Jesus on the Hill

Amy showered and dressed in the most modest outfit from her closet – a pencil skirt and chiffon shirt with a camisole underneath. Not because she turn Christian, she had to look like the girls she saw in the church, eyeing her sideways with jealous eyes, suffocating in long shapeless skirts and bet-I-choke-you tops.... Well, she would gladly dress like that if Jesus asked, but if that was the same Jesus she was reading about who spoke to the woman at the well and told her to go about her business, that her sins were forgiven – after she was caught in adultery – then it would not matter to him how she dressed. In fact, Amy had a strange feeling that the congregation would not like Jesus if they met him. She got this impression from observing little things: the way they only mentioned some sins, or rolled their eyes when a member got up at the wrong time to ask a question, or even when a child wanted to go out in the middle of the never ending sermon to answer a call of nature. She could not put her finger on it, but to her, the Jesus she read in the Bible was not pretentious.

Choopse tun... Amy sucked her teeth. She slipped on her favorite leopard-skin pumps, and admired the way they picked up on the black of the pencil skirt and the gold thread of her top. Anyways, nice looking or not, those heels would be the first thing she would kick off so she could stamp, stamp, stamp on Satan when that worship music hit her, never mind who was watching.

Amy shook herself out of her reverie and sped up her preparations. Church was in less than an hour. By the time she caught the La Clery bus, walked across town and up the Pavee hill she would be more than a little late for church. With her crisp, new, red leather bible under her arm, she paid the driver and started her journey as the bus roared away. The sun grinned on her back and she smelled that familiar camphor-balls-church-clothes scent coming up through her open blouse and settling like a garland around her nostrils. All that chiffon and cheap perfume mixed with sweat generated by a nine-in-the-morning sun created a purgatory of sickly sweet euphoria.

It brought her back to when she was a child and she and her sisters used to go to the Children's Mass at the Cathedral dressed like little stiff princesses...the can-can under their dresses scratching against their thighs as they marched down the La Clery hill in the hot, bright sun to church. Her mother insisted on making Sundays an uncomfortable church experience for Amy and her sisters, while she herself went back to bed with that wicked man.

Amy crested the hill, sounds of glory filling her ears from the church—her church–she thought, puffing with pride. Beacon of Joy was known for its worship. The Chief Worship Minister was anointed, and was always able to draw the congregation into deep, expressive worship. People fell down, swooned under the power of the Holy Spirit; started to cry big tears and jump, wave and misbehave, bosoms heaving, skirts riding, legs ajar, arms flailing...the ushers were always busy throwing sheets over people, to spare their modesty the scrutiny of carnal eyes.

She quickened her pace. Just a few steps short of entering the church, she heard a yelp—high pitched, persistent—a sound full of pain. Amy whirled around. "What on earth is that? A dog?" The usher at the open doors beamed when he saw her. Amy remained rooted in the doorway.

"What is that noise? Is it a puppy?" she asked the usher. His angelic smile collapsed into unmasked annoyance. He avoided her eyes.

"Yeah, must be a dog. Don't let it bother you sister. Come in and serve the Lord." It was as if he was instructing his daughter to get into the car to go to school. Amy waved off his attempt to push her through the doors. She decided instead to find the source of that painful sound which pierced her heart and her ear drums.

Amy crossed the road. In the drain by the tamarind tree, directly opposite the carnival of brass and drums and frenzied screaming was a howling puppy, bleeding from its mouth, with a deep, jagged hole on its side where the blood had congealed and ceased to flow. It seemed to have been hit by a vehicle. The puppy was straining every sinew to keep its nostrils above the water that was flowing in the gutter all around it, red with its blood. It shivered, its wet brown fur shrivelling against its skin, taking on a strange, dark orange hue around the punctured area.