The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [11]
So here’s Tony. He doesn’t ask anything of this world beyond sustenance. All he wants is to honor this vow: So That I May Not Cause Suffering.
Fairly traded coffee: $10.99/lb.
Closet of a room in the student house: $515/mo.
Sweatshop-free organic cotton apparel: $41/outfit
Share of utilities even though he uses almost no electricity: $34/mo.
Food bill at the co-op: $65/mo.
Available jobs for a man without a college degree who refuses to cause suffering: 0
He said, “If you don’t want to work for The Man, you have to have some kind of a talent, you know? I play my saxophone on the street corner and people like it all right, but it’s not like I can play the guitar and sing. Sax and bass are really kind of useless if you have to make a living busking.”
I gazed up at the water-damaged ceiling, ravenous. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this hungry. And all at once my appetite seemed funny. Hilarious, in fact. “I have a talent!” I blurted out.
“What is it?”
I wasn’t sure if I could do it in front of Tony. I’d never performed my trick for anyone but my grandmother—denied it, in fact. When Nana took me to Father Michaels to convince him of the miracle, I’d stood there in front of his big oak desk with my arms outstretched, poker-faced, willing nothing to happen.
“Batty old woman,” I heard him mutter as we left the office.
I walked out of the church building, head down, sure my grandmother would be angry with me for making her look like such an idiot in front of the new priest, but she just squeezed my hand. “Our Lord works in mysterious ways, my child.”
I took a deep breath, stood up, and faced Tony. I closed my eyes, concentrated on the sheer emptiness of my belly. I forced the dull ache up, up, up, then out. Could I even still do it? I concentrated on my palms, hot in the center.
Tony stared, slack-jawed. “Holy shit, Frankka.”
I fell to my knees.
Tony rushed to my side. “Oh, my God, are you okay?” He lifted my hand, pressed his thumb into my palm. “That’s so bizarre.”
“You have to feed me something,” I managed.
Awestruck, Tony scrambled into the kitchen. As he fed me organic banana chips from their crinkly plastic bag, he wanted to know everything. “What is it?”
“It’s just a trick,” I said, sitting up. “Like some people can move their eyeballs independently of one another.”
“No,” he whispered. “Are you, like, a saint or something?”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Hadn’t you noticed?” It had been Tony, not forty-eight hours earlier, who’d called me the worst cynic he’d ever met. I said, “Anyway, Jesus wasn’t actually crucified through his palms. The way they used to crucify people—they used square nails and pounded them through the wrists and ankles. His palms only bleed in the pictures. Real saints get the stigmata because they identify so totally with Christ’s suffering. I just learned to do it for attention.”
Tony shook his head. “I’m serious, Frankka. People would pay clean money to see that.”
Something like panic shot through me, like maybe I shouldn’t have let Tony in on my talent. “No way. It’s a secret.” I clenched my fists. “Church people freak out over this shit.”
But Tony just smiled. “It’s not like anyone’s gonna believe it’s real. They’ll just think it’s a wild magic trick.”
“Then why would they want to see it?”
“Because it’s an awesome magic trick, Frankka. One of the best I’ve seen. It could be some kind of miracle performance, you know? Or, I don’t know, part of a cabaret.”
“What would we call it?” I laughed. “The Death & Resurrection Show?”
So, I’d given Tony the demonstration of my talent and the whim to call it The Death & Resurrection Show, but he’s the one who ran with the idea. By morning, the little seed I’d planted in him had grown into a blossoming scarlet-flowered tree. “We can’t just go around having you bleed,” he said, stirring organic honey into his chai tea. “It has to be a real show. Like we’ve got to have a few performers, and we’ve got to have some kind of a story line. The obvious thing