The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [104]
“Lord,” she said, “we ask that you bless us with a spirit of strength and courage.”
Waves of shoppers were entering and exiting the store, and each was staring at us. One little child pointed at me, and her mother quickly yanked the kid by the hand and dragged her out to the parking lot—spiriting her child safely away from us, as though we were emitting sulfur fumes.
Janine was up next and had begun her prayer. Janine’s prayers were always strange, original, and poetic. “Lord,” she said, fidgeting as a shopper nudged her aside, “I ask you to bless us with your rain. Rain on us, dear God!”
A young man burst through the door behind us. When the door flew open, the handle nailed me right on the coccyx bone. Worse, I was panicking at the thought of actually praying out loud in this doorway. I wasn’t sure I could do it.
“Your turn, honey,” Laurie said.
I bit my lip. “Can I pray later?” I said.
They frowned. “Why?” said Laurie.
“I just feel shy,” I said, wincing.
This didn’t go over well—the women eyed me strangely—but eventually we shrugged it off and loped through the store. I was walking funny after taking that blow and also momentarily captivated by a store ad for the “Cabernet Full-Figure Deep-Plunge Seamless Bra” that featured a distracted russet-haired beauty and a ridiculously long cleavage line. Again, perhaps I had been in the church too long, but the ad just seemed way over the top. Children shop in this store, I thought.
Christ, I’m losing my mind.
As we walked through the store, Laurie and Janine were talking about the “Million Dollar Bill” icebreakers we were about to use.
“Whose face is that on the bill?” Laurie said.
“I don’t know,” said Janine. “Matt, do you know?”
“It’s Enrico Fermi,” I said, still staring at the bra ad.
“Who?”
I looked at the bill again. Actually the husky bearded figure in the picture was Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a nineteenth-century icon of the fundamentalist movement, probably the world’s first megachurch preacher. He once preached to twenty-three thousand people at the Crystal Palace in Victorian London. They handed us this stuff in church without telling us any of it—I’d had to look it up the night before.
“Enrico Fermi,” I repeated. “He founded Grace Bible College.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” said Janine.
“I’m nervous,” said Laurie.
“Me too,” I said.
“Me too,” said Janine.
In a few minutes we were in the food court. Janine and her little girl sat down at a table. At the moment of truth, Janine couldn’t actually approach anyone and decided to assist in the venture by offering prayer support. So she sat at a table in front of the China Super Buffet and began whispering prayers to herself.
Laurie, on the other hand, immediately started accosting strangers—she was a natural. She hit a whole crowd full of shoppers and had them eating out of her hand in about eight seconds. Laurie had a lot of good qualities. She was fearless and easy with people. Her tragedy was that while these were wonderful traits to have, they didn’t help her self-esteem. She would make friends but not be soothed by them, so then she would have to make more. For a few minutes I stood behind her, just mumbling under my breath, and then I fumbled the snap with my first solo try, inspiring laughter from Laurie when I invited a young man with a Limp Bizkit–style chin beard to come visit Cornerstone.
“You’re not supposed to invite them to the church,” she said.
“I’m not?”
“No,” she said. “Just go by the program.”
“WDJD,” I said, smacking my head in exasperation.
“That’s right, honey,” she said. “You’ll get it.”
She went off again, this time hitting a crowd full of teens over by a sporting goods store. I would later learn that one of the teens in this crowd was wearing a hat with an anarchy symbol on it, which would lead Laurie to conclude