Revelations

One of the most frightening moments of my life was when I thought an intruder had broken into my apartment. I was alone in my apartment in Southern California. It was well after midnight when I heard a glass break in my kitchen. With little furniture to my name, I had been sleeping on a borrowed futon in my living room, which was only a few feet away from the tiny kitchen. With a door in the kitchen leading out to an outside stairway, an intruder, especially in the San Fernando valley, was a very real possibility.

Realizing I had but a few seconds to deter a possible intruder, I yelled something probably unintelligible at the time, like "Get the fuck out of here, I'm calling the police." Okay, so maybe it was intelligible, even to my neighbors across the hallway and below me. But then there was silence. Nothing. After I got up the nerve to move, I found that somehow, a glass had floated across a dry tile countertop on some sort of air bubble and slipped to the floor. Or, an alternate theory is that perhaps a truck rumbling by jostled it just enough to fall off the counter. Either way, I will never know. That night, the possibility of someone violating the intimate space that my apartment represented was a turning point, although not a conscious one at the time.

Sometime later, I decided quite firmly that I was leaving California and would be heading where exactly, I didn't know. I told David, my boyfriend at the time of my plans. Now as my husband, he remembers little of this today. I think he thought it was an empty threat, a pipe dream, another story I told myself. I began my preparations to leave by sorting through my possessions to see what I could get rid of to lighten my load.

Not long after this, on a typical scorching day in the valley, I remember standing in back of my apartment building by the dumpsters. In the empty alley, the pavement radiated heat. Everything around me was dry as baked sand. I held a box of books that the used bookstore wouldn't take. I couldn't bear to put the books in the trash, so instead set the box down on the asphalt next to the trash. I knew it would be taken by someone before the trash pickup would come.

One of those books was my Bible. It was a red King James version of the Bible that had my name embossed on it. The name Betty was a name I had dropped sometime during my sophomore year in college and had switched to the more formal name of Elizabeth. The Bible represented an anchor to the past, to things that had been important to me that no longer served me. It was important to let this go. I realized even at the time that it seemed hypocritical to not want to throw the Bible in the trash if it no longer had meaning for me. I thought that someone else might see the Bible as a good find and would receive some comfort from it. But, I also felt the same way about the other books, as well. So, not thinking much more about it, I set the box down and walked away, taking only my memories with me.

When I was in high school in Lyons, Colorado my parents had made a promise to me. This promise came mostly from my step-mother. If I read the Bible three times from cover to cover they would buy me a French horn. A French horn represented my future. I had planned to continue in music, become a music teacher. This future was hardly possible without an instrument of my own, which I would soon be without once I graduated.

As I progressed through my reading, I would announce to my parents, typically at dinner time, where I was in my reading. Proverbs, Isaiah, Song of Solomon, and finally into the New Testament with Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. Then picking up the pace, I would quickly read through to the last book, Revelation. I ponder now how ironical this is, but when I finished reading the Bible for the third time over a year and a half later, it never occurred to me that neither my step-mom nor my father would remember this promise. My personal revelation was two years in coming. Honesty, truth and any other manner of virtue was of little consequence to them. The Bible promise was to them much like encouraging a little girl to "make your wish" before blowing out the birthday candles. Yeah, whatever, just blow the fucking candles out.