1001 Nights Cast

Mr. Link’s hand came down on my leg, just above my knee. I was sitting next to him on a metal folding chair. He pressed his thumb and pinky finger hard into my flesh and I jerked away from him.

‘Ah,’ he laughed, ‘That’s the eagle, you see.’

He held up his hand with his fingers curved downward like a claw.

I frowned and rubbed my leg. It still throbbed from the eagle’s attack. I stood up and walked out of the classroom across the hall into the library. In ten minutes the other boys would show up for Sunday school.

I liked the musty old church library. It was a small dark room, but books were overflowing the shelves, piled in stacks on the floor, and sitting in cardboard boxes near the dirty window in the back. Most of the books were much older than I was.

I pulled a thin volume off the shelf near my head. When I opened and slammed it shut, I saw the little puff of dust expand and billow up in the shape of a small cauliflower and vanish a second later. The word ‘CHUMA’ in faded white letters was printed across the shiny blue cover. Below it was a grinning little girl with the darkest skin I’d ever seen.

Only two pages into the book, I slammed it shut again. I shoved it back on the shelf and ran back to the classroom.

Mr. Link stood in front of a row of sleepy boys with his arms swaying this way and that while he talked about today’s lesson. He winked at me as I slunk into a seat behind the other boys.

‘Love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy might,’ Mr. Link pleaded. ‘This is what you must do. It is the most important thing, you see. God will always take care of you if you let the words of His great book guide your life. Trust in the Lord. It is such a simple thing, but a whole world is waiting out there to keep you from doing this.’

As he continued his passionate exhortation, I heard no more words. I just watched his waving arms and his eagle claws open and clench shut in midair. I felt a pain in my head, like hot needles dipping into the soft jellies of my brain. I could only think of a tall black mother over in Africa, chewing up little bits of meat into a soft pulp and dropping it into baby Chuma’s open mouth.

I could never be a missionary now. I couldn’t bear to see such horrible things in such a terrible place like Africa. How could anyone? No wonder they had so many diseases over there. I wanted to vomit as the image of the chewed meat kept coming back to me again and again. I imagined the screams of baby Chuma as her mouth was forced open to accept the tainted food.

A couple of the boys in front of me were giggling and whispering. Mr. Link didn’t stop to scold them. His face was tilted upwards towards heaven, but all I could see were the overlapping wavy brown circles on the otherwise white ceiling. The rains had been heavy this winter and the church didn’t have the money to fix the roof or buy new books for the library.

The two boys began laughing and poking each other. I told them to ‘shusssh.’ I didn’t care at all what Mr. Link was rambling on about, but he was always so friendly to me. He always patted me on the back or tugged my arm. Sometimes he would put his heavy arm around my shoulders as we sat on the folding chairs. The cold of the metal went right through the thin material of my pants and I would shiver when the back of my neck rested in the crook of his arm.

It all seemed so simple for Mr. Link. He had the answer to a happy life and not only that, he was willing to tell anyone who would listen to him. Why didn’t I believe what he said? Why wasn’t his unwavering conviction enough for me?

I was such a coward. I would never go to Africa to help people like baby Chuma and her mother. I knew Mr. Link would go if he read that book. He would help anyone.

I thought of his tall, frail wife, Ida. She didn’t make it to church most Sundays. When she did, she sat in the back row, ghostly pale, holding her head in her gloved hands that always matched her dress and her hat. She had terrible migraine headaches. She could hardly sleep or eat.

Mr. Link was always by her side, holding her up. The same way he was trying to hold the boys up in his Sunday school class.

I couldn’t understand it. Whenever I saw Mrs. Link, I was furious. Why didn’t God take care of her? Mr. Link wanted to do so much for God and yet his wife suffered constantly. Our pastor said God punishes evildoers with sickness and death, well, then why was good Mrs. Link in this condition?

After the class was over and the boys had all dashed off, I asked Mr. Link why bad things happen to good people.

‘God tests those he loves,’ he said softly.

But how do you know when a sick person is evil or if they are good and just being tested? It was so complicated, not just in Africa for baby Chuma, but here in this church. Nothing was simple to me at all.

Mr. Link sat down on one of the chairs and pulled me down, so I was sitting on his lap. I felt his warm breath on the top of my head and as he ran his fingers through my hair, he whispered from behind me, ‘You just have to believe.’