Speaking in Tongues: Toward Salvation

In Childhood, Creative Nonficiton, Family, Narrative on 22 December 2009 with 4 comments

My mother was a deeply reli­gious woman. She was what most peo­ple would call a fun­da­men­tal­ist Christian. She believed in God, the Father Almighty, cre­ator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son, our Lord.

And how.

But she espe­cially believed in Hell, and she even more espe­cially believed that my brother and I were headed straight for it because of our lat­est shenani­gans. So she decided to call an inter­ven­tion, and for an inter­ven­tion, she required the assis­tance of her best friend, LaVerne. She dialed her num­ber on the kitchen phone.

“LaVerne? Oh, I’m so glad you’re home. It’s Shirley,” my mother said, phone cord wrapped around her fin­gers. My mother’s name is Shirley. Anybody famil­iar with lat 1970’s TV sit­coms can under­stand why my brother and I found their friend­ship par­tic­u­larly amus­ing. “You’ll never believe what Amber and Carleton were doing. Last night, I found them out­side wor­shiping idols.”

She didn’t bother to men­tion that we were only pre­tend­ing to wor­ship idols. I guess it was all the same to her.

“I’m bring­ing them over to your place,” she said after a few moments. “You said you wanted Hassan to be bap­tized; well I think my kids need it, too. They can all receive the Lord together, praise God. What do you think?”

After exchang­ing quick looks at each other, my brother and I ran to the back of the house to pack up our things as quickly as pos­si­ble. Hassan had a Nintendo.

It was late in the after­noon when we arrived at LaVerne’s house. She was stand­ing on the porch wait­ing for us, her long black hair tied in a dra­matic pony­tail away from her face. She had slen­der cat eyes, and dark skin. I always thought she looked very exotic and not at all like a crazy fun­da­men­tal­ist Christian, which just goes to show that you can never judge a book by its cover. Her lit­tle boy, Hassan, was play­ing with a Tonka trunk at her feet. He was my brother’s age.

The women went inside, and my brother and I knelt down on the porch with Hassan. “What kind of candy did your mom get?” I asked. LaVerne always bought huge bags of candy when my brother and I came over. I think it was a bribe of some sort, though I was never sure what she was get­ting out of the deal.

“Skittles,”he said, throw­ing the Tonka truck into the dirt. “We have to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and sav­ior, and tomor­row we’ll all go get baptized.”

I sighed, stretch­ing my legs out in front of me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and sav­ior; I went to a Lutheran school and I believed in God and every­thing. But if we had to do all this tonight, it meant we wouldn’t have time to play Kid Nicky on the Nintendo, and I was really hop­ing to make it to the next level. “What do we have to do to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and sav­ior?” I asked.

“I accept!” my brother said. He stood up and opened the screen door. Sticking his head inside and tak­ing a deep breath, he shouted, “I ACCEPT JESUS CHRIST AS MY SAVIOR CAN WE PLAY KID NICKY NOW AND EAT THE SKITTLES?”

Two voices boomed back at us simul­ta­ne­ously. “NO!”

My brother let the screen door slam shut, and Hassan pat­ted him on the shoul­der. “I already tried that before you got here,” he said. “Let’s get started on the Skittles.”

LaVerne and Hassan lived alone in a big house in East Los Angeles. His father was a musi­cian of some sort, though he wasn’t around much now that he and LaVerne were divorced. Hassan had a big room with lots of toys and a tele­vi­sion. For some rea­son, he wasn’t allowed to keep the Nintendo in his room; it was hooked up to the TV in his mother’s room, where our moms were cur­rently holed up, plot­ting the sal­va­tion of our eter­nal souls. But we man­aged to get hold of the bag of Skittles.

We poured the candy into a huge plas­tic bowl, and began shov­el­ing the col­or­ful taffy pieces into our mouths. We weren’t sure how much time we had before our indoc­tri­na­tion, so we had to use our time wisely.

Half the bowl of Skittles was gone when LaVerne and Shirley called us into the liv­ing room. We brought the candy with us.

Our moms were seat­ing cross legged on either side of an open King James Bible, wear­ing very solemn but peace­ful expres­sions. Following suit, we sat in a semi­cir­cle around the Bible. My brother and I guarded the bowl of candy between us.

“Hassan,” LaVerne said, “I want to help you accept Jesus as your per­sonal sav­ior. Part of that means learn­ing a spe­cial lan­guage that only you and God know. It’s a lan­guage that you can use in your prayers, a lan­guage that you might not under­stand when you speak it, but which will fill you with a sense of peace and joy when the words come out of your mouth. Are you ready to receive the words of the Lord, Hassan?”

She was talk­ing about speak­ing in tongues. I knew what that was because although my mother’s church didn’t take to such non­sense, my father was known to start speak­ing in tongues invol­un­tar­ily in the car on the way to school some morn­ings. His whole body would break out in goose­bumps, and he’d start prat­tling, “Ombubba shikaya olayama, opurda hicari­namm hosa­iah.” As creepy and com­pletely insane as it was, it was actu­ally very pretty, not unlike poetry. The words were melodic, and my father seemed so enlight­ened when the spirit came over him.

Unfortunately, the spirit came over him one day when a Jewish friend of mine was in the car with us. She never rode in the car with my dad again after that.

Hassan shrugged his shoul­der. “Sure, I love Jesus,” he said, stand­ing up. LaVerne stood up as well, and placed her hands on Hassan’s head.

“Oh, Father,” she said, her body sway­ing, “this your earthly son calls to you, to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He requests the words of the spirit be given to him, oh Lord. Lord, speak to your child. Give him your words!”

LaVerne looked down at Hassan, and after a moment said, “Did the Lord speak to you, baby?”

Hassan looked up at his mother and nod­ded. “Yes.”

Tears sprang to LaVerne’s eyes. “What did He say, baby? What did He say?”

After a moment’s pause, Hassan answered, “Skittelia.”

“Skittelia?” LaVerne repeated. Hassan nodded.

My brother and I exchanged glances at each other, try­ing very hard not to laugh. The Lord, like Hassan, appar­ently very much liked candy coated taffy bites, and had cho­sen the name of the candy to be his secret lan­guage of the spirit.

Skittelia sounded noth­ing like ombubba shikaya olayama, opurda hicari­namm hosa­iah. Either my dad or Hassan was lying, and some­how, I didn’t think it was my dad.

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