You know you’re in a dodgy fuckin’ neighborhood when you overhear a mother telling her fiveish-looking son that she needs to reread the Old Testament. Harper can’t quite make out the reason why, but suffice it to say, there’s no “reason” that could be rational. Harper doubted this mother was doing it for any “literarily-inclined” motive. In other words, she wasn’t “doing research” for a book. Or even a screenplay. And that would have been the only way Harper could have maybe excused such a scandalous statement. Made to anyone, let alone a five-year-old. But the thought of this mother molding her son’s young mind with talk of the Old Testament made Harper shudder. In part, because it flashed her back to her own indoctrination as a young child. Those early years forced to go to Sunday school, catechism, prepare for the Holy Communion. The things Harper learned took a long time to unlearn. And she was certain that the worst elements of the religion were still inside of her, deeply rooted and ready to sprout at any unexpected instant. 

Those elements that made her adhere to the opposite of the adage, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Which, when taken in its secularized (read: bastardized) version, simply seemed to mean: if you don’t cast judgment on anyone, they won’t do the same to you. But when read in its full original context from Matthew 7:1-3 (if locating it in the King James edition), it didn’t come across quite as “breezily” to Harper, who could still recite it to herself now as she realized how much she was judging the mother for her comment to her son. Though Harper tried to fight off the internal recitation, it came to her nonetheless: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you.” It was such threatening, foreboding language, like most of what was in the Old Testament. And it instilled within Harper the genuine fear that she would be karmically punished in some way for her reaction to the mother’s words…even if that reaction was only given on the inside. But thanks to all that Catholic hooey, paired with living in California for so long, Harper couldn’t help but adhere to the idea that any energy you put out is what you would also get back. In which case, she should be feeling the sensation of daggers against her back at any second. Not necessarily from the woman she would later refer to as OT (for Old Testament, obviously) Lover, but from someone else nearby funneling her karmic energy back to her. She stopped in her tracks upon the revelation that she was having such absurd ideas. And here she thought she had long ago cleansed her mind of all these toxic, Catholic-helmed thoughts. At the very least replacing them solely with capitalistic ones. 

As a matter of fact, Harper had been working so many hours (and sleeping during any free ones) the past couple of weeks that this was the first time she had been able to block out the necessary time to go grocery shopping. To buy food that would allow her to make “wholesome” meals so that she might be able to, even if only briefly, “properly” care for herself. Nourish her body with the types of things that would fortify it to be able to make more money. Harper had tried for a while to create a viable income out of being a work-from-home customer service representative (with those promises of “making your own hours” being a dead giveaway that it was never going to make ends meet). It didn’t take long until she resorted, like so many women, to OnlyFans (yet another “make your own hours” “job”). When she found that was way too competitive and oversaturated, she decided to turn to a more “old-fashioned” (or analog, if you prefer) form of sex work: stripping. 

At first, she was shy about it. Not that that really mattered to the owner or the patrons of Lapland (not to be confused with the Finnish city of the same name). If anything, her coy “shtick” turned them on all the more. But after roughly a month, she started to get over the sense of shame about her body and her inherent sexual nature that Catholicism had taught her to abhor, to repress. Before long, her dances were raking in the most cash thrown onstage, much to the jealousy and contempt of the other dancers, who took to calling her Nudie Two-Shoes. It wasn’t the worst nickname she had ever encountered. Actually, she found it to be cleverer than some of the other ones she’d been called in the past—“dumb bitch,” “Catholic cunt,” that sort of thing. Nudie Two-Shoes had more thought behind it, more…personality. And it spoke to the dichotomy of her post-Catholic state. For, on the one hand, she was still that virginal girl that Catholicism had told her to be. Shaped her into like so much malleable clay. But on the other, she had been this sex-positive stripper all along. The woman who wanted to take her clothes off (whether for money or not) because it was liberating. And, more importantly, because she liked to choose what song she would blow the crowd’s minds (and wads) with every night. 

Lately, though, she had been running on empty, so the inspiration was lacking. That was why she had opted to take the day off for the first time in months to go on this grocery shopping excursion. Here she had worried she might run into one of her customers, but it was worse still to encounter OT Lover, who continued her beatific rantings about the Bible inside the store as well (for whatever reason, Harper couldn’t seem to shake her once she first overheard OT Lover in the parking lot before going in). When her child stuck his tongue out at another girl his age riding in the front of the cart her father was pushing, OT Lover was quick to chidingly quote, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Harper got a faint sense of whiplash upon not only hearing the famed line from Leviticus, but also, once again, hearing it misquoted. Her father would never allow her to be so sloppy with citing scripture. If she had ever reduced any lines from the Bible to such drivel, he would have beat her senseless (and often did). He took it upon himself to inflict corporal punishment since nuns teaching in Catholic schools (let alone nuns being allowed to still beat children in Catholic schools) had become a thing of the past. Someone had to teach Harper “manners,” after all. Including the essential “decorum” of being able to accurately recite every Bible verse. Like the one OT Lover just botched. Which was very much to her disadvantage, as she hadn’t bargained for the ex-Catholic stripper whose visceral reaction to a misquoted Bible verse was to march right up to her, point the zucchini she had just grabbed from the produce section at her face and adamantly correct, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

OT Lover’s son looked up at her while she said this, his gaze very deliberately landing on her cleavage. Not a very “holy” child, as far as Harper was concerned. But then, no child is. OT Lover, meanwhile, just stood there, speechless. When she finally stopped blinking and closed her dropped jaw, she returned, “Yes…that’s correct.” She then seemed to take the advice of that “edict” by choosing not to further engage with Harper, for it would have meant judging her odd outburst quite harshly. And OT Lover, as a quintessential “beleaguered” mother, told herself she didn’t have time for that. To engage in any “petty drama,” that is. OT Lover was a good Christian woman, and would affirm that for herself even as she left the store with a number of shoplifted items. And especially when she went home and found herself “going Old Testament” indeed by smacking the shit out of her still-ignorant-of-the-Bible son for spilling stolen orange soda all over the couch. Because, despite what Harper had said to her about not “taking vengeance” against her own people and loving her neighbor as herself, she recalled most of the Old Testament differently.

The way she figured, it’s only really in the New Testament that there’s all that hogwash (among many other “hogwashes”) about letting revenge belong solely to God. But no, the Old Testament—again, from what OT Lover could (selectively) remember—espoused that it should belong to everyone. Which might have proved she really did need to reread it again. And hopefully before her son’s next offense.