A short, round woman in a pink dress stood in the aisle. Miss Roc handed her the mike.
"You Jesus, huh?" she asked. "Where was you when my sister was shot in the back of the head? She didn't do nothing. My own sister. She was just standing there. She was just hanging out by the drug store. How come you don't go to my neighborhood, Jesus? I ain't seen you round there. You know my sister?"
"No, Ma'am," said Donald.
"How you be Jesus, then?"
"I don't know."
"You have Him now, here," said Dahlia. "He will not always be with you."
"I want Him with my sister!" shouted the woman. "My sister is dead, Jesus! How could you let this happen?"
"My sister died, too," said Donald.
"You couldn't save your own sister?"
"People die," he said.
"Oh, really? Can I write that down?"
"We all die," said Donald. "Whatever life you have is a gift, an abundant gift."
"But my sister! What about her two girls? Did they need to lose their own mama?"
Donald stood up. "Come here," he said, opening his arms. Sarah could see a channel opening between Donald and this woman. A channel through the mire of norms and expectations and roles and locations and color and money, through hatred, through everything that seems so real. He had somehow emptied out a pathway, like a devoted father with a snow shovel.
"Fuck you!" said the woman. "Fuck you, Jesus! What good you ever done me?"
"Come here. I can love you now."
"I could kill you now! You never done nothing for me or my family."
"Then come here and kill me. Do whatever you have to do. Just come here."
She walked toward the stage. She was sobbing as she spoke. "Everything we got, we had to work for, and most what we worked for was taken from us. We worked like dogs. Where was your healing hands when I got the flu for a month? Where was you to pay my bills when I got no income and I got no man?" She stepped onto the stage. "I hate you, Jesus!"
"Give me that hatred," said Donald.
Object: hatred