouth; her tail's going wild.
”His friends from the city?” asks Hattie.
Sophy nods, trying to wrest the ball out from between Annie's teeth. ”We were doing so good,” she says. And though as she speaks, Sophy does manage to pry open Annie's mouth, reclaim the ball, bop Annie on the nose with it, and send it back across the room, the bounce is entirely in the ball. Her voice has none.
”You're still doing good,” says Hattie. ”Your family's going to be okay.”
But Sophy's forehead crumples anyway-despite the dogs, despite Annie, despite the soft light and soft air that they seem to pull in around them. Such happy animal innocence! And should not innocence touch innocence?
Sadness, though, will stake itself off. ”You don't understand.”
”He said he would quit that gang,” says Hattie.
Sophy nods.
”Your father's going to be upset.”
Sophy nods.
”And just when you were starting over.” Starting over being the town pastime, it does seem.
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