Hunger of the Pine

by Teal Swan

  At the end of the sermon, they were encouraged to gather in a circle and hold hands while the priest led them in prayer. “God, our father, let us see the kingdom come today. Forgive us of our trespasses. We know that we are sinners and cannot therefore save ourselves, but instead rely upon the mercy of your salvation. Use our problems not to cast us out, but to draw us closer to you so that we might have a saving relationship with you through your son’s redemptive work at Calvary. Give us hope in this life and the life to come that is found only in Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming to earth. We know you to be the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins. Thank you for bearing those sins and giving us, who accept you into our hearts, eternal life. Many of your children standing here today have lost everything, but Lord God, offer them the gift of everlasting life. Where they may inherit all things. For that, and for the glory of the name I pray in, Jesus Christ amen.”

  He spoke as if he was putting words in her mouth and speaking them to some presiding spirit who was either pleased and therefore merciful, or displeased and therefore vengeful. Aria felt humiliated by his words. She could not find in herself a sinner. Instead this “God” they spoke of had stood by and watched year upon year of trespasses against her. It was they that had sinned. It was they that should be asking for forgiveness. And it always struck her as odd that anyone with a life as bad as she had experienced would be asking for life to be eternal. Why not pray for life to be over? she thought to herself, waiting for the spectacle to end. She could see beyond the pretenses. She could see that the person who was most insecure in his relationship to God was the very man trying to secure everyone else’s.

  After the sermon, anyone who felt ready to put their trust in Christ was welcome to step to one side of the room for their salvation. A galvanized metal utility tub that looked vaguely like a watering trough was filled daily with freshly blessed tap water. The priest would instruct any woman who was ready to commit to Christ to sit in the water, holding her left forearm with her right hand and using her left hand to pinch her nostrils closed. The baptisms were short, faith placed on a conveyor belt. The same ritualized words were yelled to the woman being baptized, as if yelling them made them more effectual.

  The whole display made Aria despondent. What upset her most was that night after night, women stepped into the water with the hope that their problems might be solved. She could see it in their eyes when they sat down in the water and waited for the immanence of their baptism. The innocence would return to their faces as if they were children, suddenly brittle in their vulnerability. But Aria knew this promise, like every other, was only the promise of inevitable disappointment. A step backward instead of forward … A step that only those who had not yet accepted their ill fate would be dumb enough to take.

  The women were not allowed to be at the mission during the day. This gave the volunteers time to launder and organize and clean the floors in preparation for that night’s wave of arrivals. In truth, even if it were an option, Aria would not have exercised it. She was eager to escape the tension of the impossible position that they were all placed in. So much of life being homeless, including life at the mission, was like drinking poisoned water. The impossible position of relying on someone for charity, knowing that there were conditions for that charity. It gave a whole new meaning to selling your soul.

  The various religious organizations that offered help throughout the city engaged in a covert kind of parasitism with the people who needed them the most. On the one hand, like everyone else, Aria was too desperate to turn down the help. On the other hand, by accepting it, like a man who is so poor that he has no choice but to enlist in the army, she would have to consent to enlisting in God’s army. Or at least act as if she would. Of the people she encountered who had made it their mission to help people who lived on the streets, only a handful actually cared about them. For the majority of them, it was obvious that their preoccupation with the homeless was in fact a preoccupation with using them. Using them to bolster their self-concepts as good people. Using them to bedazzle their résumés. Using them as write-offs for their companies; using them to increase the head counts of their congregations. And most of all, using them to secure their own place in heaven. Aria hated it. Being a naturally prideful person, she hated to be so desperate that she was forced to give them the satisfaction. Because of this, when the women and children at the mission were sent out for the day, she followed some of that inadvertent advice that she had been given and she went to wait outside the library until it opened its doors at 8am.

  There was a book at the library called A Dictionary of Angels. No one had opened it in what must have been 20 years. It wasn’t that Aria believed in angels. She opened its inelastic pages simply to give herself the feeling of them. She imagined them sitting in the rafters of that voiceless place, being carried to where they wanted to go not by wings, but by the shafts of sunlight coming through the windows. She imagined the room to be heavy with them, watching and championing the people who had buried themselves in the whispers of the books on the shelves.

  Being at the library afforded Aria the opportunity to feel like she was a normal person in society again, less like a castaway. She spent most of her time there thumbing through books that looked like they had been forgotten. There was something virginal about them. Perhaps she felt compelled to give them company because they were forsaken, much like herself.

  With the remainder of her time, Aria reviewed the cookbooks and looked up on the public computers some local resources catering to people in her position. Each cookbook offered an artistic pilgrimage into the world of the chef who had created it. And, like the thorough recipes they contained, each one presented a different flavor. So far, her computer searches had proven to be time well spent. She was able to locate a sober living home and ask the manager there if they had any shoes left over from the clothing donations they received, which the residents might not want. Once the manager had sized her up and established that she didn’t present any threat, she was left there to look through the pile. She pretended to try on a few pairs before pulling the shoelace on a pair of tennis shoes clean of its eyelets. She stuffed it in her jacket pocket before telling the manager that there was nothing that fit her in the pile. She tuned him out when he proceeded to give her a list of alternative suggestions for where she might find some shoes.

  Aria was attached to her All Star sneakers. She felt down to earth and classic in them. When she looked at them, she could sometimes hear the song Cecilia by Simon and Garfunkel playing somewhere in the recesses of her mind. It seemed to her that this new way of living was demanding that she give away every principle she possessed for the sake of basic survival, most especially her principles of good taste. Those high-top sneakers were a form of self-preservation. The one standard she could keep, when all others had to be surrendered.

  When she had walked a safe distance from the sober living home, she sat down to thread the shoelace she had taken into the holes that trimmed the quarter of her shoe. She was now walking around with shoes that boasted two different-colored laces, one white, one neon orange. Despite the noticeable clash, she was glad to feel the balance of the even pressure hugging her feet when she walked. But threading them made her think about Clifford. She imagined his empty collar still hanging from the shoelace, still affixed to the wheel of the Pizza Hut dumpster. To say she missed him was to distort sentiment. So many times in her life, the only words available to describe the way she felt fell short. She did not miss him. The absence of him was a torture.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Let your roots grow down into him and let your lives be built on him.”

  Col. 2:7

  Nina Heng, Aria’s foster care case manager, stared at the stenciled words across the wall. Some partnership, she thought to herself. She was armed that day with a stack of papers in a manila folder, more for her own sense of security than because she needed them. Being in her position meant being an equal partner and t
eam member to the foster parents as much as it did advocating for the children under her supervision. Sometimes she was gladder of that part of the job description than others. This was not one of those times.

  Having grown up in poverty as a first-generation immigrant in Chinatown, Nina had witnessed firsthand just how little say children have in the course of their lives. She had defied her family’s hopes of her becoming a doctor, lawyer or accountant, all careers that they imagined would garner her more esteem. Instead she decided to work in the child welfare system, determined to give a voice to the voiceless.

  On this day, neither Mr nor Mrs Johnson could ever have guessed at her indigent beginnings. She sat in the overwhelmingly neutral-colored living room with both the poise and the costume of a woman who had grown up with a silver spoon in her mouth. She knew they would mistake her stiffness for manners rather than seeing that it was simply a byproduct of the fact that the Christian overtones of the house made her uneasy.

  “The missing persons report was filed over a week ago; we’ve provided them with a photo and Aria’s medical records,” she explained. “We’ve made several attempts to notify Aria’s mother but haven’t been able to contact her yet. We’ve listed Aria as missing with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and we’ve notified the court. As you’re probably aware, this kind of thing is not unusual to see with kids in the system. Do you have any questions for us at this point?”

  Mrs Johnson looked to her husband to respond. She could not believe the lack of surprise on the caseworker’s face. The interactions that had taken place between them in the past had seemed so much less mechanical than this. She found herself wondering if this coldness meant that they were being blamed for Aria’s disappearance or if the truth was that Aria was always just part of the protocol of the job.

  “What do you mean it isn’t unusual to see kids just run away like this?” Mr Johnson said forcefully. “I’m sorry, but it can’t be usual for a child to disappear for almost two weeks into thin air.” Mr Johnson tried not to express his disdain for incompetence in his question, which was really a statement. Unfortunately he didn’t succeed.

  “Many of these children have a long history of running away,” Nina replied. “Aria is one. As you know, she ran away on several occasions from multiple group homes that she was placed in before being placed with you.

  “Some of the kids run away because they miss their families. Aria is one of those kids who, unfortunately, was separated from her mother at a later age and so there may be a desire to find her mother and force the process of reconnection. Others run away because they can’t abide by the rules of the houses they are placed in. Others run away because they are in bad foster homes where abuse is taking place.”

  Mr Johnson recoiled. “Are you trying to imply that we should have been more lenient or that we didn’t provide enough love for her here?”

  He could feel the discrepancy inside himself when he said it. He was terrified that the real truth of Aria’s disappearance had more to do with him than with anything else. But he would not admit this guilt to anyone but himself. Instead he covered it over with defensive bluster.

  He need not have worried. Nina guessed at nothing anyway. Instead, she said “not at all” and proceeded to sit with Mr and Mrs Johnson for just over an hour, suppressing her nerves while calming theirs. She explained the facts and the realities of the situation at hand until the color had all but drained from their faces. There was something in her that liked to shock such obviously idealistic and therefore optimistically delusional people. Although she appreciated their interest in these forgotten children, she also felt that people like this were one reason why the children had been forgotten in the first place.

  Despite her fear about Aria’s wellbeing, wherever she was, Nina walked to her car feeling almost at ease with Aria’s decision to run away. She hated foster parents like this. People who simply did not get that if a child didn’t have a problem before being separated from their parents, they had one the minute they were. People who expected that putting a roof over a child’s head or a warm plate of food on the table or a Bible verse on the wall would somehow whitewash over the pain and make it not exist anymore. Nina found it as abusive to deny and erase the emotional truth of a child as it was to physically abuse them. Call it her personal pet peeve. Driving away, she knew deep down that Aria, with her perpetual feeling that no one cared about her, was just as likely to disappear completely as she was to pop up again as if nothing had happened.

  When all was said and done, Mrs Johnson was once again grappling with her faith. Unable to accept that it was actually as hard as they said it was for authorities to find a child. Unable to accept that, with all her efforts to make Aria feel loved, she hadn’t succeeded. Unable to accept that God had a good plan for creating the suffering behind the statistics she had just been given.

  The other children in the house, having heard the door close, had flooded into the living room to watch cartoons. She sat by the youngest of them, petting her bangs as if this child were the last surviving emblem of her identity as a good mother. She didn’t look to her husband to comfort her or to do anything else useful this time. They would deal with reality in their own way.

  To her surprise, he sat down beside her and stared at the television set. She knew that he wasn’t really watching the TV. She knew he was grappling with the very same reality as she was. The fact that everyone had done everything that could have been done. Now they had to wait, but not wait. Their lives could not be put on hold forever, especially in light of the statistics they had just been given. The only thing they could do was to keep an open door in their hearts if Aria ever did come back.

  Mrs Johnson was wrong. Her husband wasn’t grappling to swallow the same reality as she was. Instead, aside from feeling the increased seriousness of the situation, Robert Johnson was feeling much the same as he had felt when Aria had first disappeared. He was trying to stitch together the two sides of himself that hoped to rip him apart. One part of him felt the guilt and doom of knowing that he was the real reason she’d left. He feared his fate because of it. He hated himself for it. Aria had been more accessible to him and more open to his affections than Mrs Johnson had ever been. He knew it was wrong, but it also felt so right and special that the wrongness failed to prevent it.

  He knew that self-blame was selfish. But it drowned out even the grief at her loss and the worry that he had for her wellbeing.

  The other part of him felt immeasurable relief that Aria had run away. He did not trust himself when she was around. When she was there, something about her seduced him into a state of possession. It both excited and terrified him. He could not control himself. The fevered pleasure of their secret time together was always followed by the feeling that he had sold his soul to the devil. He hated walking through the doors of church, knowing that God wasn’t fooled by him and might never forgive him for what he had done. He felt hypocritical singing the hymns. Even though every person in the pews was facing forward, he could feel their fingers pointed straight at him. He hated crawling into bed with his wife like a dog with his tail between his legs, knowing that if she ever found out what he had done, what he had caused Aria to suffer, their life together would be reduced to shredded paper on the floor. He would lose everything.

  And so the two of them sat there on the couch with the dance of the cartoons in pixels on the screen, their children fixated on it, Clifford in his new monogrammed collar, asleep on the arm of the couch. Two separate lives under one roof. A living arrangement called a marriage. It was a sham, a game of pretense. They could feel that sham peeking through the visage of their lives. It did not compel them to action. Instead, it froze them both where they were seated. Waiting without waiting.

  CHAPTER 7

  A string of boutique shops lined both sides of the street. Any time one of their doors was opened, the unique scent of the store boiled out. One of these shops was a restaurant that was open for both br
eakfast and dinner. During lunch, they would prop open their door and welcome anyone who wanted to eat there for free.

  Aria had found this place in one of her searches on the library computers the week before. She had become accustomed to eating only one meal a day, if she were lucky. For the last two days, that one meal a day had been the soup and breadsticks offered here. She felt shy to go there, guilty even to be accepting charity. But this place was such a comfort. There was nothing fancy about it. The linoleum flooring was the same that had been put there in the 1950s. It was turning yellow and the extent of its pomp was a floral design that looked like it could have been copied from the draperies at an old age home. Plastic folding tables were covered with large sheets of paper that had been clumsily ripped. And plastic chairs, like the ones that had been ordered in bulk for her school cafeteria, were arranged around them.

  A long line usually formed out the door and down the street, a line that boasted all kinds of people. Some who had not seen a shower in months, whose clothes were torn and fetid. Others who looked like they had simply walked off a job site to take opportunistic advantage of a meal they didn’t have to pay for. When Aria reached the front of the line, she could see a collection of giant stainless steel vats, three flavors of soup to choose from each day. Their fragrances mixed into one, like a complex curry. Next to the soups were plastic tubs full of breadsticks left over from the day before. Aria reveled in their toasted and yeasty aroma.

  Each person in line grabbed one of the brightly colored, plastic cafeteria trays, and told whichever staff member who happened to step forward from the disarray of multitasking which soup they wanted. They were handed a generous ladle of that soup in a large styrofoam cup, a plastic spoon with a napkin, three breadsticks and two handfuls of salted peanuts. On the way to the seating area, a row of self-service water jugs and paper cups lined the counter. Some days, Aria was lucky enough to find a table. Other days, she had to find a place on the sidewalk.