Brenna Kocan: Shall We Gather at the River

Brenna Kocan, winner of the Youth New Works Competition, is a junior at Ingraham High School and is editor-in-chief of the school literary magazine. She is on the youth advisory board at Richard Hugo House, where she also participates in Write Time and Stage Fright. She has gone to Scribes for the past two years. It took her a really long time to learn how to tie shoes, and she thinks it will take her longer still to learn how to write a story.

Shall We Gather at the River

If your foot sticks up out of the water, they dunk you again. Same for your hands. Sister Stacy says if even one strand of hair stays dry, you’re not baptized. When you die and meet God at the gates, he’ll take one look at you and see that one unholy little hair. Then he’ll send you to Hell. Everything counts. That’s why you have to stay still when you get saved. They might miss a spot.

The morning of my baptism I committed a sin. I ate Mom’s strawberries. She said she bought them for shortcake but they were so fat and red and looked so good. I ate the whole box for myself. I even drank the strawberry juice. When I was finished I wiped my hands on my bare legs. I threw the plastic carton in the trash and covered it with paper towels so Mom wouldn’t see. I forgot to say grace before I ate those strawberries, too. That’s another sin.

I liked putting on the white dress and shiny black shoes, and Mom put my hair up all nice. The drive over was fun too. We loaded up the whole congregation and drove down to the river. Everybody looked so happy. When we got to the river we crawled all over each other trying to get out first: men, women and babies. All of us clambered up the hill and stumbled down again in our white clothes. When we got to the bottom we were covered in mud, red-faced and laughing.

The congregation held hands at the bank and started singing, “Shall We Gather at the River.” Fifty-four men and women and their babies. The babies didn’t know the words or what they meant but they oohed and aahed in tune, and when one of them started crying it sounded like it was a part of the song. Mom took my glasses and my shoes and the elder took my hand. He led me to the part of the river where the water was deepest and coldest. It came up to my waist and to the elder’s knees. The river rocks made my bare feet sting. My dress clung to me like a wet bed sheet. I started to worry about the bad things I’d done. I felt bad about eating the strawberries.

The elder stood beside me with his hands raised up, his face in shadow. In the sun his starched white shirt shone like teeth. I thought he looked like the Bible should if the Bible were a man. That’s when the river bed gave way.

I saw the elder go first. And I didn’t see him for a long time after. Our falls were long and silent until we landed at the bottom. The water descended on me and settled around my shoulders like the Holy Spirit. I opened my eyes. There was a kind of cliff above us, and there was a kind of light. Not the sun. We were too far down to see the sun. And it was brighter than the sun. This light spindled out across the surface of the water like daddy longlegs. I felt like I could touch it. I reached out as far as I could and I think my fingers touched the light, I think I got there. I really do.

I kicked in the mud like a hog. I paddled to the top. And I came up alone.

And I felt bad, because I left the elder down there. He didn’t want to come back up. I asked him sincerely. I thought maybe I should have stayed down there. Nobody seemed happy for me. They all stood there white and still like they had drowned too. I thought at least all of me was baptized now. Every hair on my head. My mother just cried. And nobody said anything and they were all staring at me.

So I hiked up my dress and ran.

To get to God you have to die a little and come out looking beat up. The holy ones always look like they just got in a fight. And lost.