Celia listened to them all night long on an endless loop on her CD player. I heard them when I turned out the lights in my room. Sometimes my voice, sometimes mom’s, about this war, about famous people, about parts of our history everyone thinks is important — first inventions, first discoveries, first people who did this or that.
Mom says I’m going to know seventh grade history before I get through the sixth grade. Sometimes she says this around Celia. Not on purpose.
All night long I dreamed about Presidents walking around in my room. They pulled up a chair and told me about their accomplishments, and I was interviewing them to see if I should let them into my clubhouse.
“With Emancipation’s help, I wrote the law that would free the slaves,” President Lincoln said.
I asked him, “Is this enough to get into our clubhouse?”
“I lived in a very cool cabin,” he said, and so I let him in.
I remember the Wright Brothers were in my room with their noisy propellers. “Do you want a ride?” they asked. And I thought, heck yeah, they would definitely be in my clubhouse.
Lewis and Clark came out of my closet, just opened up the door and Sacajawea led them towards my bed. Clark must have already passed through our hometown Paducah, Kentucky, because he was already a dog. Chief Paduke had asked the Great Spirit to stop them from moving Paduke off his land, and this was the Great Spirit’s answer. Clark was a golden retriever with a really whiny voice.
He jumped up on the bed with me and licked my face and I wrestled him until he promised me sailing rights up the Mississippi. “Okay, you can come into the clubhouse too.”
Lincoln, Orville, Wilbur, Lewis and Clark led me to stand at Celia’s door and we listened to their stories coming through the door.
“Those stories — they’re about us,” they said.
But I could only hear the names Democracy, America, Independence, Freedom. We didn’t have many stories where the gods weren’t doing something.
“We were great!” they said. I wondered if they were deluded.
We all sat down by Celia’s door and listened to them and when I woke up I was alone and I walked back into my room and got into my bed, and Clark wasn’t there either, and I wished I had him back most of all — a talking dog would have been nice. I was really jealous of Merriwether Lewis. We had a rottweiler named Toby in the backyard. He didn’t say a thing.
Celia woke up in the morning and couldn’t recall anything, no matter how much Mom and Dad quizzed her. At one point they considered she might be doing this on purpose. They cut her allowance. They cut out desserts.
“You’re not trying,” Mom would say, trying not to scream. “You’re not dumb. I know that.”
And all Celia could say, “I’m not dumb. I’m not dumb.”
“Celia, honey,” and she would kneel, and wipe Celia’s tears back, roughly, “this is your life.”
One Saturday, in March, when the Test was two weeks away, the Regina Proximas, our local representative, came to visit our family. I answered the door when she knocked her staff on it, a staff with the giant Twister Face on it. Every Regina had the same staff but the Regina Primoris had one whose faces swiveled from the Conservative to the Moderate to the Liberal faces depending on the ruling of the gods. While she was in our house I kept thinking the marble faces would turn — turn and look at me — but hers didn’t.
“Mr. And Mrs. Woodhouse, I’m here to see about Celia.”
All the Reginas wear flowing robes of the same green Lady Liberty is made of. So sometimes it’s easy to think that Liberty is walking around in the daytime if they come by, but normally the Reginas stay at the Courthouse, helping turn the criminals into other things, or sometimes just making them disappear. This one was old like my grandmother but thin and walked like a President.
Her mountain lion came through the door too. She walked through our house looking for a place to curl up. Celia placed a pillow on the floor and the mountain lion laid down peacefully. To tell you the truth, I liked the mountain lion most of all. I watched her lick her paws.
“You may pet Sybil, and you may sit near her if she lets you.”
I walked towards this great cat, scared and brave at the same time. “Hello, Sybil.” I had my palm out, trying to make friends with her, but I kept my eyes on her eyes and those teeth.
Sybil looked at me and shook her head, so I went to sit back on the couch with Mom and Dad.
The Regina talked with Celia. Celia looked tall sitting in the chair.
“I’ve come to talk to you, Celia, about the Test that’s coming up.” She talked formally, as if it were difficult to talk to Celia, instead of a room full of people. She glanced down at a small notebook in her hand. “With your current grade in History, no doubt you know how important to your very life this test is. Scores in Paducah have been very worrisome as of late. We had forty-seven students fail the Test last year, as you know. Paducah was way below the national average for a city our size.”
Here she closed her eyes, and maybe the whole city was on her mind. I wondered if she were thinking, too, about Mike, the bridge. I was.
“The test is nothing to be taken lightly. The Chamber of Commerce would have you believe that you are doing the city a favor, but let me tell you as your Regina, that one new business does not equal a human life. I do not know as a household,” and here she looked at me and Mom and Dad, “where you stand on your obedience and worship to the gods. That is not my place to decide; I am merely the representation of the gods in Paducah, and your representation at the Temple services. I am a go-between. And in times like these, I feel the need more than ever to be a go-between,” and she turned back to Celia. “I cannot change the law. I can only encourage you to follow the law in so far as you want to remain human.” She looked at all of us one at a time. “In so far as you remain human, you have the benefits of the law. So, therefore, do everything, everything in your power to remain human. In this way I serve you best, Celia.” She picked up the cup of tea Mom had served her and sipped. “The question then falls to you: will you do everything in your power to help me?”
Celia nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve done my best to learn History, Regina.”
And here the Regina smiled, nodding.
Celia looked at her hands, thinking. “But what if — what if a person doesn’t have the ability, the natural ability, to remember facts?” She looked at the Regina now. “Would that person remain a person?”
The Regina breathed in. Sybil stirred on the pillow.
“As you know, individuals who were considered unable to pass the test were removed from schools in the first grade. Everyone left in school after that is considered of at least average intelligence, and therefore responsible under the law for the Test.”
Celia nodded. “But, some people are capable of doing many things, and they are still of at least average intelligence, but they can’t recite facts. They get stories mixed up. Shouldn’t there be a program in place for students who are smart in other areas but not so good with History?”
The Regina placed her cup on the table. “Tell me, child, what areas are you smart in?”
We stopped for a moment, our heartbeats in rhythm.
Celia stood up and walked to our family quilt hanging on the wall opposite the couch. It was me and Celia flying in the sky above Mom and Dad. Everyone’s arms were up, as if our parents had thrown us into the air so we could fly. I was wearing an orange T-shirt, but I don’t really own one. Celia said it balanced out the colors. It could cover a whole bed, but instead it covered our whole wall.
“I made this,” Celia said. “I designed the pattern, I found the cloth, I sewed it together myself.”
The Regina stood up, her robes rustling, her eyes never leaving the quilt. She walked towards it and rubbed her hands across it. “Yes,” she nodded. �
�Yes, this is very nice work, Celia.” But she said nothing else.
Celia asked, “May I bring something here to show you?”
The Regina said, “I will follow you.”
We all stood up. We were beginning to hope.
Celia led us into my parents’ room. She smoothed out the quilt on their bed. It was my mom and dad and their bodies were long and they were wrapped around each other, my dad’s whole body was like a quilt around my mom. And they looked at each other on the quilt like they were in love.
“And this one, too?” the Regina asked, walking to the edge of the bed.
Celia nodded. “Touch it,” she said.
The Regina touched it. “That’s,” she paused. “I’ve never felt cloth that soft. It’s cotton, isn’t it?”
“It’s revived cotton, rubbed three times, and I do it by hand, because I don’t like the material you find in the stores.” She pointed to the rendition of our mother’s hair. “I dye my own cloth. You won’t see that red in a store. It’s the exact color of my mother’s hair.”
The Regina turned around and looked at my mom, as if she were just making sure.
“If you hold it up to her, they’ll match perfectly,” Celia said, “and I matched this knowing it would be washed.”
She led us into my room, where I think the Regina was very impressed with me. She looked at all the pictures I had on the wall—all the posters of the gods saving us. I was kind of embarrassed, to tell you the truth — like I was showing up my sister, but Celia walked us in here. Not me.
On my bed was the best of Celia’s quilts: Patriot standing beside me as we protected Our Country. His hand was on my shoulder, his other hand snapped a set of arrows. My hand gripped an olive branch. My foot stood on a soccer ball. The gods of other countries quivered and were blinded by our magnificence on the border around the quilt.
After a long pause, the Regina said, “Very dramatic.”
“I know,” I beamed.
Finally we went to Celia’s room where she showed the Regina the sewing machine.
“It’s a very nice sewing machine,” the Regina said.
“I bought it myself with money I made from babysitting.” She turned to the Regina. “I worked hard to learn how to make these quilts. But I can’t memorize facts. I can’t. I’ve tried and we’ve all tried. And I think there should be another way to honor the talents of kids who can’t take tests. And a way to save their lives, Regina.”
The Regina looked very carefully at Celia, and around the room where we had run the butcher paper around the walls, where all the stories of the gods were, and I thought she was going to say that Celia didn’t have to take the test. Dad held Mom as if they believed it too. Belief was the strongest thing in the world. If we didn’t believe in the gods, they would disappear, which was why the Great Spirit wasn’t as powerful anymore and Bison didn’t ride the prairies with his herd nowadays. It was our one power, I knew it, and I thought if we believed hard enough that Celia would be spared, that she would be spared, so I believed. I prayed to Patriot and Democracy and Freedom and Justice. Even though the Reginas are there for us to pray for us, I still put my two cents in when I heard how Celia tried to convince the Regina. I’d never heard of a Regina ever stopping a student from taking the Test, especially one who was failing History. Maybe Science, ‘cause not everyone’s good in science, but History was different.
The Regina took Celia’s hand and she led her to the wall where all of American Time divided up in front of them. “Celia, why do we learn about history? Why is it important?”
Celia didn’t answer right away. “It’s important to know the stories.”
“Why is it important, Celia?”
Celia looked towards the window and I could see what she did with her face. She turned back to the Regina. “We have to know what happened to know who we are now.”
The Regina paused. “That’s part of it. What else?”
Celia stared at the wall and I wished all the people in history could have told her the secret of History, underneath the black lines of charts, in between the names, because sometimes I didn’t know either. I just knew how to make the charts.
The Regina breathed in and said, “They want you to remember who they are.”
“But I know who they are,” Celia said. “They’re the gods. Everyone knows them.”
“You know of them, Celia. But you have to know what they have done for more than two hundred years. It’s important that everyone who grows up in the country knows the history of the way things have been run, everyone down to the baker, the police officer, the garbage collector, even the quilters. All those people have one thing in common: they know their history, their gods, and this makes them careful, smart, and they don’t get into trouble. People who don’t know their history might hurt an entire city—,” she stopped. “Did you ever hear about the levees of Caruthersville, Missouri?”
Celia shook her head.
“There was a man there. He was running for mayor. He campaigned on a platform of innovation and independence. He wanted to overthrow the gods, especially the gods of the Mississippi — which ruled his city and the surrounding land. The Mississippi heard this, and overran its banks, crushed the levees, flooded the town, and the gods had to step in and make things right. They turned everyone who voted for that man into a flood wall. They lay toe to head around the city, like great statues on their sides, holding back the Mississippi, lest she get upset again.
“As he promised, he protects the city from her,” the Regina said, with only a hint of irony in her voice. “But so do all the people he convinced. People who didn’t respect the gods — both those gods who live with them and those who protect them. If people don’t know their History, they threaten everyone around them.”
Celia nodded. “But the river — the river was really at fault, wasn’t she?”
The Regina’s face hardened. “Do you know why the Regency was created, Celia?”
She was quick. “To serve mankind and to serve the gods.”
“Yes, but even more to save people from their own ignorance.” She became resolved and tired, her eyes looking upwards, as if she’d just played hours on the soccer field and someone asked her to walk to the car. “Someone must help each person know and understand the laws and those that govern them. That’s why we are here, the Regency, from the Regina Primoris — may the gods listen to her — to every Regina under her responsibility, including me. I have to help people know History, the law, the way to work with the godhead.” She traced her fingers along America’s timeline. “These are the gods, this collection of events, the scenes, the moments all strung together — because you can’t define them any other way. They are beyond our comprehension, except through their deeds. If I didn’t know America, could I tell you what she might say if your parents tried to disobey her, if they tried to hide you.”
I looked at Mom and Dad. They would never try and skirt the law, I knew. Dad carved the names of the gods in all his tables.
Mom put her face against Dad’s shoulder.
The Regina continued, “I know her because I know what she’s done in the past. Even the best craftsperson can wander into trouble if they don’t know their history. We want the gods to care about us — each one of us in this land of thirty million people. To do that we have to show that we care about them.”
“I care about them, but I don’t know the dates of their … their deeds.” Celia flung her arms out. “I want them to care about me, too.”
The Regina squinted and her mouth got firm. “You want them to care about you. Celia, what are you doing for them? They ask only that we know them. That we respect and love them. They’ve already done so much. You live in a country where the gods sacrificed ultimate power to share it with the people they should have ruled absolutely. Yet you don’t want to know who the
y are and what they did.” She blinked with effort. “When was your brother born?”
Celia looked at me. “June third — but that’s not the same—”
“It should be. These are their lives. We honor them by remembering their histories and our history is intertwined with theirs.”
“I’m doing my best …. can’t they honor my best?” Celia looked around the room. “What if I did a set of quilts to honor the gods — quilts of their stories? Wouldn’t that be enough?”
That was a great idea, I thought.
The Regina looked as if she were thinking about it. She suddenly pulled Celia close to her, hugged her and looked down over her back. “The test is the test. It is standardized across the country for every child. Not all the quilts in the world can help you pass that test. I can’t help you pass that test. I’m confident, though, that the study you have done will propel you forward into the future.”
Sybil loped into the room, her tail swishing opposite of her head as she looked back and forth at everyone. She came walking straight towards me. She put her face close to mine and smelled the breath coming out of my nose. She said to me, And you will walk bravely into that new world fearing no one.
Later that night, in my dreams, every Regina Primoris in history crowded into my room. They all had the same green gowns, the same staffs and they looked at my posters of gods and my postcard collection of Liberty as she passed through different cities (Liberty ducking under the St. Louis Arch was my favorite.) They went through my bookshelves reading my book titles aloud: Strike Goes to Afghanistan, Theodore Roosevelt and the Capture of the Philippines, How the Gods Appreciate You, Field Guide to the Kentucky Gods of Rivers and Streams. Two of them played with my action figures, flying Strike through the air on a stretch of fire, making Patriot grow into a giant. I counted 26 of them.
I sat up and went to the first one. It was Regina Primoris Riessen from the Eisenhower years. I remembered her nose and her tiny glasses. I said to her, “You don’t need to come in here. You need to be in Celia’s room. Come with me.”
Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories Page 32