These words transfix me. When I can speak again, my voice is rough with grief. “I’m sorry, Bonnie. So so so so sorry.”
She comes back to the present. Her eyes lose that faraway coolness, that deadness, and fill with concern for me, instead. “Hey, hey, Momma-Smoky, it’s okay. Well, I mean, no, it’s not okay, but I’m okay. I could have been really messed up forever, you know? I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to talk again or stop having nightmares. I even thought about killing myself. But now, I like my life. I love Elaina, and Alan, and most of all, I really love you.” She grins. “Like tonight. We made steaks.”
“Yes,” I manage. “Good steaks.”
“Yeah, and that’s small, but it’s also everything, you know?”
“I do, babe.”
“But the thing with my mom happened, Smoky. It happened, and it’s always there and in a way it always will be. I know you know what I mean, because stuff happened to you too. And you know what? I don’t want to forget. I think the day I can’t remember how my mom looked in that room is the day I’ll really be in trouble.”
The simple mature wisdom of what she’s saying takes the keen edge off the saw blade that had been attacking my heart. She’s right. I used to think that if I stopped mourning Matt and Alexa, I was killing them all over again. I came to realize that suffering was not a requirement, not even guilt; remembering was enough. But—and here is the ocean-sized caveat—remembering is required.
“I understand,” I tell her.
She smiles at me. “I know you do. So you should understand why I want to do what you do.”
“Because of what happened to your mom.”
Those cool, oh-too-speculative eyes are back. The twelve-year-old is gone again.
“Not just my mom. Because of what happened to me. Because of what happened to you. Because of what happened to Sarah.”
Sarah was the living victim of a case I’d been involved in a few years back. Even though she is six years older than Bonnie, they have found kinship in tragedy and remain close friends.
“Everyone I love most knows that the monsters are real, Momma-Smoky. When you know they’re real, you can’t pretend anymore, and you have to do something about it.”
I stare at her. I don’t want to hear these words coming from that mouth.
God, I hate this conversation. And you know what? I’m going to lose this argument. Because these wheels were put in motion the moment Bonnie was tied to her gutted mom and left there to change into what she is now.
It makes me sad. I’ve been living in a fantasy world, hoping that Bonnie would grow into a normal life, a normal job, get the white picket fence and the dog. Who had I been kidding?
Not her, that’s for sure.
I sigh. “I understand, babe.”
I may not like it, but I do.
“Going to a regular school is a part of that. I can’t understand the monsters, not really, if I don’t understand normal people, you know?”
And you’re not one of the normal people, babe?
I think it, but do not ask it. I don’t want to hear her answer.
“I thought maybe it was so you could make some friends your own age.”
“But I’m not my own age, Momma-Smoky.”
It finally happens, against my will. That little tidbit is enough to bring a tear. Just one. It rolls down my cheek in a straight line. Bonnie’s face scrunches up in concern and she reaches her hand out to wipe it away.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
I clear my throat. “I don’t ever want you to tell me anything less than the truth. However it makes me feel.”
“But you shouldn’t feel bad. I could be dead. I could be in a mental institution. I could still be screaming in the middle of the night—remember that?”
“Yes.”
We both used to do it, sometimes in stereo. Nightmares would walk us into memory and we’d wake up screaming ourselves hoarse.
“So things are better, see? I don’t want you to think I’m not happy.”
She manages to drill down with that, to put words to the greatest, most basic mother-fear.
“Are you, babe? Happy?”
I’m a little shocked at the miserable, desperately hopeful sound of my own voice.
She gives me a new smile now, one that’s unfettered, unadulterated, no fog, no screams or rain or cold, cold eyes. Just twelve-year-old cloudless blue-sky sunshine, the most beautiful sun there is.
“Eight days out of ten, Momma-Smoky.”
I remember what Alan said earlier, and know that he was right. Count your blessings is a cliché, but only because it’s so damn true. Bonnie is here, Bonnie is beautiful, intelligent, talented, she talks, she doesn’t fear life or wake up screaming in the night. Yes, she’s been changed by what happened to her, but she hasn’t been broken, and in the end, that’s the biggest blessing of all. Almost a miracle, really.
I grab her and hug her to me.
“Okay, okay. But can you wait till next fall? Finish out this year with Elaina?”
“Yes, yes, yes, thank you, thank you!”
I know the decision is the right one, because those squeals of delight are pure twelve-year-old again.
We spend the rest of the night wrapped in normalcy, doing nothing much, just enjoying each other’s company. For a little while, I don’t worry if someone’s dying.
Somehow, the world turns on without me.
I WAKE UP TO THE insistent buzz of my cell phone. I check the caller ID with bleary eyes. Alan.
“It’s five A.M.,” I answer. “Can’t be good.”
“It’s not,” he says. “The shit’s about to hit the fan.”
21
“I GOT A CALL FROM ATKINS. HE SURFS A LOT OF THOSE VIRAL video sites—”
“Come again?” I ask.
“Websites that allow users to post video clips,” James explains. “They can be self-made, or they can be thirty-second to three-minute clips people encoded from the news or a DVD or whatever.”
I frown. “What’s the point of that?”
“Entertainment,” Callie says. “Voyeurism. Socializing. You have everything from skateboards crashing into the sidewalk and breaking wrists to cute just-legal somethings talking about world events while sitting around in their bikinis.”
I sigh. “Bonnie probably knows all about this stuff.”
Callie pats my head. “Everyone does except you, honey-love.”
Alan opens up a browser and types in a url: user-tube.com. A moment later, the screen fills with a series of neatly arranged thumbnail photos. Each thumbnail has text aligned beneath it.
“Wipeout,” I read below one.
The photo shows someone flying off a motorbike as it crashes into the ground.
Alan clicks it and a new page loads. The video clip begins to play. Sure enough, we see a motorbike hit a ramp, fly into the air, and miss its mark. The rider does a real-life Superman as the bike crunches into the ground. He lands, bounces a few times, and ends up in a tangled heap.
“Ouch,” I say, wincing.
“There’s more,” Alan observes.
Whoever made the clip did us and all other viewers the service of rewinding to the moment before the crash and replaying it all in glorious slow motion. We get to hear the crunches and crashes in that long, drawn-out ohhhhhhhhhh-nooooooo druggy reverb, get to watch the hapless rider arrow through the air and bounce like a human basketball.
“Gross,” I observe.
“Modern day Roman arena,” Callie says.
“What’s all that posted below the clip?” I ask.
“User comments,” Alan says. “You create an account. That lets you upload your own clips and allows you to comment on stuff other people have posted.”
He scrolls down a little so I can read some of the witticisms.
Motherfucking WIIIIIIPEOUT!
Who says a man can’t fly?
Holy shit, did you see him bounce? Holy shit!
We all saw the same thing you did, you dumb fag…
“Highbrow,” I remark.
“It’s not all mayhem,” Alan says, navigating back to the home page. “They have categories, see?”
I read. Family Fun. Animals. Romance. I start to understand the attraction.
“So anyone can come on here, upload a video clip, and have others talk about it?”
“Yep. You get a lot of crap, but you also get some pretty creative stuff. Short movies, comedians and musicians trying to get heard, all kinds of things.”
“And sex, I’d imagine?”
“Actually, they police that pretty hard. No nudity allowed.”
“No problem with gore, though,” James observes.
“Nope.”
I glance at Alan. “And you frequent this site?”
He shrugs. “What can I say? It’s addictive. Each clip is a snack, not a meal.”
“You can’t eat just one,” Callie chirps.
“Okay,” I say. “I understand the structure. Now show me what it has to do with us.”
Alan points to the listing of categories.
“There’s a religious category. Generally, it has a few different uses. Preachers or would-be preachers giving three-minute sermons, a far-righter talking about the sins of abortion, a far-lefter talking about the sins of organized religion in general.”
He clicks on the category and a new row of thumbnail images fills the screen.
“The top ten are the ones you need to see.”
He clicks on a thumbnail. There is a black screen. White, block letters appear: The Beginning of the Opus—A Study of Truth and the Soul.
The letters fade into another few seconds of blackness and then open to the mid-body shot of a man. He is seated at a simple brown wooden table. He is only visible from the shoulders down to the table-top. The wall behind him is blank gray concrete. The light source comes from above, just enough to illuminate him and some of his surrounds. The word austere comes to mind. Snow on a treeless field. His hands are clasped in front of him, resting on the table. They are draped with a rosary. He wears a black shirt and a black jacket.
“The study of the nature of truth,” he begins, “is the study of the nature of God.” The voice is low, but not bass, more alto. It’s a pleasant voice. Calm, measured, relaxed.
“Why is this? Because the basic truth of all things is that they exist as God created them. To view the truth of something is to view it exactly as it is, unlayered by your own views, your own preconceptions, your own additions to its composition. To view the truth of something is to see it not as you want it to be, but as it is. In other words, to see it exactly as God created it to be, at the moment of its creation. Thus, when you see the truth of something, you are, in fact, allowing yourself to see a piece of the face of God.”
“Interesting. Cogent,” James murmurs.
“What, then, prevents us from perceiving this truth? We were all born with eyes to see, with ears to hear. We all have a brain to process the input of our senses. Why, then, do two men witness an automobile accident and have entirely different versions of the truth? Why, further, does a video camera recording of the same accident demonstrate both men’s observations to be incorrect?
“The answer is obvious: only the video camera records without alteration. What, then, is the difference between the man and the camera?” He pauses for a moment. “The difference is that the video camera has no filter of ‘self.’ It has no soul, no mind. One can then extrapolate that where errors in judgment occur, the soul and the mind are the sources of the flaw.
“But if God created all things, and He did, then we must acknowledge that He created the soul and the mind as well. God does not make mistakes. Therefore, the soul and the mind, at birth, are perfection, capable of perceiving exact and basic truth. One could argue that, at birth, no filter exists at all between the truth of the world and the self. What, then, is this ‘filter’? This thing that changes man over time, that makes his recollection less reliable than a video camera?”
Fade to black again, followed by those same white block letters proclaiming, End Part One.
I turn to Alan. “This is fascinating—but what does it have to do with us?”
“Keep watching.”
He clicks on the next thumbnail and we go through the black screen, white letters, and return to the narrator.
“The filter is sin. The catalyst is power of choice. God gave man the ability to choose between heaven and hell. To choose between everlasting glory or eternal damnation. From the moment we’re dragged from the womb, we begin to make choices. The nature of our choices, over time, are what decide our fate when Death knocks.
“From the moment we choose sin, we create the filter. We pull a veil over our eyes, create a barrier between ourselves and the basic truth of things as God created them. Do you see? As we alter the basic truth of us, that truth that God created, we change, thus, our perception of all of the other truths and works of God. This is described in many places within the Bible, such as in the story of Saul.
“‘As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.’ The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
“You see? Saul could not see Jesus even though Jesus was before him. And later:
“‘Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized; and he took food and was strengthened.’
“Saul repented his sins and came to Christ and was thereafter no longer blind. There are those, I know, who will see only the literal in this and no metaphor. I see it as a direct message, an example of the paradigm I have been discussing. Saul was a sinner, and thus, he was blind to God even when God was before him. Saul was filled with God, and his sight was restored. What could be more obvious, more basic, more true?
“And so I say to you, as someone who has worked all his life to be an observer of God’s truth, that your sins, your secrets, your lies, these are what prevent you from seeing the simplicity of the love in the world around you.
“Perhaps you hear this and you agree and you have decided, now I will live in truth. I will be honest, I will sin no more. I applaud and encourage you in this, but I must be honest and tell you—you will fail unless you come to understand this fact: truth is not a striving, it is an immediate arrival.
“What do I mean by this?
“It is explained in our next discussion: the nature of the truth that hides a lie, and the example of Lisa/Dexter Reid.”
Fade to black.
“Oh shit,” I say.
“It gets worse,” Alan replies, grim.
He clicks the next thumbnail. I watch and fight the unease that’s coming to a slow bubble inside my belly.
Again the hands. They haven’t moved once since we began watching.
“Lisa Reid was born Dexter Reid, son to Dillon and Rosario Reid. Dexter became unhappy with the body God had given him, and chose instead to alter that body in an attempt to become a woman.
“All can agree that this is an abomination against the Lord. But it is here, with this misguided soul, that we most vividly illustrate the phenomenon of the truth that hides a lie. The phenomenon goes as such: a person reveals a secret, a sin, a lie. It
is not a small thing that they reveal. It requires courage to do so, and it garners them both relief and admiration. They receive praise for having ‘come clean.’ All of which would be well and good…except for the fact that they had a deeper, darker, as yet unrevealed secret.
“You see? By revealing one great sin, they remove all suspicion that there might be another. We watch them tell the truth, cry tears of relief along with them, and wish we had their strength of character, their newfound courage and virtue. Unbeknownst to us, something more terrible remains unseen.
“This is what I meant when I said that truth was not a striving, but an immediate arrival. One either comes to the truth all at once, or not at all. There is no halfway mark on the path to God. You are either with him or you are not.
“Dexter Reid became Lisa Reid. He came into the open, he revealed his secret—the desire to become a woman—to the world. He accepted all the disgust, chastisement, and blame that would accrue with this. He walked this path unflinching, refusing to be deterred by the disapproval of society. Some—many, even—saw this and admired him for it. Dexter’s life was difficult, even dangerous, but he did what he did because he felt he must, in spite of the obstacles. The definition of courage.”
Another pause. The hands move this time. One thumb comes free and rubs the beads of the rosary.
“But Dexter had another secret. He detailed it in his journal. I have those pages of the journal here, as I stole them after I killed him.”
Fade to black. The white letters Continued in next clip.
“Dammit!” I say.
“It’s a hard medium to get used to,” Alan allows.
Alan clicks on the next thumbnail. When the video begins, the screen is filled with a page of paper. I recognize Lisa’s handwriting. The narrator pulls the page away from the lens and holds it in his right hand so he can read it. The rosary remains draped in his left, and he moves the beads between thumb and forefinger with reverence, a motion I can tell is as natural to him as walking. He begins to read.
THE SIN
of
DEXTER REID