Seasonal work
We printed it: Jesus is just alright

     Jack is sitting on the chafing canvas strips of a folding stool in front of a hollow cross, made of foamcore and painted brown with sprinkles of red. The line of children snakes away from him, and so he feels like an amusement ride. They sniffle and whine and cackle. They have no patience, but they are willing to wait, quibbling with their shirt-bottoms, for the possibility that their desires can become the responsibility of magic, can be communicated to a power of such magnitude that only the smallest human brains can conceive it. Beyond Mom, beyond Dad, beyond the mall, beyond the City of Dorval there is a greatness, this they know; and there is the chance that such greatness is taking requests.
     The frustrated faces of parents poke out above the kids, and this is how Jack measures the length of the queue. He cannot even see the last parent's head at two in the afternoon - they stretch out past the velvet ropes and far past Foot Locker and Suzy Sheer. The line takes a turn out of Jack's vision at the food court, disappearing behind a cardboard cutout of Ronald McDonald.
     The children's noses are snotty from the April nip that had revisited the suburb recently - that last boost of winter slapping the residents of Dorval so that they would not escape nature in an effort to remember God. Or perhaps it is Christmas's revenge on Easter. The brisk wind is just strong enough through the mall entrances to reach Jack on the basement concourse. He is naked except for a loincloth that he has double-pinned to his underwear. Most of his body shivers, but his head is sweating under a stringy wig and phony moustache, the polyester hair of them not even pretending realism. Feeling the moisture on his forehead, Jack leans over on his stool to demand his brow be wiped by one of the attending Marys. There are two: one wrapped in a baby-blue robe made to look like satin and the other in a red bra and panties. The Virgin is the one that swoops down with napkins to wipe Jack's brow and as she does, a small boy scurries off Jack's lap towards the whore.
     "Thanks, Mom," Jack whispers into the Virgin's ear. By some cruel twist of fate, this particular Mary's name is actually Virginia and she loathes everything about her work: Jack, children, polyester. It is seasonal work for her, a college student declared by her employer as too ugly to be a whore, but just plain enough to be both a virgin and a mother, a situation Virginia (who is neither of these) considers to be the shittiest compromise in Christendom.
     "Fuck you," Mary says, throwing the loose end of her robe over her shoulder. The red Mary - Mary Magdalene - is standing near the makeshift exit to hand the children little chocolate Jesuses wrapped in aluminum.
     Good Friday and everything is shit.
     "Are you really Jesus?" The child is dressed in a pastel golf shirt, his breath like watermelon gum
     "Of course," Jack replied. "Don't you have any faith?"
     "Not if you're not really Jesus."
     "Well, I am. Don't be like that. Don't be a doubting Thomas."
     The kid flares his nostrils and tilts his head. "But he's the only apostle that makes any sense."
     "Don't you want to tell me what you want for Easter, Thomas?"
     "My name is Spencer."
     "God hates that name, you know. He told me himself."
     "Jesus wouldn't be mean. You're not really him. I can tell."
     "You're a very stupid boy, you know."
     "My teacher tells me I'm too smart for my own good," Spencer says, his eye balls in the top right-hand corner of their sockets. "My mother says I'm the brightest boy she's ever met." Jack looks over at the waiting mother who is nothing but bangs and treacle frames of hair and a camera with a long cord dangling from its side. She seizes her opportunity and the flash explodes. It is so bright it is nauseating.
     "You're mother's a liar, little boy," Jack says bending his head so his hairy chin is pressed to his neck."She has to say nice things about you, that's what moms are for. But I am Jesus and I know everything, you see. I have to tell you the truth. That's what Jesuses are for." Spencer's eyebrows are up and his lips are slightly parted. "Now, don't you want to tell me what you want for Easter, Thomas?"
     "Not if you're not really Jesus," Spencer says and starts to squirm out of Jack's lap through Jack's parted knees and starts running towards the camera and the hair.
     "It would help if you at least pretended to believe in this," Virginia says.
     "If I ever brought myself to, I would have to face the fact that God is mocking me. I mean look at me." Virginia looks up and down at her co-worker: his legs are hairy and his chest in so meager, it is nearly concave. "Come on, Virginia, jump on my lap. I'll give you an Easter treat."
     "Calm down, cowboy," she says, "Check it out. That damn Gursky boy is here again - two down." Jack peers around her torso and there he is, David Gursky, dressed in a black wool vest and trousers. Black shoes gleaming. He is like a dot of ink against the stupefying pastel decorations of Easter. Every day of Holy Week he has come to see Jack, waiting parentless and calm, arms parallel to his body.
     "He better not pee on me again, " Jack sighs. "This is my second loin cloth today."
     "Well, try and be nice. Easter joy and all that," Virginia says. "I'll prep the paper towel." So after a girl who longed for Easter with Alanis and a boy in army pants, who, in Jack's estimation, was too old to still believe in Jesus, comes the trepidatious Gusky, with eyes like saucers, framed with curled tendrils of hair.
     "Jesus, this is David Gursky," says Virginia, leading the child to Jack's side.
     "I know, I know."
     "Hello, Jesus," the boy says, letting himself be lifted under the arms. His wool pants are rough on Jack's narrow thigh.
     "Now what is you want? You can't keep coming back here. All these kids need a chance to see Jesus." Jack casts his arm out, indicating the line. "You're not even Christian."
     "All these kids get to talk to Jesus every day," Gursky says. "I'll get in trouble at home if I do." Jack eyes Virginia, who shrugs her blue-polyester shoulders.
     "Can't you just pray to Jesus privately?"
     "My father says he'll know if I do. He's got a direct line to God, he says." Jack thinks about his own father, a stout man with degrees and no tolerance for religion. Jack had never even been baptized. "Why do all these kids get what they want and I don't?"
     "I don't know, my friend." Jack looks out at the long line of impatient children. "Most of these kids don't know what they really want anyway."
     "I know what I want."
     "I told you yesterday that I can't give it to you. I can't make you stop wetting the bed. That's your little challenge."
     "No!" David says and Virginia's head pops up from her discussion with the other Mary. "I do want to stop wetting the bed. But now I want something more."
     "I'm not a miracle worker, kid. Let's stick to one problem at a time."
     "Yes you are," David was trying to make his voice sound reasonable. "All I want is for you to make me believe in Jesus." His voice diminished to a whisper by the end of the sentence. And then he looks up at Jack, his perfectly round black pupils pushed against the top of his eyes. Jack felt a sudden wave of conspiracy come over the whole scene.
     "Ah, crap, David, I can't do that. That's not something you can just do." Jack's sighed heavily and looked around him for Virginia. "What do you think this is?"
     "All the other kids get to."
     "You can't make someone believe in something, kid. It comes from inside." Jack tapped on finger on the child's chest. They were both in new territory here. Jack's own parents had their lie with God disconnected before he was born. And now, looking into the yarmulke on top of David's head, Jack felt ridiculous but responsible, like being cornered by a homeless woman on a subway platform.
     "But I don't have it inside. Someone has to make me do it."
     "For Christ's sake, kid, this isn't magic. It's minimum fucking wage." But now the boy is crying and Jack, with his fingers tight around the boy's black vest, can imagine what is coming. He looks up desperately at Virginia. Finally, she comes over, shaking her head is a disappointed fashion.
     "David," says Virginia in her softest voice, "why don't you come with me? We'll get you some nice chocolate hosts and if you don't piss all over Jesus here, I'll even set you up with a nice candy rosary or something. You can eat the beads as you say the prayers."
     But it is too late, the boy is crying and sniffling. "But I don't even know the prayers," he says desperately and drawn out.
     "God doesn't mind," Jack says. "And neither do I. Just make something up."
     "That's right," Virginia says. "Take it from me. I'm Jesus' mother."
     "It's all the same crap anyway," Jack includes. David looks confused in his crying, trying to hide his eyes behind little fists. Jack and Virginia exchange a desperate look then turn back to Gursky who is rumbling with sniffles. And then it comes. Warm at first against Jacks bare legs and then freakishly cold and wet. Jack lifts the dripping boy from his lap and stands, tiny rivulets of urine chasing each other towards his ankles.
     "Fuck, fuck, fuck," Jack yells. "Get him out of here." But David was already gone, running in his wet trousers, leaving shoe-prints of wetness from Jack's stool to the exit.