Angel in the Parlor

by Nancy Willard

  “What are you giving him?” inquired Etta.

  “Scalded calves’ milk,” said Helen.

  “You could add a little honey. That won’t hurt none. John the Baptist ate honey in the desert and he grew up strong as an ox.” As Etta spoke, she peered at the baby knowingly over her glasses. “Is that a scratch on his nose?”

  “He scratched himself in the night. His nails are so small I don’t dare cut ’em,” explained Helen.

  “If it was mine,” said Etta, “I’d bite ’em off. ’Course I’d never bite anyone else’s baby,” she added quickly.

  A white star gathered slowly at the end of Etta’s crochet hook. Comfort and mercy dropped upon me in good smells that filled the ktichen. I was in heaven. I was lying in a giant cookie jar. Cuckoo, cuckoo, shouted the bird in the living-room clock. On its fifth cry, the grandfather clock in the hall started bonging away, nine times.

  “Galen, take your thumb out of your mouth,” said Helen sharply.

  Galen took it out and examined the yellow blister on the joint.

  “I had a niece who sucked her thumb,” observed Etta. “Her mother tried everything. When she got married, her husband said, ‘I’ll break her of it.’ She finally quit when she lost her teeth.”

  “Better to suck your thumb than smoke,” said Etta.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s wicked,” said Helen.

  “It’ll stunt your growth,” said Etta. “I had an uncle who smoked young. He never grew more’n three feet tall.”

  Deep in a shaggy dream, Nuisance growled and thumped his stubby tail.

  “I think I’ll latch the screen,” said Helen, and she stood up fast. “Caleb Suarez told Penny if she wouldn’t go out with him tonight, he’d come and break down the door. But I do love the fresh air.”

  “You want to go upstairs and see Penny’s stuff?” whispered Galen.

  “Sure,” I whispered back.

  I was more comfortable in the same room with Penny’s stuff than with Penny. Penny was sixteen and religious, but like every other girl in the high school, including my sister Kirsten, she dreamed of Caleb and would dream of him long after she was married to someone else. Whenever she looked at her mother, she would burst into tears, and her mother would shout, “So sleep with him! Go ahead! But let me tell you, you can’t get away from your upbringing. You’ll feel guilty all your life. It’s a sacred act, you don’t just do it with any boy that comes along.”

  Caleb had black hair, all ducktailed and pompadoured, blue eyes, a handsome face, and a withered arm—the scar of infantile paralysis, my mother explained. His father was one-quarter American Indian and owned the Golden Cue Pool Parlor and came, when Caleb was six, from Sioux City to find his relatives in Northville. There were no relatives, and as far as anyone could see, there was no wife.

  Caleb spent his days at the fire department, reading and waiting for fires, and his nights drinking at the Paradise Bar.

  “He’s read all the books in the library; now he’s starting the second time around,” said Mr. Malory, shaking his head at such folly. “I will say one thing for him, though. I’ve never seen him drunk.”

  Galen turned on the light in the room Penny shared with Helen. Over a dressing table littered with bottles hung a big framed picture of Jesus, surrounded by photographs of brides clipped from the newspapers.

  “That’s Penny’s,” said Galen bravely, pointing to the picture. His voice was too loud for the room, as if he were shouting before a shrine. “We gotta go now.”

  “Did you tell anyone about God?” I asked.

  “I wanted to, but I couldn’t,” said Galen.

  “Me neither.”

  Down the hall, Helen was putting the baby to bed. Suddenly it cried furiously, and Galen and I hurried back to the kitchen. Seeing us, Nuisance lifted his head, and his rabies tags jingled like harness bells.

  “Here, Nuisance,” I called.

  “His real name is Winthrop,” said Galen. “He has a pedigree. If he had the rest of his tail, he’d be worth a lot of money.”

  Nuisance loped after me into the dark dining room, his nails clicking on the bare floor. China gleamed on the sideboard like the eyes of mice.

  “Galen, get me a piece of chalk.”

  “If you change Nuisance into a donkey,” said Galen weakly, “my mother will never let me play with you again. That’s my dad’s best hunting dog.”

  But he brought the chalk.

  “Sit, Nuisance,” I commanded.

  Nuisance rolled over. I drew the circle around him and stepped back.

  “Out of my way, Galen.”

  Galen did not need to be told twice. I fixed my eye on the golden shape of Nuisance, motionless, save for the stump of tail which wagged.

  “Now I am going to change you into a donkey,” I whispered.

  And because it was Nuisance and not Galen, I sang to him:

  Nuisance go round the sun,

  Nuisance go round the stars.

  Every Sunday afternoon:

  one, two, three—

  The sweetness of apples and incense hovered around us again. But nothing happened.

  Then suddenly Nuisance jumped three feet into the air and, barking wildly, charged across the kitchen and crashed through the screen door. Etta shrieked and Helen came running.

  “Is it Caleb?” she yelled.

  “Nuisance broke down the door,” shouted Etta. “You better lock him up good.”

  Galen burst into tears, and Helen sank to her knees beside him.

  “There, there, honey lamb. No one’s going to hurt you. Helen will lock the doors and windows.” She held his head against her neck. “And I’ll let you play with my Old Maid cards.” Galen’s shoulders stopped shaking. “And I’ll even let you touch my new lampshade.”

  “Can I go down cellar and see your chest?” Galen said in a sodden voice.

  Flicking the switch by the cellar door and taking each of us by the hand, Helen led us down the steps, dimly lit, past a clothesline sagging with diapers, to a big brassbound chest.

  “Can I open it?” snuffled Galen.

  “Go ahead,” said Helen.

  So Galen lifted the lid very slowly. It was like a thing from dreams, this box, big as a coffin, full of bedspreads and blankets and dishes. This is the way I would like to keep my whole past, I thought, folded away where I could take out last year’s Christmas or my first birthday and play dress-up whenever I liked. Resting carefully on top of a platter painted with turkeys, the lampshade waited. It needed a light to show clearly the man and woman walking in a garden painted on the front.

  “I got it for seventy-five cents at a rummage sale,” Helen announced proudly. “It’s not paper, either. It’s real satin, and all clean.”

  “Too bad it’s purple,” I said thoughtlessly, and then, seeing I’d hurt her, I added, “but I like the two people in the garden.”

  “What comes after the garden?” asked Galen, pointing to the edge of the picture.

  “Nothing. Don’t poke at it,” said Helen crossly.

  And she herded us upstairs.

  Etta had gotten control of herself and was crocheting as if nothing had happened, but her face looked like bleached flour. The lower half of the screen door was hanging out, torn in two—I touched it, awestruck. Helen went to the sink and started snapping the stems off the beans heaped on the drainboard.

  “Etta,” I said, and I felt my tongue thicken in my mouth, “Did you ever see God’s face?”

  “Nobody has ever seen God’s face,” said Etta. “Only His hinder parts.”

  Helen touched her buttocks absentmindedly.

  “His what?” said Galen.

  “His hinderparts,” repeated Etta. “Nobody will ever see His face till the last day.”

  Etta knew the Bible better than any of us, but she didn’t know I gave God the head of an ass.

  “How do you know which day is the last day?” asked Galen.

  “When all the signs have
come to pass, that will be the last day,” said Etta mysteriously. “Oh, they won’t all come at once. They’ll be spread out over the centuries, for a thousand years in the Lord’s sight are but as yesterday when they are past.”

  “Something’s burning,” exclaimed Helen. She peeked into the soup pot, pushed the chicken legs down, clapped on the lid like a jailer, and turned off the stove. Then she said to Etta, a little sadly, “All those things are mighty hard to understand——”

  A crash outside cut her off. For an instant none of us moved.

  “The raccoon is rummaging through the garbage pail again,” Helen squeaked. “He comes pretty near every night.”

  We all exhaled.

  “Go on about the signs,” I urged Etta.

  Etta smoothed a finished snowflake across the back of her hand.

  “When my grandfather was a little boy, he saw the darkening of the sky. That’s one of the signs. The cows came home and the chickens went to roost just like it was night. And stars fell out of the sky. People thought they would get burnt up, and some folks killed theirselves.”

  “Is this a ghost story?” asked Galen nervously.

  Etta scowled at him over the top of her glasses.

  “I’m telling you what’s in the Bible.”

  She opened her purse and pulled out a small book bound in white paper. “It’s the new translation, and it only costs twenty-three cents. You could own three of ’em if you wanted to. And it’s got pictures. See——”

  “Who’s that wild man?” demanded Galen.

  “Where? Where?” cried Helen.

  “There.”

  He pointed to the picture of a hairy man dressed in skins waving a big stick.

  “That’s John the Baptist,” explained Etta. “But I believe this one is my favorite. It’s from Revelations.”

  Over a crested wave, the red sun and the black moon bobbed like apples, and fish floated belly up among the spars of sunken ships.

  “And every living soul in the sea shall die,” said Etta.

  “Fish don’t have souls,” said Helen.

  Etta frowned.

  “But that was the title of our lesson last week! What could it mean, then?”

  “Don’t fish have souls?” I asked, surprised.

  “Of course not,” answered Helen. “Only people go to heaven.”

  “What happens to the animals?” I hardly dared ask her.

  “They turn back into earth.”

  “All of them?”

  “All of them.”

  And my lovely spotted cat who loved nothing better than to nap by the stove in winter, would she too lie down in darkness? But I knew there was no point in asking about special cases if the rule applied to all. No doubt God didn’t want puppies chewing up His golden slippers and peeing on His marble floors. I felt like crying, I could not imagine a world without animals. Even if I had none around me by day, I would need them at night. For whenever I could not sleep my mother would say, count sheep. I counted, one, two, three, four, and waited for the sheep to appear. But it was always buffalo that came to be counted, shaggy yet delicate, as if sketched on the walls of a cave. They floated out of the wall by my bed, crossed the dark without looking back at me, and passed silently into the mirror over my dressing table.

  Suddenly I thought: if God does not mind wearing an ass’s head, then why doesn’t He let the whole animal into heaven?

  “Not a one will get there, because they have no souls,” said Helen.

  “Do you think Nuisance will come back?” asked Galen.

  Helen sighed.

  “Dogs always come back.”

  “Tell some more signs,” I said.

  “In the last days,” continued Etta, “God will send His star, just like He did when Christ was born. It will look like a big hand coming closer and closer. And then God will appear, not just to a few people in Sweden or Japan, but to everybody at once, like lightning.”

  Somebody tapped on the window over the sink, and a man’s face lurched past, like a cracked moon.

  “It’s Caleb!” screeched Helen. “Don’t let him in!”

  We all rushed to close the kitchen door, but Helen rubbed the latch on the screen the wrong way, and in walked Caleb with his hands up, empty whiskey bottles on all his fingers.

  “I’ve come to pick up Penny.”

  “Penny is at church,” said Helen, her voice shaking.

  “Church? Well, I’ll wait for her.”

  “Suit yourself,” sniffed Helen. “When my father comes home, you’ll get it.”

  “Me and your old man are going hunting together next Sunday. Doves are thick this year.”

  “You shoot doves!” cried Etta. “Dreadful!”

  Caleb shook the bottles off his fingers, one by one, and lined them up against the stove. Then he pulled off his sheepskin coat and threw it on the floor. Then he kicked off his boots. I could see skin peeking through his black socks like stars.

  “Tell your dad to keep his bottles at home,” said Caleb. “Tell him I saw ten empties running up Mulberry Street like a pack of dogs.”

  He drew up a kitchen stool and sat down.

  “You can wait here till doomsday,” snorted Helen. “No girl will look at a man who can’t make a decent wage for himself.”

  Caleb smiled. He’d seen plenty of girls looking.

  “I make a decent wage. I got my own place now too. A little cabin behind Mount Holly. No water except for a stream. No electricity. No cops.” And then he added as if it had just occurred to him, “Why doesn’t Penny want to go out with me?”

  “Because you’re no good,” Helen said vehemently. “What woman wants to sit up with a man on Mount Holly? A woman likes to be comfortable.”

  “Penny said that?” asked Caleb, surprised.

  “Mother said it,” admitted Helen.

  I knew it was all over now with Mrs. Malory. Caleb’s revenges were swift. When a Mercedes nosed his old Ford out of a parking place, Caleb came back to let all of the air out of the tires and stole the hubcaps. He sent snakes to those who spoke ill of him; Reverend Peel’s wife received one in a teakettle, sent anonymously, which slithered out of the spout the first time she filled it with water.

  “What do you do on Mount Holly?” I asked him.

  “I watch for forest fires and make shoes.”

  “Shoes?” exclaimed Etta. “Who taught you how?”

  “I taught me. When I’ve learned everything there is to know about leather, I’m going out to the West Coast to make me a fortune.”

  A thin wail brought Helen to her feet.

  “The baby wants his bottle,” she said brusquely, and hurried out.

  “If you ever need a sitter,” Caleb called after her, “I’m available.”

  Etta snorted, but Caleb paid no attention and turned instead to Galen.

  “I’ve got a little present here for Penny.”

  And he bent down and began searching through the pockets of the coat he’d thrown on the floor. A couple of quarters spun out on the linoleum. A key ring with a medal on it plunked at his feet.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “That’s Jude, Saint of the Impossible,” he answered, pocketing it and still searching.

  “But you ain’t Catholic, are you?” said Etta.

  “No, I’m not Catholic. I got it from a buddy in the army.”

  “Do you believe in God?” persisted Etta.

  Caleb shrugged. “When I was an altar boy in Sioux City, I wanted to be a preacher.”

  “You! A preacher!” shouted Etta, turning red. “The way you drink!”

  “Christ drank,” said Caleb quietly.

  “And running around with women!”

  “Christ ran around with a lot of women.”

  Etta was speechless. She wanted to walk out on him, but she could not take her eyes off what looked like a couple of leather bandages he was unrolling across his knees. Black leather, painted with flowers, the toes tooled with leaves, the cuf
fs studded with nails and, unmistakably, silver garters at the top.

  “What beautiful boots,” I told him.

  “These are stockings,” he corrected me.

  “Leather stockings?” exclaimed Etta, astonished. “I never heard of leather stockings.”

  “Well, now you have,” smiled Caleb.

  He picked one up and stroked it like a cat, then laid it across the kitchen table. For the first time I noticed he used only one arm. I nudged Galen and whispered: see, one arm.

  “How did you hurt your arm?” asked Galen loudly.

  I saw Etta close her eyes.

  “Jumping down Niagara Falls when I was young.”

  Etta opened them again.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Twenty-three.”

  This saddened me. Anybody over nineteen was, in my mind, old enough to be my grandmother. As Caleb was leaving, we heard Helen tiptoeing down the stairs. Waving to us, he called over his shoulder.

  “I’m going to church, ladies. And if Penny is with anybody else except her mother and her sisters, I’ll cut him in two.”

  The privet hedge was wet with dew. I hoped no slugs would drop on us as Etta pushed our way through.

  My mother, barefoot, in her bathrobe, let us in.

  “It’s nearly midnight! Where have you been?” she hissed.

  But instead of scolding Etta, she scolded me. “If you want to get up for the sunrise service,” said Mother, “you’d better go to bed instantly. You and Kirsten are sleeping on cots in the kitchen. Your aunt and uncle are here. Etta, I made up the sofa bed for you. It’s too late for a cab.”

  “My nightgown is in my room,” I whispered.

  “Never mind your nightgown,” said my mother. “Uncle Oskar’s asleep in there. You can sleep in your underpants. And if you smell the ham burning, wake me up. I’ve got it on low.”

  Kirsten was sleeping in the middle of the room with a pillowslip over her head, which she started wearing the night a bee crawled into her hair. Though I lay perfectly still, I could not fall asleep. The buffalo did not come to be counted, and the enamel pots hanging on the walls watched me like a dozen moons.