Pam Robinson is our third place winner in the Writing It Real winter, 2012 writing contest. Our guest judge, Shanti Bannwart, sent these words along about Pamela’s essay:

The piece begins with a quote that provides almost a summary of the story that follows. And the almost is the trigger here, whetting the appetite of the reader.

The structure of this memoir piece builds up artfully towards the catharsis. It moves from the personal situation in college, “I read the short story “Salvation,” to the place and geography of the tale: “The hub for south central Kentucky farm families…” to entry into crucial events when the author was eleven years old: ” One summer…”

As readers, we are entrusted into a dark family secret; we hear what happened between father and daughter in that milk barn in the dark and what cannot be resolved through ardent prayers. “At that moment, I decided I was damned for hell,” the young girl decides with horror. But! There is a wonderful twist in this story in the surprising ending, when the father turns from “antagonist” into the savior and knight-in-shining-armor, who would — for his daughter — even confront God himself.

The flow of the story is easy and inviting, the simple and logical structure makes it authentic and believable. We care for the narrator and also for the father, who is in this story the one transformed.

Salvation
by Pam Robinson

That night, for the first time in my life but one for I was a big boy twelve years old – I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn’t stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me.

— from “Salvation” by Langston Hughes’

In college, I read Langston Hughes’ short story,“Salvation,” and realized Hughes’ own troubled salvation experience needn’t have ended in atheism–if only he’d talked with my father about it.

Like all our neighbors, my father knew I’d never been the same since the fire and brimstone revival preached at our community church when I told everyone I had “seen the Light” and was saved. About a week later, my father found me as I sobbed uncontrollably behind our closed bathroom door, and he burst onto the scene like a professional firefighter to rescue me.

The hub for south central Kentucky farm families from several miles around, our small community church welcomed both Baptists and Methodists. One Sunday, the Baptist minister preached; the next, the Methodist minister. Every year, we put on two week-long revivals — one led by the Baptist minister; the next, by the Methodist minister. The members of the conservative congregation agreed on everything, except the method of baptism. The Baptists believed in dunking; the Methodists, in sprinkling. They attended all church meetings, whether led by the Baptists or the Methodists.

One summer, the Methodist revival had drawn several of my 11-year-old peers from their church pews to the foot of the altar, where they were encircled by church elders. My peers would cry and ask Jesus to save them from the fires of hell that the minister described so vividly. Within minutes, their tears turned to smiles as they announced, “Jesus has saved me!” Since ministers always said, “You will see the Light when you are saved,” I believed everyone literally saw “the Light,” a shaft of light descending from heaven right into the mind’s eye, to verify their conversion. I was impressed with my peers’ vision. I wanted to see the Light also, but it scared me at the same time it fascinated me. I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what a person needed to do to see the Light. I wanted to know the exact words to pray and if believing in Jesus and his goodness was enough to get to see the Light.

Before I had worked up the nerve to ask our pastor or my Sunday school teacher these questions, the last night of revival had arrived. The preacher poured his heart out, begging people to see the Light, and soon enough the last altar call was being issued. While “Just As I Am” was played at the piano, the preacher’s wife approached me in my choir pew.

Her arrival alarmed me. She’d never walked over to my peers at their seats. They’d all gone down to the altar of their own free will.

She smiled sweetly, took one of my hands in hers, and asked, “Don’t you want to be saved, honey? You don’t want to go to hell, do you?”

I whispered, “No,” as I choked back tears. By the time we reached the altar, I was wailing, “I don’t want to go to hell! I don’t want to go to hell!”

Several church members crowded around me and said, “All you have to do is ask Jesus to forgive you all your sins,” or “Just believe in Jesus,” or “He wants to save you, honey.”

I cried even harder, but now my eyes were closed and I was praying silently, “I’m sorry for everything I ever did wrong. I’m truly sorry. Please, Jesus, let me see the Light.”

It was pitch dark inside my mind, so I closed my eyes even tighter and prayer harder, “Please, Jesus, send me the Light.”

I must’ve prayed this way for 15 or 20 minutes until I realized I wasn’t going to see the Light. I stopped crying. None of my friends had ever stayed at the altar this long, and when I opened my eyes, I saw church members were all looking at me expectantly. I didn’t understand why my friends had seen the Light, and I hadn’t. Suddenly, I felt chilled to the bone: I remembered a preacher talking once about the unpardonable sin, whatever it was. I must’ve committed it and couldn’t be saved. I’d ask for forgiveness of all my sins, and I still didn’t see the Light. At that moment, I decided I was damned for hell.

I was a child holding onto a dark family secret. My father had been sliding his hands down my pants when we worked together in the evenings at the milk barn. He’d told me often enough that my mother would leave us if she ever found out about those times. The all-seeing God might have already left me behind. So much shame filled my heart I felt unworthy of redemption.

I didn’t want to disappoint the church members kneeling around me, so I lied to spare them any suffering. “I’m saved,” I said.

The preacher’s wife stood and helped me to stand. She was beaming. “I knew you didn’t want to go to hell,” she said.

While the pianist played “Amazing Grace,” church members lined up to shake my hand. “Bless you,” they’d say, or “Praise God!”

Neither my father nor my mother had witnessed my struggle. My father didn’t even pretend to be a church-going man, and my mother didn’t darken the church door with any consistency. They both believed, though, that Jesus was the Lord of the Universe. As a result, they had received salvation, or so I thought, in spite of their frailties. They had thought it was their responsibility to send me to church with a neighbor so I could, one fine day, be saved like them and everybody else. Only such salvation allowed for baptism. From my vantage point, lusting fathers could be saved, but not lying children. Nothing could wash away my sin.

I was silent as our neighbor drove me back home that night. I had really let my mother down now. How could I possibly tell her I’d committed the unpardonable sin, couldn’t see the Light, and wouldn’t join the rest of the family in baptism, much less in heaven. When Dad and Mom asked about the last night of revival, I lied to protect the two of them from suffering also. Mom just couldn’t leave my dad and me and destroy our little family on earth, the only place we’d ever really be together.

“I was saved tonight,” I finally said. As they congratulated me, I stumbled toward my bedroom and into bed.

For the next several nights, I would wake up around 2 or 3 a.m., terrified of going to hell. I’d go to the bathroom and close the door behind me and cry and pray in the darkness. I still held to a sliver of hope that some of us had to plead with Jesus longer than others before we’d see the Light. I wanted so much to believe I hadn’t committed the unpardonable sin. As I shivered from leaning against the cold porcelain of the bathtub one night, my father burst through the door and switched on the bathroom light. I was too startled to worry about unwanted caresses. Just the same, I was relieved when he only knelt beside me and asked what in the world was wrong. That night, he was filled with compassion, not passion. I never thought I’d have the nerve to admit my lie to anyone, but the truth came pouring out with my sobs.

“I didn’t see the Light,” I wailed. “I lied when I told everyone I was saved because I never saw the Light. I just told everybody I was saved because they all were tired of praying and wanted to go home. You may as well know I’m going to hell. I think I must’ve committed the unpardonable sin! I can’t possibly go through with baptism.”

“What light?” my father asked. “What light are you talking about?”

“You’re saved,” I said. “You know the Light that comes down from heaven that only you can see and lights up your whole dark mind while your eyes are closed. Then you know you are saved.”

“Pam,” my father said in an unforgettably level voice, “there is no Light.”

“There is no Light?” I said in disbelief. “Then why do people say that all the time?”

“It’s just a way of talking because when we are saved we see clearly how much Jesus loves us.”

“Loves us!” I snorted. “What about the unpardonable sin? What about hell?”

“Hell is for evil people like Hitler. They commit the unpardonable sin by refusing to love God,” my dad clarified. “All you have to do is believe in Jesus and love him. You always have. You aren’t going to hell.”

“That’s all there is to it then?” I asked, my voice quivering with anger. “And there isn’t any Light?”

“That’s it,” my dad said. “No light.”

My father wrapped his arms around me and hugged me close without putting any moves on me. He kissed me on the forehead, and said, “I’m calling that damned minister tomorrow so he can come out and talk with you about salvation and baptism. Now, go to bed.”

My father didn’t switch off the bathroom light until after I’d headed well down the hall to my bedroom. Right or wrong, my father would, I believed at that moment, have shouted right in the face of God in my defense. I wanted to trust my father’s love that night–in fact, I did–the kind of love a father ought to have for his child.