On the way back home, she continued to wrestle with what she had already experienced. She had always assumed that white people who resisted discussing race did so because there was something wrong with them, because they were toxic. Now here she was, scared stiff of a book she couldn't even read completely because it somehow took her out of her own skull, made her feel things that she had never felt before. Was she toxic? She liked to think that she wasn't, could convince herself that she wasn't, but in order to do that, she would have to give them a pass too. It just wasn't fair.
But wait...was there another way? Could she still win? Yes...yes, she could. It was likely to hurt, but she would prove herself right by toughing it out. If she could just do that, her position would be safe. She was not about to lose an argument with a dead man, even if he was "Gampa". She smiled. Challenge accepted, oyinbo.
Safe at home, she opened to where she had left off: "2nd Samuel 12:1-9".
And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.
And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; And I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.
Below the reference, she read:
Hheasbek dû sun bedfuvh es boba úoda.
***
She saw faces, all of them familiar and many of them very much a part of her "set". They ran the gamut, all the way from her current church to the one into which she was born. Some of them even followed all of her favorite teachers and nearly all of them were drinking the Kool-Aid! Every last one of them, save a priceless handful. "Allies", they called themselves. Allies of whom? Mao Zedong? Because they certainly weren't serving Christ this way, sowing discord among brethren.
They wore the clown makeup as if they were born to it, shilling publicly and endlessly for the mob with maudlin posts, totalitarian fist icons, and other cheap theater. A symphony of slide whistles, playing "Leck Mich im Arsch" with farcical reverence. It would have been hilarious if it wasn't so infuriating. The moral courage thus displayed had been modeled by Moe Howard when he said, "I'll protect those girls to the last drop of...your blood!"
She had only recently begun the business of building a family. It had been bad enough to have the President exerting himself to the utmost to make her job harder, so to see almost all of her siblings in Christ doing the same infernal thing was both a knife in the back and a mortal insult. They might as well have told her to go to hell while they were at it. Sold down the river for clicks and comments. What would it take to sober them up? Ten years in the Gulag? Death camps?
If ever there was a time when she had shared in Jesus' own suffering, this was it. Crucified in effigy for the whole world to see, including and especially her spouse. What was next? Literal whipping and nails? But vengeance was the Lord's to take...not hers. She knew what she had to do. Through tears and ragged sobs, she gasped out the words, "Father God...forgive them...for they know not what they do."
***
It had washed over her like a flood, inducing temporary amnesia. When she finally came back to herself, she was physically weeping. As self-consciousness returned, she slowly regained control and composure. She wiped her eyes. One theory she had drawn from the Death Gate Cycle had been proven correct. He had felt betrayed by his own, and that on a scale she could scarcely have imagined.
Fair point. I may not have been there exactly, but I've been close enough to sympathize. I don't like getting shot at from behind either. I hope I wasn't part of that, but if I was, please know that I'm sorry.
With calm came a question: What did it mean to "drink the Kool-Aid"? Would Google be able to tell her? Among the search results she found references to a "Jonestown Massacre" in Guyana, "Jim Jones", and "People's Temple". Kool-Aid (or rather, an off-brand version of it) had been the beverage into which Jones had put cyanide and which he had then ordered everyone to drink, killing every man, woman, and child he could still round up. On a hunch, she tried searching "Jonestown video" on YouTube. There she found a 44-minute audio recording of the massacre itself. It pulled and twisted her insides in all the worst ways.
Jim Jones, it turned out, was a communist. Weren't communists the good guys? Even more surprising than that, though, was a question she had not been expecting to hear. "Is it too late for Russia?" a woman asked.
Russia???
Why were self-identified communists referring to Russia as a place of refuge? Hadn't the benevolent forces of Democracy roundly condemned Russia? Hadn't it always been that way? What was she missing?
And where was the pride? Where was the instinct for self-preservation in Jones's Black audience? Words could not express how depressing it was to hear such things as these:
No other way I'd rather go than to give my life for socialism/communism, and I thank Dad very, very much.
We're all ready to go. If you tell us we have to give our lives now, we're ready.
And then there was the "rebuttal" to Christine, the lone brave woman who had resisted the call to suicide and asked about Russia:
Christine, you're only standing here because he was here in the first place. So I don't know what you're talking about, having an individual life. Your life has been extended to the day that you're standing there because of him.
And the wails... Dear God, the wails! Children were dying and the microphone was recording their final screams! And through it all, there was that "prophet" Jim Jones talking like a psychopath, frequently to wild applause.
Without me, life has no meaning.
I'm the best friend you will ever have.
Lay down your life with dignity, don't lay down with tears and agony!
It will not hurt if you'll be quiet.
Adults! I call on you to stop this nonsense! I call on you to quit exciting your children when all they're doing is going into quiet rest! I call on you to stop this now, if you have any respect at all. Are we Black, proud, and socialist, or what are we?
I don't care how many screams you hear, I don't care how many anguished cries. Death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life.
Then the eerie, sluggish music in the background faded into nothing and she was left with a profound heaviness in her chest, as if a kettlebell were hanging from her ribcage. These were the people that she was supposed to support? These were her friends and allies? White Saviors like Jim Jones, who would order her to drink poison if things went sideways?
He was certainly quick enough to throw shade at the people who left, whom he snidely wrote off as "mostly white people", but in light of this recording, it seemed that those "mostly white people" had been the only people in the group who were still sane. With friends like Jim Jones, who needed enemies? What else had been hidden from her like poop in a box of chocolates?