Choosing Barabbas

By Tess Almendarez-Lojacono

rinidad!  Carlitos!  Come now!  We will be late!” 
Mama rarely raised her voice.  There were only two things that could arouse such passion in her.  Courtesy to God was one.  “Maria Elena, where is your hat?”   Hats must be worn on Sunday, especially on this Sunday and the next.
ME flew out the kitchen door, straw boater in one hand, prayer book in the other.  Trailing behind her parents, she was half way up the hill before Trinidad and Carlos caught up. Trini was raking her hands through her hair and Carlos still buttoning his shirt.  ME squinted at Trini.  “You look like you just rolled out of bed.”
“Thank you for noticing.”
“She dresses like lightening!” Carlos muttered.
“Is that a compliment?” ME asked.
Trini chuckled.  “Why does it take you so long?”
“Oh, I don’t know.  Because I trouble to wear underwear?” Carlos raised an eyebrow as he straightened his shirtsleeves, finished buttoning his cuffs.  ME clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Shut up!”  Trini tried to swallow her laughter. 
Mama pressed her lips together as everyone squeezed into the old Plymouth.
Once settled, Carlos jerked his chin toward the front seat.  “They should just be glad we still go to church!”
“Amen!”  Trini whispered.
Mama turned around in her seat.  She frowned at what she could see of Trini.  “Is that how you dress to meet your Savior, Trinidad?”
Trini blinked.  “Mama.  I’m not dying.  We’re just going to Mass.”
“Just going to Mass?”  Her mother’s eyes were like two knives.  “Did you forget this is Palm Sunday?” With a harrumph, she turned back to glare at the road.  It was a short drive to the church.  Trini always figured you could leave at noon to be at noon mass.  It was that close.  Or she cut it that close.    
“Trinidad,” her father grabbed Mama’s hand as he spoke.
“Yes, Dad?”
“Going to Mass is never just going to mass.  It is the most important thing you will do all day.  All week.”
“Yes Dad.”
The silence grew thick. 
“How’s BOB?” Carlos stirred the pot quietly, slyly.
Trini smiled at her folded hands.  “You know.  He’s BOB.”
Carlos nodded.  “Funny, how you two hit it off.  I mean, he’s so--uncomfortable around most people.”
“Yeah.”
“Not us though!”  ME crossed her arms with purpose.
Trini smiled at her.  “At first I thought it was just curiosity--”
“On your part or his?”  Carlos teased.
“Trinidad?” Mama was speaking to her again.
“Yes Mama?”
“Bring your new friend around for supper.  After Mass.  That boy’s too skinny.”
“Yes Mama.”
“Your new friend?” ME pulled the brim of her hat down over her eyes.

            The windows of the church were open, letting the first smell of thawed ground and new shoots blend with the heavy perfume of the female worshipers.  Easter and Palm Sunday were early this year, but the weather was cooperating nicely. Trini was glad she had decided upon bare feet and loafers instead of panty hose and pumps.  Her father was in a suit and her mother wore her best long sleeved dress and stockings.  Little ME had on a good school dress, with a wide brim straw hat pinned to her head.  They dressed for the occasion, not for comfort.  Even Carlos was wearing a tie.
Trini sank back against the smooth wooden pew and tried to concentrate. The Passion was long and strangely clinical this year.  Perhaps it was the familiarity?  Until they got to the part about Barabbas, and then something troubled her--something about Barabbas. 
When the crowd was given a choice to free innocent Jesus or the hardened criminal Barabbas, this year like every year, they chose the criminal and for the first time ever, Trini questioned what she would have done.  She always just assumed she’d have had the guts to be different, to stand up for Jesus, to save God.  Safely ensconced in the future, it was easy to declare confidence in making the right choice now.  But would she have chosen Jesus back then?  She looked over at Carlos.  Would he?  One thing was sure.  BOB would have had the courage to do the right thing.  The thought made her smile.

“Just come over and eat a chicken leg.  It’s no big deal.” Trini wound the long cord of the kitchen phone around her elbow. She could feel BOB’s reluctance, hear him squirm.  She chuckled. “Not because it’s Palm Sunday.  It’s not like we’re gonna expect you to ride in on a donkey or anything.  Besides, Mama will be mad if you don’t.”
BOB weighed the relative discomfort of driving out to the sticks in the middle of a Sunday just to be examined by a hoard of round eyed inquisitive people bent on feeding him until his sides burst, against the kindness of Trini, his first, his only ever girl friend.  He rubbed the crease between his brows.  “Okay.”
“I’ll keep ME away from you if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“What?  You’re gonna drag me all the way out there only to desert me and leave me to fend for myself among--”
“No, no.  Not me.  ME.  Maria Elena.”
“Oh, yeah.  No.  Don’t worry about her.  I kind of get a kick out of her.  Don’t you?”
“Oh, well sure.  But I have to.  She’s my sister.”
BOB laughed.  “Man, you guys are weird!”
She liked his laugh.  It made her feel relieved. “BOB, you’re very brave.”  Yes, he would have taken the heat for Jesus.

            BOB drove a Volkswagen Rabbit.  He called it the VR. He wasn’t making a statement against the consumption of gasoline (his car ran on diesel fuel) and he wasn’t trying to be different. He knew the guy who was selling it and he could afford it, that’s all.  But he was pleased that it allowed others to think of him as one who cared about gasoline and the state of the world and who took a stand for the environment. 

            BOB hummed Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as he made his way up the long driveway.  Trini emerged from the house immediately and he watched her come up the hill before getting out of the VR.  He liked her graceful run, the way she smoothed her hair when she reached him, like she thought he cared how she looked.
He touched her shoulder by way of a greeting.  “Hello, Trinidad.”
“Hi!”  Trini was out of breath.  She leaned against the car, her breasts heaving slightly.  She didn’t know what to do with her hands.  This always came as a surprise to BOB, that he could make a girl nervous.  He grabbed her hands and moved forward, standing between her legs.
“So-o-o--” He grinned.
“Now, don’t get any ideas,” she scolded him.  “You’re here to eat and get fat and healthy and relaxed.”
“Don’t be silly.  I wouldn’t know how to relax!”  His gaze pierced her like granite pressing into something soft.
She blushed.  “H-How’s the story coming?”
BOB actually winced. Then as if changing his mind, he laughed instead.  “The one I’m reading or the one I’m writing?”
“Well, I’m not sure I’d call War And Peace a story.  I meant the one you’re writing.”
“Everything’s a story, Trini.  And I’m slogging through both.” He kept his eyes locked on hers and pressed forward slightly.  They forgot they were standing in the driveway in the sun, until Mama broke the spell by calling them.

            Two hours later they were back in the driveway, this time Trini letting BOB kiss her goodbye.  “It meant a lot to me that you came,” she said.
“You mean a lot to me.”
It had been two hours of torture and triumph, BOB taking full possession of his place in the family as ‘Trinidad’s new boyfriend’, and along with it, becoming a natural target for Carlos’ wit.  Trini’s gentle acquiescence and patience with her brother made Carlos’ taunts seem inconsequential, childish even. The realization of this introduced BOB to a guilty pleasure.  He actually felt pity for his friend.
BOB made quite a leap when he went from weird friend of Carlos to dependable beau of Trinidad.

            Trini ran back down to the kitchen as the VR took off with a lurch.  Carlos was standing in front of the sink, back to the window, hands on his hips.
“What?” Trini said.
“What what?” came the obtuse reply.
“Okay, what did I do to piss you off?”
“Who says I’m pissed off?”
“Why else would you be such a jerk to your best friend and your favorite sister?”
“Oh, ho! My favorite?”
“You know what I mean.”
“And you know what you did.”
“What?”
“You stole him.”
“What?  Who?”
Carlos thought of all the late night foreign films he and BOB would not be seeing anymore.  He thought of the heated arguments about art, the way they would stand in a bar together drinking cokes, looking down on all the women who wouldn’t talk to them. “He’s not BOB anymore, that’s all.”
“Oh, Carlitos!  He’s just not your BOB anymore.”  She went to the sink, started filling it with sudsy water.  “He’s not really my BOB either you know.  It’s not--he’s not like that.” 
Carlos made a face, but Trini didn’t see.  She was watching another car coming up the driveway.  It was Ken’s Datsun.  Blue, like his eyes.

Tall and robust, Ken knocked at the screen door and smiled too broadly.  “Happy spring, Mrs. Mendez!  These are for you.”  He handed her lilies, pure white with waxy fragrance.
“Thank you Ken! Please come in. Have you eaten yet?”
“Thanks, ma’am.  My mother has Sunday dinner a little later. I’m fine right now.  Is Trini around?”
“Trinidad!  You have a visitor.”
Trini and Carlos were hidden from view, listening in the seclusion of the staircase, where they had retreated.  Now Trini smoothed her hair and bit her lips on her way to the kitchen.  “Yes Mama?”  She managed a look of surprise.  “Why Ken! How nice.”
He leaned over and kissed the cheek she quickly offered, stifling a laugh.  “Hello, Trini.”
“Let’s go outside.” 
“Sure.”
She led him through the house to the front door and outside to the porch swing.  It was chilly now.  Trini shivered as she sat.
“Here you go.”  Ken wrapped his sweater around her shoulders and then added his arm for good measure.  “You know, you haven’t been very, well, nice to me lately.  Are we fighting?”
She blinked.  “Are you kidding me?”
“Hardly.” 
“Ken, how do you not--?”  She lowered her voice and stared at him for a minute before continuing.  “Let me put it to you this way: I thought I made it perfectly clear--you and I don’t have a future.  And I’m not so crazy about our present either.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ken, it’s o--”
But before she could get the word out, he covered her mouth with his and didn’t let her up for air until he’d hurt her neck with his penetrating kiss.

            Trini was putting the last of the leftovers away while Mama wiped the counter.  “So, I keep wondering what I would have done,” Trini said. “If I lived back then.”
“Don’t be silly, Trinidad,” her mother gently chided.  “You are human.  You would have chosen Barabbas.”
The comfortable conversation between the two women twisted itself into barbed wire.  “What did you say, Mama?” Had Mama seen Ken kissing her?  Trini was so surprised she couldn’t move.  She only imagined she had turned toward her mother    
“Of course you would have. You do it now.”
“I choose Barabbas?”
“You do.”
“But, Mama!  I have integrity.  I speak up.  I’m honest!”
“Are you?”
Trini didn’t know what to say.  She thought she lived honorably.  She had settled the question of love and sex long ago.  Okay, she’d made a mistake with Ken.  Turned out that wasn’t love at all, but how did she know?  How could she tell at the time?
“Mama, I try my best--”
“Trinidad, you don’t even know what your best is yet.”  Mama went on wiping the counter, making little circles with the dishrag.  “We all choose Barabbas.  Every day.  Each time we perform some little task without giving it our best effort, we put something before God.  We choose Barabbas.  When we run in late to Mass, leave a little early, plan our workday while listening to a friend in need, give just a little to the poor so that it does not really inconvenience us--we choose Barabbas.”
“But Mama, you never choose Barabbas.  You don’t put anything before God!”
Mama looked out the window, over the field where Trini’s father was walking, testing the ground to see if it was too wet to mow.  A little stiff, bow legged, but still handsome; he wore a hat as always, covering the balding spot on his head.  She smiled a secret little smile.  “Oh, dear heart,” Mama said softly, “I am human too.”  She drew in a breath, shook her head.  “Sooner or later, we all choose Barabbas.”