My mother used to dress me up for church, in a white dress mostly, and one time I asked her why I always had to dress up.  She said it was “God’s house”, and she made my brother Derek wear a tie.  Which he looked ridiculous in, I mean it was kind of janky to make a little boy dress like that.  But it was God’s house.  You know, I think if God had a house, he could do a lot better than that little wooden church down in Cape May Courthouse.  That’s where I grew up, in Cape May Courthouse.  Everybody’s heard of Cape May, but when I tell my friends at the University of Pennsylvania where I come from they’re all disbelieving my real truth.  “What you mean Cape May Courthouse?” they ask, “like a building?”  I get a little vexed about it.  I don’t know who named the town, but that’s how it is.  I get even more vexed when I go home on the weekends and my mother still wants me to go to church on Sunday, like I haven’t grown up and gotten my own life.  Hello, Mama, I’m in college now.

I’m an anthropology major, declared it when I turned a junior, because I always have been curious about how people behave.  With anthropology you’ve got the whole scope, stories and marriage rituals and coming-of-age rites, all the stuff people do that makes life meaningful.  Though I have to admit that some of what people do to make life meaningful seems pretty senseless.  And the most senseless thing of all to me is religion.  I don’t understand it, but I do admit I’m sort of fascinated by it.  What’s so attractive about this magical idea?  So I’m thinking of specializing in studying religion as part of anthropology.  Right now I’m taking two religion classes, one in eastern religions and one on Christianity, and they’re both really interesting.  We’re doing Buddhism right now, and I had no idea it had all those branches, that there are so many kinds of Buddhism.  And I do like the reason why the lotus flower is a sacred image in Buddhism, that it’s something pure and beautiful that rises up out of the muck that it grows in, like a pure spirit can rise up out of the muck of this world.  That’s kind of cool.

Here’s what really turned me off to religion, what happened to my grandmother when I was a senior in high school.  I was very close to Grammee.  Sometimes when me and my brother Derek would go to Grammee’s house, she would make us friend flounder and fried potatoes.  I probably wouldn’t eat that now, since all that fried food isn’t too healthy, but me and Derek loved going over there and having Grammee cook us that meal.  It was a treat to have dinner with our grandmother, because we loved her.  And sometimes I’d go by Grammee’s house after a soccer game to tell her about the game.  Grammee showed me how to embroider, which I don’t do either, but I liked doing it with her.  Now maybe there’s a God, maybe not, I don’t know.  But Christians think there’s a God up there who’s watching out for everybody, or at least he’s watching out for you if you’re a Christian.  Which Grammee was.  Well, if there is a God who’s watching, then he’s cruel, and I don’t want to believe in a cruel God.  And if there’s not a God who’s watching, then the Christians are wrong.  Like I said, my Grammee believed, told me a hundred times that God would take care of us.  So if there’s a God, why did he do what he did to my grandmother?  One of my main memories of this sticks in my head like somebody burned it there with a branding iron.  My brother Derek and me went to the hospital to see Grammee, because she had cancer, and instead of God curing her cancer, or even letting a doctor cure it, the cancer grew all through Grammee’s body.  We knew she was dying, and we went several times to see her.  This once Derek drove, he’s several years older than me, and when we got there I remember him saying, “I hate hospitals.  I hate going in there.”

“That’s where Grammee is,” I said.  “And if we’re gonna see her we’ve got to go in.”

So we went on in, but this time she was even sicker, and it had just been a couple of days since we were there.  This time she didn’t seem like she could speak, even though she had her eyes open, just staring up at the ceiling.

I went up to her and said, “Grammee, it’s me,” but she didn’t say anything, and then she moaned.  “I think she’s in pain,” I said to Derek, “we should get the nurse.”

“What’s she saying?” Derek asked.

“She’s not saying anything,” I said.  “She’s hurting.”  Then Grammee moaned again, real loud, it kind of scared me and maybe it scared Derek too, and he went to get the nurse.  The nurse came and said they had already given Grammee all the pain medication the doctor allowed, and they couldn’t give her any more.  I got mad at the nurse, then Grammee started moaning more and more, and you could see the expression on her face that she was hurting.  It was horrible.  Then the nurse said she’d call the doctor and asked us to leave.  The next week Grammee was dead.  Thanks, God, for taking care of my grandmother.

I inherited some money from Grammee, enough to pay my tuition for school, but I need extra money sometimes, so I have a job on weekends.  I work as a waitress at a bar over in New Jersey, where they have blues bands come in on the weekend, so we get the live music.  It’s not really my kind of music, not like Whitney Houston or N’Sync or U2, but even so I like hearing it.  I talk to some of the musicians, which is interesting, so that I can see what another kind of life is like, like I’m doing anthropology.  And I talk to the customers, and so it’s not so bad.

I happened to mention to one of my customers that I’m studying religion, and now whenever he comes in he brings me some sort of religious pamphlet.  What he brings is sort of crude and stupid, actually, little cartoon drawings.  These stupid little pamphlets tell weird stories about people who worship the devil or do drugs, then at the end somebody realizes how wrong they’ve been and becomes a Christian.  I think I’m supposed to be converted and start going to church because I looked at some cartoons that would make a dog feel smarter than the person who drew them.  But the customer is nice, even if I’ve lost all respect for his bad-taste religion.  If I was to join anything so far I might become a Buddhist.  They’ve got their superstitions too, but at least they don’t want to cram them down your throat.  One of my religion teachers says that every religion contains some mystery.  The mystery to me is why does anyone believe this stuff?  How can you turn your brain off that long?

And here’s an even bigger mystery that I’m worried about.  About a month ago my mother called to tell me that she’d gotten news from my brother Derek, who lives in Georgia now, that he’s decided to be a preacher.  At first I’m thinking “now I know I didn’t hear her right” because...Derek?  Derek who used to sit in the pews with me and get all frowned up and say, “Why does she make us come to this?  That preacher is stupid.”  So now I guess Derek thinks he can do better.  I’m a little freaked out by this.  What happened to my brother, can a grown man get brainwashed?  Some of my friends say just forget it, he’s just different from how you are.  But he’s my own brother.  How did this happen?

To

every

thing

there

is

a

season,

and

a

time

to

every

purpose

under

the

heaven:

A

time

to

be

born,

and

a

time

to

die…