Jesus Saves Read Online Free Page B

here. She shook her head, but the lady next to her told her little boy she'd be right back and slipped past Ginger. The boy was leaning on a hymnal coloring a Sunday school sheet that read God Made Me. As the line grew she recognized only a few of the parishioners; frizzy-haired Jean Gephart, who was afraid of her dishwasher and fat Mrs. Clayton and her startled-looking husband Herman. There was Ann Heinz, the goody-goody girl in her floral dress with the lacecollar and her exhausted alcoholic mother Barbara. Old Klass was here today too; he was the only member left from the old days. Most of the old Germans lived in row houses or garden apartments downtown; they hadn't taken to the new church building. Her father hired a van to go down and get them Sunday mornings, but the only one who ever came, sitting alone in the back, dreaming like a wizened duke, was old Klass. He was tiny now, less than five feet, and seemed smaller still in his three-piece suit. He kept cinnamon candies in his pockets for the children and was always calling himself a Prussian Lutheran and a libertine.
    She watched her father raise his hand and make the sign of the cross to dismiss the first group of communicants. All rose with their heads bowed. The organist used the softer tones of the choir keys and only a few people sang.
Take my will, and make it thine / it shall be no longer mine /
    Take my heart, it is thine own / it shall be thy royal throne.
    Her father lifted his head and glanced at her. His features were not tense or angry, but Ginger knew what he wanted her to do. She stood with an irreverent swivel of her hips, loosened herself from the pew, and walked up the aisle to the far end of the communion rail, knelt down, watched from the side of her eye as he placed a wafer on each extended tongue. This is his body given unto you for the forgiveness of sins.
    The real world should seem foreign and out of focus from inside here; a church was a way station between this material world and the next immaterial one. But she saw cars like meteors made ofcolored light zoom past on the highway. And heard a truck heave and honk, the driver hurling his load into the express lane.
    He moved closer, smelling of nautical aftershave and dry toast. This is his body given unto you for the forgiveness of sins. He placed the wafer on her tongue and she brought it back into the wet cave of her mouth. The host stuck to the roof, tasted like typing paper, like white grade-school paste.
    He began again with the silver chalice. This is his blood shed for you. He tipped the cup to a man's lips, then lifted it, cleaned that spot with a piece of white flannel. This is his blood shed for you. He was near. Flutter of robes, his muffled side step. She raised her head, took the cup's lip between her own, and looked into her father's face. Large pores were open and oily around his nose, and his eyes reflected pinpoint faces of parishioners in the first pews. This is his blood shed for you. The red wine stung her gums. She tried to swallow but a cramp punched into her abdomen. Flinching, her mouth opened and wine dribbled down her chin, spattering circles round and soft as berries on the wooden rail. How ridiculous, she thought, that this is happening now. He was already behind the altar, making the sign of the cross, touching his forehead, his heart, then each shoulder. “Go in peace,” he solemnly said.
    As she rose the muscles in her stomach contracted and she felt that monthly paradox, a light-headedness with unbearable bloody weight. She walked along the side aisle with her thighs clamped together so that no blood would drizzle down her legs. A man sat in the back row in a baby blue golf sweater silently moving his lips, not the wide-open shifts of singing, but whispering furtively to the trustee beside him.

    She hurried out the narthex doors, down the stairs toward the basement, past rows of Sunday school rooms, the nursery. Posters lined the hallway, enlarged flowers