James Frey - The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

We walked right down the middle of the tunnel, in the area between the two tracks. Occasionally there’d be an overhead light, but mostly it was black. I could hear dripping water and rats, and once or twice I heard some yelling. When the trains would come by, I’d put my hands over my ears, and the wind was really strong and the girders holding the tunnel up would shake a little bit. The trains were only a few feet away, and the people in them were a blur. Even though Ben was with me, I stayed scared. I felt like we were walking into Hell and the trains were full of souls of the damned, rushing towards eternal fire and pain. And though I would have once thought, having seen what I saw with Ben Zion, and having disobeyed Jacob, and having forsaken my mother, that I was going to join them, this time I didn’t. If I was walking into Hell, I knew I’d walk out. Or if I felt like we were walking into Hell, I believed that there was no such thing. There is only life. This life that we live. If it is Hell, it is because we make it so.

I saw lights ahead of us, and we came to a platform and we climbed up and waited for the next train. There were a few other people on the platform, but they paid no attention to us and didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that we had come walking out of the tunnel. We got on a downtown train and switched to one going to Brooklyn. Nobody on the trains spoke or really even looked at each other. Ben held my hand and closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window and breathed through his nose, and though he looked like he was asleep, I don’t think he was. Once a thin white man in a nice suit got on with a briefcase, and Ben immediately opened his eyes. The man was sitting across from us and further down, and Ben stared at him. He didn’t give him a dirty look or a mean look, just stared at him. At the next station the man got off the train.

It took an hour or so. We got off and walked to the hospital. When we arrived, our mother was sleeping. The doctor said she was fine but not good. Ben Zion took me to the waiting room and left. I asked him where he was going and he said for a walk . I asked him where and he just smiled and walked away.

He came back three hours later. I had tried to pray while he was gone, but had had trouble doing it. It seemed strange to be talking to something that wasn’t there, or that I didn’t know was there, or that I believed was there but had no evidence was there. And I saw other people in the waiting room who were praying. I watched them carefully. Two of them were praying to a Christian God, and I know because one had a Bible with them and the other made the sign of the cross before prayer, and another was a Muslim, and had a copy of the Qur’an. They were praying very hard, and they were very focused. I was used to praying with other people, sometimes many other people, especially at Bible conventions and Christian Youth meetings, so that wasn’t it. I just couldn’t do it at that moment, and wanted to see other people do it, and wanted to see what, if anything, happened. There were magazines in the room, magazines with movie stars on the front of them and silly headlines and bright pictures of pretty people in fancy clothes. I picked one up and looked at it. While I looked at it, I watched the people praying. If the outside of the magazines seemed silly, the insides were worse. The stories were about people who were very concerned with how they looked and dressed, and how much money they made, and the houses they lived in. And while I could understand worrying about those things on some level, they seemed incredibly insignificant in a hospital, a place where people were sick and diseased and dying, and where the people who loved them came to watch them suffer. At the same time, what the people praying were doing seemed equally insignificant. They were all begging for help, for aid, for some way to relieve their suffering, and to relieve the suffering of whomever they were praying for, begging to characters in books, characters that no one had ever met or seen or spoken to and was sure even existed. They were praying to whatever God or Savior they believed in to save them, and in the same way that some people worship the silly people in the magazines, who we at least know are real, they worshipped the people in their books, who we don’t know anything about. I watched a doctor come in to see one of the Christians, and he had some type of bad news, because the person immediately started sobbing. A family member of the other Christian, or someone who I assumed was a family member because they looked exactly alike, came in to take the person away, and the family member had clearly been crying. The man with the Qur’an saw what I saw, that the prayer had clearly done nothing, but kept clutching his book and praying anyway. I wondered, and I still wonder, if I had replaced their books with the silly magazines I had been looking at, and if they had worshipped the silly people in those magazines, if they would have gotten the same result.

When Ben Zion came back, he smiled and told me to come with him. I stood and we left the waiting room and walked to our mother’s room. When we went in, she was awake and she smiled at me. The tubes were out of her mouth, but there were others still in her arms, and she was still covered in bandages. I sat next to her and took her hand and told her I was so sorry and that I loved her and I started crying. She pulled me towards her, and though she was too weak to really do it, I understood what she wanted, and I stood and put my arms around her. I kept telling her I was sorry and that I loved her, and she put her hands on the back of my head and held me against her chest. Ben Zion stood a few feet away and watched us. After a minute or two, our mother let me go and I pulled away and sat back down, though I still held her hand. Ben Zion walked over and kissed me on the forehead, and leaned towards my mother and whispered something in her ear, though I did not hear what it was. She smiled and kissed his check, and he stepped away and sat with me. He stayed until she feel asleep, and when she did, he stood and kissed her forehead and turned and started to walk out of the room. I asked him where he was going, and he stopped and turned around and looked at me and spoke.

I’m leaving.

Where to?

I’m going to see Jacob.

Don’t.

I’m going to make sure you never have to see him again.

Don’t hurt him.

I wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Then why go?

I want you to be free.

I’ll be fine.

Fine is no way to live. Take care of Mom.

You call her Mom?

When I was little I called her Mommy, when I got older it was Mom. Only when we were alone. It was our little thing, away from the rules and formality of our home.

Is she going to be okay?

I don’t know if she wants to live anymore. She’s had a long, brutal life.

She didn’t deserve it.

None of us deserve it.

He turned and walked to the door.

Don’t let him hurt you, Ben Zion.

I love you, Esther.

I met Ben at his arraignment hearing. It was at the Queens County Criminal Courthouse. He had been arrested and charged with attempted murder and arson. I am an attorney and work for the criminal defense division of the Legal Aid Society. In simple, layman’s terms, I am a public defender. I literally drew his file out of a basket. In doing so, I have been irrevocably changed. In almost every way for the better. Except for the rage I feel when I think about what was done to him.

I became what I am because of my father. He was a drug dealer. He was not a drug lord or anyone of importance in the drug trade. Rappers have not glorified him in their songs. Writers have not written books about him. Hollywood has not made his life into an award-winning drama. He was, like many black men, both now and in the ’70s, when he was active, a street-level drug dealer. He literally stood on a corner and sold drugs. He did so because he believed there were no other options. He was not well-educated. There were no jobs available to him. He did not have parents who were able to support or nurture him. We lived, and still do, in Harlem. He and my mother were married, and still are, and they had three children, me and my twin sisters, who are a year younger than me. We lived in a fifth-floor walk-up. My mother worked as a checkout clerk at a grocery store but made very little money. My father looked for legitimate employment but was unable to find anything. He did what he had to do. He took the only job that was available to him.