F a i t h
H e a l i n g

__________by Kelly
__________Easton



There are four things Faith remembers when she feels like she is drowning.

1. Winning the Swim Meet

Julie Prudard had mono. A disease born from kissing, a kissing disease. Faith had imagined the eight-year-old Julie in the park bushes with a boy. The boy's tongue snaked through the barbed wire of her braces; his body pressed hers into a smooth white plank. It must be sweet feeling a boy on top of you, she imagined, like if your mother tucked the covers around you so tight.

Faith had stood on the platform where Julie usually did. Her bare feet were white bricks against the grains of wood. From up so high, everyone: her coach, her brother, even her mother, appeared minute and unimportant.

Faith sinks beneath a sea of voices and foods. The table is laden with salmon pate', unpeeled shrimp, and caviar like mouse droppings.

The utterances are loud and full of magnitude: deconstructive narratives in the age of terrorism, the rape of aboriginal lexicons by British linguistic systems, gender imprinting in Bonanza.

She has consumed three or four glasses of merlot on an empty stomach, wanting to diet, and having read in a magazine she keeps hidden behind The Paris Review and the New Yorker that alcohol does not metabolize into fat, and she believes it; the drunks she knows are as skinny as rails.

"The marginalization of women in Westerns is related more to fear than anger." Janet Pfeizer's voice rises.

"Why do you think John Wayne is always hiking up his pants," Marvin Kramer pipes in. "He's clearly afraid of castration."

"Well, with Jane Russell around...who wouldn't be?"

Laughter all around. Ha, ha, ha, Faith mimics, and while she knows that she's sulking dangerously, on the couch alone and untenured, she is afraid to dive in with the rest, afraid of unknown currents, the creep of red up her neck when she's said something inappropriate.

She is being watched, she suddenly realizes. A man with narrowed eyes sums her up with the attitude of a hairdresser musing over a bad perm.

I am at a faculty party, she reminds herself, and I am a faculty.

"Oh if that isn't the biggest pile of shit I've ever heard. You goddamned scientists, you optometrists..." Gloria Mallard's voice slurs. She's from Cultural Anthropology. She sways and the colored elephants around her neck appear to stampede.

She's drunker than I am, Faith thinks happily.

"Ophthalmologist," the man corrects Gloria.

"What the hell difference does it make? You can't tell me that Swedenborg's visions were due to a detachment of the retina."

"Of course, you can take it on faith..."

"This has nothing to do with faith! We are talking about passion..."

"Van Gogh's vision, as well," the ophthalmologist continues; "those halos he painted around everything, simply an effect of epilepsy on the optical nerve." The ophthalmologist is tall and wears an Armani suit. Silver feathers glitter at his temples. "So you see, it's really not a question of genius..."

Gloria throws her glass of wine in his face. He flings a forkful of salmon pate' onto Gloria's leotard. Tears rush into Gloria's eyes. She turns to her date, an angular man, ten years her junior; "Aren't you going to do something?"

Gloria's date looks disconcerted. His eyes wander around the room. He is new to the academic scene. An expression of disappointment washes over his face. Slowly, reluctantly, he rolls up his sleeves.

"So much for feminism," Faith says to the narrowed eyes across from her.

"I'm Bob Stein." He grabs her by the wrist. "Let's go."

2. Being rebellious for the first time (but not the last).

"Why buy the milk when the cow is free," her mother had said, turning Faith in circles for inspection, peering between her legs for signs of blood or sperm. Faith had returned from a date with a boy named Carver who was formulating a plan to move to Utah and become a Mormon. It wasn't a bad date; Carver did all the talking over hamburgers and fries. In fact, it was almost as if he was on a date with himself.

"If you be dirty with anyone in this town, your life is over," her mother said, disbelieving that the date had been as pure as Mormon snow. "If I ever find out you've been dirty..."

"All we did was talk, mom."

"You're a liar like your father."

The next day, Faith had gone into town and stood outside the drug store with an ice cream cone, one hand in salute to deflect the sun. The air was sticky. Her dress melded to her skin. A boy had driven up. A stranger in a sailor suit.

"Wanna go to the lake?" he asked, as if they knew each other. "We can take off our clothes and get cool in the water." "I'm not supposed to get into strange cars," Faith replied.

He opened the door. She slid onto the seat.

"You sure?" he asked.

"I guess so."

"I'm just a fly by night," he said, "but it's not on purpose. It's because of the navy. And I want to inform you, just so there's no misunderstandings, that after today, I'll be history to this town. That's what makes it all so fun." He pulled out a small square package. Faith recognized it from her brother's room. "Safety assured," the sailor said. His hand slipped to her knee. The sherbet on her cone melted faster than she could lick it, so she threw it out the window.

"The body is a map," Bob Stein says, running his middle finger from her thigh towards her center. I wish he'd use his index finger, she thinks; it wouldn't seem quite so obscene.

"Each part of the body has its own story. This area is full of life, inspiration, but other parts are dead, and I can feel that. This elbow, for example; It's numb from when your mother wacked it off the table. She just couldn't stand your dreaminess."

"Bullshit," Faith says.

"It's what I wrote my dissertation on; the body's memory of psychic pain."

"I wrote my dissertation on the mathematics of the Bible."

"Really?"

"See, the Old Testament is about multiplication. Be fruitful and multiply and all that." She tries to sound sober. "God shows favor by multiplying everything: land, wives, fruit, wine, mistresses, children, but the New Testament is obsessed with subtraction-with giving things away, stripping down, shedding. This is what causes the modern crisis of conscience. Americans, in general, are Christian but they don't want to do their math..."

Faith allows her eyes to wander around the room. There are etchings done by someone, maybe Bob, of parts of the body. The etchings are good. They make a torso appear as a tree trunk, an arm, a branch.

"I'm Jewish," Bob says. "That means I'm into multiplication." He presses his warm mouth on the slope of her neck, her shoulder, and it all begins again.

After, Bob brings out a tray of fruit and cheese. "Those parties are horrible," he says. "I don't know why I go."

"I just need to be transported sometimes." She munches on an almond. "Or maybe, all the time."

"This is the nineties," he says. "It's what we all need."

3. Being wanted

Richard Kellog had saved for months to offer her the ring, the marriage, the security of security.

He took her to an Italian restaurant. A fat man spun spaghetti on a fork and spoon.

Faith Miller, will you marry me, will you, will you jewel, beauty, sea, goddess, will you weave, inherit, shadow, pierce, ocean, love, scamper, dove. The words poured out; she squinted in concentration. Will you honor, share, inherit?

But what she heard was, will you fold, clean, slave, wait, sit, lie down, shut up, bequeath, will you dumb, stink, punk, breath, die?

"You idiot!" her mother shrieked, when Faith told her she'd refused. "What can you possibly get for yourself?!"

Faith tries to move her head. It feels as if a time bomb has only half exploded. A man is watching her; nodding, smiling.

"Where's Bob?" she says.

"Right here."

"You're not the guy from last night."

"Same guy."

"Are you from my department? Tell me you're not."

"I'm not."

"Thank God."

When she feels remorse or shame, Faith's feet begins to burn. "Do you have any ice for my feet?" she asks.

Bob rubs her feet.

"Great feet. I'd like to draw them."

"Wh-what department are you from?"

"Psychiatry."

Faith covers her head with the pillow. She envisions her herself in a straight jacket, the empty sleeves tied in an X across her back. The pillowcase is as white as a padded cell.

It hasn't always been this way, but lately, Faith has been having some bad days. The neighbor's dog, for example, has been shitting on her doorstep. Technically, no dogs are allowed in the complex. "Technically," is how her neighbor, Jenny, explained it.

When she approaches Jenny, with yet another shoe covered in shit, Jenny becomes hostile; "When are you going to learn?" She grabs the leather shoe before Faith can say a word, and begins to hose it down: "Why don't you look down before you step!"

"Why don't you move into a house?" Faith says, even though she knows she's lost. "Someplace with a yard, or children to bite."

"He must really like you, you know. I mean this dog is into desire. And it doesn't have to just be other dogs. He can tell when someone's really needy."

Jenny's mouth is moving, but no further sound comes out. Really needy...Faith winces, then thinks of Bob, who has not called her. She peers down at her sodden, stiff shoe.

Jenny pulls the dog towards her in a conciliatory fashion. "Pet him, Faith," she says, "let him know you aren't really mad."

4. Being Accepted (blah blah blah).

She had raced through the corridors to Dr. Marvin's office. "I got accepted to grad school," she panted. "That recommendation you gave me must have done the trick!" She waved her letter of acceptance.

Dr. Marvin looked at her in that way he had when one of his students wouldn't sleep with him: "For God sakes Faith, give yourself some credit. What the hell could I have said? Faith is a good student, blah blah blah. She has original thoughts, blah blah blah. You were accepted because no one else is interested in doing the kind of work you're doing. No one is dealing in antiquities, except for a few half dead cronies at Harvard." But even his cynicism hadn't dampened her spirits. Acceptance, the mere word of it, was like standing on the podium and winning, like sex combined with love. She crossed to Dr. Marvin and kissed him the way he had always wanted her to; on the mouth and hard.

"Listen, Faith," her brother has exhorted her over and over again; "when are you going to enter the 20th century?"

Now, with her typewriter arthritic, near death, she may have to make the leap through time, through the language spoken so easily by her colleagues: WordPerfect, Mac, Windows, Web, Internet, E-mail. She is writing an article on Sumerian modes of spirituality versus modernist alienation, one of three she must publish in order to eke out tenure.

The representation of the flood in Gilgamesh, she writes, while similar to the depiction in Genesis, differs in the humanistic response. The Utnapishtim/Noah split symbolizes the movement from faith to modern cynicism. Noah's construct is self preser

The typewriter wheezes out its last letter, chokes and dies. Faith calls her soulless brother, the computer King. His wife, who hates her because she hasn't birthed babies, answers: "I'll get him." She drops the phone. Faith can hear it dangle on its cord; she imagines that she is spinning upside down inside of it. According to the Hebrew Bible, a barren woman is a woman of no worth. But this has nothing to do with Gilgamesh.

"Faith," Barry forces animation. "What's wrong? Did someone die?"

"Some-THING," Faith says. "Okay, it's time."

With a rare show of emotion, Barry lets out a little whoop: "Faith, this is going to be so great, so smooth, you won't believe it. Your hands are literally going to sing, and we'll fix you up on the internet. Who knows, maybe you'll meet someone nice."

Someone nice? A quotation from their mother--someone nice, well placed, well heeled, conservative, a dentist, a lawyer, a CPA

Much to her surprise, she learns how to use the computer in a snap.

"Hey you catch on quick," Barry enthuses. "I can actually see why you're a professor."

Inexplicably she says, "I'm getting better. I really am."

While she pretends not to wait for Bob to call, she dabbles on the internet: information she'd rather read in bed, talk rooms full of nerds who want to relive high school. There is something called the dungeon. She enters. So it's sex, she thinks, sex on the computer. She can see her brother in these rooms, locked away from his frigid wife, pretending he's perusing the Wall Street Journal.

Someone called Psycho Bitch addresses Gutter Brain: "There are dead soldiers in the mire," Psycho Bitch writes. "In a sea of filth and blood, of body parts. You swim towards me, hungry, but I shove you down face first. I shove your face beneath the water, beneath the murky water where you can't breathe. I stride across your back in my red shoes, like Dorothy's in the Wizard of Oz. The sharpness of my heels carves bleeding holes in your skin. Just as I think you're dead, you reach up and grab me by the throat. I beg for mercy, but you don't give it. You hit me and rip the clothes from my body. You tie up my breasts with the laces from your boots, and piss all over my face..."

Faith slams the power button with her knuckle and Psycho Bitch dies a cyber-death.

Agitated, Faith pours a glass of wine and does yoga. Then, against her policy, she dials Bob's number.

"This is Bob," the machine chatters; "I'll be back from Montreal on the first..."

She starts to slam down the phone, but the message continues, "If this is Faith, I'll be coming by to see you first thing...miss you."

For all the world to hear, she thinks with irritation.

For all the world. She smiles.

"I just want to be happy," Faith answers Nancy. Nancy is a bartender who attended graduate school with Faith. She grills and probes, with a bartender's forgiveness. Faith wants to be great, but she is afraid that greatness entails misery.

"It's like those singers in the old days," she tells Nancy. "In order to preserve their voices, they had to cut off their balls. Or those confessional poets who always commit suicide."

"I know a guy who was killed at the bull run in Spain. He didn't even know there was gonna be a bull running. He was a happy guy; he definitely wasn't great. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bull gored him," Nancy gestures to her solar plexus, "here."

They both nod sadly. You never know.

Nancy hovers under her fourth Midori margarita. "Greatness is something our mothers brainwashed us with, so we could relive their miserable lives. I shun greatness. It's why I dropped out of graduate school. I welcome all the things our mothers didn't want for us: spinsterhood, sagging breasts, S.T.D.s, alcoholism."

"I don't think my mother wanted anything for me."

"You're wrong on that one, Faith. I saw how proud your mother was when she came to your graduation."

Faith flushes. She looks around the dark restaurant. It is midnight. The single strip of light creates a road on the shiny surface of the bar. The naugahyde peels from her leg like an unlucky tongue on an ice cube. Aside from one drooping man, they are the last patrons there; "How can you handle those sweet drinks Nancy?"

"I can't," Nancy assures her. "Really, I goddamned can't," and she throws up in the nachos grande.

A girl, a child, had drowned in the lake. Faith had been one of several Girl Scouts to discover the pressed face against the frozen surface of the water. It was like nothing she had ever seen before, a parade balloon with the air let out.

"Popsicle girl!" Mary Henson, chanted. "Popsicle, popsicle."

The pressure in Faith's stomach mounted to the top of her head. As if she were apart from herself, she had a vision of her father riding on a train. He was drinking champagne with a woman, smiling in a way she'd never seen before.

The girls ran through the woods as if someone were chasing them, back to their homes, their mothers.

"A girl drowned in the lake," Faith panted as she slammed the door.

Her mother paced through the kitchen, picking up objects and putting them down.

"A little girl," Faith repeated. "She was frozen."

Her mother searched the refrigerator, the oven. "I'm looking for your father." She opened the dishwasher. "He's hiding somewhere and I can't quite find him."

"He's on a train," Faith said.

Her mother crossed to her, slapped her in the face: "I knew you were in cahoots with him, you bitch, tell me where he went!"

"I don't know," Faith began to cry. "It was in my imagination is all. I don't know where he is."

Faith's mother crossed to the window. Frost clutched the limbs of the trees, encircled the pane. "Others have drowned there before," she said. "You don't have to make a big deal of it."

Bob shows up in jeans and a Pendleton, looking like some Oregon lumberjack, some redneck who would nail a spotted owl to a tree. He is carrying coffee beans, roses, a CD, and a tie dyed scarf. Something about his cheerfulness brings out the worst in Faith. She wants to destroy his certainty, to let the air out of his hopes.

"So you just figured I'd be here waiting." Her voice sounds thin, harsh, her mother's. He stops, frozen. Everyone is afraid of being humiliated. Bob is no exception. "I should have called," he says.

The day before he left, her father held her face between his hands: "Sometimes you have to make a change. You just have to and you don't have a choice. Sometimes..."

Faith draws Bob into the house. "My mom died last year, did I say this..." She takes the CD, the roses from his hands.

"Brahms." Bob looks tired, but comfortable. He scans the bare walls of her apartment. "I heard a great quartet in Montreal."

"Conference boring?"

"Not bad."

"Let's listen," Faith says.

Bob puts on the CD. The music is good and raw, the way music sounds when it's been recorded live.

"Tell me about your mom." Bob pulls her over. There are rivers in her body. He draws his finger through them like a boat.

WHAT IT ALL COMES DOWN TO

What it all comes down to is the Sumerians.

Faith had waited at her mother's side. Tubes were connected to her nose, her throat, her heart, the white mound of inner arm. "The tubes are life," the nurse told her, fidgeting with a Princess Jasmine barrette in her hair. And because Faith stared at her, she became defensive: "Who doesn't like Disney?"

"I think Disney should take over Russia, run it like a real theme park," Faith replied. "Make everyone shave clean and wear crew-cuts. Make everyone efficient."

The nurse had smiled sickly and backed out of the room.

The Sumerians had faith that the gods would relieve them of Gilgamesh's hubris and greed. So the gods discovered Enkidu. Like Adam, Enkidu was coerced from the natural world and, in bitterness, he died; "Once I ran for you, for the water of life," he said to Gilgamesh, "but now I have nothing."

Enkidu's story, though, is somehow incomplete. Many of the cuneiform tablets were lost or crumbled beyond recognition.

There are mysteries to the epic which may never be solved, but Faith is willing to try.

Kelly Easton has an M.F.A. in playwriting from U.C. San Diego. Presently, she teaches at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her fiction has been published in Connecticut Review; Frontiers; Phoebe; Prairie Hearts, an anthology; Washington Square; Rio Grande Review and is forthcoming in The Paterson Literary Review and Sojourner. Her e-mail address is eastonk@uncwil.edu.



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