Paper Angels

by Billy Coffey

  Elizabeth said, “I’m sure you haven’t, have you?” She glanced above my bed to the clock, then moved her hands toward the box and rattled it, taunting. “Is there anything else in here that helped you learn that lesson?”

  I wiped my eyes and offered her a smile.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “There was the day I found out firsthand how tough being an angel can be. Talk about a lesson in humility.” I took the box and rummaged inside it. “I know it’s in here somewhere,” I told her, but I couldn’t find it. I began emptying onto my lap the objects from the stories I’d already shared. There it was, stuck to the side. I pulled the piece of bubble gum free and held it up to her.

  “Smell,” I said.

  She did and asked, “Watermelon?”

  “Crazy, huh? All these years later, and it still smells.”

  22

  Bubble Gum

  It was not merely a bench, it was my bench, and someone else was sitting on it. Someone who I was certain did not appreciate my bench nearly as much as I did, and surely could not. And I didn’t know what to do.

  I went to the park that morning for no other reason than to enjoy a respite from the demands of everyday life. The air was cool and the sky a clear and deep blue. Autumn leaves had begun to fall from the oaks and maples, blanketing the almost hidden trail in a fresco of reds and yellows. A few remaining robins lingered before making their southward trip for winter. The walk was a fairly short one, no more than a few hundred yards, yet long enough to put an agreeable measure of distance between myself and the world. I slung the loaf of bread I brought along for the ducks over my shoulder and slowed within and without. The smile on my lips dimmed only slightly when I realized I was often at my best when I was alone.

  As I neared the grove of pines that hid my bench, however, I began to think that perhaps I wasn’t alone at all. Amid the idyllic sounds of crunches and quacks and chirps came the sound of humming. I stopped for a moment to listen, then crept forward to peek through the limbs.

  That was when I saw her. On my bench.

  Little girl, skinny and dark-skinned. Her feet swung like a pendulum beneath the rotting wood of the seat in an awkward cadence. She continued her indecipherable tune, pausing only for a breath to blow bubbles with her gum. I eased away and looked down toward the tennis courts. Up to the basketball court. The softball field. The jungle gym. Not only was there no one I could peg as a parent, there was no one, period.

  My bench offered little in the way of aesthetics, but the discomfort was more than made up for by the view it offered. It had been placed in the perfect spot along the banks of the South River, where the water tired of flowing fast and shallow and decided slow and deep would be better. There in that spot stood the Old Man, casting a fly fishing line over the waters. He looked at me, then to her, and then waved.

  I wondered why she wasn’t in school and how she had managed to find my bench. And more than that, I wondered what I could do to get her away and gone.

  Selfish? Yes. But honest. Because, as I said, that was My Bench. I had been coming to that park and sitting in that spot since before she had been born.

  I considered my options, none of which were very good and all of which would paint me in an unflattering light if acted upon. I decided—reluctantly—that patience would be the more proper means to my desired end. I would bypass my bench, stroll down to the picnic pavilion, and wait her out.

  It seemed a flawless plan, and I suppose it would have been if I hadn’t stepped on a very small but very noisy twig when I turned to leave.

  “Better watch that twig behind you,” the Old Man shouted, and then laughed at his timing.

  The girl wheeled around in midbubble, her legs frozen in an open scissor, and she greeted me with a strange look of shock and amazement. Then she smiled. A big, toothy, Christmas morning smile. I smiled back. She raised the fingers of the small hand that gripped the back of my bench and waved. I waved.

  And then she screamed.

  “I knew you’d come!” she said, her voice cracking with excitement. “I knew it I knew it!”

  “Pardon me?” I asked.

  She turned fully around and raised up on the back of my bench. Her smile grew wider. Mine didn’t. The Old Man floated his line above the water and then settled it. I was wondering if the fish could even see him, much less whatever he’d conjured on the hook.

  The girl spoke again, this time in a whisper: “I knew you’d come.”

  “How did you know I would come?” I asked her.

  “Because,” she said. Her tone suggested that one word was sufficient to make everything clear to all but the slowest people. When she realized I still hadn’t caught on, she clarified, “That’s how prayin’ works.”

  “You just say when,” the Old Man shouted again, “and I’ll come on up there. Don’t think the fish are bitin’ today, anyways.”

  I ignored him and turned back to her. The girl was still bent over the back of the bench—my bench. Her tongue was busy working her gum into a bubble. Her eyes were bugged and on me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled like a frustrated parent trying to explain the plainly obvious to a child.

  “Last night I prayed that God would send an angel to me at the park, so I came here to wait.” She paused and then leaned further over the back of the bench. “You are my angel, right?”

  “Oh boy,” came the voice from the river.

  My first reaction was to laugh, and I almost did. I’d been called one or two things in my life, but never an angel. But then I saw the expression on her face turn from joy to disappointment. The bubble she’d been working on now lay flat against the bottom of her lip, and I felt as though I was the one responsible for bursting it. Something was obviously wrong with this child, and laughing at something she said wouldn’t be very appropriate. Or helpful.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” I asked, evading her question.

  “Daddy said I could stay home today.”

  I nodded and took a step closer. Just one. “I see. Does your daddy know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think he’s worried about you?”

  She slurped the bubble gum back into her mouth and started chewing again. “I told him I was going to my auntie’s house,” she answered.

  “How long have you been sitting here?” I asked.

  “All morning,” she said.

  “How long were you going to wait?”

  “Until you came.” Then, “You are my angel, right?”

  I looked down to where the Old Man was fishing. “You have no idea what you’re doing, Andy,” he told me. “My job’s a lot harder than you think it is. You got a long way to go before you can be like me.”

  He was right, at least partway. I really didn’t have any idea what I was doing. But his job was hard? Really? Popping in every now and then to make a little comment about something? Please. If that was tough work, then angels had it easy. The Old Man had no idea how easy he had it, and there he was telling me I had a long way to go before I could be like him. Well, we’d just see about that.

  So.

  “I’m your angel,” I said.

  “Have it your way,” the Old Man said. “I’m outta here.”

  He tipped his cap and wished me luck, then let go of his fishing pole. It jiggled and danced over the surface of the river and then gathered into itself. There was a gentle poof! of air that made me blink, and when I opened my eyes I saw that the pole had formed into a duck that quacked and then flew away. The little girl turned at the sound and watched, no doubt wondering from where in the world the duck had come. The Old Man applauded his feat of prestidigitation. I had never seen him do anything like that—didn’t even think he could. But I offered him no awe. I had the feeling he’d done it not to brag, but to show me he could and to remind me I could not. I paid his warning no mind. I would not need magic tricks just to talk to a little girl.

/>   The Old Man winked at me from the river and then began to melt into the water. Just before his head disappeared, he said, “Take the gum, Andy, but don’t chew it. You’ll need it later.”

  The girl turned back to me, trading one marvel for another. “I knew it!” she said. “I’m sorry I kinda doubted.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, turning back to her. “I get that all the time. Hard for folks to believe much anymore. My name’s Andy.”

  “I’m Jordan,” she said. She extended a bony arm toward me. I crossed the space between us and shook her hand, nice and official like. When she pumped her arms, the shiny beads on the ends of her cornrowed hair clicked. “But I guess you already knew my name, huh?”

  “Sure I did,” I answered. A tiny burn formed in my gut. I tried to push it down, along with the thought that surely one of the straightest roads to hell was paved with lies told to innocent children.

  “Want some gum?” Jordan asked, holding out a half-chewed package.

  “Sure. Thanks.” I took her offering and put it in my pocket. “I’ll chew it later. I have a feeling I’ll need it.”

  Jordan scooted over and patted the seat of the bench like she was inviting me into my own home. I took it anyway and even offered a thank-you. We sat in silence for a few minutes, both unsure what was next. Then she pointed to the loaf of bread on my lap and said, “What’s that for?”

  “God wanted me to feed the ducks while I was here,” I said, surprised at how well and how easily I could slip into a lie. Like an old pair of shoes.

  “Where’d you get it? At the store?”

  “No, I just brought it with me.”

  “You mean,” she said, eyes bulging, “Jesus made that bread?”

  I looked down at the bread. Fittingly, the big red letters spelled out WONDER.

  “Absolutely,” I answered.

  Jordan whispered a heartfelt “Awesome.” She began to swing her feet back and forth beneath the bench again. Her eyes were studying me. “Are you sure you’re an angel?”

  “You don’t think I am?”

  “No,” she said, eyes wild again. The thought of making an angel mad hadn’t occurred to her, but now it had. “I mean, yes. I mean, I don’t know.” A pause, then, “Do you know why I prayed for God to send you down here?”

  Now my own legs began to swing beneath the bench, if only to give me something else to do rather than answer.

  “Well…,” I started, hoping I could finish, “God didn’t get real detailed. He just told me I needed to come see you.”

  Jordan gave me a satisfied nod, blew another bubble, and asked, “Are angels smart?”

  “Sure they are,” I told her. Then, catching myself—“We, I mean. Sure we are.”

  “So if I asked you some questions, you would know stuff?”

  I thought about that. I’d been raised in church, and still hardly ever missed a Sunday. Read my Bible every day. Prayed often. And I’d had my very own angel for a very long while. Sure I would know stuff.

  “Shoot,” I said.

  Jordan’s legs stopped swinging and she looked down, almost embarrassed by what she was going to say next. “I guess I just kind of want to know what heaven’s like.”

  The question took me by surprise. Heaven? How could I possibly talk about something like that? I cast a glance toward the river where the Old Man had stood, but there was nothing but current.

  I’d asked him quite a few times about heaven when he first came into my life. The wounds of my mother’s death were still fresh, like open sores on my heart. I needed to know there was an After to life’s Now, and I needed to know she was there, that she was happy. That she was waiting. When I would ask, the Old Man would always smile in a far-off kind of way, and there were tears in his eyes that spoke of a joy that could not be told. He’d said that she had found her joy and was indeed there waiting, but that it was not an anxious sort of wait. And he would say no more. Heaven, he said, was beyond words. Describing it would be like describing the color yellow to a blind person. You could try, but the more you explained the further away from the truth you would be. Wait, he would say to me. Wait, and you will see.

  I knew wait, and you will see would not help me in this case, but what would? All I could think of was the streets-of-gold, mansion-in-the-sky description. I figured that wouldn’t appeal to someone her age. How could blissful eternity be explained in terms a little child could appreciate?

  “It’s sorta like every day is Saturday,” I said.

  Jordan smiled and said, “Good.”

  I thought my task was over then. Yes! Simple enough. I could pat her on the leg and send her home and everything would be fine. But Jordan wasn’t done. Not even close.

  “Where are your wings?” she asked.

  “In my pocket,” I answered.

  “Can I see them?”

  “No.”

  “Are Adam and Eve sorry?”

  “Yes, and God forgave them.”

  “How old is God?”

  “Really, really old.”

  “Does He have dreams when He sleeps?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because God doesn’t sleep.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because He’s busy watching over you.”

  “Why does He watch over me?”

  “Because He loves you and wants to keep you safe.”

  “Then why did He let my mommy die?”

  My mouth, open and ready to fire off another automatic answer, suddenly became very dry. I’d been staring out at the river all that time, but now my eyes cut to the right and the left, searching for the Old Man. He wasn’t there. This was another lesson. One more Teachable Moment. But this one would be coming at Jordan’s expense.

  “What?” I asked.

  Jordan looked up to me. Tears pooled in her little eyes. She tried to look at me but found she couldn’t and settled for her shoes instead. “I said if God loves me and wants to keep me safe, then why did He let my mommy die?”

  The breeze wafted over us, blowing through the pines and into the river and carrying with it a thin and familiar voice that whispered, “Told ya so.” If Jordan heard it, she said nothing.

  Jordan sniffled and reached into her pocket for a tissue. She swiped at the tears trickling down her cheeks as she waited for an answer. I had none. This was not a child’s question. This was adult stuff. Serious stuff. Stuff I still asked myself. And God, too.

  Why did the world have to be so bad? Why do the innocent have to suffer? Why must good people have nothing and bad people have everything and why did it have to be that way?

  Because bad things happened in this life, and to everyone. That was the easy answer, the one I’d learned to adopt myself. The world was a hard place and no one lived happily ever after. And no matter how wise we became, we would always leave with more questions than answers.

  But how could I tell Jordan that?

  I knew this was one of those moments in Jordan’s life where she found herself at a fork in the road. One path led to healing, the other to bitterness. Whatever I said next may well be the very words that pushed her down either the one or the other. So I did what I should have all along. I told her the truth.

  “Jordan?” I said.

  She sniffled and wiped her nose. Her eyes were still on the ground, but she had nudged herself toward me. Her head was now very close to landing on my shoulder. “What?”

  “I’m not an angel.”

  I spat the words out as quickly as I could, but their fetid taste remained. More tears would come now. Maybe a tantrum. Which would be completely justified.

  But there was only silence.

  Finally, she said, “I thought maybe you weren’t.”

  “You did?” I asked.

  Jordan nodded and pointed to my hat—“Daddy says God hates the Yankees.”

  I chuckled and she managed a weak grin, and then her steadfast countenance crumbled in a fit of tears. I wrapped my arms
around her. Jordan huddled into the crook of my shoulder. I rocked her as she sobbed.

  We sat for a long while on my bench—our bench—and looked out over the river. The ducks arrived. We took turns tossing them bits of bread and laughed as they quacked and fought over each chunk.

  I told Jordan that I’d lost my own mother when I was near her age. I didn’t know why God would do a thing like that, but that He must have had a very good reason. He always does, I said, and one day we would both find out what that reason was. That was what faith was all about.

  “In the meantime, your mom still loves you and she’s in a good place. The best place.”

  When the bread was gone and the ducks were full, Jordan said it was time for her to be going. She thanked me, gave me another hug, and assured me she felt better. I knew she didn’t. But I also knew one day she would. I watched her walk toward the bridge that led across the river toward the soccer field and the houses beyond.

  “See ya,” she said from the bridge.

  “See ya.”

  And she was gone.

  I remained behind and watched the river flow by. After a few minutes I heard a creak beside me on the seat. The Old Man was now dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. “Guess I could’ve used you after all,” I said.

  He smiled and offered me a pat on the leg that I couldn’t feel. “Nice to know I’m needed.”

  I stared out over the bridge again and said, “If you had been here, what would you have told me to say?”

  “Exactly what you did,” he said. And then, just to make sure I understood: “Exactly what you did. An important lesson. For the both of you.”

  I fished the piece of bubble gum Jordan had given me out of my pocket and held it up to him. “This why I was here today?”

  “No,” he said. “You were here to help a little girl.” He pointed to the gum. “That’s extra. Keep it safe, Andy. Okay?”

  I nodded. I knew what he meant by that.