“What did you play?” Dr. Adams wants to know.
“Oh, I guess the usual. Hide-and-seek, dolls, parties. I used to make cakes for her, out in the sand, cover them with rose petals from Daddy’s flowers. Roses were her favorite. The pink ones.”
“Did you talk with her?”
“Oh, sure. Talked about everything under the sun. And above it, too. See, sometimes we played down here, sometimes up there. Now, that was a treat, when she’d take me around up there.”
“What was it like?”
“Just like it says in the Bible. Streets paved with gold, green valleys, blue and purple mountains all over the place, winding streams running here and there, angels floating around on clouds everywhere blowing their horns, lions laying down with the lambs, wolves and snakes and foxes, all peaceable together. And God, you could go see Him anytime, sitting there on His throne in His long white robe and brown beard and people at His feet just waiting to hear some words of love. It was . . . well, kind of nice. Though I don’t think I’d want to live there. That’s why I kept on calling Angela to come back down here and play with me. It just wasn’t a good place for kids. Not enough excitement or something, I don’t know exactly what was missing, but something was. That’s why we played down here most of the time.”
“Do you still play with Angela?”
“Of course not! I may be crazy, but I’m not that crazy!”
Dr. Adams grows stern as I’ve ever seen him. “What happened to our agreement, Elizabeth?” he asks, looking at me straight on.
“What agreement?” I say. “Oh, that. Well, I wasn’t using crazy to mean you know, like mad crazy, insane crazy. I was just using it like, ah, you know. Okay. I know I’m not crazy. Okay?”
“Thank you,” he says, as if he’s just won some kind of award. Then after he writes in the metal chart, he turns back again to Angela. “You don’t play with her anymore. When did you stop?”
“Oh, I don’t know, really. Maybe at nine or ten, I don’t know. But no longer than ten years old, I’m sure.”
“What happened when you stopped playing with her, when she stopped coming down here?”
“I guess mainly I just switched to thinking about her instead of playing with her. I guess that’s what happened.”
“Did you continue to talk with her?”
“Hm-m, maybe, yeah, I guess, just like, you know, you’d talk to yourself. Well, it was such a habit by then, you know. Like talking to yourself, yeah.”
“What did you talk about?”
“God stuff.”
“God stuff?”
“You know, the kind of stuff you’d talk to God about. Sort of like you’d be talking to Angela when you had things on your mind instead of talking to God. That’s a near sight easier talking to someone you know than someone you’ve never seen before and don’t even know if He’s there or not although you’ve heard about Him all your life and although you’d better believe in Him or burn in hell forever.”
“But I thought you saw Him when you played with Angela.”
“God? Saw Him? Oh, that. Well, you know how that was. He was just all part of the game. He was just part of the deal, you know. Like, you go visit someone in heaven, you most likely gonna see God around someplace. Anyway, it was all just a game, the playing. I had to have someone to play with, something to do, since Mama never let me out of her sight for one minute, always looking after me, then wanting me to look after her.”
Mama. Poor Mama. Why wouldn’t she come on down here, when they asked her to? Why wouldn’t she? Just to talk for one day. Just to see that she doesn’t have to keep on torturing herself, and me, too. Just to see what they’re doing here, that it’s not a crazy place, that she can’t keep on wanting me to look after her forever and making me into Angela, that I’ve got to be me, Elizabeth, and what might be so bad about that, in fact Elizabeth might even be better than Angela because Elizabeth might be real and not just a shadow, might be, if she can only come out and I can see her and feel her and touch her and I wonder if Elizabeth will talk the same, no, she won’t, and walk and act just the same, no, she won’t, and think and believe the same, no she won’t, and will she still work at the pants factory, I don’t know, and what will she do, where will she go, I don’t know, and how will it be with her mama and daddy from here on, I don’t know, and will she still want to live with them, I don’t know, but if not with them, who, and if not in Littleton, where, I don’t know, don’t know, don’t know. Look, Elizabeth, look. See?
Dr. Adams offers me the tissue box and says the usual. “Why the tears, Elizabeth?”
I’m getting real good at bringing the crying to a halt when it’s time to talk. I didn’t do too good on that at first, I just kept on and on crying until I couldn’t talk anymore and we’d have to stop. But now I can stop a whole lot better and now I can always even laugh a little bit at myself and that helps me to stop. Plus, I’m doing better, too, at telling Dr. Adams why the tears, that is, telling him exactly what I was thinking when they started. And when I tell him this time the tears had come from what all I was thinking and I tell him what all I was thinking, well, most all of it anyway, it seems he looks at me in a different way, a way that says, “Hey, Elizabeth, I’m proud of you, you’re going to be okay.”
But he doesn’t say that. He starts talking about Mama instead, and for once he does more talking than I do.
“Elizabeth, what I hear you saying is you don’t think your mama will ever change, that she will be, how did you say it, ‘the same old Mama forever and ever wanting to make me out of Angela.’”
“And so we’ll just go on being miserable forever. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. That’s what you chose to hear.”
Chose, choice, choosing, chosen. I’ve heard those words so much my insides are near about filled up with them, just like when Miss James way back in high school was teaching conjugation: I choose, I chose, I have chosen; I will choose; I would choose; I will have chosen. And now down here at Nathan, what would you choose, Elizabeth, if you could go anywhere or do anything? What would you have chosen to say, if you felt you could say anything to your Mama? What would you choose to do on Sunday mornings if you didn’t “have” to go to church? What career would you choose, if you no longer worked at the pants factory? Why didn’t you choose to go on to college since you were offered a scholarship? You see? They’re real big on choosing around here, as if a person has some say-so in the whole matter. Just like here lately he’s telling me I even choose what I hear, when I always thought I just heard what people say, and there’s no choosing about it.
But when I get to thinking on it, no, Dr. Adams didn’t say a thing about me and Mama having to be coupled up together and miserable forever. And for a minute I feel downright ridiculous at hearing something that he didn’t even breathe a word about, because I know by now that hearing something awful that you think somebody has said and you get to thinking back on it and find out they didn’t say that at all, well that tells you a whole heck of a lot about yourself.
“But Elizabeth,” Dr. Adams continues, “we know that chances are your mother won’t be changing a whole lot. So, you’re the one who’s doing the changing. You have been, you know. Don’t you see it, don’t you feel it? I think you’ve taken a giant step toward becoming Elizabeth. And, you’ll keep taking those giant steps. Now that you’ve started, you’re not going to stop. Can you see that? There’s no turning back. You’re beginning to let go of Angela and take hold of Elizabeth. And you won’t stop. Even when you go home, you won’t stop being Elizabeth.”
Now Dr. Adams hasn’t ever talked to me that way before. And he reminds me somehow of Preacher Edwards when he gets to impassionately, fervently pleading on behalf of the Lord for His Lambs to come home. But, oh, this sounds so much like a home I’d want to go to. Home to Elizabeth, whoever she is, wherever she is.
But what I hear Dr. Adams saying now doesn’t sound like going home
to Elizabeth. It sounds like going home to Mama. “So we think it would be good if you could go home for a weekend,” he says, “just to see how you’re doing. At least that’s what we’d like. You don’t have to right now, of course. But think about it.” He doesn’t say “you’re going home to Mama” at all. Just going home for the weekend. But I sure hear “going home to Mama” loud and clear. And I have to choose, then, if I am going home to Mama and Angela, or if I am going home to Elizabeth. Actually, I don’t want at all to go back to Littleton. I want to go far away forever. Except I’d miss awfully Mama and Daddy. And I know what a contradiction that is, and it sounds like I’m awfully mixed up, which I guess I am, and I can’t stand this feeling two ways at once, wanting to go home and not wanting to go home. It’s hard on a person.
Besides, who in the world will I get to come and pick me up just to carry me home for the weekend? Dr. Adams said he’d leave that up to me. Now, he didn’t say that in a mean way, he said it just like he was letting me make that choice.
Although I know for a certainty Mama will be too sick to come and get me, still I call her anyway. And after I explain the whole thing to her, that I will be coming home just for the weekend, sure enough, she is just too sick to drive to Nathan.
If I could choose what I’d say to Mama about that, I’d say, “Where, Mama, I’d like to know is all that Christian love I’ve been hearing about all these years, this love that’s so wonderful on Sunday and Sunday night and Wednesday night and any other time the church doors open? Now that I need some of that Jesus power spilling out of your heart, where is it?”
And Mama would probably say, “Elizabeth, honey, you know your mother loves you, you know that.”
“But what kind of mother love squeezes and squashes the life out of people so they can’t be themselves, only what the mother wants them to be, what kind of mother love is that?” That’s what I’d say.
But I can’t say that. Not because I don’t have the nerve now to say it. But because now I think Mama is probably doing the best she can do with what little she’s got. In spite of what all she did way back then, and in spite of it will never go away from me, and I won’t never, ever tell a soul about it. In spite of all that, the more I think about it, the more I think Mama is downright pitiful, and you can’t just go hitting pitiful people over the head with all the things they should be and are not, because who knows what that might do to them? Besides, it’s looking to me like just about everybody is downright pitiful in their own way.
Anyway, as Preacher Edwards is always saying, who among us is perfect? Of course, he didn’t start harping on that so much until lately when everybody found out about him and Mrs. Akley, and they both stood right up at the altar one Sunday morning in mid-spring right in front of Mama’s arrangement of May apple blossoms and confessed their sins to their fellow Christians and asked for forgiveness, just about shocking everybody to pieces, not that they had sinned, because everybody already knew about their frolicking about together anyway, but because they actually got up in front of everybody and confessed it, that’s what floored everybody.
Now, I know the Bible says that if you confess your sins openly, that your Heavenly Father will reward you in secret. Or is it the other way around? Whichever way you’re supposed to do it, He’s supposed to pour out His blessings on you. But instead of thinking about getting blessed, Preacher Edwards must have thought he was going to be run out of town on a rail, as humble as he was and all during the confession.
I think everybody was at first too shocked to do anything. Except Mr. Akley. He got real truthful, too. After Preacher Edwards and Mrs. Akley finished confessing, Mr. Akley stood up and said, “You damn right nobody’s perfect, least of all you, you son of a bitch!” And he proceeded to tell him what all he would do for him, but that’s when the congregation took it upon themselves to dismiss, and for a few Sundays everybody was real cool toward Preacher Edwards, but before long, everything was like always, except I think people started liking him even better than before. Strange, isn’t it, what a little sinning can do for you?
So, it’s things like this I now get to thinking about when I think about Mama and me. Sometimes it seems like I’m wanting her to be perfect when there’s none among us perfect, least of all me. But what if Mama just made some sort of confession that she’s not perfect. What if she got up in the church in front of her May apple blossoms and said, “I know I didn’t do right by Elizabeth back then, and I’m not doing right by Elizabeth now. I know I’ve been trying too hard all these years to hang on to Angela and in some queer way to make Elizabeth into Angela. I repent of my sins before the Lord. And I ask your forgiveness, too.”
You can bet that would just about shock me to pieces, too, just as much as Preacher Edwards and Mrs. Akley. And would it also make me like Mama better than before? I think so. I know so. Even though it wouldn’t take away what she did, at least I could feel a mite better toward her.
But who can I get to come and take me home? Actually, I don’t want to have to ask anybody. It’s not easy asking favors of people, because it’s more blessed to give than to receive. But if it makes people feel blessed to give and you don’t allow them to give, if you don’t ask for a favor, then you can’t help people feel blessed. That’s what my mind is telling me.
Take, for instance, when I was always doing some little old thing for Caldwell, like polishing his shoes or helping him paste stamps in his albums, or writing a letter to the editor (Caldwell wrote letters nearly every week on how people weren’t serving the Lord like they should by worshipping in His house on Sunday), when I was doing anything to help out Caldwell, I always felt good. Not blessed, maybe, but well, good that I was helping him out. So here is my turn to call on somebody to help me out, and I’m not doing too well.
I know plain as day that I won’t call Sheriff Tate. He was out. Period. And, shoot, now I can’t even call Aunt Lona. Would Aunt Lona come down under these circumstances? Just to pick me up? Probably. No, not probably. Sure, she would. But, then, I don’t want her feeling caught in the middle between Mama and me, since she wasn’t about to stir up more ill feelings in Mama by having the least bit more thing to do with me being or not being here.
Preacher Edwards? No! Yes. No! Yes. No! Why not? Wouldn’t Preacher Edwards just love to feel blessed about now? Wouldn’t it go a long way toward redemption if he served the Lord by rescuing one of His Lambs from an ill-begotten path? But the question is will he preach for three hours, or worse, will he try to find a bit of Mrs. Akley in me? No. Shame on me. There is a difference in Preacher Edwards now. Ever since that Sunday of confession, Preacher Edwards doesn’t preach as hot and heavy anymore. It’s like Mrs. Akley took some of the breath and the steam out of him, and he is more settled and less eager to set in judgment on people.
And now that I think about it, maybe Mrs. Akley was just what Preacher Edwards needed. Maybe the Lord sent Mrs. Akley to Preacher Edwards because he’s always saying the Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform, and the Lord sure performed a wonder that time.
Preacher Edwards, yes! Whether he wants to or not, it’s his Christian duty. Just like, according to Mama, it was Sheriff Tate’s legal duty. So, yes, I will call Preacher Edwards. At least it’ll be showing some progress to everybody in Littleton, won’t it? Me coming down to Nathan with the sheriff, and going back with the preacher?
12
. . . . . .
I am for certain surprised to see not only Preacher Edwards, but Mrs. Preacher Edwards come to get me. Mrs. Preacher Edwards, although I hate to say it, is a little backward, a little shy, and she’d just as soon not do anything that’s not absolutely necessary. That’s not usually the way of preachers’ wives; they’re usually so friendly and sweet and helpful they just about charm the pants off a cat, but who says they have to be that way? The way I always see Mrs. Preacher Edwards she is just being normal, just the way she wants to be, but that doesn’t keep most women of the church always fussing about
her quietness and her just sitting back and doing nothing to further the Lord’s cause.
Mama never can stand for me to say “Mrs. Preacher Edwards,” but the only reason I call her that sometimes is she and Preacher Edwards look so much alike. You know how some married folks start looking like each other after they live together for twenty or thirty years? That’s how the Edwardses look alike, as if they looked at one another for so long their jaws became set in about the same determined way, their light blue eyes shine just about the same mixture of curiosity, concern and suspicion, and their heads set at about the same angle, slightly tilted to one side. The only difference is she doesn’t wear a mustache that jumps and wiggles like a wooly worm when she talks.
Marriage. Before Nathan, I never thought about me being married to anybody. I just always assumed I would be stuck at home with Mama and Daddy forever. But after being around Dr. Adams for so long, and seeing how truly wonderful it is sitting around with such a beautiful man and just talking and saying whatever comes into my mind, I try more and more to picture me being married to someone like Dr. Adams, and although it’s still a hard thing to imagine, at least I can now see where it might be a good thing. But the sex part, that is still like foreign, unexplored lands to me, with a man, that is; but with the feelings I get around Dr. Adams sometimes, I get to feeling like I wouldn’t mind doing some deep down exploring one of these days, as long as it is with a man, and if the man is anyone half as nice as him.
Anyway, I am awfully glad that I don’t have to ride back to Littleton alone with Preacher Edwards, even if he does have a new pine green coupe that looks a sight. And I am awfully glad that the Preacher Edwardses hardly ever mention God stuff. The only time they come close is when Preacher Edwards says, “Elizabeth, I feel in some way that I have failed you.”
“Failed me?” I say in my Sunday-best way. “How, Preacher Edwards, could you fail me?” I reckon that takes me aback so because I was beginning to feel the stirrings in me that if people are failed, it’s a failing mostly of their own doing and not the fault of someone else, so you can’t go around all your life blaming someone else for your shortcomings. Even if you do have cause to, it’s not helping you get anywhere, and if it’s something you can’t change, then you just have to accept it, and try not to think about it.
Quiet-Crazy Page 10
