Chapter Fourteen – “Not Not Not a Liar”
“Hey, Keith, I’m sorry, but I have some bad news.” Clark Johnson doffed his hat as Keith opened the front door. “Is your dad home?”
“What do you mean, Clark? Is it my grandmother?”
“No, no, I’m sure she’s fine. I promised I’d let Principal Bradley know personally about the emergency, but I guess you can relay the message.”
“Emergency? What emergency? Clark, what are you talking about?”
“She was stopped by the side of the road, and I could see how upset she was. Understandable, considering they’re her only family.”
“What? Are you talking about Talia?” Keith grabbed Clark by the collar. Then he remembered Clark carried a gun and quickly pulled back.
“I’ll excuse that, and not charge you with assaulting an officer of the law,” Clark said with a stupid grin.
“Clark, please, somehow, can I get you to start from the beginning and explain what this is all about?”
Clark explained. Keith heard him out, slammed the door in his face and immediately called Talia. He got voicemail. For the rest of the week, he had kept calling. Sometimes he got voicemail, and sometimes some message that the number was unable to receive calls. He figured that must have to do with the satellite reception problem Talia had mentioned.
Keith tried to inject a little science and fun into the Bible as Literature class on Friday.
“Blow this up,” he ordered Tyler, a boy in the front row, handing him a balloon. “You, and you, blow these up.” All three students blew up their balloons. “Tie ’em off, and give ’em here.”
Keith moved to the desk, which he had cleared and covered with an asbestos cloth. He pulled open a drawer and set the three blown-up balloons inside, carefully pushing aside the one filled with water that he had already placed in there. The fire extinguisher sat right by the desk, so nobody would report that Mr. Safety was being unsafe. He set a candle in a holder in the middle of the desk and lit it.
“Can somebody tell me what perfection is?”
“Never doing anything wrong,” somebody said.
“Never, ever?” Keith asked.
“Well, yeah, if you’re perfect, you can’t mess up,” another student answered.
“So who here is perfect?” Keith asked. Silence. David started to raise his hand and everyone burst out laughing.
“So not perfect, David,” someone snickered. David grinned and put his hand back down.
“Nobody? There’s nobody perfect?”
“Well, yeah, no, Mr. Bradley. You and Ms. Ramin been teaching us that verse that says There is none righteous, no not one. Righteous is pretty much like perfect, right?
“Are you sure? There’s nobody, nowhere, who’s perfect?”
“Well, God is,” somebody ventured. Murmurs of approval and Oh, yeahs! rippled around the room.
“So all we need to do is get with God, and we can be perfect too, right?” Keith asked.
“Yeah…” Keith smirked at the number of doubtful expressions, as if some students thought it was a trick question. Keith had to admit that he was famous for asking them in science class. He sobered his expression and held up an air-filled balloon.
“Let’s say this balloon is a connection to God. It’s nice and big and full, like when we are right with God and everything’s going right.”
“Okay …” the class assented.
“So, suppose this candle represents sin. We’re perfect right now, right? Close to God, doing good. Or are we? Somebody name a sin.”
“Lying!” someone shouted.
“Good one.” Keith suddenly whipped the balloon into the flame. The pop made everyone in the room jump. “One sin? One little sin? And just like that, the connection to God is broken. Give me another sin. Anybody.”
“Cheating.”
“Cheating! A great one to remember at school.” He popped the second balloon in the flame. “Look at that! Cheating breaks the connection to God too! Another sin. Quick. Give me one more.”
“Stealing.”
“Bam!” Keith exclaimed as the third air-filled balloon popped. “Connection broken. No more perfection. No more fellowship with God. Three little sins, each of which broke the connection. Now …”
Keith walked around the room, holding out the shriveled remains of the popped balloons. “Can you fix my balloon, Katie?”
“No,” Katie laughed.
“What? Luke, can you fix my balloon?”
“Man, it’s busted good, Mr. Bradley. Toss that sucker,” Luke said.
“Nobody can fix my balloons? Nobody?”
“Naw, Mr. Bradley. Sin burned ’em up.”
“But why? I had a relationship with God here. How did sin break that relationship? What if I don’t sin anymore? Will that fix my balloons, or my relationships with God? No. They’re still popped. My relationship’s still broken, because I sinned. Somebody give me that verse about sin and how it affects everybody. Come on, I know you know it.”
“All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” At least half the class chimed in.
“But I had a relationship!” Keith protested.
“Maybe you never had a relationship. Maybe all you had was hot air,” Tom giggled.
“Oh, yeah?” Keith scratched his head. “You mean maybe I only thought I had a relationship with God, but it was just in my head, in my mouth … it wasn’t a relationship that came from God? How can I get a relationship that’s from God, not just my own hot air?”
“Jesus,” Jayna said with a huge grin.
“Yes.” Keith pointed at Jayna. “That’s right. Now, what did Jesus say about believing in him? Give me a verse.”
Several students called out verses, and finally someone said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.”
“All right!” Keith shouted, startling the students. He swung back to his desk and pulled out the water balloon. “So, here’s my real relationship with God, the one that’s filled with the living water Jesus gives me. Now, what happens when sin comes along?”
“Mr. Bradley, no!” several students shrieked. “You’ll get water every –”
Keith hovered the balloon over the candle. Nothing happened. Silence fell, along with jaws. Keith waited for the mood to reach its peak, then pushed the balloon straight down into the middle of the flame. Squeals and gasps and whispers of amazement filled the room. Keith raised the balloon up in the air.
“Relationships with God based on our promises to be good, our strength to do right, our ability to be perfect – They’re just hot air,” Keith said. “Sin breaks them – pop! Only Jesus Christ can fill us up with His living water. That relationship is one sin can’t break. Yeah, we might sin, but Jesus can fill us up and keep it from breaking the relationship.”
“Is the water like … reading the Bible?” Tom asked.
“It’s God Himself, it’s Jesus Christ, it’s the Holy Spirit,” Keith answered. “And how do we learn all about God and get filled up with Him?”
“By reading the Word,” several voices responded.
“That’s right.”
“Cool class, Mr. Bradley,” Samantha said as the kids filed out at the end. “But is Ms. Ramin okay? When will she come back?”
Friday evening he heard a new voicemail message when he tried to call Talia. Her voice said her uncle was out of danger. She apologized for not taking calls and said she would be back soon. He couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Talia was simply dealing with a rough situation as well as she could. But could she really not call or contact them one single time? Why would Clark, for crying out loud, the most rigorously honest man in the county, be in on a big plot with Talia to deceive him?
Keith retreated into the loving arms of the two people who helped him most when he was confused and afraid. On Saturday he spent time with his sister, who prayed with him and made him watch that movie Talia had g
iven her, One Night With the King. He was astonished at how it resonated with him. It was fiction, and dealt with things in the story of Esther that weren’t in the Bible. The explanations were plausible for why the king wouldn’t call for his beloved wife for such a long time.
“Jo-Jo, was Esther lying when she didn’t tell who her people were?”
Keith and Joana lay on her bed together, his arms wrapped around her fragile body.
“Nobody asked her.” the artificial voice sounded very flat and very reasonable. “Why is it lying to not answer a question that isn’t asked?”
“Wow. But do you think that might have happened, that the king maybe saw her meeting Mordecai and thought she was cheating on him? He’d probably already murdered one wife. Why didn’t he kill her too?”
“Baby brother, he didn’t marry her for power or position. He married her because out of all those women, the best in the world, she was better.” Joana repeated better about six times. “He may have even loved her, like in the movie. Look how the Bible says he reacted when she broke the law and faced death to come to him. Look what he said when he thought Haman was trying to rape her. Cover up his head. Hang him high.”
“I can’t hang her uncle high for getting hurt, though, can I?” Keith asked.
“There’s more going on with Talia than a family emergency,” Joana said. “You’re worried she’s taken off somewhere, and isn’t who you think she is, and is going to break your heart.”
“Joana, you are crazy!” Keith didn’t dare just leap up out of the bed. But he did shift away from her. Joana couldn’t exactly go after him, but she did her arm and leg swinging routine and whacked into him a few times, until he embraced her again, mostly to get her to stop thrashing.
“She hasn’t lied to you,” Joana said. “You told me Clark believed her and even escorted her to the airport, siren blaring. But maybe, when she gets back, you could figure out what questions to ask her. Just don’t break her heart.”
The number of times Joana repeated don’t when she said that sentence irritated Keith. “But she’s keeping stuff from me – from us. What’s up with that Doomsday Duffelbag of hers? What’s she mean, she can't even get in touch with her aunt and uncle sometimes? And do you think those golden testaments she talked about are real?”
“I can imagine archaeologists jump from place to place. They could get out of touch sometimes. Talia has another life besides mild-mannered English teacher and beautiful girl driving my brother crazy. But then, everybody does, don’t they, have another life besides the one the people they work with know about?”
“She’s been at our house, Joana. She’s been … great, and nice, and … I don’t want to think she’s going to turn out to be lying to us. She keeps hammering in the class about the truth of the Scriptures, like it’s the most important thing in the world to her. How can someone who respects truth like that lie?”
“She is not a liar. Not not not …” The nots turned into an endless echo, like the voice synthesizer was a stuck record. Keith grabbed Joana’s head and bobbled it, but he did it gently. A tap on the bedroom door announced the arrival of a caregiver.
“Okay, Jo-Jo. I’m gonna go see Grandma now.”
“Oh, man. I can’t fix Kevin’s broken,” Joana lamented. “He’s bringing out the big guns. Hug Gram-gram for me big big big.”
Keith grinned. Joana had never forgotten his baby talk, when he had been about three. She had been the one to find him crying over his little smashed balsa airplane. She hadn’t been able to fix that, either, but she had hugged him big, big, big, and that had helped.
“I will. You kinda helped fix my broken, big sis. It's just not all the way fixed.”