chapter 01

The first time I met eyes with Jesus he was fighting with the devils of the Synagogue. The Priests at the party had tired him and he was not literally folding into himself but I seemed to shock him when I spoke to him.

He hadn't been expecting something and whatever it was that happened in his mind, the devils' hold on him was gone. At least for a while.

I showed him something that would give him time to prepare to fight the devils the next time the evil beasts came back.

He didn't look at me again until I caught his eyes in the synagogue a year later. I wasn't the only girl trying to catch his eye. But he was always occupied asking the elders questions.

"I saw you talking to Mary's son, today."

"That's what people do, Mom, they talk to people."

"He's got a loose tongue, the boy. His innocent questions are loaded with insult."

"Maybe because he's right."

"I don't think one boy can be righter than a hundred forty generations of Priests and Lawyers."

"He must have missed that point. All I know is most people love him."

"You would do better to keep some distance from him."

It was always the same with my parents. They knew what a girl should do. A girl who was the daughter of a Synagogue Lawyer.

Modesty was in order. Talking with other Jewish girls or other Jewish adults was considered appropriate for a girl like me. Jesus was often seen with Romans and Arabs playing as if he didn't understand who he was.

He was anybody. A bastard child that appeared to be blessed and oblivious to it.

But he was the opposite. The first time he kissed me, every bit of him was the opposite of oblivious. Time and the world were there to allow us a place to share love.

He rambled on like that before we had sex. He didn't want to hear his name. He wanted love without words or symbols.

If I told my mom that, she'd say he's a goat. Goats don't pay reverence to Jewish tradition.

Which explained why Jesus seemed to get along with animals better than most people. True either way.

I don't really think we fell in love. It was already there and contact was added to it.

And out of the blue, I decided to take my dancing lessons on with more enthusiasm. My friend and cousin Liz and I danced almost every day together. She knew when I was with Jesus. And I knew when she was with John.

And it was mostly a secret until my mother found me crying on my bed.

"Helene. We'll be late for synagogue. Have you been crying. Why were you crying Helene."

I didn't tell her but she watched me before and after synagogue and saw me with Jesus. I wasn't crying or touching him in any forbidden way but anyone who saw his eyes or my eyes knew there was love.

Not a good thing to show in a synagogue where everyone is conducting serious business.

"What did Jesus have to tell you."

"That no matter what happened he would always love me, not as a promise but an understanding of what life was and how life lived in me."

"Well, he's leaving for Cairo."

"When I am finished school, I will move to Cairo or any where else."

"You can forget about that, Mary Helene, the boy is a trouble maker and doesn't understand his place. When he does, it will be too late."

chapter 02

"One man clapping in the desert does not exist."

Jesus was back for the passover feast and was so charged that the year without him seemed like a preparation for me to see him again for the first time again. And still not question love. His eyes told me. I smiled and waited for his explanation.

"He can write in the sand. I am here. And for a short while it will hold truth. And for him it will remain the truth until the vultures eat out his eyes, tramp on his words and devour his flesh.

"Jesus."

"He only really exists when there are others to witness."

"And tell the story of the man clapping in the desert."

"Yes, Helene. But think of this. The universe doesn't really exist until something observes it and says that it is."

"I like that thought. It makes my being here with you quite exciting. What, pray tell. Is a universe."

Jesus laughed.

"Jesus, you look very alive."

"We are very alive. Helene. I have read books that are older than the Torah. Books that don't know of Moses. The world is very big and some say, very old."

"And yet always young."

"It is the magic of life."

"Make babies so they can be younger then us."

"Yes. So we don't forget growing and learning."

Jesus had taken an interest in learning something from everything written. To train his mind how to think so that he could work on freeing himself from conviction and step into every bit of his being. He was very convincing. Eventually I reached out to touch him and dance with him in heaven.

When we were together, the universe seemed to smile at us and hold our devils at a great distance. And it was something bigger than the two of us. It was all of us communing through creatures of skin.

"Jesus, you aren't normal."

"I could be."

"I hope you never are. Normal is blindness."

"Yes. And soon I will be normal. You will be normal. It will be normal that we hear one another and understand. We will all see and understand."

"I'd like to see it."

"You are it."

"I mean."

"The time will come. They can build temples and synagogues to seal a lie. They can kill those who want heaven when they can be in it."

"You make the believers seem so mean."

"They are. They believe heaven is somewhere when you die. When God comes for you. God has already come for us. This tree is part of God. We are two more parts of God. God is young. Very young. A child. With so much experience. So many lives coming and going. And."

Jesus lay his head on my lap and watched the birds eating olives.

And he was silent. Saying nothing and everything at the same time. I watched his belly rise and fall with his breathing.

"I've got a fairly good chance at getting into the university of Istanbul next year."

"I want to come with you."

Jesus smiled and looked off into the sky. I held my hand over his heart.

"I can likely earn some from teaching."

"You would make a good teacher."

I hadn't told anyone but Liz that I wanted to study theater and performance. My parents were talking about who I should marry. That's what small town Jewish people believed.

I did tell my parents. Told them I loved Jesus and would move to Istanbul.

They flipped.

They said things they shouldn't have. Including forbidding me to see Jesus again.

But I knew they were stubborn thick skulled children of Israel. Still hoping for a king to rise up and put Israel back on the map. Because, as Jesus said, it had been written.

chapter 03

I went to the hill of olive trees almost every day after school. Liz came with me when she could. Her parents were more hard line then my parents. My father was too busy with his importing and exporting and playing priest in the synagogue to have time for his 6 children.

My older brother liked Jesus and my 4 younger sisters loved him. Parents of Jewish children usually thought him a little too controversial.

"That Jesus Christ is looking for trouble."

That was not true. He was simply trying to discover the difference between traditional methods of conduct and how the world went on oblivious to any creeds.

"I got a letter from John."

"How is Baghdad."

"He loves it. He sits in a café and reads books and drinks tea from china of coffee from Java."

"Sounds like he's working hard."

"He teaches three classes a week on the Torah and Iliad. I don't know what John and Jesus are up to but they are both cranked like little boys."

A little fly landed on a leaf and I looked at it and wondered. Can it wonder at all. What does it know of me.

"If I demanded that fly to worship me or I would torture it and kill it, what would you think."

"That you are trying to convince me it is stupid to worship god."

"I love you, Liz."

"I know that, Helene."

"I like it that you know it. It makes the universe smaller."

"Bastard isn't a real word."

I started reading the Torah again. It was the book that mattered most. A book that wasn't easy to find but my father had one. And he might have thought I gave up on Jesus when I started reading it and trying to see it like Jesus. Learning to pick out the lie from the truth.

Quote Genesis vs. 4: "And the serpent said to the woman, "You are not going to die, but God (the father of all fathers) knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened and be liked unto an angel who knows truth and fiction."

Jesus was very wild about that bit. He said he was convinced that royalty, the Kings and the Priests and Lawyers were the club of ignorance and war. That war wasn't normal in other animals. And our war was against women. Against wisdom. Against the angel, the eternal life in the living. That death had no real hold on us. And that I was his grandmother.

I didn't try explaining anything to my Dad. And my mother had nothing on her mind but getting me hooked up with a lawyer.

"Mary Helene. Get down here for dinner."

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't care what you are. The Zimmers are here and you put a dress on and get yourself looking like a lady."

"Okay, mother."

I picked out my ugliest dress and followed my mother to the table. The Zimmers had their son with them. The last single one. He looked like a priest and a bore. Sammy Simpleton was not fooled by my ugly dress. He didn't care that I didn't look at him. He wanted to make babies with me. His parents wanted him to make babies with me and my parents hinted at the possibility that it was time for me to make babies with Sammy Simpleton.

I'm a lesbian.

I didn't say it. I just thought it. If I said it I would be forbidden to see Liz. So I said the next worst thing I could think of.

"I'm going to study theater and dance."

"But you are a woman."


mary helene chapters 04 - 06