Nancy Bear got baptized in a plain white dress made out of a sheet, like a hospital gown, except that it covered her all the way around. Pastor Brown stood beside her behind the altar. I couldn’t see their legs, but I knew they must both be standing in the tank. Pastor Brown closed Nancy’s nostrils in his hand and then laid her down backwards into the water.
I heard a little squish of water as she went down, but no big splashes, because she didn’t thrash around or anything. I sat forward on the edge of the front pew, and I didn’t breathe out until Pastor Brown brought her up, with her long yellow hair clumped and rivulets running down her face.
That was the first time I realized that white cloth becomes transparent when it gets wet. I thought I saw two spots on Nancy’s chest, what would someday be breasts. I giggled quietly, but no one else laughed or seemed to see anything embarrassing about it, so I quickly behaved myself.
Pastor Brown said that now Nancy was assured of going to heaven and was spared the torment of eternal fire. Nancy just stood there patient and dripping in her transparent gown.
Afterwards I went to a party at Nancy’s house. It was sort of like a birthday party, because there was a cake. It had white frosting and a blue-frosting cross on it, but no candles. I didn’t see any presents. Lots of grownups came, still in their Sunday dresses. The only other kid was Nancy’s younger brother Nathan. I was allowed to go because Nancy and I were best friends and lived across the street.
I didn’t get to talk to Nancy because all her aunts were kissing her, but walking to school the next day I asked her what it was like to get baptized. She said she wasn’t afraid she would drown, and she didn’t get water up her nose, but the water was a little cold. She felt good that she was baptized now, although of course she was already saved even before.
I asked Nancy when she got saved, and she said, “When we went up to the front and took Jesus as our personal savior, of course.”
Naturally I remembered that day. Nancy and I walked up the Sunday School aisle side by side. But I wanted to know if that was the exact moment when she got saved. “So, when we went up there, is that when you took Jesus as your savior? Or were you showing that you already did it?”
Nancy’s forehead wrinkled. “I just went up to the front, same as you, so now we’re saved.”
I was worried about being saved. Mrs. Slayback, my Sunday school teacher, had explained the rules very carefully. Jesus was the Son of God, and he was perfect and never did one thing wrong his entire life, and he died on the cross to pay for our sins, and if you believed every bit of that, and if you accepted him as your personal lord and savior, you would go to paradise and walk on golden streets and eat anything you wanted, even pears.
But if you did not sincerely believe every bit of it, or if you did not accept him as your personal lord and savior, you would go to hell and burn forever and ever, and it would never stop hurting for all eternity, and no matter how sorry you were, it would be too late. You could never apologize and get to start over.
Even though I’d gone up at the altar call, and Pastor Brown had announced that all of the children standing by the altar that morning were cleansed and saved, I couldn’t tell for sure whether I sincerely believed about Jesus dying for our sins to pay God back for our wickedness.
I understood that it was my conviction that was in question, not the truth about Jesus. The Jesus story had to be true, because all the grownups said so. I was only a little kid, and they were all so old and had lived so much longer than I had. For sure they must know more about it than I did. Besides, they all agreed.
“I believe,” I told myself. “I believe, I believe, I believe.”
But no sooner had I reassured myself that I believed than I would have horrible thoughts that I did not mean to think. If God loves us so much, why would He send us to hell for such a long time? Or what if somebody just made up the story about Jesus, and now there’s no one left who remembers what really happened? Those heathens in Africa and India, the ones our church’s missionaries were trying to save—they believe completely different stories that don’t have Jesus in them at all. They don’t even have Christmas. And the Pima Indians whose tales my father read to me believed that Sky Magician made the earth by rubbing his palm across his chest and rolling up his dirt and sweat into a ball and throwing it into the sky. So the Pimas believed in Sky Magician instead of God and Jesus.
How could I know for sure that the heathens and the Pimas all were wrong and Mrs. Slayback and Pastor Brown were right?
I could certainly see how God might not think I had sincere belief when I was thinking things like that. Maybe if I got baptized, He might overlook those thoughts and let me into heaven where my mother was, and where Nancy would go when she died, or at least He might turn down the fire a little bit in my part of hell.
So I began a campaign to persuade my father to let me get baptized. I’d asked before, because Pastor Brown said we should get baptized after we went up to the front and confessed Jesus as our savior, but my father always said no. He said I was not old enough yet to know my own mind, and I should wait a few more years.
A few more years! I could get run over by a car on the way to school or catch leukemia like Nancy’s older brother and die, and then, un-cleansed and unsaved, I would be in hell forever.
I assumed my father was still a Christian, though he didn’t talk about it, and he didn’t even go to church. Although I was afraid for the salvation of my soul, I never really considered telling my father about that. I didn’t think he would understand, and I didn’t want to imply that he too was going to hell. Also I was embarrassed.
So I told him I wanted to get baptized because my friends were doing it. The answer was still no, and no it remained. I thought about it every night when I said Now I lay me down to sleep.
I was going to hell.