Bloodlines
By Greg Rapier
Grandma and I went to church every week. Sat in the same pew. Read from the same hymnal with a tear down the spine. Each week after the children’s message the other kids went to some place called Sunday School, but Grandma had me sit in our pew and listen to the adults’ sermon instead. Grandma said it made me smarter. But Grandma said lots of things.
For example: she once told Reverend Mathis she didn’t care what he thought and she definitely didn’t care about church polity, so—damn it—her grandbaby was going to have communion—and that was that—and if Reverend Mathis refused, she’d take her tithe across the street to Grace United where they baptize babies and let women preach.
A week later, she cradled me in her arms and fed me my first communion—my first solid food of any sort—and the way she tells it: I almost died. Gluten allergy.
From then on she paid her tithe plus one dollar, two separate checks in the offering plate, and for the second check, she wrote in the memo line gluten-free host. She says churches have to do what the check says or forfeit the money—and churches hate giving back money.
So that’s why I have gluten-free communion. Because of Grandma. And that’s also why I feel so different. Because of Grandma. This year, some kids my age started coming in from Sunday School for communion, but none of them touched the gluten-free bread. Just me.
***
Grandma never lets me go to birthday parties or field trips—she says they’re too dangerous.
She also has these ugly dishes in display cabinets all around the house with hand-painted dogs and windmills and sad-looking children carrying ladders in the snow outside white churches. Sometimes I feel like those children. Painted. Stuck behind thick glass. But that’s not the point. The point is we never use Grandma’s dishes, even when there’s company. Even when Grandma hosts the family reunion, we use paper plates.
But what good is a dish you never use? Or a school when you can’t go on the trips? I guess you could say the same about church and communion. Why host a meal everyone can’t enjoy? Did God ever consider that maybe I’d like to eat the same communion as everyone else?
***
I don’t know when I decided I would grab the real communion bread at church camp, but I do know it was premeditated. I thought maybe Grandma was lying. Maybe I didn’t have a gluten allergy. I needed to know for myself.
I arrived at camp just before noon. Grandma clung to me even more than usual, like she could tell I was about to get into trouble. Once all the kids arrived, they broke us into our cabin groups for lunch. I sat across from three kids I recognized from church whose names I didn’t know—the Sunday School crowd—and two kids who knew each other from someplace else.
The camp director called our table to the food line, and I lined up behind everyone else, but my table leader pulled me aside and directed me to a window near the kitchen. While the other kids loaded their plates with dino nuggets, green peas, and fries, the kitchen staff fixed me a special plate of canned-chicken salad drenched in off-yellow dressing.
One of the kids at my table asked why my food looked so funny. I told him about my gluten allergy. The kid said it was weird to be allergic to something you can’t see. I agreed.
Then this brown-haired kid from my church—he was a grade older than me, I think, and taller—he said there’s nothing weird about allergies. He said he was allergic to peanuts. Then he winked at me like that made us best friends or something.
That night we sat on raised wooden benches, bleacher-style, around a smoky campfire. I sat next to the brown-haired kid whose name I still didn’t know. Pastor Miguel stood behind a pressed black cloth draped over a wooden table. On top of the table rested a large chalice and a loaf of homemade, golden-crusted bread. Next to the golden bread on a small, plastic plate were individually apportioned freeze-burnt squares of gluten-free bread for people like me.
Pastor Miguel invited us to the table for communion. Scratch that. Pastor Miguel told us Jesus invited us to the table for communion. He said everyone who believes in Jesus is welcome to share in this feast. As equals. He broke the bread, poured the grape juice, and called us to the table. Row by row. One by one. The line snaked down the dusty steps past the campfire.
I followed the brown-haired boy with the peanut allergy, watched him rip himself a piece of the good bread and dip it in the cup. Thick crumbs sprinkled on the tablecloth. I wanted what he had. All of it.
So I grabbed the real bread. My mouth watered. The bread Pastor Miguel broke. The bread I never tasted. Bread like Jesus’ body, broken and leavened and flaky, passed from person to person, ripped and dipped and consumed. I wanted to taste Jesus. And I wanted Grandma to know. I wanted her to know Jesus loved me, same as everyone else, that I could receive Jesus, swallow his body, and be made whole.
I ripped a huge chunk just for me and dipped it into the cup. Watched the juice bleed onto the spongy middle. I took Jesus into my body. Onto my tongue. Prayed.
***
I was sick.
My insides twisted like a towel, soaked and then wrung out to dry, and my stomach was so heavy I thought it may fall straight through my asshole. I couldn’t climb the wooden steps. Not like this. So instead of turning right to follow the brown-haired boy, I turned left, hurried past the communion table, and ran.
Someone yelled behind me—my counselor, probably. He didn’t know my name.
I kept running, faster, holding onto my side, doubling over as I searched for escape. Footsteps behind me. I cut across the hill and looked for a bathroom. My side was about to tear open. Sphincter too. I hobbled onto the main path where I said goodbye to Grandma, and I recognized a square building Grandma used before she left, so I hurried to the boys’ side and dropped my pants.
I squatted on the toilet long enough for four or five separate conversations with plenty of time in-between for entire worlds to spill out my anus. I talked with my counselor then the camp nurse then my counselor again, then I asked to be alone until the nurse returned on the phone with Grandma.
As I sat there on the plastic toilet, I thought about Jesus’ body broken for me, and I wondered if Jesus did this to other people. I wondered if this was what communion was all about. Suffering together.
I also thought about these two neighbor kids who lived across the street. We were the same age but went to different schools. They got bikes from Santa a few years ago when we were all in kindergarten. When I turned ten and Grandma finally bought me a bike, she also bought a can of spray paint, and she went to the end of the street just before the stop sign and painted a thick line across the asphalt, and she told me I could ride anywhere in the street as long as I didn’t pass that line. And as I rode my bike through our cul-de-sac, round and round in circles, I’d look to our front window, and if our blinds were closed—which happened not every day, but sometimes—I’d brush up against the white line and let my back wheel flare out onto the other side.
And sometimes those kids across the street would see me out on my bike, hop onto theirs, and ride past me like Grandma’s line didn’t matter. Maybe communion then—and I could be wrong—maybe communion looks like us kids suffering together. Like them hitting the breaks just short of Grandma’s line. On their own. Or maybe communion is like a big rain that erases the line—who knows.
I promised God I’d read the Bible every day—and not just with Grandma—if he somehow made my stomach feel better. But he chose not to. Maybe he wanted me to keep thinking. Maybe I was right about communion, or maybe I was just dehydrated.
The main door opened, and I peeked through the crack underneath my stall, expecting to see Nurse Robin on the phone with Grandma. But it was some boy. I watched his feet shuffle toward the urinal. He flushed, which was against camp rules because if it’s yellow, you let it settle—or something like that. At least I didn’t have to worry about breaking any rules.
The kid washed his hands, pointed his feet at my stall. He said, “You’re that kid, aren’t you? The one who ran during campfire.”
I didn’t respond.
“I know your shoes,” the kid said. “We go to church together, I think, but you never talk. You sat next to me at lunch and at campfire.”
I covered my face the way Grandma told me you’re supposed to if you’re in the restroom and somebody might be naked. I peeked through the hole in my fingers and the slit in the side of the door, expecting to see a splash of brown hair, but I couldn’t see anything.
The boy continued. “You’re allergic, aren’t you? Either that or sick.”
I farted. “Allergic.” The only word I could squeeze out. I wanted to say if you were paying attention, you’d realize I already told you I can’t eat gluten, the same conversation you told me about your peanut allergy—but also thank you—thank you for noticing—thank you for checking on me. But I couldn’t say all that.
“I, uh…I hope you feel better,” he said.
A few minutes later, Nurse Robin told me Grandma was on her way to pick me up. Grandma packed my clothes for me, and when she was done, she slipped an adult diaper through the stall.
It was pink.
***
Back at church, Grandma stopped writing her second check. Whenever church served communion, she had me stay in my pew. Just watch and pretend, she said. You don’t need any bread as long as Jesus knows your heart.
Each Sunday after church, Grandma made me stay by her side as she talked to all her church friends—a series of ancient women who all blended together with their neck-wrinkles and thick glasses and poufy hair. They smelled like dust. I once asked Grandma why she sees her church friends only on Sunday, and she said sometimes people need a little space. Then she told me to get in the car.
I occasionally saw that brown-haired boy from camp when he made the after-church rounds with his mom. His name’s Johnny. Johnny told me what I missed at camp and he told me all about Sunday School, which, it turns out, is like regular church but you play with action figures and make shepherds out of felt and scissors.
One time when Grandma wasn’t looking me and Johnny ran onto the stage-part of the church and pretended to be preachers. He stood in the pulpit and recited The Apostle’s Creed and I went behind the communion table and pretended to break the bread, then we pretended to eat together.
Johnny dipped his fake bread into the empty cup. He chewed a little. Laughed. “Tim, I’ve been meaning to ask…” he said, looking around to make sure Grandma wasn’t close. “Why don’t you ever come to Sunday School with the rest of us? Miss Sandy says you’re always welcome.”
I looked back at the empty pews. “Grandma says you don’t need friends as long as you have Jesus.”
“What do you say?” Johnny asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t want to upset Grandma.”
Johnny and I played Church again next week. We continued last week’s conversation, this time with Johnny serving communion.
“I was thinking about what you said about your grandma, and my mom’s been lonely too,” he said.
“Yeah?” I said, leaning against the podium where Reverend Mathis speaks.
“Mmm-hmm,” Johnny said. “Since daddy, since he left, she’s been different.”
“How long’s he been gone?” I asked.
“Four years.”
I gave Johnny my address, and he said we lived really close, so one day after school he rode his bike over to the cul-de-sac where I lived. I showed him where to stand on the far side of Grandma’s line so Grandma couldn’t see him, and I stayed on the good side while we talked. We talked about his daddy. We talked about Grandma. And we talked about how hard it can be to make friends. So we decided Grandma and Johnny’s mom should become friends, and we devised a little plan for next year at camp, a way to make sure Grandma and Johnny’s mom found each other.
***
Grandma had this thick black marker she used to cross out all the identifying information in our mail, and she used it to write the words no gluten on my suitcase, my shower kit, the underside of my hat—everything. She shouted about gluten to anyone who would listen. I half-expected her to make a temporary tattoo with the phrase and stick it on my arm. Good thing Jesus doesn’t like tattoos.
Johnny slept in the bunk above me. We sat together every campfire and ate together each meal. Then during free time, while Johnny was volunteering in the garden with the maintenance man, I played kickball with the other kids on the Big Green Field. I’m left-footed, and I kick hard, so the captains learned to pick me first or second. The kids asked once if I wanted to be captain, but I said no thank you because I’m awful with names. But that was a lie; I just liked kickball better when I was being picked first.
Johnny and I talked about our plan a couple times—we knew it was a risk, but we didn't think anything bad would happen. Not really. So before Thursday’s campfire and communion, Johnny gave me the signal, and I pulled the floss container from my bag, flicked open the top, then pocketed it.
Communion went the same as last year. Pastor Miguel gave a sermon, then we merged from our wooden benches into a single-file line on our way to the table. Johnny first, then me. I slipped the floss container into Johnny’s hand. He flipped open the top and a peanut spilled into his palm. I tore a heavy piece of the regular bread. Dipped it into the chalice. Opened my mouth.
Pastor Miguel grabbed my wrist. He looked at me the same as Grandma when she’s angry. Eyes scrunched; jaw clenched. “We’ll talk about this later. Just take the gluten-free bread and move on.”
I ate the gluten-free square. Didn’t feel sick. Didn’t feel anything. A little hungry, maybe. In front of me, Johnny stumbled over himself, the open floss container dropping from his right hand, the peanut I’d smuggled inside missing.
Johnny fell down. His throat gurgled like a straw slurping at an empty cup. Violent, ugly noises. Johnny shut his eyes. His lips full and purple. Eyelids too.
Within an hour, a helicopter landed on the Big Green Field. Two women in helmets strapped Johnny onto a gurney then took him away while the boys in our cabin stood back with Pastor Miguel to say a prayer.
When we finished, Pastor Miguel brought me into the camp director’s office. I told them everything. I told them our plan went wrong. I told them about the peanut and the bread. And how Johnny and I were lonely and his mom and my grandma were too, and how we planned to get sick together so our families met in the nurse’s office and became friends. I told them how we first tried during church, but Johnny’s mom didn’t want to talk to Grandma, and Grandma didn’t want to talk to anyone with kids.
They expelled me. Then they prayed for me. Then we all held hands and prayed for Johnny.
Grandma doesn’t drive at night, so she picked me up early the next morning. I thought Grandma would yell at me. But she didn’t. She asked me to pick some flowers, so I stopped at the edge of a hiking trail and plucked some poppies and lilies and a couple of the dandelions you blow when you want to make a wish.
Grandma let me sit up front all the way to the hospital.
When we arrived, Johnny was asleep. His mom reclined next to his bed, a hospital blanket pulled to her chin, her hair a tangled pouf. When she saw us, she dropped her magazine and hugged us both.
I presented the wildflower bouquet sealed at the stem with a piece of dental floss. Johnny’s mom motioned to the bedside table, so I laid the flowers next to a pink hospital tray covered with stale grilled cheese and tomato soup. And as Johnny’s mom talked with Grandma, I listened to the strange beeps and wheezes of the respirator, and I watched the life lines pump oxygen into Johnny’s nose, then I looked away, downward, toward Johnny’s arms and the blood tubes jammed deep into his veins.
THE END
Author Bio: Greg Rapier is a writer and pastor. He has degrees in English and Film and is currently getting his doctorate in Creative Writing and Public Theology (Yeah, that’s a thing). You can find his work at places like The Nervous Breakdown, Fathom, and The Princeton Theological Review.