My father and brother get out of the car to join the members of our church. A cameraman follows them with his big-lensed camera. My brother is the youngest protester of the group. Because of that, he’s special. And because he’s special, I want us all to go home.
“Someday you can join us,” my mother says. She smiles, revealing the brown tooth on her upper row of teeth from a field hockey accident in high school. I search her face for any indication of the sickness raging inside her.
There are about fifty people with signs. The crowd breaks into “Save a Baby, Go to Jail.” I gather the courage to switch the radio to the pop music station and turn up the bass.
There’s something different about this protest. Usually the gatherings are just members of our church. This feels more dangerous. At the far end, there’s a group of people younger than my parents. They look like they’re in college. The slogans on their signs have an edge to them. One sign has a realistic picture of dead bodies piled high beneath a swastika with the words Abortion Is America’s Holocaust in red ink. Another reads Planned Parenthood, The Killing Place. These protesters look restless. The three police officers eye the college students.
My brother is by Father Brian’s side. At church his newfound fame has made him lead altar boy at every mass, though he doesn’t seem to give a shit about the job, just the attention.
The protesters get loud suddenly. One of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen walks out of the entrance of the building. She’s alone. She looks like she’s in college, maybe younger. Her jet-black hair falls below her shoulders. Her skin is porcelain white. She keeps her head bowed as she approaches the protesters. Though she’s wearing sweatpants and a flannel coat, all I can think is that she’s magnificent. At the age of twelve, I already understand there is a mystery about women that I’m supposed to fear, that femininity will lead to sin. It is something I will always have to suppress and dread, but that terror is suspended in this moment.
At the far end of the group of protesters, there’s a commotion. The college-aged kids rush at this girl, holding their signs high. One of them, a female, screams, “Murderer!”
In the chaos, the police officers move at the protesters. The girl in the flannel coat is knocked to the ground. I press my palms against the car window.
One officer helps the girl to the sidewalk while the other two use white plastic zip ties to handcuff the protesters who came at her. A cameraman points his lens down at the girl. Shaken, she sits on the curb. None of the other protesters on the sidewalk move until one of them steps forward. An officer blocks the protester, who I now recognize as my chemo-drained mother. She says something to the officer, and he allows her to continue to the girl. My mother kneels next to her and rubs the girl’s back. She leans into my mother’s shoulder and shakes while she cries. My mother hugs her tightly.
More cops arrive in a police van with its lights flashing. The college-aged protesters have collapsed to the ground. The police officers are forced to drag each one across the parking lot to put them in the back of the van. The crowd of protesters cheers and shakes their signs in the air. My mother leads the girl to a car across the lot. The girl drives away in her red sedan. My mother rejoins the group, and my father hands her a sign to wave. Mr. O’Connor, our neighbor, says something to my mother.
As cops detain protesters, Father Brian walks toward the college kids who are limp on the ground. A cop yells for him to go back to the sidewalk. The cameramen turn to the young priest. Father Brian looks at the officer and collapses to the ground. The crowd cheers. It occurs to me that—only a year out of seminary—he’s not much older than the college protesters. My brother lunges toward Father Brian, but my father grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him back. Eventually, Father Brian is dragged to the police van. When this happens, all of the adults from my church shout and applaud. Nobody roars louder than my brother.
On the car ride home all we talk about is Father Brian. “He really believes,” my father says.
“Did you see him smile at us from the cop car?” my brother asks.
My brother goes on about Father Brian, but in the front seat I hear my father say to my mother, “We’re going to face problems at church for what you did.”
“I know,” my mother says. Weary, she rests her head against her seat and closes her eyes.
* * *
My father is right. Mr. O’Connor knocks on our front door. It’s late June, the first week of summer. Crickets hum out in the yard.
“Hello, Bill,” my father says in a low voice meant to sound serious. My mother is sleeping down the hall.
Mr. O’Connor steps into our living room and looks around, taking stock of what he sees: our couch with the broken arms from years of my brother and I wrestling, the staticky concave television I’m sitting in front of that only gets local channels, the faded green rug stained with cat piss, the Sacred Heart of Jesus picture hanging in the corner, four dead palm leaves from Lent tucked behind its frame.
“My phone won’t stop ringing since the protest,” he says. His voice is belligerent, much like I imagine the voice of God in the Old Testament.
“She was helping the girl,” my father says. “She was only a child.” He hasn’t moved to let Mr. O’Connor enter the house like he normally would for a guest.
On the television, fighter jets thunder through the sky on a news update about the impending war in the desert. I turn the volume down.
“We’re not sure we want you at the rallies,” Mr. O’Connor says. He rakes at his five-o’clock shadow with his fingernails.
“What she did,” my father says, “Jesus would have done.”
“We’re afraid your actions will make us look like we’re not dedicated,” he says.
“That’s ridiculous,” my father says. The doubt in our loyalty pains him. My father talks about abortion to anyone who will listen.
“I’m just here to warn you,” Mr. O’Connor says. “Since your son got in the paper, most of us are willing to let you stay—just be careful.” He eyes my father through the lenses of his glasses. On the television, the news flashes clips from yesterday’s protest. We all stare at the screen silently as two officers drag Father Brian to a police car.
* * *
Father Brian remains in jail as the cause broils from the latest news coverage. There are abortion protests happening all over the country, some of them ending in violence. A clinic is bombed in Alabama. A doctor is shot three times and killed by a protester in Florida. Though our church is divided by the violence, the adults all agree that what we’re doing is part of something bigger than ourselves. Our church’s next protest is organized for Planned Parenthood. My parents don’t want to go back to the clinic. My mother has started vomiting after chemo treatments, but they want to act like everything is okay, so we go. My brother is hungry for the protest. He traces the slogan of his sign as we drive to Planned Parenthood: Real Doctors Don’t Kill Babies.
It’s one of the first hot days of summer—my T-shirt sticks to my back. I roll down the windows all the way while they protest. The crowd in front of the clinic is double what it was the first time. I count six television cameras positioned around the crowd. A hundred people wave signs, hold hands, sing. The bodies sway, as if the crowd is a breathing thing. My parents and my brother all hesitate to join the group, but Mr. O’Connor waves at them from the edge of the protesters.
The crowd feels violently charged with the Holy Spirit. A line of police officers stands between the protesters and the clinic. I don’t turn on the radio. For comfort, I pass the beads of a plastic rosary my father keeps in the glove box between my fingers.
A girl and a woman I assume is her mother push through the protesters, heading toward the Planned Parenthood building. Cameramen steady their cameras on their shoulders. A police officer moves into the crowd to help the girl and her mother navigate through the bodies. The protest signs
undulate, slogans are bellowed. The entire crowd is a single roaring fire against this girl and her mother.
My brother steps toward them, and I hear his deepening voice scream, “Jesus hates you!” The crowd booms.
Without hesitation, my mother snaps to life and slaps my brother across the face. Mr. O’Connor glares at her. My brother drops his sign and cups his cheek.
My mother turns to the woman and the girl. “I’m sorry for my son,” she says. “God loves you.” They both nod and continue to the front door of the clinic. A few people in the crowd boo.
My mother drops her sign and leads my brother back to the car. My father follows. Their signs lie on the concrete sidewalk.
In the car my mother falls asleep, snoring quietly with her mouth open. My father doesn’t speak as he drives. From his back pocket my brother produces the crinkled newspaper clipping of his photo with Father Brian. He studies it for a moment, before slowly tearing the paper, first in half, then continuing until it’s in a dozen small pieces he balls up in his hand. Rolling down his window, he sticks his arm out of the car and opens his fist. The scraps scatter in the wind, rising up into the gray sky.
IV
Though my mother has begun to vomit again, that doesn’t stop her from making a lasagna for the Thompson family. I don’t know this family. She says Mr. Thompson had surgery for a tumor. Lasagna is our favorite—mine, my brother’s, my father’s—but the lasagna is not for us. My mother instructs me to pull chicken nuggets from the freezer for our dinner.
My brother complains that we eat chicken nuggets all the time now that my mother’s chemo treatments cause her to sleep and that we want lasagna. Even my father wistfully observes my mother spreading ricotta cheese over a layer of softened noodles.
“I’m doing this to be kind,” she says. “They need help.” She talks quietly. Lately, if she talks too loudly she gets nauseous and runs for the bathroom. We try to be good so she doesn’t have to yell, but it’s hard.
When the oven is preheated, my mother slides the pan onto the metal rack and closes the oven door. She says, “That will be done in an hour. I’m going to lie down,” and shuffles to the living room to rest until the lasagna is ready.
My father shifts the bag of frozen chicken nuggets from one hand to the other. I open my mouth to complain, but he stops me before a word can escape my mouth. “Don’t,” he says. “We’ll eat on the porch. Both of you go wait outside.”
From the cupboard he pulls out a plastic tray and empties the contents of the bag. He spreads the gray nuggets in an even layer and sighs.
We don’t have a kitchen table since we gave it to the woman at church, so we eat our meals on the porch now or, when it’s raining, we eat in front of the television, because our mother is too sick to stop us.
Outside, my brother and I can still smell the sweet marinara and basil from the lasagna in the oven. We haven’t eaten a meal cooked by our mother since the spring when she was first diagnosed.
Our father brings out the tray of breaded nuggets and a bottle of ketchup. We squirt ketchup onto our own corners of the tray, dip the limp nuggets and eat in silence. The sun has gone down behind the pine trees in the backyard and the air is cool. Despite the lilies in the garden and the chlorine from our neighbor’s above-ground pool, the lasagna is all we can smell. We’re all silent from the scent as we eat our share of chicken.
When only crumbs remain, my father says, “I’m going to the garage. Don’t wake your mother.”
He disappears inside and my brother and I go to the kitchen and stare into the glass window of the oven. The cheese bubbles, the red marinara boils. Our stomachs are unsatisfied.
“Get away from there,” our mother says, coming in from her nap.
“Why doesn’t someone bring us lasagna?” my brother asks. “Aren’t we in need?”
She forces a smile. “We’re fine,” she says.
But we aren’t fine. We all know this. Even my mother.
She cracks the oven door a few inches, releasing an unbearable aroma into the kitchen. I think I’ll die from it. My brother closes his eyes and savors the smell by raising his nose in the air and inhaling.
With an oven mitt, she removes the pan and sets it on the stovetop. The heat from the oven causes sweat to develop on my upper lip.
My mother frowns and hands us each a Swiss roll from the cupboard.
“I’m going to lie down for fifteen minutes while this cools,” she says, pointing to the lasagna. “Eat those outside.”
My brother and I sit on the concrete front steps and take small bites of our chalky Swiss rolls. I take the last bite of my pastry and crinkle the plastic packaging in my fist. Some neighborhood kids argue out on the street. They call us over to play tackle football, but my brother waves them off. He hasn’t played games with the neighborhood kids all summer. In the fall he starts high school.
Our mother opens the front door and walks out onto the steps, cradling the lasagna. The top of the pan is covered with shiny foil. She pulls her sunglasses down over her eyes. When she wears sunglasses she almost looks healthy. She must know this, because she even wears them on overcast days.
“I’ll be right back,” she says.
Before I can stop myself, I say, “I’m going with you.” I want to see who needs this lasagna more than us.
She doesn’t have the energy to argue, so I jump in the passenger seat. Before she turns the key, she takes a moment to catch her breath from the walk to the car, then she cranes her neck to look behind us as she pulls out of our driveway.
I eye the lasagna in the backseat as we drive. Sun reflects off the foil. The grocery store and Mobil station and strip mall with the Chinese restaurant and pizza shop on Main Street are speckled with people I recognize from town. Our windows are down. The Christian radio station whispers just above the current of wind.
We reach the bridge that takes us over the dam to the edge of town where the houses become spread out and the forest thickens. The lake, polluted with mercury and sulfuric acid, shimmers in the summer sunlight. There’s supposed to be an old Native burial ground on this side of town. It’s not far from the trailer park where we lived before we moved to our house closer to town. I try not to think about the trailer park. If you walk over the burial ground, my brother claims, you’ll be cursed. That’s why Larry Anderson hung himself, though some people claim it’s because he had been laid off from the plant where my father works, and he was going to lose his trailer. Mr. Anderson was a machinist who worked in my father’s department. He built steel side armor for military tanks. Without a war, no one needed tanks. When my father used to run into Mr. Anderson in the park, they talked about the plant. Mr. Anderson used a lot of shits and fucks when he spoke, but it didn’t seem to bother my father, though he’d shoot me looks over the rim of his glasses that told me not to get any ideas. He was one of the only people I saw my father talk to who didn’t attend our church.
My father sat alone at our kitchen table in our trailer when he found out about Mr. Anderson. He never talked about it with us, but after that, he went out of his way to keep from driving by the pink trailer where Mr. Anderson had hung himself.
My mother stops at an intersection, and the smell of the lasagna returns to the car. A cloud rolls in front of the sun and the road goes dark. When she pulls away from the stop sign, the cloud moves and it’s sunny again.
We turn onto a road I’ve never been on. The roadside is mostly trees and telephone poles. No other cars on the road. A dead possum lies on its back—its mouth agape as if to scream.
My mother slows the car and puts on her blinker. I want to make one last plea for this lasagna, but we turn onto a driveway. Wild rose bushes line the dirt drive.
At the end of the driveway, a yellow trailer appears. Rusted cars and trucks are scattered across the scrub brush of the front yard. The lot is covered with gravel instead of
grass. A rotting shed squats next to the trailer. Broken toys litter the lot: a tricycle, a dollhouse, a red plastic lawnmower. An abandoned toilet lies on its side next to the front steps.
“How do you know this family?” I ask.
“Don’t talk like that,” she says. “I’ve delivered food from the food bank to Glenn and his kids for years.”
“But they don’t go to our church.”
“That’s not how it works,” she says. “We take care of local families in need—whether they attend church or not.”
From the front door a kid my age walks out of the trailer. He’s shirtless. His thin torso is tanned. He wears cutoff jean shorts and his feet are bare. He doesn’t wave, just stares at us from the wooden steps. My mother smiles and waves at the boy. He places his hand over his eyes to shade the sun and squints at our car. The metal hinge of the car door creaks as my mother steps onto the gravel lot. I follow her lead.
“Get the lasagna,” she says to me. To the boy she says, “Hello, Isaac. How’s your father?”
I carry the warm lasagna pan as I follow my mother up the stairs. Isaac opens the sheet metal screen door to let us in. His gray eyes follow me. I recognize him from school. He’s one of the free-lunch kids even the trailer-park kids avoid.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the dark trailer. Styrofoam coffee cups rest on every flat surface. Exposed plywood works as the floor. A couch with the stuffing pulled from its cushions sits in the corner. There’s the sound of people moving in other rooms of the trailer, but in the small living room it’s only me, my mother and bare-shouldered Isaac. We follow the boy to a bedroom off the living room. The trailer shakes with our footsteps.
The shades are drawn in the bedroom—everything is black.
“Glenn?” my mother says.
A voice says, “Open the curtains.”
Soon the Light Will Be Perfect Page 3