other: I see you in there .
14 • Gloria
It sounded like hands digging in buckets of popcorn, like
Velcro pressed together and ripped back apart, all those fingernails gouging
and scrambling against the bark of the tree. Gloria jostled with the pack
beneath the limb. Mother and daughter sat above, quietly crying and whispering
false hopes, cornered like cats by a pack of dogs.
There was no escape, Gloria saw. For the past few hours, she
had studied the predicament of the two women, and there was no escape. Not for
any of them. This was what frightened her the most: The left-behind souls
scrambling at the trunk were just as trapped as the starving couple in the
tree. And a steady trickle of the blood-crusted meat-eaters was shambling
through the woods to cluster beneath that limb. It was like ants spilling down
a slippery funnel they couldn’t get back out of. They were all trapped, every
one. They would be until those women on that limb starved to death or lost
their balance, until they were either consumed or their meat rotted in death
and stopped smelling like sweet succor.
This was not a problem Gloria had foreseen. The living
simply did not do this, they didn’t hover almost within reach, neither running
nor dying. They survived or they were consumed. They got away or they passed
through the guts of the damned. One side or the other won, never a stalemate.
Not a stalemate, Gloria thought. Purgatory. Trapped in the
in-between. They were a lot like Gloria in that way, and she wondered what they
had done to deserve this. Something, obviously. The Lord was just, all sins
accounted for. They had all done something to be trapped there.
Hours went by, thinking such circular thoughts. Gloria
circled that tree, which she thought was an oak. She bumped into the others and
took her turn scratching the rough bark. She clawed at the air and groaned at
the nothing, secretly privy to the voiced fears and panicked whispers that
drifted down from above.
And Gloria prayed for deliverance. She thought of that
shoreline she had walked down hours before and wondered if turning toward the
water, toward the thing she feared in that moment, may not have been the better
choice. Wasn’t this her lot? Her life? Was this the lesson God was attempting
to hammer home?
Gloria kicked through the dry leaves and mulled over the
times she’d felt both trapped and safe. Trapped in marriage, even after the
baby was taken from her, even after her husband was locked away. The sin of
divorce was that frigid lake, and so she circled Carl for years and years,
pawing at the empty space around her.
A job she hated, turning over rooms, making bed after bed,
picking up scattered towels and restocking stolen toiletries. Every day,
tiptoeing through wrecks that looked more like robberies than a night’s stay,
dealing with creepy men who put signs out for service, but were still in there,
sometimes a towel around their waists, pretending to be startled, sometimes
wearing nothing at all. Men sent by the devil to harass her, tell her she was
pretty when she knew better, offer her money for unspeakable things.
A job she hated, but change was the other way. Applications
and learning something new were the icy deep.
The city was a funnel. Gloria looked around her, something
she secretly did on the subway. All different colors, different backgrounds,
all the accents. Ants drawn to honey, but they can’t get away from the city.
They land with their parents or bring their own children, get that first job,
learn to drive a cab or flip a room, and never leave.
This was her sin, Gloria thought. God had given her command
of her feet and had set her on the shore of life, and she had chosen to live
the least. She had always chosen to avoid her fears, had shrunk from the
daunting and the risky. And what had her Savior done? Had he walked away from the
challenge, or had he strolled across the water knowing he would not sink?
Gloria let out a frustrated
14 • Gloria
It sounded like hands digging in buckets of popcorn, like
Velcro pressed together and ripped back apart, all those fingernails gouging
and scrambling against the bark of the tree. Gloria jostled with the pack
beneath the limb. Mother and daughter sat above, quietly crying and whispering
false hopes, cornered like cats by a pack of dogs.
There was no escape, Gloria saw. For the past few hours, she
had studied the predicament of the two women, and there was no escape. Not for
any of them. This was what frightened her the most: The left-behind souls
scrambling at the trunk were just as trapped as the starving couple in the
tree. And a steady trickle of the blood-crusted meat-eaters was shambling
through the woods to cluster beneath that limb. It was like ants spilling down
a slippery funnel they couldn’t get back out of. They were all trapped, every
one. They would be until those women on that limb starved to death or lost
their balance, until they were either consumed or their meat rotted in death
and stopped smelling like sweet succor.
This was not a problem Gloria had foreseen. The living
simply did not do this, they didn’t hover almost within reach, neither running
nor dying. They survived or they were consumed. They got away or they passed
through the guts of the damned. One side or the other won, never a stalemate.
Not a stalemate, Gloria thought. Purgatory. Trapped in the
in-between. They were a lot like Gloria in that way, and she wondered what they
had done to deserve this. Something, obviously. The Lord was just, all sins
accounted for. They had all done something to be trapped there.
Hours went by, thinking such circular thoughts. Gloria
circled that tree, which she thought was an oak. She bumped into the others and
took her turn scratching the rough bark. She clawed at the air and groaned at
the nothing, secretly privy to the voiced fears and panicked whispers that
drifted down from above.
And Gloria prayed for deliverance. She thought of that
shoreline she had walked down hours before and wondered if turning toward the
water, toward the thing she feared in that moment, may not have been the better
choice. Wasn’t this her lot? Her life? Was this the lesson God was attempting
to hammer home?
Gloria kicked through the dry leaves and mulled over the
times she’d felt both trapped and safe. Trapped in marriage, even after the
baby was taken from her, even after her husband was locked away. The sin of
divorce was that frigid lake, and so she circled Carl for years and years,
pawing at the empty space around her.
A job she hated, turning over rooms, making bed after bed,
picking up scattered towels and restocking stolen toiletries. Every day,
tiptoeing through wrecks that looked more like robberies than a night’s stay,
dealing with creepy men who put signs out for service, but were still in there,
sometimes a towel around their waists, pretending to be startled, sometimes
wearing nothing at all. Men sent by the devil to harass her, tell her she was
pretty when she knew better, offer her money for unspeakable things.
A job she hated, but change was the other way. Applications
and learning something new were the icy deep.
The city was a funnel. Gloria looked around her, something
she secretly did on the subway. All different colors, different backgrounds,
all the accents. Ants drawn to honey, but they can’t get away from the city.
They land with their parents or bring their own children, get that first job,
learn to drive a cab or flip a room, and never leave.
This was her sin, Gloria thought. God had given her command
of her feet and had set her on the shore of life, and she had chosen to live
the least. She had always chosen to avoid her fears, had shrunk from the
daunting and the risky. And what had her Savior done? Had he walked away from the
challenge, or had he strolled across the water knowing he would not sink?
Gloria let out a frustrated
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