everyone from between strands of greased hair pressed long against the sides of his face.
He caught Correen’s cautious attention, but he never caught her off guard. She watched him, but she never feared him.
Older, louder, and still with so much to prove entering real street life, he often dominated group conversations. Inevitably, he created and orchestrated countless haunted conversations about the Order of the Trapezoid, Pythagorean Tradition and the Goat of Mendes. Tired, repetitive rants about the Nine Satanic Statements and the Nine Satanic Sins. We had more than a few ironic conversations about Satanic Statement number four (“Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates”) and Satanic Sin number six (“Lack of Perspective”). Many of the young people maintaining turf along this 500-metre stretch indulged him out of sheer boredom, having passed through the this-is-so-cool stage into the how-am-I-going-to-get-by stage long, long ago.
But on occasion—usually in the darkness of post-midnight—wits were stirred and nerves were tapped in very real and frightening ways. And if I were present, the young man in black would look my way and raise his head high on his long neck like a wild animal with a carcass, assuring me that he had won the hunt that night. He eerily enjoyed my presence and the opportunity it served him to centre me out as a manifestation of naïve Christianity, a pathetic Jesus and a futile God.
Within that same group of regulars claiming squatter’s rights along the muddy stretch, there was an 18-year-old who moved drugs along the Lakeshore to the tune of hundreds of dollars profit a day, every penny finding its way into his veins or up his nose that same night. And by midnight, he would turn the young Satanist’s conversations into his own surreal reality, get on his feet, repeat some of things he had heard, and chase the devils, snakes and spiders in his mind around the small fire pit where everyone gathered.
Some kids would laugh nervously, others just shook their heads and rolled their eyes. One just wouldn’t look. Correen would sit on her hands and look down at the fire and say nothing. Just stare into the orange sparks cracking off dried twigs, used paint sticks and fragments of misplaced construction lumber. A silent little girl, working hard to escape her unimaginable reality by gazing into the only bit of light and warmth nearby. With a tiny frame, a sweet, pain-filled face, and a gentle disposition at all times, Correen was nothing like the animated group she was in the midst of, or the dark characters that monopolized the group conversations.
I had known many of the others around the nightly circle for quite some time. It was their acceptance, built on long months of presence without pressure, that allowed me to find at least some sense of community with them. It was that same acceptance that mystified the newly arrived Satanist. And it was that same acceptance that clearly worried Correen.
Why was I there? And what did I want?
Unlike any other experience I had known on the street, the gentler or more sensitive I tried to be, the more I could sense Correen’s fear of me. It wore on me for weeks. Correen was a mystery even to those she gathered with. Some of the other girls would tell me they had no idea where she was coming from or what her story was. She was an outsider among outsiders. Mousy and shy, yet she stood out so vividly in her timid presence. I had worn Correen on my heart since the moment I met her as the special one God meant to humble me most.
Cults, pimps, pushers, suicide pacts—I sat in on dozens of conversations around the circle about everything “street” and otherwise. Exchanges exposing shredded hearts and souls, and depraved dialogues nothing short of shocking. And sweet little Correen was there for every single one. Even through the most graphic telling of the Satanic Rituals of Diabolatry, she was always present, saying nothing, but never leaving.
But every time the name “Jesus” was spoken, she flinched. No matter who said it. Quite often it was the young man in black who spoke it while prophesying his disturbing interpretation of Satan’s ultimate plan. But on other occasions, it would be when some of the others had had enough of his banter and would ask me questions about my faith. Or just offer up some part of their own beliefs.
Whenever I would speak she would remain as still as stone, but for the tiny spasms at even the passing mention of Jesus. Over time, it was so obvious that even our frantic friend well into his midnight high would stop and take notice.
Then one rare evening, when almost all the familiar faces were gathered, I was asked by the supposed Satanist, “How the hell can you believe in Jesus?”
And I began to answer: “Cause I think Jesus may be the only one any of us can really and fully trust and….”
Correen stood up and walked away before I even finished the sentence. Not out of sight. Just far enough that she could not hear me. In the shadows of a cement partition, she crouched on a wooden freight skid, waiting for me to finish.
I continued on, speaking through the jeers of Satan’s fan and the disbelief of a young group weary of the notion that they should trust anyone, and especially not a “two-thousand-year-old lie.”
In the weeks that followed, my presence and the testing of my faith became a regular event. Each night it was so, Correen would walk away, sit a ways off and wait. And every night my heart would tear in two, knowing that my words were hurting her and forcing her even further from whatever strange and thorny safety she had found among the group.
So I began to temper the issue. “Let’s hear what you think is important in life,” I would suggest to my young friends. Often, even the most serious starting point for some kids would end in laughable rants and teasing, and on occasion I would notice Correen smile, or even chuckle. I hoped and prayed that those hesitant grins and giggles meant she felt safe, even with me there. In the days that followed she looked up a time or two around the circle and whispered a comment to the person next to her or shook her head over something dumb said aloud. My heart warmed at every little nuance of her ease and comfort.
But the nights were getting colder and uglier as October frost forecasted the season ahead. And on a wet Friday night, with the fire barely intact in the damp mud, the young man in Pentagrams leaned into the fire, glared at me and snarled, “So where the hell is Jesus now?”
Before I could even begin to fumble a response, Correen stood up and walked away.
The mocking was quick as another young man in the group (fed up with “Devil-boy” as he was mockingly called by this point) responded, “Ya, and where is Satan? He ain’t helping much either.”
I walked over to Correen at the freight skid, with the voices of frustrated and cold youth at my back. I sat low on a squeegee bucket and simply said, “Why?”
I did not need to say: “Why do you stay for every other dark and disturbed conversation?” or “Why does the name ‘Jesus’ terrify you?” or “Why on earth are you out here?”
No. Just, “Why?”
She cleared her throat and with a soft, quivering voice offered me her “why.” I was shocked. All this time pussyfooting around, and all it took was asking a one-word question.
She told me how she went to church every Sunday with her family. How her family would hold hands to say grace before every meal. That her dad would teach Sunday School and help serve communion at church. How every prayer he said—the thousands of prayers she had heard him say—would all end “in Jesus’ name.”
Then she told me that every night after her mom was asleep, he would sneak into her bed and quietly rape his own little girl. From age six until she walked out the door at age sixteen. A decade of torture between her father’s knees after midnight. A decade of hearing him talk
