“Let me go,” Jane said.
“I’m calling the police, Mr. Cooper.” Dad let Jane go and went to the phone and yanked it from Sam’s hand and then he yanked it from the wall. The baby started crying. Dad’s face remained constant and determined, a slight smile on his lips. For a moment Jane stood in a daze.
The next thing, Dad was chasing Jane down the hall up the stairs to her room. Jane’s room was bright and neat, painted yellow, and her bedspread was yellow printed with evening primrose. She always kept everything so neat, the way Mom liked it.
“I only want to drive you to school,” Dad said. “You can’t give me this? You have to take that away from me too?” His voice was more desperate now, but restrained trying to be patient, that weird angry controlled tone, that yes-sirree tone.
“I’m not going,” Jane said, trying to shut the door on him, but he pushed it open, knocking her against the wall and out of the way. “I’ll be late, Dad. Leave me alone.” She scrambled to the bed.
“Let’s talk at least,” he said. “Give me that at least.” He pulled her from the bed, but she refused to speak. “I love you, Jane,” he said. He started shaking her. “I love you,” he shouted. His face flushed and now Jane’s went white. Her big eyes wide. She flung her arms free of him, but he grabbed her again and shook her some more as if he could shake her into loving him and then he held her, squashing her against his chest.
“I hate you,” she hissed. Then there was utter silence. He held her out from him and stared at her and she stared at him, trembling, and I thought somehow things would be all right, but in a flash they were wrong again and Dad picked Jane up and heaved her onto the bed. Julia was on him at once, but he shook her off and went after Jane.
I crawled beneath the bed and closed my ears and started singing. I could feel the box springs on me and dust balls beneath me. It was dark under there with light just barely seeping in from beneath the bed skirt, and messy. I wanted to laugh, thinking, This is how she manages to keep her room so neat. Papers from old school years and books and pictures and junk and then I saw a whole bunch of Wendy dolls, that’s what we called Madame Alexander dolls, a whole world of them. I loved playing with them. I had a wicker basket filled with dozens of them. They were beautiful dolls, with the little eyelids that roll up and down and their costumes from foreign countries. Among the dolls was a new box and inside a new doll, played with or held once or twice, one that came from Spain. It was the doll that Dad had sent in August. She hadn’t thrown it away. I never thought of Jane playing with dolls. I never imagined there’d been a time when Jane was my age, doing the things I did now. Then it occurred to me that Dad and Mom were still together when she was my age.
“Ian,” I heard Mom’s weary voice say. The bed stopped moving and the shouting stopped. A silence settled down. I was relieved it wasn’t Sam. I could hear Dad crying and I crawled out. Jane was up at the head of the bed pressing her body into the wall. Julia crouched over her, wiping Jane’s hair away from her face. My wool stockings felt very hot now and dust balls stuck to them and the crotch had come down between my thighs. I thought about school and how late we would be and how the teachers would ask me questions again. They loved taking me into their offices to ask questions about home. Then I wondered how we’d get to school. I wondered, if Dad drove us, would Sam’s kids come along?
“Ian,” Mom said again. That ‘Ian’ seemed to say a million things to Dad. He dropped his arms. His face was ugly, smeared with tears, and he drooled. She came through the doorway, wearing the nightgown she’d been wearing for months. The skin around her eyes was wrinkled from too much sleep and I thought about her pinching it. I hoped she didn’t smell. Her arms reached out to Dad as she glided past me to him. She hugged him and he held her hard, clutching. Jane watched, holding a pillow against her stomach, shaking, while Julia petted her. Mom smoothed Dad’s hair and he continued to cry, hugging Mom, holding on to her hard as if she would vanish.
Sam let us have this. She stayed away. It was hard for her, surely, but she let us have this.
In early March, Sal and Sam and the four of their seven children piled into their yellow station wagon and drove away. They moved to England, where Sal had found a publisher, their lives receding from ours. By then, even Mom was glad they left, and for a while she was strong.
∨ Bright Angel Time ∧
The Beauty of Christianity
Sometimes it was like drowning, like what I’d imagine drowning to be – bobbing up, gasping for air but breathing in water, arms flailing, attempting to crawl higher above the waves. Body heavy. Weak. And when you do give up, it’s supposed to be a magnificent feeling, of total and final relaxation. Tingles run through your veins easing you, soothing you slowly, slowly until you are finally absorbed.
♦
We weren’t ever going home. Our father wasn’t ever coming to pick us up. Jane, with her plans to run away, wasn’t going home either. Otherwise I might have gone with her. Instead I started feeling religious. A wonderful sensation, like I was being absorbed by something grand. Something big. The arms of God stretched down and enveloped me, hugging me like the arms of my friend Allison’s mother. I thought this was what feeling spiritual meant. I wanted to feel spiritual like Mom. I had to find God. Everywhere I turned He appeared like a premonition. Chapels and missions and churches popped up by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, PAUSE, REST, PRAY read a sign in Sultan for the Wayside Church, horribly lime green and small, small. Every town had a religious store selling biblical figurines so colorful you’d want to believe: Mary in prayer, Christ on the Cross, Saint John the Baptist – they were the ones I knew. There were religious candles and religious balms. Rosaries and prayer books and Bibles. There were ‘evil away’ air fresheners and special dried religious leaves and twigs that when burned attracted the Holy Spirit. I could have spent a lot of my money in these stores. On the radio, ministers of the faith proclaimed miracles they’d performed like magic, curing paraplegics, giving sight and hearing to the blind and deaf, wits to the dumb, raising the dead like Lazarus. I believed. At camp one night a religious woman rode up to us on a bicycle and handed me a religious pamphlet that told me Jesus loved me. On the highway, billboards appeared: CHRIST IS ALIVE, ARE YOU?
I thought God was trying to tell me something and I wanted to hear it. I prayed. Began praying all the time on my knees, looking up to heaven with my mind and heart opening for God. I’d fold my hands together and press my knees into the dirt, waiting to be filled. At first I kept this to myself. I didn’t want to be made fun of. And I’d squeeze my eyes shut tight and wait and pray to God. And He’d come down and fill me until I thought I’d burst inside. Fill me with the desire to be generous and good and giving. I was awake, alive. I thought about the religious kids back at home going to parochial schools and felt blessed and more aware, like I understood because I was choosing this. No one was choosing or had chosen it for me. The arms of God came down and wrapped around me from behind, protecting me. Instructing me to be good, telling me what was out there when it seemed that there was nothing. We weren’t ever going home.
♦
Peter asked Jesus, “Sir, how many times should I forgive my brother if he keeps wronging me? Up to seven times?” Jesus responded, “Not just seven: seventy times seven.” Anton said, Forgiveness is an attitude not an action. Anton said, Forgiveness is an openness of heart. He lit a joint and I looked up to him. We were camped in Arizona on our way to the Grand Canyon, finally. Ocotillo surrounded the field like barbed wire and flycatchers and woodpeckers drilled holes in the saguaros. “Forgive us our wrongs as we forgive those who have wronged us.” Forgiveness is the beauty of Christianity.
“The beauty of Christianity is that it is based on life on earth and the reality of our world more than any other religion,” Anton said.
“Except that you’re not allowed to enjoy any of the pleasures of life on earth without sinning,” Cynthia Banks said and laughed.
“What about Zen Buddhism?” James asked in his sweet, deep accent.
Anton’s eyes glowed red and the campfire burned fiercely, the flames twisting and righting and as night came we heard a coyote and then a plane flying through the stars overhead. Anton talked about the Jesuits and sex and the Virgin and his visions of the statue in the courtyard outside his cell. He talked about making love to Mom for the first time in the onion grass outside his therapy farm. Cynthia laughed and no one else paid much attention, except for me and Julia, who asked questions about sex. Then she went away to join the big kids, who were having a taste test of bad wine to see which was the worst: Mad Dog 20/20, Wild Irish Rose, Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, Thunderbird.
“For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly father will forgive you.” In my holster I had the three hundred dollars I’d collected. For a little while I wanted to give it all back, hand it to Anton and have him take it from me and bless me and forgive me and tell me I was good. His hand would be warm and soft, sweeping over mine and he’d hold me and comfort me and love me. I wanted him to help me find God.
I’d promised the money to Jane, though, and when I thought about it, I figured if Christ and Anton would forgive me now they’d also forgive me later.
Anton said, Love is a vital part of forgiveness. Anton said, Christianity is centered around the mystery of Divine love and man must learn to respond to that love. I saw the back of his hand come down on Mom. I saw the enormous turquoise ring and the pinched skin and the little hairs which emerged from beneath the silver setting and I saw Mom take it, standing strong, her body wavering only from the impact. I saw him asking, begging, pleading with her for forgiveness. “He hit you, Mom,” Jane had screamed over and over. I could still hear her. He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
♦
“Anton loves me the best,” Julia said. “Of the three of us he loves me the best. I can feel it.” She wasn’t saying it competitively. She was simply stating fact. I thought of the way she sat in Anton’s lap sometimes, plopped herself in his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. I thought of the way he always chose her to be on his football team. The way she flirted up to him like a smaller version of Mom. It hadn’t occurred to me that he could love her differently from me.
“I’m going to convert,” I said. I liked using the word convert. It was sophisticated. Julia was the first one I told. I wanted to test it out.
“You can’t do that,” Julia said and screwed up her eyes. She understood absolutely nothing about God. Then I thought she didn’t want me to because she was jealous. She’d wished she’d had the idea first.
“I can too,” I said and told her Anton was going to help me, which was a lie, but I knew that Anton would help me when I asked.
“Why?” she asked.
“For the same reason most people do,” I said.
“Most people are born Catholic.”
“I know,” I snapped. “But I wasn’t.” I thought for a moment. “I want to know what’s going to happen to me.” I thought about Dolly, my Catholic friend whose mother had said I treated her like a priest. She trusted God would take care of her and she didn’t think about the future because He thought about it for her. When she was six years old all her blood was removed from her body through a tube plugged into her navel, sucked out as if through a straw and there was a moment, before the new blood was put back in, when she was bloodless and could die and she hadn’t been afraid. She said God protected her and if He chose to give her death then she would welcome it. I didn’t want to be afraid.
“What if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?” Julia chewed on a twig she’d picked up off the ground. We squatted, thighs pressing into shins, rocking. I heard Sofia bossing Finny and Timothy, telling them to do dinner jobs and I heard Timothy tell her to fuck off and then I heard Dwayne try to arbitrate. I hated Dwayne. Then I felt bad for hating Dwayne, ungiving, and started loving him. I loved Dwayne. Home flashed before me for an instant. The sky turned indigo and the air cooled.
“If that’s what God wants I’ll welcome it,” I said. Actually that too was a lie. I’d started thinking about dying a lot now and was afraid. Sometimes I thought there were so many of us one of us would die soon. Sometimes I’d be so afraid of dying I wouldn’t leave the camper in the middle of the night to pee. I’d hold the pee until morning, afraid that someone would be out there in the dark to get me. But I liked saying that I’d welcome death. It made me feel better than Julia. I saw her in Anton’s lap again and wondered if she’d stolen anything.
“You can confess to me,” she said and flexed her left eyebrow.
Anton’s love for Jane wasn’t obvious love, that’s the way Julia put it. “Obvious love. A love/hate relationship.” But Jane’s love for him wasn’t ‘obvious’ either. She still didn’t speak to him and he gave her this disgusted look when he told her to do a dinner job or some other chore. It was a ‘You’re-gonna-do-it-babe-and-not-complain’ look. We felt sorry for Jane. We wanted her to get on with Anton because we knew that somewhere inside she wanted to get on with him the way we did. We thought she was jealous. I didn’t believe that Anton loved Julia better than me.
“Look at how Anton and Julia get on,” Mom had said to Jane. Julia and Anton had been playing a game that Julia said he had invented especially for her. She was wearing one of her outfits, a polyester minidress with blue sailboats floating on it. Her hair a bunch of curls. Anton called their game ‘Uncle’. She ran and he chased her. First slowly and lazily. His pants fell down his hips and his cowboy hat flopped on his head. He wore no shirt. At first he let her believe she was faster. In poker he taught us to play like that, to lose a few hands to fool your opponents. Then suddenly he’d grab her and she’d scream and we’d stop what we were doing for a moment to watch them flirt, Mom watching with her pleased smile. Anton bent Julia’s fingers back as far as they could go until she coughed up more screams and looked at him with her eyes opening and closing and smiling and pleading. Julia had told me that Anton made her feel sexual. I thought about that now. Thought about the bulldog ants oozing infertile eggs. I wanted to play ‘Uncle’. She loved Anton and her eyes beamed and she slipped down to her knees. “Say ‘Uncle’,” he’d say. At first, giggling and still struggling to get away, she’d refuse. “Come on, babe.” His body loomed over hers, casting her in shadow. And her fingers went back further and her knees pressed harder into the dust.
“Uncle,” she’d finally say, and with ‘Uncle’ the game would end.
Now Julia stared at me, really seriously, trying to figure me out, see if I were convinced about converting. Her look made me nervous. You could just tell something smart was forming in her mind.
“Do you believe in the host?” she asked, suspiciously.
It took me a minute to remember what the ‘host’ was, but I did and felt relieved.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s symbolic. I don’t really believe it’s Christ’s body and blood. It’s just a beautiful part of the ritual.” I had heard Anton say that, so I knew it was all right.
“You mean transubstantiation?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. “How about original sin? You can’t possibly believe in that.” I didn’t know how Julia knew all this stuff and I was beginning to feel annoyed. I didn’t know what original sin was. I just wanted to be Catholic.
“I feel the same way about that as I do about the Host,” I bluffed. “It’s symbolic. A beautiful part of the ritual.”
We were silent for a bit, squatting there in the late afternoon heat, watching the camper. Anton, James and Mom sat at the table, talking. Mom had draped the table with a cloth and it flapped in the light breeze. Anton’s classical music played from the cab. He was telling a story, his arms gesturing a lot. A bott
le of Jack Daniel’s stood on the table. Cynthia Banks walked from the camper to join them. She carried a bottle of wine. Then Nicholas did too. A few of them laughed as Anton told his story, probably a story from his childhood. Anton was big and animated sitting there, the leader of our world.
“I like to protect Anton,” Julia said suddenly, eyes far away. “He’s like a child, a scared child. He needs to be protected.”
♦
I liked the miracles the best. I liked the way Jesus or someone acting for Jesus could make the dead rise, or cure an incurable disease. I liked drinking the wine from the big metal goblet and eating the wafers that dissolved on my tongue. The water and the sign of the cross. The kneeling. The praying. Confession. I thought of all the things I could confess to and be forgiven for. I was impatient for forgiveness.
At a store selling religious things I had Anton buy me a strand of mother-of-pearl rosary beads that I wore like a necklace.
“You’re not suppose to wear it like that,” Sofia said. But I didn’t listen to her. I counted the little, beautiful beads, saying Hail Marys and Our Fathers in my head, trying to memorize the words.
♦
Mom liked that I wanted to become Catholic and encouraged me to talk to Anton. Converting would bring me closer to him, make us whole, more of a family. I could tell she would have liked for Julia and Jane to convert too.
“How long does it take to become a Catholic?” I asked Anton.
“Not very long, babe, if you listen carefully to me.” He smiled. His gold caps sparkled. He squeezed my elbow. There was nothing better than after a fight. He held Mom near. All that had frightened me turned soft and you’d forget that he could ever swell up. You’d forgive. Forgiveness was easy for me.
Sometimes when we stopped for lunch or parked early for the night Anton would take me for a walk, just the two of us. We’d walk away from everybody else, entirely alone. His big hand enveloping my tiny one, soft like a mitten. I’d feel awkward at first. My knees would tremble and I wouldn’t be able to think of anything to say. It would all seem stupid. I remembered Finny on his birthday being led away and I’d get scared that Anton would be leading me to something bad. I’d hear the other kids doing their own things, laughing, whatever, and my world would get very small. Inside would feel funny and I’d forget to breathe properly. I’d feel dirty inside. My stomach would knot and I’d think he was going to tell me that I was dying.
Bright Angel Time Page 21
