Devine Intervention

by Martha Brockenbrough

  Rory threw a LEGO at the wall, so Heidi couldn’t hear her dad’s reply.

  Then her mother’s voice. “But the doctor said —”

  “Doctors don’t know everything.”

  “Fine.” Her mom sounded angry. Had Heidi done something bad? “I’ll deal with it myself.” Silverware clinked against dishes, and a blush heated Heidi’s face out to her ears. She tried to snap a LEGO onto the green base to rebuild her tower, but she couldn’t make it fit.

  The voice in her head was making her parents fight. It would make other kids think she was weird. So she resolved not to talk about him anymore, even though she used to tell everyone about Jerome. And why not? She thought everyone heard a voice like that, just as she thought everyone’s tuna salad sandwiches tasted like the ones her mom made. She even liked having Jerome there, usually.

  There was this one time when she was about three years old and still slept in a crib … she woke up in the middle of the night with a sore throat and fever. She had strep throat — not that she knew it at the time. She just knew she hurt all over. Her throat felt like a scraped knee, and her skin hurt to touch. When she tried to call for her mom, her voice came out as a useless squeak. So she lay in her crib, hugging her stuffed bunny, despairing.

  That’s when Jerome started singing a song she hadn’t heard before. It was different from the music she usually listened to. There were no rainbows, stars, or wiggly worms in the song, and maybe because she was at a low point in her life, the song went straight to her soul and stayed there. The song, she learned later, was called “Freebird,” and Jerome was just finishing up the last words when her mother came to get her.

  She scooped Heidi up and pressed her against her chest.

  “Oh, poor baby,” she said. “You have a fever.”

  She carried Heidi into the bathroom and flicked on the light. Heidi closed her eyes against the brightness, listening to the creak of the medicine cabinet, the crackle of cellophane coming off a new box of medicine. Her mom tipped a plastic cup of it to Heidi’s lips. The liquid tasted sweet and strange, and afterward, her mouth was sticky, but her throat started feeling better right away, and she was almost asleep before her mom tucked her under the flannel comforter on her parents’ bed, where she slept between them for the rest of the night.

  The next morning, Heidi went to the doctor’s office, still wearing her footy pajamas. She said “aaah,” endured a swabbing with a giant Q-tip, and was sent home with a lollipop in her favorite flavor — red — along with a bottle of powdered medicine. Jerome sang songs in her head about candy and sugar all the way home.

  Then her mom put her in front of the TV set with a sippy cup of apple juice.

  “Who’s Jerome?” she said. She’d squatted down and put a gentle hand on Heidi’s knee. Even as young as she was, Heidi could read the concern in her mom’s face. “You were talking about him last night. A lot.”

  “He’s my friend,” Heidi said. She sucked up some apple juice. “He sang to me.”

  “Where did you meet him?” Her mom tucked a strand of Heidi’s hair behind her ear.

  “I don’t know.” Heidi looked at her feet. She could tell it wasn’t the answer her mom hoped for. “Can I have more juice?”

  Her mom nodded, took her cup, and headed for the kitchen. “Where did he sing to you?”

  “In my room.”

  Her mom stopped walking and turned to face Heidi. “In your room?”

  “Yes,” Heidi said, watching Elmo recite a poem to his goldfish. “Last night. Every night.”

  “There was no one in your room last night, honey.” Her voice sounded reassuring. She opened the fridge, swished the juice into the cup, and snapped on the lid.

  Tell her I’m your imaginary friend.

  “He’s my imanigary friend,” Heidi said.

  “Ohhhh.” Her mother handed her the cup of juice. “Imaginary. That’s a big word for you, Heidi. Good girl. Now finish your juice and let’s get you dressed for the day.”

  Tell her you want to wear your conductor overalls.

  “I want to wear my conductor overalls.”

  “Those again?” Her mother wiped the countertops.

  Say “damn straight.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Heidi, I don’t know where you learned that language, but it’s not okay.”

  Holy smokes, that hurt. But it was worth it.

  “What are holy smokes?” Heidi asked.

  Her mother marched over and clicked off the TV. “Enough of this,” she said. “It’s time to get you dressed.”

  So, making a special effort to conceal her invisible friend, Heidi lifted the sandwich. She sniffed it. It didn’t seem quite what she expected. Megan, meanwhile, took the bread off the top of her sandwich and sprinkled the tuna with Goldfish.

  “It’s yummier this way. Try it.”

  Heidi shook her head. That wasn’t what she was used to.

  “Okeydokey,” Megan said.

  Heidi took a huge bite of the sandwich. She gagged.

  You’re not choking, are you? If you’re choking, reach around and thump yourself on the back. I’d do it for you, but …

  She shook her head. She wasn’t choking. It was the tuna. It tasted terrible — pasty and sweet like the cat food her grandmother served Mrs. Kitty. Also, there was celery in it. Celery! Why would anyone want crunchy tuna fish?

  She wanted to spit out the sandwich, but she didn’t want to hurt Megan’s feelings or miss her chance to see ugly fruit. She took a huge gulp of milk. Her mouth was so full she thought she might drown. But then she swallowed. She was done.

  Heidi, did you see that? Megan took the cracker out of her nose and put it in her sandwich. Then she ate it. What a sicko!

  “Uh,” Heidi said.

  “What?” Megan had a mouthful of sandwich.

  “I’m full,” Heidi said. She pushed her plate away.

  Mrs. Lin swooped in, holding what looked like a dented grapefruit. “Heidi, you’ve only had one bite of your sandwich. Don’t you want some Ugli fruit?”

  That’s ugly fruit? I’ve seen worse. Once, my cousin Mike made me eat this apple that was all bruised up. It looked like it had gone fifteen rounds with an angry caterpillar. Now that was ugly fruit.

  “No, thanks,” Heidi said.

  She’d had enough strange food for one day, and her mind was still snagged on what had happened the night before, when she’d heard her parents talking about the voice in her head. There was something wrong with her, something that would make people not like her. Maybe that was why she hadn’t liked Mrs. Lin’s tuna sandwiches. Megan loved them, so it was probably all Heidi’s fault how bad it tasted.

  Her stomach clenched. No one could know about any of this. She forced as much sandwich down her throat as she could, and slipped the rest in the front pocket of her jeans, where it left a damp circle and a funny smell, even after they’d gone through the wash.

  Over the years, Heidi carried the secret inside her, and it behaved like a jungle plant, climbing and spreading everywhere it could find room. There were some difficult times, like the night Tammy Frohlich had a slumber party in seventh grade.

  Five of them attended the party: Tammy, Heidi, Megan, Piper, and Hallie. Or six, if you count Jerome. Megan and Heidi lay on Tammy’s hot-pink shag rug, just a little bit on the outs, even then. Everyone else danced and played air guitar and pounded out drum solos on Tammy’s queen-size bed, which was covered with a zebra-print duvet. The whole thing struck Heidi as impossibly cool, from the size of the bed to the existence of such a thing as a duvet. Heidi came from a world of twin beds and blankets. Overhead, Tammy even had a disco ball.

  Then “Freebird” came on, part of a classic rock playlist they were listening to ironically. Everyone laughed because it ranks as one of the cheesiest anthems ever. Piper sang along to the lyrics, prompting loud complaints from Jerome.

  Nobody sings on top of Ronnie Van Zant. That’s criminal.

  Lodged wh
ere they were in Heidi’s soul, the opening chords made her eyes sting. Heidi breathed deeply and focused on the lyrics. She could feel herself in them, especially in the line about being a bird you cannot change. While the song itself is about a guy who doesn’t want to be tied down, it’s also about being fundamentally broken, unfixable. That was her. She was the bird with the fatal flaw.

  Overhead, the spinning disco ball cast a constellation of light on the ceiling, across the walls, and over their bodies. Spinning stars and painful words and all those voices — it was more than she could take all at once.

  She started to cry, just a little, and Piper was on her like mold on bread. She clicked off the music, stopped singing, hopped off the bed, and loomed over Heidi in her adorable pajamas. “Oh my GOD, you guys! Heidi’s crying.”

  “No, she’s not,” Megan said. She sat up so fast her glasses slid down her nose.

  Heidi wiped her eyes and said, “It’s the lights,” at the same time Megan said, “She’s allergic to dust,” which made it clear to everyone in the room that Heidi actually was crying, in violation of one of the unwritten rules of slumber parties.

  “This is the stupidest song in the world and it’s making you cry,” Piper said. She flopped down on the bed. “You’re hilarious, Heidi. God.”

  “If it’s such a stupid song,” Megan said, “then why do you know all the words?”

  That was the last of Tammy’s slumber parties that Heidi and Megan were invited to. Jerome remained in Heidi’s head, talking to her when she was at school, when she was folding her underpants and putting them away, and of course when she was making the big decision about what to name the terrier puppy she got in eighth grade.

  Come on, Heidi. Corn is a funny name for a dog. Corn Dog. Get it?

  In the one time she was able to ignore Jerome completely, she named the dog Jiminy instead.

  Jerome also talked to her when she was doing her art. At first, he used to tell her what to draw. Things like a shark eating an alligator eating a dog eating a baby. But then he figured out it wasn’t her style. So he offered encouragement, which she loved. There were maybe a couple of hours a day he was quiet, as though he’d gone to sleep or something. Those were the hours her head felt like it was open to the sky, quiet and clean, and it gave her a little taste of how it must feel to have a life that’s really yours, how it must feel to be normal, undamaged goods.

  One night during her freshman year, she couldn’t sleep. She decided to look up her problem on the Internet and see if it had a name.

  It did.

  Auditory hallucinations. The heartening news was that one in ten people hear them. She wasn’t totally alone in this. But even her case was abnormal. Most people hear either a happy voice or a sinister one — an angel or a devil in their heads. Jerome was a lot more complicated. He was sometimes comforting, but mostly just funny and gross, or funny and gross simultaneously. He had a joke about an Irish zookeeper and a gorilla that made her want to laugh and throw up every time she heard it.

  But knowing that Jerome was an atypical hallucination wasn’t the worst part. Nor was the part of the website that told her how serious her problem was, which she read aloud to make sure she understood:

  “When auditory hallucinations are associated with a psychiatric illness, when they manifest frequently, and when they lead a patient to confuse reality with illusion, they can pose a severe disruption in a person’s life.”

  What are you reading? I don’t know what any of those words mean. Reading blows. Let’s go to that website that shows the funny animal videos because the one with the turtle and the strawberry —

  “I’m not reading anything,” she said. “I’m just — leave me alone.” Her reply was more proof that she’d confused reality with the imaginary. She was mentally ill. Sick. Crazy. Disturbed. Any number of words that coated her stomach with ice. Disrupted felt like too mild a word to describe what Jerome had done to her life. But even that wasn’t the worst part.

  Rather, it was that, deep down, no matter how he shamed and complicated her, she didn’t really want him to leave. She loved the quiet parts of her day. But there was something about his voice, his way of seeing things, and just the weight of him in her head that she also loved. When the silence ended and his chatter returned, she invariably felt a flood of relief. He was back. She wasn’t alone. Even if everyone else in her life left her, she had someone. And she wanted to stay that way — even if it meant she was beyond saving.

  At SRPNT, we take an innovative, three-step approach to rehabilitating wayward souls: memorization, group discussion, and practical application.

  First, memorize the Ten Commandments for the Dead (page 29). Feel free to use whichever technique is most effective for you. One of our wards wrote a catchy ten commandments rap. He graduated to Heaven in just six months!

  Next, bring a positive attitude and a willingness to learn to your group counseling sessions. Candidates for soul rehabilitation have mandatory small-group discussions facilitated by our expert counselors. These begin promptly at nine o’clock each morning.

  We’ve assigned you an infant soul to nurture and protect. Treat this soul as you would your own. We call this the Golden Rule™, and in shepherding another soul safely through the mortal plane, you will demonstrate your readiness for graduation.

  Our seraphim-to-wayward-soul ratio is the best in the business because it is the only such program in existence. So take advantage! Pour your heart into the process. Your immortal4 soul will thank you later!

  Though this should go without saying, we know the likes of you well enough that we shall commit it to print: A failure to protect your soul shall result in expulsion to the appropriate level of Hell (see page 87 of your manual for a description of Hell’s nine levels).

  4 Souls are mostly immortal. Under certain conditions, they can dissipate into the cosmos, which is why you should read this handbook with care and attention.

  WHEN I FIRST got to Heaven, or at least the part they let me visit, I was sitting on a hard chair in a room that reminded me of a principal’s office. I kept shifting in my seat, but this was normal for me on account of how I was born with a tail. Just a little one. Lots of people have them and no matter what Mike said, it didn’t mean I was the son of the Devil. I was the son of Doug, and chairs were uncomfortable. That was it. Even so, I used to check my forehead in the mirror every so often to see if I was sprouting horns.

  Two guys with glowing heads and choir robes were in the room with me. Grown-ups. Smiling, but that lippy way old people do before they drop the trouble bomb in your lap. The one behind the desk had a mustache the size of a harmonica. The other one, a bald guy, stood next to him.

  I felt fuzzy-headed, like I was dreaming, so it didn’t strike me as impossible or anything that one minute Mike was aiming an arrow at the orange on my head, saying, “I wish we could make a movie of this,” and the next I was getting busted at a school I didn’t go to by two guys I’d never met, in an office decorated with framed posters that said things like BELIEVE and DETERMINATION and MAKE IT HAPPEN, with pictures of flying whales, three-legged kittens, and people lifting monster trucks off of toddlers. Worse, the background music was classic rock songs covered by a church choir, which ought to be illegal.

  Out the window was an extra-green grassy field where a lot of old people were doing something that looked completely wrong. A couple of them had linked elbows and were moving around in a really fast circle. Two more were holding on to the edges of their robe things and snapping them back and forth, and the rest had pulled their robes up real high so they wouldn’t trip on the bottoms while they were playing leapfrog. You don’t normally see that much leg from old people, so it was hard not to gawk a little. Also, I wasn’t totally sure it was happening outside my imagination, especially on account of the sky was so blue it looked like the stuff Mr. Moder used to clean toilets.

  “What’s up with them?” I said, once I found my voice. “Are they on something?”

/>   “They are frolicking,” said the bald one with the dark skin and shiny head. “Would you care to join them someday?”

  He stood and walked behind my chair and put his hands on my shoulders and made like he was enjoying the view. A little breeze from his robe brushed against the back of my neck and I shuddered. My dad called that a rabbit running over your grave.

  The angels introduced themselves. The one with the lip broom was Gabe. The chrome dome was Xavier.

  Gabe started in on me. “There is hope for frolicking, Jerome. There is hope for you. But only if you want it. You must believe, and you must show determination to make it happen. So we ask again, do you want to be saved?”

  If it meant I had to frolic, then the answer was no. But I knew it wasn’t the one they wanted to hear, so I dodged the question and sort of went, “Derrrrr. Nice posters,” and then I wiped a little slobber off my chin.

  The choir music got real loud then, and let me tell you, “Highway to Hell” isn’t anywhere near as good without the guitar.

  Xavier said, “It is possible his mind is not fully recomposed, Gabe.”

  “I think this could be as good as it gets,” Gabe said.

  They looked at each other and shrugged, and let the air be empty except for the singers. Then Xavier did a little wave with his hand, which turned down the music. He made his voice go all trumpety and announced, “Jerome, thou shalt be a guardian angel in training, and thus shalt thou redeem thyself for thine earthly misdeeds.”

  I sat up straighter and was all, You are shitting me, which is when I found out about the swearing sensors in my skull. If you say that word, or pretty much any of the other swears normal people use all the time, you get a brain shock so bad you could cook bacon on your forehead. Every once in a while I forget, but mostly nowadays I use words like Chevy instead. And flask, motherflasker, apple, jack apple, and apple hole. Among other things.

  After my head stopped sizzling, Gabe touched his fingertips together, church-and-steeple style.