Almost Eden

by Anita Horrocks

  “Pleased to meet you.” He held out his hand. It felt cold and limp, like a dead fish.

  Someone started wailing in the lounge behind us.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. Mom didn’t belong in this place. I wanted to shout it in that doctor’s face. Only of course I didn’t. I was way too gutless. “We gotta go,” I said. “See you later, Mom.” I practically dragged Lena outside.

  The fresh air tasted so good I didn’t think I’d ever be able to gulp down enough of it. Lena looked back and waved. Probably Mom was standing at the front, waving good-bye. I didn’t look.

  “I don’t like that place,” Lena said. “I don’t think Mom should be there. She should come home.”

  “Ya think?” I murmured. A seven year old could see it. It was the idiot doctors who couldn’t. Probably they’d been hanging around crazy people so long they didn’t know the difference anymore.

  The Lord works in mysterious ways, says Reverend Funk. That’s an understatement.

  I shoved Eden out of my mind and practiced my apology all the way to Sadie’s place. When we were almost there already a car turned the corner in front of us and drove away. Sadie’s parents were in the front. Sadie, her baby brother, and Jillian sat in the back.

  My two best friends were going somewhere together and I wasn’t invited.

  A few of the gang showed up at the pool–Naomi, Joy, Caleb, and of all people, Mark. Everyone else was probably grounded. I could hardly believe Mark wasn’t.

  “Dad decided grounding wasn’t good enough,” Mark explained. “I start work Monday, hoeing beets.”

  “Youch,” Caleb winced.

  Ask anyone who has done it. Hoeing beets is like hell on earth. Up at dawn and out in the fields by six. Long hours bent over, sweating in the hot sun until dirt sticks to every bit of you. Dirt in your eyes, dirt in your ears, dirt in your hair, dirt up your nose, and dirt lipstick yet, too. The summer Beth hoed beets she sneezed dirt for weeks. And all the while swarms of mosquitos consider you their personal buffet. All for a whopping buck a row. And I’m not talking your backyard garden rows either.

  I couldn’t have picked a better way to get even with Mark. I almost felt a bit sorry for him.

  “Why did you do it?” I had to ask.

  He knew what I meant all right. “I just happened to be there,” he shrugged. “Not a big deal.”

  “For you maybe. I bet Eleanor thinks it was a big deal.”

  He flushed red. Huh. I wondered if maybe he liked Eleanor. That made a whole lot more sense than to think Mark could just be a nice guy when he wanted.

  When I got home after swimming I asked Beth if anyone had called while I was gone, but she said no. So then I called Jillian’s house. Maybe I was somehow wrong about my best friends going off together. Jillian’s mother said she’d gone with Sadie’s family to their cabin at Lake Winnipeg for a couple of days.

  If this was God’s idea of a joke, I wasn’t laughing. He’d answered my prayer all right. Mark wouldn’t be around to bug me anymore.

  Neither would my best friends.

  At bedtime Lena asked if I would read her a story. “Mom always reads me a story.”

  “I’m too bushed,” I told her, rolling around trying to get comfortable. I wasn’t in any mood to read to her, even if I knew I should because Mom would want me to, and besides, it would be a nice thing to do for my little sister.

  Something hard poked my back. Lena was prodding me with the corner of a book.

  “Read me a story or else,” she demanded.

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else I’ll tell Dad what you did last night. I heard you talking with your friends.”

  My own sister. “Give me that.” I grabbed the book. It was Tales from the Arabian Nights.

  Lena jumped into bed and curled up into her pillow. “I want to hear the one about open sesame tonight. Tomorrow you can read the one about the genie in the lamp.”

  Uy uy uy.

  Dear God,

  I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I’m really glad that Mark won’t be able to pester me for awhile. I don’t believe for a minute that this nice guy act he’s putting on is going to last.

  The thing is, God, nothing has turned out the way I thought it would. Aaron was supposed to like me, not Sadie. Now Sadie hates me, and I think Jillian is on her side. I think maybe I’ve lost my best friends. I’d rather put up with Mark than lose Jillian and Sadie. So please, if you don’t mind, can you help me figure out a way to get things back the way they were? If it’s not too much trouble?

  I’m trying to understand your will. I guess you probably want me to be happy for Sadie instead of jealous. That’s going to be awfully hard, Lord. How can I be happy when I’m so miserable?

  Maybe, if you have the time, you could put in a good word for me with Dad, so when I tell him what happened with the police he won’t blow his stack completely. Please make Lena keep her mouth shut until I get a chance to tell him.

  That’s it for now. I know I’m asking an awful lot. If there is only one prayer I can have answered, then my prayer is for Mom to get well so she can come home again. She doesn’t belong in Eden.

  Probably you’d want me to get myself out of this mess with my friends anyways. But I can’t do anything to make Mom better. Even if it’s sort of my fault she’s there. I need your help to make things right again. Thanks, God.

  Amen.

  Trouble follows me closer than my shadow.

  Sunday after church I was working up the nerve to tell Dad about our midnight swim. Sunday seemed like a good day to confess. I’d remind Dad what Jesus said about forgiving others.

  The sermon that morning had been from Proverbs, about how a “soft answer turns away wrath.” Reverend Funk said if we follow Jesus’s example and speak to others lovingly and gently instead of with anger, we can calm many storms. I was pretty sure he was thinking about me and Lena when he wrote his sermon.

  Anyways, it seemed like good advice to pass on to Dad. He’d stayed home from church to caulk windows and went right back to work again after dinner.

  Beth made roast chicken with all the trimmings. Probably because she knew I couldn’t eat chicken. Instead I had two helpings of all the trimmings, with extra gravy. Then I changed into grubbies and climbed up on the scaffold beside Dad.

  “I don’t want you climbing up this high, kidlet,” he right away frowned at me.

  “I’ll be careful.” I watched him for a bit, waiting for a good time. “You missed a pretty good sermon.” I gave him the Reader’s Digest version. “Do you think it works?”

  Dad finished squeezing a line of guck to the corner, then smoothed it out with one quick wipe of his finger. If I was doing that, I’d be tempted to lick my finger to see if it maybe tasted like icing.

  “I suppose it does. Sometimes. Not always. Some people are too full of anger to hear what anyone else says.”

  “Well–” I took a deep breath. “I hope this isn’t one of those times.”

  Dad frowned, but I don’t know if it was at me or because he wasn’t happy with how the caulking looked. I never got to find out.

  “We’ve got company.” I nodded toward the street. Mr. and Mrs. Friesen and their two little brats, Mattie and Jonah, piled out of their car. I’d babysat for them once. Once was for sure enough. Besides which, Mr. Friesen may be a deacon in the church and have the biggest house in town and everything, but he was cheap as borscht when it came to paying babysitters.

  Dad groaned. “I’m never going to get this job done.”

  “Do you think we’re on some kind of list,” I wondered out loud, “and every Sunday someone from church has to come visit us?”

  “Be nice,” said Dad. But then he grinned and messed up my hair.

  We climbed down to meet the Friesens.

  “I hope we didn’t come at a bad time, Isaak.” Mr. Friesen was frowning a little at the caulking gun in Dad’s hands. “We didn’t expect to find you at work on Sunday afterno
on, or we wouldn’t have dropped by.”

  Translation: Dad shouldn’t have been working on the Lord’s Day. Not that it was any of their business. Except in the Mennonite church, everyone’s business was everyone else’s business. That’s the way it was.

  “Doesn’t feel like work, not a bit,” Dad spoke so soft and gentle I did a double take to see if it was really him talking. He winked at me. “The Lord gave us such a beautiful day, Elsie and I thought we should get out and enjoy it together. Why don’t you go on inside? I’ll just take a minute to clean up here.”

  Mrs. Friesen side stepped around Tommy, who was pacing back and forth on the porch. “I’m not overly fond of cats,” she sniffed. “I think I have an allergy.”

  I was thinking that I wasn’t overly fond of her when I caught the look Dad gave me over his shoulder. “He doesn’t usually hang around this time of day, does he Elsie?”

  Oops. I grabbed the empty saucer. Tommy meowed, as if to say, “About time.”

  Beth showed the Friesens into the house. Of course, yours truly got stuck entertaining the toddlers. Mattie and Jonah followed me outside when I brought Tommy his milk. He lapped it up like he hadn’t eaten in a week, but as soon as the first grubby fist went for his tail he was gone.

  So then Lena and I herded the boys up to our room and scrounged around in the closet for old toys. Only Mattie had other ideas. He went straight for my model of the lunar landing module.

  “Whoaa there!” I scooped up the model, setting it out of reach on top of my dresser. “That’s not a toy.”

  For a little kid Mattie sure knew how to give a dirty look. He opened his mouth, ready to holler.

  “Hey, what’s this?” I grabbed a stuffed monkey off my bed and shoved it at him. “Look, there’s a whole jungle of animals here. You can play Tarzan.” I wrapped Lena’s baby blanket around his middle for a loincloth.

  “Ow!” I heard Lena yelp, only I already had one monster to deal with, so I couldn’t check right away to see if everything was okay. Pretty soon though, Mattie was jumping from one bed to the other doing his best Tarzan imitation.

  I was pleased with myself. At least until I turned around and there was Jonah yanking books out of the bookcase. One by one he threw them on the floor, making little exploding noises as they landed. Lena was backed almost into the corner, rubbing her arm.

  I snatched Jonah’s wrist as he went for another book.

  “Leggo!” he said. “I’m reading.”

  “Good for you.” I smiled pleasantly. “Only it almost always works best to read one book at a time. You can pick which one.”

  He picked How the Elephant Got its Trunk, which was my favorite ever since Mom read it to me all the time when I was still little. I loved how the words sounded, especially at the beginning when Mom would read in a hushed voice: In the High and Far-off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. I loved that the Elephant’s child was full of “’satiable curtiosity” and got in trouble all the time.

  The kid had good taste anyways. I sat him on the floor, pulled Lena down beside him and told her to read. Then I started putting back the rest of the books. All of a sudden I didn’t hear Tarzan anymore. Mattie had disappeared.

  Lena paused.

  “Read!” I told her, and went in search of the missing ape-man. I found him in Beth’s room. He’d shed his loincloth and was trying on a bra he’d pulled from her dresser drawer.

  “I know what those are,” he announced, pointing at my chest.

  “You do, do you?” Right away when I opened my mouth I knew I’d made a mistake.

  “Boobs!” The little pervert grinned.

  I choked. So much for Beth’s theory that I didn’t have anything a guy would notice. Too bad the guy was a five year old.

  “That’s it. Come here once. Let’s get that thing off you. Bras are for girls, not boys.” Soft and gentle, soft and gentle, I reminded myself.

  Mattie turned stubborn. “I’m playing dress up.”

  “Nope,” I said cheerfully. Calmly. “N-O. Nay. No way. Not going to happen. Beth would skin us both alive.”

  Mattie hugged himself to keep me from getting at the bra. Unless I got rough I wasn’t going to get it off him. Time to try something else. “Have it your way.” I stepped back as if I didn’t care, shrugging my shoulders. “Makes me no never mind if you grow up to be a girl.”

  “I’m a boy!” he shouted.

  “Well, I’ll tell you a secret, if you promise not to tell anyone. Not ever.” I was whispering now, and looking over my shoulder like I was making sure no one else could hear. “See, the thing is,” I paused for effect. “I used to be a boy, too.” I threw up my hands to show I was powerless to stop the disaster. “If it happened to me, it could happen to you, not?”

  His eyes grew wide. He whipped off the bra and threw it on the ground.

  “Whew! You’re safe.” I scooped up Beth’s underwear and returned it to the drawer before the kid got wise to me.

  “I don’t like you.” He aimed a squint-eyed death stare at me.

  “That’s okay. The feeling’s mutual. But this is my house, and if you’re going to visit you have to do what I say. So there.”

  “I didn’t want to come here. My mom made me.”

  “Moms will do that.”

  “My mom says you and your sister run wild all over town. She says, she says you’re a couple of…of ragamuffins.”

  “Figures.” I was pretty proud of the way I’d kept my cool until then. “What else does she say?”

  “She says she feels sorry for you, ’cause you don’t got a mother at home to teach you–”

  Calm and gentle, my heinie. I grabbed the kid’s arm and yanked him to his feet. “Yeah, well, your mother’s a liar. You should try telling her to mind her own beeswax for once.”

  Judging by the horror on his face you’d have thought I’d just told him there was no Santa Claus. He let out a wail and headed for the door, hollering for Mommy.

  A shriek from my bedroom drowned him out. Jumping Jehoshaphat. It didn’t sound like things were going much better for Lena. I hurried back, schlaping Mattie along.

  “H-he-he–” Lena couldn’t spit out the words. She looked ready to strangle Jonah. The little twirp was waving something in his grubby fist. My stomach did a nosedive. He was waving a torn page with a crocodile pulling on the elephant’s trunk.

  “You, you–!” The only words that came to mind I couldn’t say in front of a kid. “You little toad!” I managed to choke out before grabbing his wrist. I half-carried, half-dragged both of them down the stairs, Lena trotting along behind. Their chubby little legs barely touched the ground until I plopped them on the living room floor beside their mother.

  Mrs. Friesen frowned. “What in heaven’s name–?”

  “These two want to go home,” I said.

  “Elsie, what do you think–”

  “Sorry, Dad. Lena and I are off to run wild around town. C’mon, Lena.”

  I pedaled furiously for a good five blocks before I stopped seething enough to let go of the handlebars. Seething was another good word, I decided. I’d have to remember it, especially if we were going to get a whole pile more visitors while Mom was sick.

  I made two blocks with no hands easy. I wished I’d never have to see those little fiends again. Pretty good chance of that wish coming true. The Friesens for sure wouldn’t be back for a while. One by one I was scaring off the whole church membership.

  Three blocks. I wished Mattie and Jonah would come down with mumps. It was possible. I’d heard it was going around. I was doing them a favor really. Somewhere I’d heard it was supposed to be better for boys to get mumps when they were little, not?

  Four blocks. I wished Jillian and Sadie would like me again. There was some hope for that, maybe. If I found a way to make things up with Sadie.

  Five blocks. I wished I could turn around and go home and Mom would be there.

  Fat chance. I grabbed the handlebars because I cou
ldn’t stop the stupid tears filling my eyes and I couldn’t see right. Fuy, I pulled over and wiped my face with the back of my hand. Lena caught up to me.

  “Are we going to visit Mom?” she asked.

  “Sure. Why not.”

  Sunday afternoon was why not. I hadn’t thought about how many visitors there would be on a Sunday afternoon. The lounge was crowded with all the people, and still more people I didn’t know even were in Mom’s room. Practically all of them looked at us funny, not laughing funny, but funny like they felt sorry for us. We got out of there in a hurry, let me tell you, without stopping to see Mom.

  Then we ran wild around town some more yet, until I was good and sure the Friesens would be gone. When we got home Dad was watching Hymn Sing, which usually put him in a pretty good mood. Except not today.

  “Nah yo” he said, pointing to the stairs, which meant for me to get myself to my room. “This was sure a nice day for killing pigs, thanks to you.”

  No one cared less about my side of the story. My essay on How I Spent My Summer Vacation was going to be easy to write this year. One word would do it. Grounded.

  Now was not a good time to make Dad still madder, so I kept my mouth shut about the midnight swim.

  Lena picked up the torn page with the elephant’s trunk ripped in half and tried to smooth it out. “I’m sorry your book got ripped up.”

  She looked miserable, more miserable than me even. I slid to the floor beside her. “Maybe we can fix it.”

  I tried fitting the torn piece to the page. “Lookit, we can tape it.”

  “I’ll go ask Beth for tape.” Lena jumped up. Without warning she threw her arms around my neck. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell on you, Elsie. Even if you don’t read to me anymore.”

  I was so surprised I hugged her back. “I don’t mind reading to you,” I said.

  Then she ran downstairs and even if I thought I was over crying about it I guess I wasn’t, because just like that for no good reason, the tears were pouring down my face all over again. It was stupid, stupid, stupid to cry. It was just a little kid’s book anyways. Only I’d been praying all the time for seven days now and things were getting worse. If Mom was here she’d fix everything. She’d make everything all right again. She wouldn’t let Dad send me to my room for something that wasn’t my fault, or let Beth boss me around. She’d know what to do about Jillian and Sadie, too.