The Varieties of Religious Experience

For Elizabeth

They took the little dead girl away from across the street several days ago. She had been there under the billboard for some time, ever since I moved into my house summer before last. She frightened me at first. I was afraid it would worsen my depression having to look at her every time I left the house but I gradually became used to her and then, after the first few months, I began to find a kind of comfort and reassurance in her steady presence. She was something I could count on, something that was stable beyond change. I learned that her name was ‘Nicole.’ The neighbors said that she had been run over by a drunk driver. It bothered me right away that she was just laying on the cement sidewalk so I always made sure she had something soft under her head. At first I used old shirts of mine but eventually I found a sofa repair shop that gave me all their used foam and that held up better under the weather.

After a while I began to talk to her. Just small things at first like ‘Hi’ when I opened my door to leave and ‘Goodbye’ when I drove past her then after a while I began addressing her as ‘Nicole.’ It’s strange how a little thing like that can make you feel a lot closer to someone. I began to tell her where I was going and how long I would be gone. Just knowing she would be there when I got back began to give me a kind of settled feeling when I got to where ever I was going. After I began to feel more secure in our relationship I started telling her where I had been and what had happened, not in detail, but just sort of sketchy.

Right at first I noticed something different about talking to her. It felt different from talking to other people. Other people can sometimes be like black holes, if you get too close to them you can disappear and get replaced by someone that looks like you but is really made up for the occasion but with her I began to realize that it was going to be okay when I told her something so I began to tell her more specific and revealing things about me, secret forbidden pleasure, things that I had done or that had happened to me.

It was very odd to feel that safe talking to someone. It was the exact opposite feeling of what I got from going to confession at church. This made me feel somehow larger and more free than I’d ever felt. I never got an unkind or indifferent response from her and though one could say that was because she was no longer capable of giving one, it was nevertheless, if you think about it, a rare and very prized response. Even though it was a message from the dead to the living it was a very generous one and besides lots of the messages we receive aren’t really sent intentionally to us anyway. People are always telling me things with their bodies or eyes or even their absence that they weren’t aware they were telling me and clouds can send clear messages to me without knowing I’m alive and even rocks tell me that they’re there and that I have to lift my foot if it’s a big one right in front of me or a parked car tells me that I’m temporarily safe from it, that it’s not moving right at me.

Since they took her away there has been a hole in my life. I had begun to feel very close to her like sometimes at night, after it was dark, when I would cross the street and just sit somewhere nearby and smoke my cigarettes or play soft music on my tape recorder or read to her from a book. Over time I began to tell her more about myself. That always makes you feel closer to someone, more a part of them, of something other than just yourself, and that makes you do things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do.

We don’t get much rain here but on nights when it was a little cool or damp I would take something over across the street to slip on top of her. Of course I knew it didn’t matter to her, but it wasn’t just that I was being sentimental, its just that like I said, when you feel close to someone everything can change, especially what’s real and what isn’t.

I once put some of those glow in the dark stars on the bedroom ceiling above my bed. There are hundreds of them crossing from one corner of my ceiling to the other and it looks just like the milky way at night. Your mind knows they’re not real but if you don’t think about it they feel real, nor only real but close too, I mean the kind of closeness that’s comforting, not frightening like real stars are. Most people just look at real stars without imagining them so they never see their terrifying distance and indifference. Real stars are amazing but they’re not very comforting and its hard to feel close to something that isn’t really comforting, even if its real.

I got lots of free clothes for her from the Salvation Army and even though it was usually stolen off her within a day or two I could get plenty more. Maybe stolen is too harsh a word since it doesn’t really seem like you can steal from the dead. I finally realized that whether they were on her or someone who took them they were still being put to good use, I mean someone had the anxiety about a need in their life lessened a little and that gave me a peace of mind and in doing that it was put to another good use.

Anyway, no matter how I looked at it the whole thing seemed to bring a kind of a spiritual or religious calm. I mean isn’t that what the spiritual or religious should do, put things to a good use, take people to a kind of calm peaceful place. She gave me a new kind of strange patience, a gradual and wonderful ease that seemed to settle over everything like gold dust. It was partly the way she was untroubled by the traffic that rushed by her or the weather that changed on her or the people that took the salvation army clothes off her. It was like a message from her saying, “See,! This isn’t so bad” to anyone who was able to look. I mean just stand on any street or freeway at rush hour and watch the faces in the passing cars. It’s just a big trouble parade.

More than once I thought about somehow getting her across the street and burying her in my back yard but I knew my behavior was not going unnoticed. I had seen the quick swishes of my neighbor’s curtains and the glances of familiar faces through car windows as they passed slowly by when I was sitting with Nicole and what with the stiff penalties you can get for displaying generosity or decency or any other kind of suspicious act these days I didn’t want to risk it, especially with her uncertain nationality. Still it would have made me feel safer to have her at my house, a kind of protection against the neighbor’s surveillance, against all the uncertain dangerous things that can fall on you out of the sky, all those people just waiting to see you weakened with a cough or walking with a sudden limp, waiting for you to stumble and fall.

It’s strange that we don’t bury our loved ones near us, in our own yards. We have flowers and trees and pets but there not really as important as someone you felt close to. I think it must be the fear, I mean having someone you were close to who is now so far away be so near.

I just consoled myself that it wouldn’t be the same, I mean I was used to her being across the street and knowing that she would be there when I returned. I wanted to be able to talk to someone I could see. It’s important that what’s important to us remain more or less the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. Even the people who are risk takers, the people who climb Mt. Everest and quit their jobs and leave their marriage want to do it with roughly the same personality they had yesterday, or roughly the same number of teeth, and exactly the same number of hands and eyes and ears as they had a day before or an hour before.

I can’t stop worrying about her. I’ve been worrying about her ever since she went away, wondering what happened to her, where they took her and what they did to her. Just think of the things the living do to the living and then how easy it is not to care at all about the dead, like they were just matter that doesn’t matter to us anymore, like they don’t even exist when the truth is that’s when you’d be concerned and worried the most about someone you cared about, when their so far away you could never find out how they are, so it’s not really odd at all to worry. What’s strange is that we ever stop, even for an hour.

After they took her away they put up a public service billboard about the importance of Organ Donation and what number to call for information and even though there is some kind of sameness between that and Nicole, it’s not the same. It doesn’t fill up the hole. The only thing that fills up the hole is the loss but that’s not really odd because its real and I guess anything that’s real is spiritual but it’s hard to make people understand that about Nicole.