Where No Gods Came

by Sheila O'Connor

  “No, it was a guy who called. The archbishop, I guess.”

  “The archbishop?” I pry the charred bottom off the cookie sheet. “Why would the archbishop call me?”

  “Shit,” Cammy says. “Too bad, man. We'll eat the top.”

  “Did you go somewhere today?” I ask. “You seem strange.” It's like she's in a trance, or about to drift off to sleep.

  “Give me a break,” she says. She folds her arms into a nest, rests her cheek against them, closes her eyes. “I'm just wired. It's boring as hell sitting here all day. Why can't you stay home and keep me company? Keep me out of trouble.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Who? Jimmy?” When she says his name, she bites on her arm to muffle her laughter.

  “Jimmy? Was it Jimmy who called here? I thought you said it was the archbishop.”

  “It was.” She keeps giggling, but I don't join her. I can't find a funny word in this whole confusing conversation.

  “Cammy,” I say, poking her in the back with a fork. “Cut it out and answer me.”

  “I was kidding about Jimmy. But why won't you tell him about me? I'm ready to meet him. I could use a diversion. Even if he is, what? Thirteen? I like them young.” She loops her hair around her ears, rubs her hand over her face to keep from laughing. Then she walks over to the stove, eats a spoonful of corn straight out of the pan. “Do you think he'd like me?”

  I hate the way she talks about Jimmy, her constant questions when I come in from the fire escape at night. “How far did he go? Have you frenched yet?” The stories I'm forced to make up so she'll leave me alone. “Cammy, the phone call? Come on. Who was it?”

  “That pastor guy. The one with the strange name.”

  “Monsignor?”

  “That's it,” she grins. “Do you think I might be his type?”

  Cammy - Closing the Circle

  I knew the truth about Jimmy, though I made up my mind to let Faina have her little secret. I'd watched them on the fire escape sharing those sweet night smokes. Right away I took him for a New Directions kid. They all had the same shaggy look; I'd hung with enough of them through the years to know it. How could I avoid hooking up with them, their house across the alley, the steady stream of stragglers doing time at Kenny's? Most were good-looking in a ragged way, and Jimmy was no exception. Of course he was too old for her. Not just in years. In life. But she loved him; she wore it on her face. I would have known it without the diary.

  “So what's happening?” That's what I said to Jimmy when we met that afternoon in the surprising sun of late January. A break in the worst winter, something we didn't expect. I was hanging out at the bus stop, killing time, waiting for him to cross Dakota Avenue for his shift at Kenny's.

  “Who's asking?” Sometimes I can still hear him, his voice lifting a little at the end of each sentence, every question marked by a half-squinted eye.

  “Me. Got an extra smoke?” Close up he was cute enough—too young for me, too small. But I knew what she saw in him. He had a way with his eyes. Drilling them straight into me so that I had to squirm a bit, while he slouched in his leather jacket, smoking. He reached into his pocket and tossed one to me. He was playing a poor game of hard to get, keeping his eyes steady, refusing to blink. I'd mastered this dance, the little dares, the long stares that raised the stakes. Jimmy Cordova was small time compared to me.

  What gave away his edge was the slight tremor in his hands, the way the match shook when he lit my cigarette. That day I took it for nerves, though it never left him.

  “I'm Faina's older sister,” I said. He blinked then, several times, his eyes wide and startled. I was ahead.

  “Who?”

  “Cammy McCoy. Faina's older sister.” Now he squirmed, looked over my shoulder at the cars splashing down Dakota.

  “I didn't know she had a sister.”

  “Well, we all have secrets.” I flashed him my sweetest smile. He was nervous, no question. Grounding out one butt, and lighting another. I tried to read his face to see what he felt for her. He was too old to have any real interest. “Do you have some kind of a thing for her?”

  “No,” he said, choking on a deep drag. “She's a kid.” He wiped his palms on the front of his jeans. “What's this about anyway? Is she okay?”

  “Sure she is. She's off at her little school, like always. Just thought I'd introduce myself. You know, be neighborly.” I let my fur jacket fall behind me on the bus bench. I'd dressed for the weather, and for Jimmy. A short T-shirt that showed some skin, my favorite jeans. I yawned, stretched my arms up over my head so Jimmy could get a good look at me. Check out the family. “Isn't she a little young to be smoking out back with a guy from New Directions? Seems to me that could lead to trouble.”

  Jimmy laughed, smoothed his hair back off his forehead. Water rushed down the gutter and into the sewer like a river. “What are you asking?” Again the squint. “Is she safe with me?”

  “It's a big-sister thing.”

  “Well, big sister, catch your bus,” he said. The 6B was rumbling toward us down Dakota Avenue. “I'll let you know when you need to worry.”

  It screeched to a stop, splattered mud down the front of me. The driver flipped open the door, “Coming?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged. I climbed the steps, threw two dimes into the meter and grabbed the first seat. It was a day ripe with promise; I could go anywhere, be anybody. I slid open the smudged window, threw my head out into the warm wind and screamed, “Don't tell her about us, Jimmy.”

  He nodded his head at me, lifted his hand in a salute. I knew I'd won. He was easy.

  We met in the afternoons. Jimmy managed to add an imaginary hour to his shift, some story about stocking produce. New Directions was the end of his line, and he said the counselors were loose there, at least with him because he was playing it straight and just a few months shy of freedom.

  We made it in the storage room, surrounded by the musty plywood lockers stuffed full of Papa Roy's stuff. Green light filtered in through the glass-block window, the one Hank had replaced since my summer visit. There were spiderwebs everywhere. When we were finished, Jimmy liked to fool with the padlocks; he could crack a combination in seconds.

  He wasn't bad in bed, but he wasn't Tony. It was a fling, a cure for cabin fever. She'd taken my dad. But even Jimmy wasn't a fair trade.

  “You ever think about what you're going to do when you get out?” We were spread out on my old quilt, the cement cold against my back, my head on his stomach. I tried not to look at him. He was so thin, girl-like, with a smooth, sunken chest.

  He was staring up at the ceiling, silent. Conversation wasn't his gift. “Join the service, I guess. If they'll take me.”

  “Couple of years and you can come home and marry Faina. We can be a threesome, star in our own porn flick.”

  “Why do you say that kind of shit?” He stood up, grabbed his jeans, and stepped into them. “What's wrong with you anyway?”

  “Jimmy, I'm just kidding.” But he couldn't take a joke about anything, especially Faina. “Come back down here with me. I'm cold alone. And we've still got fifteen minutes before your little schoolgirl comes home. She won't find us. Take it easy.”

  He zipped up his pants, threw his shirt on and buttoned it. “She's just a kid. Leave her out of this.”

  “Stay,” I begged, rubbing my cheek on his leg. “I bought you something.” I pulled the joint from my cigarette packet. It was crumpled a little in the middle, but I smoothed it out between my lips. Jimmy stopped stuffing his shirt into his jeans.

  “I can't,” he said, but he was wavering.

  “Jimmy, it's a gift. From me.” I ran my hand along the back of his skinny calf. He'd told me he'd been clean two years, since the beginning of his stint at Red Rock. I'd made a special trip down to Lord Leo's to break his losing streak.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. He was lacing up his boots, determined to leave. But he kept glancing at it, that thin joint suspended betw
een my teeth.

  “Jimmy,” I said. “Smoke. No one will know.” I tugged on the waist of his jeans until he surrendered and toppled down next to me. “That's better,” I said. “You take the first hit.”

  “Don't,” he said, batting my hand.

  I lit the joint, wrapped the quilt around my naked body, closed my eyes and let the warm tingle of grass soak through me. “More for me. I'm just going to sit down here and get stoned. Maybe your little girlfriend will join me.”

  “You get her stoned,” he said, “I'll kill you. She's a kid. Why can't you leave her alone?”

  That was our last blast; he never came back. I was bored, but it didn't break my heart. I could have blown his cover. Told her what a loser he was. Lousy kisser. Too quick. But we were just coming together then, just being sisters. They had their cigarettes. Their fantasies. So what?

  I was glad when the Starlight gave me an escape. I was tired of watching through the window, tired of standing outside their little circle. I hated the way he leaned toward her to light her cigarette, the way he laughed at her stories, the way he tugged her braid. They looked like brother and sister, family. Both small and dark, his arm resting on her narrow shoulder, her head tilted toward his chest. Brother and sister. It was something I could never explain.

  Lenore - Survivors

  It was Cammy who forged the field-trip permission slip. But when the Cathedral secretary called to say my signature looked suspicious, I lied and said it was mine. I didn't want to sound the alarm.

  Certainly I saw through the conspiracy. Cammy plotting behind my back, Cammy turning Faina against me. Divide and conquer, that was Cammy's disease, and she'd done it since she was a child. Jealous, she'd tried to come between Papa Roy and me. She couldn't help it.

  “So where is Faina?” I asked Cammy, the second I hung up the phone.

  “At a protest march.” Cammy had a bizarre sense of humor; she loved to jangle my nerves. “She knew you'd say no, so she asked me. Big deal. You're too paranoid to let her do anything.”

  I hated when Cammy accused me of holding Faina prisoner; she didn't know about the accident, didn't know the worries that weighed on my heart. “Where is she really?”

  “I already told you. Some protest march.”

  “A protest march? At her age? What is she protesting?”

  “Abortion, I guess. I told you that school was a cult.”

  Abortion?

  Every time I tried to close my eyes I had visions so vivid and violent I couldn't sleep. I saw my little Faina dead in the snow at the State Capitol, some hysterical hippie screaming over her, a famous photograph that would become history. I kept waiting for the phone to ring, the knock on the door to announce she was dead. I imagined her handcuffed by riot police, locked in the back of a squad car, our troubles beginning again, the authorities snatching my children.

  “Faina, I could have lost you,” I said, when she finally came home at 3:30. She had a strange pink plastic baby pinned to her coat. “You could have been killed today. Haven't your teachers ever heard of Kent State?”

  “It was important,” she said. “They took the upper grades on a bus. All of us. Before we left Cathedral, Dr. Atwood led a prayer rally in the gym. He showed slides of unborn babies sucking their thumbs. He said he'd abandon medicine before he'd take a child's life.”

  “God above.” I stifled the urge to strike her. “What are you babbling about? You're a twelve-year-old. What does this have to do with you?”

  “Everything. What if you had killed me?”

  “Killed you? I didn't. You're here.”

  “But you could have. If it was legal, like it is now. What if I'd never had a chance to live?”

  “Faina, enough. I haven't slept all day. You're alive. What more do I need to say?”

  Brainwashing. I saw what was happening. But what breed of people would suggest such a thing to a child?

  Faina - Stew

  At night, Cammy disappears to her job waiting tables at the Starlight Lanes. “We need the money,” she tells me. “We can't depend on Lenore.”

  While she gets ready, I lounge on the floor, watch as she scrunches the pantyhose together at the toe, inches them slowly up over each leg, bends at the knees to yank them up over her hips. The elastic top cuts into her flat white stomach. Then she sits half-naked in front of the make-up mirror, the round white bulbs turning her bare skin blue. She spits on the end of her eyeliner brush, rubs it over a little black cake, draws thick lines around her eyes. “Highlights,” she says, opening them wide to dry. “Now they're almost as dark as yours.”

  I stay by her side, flip the record albums, light her cigarettes, help her unwind hot rollers from her hair. Now that she's gone for long hours, I miss her.

  “Are you sure you have to work?” I ask her.

  “The cash will come in handy,” she says. “You wait and see. My mother's loaded, but it won't trickle down to us. Besides, I'm buying you a confirmation dress with my tips; we'll go shopping at Sears on Lake Street.” She nods toward the giant plastic beer bottle already heavy with silver. “Anyway, you've got your Jimmy. That virginal boy from Cathedral. Can't he keep you company at night?”

  “But Lenore and I are lonely when you leave.”

  “You're starting to sound like my mother.”

  Before she leaves, she sprays musk perfume over her body, under the pink waitress dress, between the top of her uniform and her bra, behind the back of her neck. I hold my breath when she bends down to kiss me. “Good-bye, little sister,” she says, her lips sweet with Close-up tooth-paste and watermelon gloss. “Don't wait up for me.”

  But I do. Ever since her first night, I've set my alarm so I'm awake when Cammy comes home. I watch for her out our bedroom window, the parking lot dreary and deserted, the garage lights shining on the snow. I watch while the strange cars bring her home, idle outside in the cold, exhaust clouding out of their tailpipes, windshields fogged over with breath and ice. Sometimes the driver roars the engine, and a loud muffler explodes into the silence. Other than that, nothing happens, so I close my eyes and wait for the sound of her footsteps stumbling up the back stairs.

  When she comes into our room, I pretend to be asleep. I open my eyes just a little so she doesn't know I'm watching her kick off her spongy white waitress shoes, pull her uniform over her head. Then she peels off her pantyhose and stands in the city light that streams through our window, and lets the shadows fall over her beautiful body. Cammy.

  Cammy smoking to get to sleep. Cammy playing “Stairway to Heaven,” over and over, her husky night voice singing along with the song. Cammy climbing into our bed finally, her skin cold against me, her full breasts pressed into my back, her leg looped, as always, over my hip.

  In the morning when I leave for school, Cammy's still asleep face down in her pillow, her long blonde hair spilling over her bare shoulders, pooling in the small curve of her back. Now it's me, again, who brings Lenore coffee, it's me who helps her hobble to the bathroom, it's me who delivers dry toast and a juice glass of vodka.

  “Don't mention this to Cammy,” Lenore tells me. “I just need a little sip to get going.”

  “You shouldn't drink in the morning,” I say to her.

  “I know,” she says. “But someday you'll understand. It's this damn cough. A drink is the only thing that helps.” Ever since Cammy's come back, Lenore seems weaker, hacking all the time, her voice faint and scratchy like she has laryngitis.

  “I wish Cammy wouldn't work,” she says. “I worry so when she goes away.”

  I look at Lenore's spindly arms poking out of her covers, her thin fingers nothing more than knobby bones. “Cammy is home with you all day.”

  “But she won't stay. Mark my words. She'll be gone when she gets some money.”

  “Monsignor wants to see you.” Sister Cyril is waiting for me outside our classroom. “He's down in the nurse's room.”

  The nurse's room is a small dark closet at the end of the hall, next to
the girls' lavatory. Inside there's only one small cot covered with a crisp white sheet, and an old metal desk. Sometimes the girls in my class pretend they have cramps, so they can skip class and sleep on the cot. Not me. I don't want to get my first period at Cathedral, I don't want to stand in that dark closet while Sister Cyril pulls a Modess pad out of the metal desk.

  “Monsignor wants to see me?”

  “Are you hard of hearing?” Sister Cyril clucks her tongue, tucks her hands up into her huge sleeves. “He's waiting.”

  Inside the dim room, Monsignor is perched on the edge of the cot, his hands pressed together, the tips of his fingers tapping on his chin. “Come in, come in.”

  I stand in front of him, glance down at the brown spots dotted over the top of his bald head. He lifts the tiny paper-covered pillow and places it on his lap. “Have a seat, young lady,” he says, patting the white sheet.

  I don't want to sit down next to Monsignor with his woody brown teeth, the gray whiskers sprouting out of his nostrils and ears. I've stood close to him before, in November, when he handed out our report cards, one by one, in front of the class—the agonizing wait while he examined my grades, the quick pat he gave me on the back when he was done.

  “I don't mind standing.”

  “No, sit, please.”

  I take my seat on the cot, out of his reach, and stretch my uniform skirt down over my knees.

  “There has been some concern about your confirmation training.” Monsignor slides his glasses up the bridge of his nose, clears his throat. “Sister Cyril says you haven't brought in your baptismal certificate.”

  “How would she know? She's not the one doing my confirmation training.”

  Monsignor frowns. “I don't know. Perhaps she heard it from Mrs. Lajoy.” I look past him at the poster of the four food groups. The cow, the bread, the red apple, the glass of pure white milk. Eat well. Build a healthy body. “At any rate. Do you have your baptismal certificate?”