SoMa Literary Review - The Golden Door

The Golden Door

By Jared Smith

Midnight in Truckee Dad pulls over to whip himself with his belt. He stands in the headlights and yells out the count: “Twelve! Thirteen! Fourteen!” His face is wet but in the dark and the drizzle I can’t tell if he’s crying. He gets back in the truck and I rub his back with aloe. “Well at least you’re not totally useless,” he says, putting on his shirt. I look out the window as we head up into the mountains, the full moon shining like my bald white head.

At the summit the darkness descends on me again. My body’s shaking and I can’t quit weeping. Dad stops the truck and reaches over to pin me in my seat. He starts the chant: “Christ, Christ, Jesus Christ.” After a few minutes I have the strength to join in. I imagine peace descending on me like a white dove. We get out of the car to take a breather. Down the slope the moon’s glittering off a big black lake.

“Donner Lake,” Dad says. “Where the pioneers got trapped and had to eat each other.”

The darkness hits me all over again. Dad does the chant and holds me down until at last I fall asleep.

In the gold light of dawn I wake up to see us crossing over the ocean on a giant orange bridge, the water sparkling in the sun and on the rounded hillside the white buildings of San Francisco gleaming like teeth. “Behold,” Dad says, “the city of queers. With your slut of a mother down in the midst of it.”

It takes us all day to find where she lives. We stop at a massage salon to buy oil for my sunburned head. “Your son,” the therapist says, “he doesn’t look so good.” He offers me a free session. I go in and take off my clothes, my smooth and hairless body sliding noiselessly under the thin bedsheet. The therapist comes in and tells me to close my eyes and take a few cleansing breaths. I close my eyes and see nothing but the dark mirror of eternity. “There’s no way out of life,” I say, “not even death, because our spirit goes on forever.”

The therapist lifts off the sheet and gazes at the huge fish shape I’ve branded on my hairless chest. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I think you need more than just a massage.”

At sunset Dad finally caves in and bribes directions from a scabby bum with a Budweiser and a gas station sandwich. We wait outside Mom’s apartment until she comes out to her car. Dad shoves her into the passenger seat and I climb in back. “And you thought you’d get away with being a lezbo,” he says.

Mom sighs and looks back at me. “Cougar,” she says. “What have you done to yourself?”

“It’s what you did to him,” he says. “It’s what you did to us.” He karate chops her in the back of the head and she looks at him, wincing, and then he chops her in the head again and she collapses against the dashboard. Dad drives back across the bridge and into the hills above Oakland where we stop near a trash pile to tie up Mom’s arms and legs and gag her mouth. She starts to wake up as we get to the temple, its clean white face a beacon in the night. We drag her across a flowered courtyard and around to the back of the building. I look down from the heights above the water to the darkening city.

“How far we’ve come,” I say to Mom.

Dad unties her right arm and takes the wool sock from her mouth. “Now it’s easy,” he says. “All you have to do is put your hand out and touch the temple and say that you repent. Then we’ll take you home.”

“Dennis,” Mom says. “You’re an idiot.”

“We’ll see about that,” Dad says, yanking on her arm until her hand touches the temple. “Behold,” he says, “and I the Lord proclaim righteousness throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

We look at her and wait to see the change. She sighs and sticks out her lassoed legs. “Are we finished?” Dad unties her and she gets up and waits until he turns around and then she picks up a rock and knocks him in the back of the head and he slumps to the ground.

“Cougar,” Mom says. “You don’t have to live like this. Your father’s way isn’t the only way. Look how sick you are.”

“I’m fine,” I tell her. I put my arms around her and try to drag her over to the temple. “Just touch the wall and say that you’re sorry and then we can go home.”

“Stop it,” Mom says, and now I’m weeping again. We tie up Dad and drag him to the front of the temple. I leave a note in his hand that says HOSPITAL.

Mom takes me back to her apartment and introduces me to her fat lesbian roommates. She puts a pan of milk on the stove and tells me to sit down and take off my shoes. “The problem is fundamental,” she says, laying out a pile of blankets. The roommates get up and bring pillows from their bedroom. “Obedience. Repression. Denial. These things have been ingrained in you. You have to start over.”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling a little better. “You’re probably right.”

“And so you will be reborn,” she says. “Through trial and tribulation you will come forth from the womb clean and whole.”

Mom pours the milk into a pitcher and nods her head. Her roommates pin me to the floor and pry my mouth open and plug my nose. They’re strong as cows. Mom jams a funnel between my teeth and pours the hot milk down my throat. I try to cry out but I choke on the milk.

“Fight,” Mom yells. “Break free of your chains. Claim your own birth.” She shoves a pillow over my face, and then a blanket, more and more. They pull down my pants and I feel the warm milk poured across my thighs. My mouth is open wide, my lungs burning for relief. At last everything goes numb and all I know is Mom’s voice.

“Go to the door,” she says. “Enter your first world.”

And through the terrible darkness I see it: a golden door trimmed in glorious light. Hot tears run down my face like blood. I reach out for it.

Jared Smith currently lives in Utah with his wife, Sarah. "The Golden Door" is a sequel to "Exodus," which appeared in Juked. Other stories have appeared on the Web in FRiGG and Night Train.