The Testimony

Jesús Santiago, preacher, New Mexico

When I went to unlock the church doors there was already a crowd outside. I did not have the building open for worshipping on Mondays, only on Tuesday, Wednesday, all the other days of the week. There were forty people, maybe, waiting, all the usual congregation, so I told Juanita to calm them down, park the car at the back and then go and talk to them, keep them patient. Enough, enough, I told the crowd. You have been very patient, so I will open the church in a few moments. It was so hot outside – a hundred degrees, the man on the television said – so they were sweating, fanning themselves, drinking water. Inside, the building was air-conditioned. They would have to wait for this, slightly, as I had to pack up the office in the boxes that I took over the night before; this was going to be my final sermon.

I never meant to lie to people, I kept telling Juanita. It was never my intention to cause pain, or disrupt their lives. All I wanted was to give them something, eh? Something that they could keep and hold close to their hearts. Religion, worshipping God, before The Broadcast it was something that people did because it was there, or because they wanted to feel better about themselves; like, Somebody is watching me, I am doing this for Him. I made that more real for them. My pappi, my father, also named Jesús, from the day I was born he told me that we were descended from the family of Christ. He showed me maps and drawings that his pappi showed him, drawings of our family tree, how He travelled across His lands, across Europe, across the sea to South America, and He married a woman, and they had children together, and their children had children, and so on, and that led to me. When I was growing up, that is what I knew to be true. When he died, pappi told me that it was all a lie, that he invented it all for the sake of his church; but by then I had my own church, and I had a congregation, and they knew when they looked at me that they were closer to God than they were the days before. And the money! They donated money, to run the church, to show how much their faith was worth, and I became accustomed to it. Juanita and the children, they always wanted more, more clothes, a bigger house, so I kept it up. It was not a lie; it was the way things were.

When The Broadcast came, I knew that it was over. If they have the real thing, they do not need a phoney to make them feel better, so I knew that they would turn against me, sooner or later. I came in to get the money that I left – it was in notes, all of it, and I kept it under the floor of the altar, the safest place in the city, because nobody would dare to damage an altar, nobody, not in this city. I put the money into bags, and when I was done I took them to the car, put them in the trunk, came back and opened the doors. We’re ready for you, I said, come in and worship Him on this, the best day of your lives! They came inside, and there were so many of them that they were in every seat, standing in every space they could, standing even in the doorways, until I pushed some of them back. We have to have the doors shut, I said, because otherwise the air conditioning will not work. I think that they understood.

When we were doing a blessing, near the end of the service – an old lady who could not walk, but believed that by touching me she would be cured by the Lord, listening to all of her prayers – the doors opened, and in walked Jorge Delgado, who never liked me, never came to church. He pushed through the crowd, until he was in the aisle. Nobody wanted to stand next to him, because he was dripping with sweat, and he looked ill. Jesús, he shouted, and everybody turned to look at him. Jesús, what do you have to say about this? I greeted him: Hello, Jorge, welcome to this celebration. Jesús, what do you have to say about hearing your great-great-grandpappi, eh? What do you have to say now? Jorge never believed me, always said that I was a fraud, and I knew that this would be one of those times. Sit down, I said, and we can talk when this is over, but he didn’t. It was the morning, not even twelve yet, and he was drunk. His shirt was yellow around the neck. Eh, fuck you, Jesús. You’ve been taking these people’s money for years, and now they can ask God themselves, they can ask Him if He even saw so much as a penny of it. Let’s watch you sweat now, Jesús. He pushed some people along one of the aisles, made them cram in more, sat down and put his feet up on the bench in front. I tried to ignore him, but he was there for the rest of the service, smiling at me. He looked like a wolf, I kept thinking.

When it was over – There will be no collection today, I announced, go home and just pray to our Father that we might hear from Him again soon – all the congregation left. You’re so lucky, one of them said to me, that you can be so close to Him, we are all so jealous. I know, I said, I am the luckiest man alive. When they were all gone, it was just Juanita and I and Jorge, who didn’t move. I told Juanita to wait in the car. You send her away, Jorge said, we need to talk man to man. Very sensible man, you are, which makes sense, because you have got perfect genetics, eh?

As soon as Juanita was gone, Jorge came over to me. His breath smelt of marijuana and alcohol, and the rest of his body smelt of sweat, like he hadn’t bathed in days. You are a fraud, Jesús. You’re a fraud, and I know it, because God would never have a relation like you. You give me back my mother’s money, and I will leave you alone. (His mother used to come to church, before she died; she was one of the biggest benefactors, and was much loved by the community. When she died, she left Jorge with nothing.) You give me every single bit of that money and I will not tell the news channels what a fraud you are. Of course, this made me laugh, because he had no evidence, no proof, so we were in the same situation, his word against mine. Jorge, I said, your mother’s money went to help the needy; it is not here any more, and so you cannot have it. I am sorry, but she loved you very much. God damn it, Jesús, he shouted, I want that money. There is nothing more important to me than getting that off you, and I will die before I see you leave here! Do not be a fool, I said; the devil reasons like a man, but God? He thinks of eternity. I stole that line from a film, and it made him think, for a second, before he hit me. He threw his fists at me, over and over, but I am not a fighter; I could not defend myself. He dragged me to the altar, screaming, Where is it? Where is it? but I would not say. He gave up after a while and left me there on the floor. I cannot remember much; Juanita said that my face was terrible, but the cuts were all in the flesh, all just on the skin. She watched Jorge leave the church and kick the wall as he left. I’ll be back, he kept shouting. Eventually she came inside, helped me to the car, got the money, and we left that afternoon. We didn’t lock the church, because at least that way the community could use it, and she had to drive, because I could not see. We collected the children from their school, and we drove toward the East Coast, where Juanita’s sister lived, and we could start again.

The bombs started going off as we were driving, and we stopped and spoke about it. Do we go there? she asked, Won’t it be too unsafe? I said, No, we’ll be fine; nobody will think of attacking Virginia. It’s not New York, I said. Besides, God will protect us. Thirty minutes later we heard about the next bomb, and the next, and we turned around because Juanita told me that if we didn’t, she was going to open the car door and just get out there in the middle of the road, and we headed south, toward the border, back where we had sworn we would never go.

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