The Baptismal

I was baptized in a swimming pool in the backyard of a backwater hick town neighborhood home on a summer afternoon. The church congregation my parents belonged to had been organizing the event for weeks, a way to mass-baptize all the kids at once to rid them early on of any sin that may come their way, and instill in them a sense of duty towards their religion. I stood in a long line of dirty children with barbeque sauce stained mouths and fingers in an old oversized t-shirt, and looked up to the sky and wondered if there was a God, and whether or not I truly was delivering myself into his powerful grasp forever by submerging myself in a kidney shaped skyblue painted concrete hole of chlorinated water.

The line slowly dwindled, and my time came. I stepped down into the pool—uncannily cold and uninviting given the situation and environment. As my feet touched the pool bottom, I slowly turned to face the congregation that stood before me watching. If I decided to suddenly refuse, everyone would be there. Not that it had been my decision in the first place. I was much too young for my opinion or desire to ever be considered. Then again, even I didn't know what I thought, let alone wanted. The preacher was reciting a scripture but he was not really talking to me so much as to everyone else, to God. Even as he suddenly turned to address me, he still was not talking to me. But I heard his words anyways, asking if I accepted God.

Could I have really said no? It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. But it didn’t feel right. The preacher pinched my nose hard and all I saw were his large nose with horn-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge as dirty sea green pool water engulfed me. All I could think about was the filthy miasma consisting of the grime that covered the bodies of the children who had been baptized before me dispersing and polluting the water that I now stood dripping in.

The potluck reception resumed afterwards—old stained thrift store Tupperware filled with greasy half cold picnic foods that would leave a caked crust that not even scalding hot water could soak off completely. The delicate skins of old wrinkled corn kernels were stuck between the teeth of the parishioners, cheap beer on their breath. I put my half eaten corn dog down onto the Dixie paper plate and sank to the ground and melted into the concrete dappled with crushed June Bugs.