Tara's Teahouse Chapter 5

By the morning of October 21st, I had decided to settle between eloquence and silence, in the comfortable realm of mediocrity. I would speak words, and my words would conceal what silence might have revealed in me. I was to speak on the duel between Elijah and the prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel – a vivid text with a punchy narrative that I could act out before my audience, now speaking as the clever Elijah, now assuming the sinister aspect of one of Baal’s prophets, plunging a knife into his own chest.

During worship, I sat in the front row, with my back to my audience. She must have slipped in during the opening hymns, because I didn’t notice her until I was brought to the front by Brother Melsworth, an elder of the church, and re-introduced as the “guest preacher” for the morning service.

That was when I caught sight of Tressa, sitting the back with her legs crossed and her arms folded. She had dyed her hair black and drawn black swirls on her cheeks with eyeliner. When Brother Melsworth announced that I would be speaking that morning, I saw her mouth actually open in surprise. She quickly untangled her arms and legs and looked back over her shoulder at the sanctuary doors, half-ready to dart from the auditorium. Mrs. Pardes, who was standing guard beside the oak gates the led from heaven’s domain to the world outside, scowled at her, and Tressa – seeing that the situation was hopeless – leaned forward in her seat with her arms folded over her stomach like she was ready to vomit. She tipped her head forward and imitated Mrs. Pardes’ scowl, her narrow black eyes rolling forward in the black cesspool of eyeliner to glare at me.

“I’ll show you.” I thought, as I turned to ascend the pulpit. For the next half hour, I hammered on my audience, my voice rising and falling as I wove a tapestry of moods and feelings in my listeners. At first they were reluctant to respond, but one by one I saw them lean forward, their eyes widening with interest, until at last they were nodding in agreement with every third word that dropped from my mouth.

All of them, that is, except for Tressa. I turned my attention to her, returning her steady gaze–

“Make no mistake about it. God will vindicate his people.” I intoned, my voice lowering to a dramatic whisper. “The enemies of God will grow ever more noisy as the battle on Mt. Carmel rages, but it will not be long before the fire falls and the duel is decided.”
With barely perceptible motion, half of her mouth curled upwards in a tight smirk and she shook her head. Not happening.

I was losing the duel against this impenitent Jezebel. I invoked the divine name, but the fire did not fall, and the sacrifice of sermon notes that I had proudly arrayed on the pulpit remained unburned. I had swayed the Israelites gathered beneath the holy mountain, but I had not conquered Jezebel. She remained outside of the audience, her royal stature preventing her from taking part in the religious fervor of her subjects.

“Choose which God you wish to serve.” I snapped, in the hoary voice of Elijah. “If Baal, then follow him; but if it is the Lord you will serve, then follow him.”

She shook her head again, impious Jezebel. She would follow neither. She was outside of it, above the duel itself. She did not care which god the Israelite throngs followed, so long as she could stand outside, herself unmoved, with that sardonic smile that made the makeup on her cheeks coil like two black serpents.

The sermon was over, but the duel remained inconclusive. Elijah had not won the day, and all at once he realized with keen horror that the duel itself had been a farce. He had come to Mt. Carmel to conquer the wiles of Queen Jezebel, only to find her disinterested and unmoved by the spectacle. Perhaps that was the greatest slap she could deliver the bearded face of the prophet – to offer him no wiles to resist, writing him off instead as an archaic irrelevancy. She had betrayed not only Elijah, but her own prophets as well; scoffing quietly while they gashed themselves in a mantic flurry, attempting to invoke her god only to find – as the last drops of blood trickled from their chests – that she had no god at all. By remaining outside of the duel, she had allowed both parties to throw themselves up against the rocks, there to destroy themselves while we she watched, freed in one moment from the righteous hand of Elijah and the lewd fanaticism of her Phoenician seers. In a matter of thirty minutes, she had overturned the entire narrative, rendering it meaningless with one flip of her head.

I stumbled through the altar call, awkwardly inviting the penitent to come forward and present themselves before the altar that had remained barren, its offering unkindled. Jezebel watched the spectacle with amusement, snickering to herself as the faithful tripped over the bodies of her slain prophets on their way to the altar.

“Don’t you see, Elijah?” The Queen mocked from the foot of the mountain. “As long as this spectacle goes on and your people remain subservient, there will be Jezebels at whose feet they will kneel. You’ve given me the victory today, although you don’t yet know it. Oh, I may have to change my name or disguise myself through cruel arts, but it will be worth it. I’ll live on in history, in the aspect of emperors and popes and fuhrers – and all because you tamed the mutton for me, made them nice and fat so that I could roast them on a spit.”

“- a beautiful service,” someone was saying. “If I weren’t already saved, I’d have come down to the altar in a hurry today.”

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder, nearly knocking me into the sea of dandelion hair that rose up around me as the elderly members of the church came forward to offer me their encouragement. A serpentine coil of people had formed around the periphery of the sanctuary, as the faithful waited in line to come forward and shake my hand, or smother me with a hug. I extended my hand with awkward, mechanical motions as they filed past, a machine in the spiritual assembly line that produced saints on the way to the church’s exit door. Meanwhile, I peered over the steady motion of shoulders and heads, my eyes fixed on Queen Jezebel, who remained seated in her pew, arms folded across her chest.

How had she done it? How had she rewritten history in a mere half hour?

“I’m looking forward to the next one!” A husky voice said, a hand clamping around my neck as if to strangle me. “You’ve got a powerful anointing on your life, and no mistake about it!”

“Well done.” Jezebel whispered through her veils, her breath conveying a whiff of oriental perfume. “Tame them one by one. Make them think they’re serving your god, when all they serve is the momentary thrill of empty words and hollow actions. I’ll be waiting at the exit door. Poor little muttonchops.”

The last Israelite past, I turned to descend the mountain, the dry desert wind biting my face as it tugged at my beard. She was waiting below, veiled in black, a shark’s smile spread across her lips at my approach. We had worked as a team, she and I. I had done her bidding. I was the conquered. Now she would have my people throughout the millennia, and I – poor Elijah, who had squandered the chance to offer true liberation – would be left on an ash heap of sermon notes and warm platitudes. If the fire were to fall now, it would fall too late.

She pretended not to see me as I passed down the center aisle beside her pew, but I saw her eyes – cold and grey – peer out from her desert veil. I circled around, came up behind her, and tapped her on the shoulder.

“You looked bored today, Tressa.”

She glanced at me from the corner of her eyes, the half-smirk returning.

“No.” She said, with a slight laugh, confirming my fears. She had not been bored; she had been horribly amused at the downfall of my people there on the mountain, had enjoyed every moment of my pyrrhic victory over her Phoenician prophets and knew all too well its ramifications.

Poor muttonchops.

“Well, I’m glad you weren’t too bored, then.” I said. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Where have you been?”

“Around.” She got up, turned to face me, her right eyebrow cocked above a tarpit of black eyeliner. “And you?”

“The same.”

“Really?”

“Well, I’ve been here at church.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “That must be difficult.”

“How come?”

She folded her hands behind her back and paced to one of the narrow windows at the side of the sanctuary.

“It’s summer.” She said. “How can you stand to be in this dark building?”

“It’s not so bad.” I replied. “I like the work that I’m doing here.”

She turned, her eyes blazing in the sunlight that fell through the window. She had caught me, and now I realized that she wasn’t just Jezebel, but the Adversary, who waited in the House of God to pounce on the first lie that fell from my lips.

“Do you?” She said with a smirk, her voice rising to accent the word “you.”

“What makes you think otherwise?”

I knew Satan’s game. I would outwit him – or her.

“You don’t look happy.” She remarked. Slowly circling me, she paused to study my face.

“And your sermon.” She said. “You didn’t seem interested at all. You just enjoy playacting Bible characters. Why don’t you go into theater instead?”

“I’m not much of an actor.” I replied.

“Sure you are.” Her smirk mutated into the shark-grin again. “Or you couldn’t do what you do every week.”

I remembered something Luther had said about driving away the devil; decided it wouldn’t work, and tried another approach.

“I’m not a pastor, I just play one on Sunday – is that what you mean?” I said in a sardonic tone.

“Exactly!” She clapped her hands together, like a teacher satisfied that she had finally communicated her point to a slow student. “See, that’s the problem. Most of us are posers. No one ever gets to know what we’re really like inside.”

I raised an eyebrow, glanced at her makeup and dyed hair.

“I take it you’re really a scene kid inside?”

She opened her mouth, looked hurt.

“I’m a genuine person.” She snapped. “Unlike some people I could mention.”

“I bet your dad is thrilled.”

Her mouth moved again, and I saw her bite down on her tongue.

“You know my dad?” She said.

I took a swing at the curveball.

“Of course. Everyone knows Reverend Durham.”

She rested her hands on her hips and turned to look out the window again.

“Yeah right.” She muttered.

“He called me yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Collecting herself, she turned to leave.

“Listen, I’m sorry if I offended you, Reverend.” She said under her breath, and I wondered whether she was speaking to me or to someone else.

“Don’t worry about it.” I said. “Five hail maries and a beer will make up for it.”

She turned back over her shoulder, smirked, shook her head, and left. And Elijah was alone on the desolate mountaintop, without a divine fire to keep him warm as the sun set behind him.