The suddenly pressured silence of the classroom forced me to glance up from my 217th line of "I love Mike Collins’," into Mr. Terrence’s tiny grey frowning eyes. 

"Delia, you may recite, now," he said.

I placed my pen gently into its desktop slot, turned in my seat, flipping over my notebook as I did so, and stood. As I walked to the front of the room, I heard muffled whispers from behind me, but no one was brave enough to laugh. At the podium, I looked out as I had done three days a week for seven full school years, and a month, and saw the same faces that I had seen there forever. All of these pacified staring faces -- bodiless with only hands that lay folded on their desks -- believed every word pumped into their waiting, cushioned-with-faith ears, and looked through me into some vast Biblical pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die dream. Didn't they watch TV, I wondered, as I prepared myself to begin the drone of the Apostles' Creed. 

"You may begin," Mr. Terrence said, breaking into my head. 

"I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth." Yeah, and where'd the fucking dinosaur bones come from? I paused an instant, afraid I had really said it, and felt, for maybe the first time, true, justifiable, rebellion climbing up my body. The physical sensations with the emotional turmoil weighted my chest. I couldn't stop my mind. 

"And . . . in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, our Lord," I began again. "Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried." Dead like Michael Young's older brother in a fucking bodybag dead? Pieces of his body strewn from Sea to shining Asiatic Sea? 

"He descended into hell." And sitteth at my left hand, last year, in the floor of somebody's bathroom as I cried -- drunk on Southern Comfort and Mist -- having just given my virginity to some guy I didn't even know. 

"On the third day he arose again from the dead and ascended into heaven." To hang out with JFK, RFK, King, Joplin, Hendrix and all the poor, fucking dead bastards from the nightly news' Casualty Scoreboard. Us and Them, after all we're only ordinary dead men. And I had to eat rare, bloody fucking steak with Walter Kronkite blaring right beside me. "Us: 27,925; Them: 69,001!" And no one cared that I was eating dinner; "We have to keep abreast of the slant-eyes' carryings on." 

"He sitteth at the right hand of God the Father, Almighty," 

and at the left hand of Pastor Cummings, First Baptist's Church of South Bend's finest; except, of course, on Saturday nights when he's right in there with all the rest of the men wearing their white hoods and burning crosses.

"From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead," and the whores and the poor, but never, never, the Republican Baptist deacons; they do their own judging. 

"I believe in the Holy Ghost," but not like the "nigras down to the Pentecostal Holiness Church, because they're simply putting on airs"; but more like I'm going to recommend you to the Spirit in the Sky, just the very next time I get high. 

"the Holy Christian Church," and, of course, there is no other;

"the communion of Saints," Yeah, I like having communion with Jesus, the Mexican boy from up at the Lutheran Boys' high school. He says, "Here, baby, stuff the toilet paper in the bag. I'll pour it, give it here. CARBONA, CARBONA, chant it, baby, CARBONA, that's it, repeat it breathe it huff it baby and eat my body which is erect for you." 

"the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body ..." And, Noah forgot to build the fucking ark this time and the blood river rises, all right. Rises, rises, and the whole earth is covered with the flood of the blood from the 

casualties

usthem

2,000,000,000

"and life everlasting? ... BULLSHIT, Amen." 

And that time I had said it.

Intaken breaths drained all air from the room leaving me none to breathe. Mr. Terrence’s face collapsed in on itself leaving hollowed and skeletal lines. I didn't wait for the reprimand but turned and walked out of the classroom and out of the school, forever and ever. Amen.