Chapter summary: So God's Name is like this big deal. So what. I still don't see why that gives Rosalie the right to whack me for saying the 'J' word. AND I bet she has no idea what the 'H' stands for. I'd ask her, to show her up, but then she's probably just whack me again.
I stayed wrapped up in myself, thinking about that mean vampire sitting so coolly by the side of the bed who wouldn't tell me what she prayed about.
"What's with the whole God-thing, anyway?" I demanded from my fœtal position.
"What do you mean?" Rosalie asked, still cool.
I unwrapped myself and turned my body in the bed toward her voice.
"All the sudden, you're reading the Bible and you're praying now, and you whack me on the back of the head just for saying the ... you know ..." Oops! Am I not allowed to say 'you know' anymore? I've lost track. "... the 'J' word. What's that all about?"
"I did not 'whack' you," Rosalie corrected.
"You whacked me, Rosalie," I retorted angrily.
"If I had, as you said, whacked your head," Rosalie hissed, "we wouldn't be having this argument, because you wouldn't have a head or even have that pretty little mouth to argue from."
"You whacked me, Rosalie," I stated sullenly, not giving an inch.
Rosalie sighed.
"So, why did you whack me?" I demanded.
"I didn't wha-..." Rosalie began angrily.
"Whatever. So, why?" I interrupted.
Rosalie gave me the silent treatment.
"Okay!" I can't believe I caved here. God! I'm such a pollyanna! "All right! So you didn't whack me, okay? So, but, why did you bow my head? I mean, what's the big deal? I said the 'J' word; everybody says it!"
"You aren't 'everybody'!" Rosalie was still angry.
"Because I'm a nobody?" I whispered.
"No!" Rosalie growled. "When are you going to see your virtues and innate beauty! You aren't everybody, because you are unlike every other person. You're not nobody, no: there is nobody like you."
"There you go again, Rosalie." I just couldn't believe how far off she was. "When are you going to leave off this kick?"
"When you start seeing yourself as you are," Rosalie responded resolutely.
Whatever, I thought, but continued: "That still doesn't explain the wha-... um, that is, the whole head-bowing thing."
"Do you know your Decalogue?" Rosalie asked.
"Can we please just say on topic, just this once?" I begged.
"But I am staying on topic!" she insisted.
I couldn't stand it any more. "No, Rosalie, I say the 'J' word and you react like that; I want you to explain that, please, and not change topics and talk about the deca-something."
"Oh, dear me!" Rosalie sighed then explained: "The Decalogue is the Ten Commandments, and one of the commandments is not to take the Lord's name in vain. You did know that, didn't you?"
"I guess so ..." I said. I knew, at least, that you weren't supposed to say 'God damn it' or whatever, although everybody does. But I didn't know the Ten Commandments were called the Decalogue, but it wasn't as if my life depended on knowing that, right?
"So what is the Lord's name?" Rosalie asked me.
"God, right?" I guessed.
"No, that's what God is, that is not His Name." Rosalie answered.
"Are you going to whack me if I say the 'J' word?" I asked back.
"Li-..." Rosalie began, then stopped, and hummed angrily at her mistake for a moment.
Maybe if I really ticked her off, she'd drop that name she's thinking of for me, and the game would be up, and she'd just call me that and quit torturing herself with these fits and starts.
Rosalie resumed after a while. "Were the Ten Commandments written before or after the Incarnation?"
I just shook my head. "Rosalie, the only thing I can say to that is 'um.' But I know you don't like that, so can you ... I mean ... would you please explain it in a way that I can understand?"
"I will try," Rosalie said. "May I tell you a history?"
"Okay ..." I answered cautiously. Rosalie and her stories, I thought ruefully.
"The Decalogue was written, historically, centuries before God walked among His creation in His Incarnate Form ..." Rosalie began.
"Rosalie," I interrupted. "I asked you to explain it so that I could understand it, okay?"
Rosalie sighed, and stopped for a moment, collecting her thoughts.
"Let me get the Bible and read it to you, then," Rosalie said.
"Oh, God!" I sighed with exasperation.
"Just ... just bear with me, here." Rosalie said impatiently, then scolded: "You did ask me to explain."
I think I was going to regret asking.
I felt Rosalie get up from the chair, then come right back. I heard her flipping through a bunch of pages.
"Don't you need some light or something to read that?" I asked. I couldn't see her at all in the darkness.
"No," came the answer and the pages continued to flip.
"You can see in the dark?" I asked.
"Ah, here it is," was Rosalie's answer. I guess she could see in the dark. I'd have to add that to my list. What number would that be again? Number twenty-two, right? 'Rosalie being able to see perfectly fine in pitch black darkness.'
"Let me read this passage from Exodus to you," Rosalie said, and she read it.
It had something to do with Moses parting the Red Sea when the Jews were escaping from Egypt. But the way Rosalie read it, with her lilting, musical voice? It was beautiful and heart-breaking and captivating. It reminded me of when Edward read me those sonnets forever and a day ago: it could have been anything, but because she was reading it, it was everything, and I was a little bit sad when she stopped.
"I remember that story," I told her when she finished. That, and Samson and Delilah, and some other stories, I guess, were the ones I remembered from what I picked up here and there from our irregular church visits.
"Do you know that story is actually an encoding of the Name of God?" Rosalie asked.
"Um, no? How can that story be God's name?" I asked.
"Nobody, today, knows exactly." Rosalie answered quietly. "What we do know, that in the ancient Hebrew, there were two hundred sixteen letters in this passage, and when arranged and said a certain way, gave the Name of God. And that Name was so sacred that the High Priest for all Israel was the only person allowed to say it, once a year, inside the most sacred part of the temple, where only he could go. He even had to be tethered to a rope, so that if were struck dead uttering the Name, he could be pulled out without others adding their dead bodies when God struck them down when they trespassed to collect the priest. That is the power of God's Name: it was so powerful, that when the Jews recited it, they conquered and ruled their lands, and prosperity and power was theirs, and when they profaned it, they were struck dead and their temple was destroyed. And since that destruction, even onto now, two thousand years later, the Name has been lost to us."
"Why? Why doesn't somebody just arrange those letters and say it?" I asked. It didn't sound all that hard.
"It's not that simple," Rosalie answered.
"Why not?" I didn't see the problem.
"Oh, don't think people aren't trying. In fact, the Volturi have existed even as far back as the last time God's Name was recited. I wouldn't put it past them to be working on it right now."
Rosalie was quiet, thinking about the other 'V' group. I now had two sets of 'V's: 'vampires' and 'Volturi.' Why couldn't they be called something else? Maybe vampires like words starting with 'V'?
"The must be pretty dumb not to get two hundred letters right after two thousand years ..." I said. I bet it would take me, like, what? a week to get it right if I were given the assignment.
"No," Rosalie answered quietly, "they have ruled for all this time; they are not dumb. And it would be well for you not to underestimate them." She added ruefully: "I don't."
"I still don't see the problem," I said.
"Well, let's take a much smaller but similar problem. If I told you 'Yahweh' and 'Jehovah' were only two of the ways to pronounce the same four-letter Hebrew word, do you start to see the issue? So how do you know you have the correct one when you pronounced it? And that's just four letters? So if we keep increasing the length of the word? And ... well, I can see your mathematical foundation isn't very strong, ..."
"Oh, don't sugar-coat it, Rosalie," I butted in, still smarting from all the red I saw on the algebra exercises I worked on.
I could feel Rosalie's condescending smile in the darkness. "Well, let me just say that the problem gets at least twice as hard with each new letter you add."
"So ... ?" I asked, still not seeing the problem.
"My dear girl," Rosalie sighed. "You take a penny at the beginning of the month and double your sum every day and at the end of the month you walk away a millionaire."
"Even this month?" I quipped. Then I clarified, "It is still February, right?"
"Yes, even this month." Rosalie answered quietly.
She didn't tell me if it was still February, however.
"Wow!" I said. Then I smiled: "Do you have a spare penny on you?"
Rosalie was quiet.
Jeez! Talk about Miss Sensitive over there.
"Well," I groused, "I see what you mean."
She reengaged: "And that's only thirty or so doubles, so maybe you can see the difficulty when there are more than two hundred doubles? It would take more than ... hm, carry the four ... approximately two to the sixtieth years to exhaust all possibilities if you were to recite a simple bifurcated variation of the name every minute."
"English, please, Rosalie." I begged.
"... with no meal nor outhouse breaks, either." Rosalie finished, and I heard the smile in her explanation.
"Oh," I said humbly. "So, I guess it must be pretty hard, then."
"Yes, it would be 'pretty hard' to know the Name of God, if it weren't for the Incarnation," Rosalie agreed.
Was she talking about flowers? She just said something about carnations, didn't she? I felt like asking her, but her mood soured when I was being flip about the money thing. I kept quiet.
"Now, everyone knows the Name of God in the Second Person, that is, the Son, and anyone can say it ..." Rosalie began.
"But people don't drop dead for saying 'Jesus Christ,' Rosalie," Here I bowed my head quickly, just to be sure that no whacks were forthcoming, regardless of what Rosalie called them. "I see it all over the place," I said reasonably. "People say it all the time, and they don't drop dead."
"Yes, they do," Rosalie responded uncompromisingly.
So much for me trying to be reasonable.
"Um, no, Rosalie, you're wrong: they don't." I couldn't let this one pass. She was wrong.
"They may not 'die' bodily, but they are taking the Lord's Name in vain, so they most assuredly will die for that." was the calm reply.
"Well, everybody dies, Rosalie!" It was just pure frustration talking with her sometimes. Like ...
Hm ... actually, when wasn't it frustrating talking with her?
"But not everyone gets to Heaven," Rosalie answered right back.
"Well, then, it must be a pretty empty place! Who in the world could get to Heaven with those kinds of rules?" I demanded. My understand of the big Mr. 'J'-man was that he was a swell; a really nice guy. Didn't sound like it from Miss By-the-(Good)-Book, however.
"You." Rosalie answered severely. "And I am going to make sure of it."
"'Cause your my guardian angel or something?" I demanded hotly.
"Or something," Rosalie answered just as hotly.
"Okay, wow! My own guardian vampire, then!" This was just around the bend. "Well, I tell you what, you can't force me to be a Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes, ya hear me?"
"That's right!" But it didn't sound like she agreed with me. "I can't force you to be what you intrinsically are, but I can make sure you stay that way!"
"Is that how you see me? Oh, Jesus Christ alrea-... Hey!"
Rosalie had reached out with both hands and very gently tilted my head down and forward at my outburst.
"Rosalie, this is ridiculous! Are you going to make me bow every single time I say that?"
"Yes," came the absolute reply.
"Oh, brother!" I fumed.
Note to self: don't say the J-word around Rosalie Bible-Thumping Hale over there.
I'd add that to my set of rules in my journal — d'ya hear me there, Miss Nosey? my journal! — but for the reaction of certain vampires to certain things I write in my journal.
Rosalie's voice then turned pensive. "'Jesus Christ' is even really correct, though, is it?"
I could just hear her head bob when she said the name. Well, okay, I couldn't hear it, but I could just imagine her head doing that in the darkness.
"For, after all," she continued her thought, "'The Christ' is His title, so it's more correctly 'Jesus, the Christ.'" I imagined her bow again. This would get old. No, this was already past old into ancient. But then she chuckled. "Sort of along the lines of 'Winnie-ther-Pooh.'"
I was sulking, but my curiosity got the better of me. I wondered if she knew this. I wondered if she knew how to force her way on me, but then make me come out of my sulk with a tidbit I just had to investigate.
Damn, she's good! I thought admiringly; hating myself for my awe of her.
"'Winny-ther-'who?" I asked. I didn't know anybody of that name. Maybe she was a famous Jazz singer Back East that backward Ekalaka hadn't yet heard of? We had heard of that new singer in New York, Billie Holiday, but she was taking the world by storm, so that really was no big thing, us, even backwater us, knowing her.
"Do not tell me you haven't been read the House at Pooh Corner books as a child," she sounded shocked.
"House at what?" I asked confused, but then Rosalie tsked in disappointment. "Okay, Rosalie, I won't tell you that, but ... well, as you may have guessed, my Ma wasn't one to read me bedtime stories."
"Well, then, we must correct that, mustn't we?" It didn't sound like a question.
"As long as those bedtime stories aren't anything like last night's!" I pouted in reply. Making me cry, burning the sheets, and all for what?
"Well, they can convey lessons ..." Rosalie began, and I thought, oh, no! "... but I'd say they are rather sweet and delightful stories, and I think you would agree with me on this particular point."
"Wow! The two of us agreeing on something! Imagine that!" I couldn't: she'd have to start making sense for me to even think about agreeing with her. "I'd like to read'm just to see if that would happen!"
"Hm, yes," came Rosalie's lost voice. "Imagine that."
It was quiet for a moment with Rosalie lost in her thoughts.
Suddenly, the grasp I had on the chair leg pulled it toward me, as it no longer had any weight on it.
Rosalie was leaving me, and I had no idea why.
Chapter end notes:
The Shemhamphorasch, the "Name of God," (שם המפורש), is encoded in Exodus 14:19-21.