“I’m sorry. I didn’t say it well. I meant—”
“No, sweetie, you said it fine. Well, there are folks whose job is to ask people for money to help other people, you know, but they get paid for doing it. That’s a job. I guess the closest to what you mean is Halloween.”
“What is Halloween, please?”
“It’s in two weeks, actually. It’s a holiday for kids. You know those displays we’ve been seeing in stores, the scary masks and the piles of candy, and the pumpkins? Those are Halloween things.”
“Oh. Those things are not always there? I thought the masks were for children to wear during their games. But why are they scary? They are only pieces of plastic.”
“You’re right,” Lisa said with a chuckle. “They aren’t scary. They’re supposed to look scary, though; they’re pretend-scary.”
“Why do people pretend to be scary? And what do the pumpkins have to do with it? I thought the pumpkins were a symbol of harvest, even though here you have the harvest in your supermarkets all year long.”
“Well, I guess Halloween’s a kind of harvest festival, or was once. The way we do it now, kids dress up in costumes and knock on people’s doors, and the people give them candy, except these days you can only go to the houses of people you know, and you have to go through the candy really carefully, because there are some sick people out there, and it’s sad. But anyway, Halloween’s a game more than an honor, like you said your Mendicants are. I’ll take you kids trick-or-treating in our neighborhood, Stan’s and mine. You’ll like it. You get to dress up and ask for candy for one night, and then the next day you get to go back to being your normal self, if you aren’t sick from all the candy. The costumes are the best part, if you ask me. You get to dress up as anything you want. But carving pumpkins is fun too.”
Stan, it turned out, did not think that carving pumpkins was fun, and he did not approve of wearing costumes to ask for candy. He stood in the kitchen the Saturday before Halloween, watching Lisa lug a huge pumpkin in from the car. The children followed her; they had helped her pick the largest pumpkin from the supermarket. “Lisa, what are you doing? Is that for pie?”
“I’ll buy another one for pie,” she said, easing it gently onto the table. “I’ll make you some pumpkin pie, Stan. I know how much you like it. With vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. But first we’re making a jack-o’lantern.”
Stan grew pale. “Lisa, we’re Christians.”
“Yes, we surely are.” Her voice was calm. “Okay, so which of you kids wants to take a pencil and draw the face?”
“Lisa! This is Satanic supersti—”
“Stan Buttle, it’s no such thing! It’s fun, that’s all! Now look here, every single year kids come to our door on Halloween, and you never said I couldn’t give them candy. You think some of those costumes are cute. You know you do. Remember that itty bitty girl dressed up as a ladybug last year? You liked that costume as much as I did.”
“She was a ladybug, not a devil! And we give out candy with Scripture verses on the wrappers!”
“And how many of those kids read them, do you think? Stan, be reasonable. You went trick-or-treating when you were a kid and so did I, and neither of us got struck down by God. Come on, now. Jesus has more important things to worry about than jack-o’-lanterns.”
“Since we have taken in this family,” Stan said stiffly, “it is our responsibility to make sure that they learn Godly ways—”
“And it’s our responsibility to make sure they learn American ways, too, and if Halloween’s ungodly, I’ll eat my hat. Sure, some people use it as an excuse to do bad things. Some people do bad things with Christmas. Is that ungodly too, Stan?”
“I want to dress up as an aardvark,” Poliniana said happily.
“I want to draw the face on the pumpkin,” said Jamfret.
“No,” Rikko said, “Zamatryna should draw the face, because she’s the oldest, and anyway she’s the best drawer.” Zamatryna flushed with pride.
Stan cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Lisa. I can’t permit—”
“Stan.” Timbor stood in the doorway. “Stan, friend, how can the children do this so you will be happy with it? If they dress as ladybugs instead of devils, will that be all right? Or if you bless the pumpkin?”
Stan blinked. Lisa grinned. “Okay, there you go. No monster costumes. Princesses and butterflies and, oh, knights or football players or something for the boys. How’s that, Stan?”
“I know,” Rikko said, hopping on one foot, “I know! We can be the Marx Brothers! There are four of us!”
“I can be Charlie Chaplin,” Poliniana said. “But I want to be an aardvark, too! Lisa—”
“Honey, Halloween conies around every year. You can be an aardvark this year and Charlie Chaplin next year. Okay?”
“Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers are actors,” Timbor said. “You explained that to me, Stan. So the children will be actors too. And that is not evil, is it? You do not think the movies with those actors are ungodly.”
“And aardvarks aren’t evil, because they’re animals, and they were on the ark, and that means God loves them,” Poliniana said, looking winsomely up at Stan. He had told them the story of the Flood the previous Sunday, and all the children had been enchanted by the tale of brave Noah rescuing two of every kind of animal. They had talked about it later, among themselves, wondering if there had been enough animals to hold the souls of all the poor drowned people.
Stan looked very unhappy. “The Devil wears a fair face.”
“And cannot withstand prayers, or so you have said,” Timbor answered smoothly. “If you pray over the pumpkin, and over the children before they go out in their costumes, will that be all right?”
Stan looked at him, because Timbor had never invited him to say prayers before. Timbor looked back, and smiled. Zamatryna, watching both of them, knew that Stan was afraid, and that Timbor was trying to comfort him. But Macsofo and Erolorit, who had just come into the kitchen, both looked worried.
“Father,” Erolorit said in their own tongue, “what of our own blessings?”
“We will have both,” Timbor answered, and then in English, “We will offer our own prayers that these things be done well and with love and kindness, and you will offer yours, and that way our children will be doubly protected, Stan, yes?”
Stan had stiffened. “Yours might—your incantations might—yours might just invite the De—”
“Stan,” Lisa said. “Stan. Baby steps, Stan. Mysterious ways, Stan.” She looked at Timbor and said, “I think that’s a fabulous idea. You do your prayers first, and then Stan will do ours. Two blessings.”
Zamatryna gasped. They all looked at her. “Hallow!” she said, squirming with pleasure at the connection she’d just made. “Hallow in the dictionary means ‘to make holy or set apart for holy use’! And that’s what blessings do! And that word’s the first part of Halloween! Lisa, am I right?” She knew that English was deceptive sometimes, and that words that sounded alike sometimes were not, like horse, which was an animal, and hoarse, which meant unable to speak, and hearse, which was a carriage for dead bodies, and whores, which was such a very bad word that Lisa refused to tell her what it meant. She would find out when she got to that part of the dictionary.
“Yes,” Lisa said. “Yes, that’s exactly right. Very good, Zamatryna. Very good. Timbor, would you bless the pumpkin, please?”
Timbor held up his hands, and the family said in their own language, Spirits of the dead, thank you for succoring us, that we may remain among the living. Repeating the familiar words, Zamatryna wondered whose spirit was in the pumpkin, and what that spirit was learning, and how it would feel about having a face carved into it.
“Thank you,” Lisa said. “Now, Reverend Stan, would you favor us with a prayer?”
She and Stan bent their heads and clasped their hands in front of them. “Dear Lord God Almighty,” Stan said, his voice rough, “protect these innocent little children from
all the evils of the world. Keep them safe from the Devil, Lord, and from heresy and unbelief and idolatry. As they carve this here jack-o’-lantern, let it be a window for them into your own eternal truth, not into the falsehoods of Satan, and when we put the candle in the pumpkin, may that flame be for them your own glorious light of revelation in the Spirit, not the scathing and unquenchable fires of Hell, which burn forever where no balm or comfort is. This we ask in the name of your only son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, who harrowed the righteous souls from the miseries of Hell and brought them into the blessedness of Heaven. Amen.”
“Amen,” Lisa said cheerfully, although to Zamatryna, Stan’s prayer was far scarier than the pumpkin itself could ever be. “All right, kids. We’ve got ourselves one holy pumpkin here. And now we have to carve some holes in it.” Zamatryna giggled: more fun with English. “I’ll go get a pencil, and you kids decide who’s going to draw the face.”
The cousins unanimously elected Zamatryna. She sat at the kitchen table, clutching her pencil and studying the pumpkin. What kind of face should she give it? A happy face, to make Stan happy, but whose?
Darroti’s. It should be Darroti’s face, because she wanted him to be happy wherever he was now; not miserable and roasting like a chicken. She would draw Darroti as he used to be, before he became a crook and began crying all the time. Darroti laughing, juggling pieces of fruit while he hopped on one foot. Darroti giving her a doll.
So she began drawing Darroti’s funny lop-sided eyebrows, his sideways grin, the mole on his cheek that was shaped like a starfish. She drew Darroti happier than he had ever looked at his happiest when he was alive. She concentrated very hard as she drew, and the adults watched her quietly. When she was done, Lisa said, “That’s sure a happy face, Zamatryna. It looks a little like one of Mama’s clowns. Is that a clown?”
“Yes,” Timbor said quietly. “A clown. Happy outside and sad inside.”
Zamatryna looked up. “Grandfather, was it the wrong face to draw?”
“It is a wonderful face,” he said, his voice thick. He bent and kissed her. “Thank you, child.”
Lisa did the carving, and then they put the candle inside, and Darroti’s grin flickered and leapt with the flame; the cousins clapped their hands, and even Stan smiled.
“Now that the pumpkin’s done,” Lisa said briskly, “we need to start thinking about costumes. Poliniana, you want to be an aardvark, right? I’m not sure how I’m going to make that costume, honey, but I’ll do my best.”
Lisa and Aliniana wound up making the aardvark costume out of paper plates and bags. Zamatryna thought it looked like a shapeless mess, but it was purple, and Poliniana loved it. Zamatryna herself had thought of being a ladybug, since Lisa had said that Stan had liked that costume, but a ladybug was a kind of beetle, and pretending to be a beetle made her too uneasy, as if somehow it would be breaking Mim-Bim’s silence. So she decided to be a princess instead, because that meant she got to wear her prettiest dress—a frilly thing with sequins and bows that Lisa had found in a thrift store—and lots of perfume. Jamfret, stealing Poliniana’s idea, decided to be Charlie Chaplin, and Rikko chose to be Harpo Marx; Lisa made him a cardboard harp.
On Halloween, they put on their costumes and got into the van for the trip to Lisa and Stan’s neighborhood. “I told the neighbors we had some friends visiting,” Lisa said. “It’s not even a lie. Just, if they ask you questions, stay in character, okay? Here, kids. I’ve got bags for you.”
Zamatryna liked Halloween, the candy and the admiring ooohs and aaahs of the grown-ups who handed it out. Everyone told her how pretty she was, and they laughed at Jamfret and Rikko. Poliniana’s aardvark was less successful; the more tactful adults asked her what she was, but some of the others hurt her feelings without meaning to. “My, what’s this, the Incredible Purple Blob? Ooooh, I’m scared!”
“I’m not scary!” Poliniana said indignantly. “I don’t want to be scary! I’m an aardvark!”
“Ooooh, an aardvark,” the grown-ups said, scratching their heads. “Well here you go, aardvark. Here’s some candy for you.”
They encountered other children wearing other costumes. Some had green makeup and fake pegs sticking out of their necks; some had capes and very long teeth; some were furry and growled. A number of children were wearing white sheets. “What are you?” Zamatryna asked one of these draped figures, when they had arrived at someone’s door at the same time.
“I’m a ghost! Boo!”
“What is a ghost, please?”
The other child, who was very small, only giggled and said “Boo!” again; its mother looked at Zamatryna and said, “Not from around here, are you?”
When that family had gone away and Lisa was leading Zamatryna and her cousins to the next house, Zamatryna said, “Lisa, what is a ghost, please?”
“The spirit of a dead person, honey, but that’s just a story. Ghosts aren’t real.”
“Dead people live in sheets here?” Zamatryna asked doubtfully. “I thought they lived in the sky, and had wings.”
“That’s right. They live in Heaven. Some folks believe in ghosts, but that’s just a scare story. You don’t have to be scared of any ghosts.”
“What do ghosts do that is scary, Lisa?”
“Nothing, honey. They don’t do anything, because they aren’t real.”
This wasn’t a very satisfying answer, but Zamatryna soon forgot about it in the excitement of making herself sick on Halloween candy. Quickly after that there was the excitement of making herself sick on turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce, and then the delirium of Christmas—a holiday of which even Stan seemed to approve, for a change—with its beautiful trees and ornaments and piles of presents, its stories about angels and sheep and Baby Jesus. When Zamatryna heard the story about the angel who came to say that Baby Jesus had been born, and who told the shepherds not to be afraid, she asked Lisa, “Was that angel a ghost? Is that why it said not to be afraid? Because ghosts are scary?”
Lisa paused in her task of pressing red-hot buttons into gingerbread dough, and said, “The angel was a messenger of God, honey, not a dead person. And ghosts aren’t real. I don’t want you to be scared of ghosts. Angels are real, and ghosts aren’t.”
“But why did it say not to be afraid?”
“Because people are always scared by what’s bigger than they are, and God’s plan for us is bigger than anything.”
“Oh,” said Zamatryna, and ate a red-hot.
Lisa smiled and handed her another one. “So how do you feel about starting school, eh? Now that you all have your papers? Are you excited?”
“Oh, yes,” Zamatryna said, and indeed she was. Stan and Lisa had debated the wisdom of having her and the cousins start school mid-year, when all the other children would already know each other, but finally they had decided that it was more important for the children to get established as quickly as they could. Zamatryna and the cousins had taken a number of very easy tests; Zamatryna would begin fourth grade, where the other students would be a year older than she was. Lisa seemed a little worried about this; Zamatryna didn’t know why. She was older than her cousins, but they still all loved each other. And she had gone to school in the camp and done very well.
So on January 3, wearing her best new jumper and clutching ethnic Barbie, the one who looked most like her, and wearing a backpack filled with new pencils and notebooks, Zamatryna found herself in the fourth-grade homeroom of Sarah Winnemucca Elementary School. Lisa had told her that Sarah Winnemucca was an Indian lady, a Paiute. “She’s ethnic too, honey. It’s a good omen.” But there didn’t seem to be a lot of other ethnic children in this room, and Zamatryna suddenly felt acutely out of place, far more than she ever had in the camp, where everyone else looked more or less like her. At the camp school there had been children of all different sizes. Here she was the smallest person in the room.
The teacher, Mrs. Checkham, smiled at her. Mrs. Checkham had very red hair and very blue eyelids. “Children, w
e have a new student. This is Zama Gan—Gandiffri. Did I say that right, Zama?” When Zamatryna nodded, Mrs. Checkham beamed and said, “Oh, good. Welcome to our class. Can you tell the other children where you’re from?”
Lisa had coached her on this part. “I am from—from Afghanistan,” she said, the lie sticking in her throat. At least it sounded a little like Gandiffri. “But I do not remember it. I am very happy to be in America.”
“Excellent!” said Mrs. Checkham, although some of the other children were staring at Zamatryna in a way she sensed to be less than friendly. “And who’s your friend, there?”
Zamatryna held up her doll. “Barbie,” she said. Surely all the other children knew Barbie.
“Refugee Barbie,” came a boy’s voice from the back of the room.
The other children giggled. “Wrigley!” said Mrs. Checkham. “That wasn’t nice! Tell Zama you’re sorry.”
Zamatryna turned. If she was the smallest person in the room, Wrigley was the tallest. He had hair so pale it was almost white; his eyebrows looked invisible against his pale face. He wore a shirt with a monster on it, one of the monsters with the green face and the pegs in its neck. “Will not. It’s true, isn’t it?” He looked at Zamatryna. “You’re a refugee, aren’t you?”
“I was a refugee. Someday I will be a citizen,” Zama said, as Lisa had taught her.
“That’s exactly right,” Mrs. Checkham said. “That’s excellent, Zamatryna. Children, the Constitution offers protection for everyone here.”
“Oh yes,” Zamatryna said eagerly, back on solid ground. Lisa had taught her about that, too. “This is a wonderful country. Would you like me to recite the Declaration of Independence for you?” Surely the other children would accept her, if she recited the creed of their country.
But instead they laughed. “Nerd,” someone said, and someone else said, “Freak,” and Mrs. Checkham frowned.
“Er, well, no, Zama, we don’t have time to hear that. But you can tell us what your favorite thing about America is.”
The Necessary Beggar Page 13
