#Bad apples…wouldn’t exist if they could throw them away…maybe the core is just rotten…

[ask-lene-the-faithless]

I don't know. If I went to the nearest mosque and asked for information about the people who worship there, they wouldn't give me that information. Even if I was a member, they probably wouldn't just hand over information about other members. Is that a religious organization keeping secrets? I wouldn't be able to freely explore the Vatican. Is that a religious organization keeping secrets? There are secrets that are bad like not sharing the rules, hidden membership fees, or abuse, but those aren't unique to religions or religious organizations. It sounds like there's some shady stuff at temple that you and Yara have mention, but maybe that's the work of bad apples who would have found a way to hurt people without the temple.

Lene starts to read the ask. The longer she goes through, the tighter her chest feels. It rumbles in her stomach, traveling up her throat and locking it in place.

Her mind started to wander as she read. Maybe…maybe she didn’t know better. If there were other people who knew more than her…maybe she should stop. It made sense that they would have secrets…maybe it wasn’t a big deal-

“…but maybe that's the work of bad apples who would have found a way to hurt people without the temple.”

Suddenly, Lene stops.

She stares at the last sentence quietly. The ticking of her alarm clock is hard to ignore. The dimly lit screen highlights her dark brown eyes.

The tightness in her chest comes to a dull lull. Instead, a small spark ignites in her stomach. It warms up her skin and lights her chest, a fire traveling throughout her body.

She grits her teeth lightly as she starts typing, not even thinking for a second.

But…that’s the problem…why would there be bad apples in the first place, if it’s supposed to be good…? why would…people keep their secrets, if they had nothing to hide? Shouldn’t the people in charge know better? Shouldnt they…shouldn’t they be doing anything to protect people?

This…this isn’t just about learning information…it’s about keeping people safe….i don’t care about what’s a secret and what’s not…i care about the people that are getting hurt.

Maybe…maybe if the Temple did a better job at stopping it…i wouldn’t care about them at all…

[exmateriadead]

THE BILLBOARDS.

I want you to imagine a sign, and on that sign is a name in black text sitting on a white background. The sign is in Georgia, in the United States of course. Not the country because who looks at Georgia the country when it isn't on fire. There are no signs there.

In Georgia, somewhere off the beat road of the highway is a sign with a name on it. Victor Young.

A name as plain as ever, susceptible to be one of those fluky ads. They're effective but cliché in taste because then the onlooker fights with themselves whether to Google the name or not and when they do they'll usually get into a wormhole that leads to an ad for a personal injury lawyer or something to do with the church of Jehovah Witnesses and then they had spent all that time wondering who is Victor Young and why is he so important that his name stands 120-feet on a white sign with black text so simple and so fixed on a bush trotted highway.

Victor Young.

Victor Young, past the 145 plus profiles on Facebook and the 87 profiles on LinkedIn. Victor Young, the name on the sign in black text and a white background doesn't lead to a personal injury law firm website or a cheap ploy by the consistent Jehovah Witnesses.

It belongs to me. I put his name up there or rather bought 25 billboard signs down the Georgia-Florida Parkway. All appraised from the alimony money, it wasn't hard to get these signs but it wasn't cheap either. The upkeep and payments ate up through my allowance and I just started driving trucks so, the money that I did have wasn't much. Buying a billboard is not cheap--makes you think about the ones out here living alone in forlorn roads and tired driveways, who pays for those? Who pays for any of it?

I didn't want to use the money at all, but after Victor... I had to. I had no other choice. So, the signs were made and put up, just Victors name at first to tell who ever would be reading it that he exists. To tell Victor if he saw it that he exists.

There are a lot of things found in the Georgia-Florida Parkway, the carcasses of animals, dead or alive, people--mostly dead. If Victor couldn't be found any where in the United States--anywhere in the world, perhaps here was the only place that made any sense to me. In this long scar of road between nowhere and somewhere, someone's wandering eyes would look upon an upcoming sign to their left fifty miles in and then again when they turn out another fifty, Victor Young, over and over and over so they don't forget. Repetition is key love, repetition is key.

Victor.... my son, the one that no one looked for.

In May of 2008 two days after Victors high school graduation, it was his birthday. He wanted something quaint and at home, I asked if maybe he wanted to invite a few friends of his to come over but he said no. Just the family just a cake, maybe a pizza or two. So I did what I could and then some, not because he asked me to no, God... he hated when I did more than what was asked for. He'd always say, 'you do so much Ma, so much.' And I took offense of course because what else do mothers do when their hard work goes unappreciated constantly and they're misunderstood and they're overworked because it’s innate, because even if the child doesn't know it, what we do as mothers is never enough, you could always do more, so much more. Least for some mothers not all. Not every mother wants to give and that is what it is can't change that. I sometimes envy that.

What parts of myself have I not given away when I became a mother?

                                                               +++

Driving down the Georgia-Florida Parkway at night I think, we as a collective are particularly good at doing nothing as we are at doing something. There should be in school history books at least a section or a chapter dedicated to humans throughout the years doing nothing. Years of nothing have passed by while we humans have been on this earth where no significant matter happened but also years of significant matter happening and us humans doing nothing about it. Maybe that's not history, that's an arguable point, maybe that's just the truth. And help us all, if any history book is filled with truth. Real truth, not some white mans version of it.

The truth is....

On Victors eighteenth birthday I lied, I told him I wouldn't do too much but I did. I invited some of his friends and some of our extended family. I wanted him to feel seen and loved and maybe I wanted him to talk a little more. It didn't have to be with me but, I knew why he was so quiet sometimes, not the usual observing quiet he had as the awkward middle child but the quiet where children think their parents can't possibly hear. But, we do, even if we don't want to admit it to our selves. And the truth is, the real truth is that we do. We just do nothing about it.

                                                                 +++

I'm fifty miles in now, I drive my truck off the road and into the dirt and grass of the Georgia-Florida Parkway, I get out my truck red fuel container in hand and walk several feet until I reach the foot of a pole. All around I douse it with all with gone pole after the next. Then there's a ladder I climb, how I climbed it is another story but I get up there. Billboards are always bigger than you'd think even the smaller ones. I throw the fuel on the white sign with black text, my eyes are crying to be saved. The smell is so strong I could almost get used to it. I get down and don't hesitate to light a match, I look up and see the black text on the sign is already deteriorating, like sledge it slowly melts from the liquid and the poor uptake from the long years it's been up standing alone holding up the name of a boy who is no longer being looked for. I throw the match into the ground as I did the last twenty times tonight. I watch for a moment as I turn from the cabin of my truck and see the white sign turn from a hungry egg yolk yellow to a fiery red and I watch it from my rear view mirror as I drive away. And who ever is on this highway tonight will watch sign after sign after sign engulfed in flames

Who looks at Georgia when it isn't on fire.

And yes, I could of just requested for the signs to be taken down and I did that, believe you me I did and yet seven years later these signs have been dotted throughout the highway again, they are never ending with my dead sons name. The thing is I stopped looking for Victor awhile ago, but someone else hasn't. Or, someone for a very long time wanted me to look upwards read his name so I never forget or so I do something or nothing about it. I did nothing for a while, I won’t lie.

I did too much on his eighteenth birthday, flared his anxiety even though he was trying to hide it for my sake, I see it now. I get anxiety now, I get why his generation is so littered with it like an infection. We as older parents thought we were passing over as caution. Perhaps not, and perhaps it was better to listen to him that night but I'm not one to live with regrets but, I am one to live with memories. I remember him fidgeting a lot, even when it was over. Him going quiet, that type of quiet I didn't know what to do with but try to knock it down with words but that didn't work. I remember faintly, when I woke up in the middle of the night to check up on the kids, the smell of earth, not bad but like a basket of apples with one of them rotten to the core.

I remember Victor not in his bed. I remember the open front door of our house and blood on our floors. His back to me as he stood in the archway of our front porch.  I don't remember much of anything else-- I mean I remember holding my child and then not holding him, how the screams from my throat stopped being voluntary that they felt like a swarm of bee stings pouring out of my throat. I felt, inhuman. I felt like a long stretch of fire that you could only watch. On and on I went, on and on I burned.

                                                                           +++

I'm in Florida now, somewhere that isn't Tallahassee and isn't Pensacola, somewhere between and off kilter. I'm turning down from the main highway to get on normal roads that'll lead me to this warehouse I'm picking inventory from and guess what I see near the obnoxious Carl's Junior sign with some skinny white girl holding a burger in her hands and a purple sign advertising a trade school? Nestled between burgers, a  two year nursing school and a hospital near by I see; Victor Young. A white sign with black text is the half blur I see when I drive past it.  

Okay, I'll play your game.

When I'm driving south in Florida not going to Clearwater or Miami. I'm going down to the tip of Florida's boot, down by the sea is a factory. When I get there I am in a hurry, I need to get back down on the roads, this time I won't burn the signs I tell myself. I wasn't sure what I would do, but I would do something. Then, a young boy approached me. He was so young eighteen or a little younger, such faces you don't see on the roads often. I turn and see Victor wearing a grey uniform. "Hey Ma." He says, "you made it." My skin feels so tight, something embers inside of me, it isn't a scream. It doesn't have a sound.

The billboards weren't telling me something, they were leading me here. And here for what happens next shouldn't have happened but it does. And I won't forget it all my life, I can't.