I Am The Local Atheist (40 page)

“
I
brought you to Jesus. It’s because
of me that you didn’t kill yourself…” She recoiled suddenly, like
the thought had hit her so hard and realisation had finally dawned.
“But you never thanked me for that.
I
showed you the cross that had saved
so many lives,
I
showed you the scripture that gave you new life;
I
brought you to the
church! It’s all because of me! But you never thanked me for that,
you never acknowledged my help. I’m the reason, Lisa! It’s
all…
my
fault!
Can’t you see that?”

“
What? I wasn’t blaming you for anything.”

“
But it’s because of me.” It was only then that I realised that
tears were streaming down my cheeks. “It’s all my fault.” I
shrugged my shoulders and slumped back into the chair. “I’m the
reason.”

“
What are you talking about?”

I felt my lips
tremble as the words rose up from my throat. “They wouldn’t let me
see her.”

“
Serene Gilligan? You tried to help?”

I felt my eyes
staring into the past like it had a grip on me that I couldn’t let
go of. “Yeah…”

“
Why? I mean, you weren’t a part of the church anymore. Did you
know her well?”

“
Yeah,” I said.

Lisa sat in
silence for a while. She finally said, “what did you do?”

I raised my
head to look at the ceiling, wiping the tears from my cheeks.
“Nothing. I did nothing. Didn’t even ring her.” I shook my head. “I
didn’t even ring to see how she was, didn’t even bother calling
just to leave a message.”

I lowered my
gaze to the floor, like I had done for so much of this year,
avoiding anyone who might catch the look of guilt in these eyes.
“…and she couldn’t bring herself to disobey her parents anymore.
”

I had expected
Lisa to say something but she was silent.

“
I figured it would be best to not get between her and her
parents. At least, any more than I already
was.”

I could still
remember Serene tacking the poster up on my ceiling as I lay on my
bed, her head hanging backwards, black hair falling down into soft
strands I could reach up to and run my fingers through. “I need
something to look at when I’m not looking at you, okay?”

“
Sure” I said. I smiled as I lay there looking up at her
slender body, jeans hugging her thighs as they arched over me, feet
planted either side of my waist.

It was an
Ecclesiastic Seal poster. I didn’t really like the band but I just
wanted Serene to be happy. She had been confused for so long that
her being happy was all that mattered to me. And I felt like I
would do anything to help her.

“
We had been dating for about two months, off and on. Secretly
– her mother would have flipped if she had known that her daughter
was dating me.” I looked down at my hands as they rubbed together.
“She certainly flipped when she did find out.”

The thought of
my fingers caressing her bare neck caught my attention, fingers
sliding down and holding onto thin shoulders, how she had pulled my
body closer to hers and then reached in to kiss me with a big smile
on her face, like she was finally breaking free from the iron grip
that her family had had her in ever since she was a child. All I
could think of was how Serene was the last person that I had held
so close to me, been in such close contact with and known…
intimately.

“
She felt so tied to her parents that she couldn’t bring
herself to disobey them. I was the boy who burned the cross
defiling the church and everything that it stood for. They didn’t
want this bad influence anywhere near their daughter.”

“
Were you a bad influence?”

“
That’s the million dollar question isn’t it?”

“
I don’t know. Is it?”

I looked out
the window avoiding her eyes. “Do you remember when you asked me
what made Jesus so wonderful, what made believing in God so much
better than not believing?”

“
Vaguely.” She squirmed back into her chair. “It was a long
time ago.”

“
Serene had lived a sheltered life in a way that I hadn’t, but
we both had grown up taking for granted a love that would be with
us for the rest of our lives. Or at least I
thought
would be. When she discovered
that I wasn’t your average everyday ‘law-abiding, clean as a
whistle’ Christian, she suddenly knew who to go to to help her
break out.”

“
Sure, but something must have set it off. That’s what I was
trying to find out, but kinda got nowhere. I still don’t know why
she did it.”

I rubbed my
eyes. “She just wanted to experience what other people were
experiencing. Her parents knew that she was smoking pot and they
knew that she was still seeing me after I had been kicked out of
church. They warned her and pressured her and tried to convince her
that she was going to hell because of what she was doing. I felt so
sorry for her. But all I wanted was for her to feel happy when she
was with me. Her parents didn’t understand that.”

“
They blamed her death on drugs.”

“
She never did hard stuff. Just some weed… and a little too
much drinking.”

I picked at my
fingers as I remembered the great ‘tougher cannabis laws’ petitions
after her death when traces of THC were found in her system – it
was also pointed out that she had been drinking quite heavily
before she committed suicide, but that little fact seemed to just
conveniently fade away as the cannabis lynch-mob started sinking
their teeth into the press. Meanwhile mother was probably going
through her worst alcohol-dependence bout yet, not helped by Dad
running away with someone else… if that wasn’t the cause of it.

“
Serene was so calm and happy when she was stoned. It was only
when she was coming down from that high and her frustrations
returned that she began to drink and become more confused than
ever, even angry. Serene had lost all her sense of self-assurance,
all her faith in herself that had gone along with her faith in a
guiding light; all the things that had attracted me to her
beautiful presence in the first place. For her Jesus had
disappeared and darkness had crowned itself the new
king.”

Lisa looked
down at her fingers.

“
There are plenty of other bad seeds in this town, scores of
black sheep who are harder and more dangerous than anything I’ve
ever come close to. But she reached out to me because as dirty as I
looked to her parents, she knew that I would never hurt her. She
needed a way to rebel against her parents without stepping over the
edge. A casual acquaintance with drugs got her foot out the door;
her own will went out and found me.”

“
So she was already on drugs before you came along?”

“
Yeah, she liked getting stoned. But she didn’t dare go
further. She just wanted to be out of the reach of her
parents.”

I thought
about the days she stayed the night, how I held her in my arms, and
I kissed her as she came down from her highs. “All she ever really
spoke to me about was the need to be free and that she never felt
free when she was constantly being told what she could and couldn’t
do.”

“
Are you saying it was her parent’s fault for putting too much
pressure on her?”

“
Maybe. They were strict, but not unsympathetic. They cared for
her. They just couldn’t accept me as a part of her life. Not the
first time parents have come between… y’ know… two people. She was
the last person I knew from church that I had any contact with.” It
still annoyed me that Lisa had deserted me just like everyone else.
“I never understood why you couldn’t accept what I had
done.”

“
The cross?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Because you stood on other people’s beliefs and you defiled a
symbol of people’s hopes and dreams.”

“
You know I hate symbols.”

“
I know, but that’s no reason to destroy them. You grew up with
these symbols always in your face and for some reason you saw
through them and pitted yourself against them. But that’s not what
they were for me. That cross you burnt was my salvation – the very
one that you burnt – it was the one you yourself took me to and
showed me the light of Jesus through. Or have you forgotten
that?”

I had. I had forgotten it. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. I
thought I was picking a cross at random,
that one on the prayer table next to the candles,
soaking our dear crucified Jesus in gasoline
before I was due to walk up on to the alter to say my reading from
Jeremiah 29:

This is what
the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried
into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle
down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons
and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in
marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in
number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity
of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the
LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes,
this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not
let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen
to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies
to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the LORD.

But I didn’t bother finishing it. I was too angry. I raised my
head and looked out at the congregation. “
I have been asked to cease working in the name of God by
hypocrites, I have been asked by mere people to give up what was
graciously given to me by our Lord God; I have been asked to stop
living my life…”

Had I
continued reading, I may have changed my mind:

“
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD,
“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope
and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me,
and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you
seek me with all your heart…
”

Lisa said:
“There are people in this town who see you as a symbol of hate and
deviltry, but you don’t see them heading out to lynch you. They
accept you as a part of this town whether or not they like what you
did.”

“
Yet they were so quick to throw me out of the church because
of it.”

She looked
back down at her fingers.

I still felt
anger towards her. “And you were so quick to desert me like
everyone else.”

“
They forbade me to see you, and y’ know it wasn’t so much
that, because I left that church and joined City Light soon
afterwards. It was just that I had become a part of a family that I
had never been a part of before. I wanted that so much
more.”

I could
understand that. I didn’t want to, but I had to. That’s how so many
non-Christians became Christians – by seeing something in religion
that they had never had anywhere else. It was the light that had
been absent from the rest of their life. That’s what it had always
been for Lisa. I guess I could only say that I had taken it for
granted for so long, in the belief that it had always been there
and always would be.

…
even when I thought it had deserted me.

“
It seems so strange that you never told me, that you had kept
it a secret from me. Well, from everyone by the sounds of
it.”

“
Almost everyone.”

She raised her
eyebrows. I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t already figured it
out.

“
Remember how you said that Anna MacPherson was Serene’s Elder
at Church?”

“
Yeah.” I surprised look hit her face. “Ohhhh…”

“
Right. Serene confessed everything to that old witch, and then
she told Rickerton. He told me to stop seeing her because it was
inappropriate and cast shame on the image of the church. I told him
to go get screwed. My flatmates knew as well, but I had nothing to
fear from them knowing. They didn’t care.” I looked past her
suddenly. “If it wasn’t for Tinsdale, I might have gone a lot
longer without… finding out.”

I didn’t know
anything that day, hadn’t overheard anyone talking about it; I knew
nothing as I drifted about town in the drizzle, hood over my head,
cap covering my eyes. It wasn’t until I arrived back at the flat
that I found out.

Tinsdale was
sitting on the couch. He looked at me nervously. He held a
cellphone in his hand.

“
What?” I asked.

“
You don’t know?”

“
Know what?”

A newspaper
sat on the coffee table. He reached over and pushed it towards me.
I sat down looking at the page it was open to.

The words almost blurred as I read them. “
…Invercargill girl… late last night… fell into the cars
below… A witness … ‘poor girl, wasn’t pushed, didn’t lose her
footing … jumped, just like that’…
” I found
it hard to swallow past the sickening feeling rising in my
stomach.

“
Who was it?” I asked, but I knew.

Tinsdale
closed his cellphone lid. “Apparently it was Serene.”

It was raining
outside. The walls were closing in. I stood up and walked out the
back door and down the footpath as the rain cascaded over me,
drenching me. I fell to my knees but crawled some more to the
nearest tree, reaching out for the low lying branches. There my
stomach heaved and wrenched as breakfast and lunch vaulted up my
throat and spewed out of my mouth. I clung tight, smashed my head
against wet bark. I pulled my weight against the branches trying to
rip them out of their knotted sockets. Pain bled across my face, my
stomach ached as I kept dry reaching and hurling myself against the
tree.