God's Ex-Wife

This book is a work of fiction that has been partially inspired by true events. The names, characters and events in this book are either fictitious or have been changed to protect the innocent.

God’s Ex-Wife

Published by Lit Match Press

New York, NY

Cover art by D. Mertens

Copyright © 2018 by David M. Woodland and Jessica Hernandez

All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

ISBN (paperback): 9781642371796

eISBN: 9781642371789

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgementsand Thanks

Introduction 1 By David M. Woodland

Introduction 2 By Jessica Hernandez

Coldfall, 2007

Old Testament:the Gospel According to Debbie

Chapter 1 Welcome to Coldfall

Chapter 2 My Real Brother

Chapter 3 Remember the 90’s? I’m Sorry.

Chapter 4 Planet Debbie

Chapter 5 Paying (for) Attention

Chapter 6 Phil on (and off) Mary

Chapter 7 Phil (and Debbie) on Mrs. Rosen

Chapter 8 The Messiah Arrives

Chapter 9 Exodus

Chapter 10 A Home for Lost Boys… Who Suck Dick

Chapter 11 A Messiah of my Own

Chapter 12 Phil & Raheem: A Love (?) Story

Chapter 13 Phil & Raheem vs. The World

Chapter 14 Debbie’s Grandma & The Other Sermon

Chapter 15 Debbie, in Black & White

Chapter 16 Coldfall ’88, by Phil

Chapter 17 Phil & Raheem

Chapter 18 Debbie Experiences Nirvana

Chapter 19 Phil: E

Chapter 20 Debbie on the Mount

Chapter 21 Like a Bat Outta Philly

Chapter 22 Incoming

Chapter 23 We Never Imagined…

Chapter 24 Outgoing

Chapter 25 Coldfall: Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell

Chapter 26 I’ve (Cold) Fallen… and I Can’t Get Out!

Chapter 27 Debbie Hears the Call

Chapter 28 Downtown Renaissance

Chapter 29 Stranger to Fiction

Chapter 30 Debbie City, New York 1992

Chapter 31 My Name is Debbie… I Think, Coldfall, 1993

Chapter 32 Now THIS Sucks.

Chapter 33 And Just When It Couldn’t Get Worse…

Chapter 34 Debbie’s Crack

Chapter 35 The Voice of Reason aka God (aka Phil)

Chapter 36 Fish Out of Coldfall, 1997

Chapter 37 Debbie in LALA Land, 1998

Chapter 38 Baby Mama

Chapter 39 Debbie & Daddy

Chapter 40 She’s Had Enough

Chapter 41 Providence 2005

Chapter 42 Debbie Interrupted, 2007

Chapter 43 Ms. Markowitz

Chapter 44 Emergence; C.

Chapter 45 Homecoming Queen

Chapter 46 It’s On Now

Chapter 47 Who The Hell is That?

Chapter 48 Who The Hell Are You?

Chapter 49 Debbie? Is that You?

Chapter 50 Oy Gevalt

Chapter 51 Heart: beat

Chapter 52 About this Lou Ann

Chapter 53 Next. PLEASE!

Chapter 54 Debbie Backtracks Again, New York, 2000

Chapter 55 Immaculate Conception Providence, 2000-something

Chapter 56 Get Rea(l/dy)

Chapter 57 When an Iris Opens

Chapter 58 Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Acknowledgements

and Thanks

David & Jessica would like to thank each other, as well as:

Our families, our friends, our students and our teachers, Murry Bergtraum High School, Larry A. Woodland, Rhona Drossman, Christina Dechert, The City of New York, The Black Community, The White Community, The LGBT Community, You…

… and ALL of the world’s unhappy young misfits,

desperate to escape the MoFN.

For Larry

Introduction 1

By David M. Woodland

God’s Ex Wife is one person’s story, told in more than one of his/her voices.

When two people meet, no fewer than six identities are engaged. There is that person who we believe ourselves to be, who the other person perceives, and the TRUTH—about who we know the least. Who we are and which of these we choose to be changes from day to day.

In other words: We are all just a little schizophrenic.

On an intrapersonal casting call for a new voice, I found my book’s heroine, my female alter ego, who not coincidentally has my initials, which become flipped when she does/we do. You’ll see what I mean. That is voice number one. And it is fiction. Debbie exists, but only in some part of my brain that not even Freud could find. I barely even found it myself, and it’s in my head.

There are also parts of this book that are pure, unretouched memoir; not many, but they are there. When the tone seems to change from Debbie’s bipolar and impatient narrative to a diplomatic editorial (or prose), you are reading a moment described exactly as it happened to me, not her. Though to confuse you just a little (beyond the jumbled sequence of events, which you may also find confusing), I sometimes keep the story in Debbie’s world while retelling an anecdote from mine. As a matter of fact, parts of Phil’s life are really mine as well. Who is Phil? Read the book.

And yet, there was a counterpoint that I wanted to include, but could not authenticate. At least, not on my own.

I am neither female, nor Black, and I am no longer young. And despite my unparalleled respect for academics (hence… ) I will be the first to say: No research can substitute for experience.

As luck would have it, the most gifted writer I know is a young, Black woman. The added bonus was that she happened to be my student! This novel is the first of its kind in so many ways: Two authors who may as well be from different planets, a dozen perspectives/characters between the two of us, yet the synthesis results from a teacher and student alternating those roles. Jessica was an obvious choice for my co-author. She is brilliant beyond her years. She is brilliant beyond mine.

One could say our finished product is a work of faction; not in the literal sense, but as portmanteau: a phonetic conflation of fact and fiction. We could also call it a work of fraction, or friction, as it is indeed both of those.

My only hope is that God’s Ex-Wife is not too preachy for you. Yes, it has God in the title, but I can assure you the existence of a higher power in this story is questionable.

… just as it always was in mine.

David M. Woodland, 2018

Introduction 2

By Jessica Hernandez

As p eople we spend our whole lives learning. We learn from experiences and from school, but most of all we learn from other people, only a few of whom are teachers by profession (and even then, only if we’re lucky). Each person we meet has a hand in shaping who we are, whether we feel their influence or not.

I met David, and maybe Debbie—though I did not know she existed at the time – when I was 16. As his introduction says, at least six personalities are engaged when two people meet. And as I’ve come to realize, he met my second personality long before I knew she existed. Had he not, I doubt he would have asked me to take part in a project that was nothing short of amazing. GXW as we now refer to it, has grown to be as much a part of my own story as it is David’s. Our hope for our readers like yourself is that you too will find resonance, that at least one sentence (but hopefully more) will feel like it was written solely for you.

Despite the media’s efforts to convince us that diversity has made great progress, our friendship confuses people. But we forgive them. A middle-aged, white, male teacher and his student—a young Black woman—would appear to lack common ground, at least to the outside observer. So, what do David and I have to talk about? How exactly did we build a friendship? Well, it’s simple. Before any of us are Black or white, male or female, gay or straight, young or old… we are PEOPLE. David M. Woodland and I bonded over something with no fixed demographic: a love of writing. And look at us now! Creating something that is sure to be as groundbreaking as our friendship itself.

Jessica Hernandez, 2018

Coldfall, 2007

"W e’re live outside Temple Beth Israel in Coldfall, where police have taken 72-year old Rabbi Eli Sherman into custody. The elderly man—and the town’s only Rabbi—has been charged with assault. Rabbi Sherman has refused to speak to reporters at this time but an attorney for Sherman confirms he may have been taking prescription drugs, including Xanax and Haldol, at the time of the attack. According to police, the victim was pushed to the ground and assaulted in the basement of the Temple, in a small hallway just outside the building’s restrooms shortly after 8 p.m. this evening. The victim has been taken to a nearby hospital and is listed in good condition. Police have refused to release the identity of Sherman’s victim at this time. We will continue to bring you coverage as the story develops. Back to you in the studio."

We’re live once again here at the Temple in Coldfall, where we first broke the story of the arrest of 72-year old Rabbi Eli Sherman on an assault charge. The incident allegedly occurred in the Temple’s basement. Now, just months later, paramedics responding to a 911 call found Rabbi Sherman dead in that same basement, less than two feet away from the location of his assault charge. No word as yet on the cause of the Rabbi’s death. We will continue to track this story as it unfolds. Back to you in the studio.

Old Testament:

the Gospel According to Debbie

Idied today.

But I can’t complain. I have no regrets. I did everything I wanted to do with my life, most of which I didn’t know I wanted until I did it. As for the things I didn’t like, or didn’t want, or wish I hadn’t done? To quote Malcolm Forbes, Failure is success if you learn from it.

The best part by far was the teaching. That was what I always wanted to do and it never disappointed me. I’ll miss the kids.

I wrote this letter to them when I started to get old, when I knew my time was coming:

To Every Student

I’ve Ever Taught:

If I could teach you one life lesson, it is not to care what people think of you. And if I could teach you another one, it is not to let people scare you into being someone you are not. When people start telling you what you need to do, who you need to be, what you need to fix, spraying you with lectures that include, "You won’t be young forever, if you make mistakes now you’ll be paying for them for the rest of your life!" They are full of shit! The people telling you that are just bitter and jealous. They see you having fun. They would trade places with you in a minute. They want to spoil it for you the only way they know how. They know that they can never get their youth back, and now they think all of their studying, grades, test scores, and degrees made no difference. They still had to work hard, prove themselves, and compete with the world, sometimes losing to people with less education. They wish they had studied less and laughed more.

No one on their deathbed ever says, I wish I had spent more time working. If you get caught up worrying about who you will be tomorrow, you might forget that you are already someone today. It’s true you won’t be a kid for the rest of your life but most of your values, idiosyncrasies, likes, and dislikes will never change and only you know what’s best for you. If college feels wrong, then it probably is. Don’t ever, ever, ever let anyone tell you a college degree guarantees success in life. If that were true, colleges would offer money back guarantees when it didn’t happen. And every college in America would go broke paying back millions of graduates for degrees that ended up being useless. Did you pass all of your classes this semester? Did your favorite musician, athlete, writer, artist, or visionary pass all of their classes, every semester, when they were in school? (Did that person even go to school?) WHO CARES??? You know as well as I do that no one cares… but FYI the answer is no.

And when you succeed in life, no one will care how well you did (or not) in school either. There have been millions of happy, successful people who never went to college. Some of them—including one United States President—never even finished high school. There are plenty of miserable people who did go to school (including three current death row inmates who graduated from Harvard).

But don’t get it twisted. The people who made something of themselves without doing well in school (or without going to school at all) did not sit at home buried in technology all day either. With or without a college degree, success does not just happen. They talked to the right people, made the right friends, marched to the beat of their own drummer, surrounded themselves with ideas (not gossip), and never turned down an opportunity, a new experience. They had an open mind, made good decisions, asked good questions, and knew when to swallow their pride. They created.

And above all, they read. All the time. They took every opportunity (every opportunity) to speak in front of an audience, to be seen and heard, and to share their ideas, to flash a confident but not arrogant smile, standing up straight and speaking articulately, leaving an impression on everyone in the room. Eventually, someone took notice and they were on their way. There is no such thing as luck, no such thing as, The right place at the right time. The right place can be anywhere, the right time can be anytime if you are charismatic, innovative, and prepared.

When a little money comes your way… save or invest it! (Don’t spend it on clothes!) And speaking of money… Money is not the only measure of success, or the only thing that brings happiness. In fact, it’s not even one of them. Some of the wealthiest people who ever lived committed suicide. And last I checked, happy people don’t kill themselves. Many of the wealthiest people in the world who aren’t dead are on prescription drugs for depression or anxiety. Or both. How many times have we said, That guy’s an asshole!? Only to be told, Correction! He’s a rich asshole! As if a rich person couldn’t possibly be an asshole (while in my experience, most of them are).

Remember that book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein? The tree was willing to part with all of its possessions as long as the boy came back. Think of the person you love most. How much money would you need to never see that person again? You can’t put a price on people. They are the only thing that will truly bring joy to your life. Ever. Don’t hurt people. You never know who you are going to need one day. Trust me on these things.

Love, DM

But a lot happened between then and now.

I took more than just my love of children to the grave.

Chapter 1

Welcome to Coldfall

Debbie, 1987

"Y OU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!!!!!! Th e words shattered the stillness of the dark Coldfall night, my mother holding the i sound in the word shit for a good five seconds. My parents’ lights were out and they had gone to bed more than an hour ago so I couldn’t imagine what had happened. The only thing I could possibly think of was my Dad farting in bed, as he had been known to do. It set my mother off every time. She would scream, JOOOOOOOE!!! (Again, holding her vowel sounds with the lung power of an opera singer) GET. THE. SPRAAAAAY!!!!" But she didn’t say that this time. Whatever it was, Mommy was done. After 15 minutes of muffled