I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.
Dad drew a star beside: “as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small.”
“Things” is capitalized, which makes it important. Frieda says, “God is in the details.” If God is “in all Things . . . in tiny seeds . . . sleeping in what is small,” then He’s in tears and buttons too, in mouse doors, shoe-box crypts, and beeswax cups.
He’s in me too, as long as I stay small.
The poem sounds like a prayer, and I memorize it.
Dad doesn’t remember it when I recite it to him later. “Rilke, you say? Huh.”
I flick the sports page with my index finger, until he suddenly tears it down the crease, and smiles at me with the silly dumpling face of the Bavarian wife in lesson drei.
“Tease all you want, Diamond Lil. Nothing can ruin my mood tonight. Your mother and I have wonderful news!”
“Are we going to Paris?”
Lauren rolls her eyes.
“No, no,” he laughs. “You’ll see. After dinner.” He slaps Lauren’s leg affectionately. It makes a funny flesh sound and leaves a pink print between her shorts and knee. I watch it fade and wonder how long a fingerprint lasts on dead skin. Gramma Frieda said the Nazis kept records—“lots and lots of gruesome records.” Rainer Maria Rilke was German.
When the dinner plates are cleared, Mom brings out a tray of ice cream and cookies. “We have an announcement to make.” She winks at Dad. “We’re pregnant. We’re going to have a baby!”
Again? I thought they were done getting pregnant. I thought it was “hard on Mom.”
“Groovy!” Lauren says. Doesn’t she remember Mom’s miscarriages?
What if Mom loses this baby too? What if it tears her up inside, or makes her sick? “But—”
“But nothing, Lily,” Dad says, wrinkling his eyebrows. “Everything’s fine. We didn’t want to announce it until the doctor saw Kit and gave us his blessing.”
I don’t like it. What’s wrong with my parents, anyway? Haven’t they heard of birth control?
When Judy took the same health class I’m taking, she called one night and sang the dirty version of “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean,” laughing at the lines, “My father lies over my mother, and that’s the beginning of me.” I hung up right away.
“We think three children is perfect,” Dad says, kissing Mom’s hand tenderly.
Why? Do they want another child because something’s wrong with me? If the normal American family has 2.3 kids (and if I’m not normal), then Lauren is one kid, the baby is another, and I’m the .3, right? I stare at the tablecloth, tracing the lacy pattern.
“Lily, aren’t you excited about having a little brother or sister?” Mom asks.
“Which one is it?” asks Lauren.
Good. If she’s so happy about the baby, she can change its diaper.
“There’s no way to know, we’ll have to wait and see,” Dad says.
“Duuhhh!” I shout.
“Lily! What’s wrong with you tonight?” Mom scolds. “I’d hoped you’d be excited about the baby.” Is she crying? “You can leave the table, Lily. No TV tonight, either.”
I blush and stand up. “Good!” I yell. My chair falls to the floor with a bang. My whole body’s mad.
An hour later, the TV chatters and in the kitchen, Jiffy Pop slides back and forth across the burner. I listen as fewer and fewer kernels rattle in the pan, and the aluminum cloud blows up with hot popcorn, reminding me of the atomic cloud they detonated in the Pacific Ocean. I saw a picture of it in Life. Mom says that kind of stuff gives me bad dreams, but I have bad dreams anyway.
I love the smell of popcorn.
“It’s done!” Lauren cries. “Can I open it?”
Let the brat open it. Who cares?
Across the street, the blue glow of Mrs. Merton’s TV silhouettes the lightning speed of her knitting needles. Mr. Garcia drives by. When the Garcias had their twelfth child, another boy, Frieda said, “Catholics are taking over Washington, DC, and our neighborhood.” I like the Garcias.
Mom knocks at my door. “Why don’t you join us?” she asks. “I feel bad. I wish you’d . . . I know you’re worried about me.”
“That’s okay,” I say.
“But you spend so much time in your room already. Come and have popcorn with us, sweetheart.”
I pick up my book—hers actually—it came in the mail today from the Book-of-the-Month Club. “I started Travels with Charley. I like it.”
“Good. So you want to stay in your room?”
I nod.
“We love you, you know.” We means Mom and the fetus now.
Why do starving kids get big bellies? There’s nothing in there, is there? We made big round beads from baker’s clay at school last week. Most of the girls painted the beads and made necklaces for their moms, but I made giant abacus beads.
Suddenly she’s sitting beside me on the bed. “You’ll always be my firstborn,” she says, kissing the top of my head. “You’re excited about the baby though, aren’t you?”
I nod and keep my mouth shut, posting my smile at its door like a prison guard.
* * *
The weather is nice when, three months later, Lauren, Rusty, and I walk home together, talking about the construction work at Rusty’s: their family’s new swimming pool and bomb shelter. The work won’t be done for months, but when it is there will be a neighborhood party to celebrate, complete with a weenie roast and swimming. Everyone’s invited.
We’ll be back from Lake Tahoe by then.
Dad’s car is in the driveway. It’s 4:10.
My stomach cramps again. It’s done it all day long. I even thought I peed my pants once.
As Lauren and Rusty raid the fridge, I hang behind them, sniffing the air. Something’s not right. The room smells of turpentine and hot bitter coffee. Next to Mom’s easel is an uncovered paper plate with dried, untouched dollops of oil paint; her brushes sit in a jar of solvent. She never leaves them wet for very long. Where is she?
Out the kitchen window, the garbage can lid is crooked—a broken canvas props it open. The house is quiet; too quiet. No TV or radio. No stereo. Even the phone is off the hook.
Did Mom and Dad go for a walk?
Something’s wrong.
“Mom?” I’ve got to pee. I need to use the bathroom, but what if she’s in one and Dad’s in the other?
Down the hall, their bedroom door opens and Dad tiptoes toward us. He presses his finger to his lips. All of us stare at him, even Rusty who stops stuffing his mouth. “I need you to go home now, Rust. Something’s come up. We need a little family time.”
Rusty grabs a soda and stops at the back door. “See you later,” he says to no one in particular. He looks sad. He wants to be our brother, Lauren says.
She sucks on a strand of hair while Dad leads us into the living room, motioning us to sit on the davenport usually reserved for company. He squats in front of us, as if we were still little girls, and clears his throat. There are wet circles under the arms of his work shirt. “Girls . . . your mother’s been sick this afternoon. She lost the baby.”
“But the doctor said not to worry this time. He said things would be fine.”
“Is Mom okay?” Lauren asks. Her bottom lip quivers.
I grab my belly and dash down the hall to Mom. I can comfort her. I can say I’m sorry, I can tell her that I’m excited about the baby, no matter what. Lauren and I need a brother or sister. Really. Three is the perfect number, you said so yourself.
I stand for a minute in the threshold of their dark bedroom and stare until Mom comes into view. She lies on a towel on the top of the bed. She sees me but says nothing; she says nothing when Lauren walks in too. Dad opens their closet and takes down her suitcase.
“Where are you going?” Lauren asks, hurryin
g to Mom’s side.
“I’m taking her to the hospital, just to be safe,” Dad explains. “She’ll be fine, girls. Don’t worry.”
“I’m fine,” Mom echoes, only she looks like crap.
Fine, fine, everybody’s fine.
Even when they don’t mean it. Everything is fine.
Gravity yanks my guts anyway, and a thick liquid, like warm candle wax, moves inside me. I know what it is now: I’m starting my period. I hurry into my parents’ bathroom and lock the door.
“Lily!” Mom cries. “Paul, stop her!”
Stop me? Why?
“I’m sorry. I’ll be out in a minute,” I cry, trying to sound as casual as the other girls who have their periods.
Jesus is in there, standing next to the toilet. He draws a zipper across His mouth, and locking the door, I do the same. “Turn around,” I whisper. “I have to pee.” But He shakes his head.
“Lily!” Dad says, knocking hard and fast on the bathroom door.
They don’t understand. I’ve started my period and I need to use the bathroom, this bathroom, now, because it’s close to Mom, and because, because . . . Why is Jesus in the bathroom anyway?
“I can’t come out right now.”
“Are you sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I choose no, Lily. No, you’re not sick. So get out here right now.” Dad’s angry. His voice moves away from the door, saying something soothing to Lauren.
“Lily!” he says again. “Use the other bathroom! Pull up your pants and run. We won’t look. Promise.”
What’s the big deal? I’ll be out in a minute.
Jesus points at the toilet, and waves me over.
Something horrible is in there, something I’m afraid to look at but want to see, something that’s broken Mom’s heart, so I turn away and run my hands through hand-washed nylons draped over the shower rod, instead. While Dad knocks on the door, I also check his suit jacket, thrown on the bathroom floor, for lipstick-stained Kleenex or phone numbers written on matchbook covers. Dad’s gone a lot. “He might have another family across town,” Judy said once. “Or go to a prostitute. Married men do.”
But there’s nothing in his pockets.
There’s something in the toilet though, and I inch up on It.
Him.
Frog Boy floating in the pink toilet water—the freak from the circus, the mistake Dad and Jamie talked about. Neither boy nor girl, human nor animal, but something in between, something so different it’s nearly perfect—floating in a lumpy, soft red feathery mass. My parents don’t want me to see the sad ugly beautiful thing that came from inside Mom and died. But I don’t mind.
I don’t mind at all.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Jesus smiles, scooping it out of the pink water that trickles through His fingers like baptismal water. “Life looks like all kinds of things!” He holds out His hand. “Even dead life.”
My insides cramp when I look at it, like it came out of my body instead of Mom’s.
I smile at Jesus. He’s right. Frog Boy makes everything okay. He’s the .3 in our 2.3 kids average American family, not me. I’m a whole person, not a half something.
I’m not like Frog Boy at all.
I finally started my period; I’m growing up. Soon I’ll be an adult like everyone else.
I smile when I take Frog Boy from Jesus’s hand and place him back in the toilet bowl. Until a few hours ago he lived inside Mom, surrounded by stars. I start to tell him about our family when I feel a gush between my legs.
“Can you turn your back?” I ask Jesus.
When He does, I reach into my panties and touch the wet. It’s the same watery pink color as the toilet, and it smears my fingers. I tuck some tissue in my underwear. “It matches,” I say, smiling, looking at the fetus in the toilet bowl. “It matches. Look!”
“No thanks,” Jesus says. He’s examining Frieda’s Kleenex doll cozy, its white plastic face and big crocheted skirt. “Strange doll.”
I finally open the door.
“You okay?” Mom says, patting the bed beside her. “Sit with me before I go.” Lauren sits on the other side, her legs stiff and straight, her face red from crying. “Do you know what that was, Lil?”
Of course. I nod, and glance back at the bathroom.
“Never mind that now,” Mom says. Her suitcase stands at the end of the bed, her favorite sweater draped over it. “Your father’s taking me in. We’ll be home before you go to bed.”
Outside, Dad opens and closes his car doors, clearing the backseat for her. He stops to talk to Connie Marks.
“Mrs. Marks will stay with you while we’re gone,” Mom says.
I’ve been babysitting us for months, but I don’t argue. I know it’s selfish to think of myself right now. I know that, but I still need to tell Mom what happened. That I started my period and everything is going to be okay. With or without Frog Boy, things are fine.
Fine, fine, everything is fine.
A “tiny seed” sleeping “in what is small.”
I recite:
I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.
“Dad’s poem,” Mom smiles. “Rainer Maria Rilke. You memorized it.”
“Mom’s sick, “ Lauren lectures. “This isn’t school.”
“It’s beautiful, Lily. You did a wonderful job of memorizing and reciting. Thank you, sweetheart.” When she puts her hand on her belly, a tear slides down her cheek.
“Mom?” I say quietly. “I started my period.”
“Gross,” Lauren says.
Mom smiles weakly. “We’re having quite a day, aren’t we?”
I wish I had something to give her. I wish I’d made her a necklace instead of using the beads for my abacus.
“Do you remember what we talked about before?”
“The Kotex? Yeah. They’re in a shoe box in my closet.”
“Double gross,” Lauren says.
“Good girl. I’m proud of you.” Suddenly Mom sits up and turns pale. “Damn it,” she says, lifting her shirt. She looks between her legs. “I went through everything.” Blood pools under her butt, soaking her pedal pushers, the towel, and the new bedspread.
Lauren pulls away.
“Don’t worry, girls. It’s just Old Mom Nature saying, Not this time, Kit.” She sniffs back a tear. “Will one of you get me another . . .”
Lauren jumps off the bed and grabs a towel from the bathroom. “Thanks, Lima Bean.” Mom tucks the towel under herself. “What a mess,” she mumbles. “My poor bedspread!”
“Ready?” Dad asks, appearing in the doorway. He looks at Mom and the blood-soaked towel.
“Sure.”
“Connie’s here, if you need anything, girls.” He walks to Mom’s side of the bed. “We need to get going, sweetheart. Anything else?”
Mom’s voice is clear and strong when she says, “The bathroom, Paul. Flush the toilet, will you?”
“No!” I cry.
“Lily,” Mom says firmly, “look at me. Look at me, Lily. I need your help too. Get me my purse. I want to take it with me to the hospital.”
“I’ll get it!” Lauren calls, jumping off the bed.
Go ahead. Like Kilroy or the beggar boy on Burnside, like Frog Boy, I’m numb from the waist down.
I bet if you look, there’s nothing there.
Chapter 17
Poor Martin Hornbuckle
I can’t find Mom.
Her car’s here, so she’s not at the store. She’s not painting or cooking or working in the flower beds. She’s not with Dad because he’s on a business trip. Mr. Marks is recovering from back surgery so he’s home, but she’s not with Mrs. Marks because Connie took Rusty and Lauren to the zoo.
If I weren’t sick, I’d have gone too.
It’s nice and quiet outside. The carpenters ha
ve left for the day. The bomb shelter will take another month, but the carpenter who wolf-whistled at Mom told her they only needed ten days to finish the pool. “Come over and sunbathe,” he laughed. Mom smiled; men always want to see her body. She bought a new swimsuit for our trip to Lake Tahoe, but she’s not showing it to Dad until we get there.
“Mom?”
It’s the flu this time. I’ve been in bed two days and promised her I’d stay down until four o’clock when The Mike Douglas Show comes on TV, but I can’t stand it another minute. Besides, I need to talk to her about Martin Hornbuckle.
“Mom?”
There’s no answer so I sneak into the den and grab the Life magazine she doesn’t want me to see. Stuck between Sunset, Look, and Sports Illustrated, in the fan of magazines on the coffee table, poor twelve-year-old Martin Hornbuckle stares at me from the cover with his eighty-year-old eyes. The same Martin Hornbuckle with the growing-old disease who’s coming to Frieda’s church on Sunday. “They call him America’s Most Unique Inspirational Speaker,” she said. “He’s addressing several congregations in Oregon. He’s a celebrity. We’re lucky to get him.”
It’s spooky, but I want to go. What does it feel like to be a little kid stuck in a body that’s dying of old age? And why’s he speaking at churches? Church won’t help him. Jesus lets people die all the time.
He taps me on the shoulder. “Lighten up,” He says. “Martin needs something to believe in.”
“Bullshit,” I say. It feels good to say it, almost as good as barking.
“I’ll let that slide because you’re sick.”
I flip through the magazine pretending to ignore Him, but He won’t let me. In the Record of the Month advertisement, Jesus stands on a surfboard advertising Jan &. Dean’s Golden Hits. On page sixty-five, He pulls up the collar of a London Fog raincoat; He sits in a café smoking a Kool on page ninety-eight.
“Have I got your attention now?” Jesus smiles. “Take the magazine and go back to bed, Lily. We’ll talk about poor Martin Hornbuckle when you’re better.”
I tuck the magazine under my arm and start out of the room. Then I see my opening. “Wait, I want to talk to you about getting us a bomb shelter.”
The Shark Curtain Page 21
