6

The hearing that followed revealed the details of Gabrielle’s life and her obsession with my mother and me, but found her mentally incompetent to stand trial. She was sent to the psychiatric ward at Standley Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.

My mom was far more nervous from then on, especially as the year progressed. Gabrielle Burns wasn’t the only fanatic out to rid the world of clones. Possibly emboldened by Gabrielle’s attack, seventeen clones would be murdered by the end of 2038 alone. A member of the Cassandra Society sent mail bombs to four families with clone babies, killing eleven people, and then martyred herself when the police came to arrest her. Allen Fisher killed eight clones in widely publicized ritual murders that included torture and cannibalism. We rarely left the house by ourselves for a long time to come.

Reverend Al Lewis, who lived nearby, began picking us up for church, contending that we were less likely to be attacked if we were in the company of a minister. But his wife and their son Jack, who was a few months older than me, began driving to church separately. I realized much later that Reverend Lewis was still afraid we would be attacked, and he didn’t want to place his family in harm’s way. He knew he was risking his life helping us get to church.

I wish I’d known so that I could have thanked him.

During the weeks that followed the attack, Mom and I would often stay after the sermon and chat with Reverend Lewis in his private office. They were therapy sessions, but that was never mentioned, and I thought we were doing it because he had some office work to do before driving us back to our house. He shuffled papers around as he talked, like he was casually chatting with me as he got some filing done.

“Do you still feel scared about what happened on the beach?” he asked one Sunday.

“Sometimes,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about it.

“Do you know why Mrs. Burns did it?”

“She said it was because she was a Christian,” I answered, focusing on the Bible on his desk.

Reverend Lewis nodded. “That is confusing, isn’t it? What’s important to understand is, just because a lot of people call themselves ‘Christians,’ they don’t all believe the same things or treat people the same way. No sir.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because everyone’s different, and we all have different ways of looking at the world and other people, and we’ve all got different ways of interpreting what we read in the Bible and what we feel in our hearts. One person can read the Bible and believe that God wants you to seek out possible sinners and stone them to death, while another person can read the very same Bible and believe that God doesn’t want you to judge others, and that He wants you to love and respect and forgive everyone and treat each other like equals, even your enemies. You can believe in a god of love and charity, or a god of hate, greed, and fear, or something in the middle. In the end, the kind of god you believe in probably reveals much more about your own nature than it reveals about the true nature of God.”

I just stared blankly. He tried to clarify.

“You see, some people, like Gabrielle Burns and those who support her or who hate you because of the way you were born, they read the Bible and think that you’re evil, and that God hates you for it, and that they should hate you as well. Although some of them might call that hate ‘love’ so it sounds like they still love their neighbor. You know, just because someone says they’re doing something out of love doesn’t mean they’re not really doing it out of hate.”

I didn’t know that, but before I could say so, he went on.

“Those Christians look for differences and for sins, and believe it’s their duty to root out such things and label them as evil. But other Christians think that’s not what God wants. When they read the Bible, they see a loving God who wants people to be good and kind to everyone, and who wants people not to judge one another but to treat everyone like equal neighbors worthy of respect. They think it’s a sin to be cruel to another person when that person isn’t doing anything cruel to them. Jesus says so again and again. He reached out to all the people that his society scorned – the outcasts like the poor, the sick, the tax collectors, the Samaritans, the Roman soldiers, and the prosti—,” he interrupted himself before continuing. “He loved all his neighbors, not just the popular ones. So how would have Jesus treated clones?”

He paused for my answer, but I didn’t know it.

“He would have loved you,” he answered for me, smiling, and making me feel surprisingly comforted. “And if Jesus was wrong, if God wants us to be hateful and cruel to one another, then why would any truly loving person even want to go to that God’s heaven? I surely wouldn’t want to go to some heaven ruled by a mean God who wanted me to treat clones like they were bad people. No sir.”

He conversed the same way he sermonized, a bit long-winded.

“Do you think being a clone is a sin?” My voice shook as I spoke, fearful of both the nature of his answer and its potential length.

Reverend Lewis stopped his filing. “I can’t believe being born is ever a sin. No sir,” he said. “It’s what you do with your life that matters to God, so long as God is truly good.”

A sigh of relief on both counts. Then I pressed my luck. “Do you think cloning is a sin?”

He hesitated with that one, probably not wanting to hurt me but not wanting to lie either. “First of all,” he began, and I cringed, “you always have to remember that just because someone says something is a sin doesn’t make it so. No sir. That said, I personally believe it’s wrong, but from a Christian perspective there’s nothing specifically about it in the Bible and, of course, only God really knows for sure. Regardless, I can’t believe a loving God would punish us for doing it since he didn’t leave any clear instructions on the issue, it promotes life rather than death, it doesn’t hurt anyone, and he made it physically possible for it to happen.”

I was a little hurt that he thought my being cloned was wrong. But I felt better knowing that God and everyone who called themselves Christians weren’t out to kill me. No sir.