Until He Comes: A Good Girl's Quest to Get Some Heaven on Earth

by K. Dawn Goodwin

  At gym, I ran to show Ms. Lyons my feet, dizzy with excitement. The problem was, once in front of her, I couldn’t think straight. I knew she was beaming down at me with that incredible toothy grin, but I was afraid to look directly at her, for fear I’d melt under the searing heat lamp of my own admiration.

  “Ms. Lyons,” I squeaked dryly, turning to show her the backs of my ankles. “Ms. Lyons… look.”

  “Oh, I like your socks!” she said, smiling big. She was so nice.

  Then I sprinted away as fast as I could, to line up for dodgeball. Being in the same gym with her made my body manufacture its own biological heroin. Pure elation. Even if I wasn’t looking at her, just knowing she was within range completed me. I threw the ball for her. I ducked for her. I got hit in the head, well, because I sucked, but I knew Ms. Lyons could tell it was for her.

  Sometimes, when my class passed by the gym on the way to music, I’d break out of line so I could peek in the rectangular windows of the gym door, tugging on the handle so I could stick my head in.

  “Hi, Ms. Lyons!!” I’d call into the echoey rafters. And she’d stop whatever she was doing to wave.

  Sometimes it wasn’t enough to just love her socks. I had to organize my complicated thoughts in my diary.

  Ms. Lyons is my favorite teacher.

  She has pom-pom socks.

  She is nice.

  I really really really like Ms. Lyons.

  Sometimes I’d write a note and sneak it into her hand as we were filing out of gym class.

  Dear Ms. Lyons,

  You are the nicest teacher. You are my favorite. I love your socks! Will you wear your red ones tomorrow? I’ll wear mine too.

  Handing her the folded note choked me with embarrassment, but gave me the same feeling as meeting Jesse in the back of the cafeteria. It eased the yearning, then made me cross-eyed for more.

  The next day, when I saw her red pom-poms peeking out of her white sneakers, I had a small seizure. Careful not to swallow my tongue, I ran up to her, breathing hard. My posse of girlfriends followed behind me, because they had taken my cue and gotten pom-poms too. I glanced back at them and secretly rolled my eyes. Please. This had nothing to do with fads. This was connection. This was devotion. Go away.

  “Hi, Ms. Lyons,” I said, approaching slowly, each step full of meaning. “I wore them.”

  “I wore mine too!” said another girl.

  “Very nice, ladies.” Ms. Lyons laughed.

  I beamed up at her, twisting, unable to think of anything to say, besides, okay bye!

  At the end of second grade, I learned that she was moving away, and I realized it wasn’t just her socks. It was her. The shape of her body, the feel of her eyes on me, it all made me unspeakably happy, and unbearably sad.

  Dear Ms. Lyons,

  I can’t believe you are moving away. I don’t want any gym teacher but you. Please give me your address so I can write to you. I’ll miss you. I will always love your socks. That’s all for now.

  That summer, she wrote me back. I held her letter in my hands. Yellow legal pad. Blue ink. Her hands had slid across this very same page. I smelled it, looking for a clue. She told me she missed me too, that I was a great girl, and to keep writing. And she was still wearing her socks.

  It took me a long time to get over Ms. Lyons. She had a special place in my heart. A place that was only rented out months later, to Connie, my new babysitter. She was seventeen and didn’t wear any socks. But she had curly hair and supple, tan thighs. And I could hardly wait to start sitting on them at story time.

  3 | Relocating to Babylon

  “Come hither, I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot.”

  —REVELATION 17:1

  In third grade I found out we were moving to Avon. I’d asked if it was Avon like the makeup lady. But no, it was Avon the picturesque Connecticut suburb named after Shakespeare’s birthplace, and makeup was quite beneath the well-educated ladies of the town. Instead they favored preppy bobs and year-round ski tans.

  Avon was the lush, woodsy kind of place where Volvos ran free, where people came for the PhD per capita schools but stayed for the golf. Their ethnicities were many but their dream was simple: that they might raise nightmarishly good-looking children who would someday conquer other children with their expensive clothes, popularity, and scholar athlete accreditations. And, in the process, never have to run into one single black person.

  I was shocked that I had to leave Armpiton. At Heritage Christian, seven out of the eight girls in my class adored me, and all the boys had secret crushes on me. When I walked into the classroom, they clustered around me, hurrying to be the first to save me a seat. Days before a field trip, I’d have to perform triage on all the incoming requests for bus partner. Sometimes Jenny wept if I didn’t pick her. Sometimes Linda tried to make me jealous by inviting Mia over, poor thing. Any sleeping bag without me in it was destined to be kinda lame. But how could they help but covet me, with my proclivity for light sinning and imaginative seminudity? Their worship fit perfectly with the Kotex commercial of a life I knew I was meant to have. Ah, these poor lower-middle-class Christian Connecticut girls. Their baseline of prudishness and lack of access to a Conair curling iron made it so easy for me to feel like Smurfette in a colony of eunuchs. Like Blair on The Facts of Life.

  But now, my hit show was getting dropped in its third season. This did not fit with the paradigm of my hair getting blonder and more powerful, so I figured it had to be like an unexpected promotion. My old life had simply reached its expiration date, and somewhere new friends were waiting with bated breath to behold my beauty and accept Jesus as their one true Savior. I was about to level up.

  But first I had to break the news to my harem. One afternoon, I called an impromptu recess meeting behind the portable classrooms.

  “I have something to tell you,” I said to them, pausing to look dramatically off into the distance, like Charles Ingalls sometimes did. “I’m moving away… far, far away. To Avon. And, once there, I’m… going to go… to public school.”

  Linda sucked in her breath and Mia clasped her hands over her mouth. Jenny shuddered. It was agreed: they couldn’t waste time. They had to pray right then and there.

  My pretties. They were the most perfect studio audience an eight-year-old could ask for.

  “Mom says it’s one of the best public schools in the state,” I offered, as they joined hands and bowed heads.

  “Dear Jesus,” Linda prayed, ignoring me, “please don’t let her get tempted by Satan and stuff.”

  We closed with “in Jesus’s name, amen,” which was like hitting the Send button, then went to hang upside down on the monkey bars so the boys could see the shorts we wore under our jumpers. Making chitchat with our skirts about our ears—this of course was my idea.

  “In Avon, school doesn’t start until eight thirty,” I continued to brag, though it was harder to talk with the blood pooling behind my eye sockets. “And you get thirty minutes for recess… and a real cafeteria… with like gourmet food.”

  “Are you allowed to pray?” asked Mia over the edge of her skirt.

  “No, the other kids won’t love Jesus like we do, but we can wear jeans as tight as we want to, and there’s no rule on how long your shorts have to be.” I flipped to the upright position, to see if the boys were watching. “It’s kind of a trade-off.”

  At home, in my soon-to-be-obsolete bedroom, I paced around the braided rings of my soon-to-be-obsolete throw rug. It’d been the perfect track for racing my Hot Wheels, especially the black Trans Am with the firebird on the hood. Transammy was my favorite car because, like me, he was on fire and always finished first.

  Where are we going? he asked me, talking through his miniaturized metal grille.

  “Well,” I whispered back, winking into his headlights, “let’s just say we won’t need this ratty old rug where we’re going. Think plush. Think wall-to-wall carpeting!”

  The rips in the rug looked back a
t me sadly.

  Oh, it said. Guess you two don’t need me anymore. Guess they’ll just throw me in the cold lonely dump where no one will love me anymore.

  “No,” I reassured it, kneeling down to pat it. “You still matter, Ruggy.”

  Tears blurred my eyes. The cameras panned in from above. There were so many who needed me, so little time.

  The movers were coming, so I layered my stuffed animals in cardboard boxes, explaining to them that it was going to be very exciting, and they would be safe. An adventure, I told them and winked cheerfully. But as I closed the flaps, I sensed their panic, the crowded darkness closing in around them, no hope of escape. No air! I flung the top back open and their little plush mouths sighed with relief.

  You saved us! they cried.

  “Calm down,” I scolded, channeling the biblical Abraham, leading a temperamental horde into the desert. “Have ye no faith?” They looked back at me, silenced by the heroism in my voice, and my stunning grasp of the Old Testament. I stuck imaginary oxygen canisters inside their box and closed the lid.

  “There,” I said. “We’ve got it under control. Just calm the heck down.”

  I only used the h-word when I meant business.

  To deal with my growing anxiety, I came up with an imaginary black horse named, well, Blackie. I did this because Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie had a black horse too. Named Bunny. Only hers was real. But whatever. I’d watched that episode repeat for years, envying Laura as she clutched the leather reins, and Bunny’s hooves thundered across the golden, sunny meadow. Together they won the race against Nellie Oleson and her thoroughbred, not because they were better—but because they were the good guys. They had simple things, like God and Pa on their side, not money and the mercantile. Oh, I needed me some of that, now more than ever.

  Everywhere I went, so did Blackie. I led him around on a rope. Onlookers would never guess, unless they noticed my right hand clenched into a fist and cocked strangely to the side as I pulled his lead. At night I tied Blackie to my bedpost, brushed his imaginary mane, fed him imaginary oats from an imaginary burlap bag.

  On moving day, I rode him frantically in circles around the backyard. I galloped him over to Ricky’s house. I rang the bell and Ricky came to the door and blinked at me with those sunken eyes, peach fuzz on his top lip.

  “I’m moving,” I said. “To Avon.”

  “Yeah, duh,” he said, without a trace of anything. I waited but only heard the TV blaring in the background, the smell of his house wafting out onto the front stoop.

  “I’m going to public school too,” I said, meaning, I’m one of you. Only more special.

  “Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

  Whatever, I thought. I had to feel bad for him. His life would be so much emptier without me peeing in his yard all the time.

  Avon was an hour north. On the virgin voyage to our new, upgraded digs, I sat in the back of the station wagon, facing backward, watching the steep, woodsy hills wheel by and the white highway lines flash out from under the car. Mom’s muzak was piping through the back speakers, the DJ over-enunciating WRFG in his stuffy baritone. My brother Kyle rifled through his cassette tapes and put on his headphones. The engine pushed and pulled. My stomach rose softly into my ears. My eyebrows filled out with a sickly, dull ache.

  “Put the window down,” I whined, stretching out to disperse the queasiness.

  “She says put the window down,” Kate hollered to the front, scooting away from me.

  “She all right?” asked Mom from the passenger seat.

  The back window inched down and sucked out some of the hot vinyl air, but Dad was busy weaving expertly through traffic, left, right, brake, lurch. Just parallel to the highway a river frothed and flowed, heading back in the direction of our old house.

  Take me too, I thought.

  Before loading up for this drive, Kate and I’d been building a tunnel house out of all the extra cardboard moving boxes. It snaked like a gopher tunnel from one end of our basement to the other. We’d filled our bowls with leftover coleslaw and crawled back inside our cardboard breakfast nook to eat it. I was trying not to think about all that pale, mayo-covered crunchiness now, or recall smelling it, or the fact that food existed at all. But I could see my fork resting in the empty bowl, pieces of cabbage stuck to the sides.

  It’ll get better, I told myself, pulling on the top of my hair to try and pop off my head, anything to relieve the ache. I tried to find something cold to look at. Just need fresh air. I squeezed my face with my hands till I left red marks, hoping to override the pain with more pain. It was getting worse.

  “Pull over,” I moaned, scooting forward on my seat, suppressing the telltale hiccups.

  “She says pull over.”

  “Pull over,” my mom barked to my dad, who was going ninety in the far left lane. “Pull over NOW.”

  Dad swerved toward the shoulder, and I filled the floor with partially digested coleslaw.

  By the time the car stopped, I felt great, but the family was miserable and clawing for clean air. I watched Mom through the window, wiping my puke off the floor mats in the weeds. She was gritting her teeth as the wind from passing traffic buffeted her hair into her face. It was an omen of things to come.

  True, I’d just barfed my guts out, but when we finally pulled off onto our new exit ramp, I was optimistic again. Big things were in my future. Although in Avon, everything was teensy. The gas station signs were dwarfed, encased in brick and yellow pansies. Banks and high-end jewelry shops were disguised inside little cottages, next to what looked like a diorama of a period colonial village. We passed an old saltbox in town with working black shutters and poured glass windows.

  “Honestly, Kyle, take off your Walkman and be a part of the family,” said Mom. “Look at that quaint little New England inn!”

  “Discount Tire,” Kyle read, squinting at the sign.

  “Oh,” said Mom. “But it’s still quaint!”

  The outdoors were just as cozy: a huge driving range with a sweeping view of a scenic ridge in the distance. Real horses meandered inside miles of white rail fencing. Cute little steepled churches were nestled tastefully amid the rolling hills.

  “I still smell puke,” said Kate, as we turned into our new neighborhood.

  The street sign read simply BLUESTONE. It had evolved beyond trappings like St. or Rd. or Dr. The houses were tucked back behind tall trees, designed—at long last—to deliver maximum Christmas card value.

  My sister and I climbed out of the car and up the stone steps of our new, empty house, caressing each detail. We opened doors and cupboards with awe, as if we’d never seen working hinges before.

  “Look!” I screamed inside a drawer. “A nook… for the cereal!”

  Nooks were good. I needed nooks. Safe little worlds that no one knew about, hidden inside the crannies of the bigger, scarier English muffin world. I made my way through the massive rooms and called Blackie to my side. I couldn’t wait to get outside and ride him around and around and around in circles, beating his shiny flanks to a froth.

  “Hold on, Blackie,” I whispered. “Gotta check out the upstairs.”

  My brother looked out the kitchen window, expressionless.

  “Yeah, hold your horses, Blackie,” he said. “Oh, wait. You are a horse. Silly me.”

  At Bluestone, everything came in twos. We had two fireplaces, two sinks in the bathroom, two doors leading into Mom and Dad’s room. But it wasn’t just a room—it was a master suite with an audaciously purple Jacuzzi in the corner. I perched on its lavender carpeted steps, amazed that I had evolved past mere bathtubs. Now I could fit all my Sea Wees AND their lily pad–shaped sponges AND their floating lagoon, with enough room left over to swim underwater with goggles in cramped circles. I had arrived.

  Of course I didn’t realize I would never be allowed to fill the Jacuzzi to capacity, on account of the water bill. Because despite all the Italian marble in the foyer, and all the walnut trim i
n Dad’s new company car, our family’s unspoken moral compass was Mom’s well-worn house clothes and hefty coupon organizer. I knew better than to ask if we’d struck it rich. It was my job to be exuberant and appreciative, assuring them I had not been spoiled by this, our amazing—but possibly revocable—stroke of good fortune.

  On my first day of school that fall, I made my entrance onto the blacktop of my new school: Bubbling Brook Elementary. Mom snapped my photograph before I turned toward the playground where all the kids were milling around waiting for the first bell. I waved good-bye and shuffled past the strange faces, clutching the straps of my empty backpack. I waited as my awesomeness exuded, as my magical curb appeal took effect on the heathens.

  There were so many of them.

  While I waited, the first thing I noticed was Avon girls. They weren’t playing freeze tag or weaving cats in the cradle; they were huddling in circles with their backs turned, as if for warmth. It was not cold out. They were receiving some kind of social heat from the center, chattering and giggling and ignoring everybody else. A preppie-looking blond boy approached a girl-huddle, and the amoeba of their bodies opened to engulf him.

  “Drew! We love you!” they squealed. “Did you love tennis camp?”

  “Yeah,” said Drew, “but oh my God, I hate my mom!”

  As they laughed hysterically over this inside joke, the whites of their eyes flashing like sharks in chum, I noticed that these girls were so… tan. Tan in a way that made them cool. I looked at their skin, then their shoes, then back at my own. Their denim jackets had GUESS tattooed on the pocket, like a press pass. Monogrammed book bags. It’s no big deal, said their fingers, twisting around locks of lightened hair. Doesn’t everyone get their braids done in St. Thomas?

  Ten minutes ago, I’d been reasonably certain that I was the golden child. But suddenly, I was average. Worse: I was invisible. Until I stared a little too long and was detected. A redheaded girl with a severe fringe of bangs turned to annihilate me with a glance, spot-checking me for country club readiness and overall elegance of carriage. She hit me with the loaded pronoun.