The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [121]
The Church of the Divine Jesus Christ was elusive that way. Particularly the Stanton one. What, with being the worldwide headquarters and all, they felt they had to be elusive. They were the one and only church on the planet who understood what the Holy Bible was really talking about, and all other Christian denominations were Babylon. As for other religions...hell, they were broken vessels damned beyond repair.
Its members were predominantly of Chinese descent, as the church was founded in underground World War II China, its founding fathers evading communist tyranny by exporting themselves by the definition of exporting to California. They hid inside hay-filled cargo crates nailed shut by close friends left behind, and fed on wafers and drank from water jugs and relieved themselves in leather pouches and through holes in the crates until they were recovered at a San Francisco harbor.
Their entire journey and discovery was enough for a newspaper’s front page.
The word of the Lord they brought with them delighted the ears and captured the souls of a growing multitude of followers, mostly those sharing the same heritage as none of the founding fathers spoke English. Even now, the pastor of the Stanton main headquarters had to make use of an interpreter, and to those who spoke English his sermons were distracting and difficult to follow. But they loved him anyway.
To Eliza and Malmey, the whole Church of the Divine Jesus Christ scene was a way of life. If not for them completely, then it was at least a way of life for both their families. And they were stuck in the middle of it all, two girls of recent high school graduation, doing their best to fit in.
Both of them stood casually against a tall concrete wall behind the camper shell of Malmey’s father’s pick-up truck at the far end of the side parking lot, where no roving eyes could catch sight of the smoke of their cigarettes. They were dressed in proper conservative attire, with ankle-length skirts and cotton-white tops buttoned to the neck. Both were Caucasian, pasty-faced and make-up free and if they were dressed any plainer they’d likely be mistaken as Amish. Unlike the majority of fellow church-mongers, their lives as devotees were increasingly overwrought with social concerns outside the church, though on Sundays one would never know by looking at them. Unless one caught them smoking. They each took a drag of their cigarettes and blew the smoke over the wall.
“Did you know that raccoons rape cats when the cats venture into their territory?” Malmey asked.
“Really,” said Eliza, stricken oddly by the question. “No kidding. What a subject to talk about, when you’re about to teach in Children’s Study.”
Children’s Study was the Church of the Divine Jesus Christ’s version of Sunday School.
It was Sunday and the parking lot was filling with the vehicles of those anticipating another morning of education and worship, Divine J.C. style.
Malmey flicked her ashes. “Yeah, well, the night before last the BoLeves came over for dinner.”
“That’s right,” Eliza said in recollection. “How did that go? They were going to adopt that one boy....”
“They did adopt him. You know, he was found in a homeless shelter four or five years ago and eventually a family took him in. He was thought to be autistic. His first foster parents were robbed and murdered; the police found him cowering in the guest room closet playing Don’t Spill the Beans in the dark. That’s what Brother and Sister BoLeve said. Someone else looked after him not long after that happened. I forgot if it was another couple or a school for boys, but the daughter of a Catholic woman was discovered in bed with electric drill holes in her throat. The boy was close to that family somehow, and the boy was fascinated with the woman’s husband, how he’d undergone an operation which left him with a hole in his throat so he could