I push the button to raise my bed so I can be more upright and hopefully appear more grown-up and even in control of this awkward situation. This rationale is ridiculous, but it’s all I have at the moment.
“Hi, Mom,” I say in a timid voice. I remind myself of a mouse with its tail in the trap. Then I turn to Aaron and attempt a smile. “Hey, Bro.”
He comes over next to Mom now and stands there with his large hands hanging loosely by his sides. He feels big and clumsy and useless. I can see it in his eyes that dart all around the small room, uneasy, unwilling to meet my gaze.
“Thanks for coming,” I tell them. Disarm them with the friendly routine, or so I hope. Perhaps I can convince Mom not to send me back to Forest Hills or call in the church troops if I can only act normal enough.
“Why didn’t you call us?” my mom begins. I suspect it will go downhill from here on out.
“How are you feeling?” asks Aaron. I wonder if he’s trying to help me out by changing the subject.
Ignoring Mom’s unanswerable question, I focus my attention on my brother. “I’ve felt better.”
“Yeah, you look—” He stops himself and glances uneasily at Mom. I know what he was about to say, but somehow this ingratiates him to me. I smile at him again, sincerely this time. My mom switches her handbag to the other hand and sighs loudly.
“I know,” I continue, directing my words toward Aaron. “I try to avoid mirrors these days.”
“I missed you at Christmas,” he says. “I even got you a present.”
“Really?” Now this fascinates me since no holidays are ever celebrated at our house—it’s against the church’s rules. We never exchange presents or practice any of the other holiday traditions that the rest of the civilized world seems to enjoy.
“We even put up a tree,” he continues. His eyes seem almost childlike.
“No way.”
He nods, and the glint in his eyes reminds me of the time he sneaked a frog into his bedroom and swore me to secrecy.
I turn and peer at Mom with open suspicion. “Is that true?”
Mom nods without speaking, and yet she seems slightly frightened as her eyes dart to the door, almost as if she thinks someone might be listening in. Someone from the church, I suspect. I wonder if she’s telling the truth even now. Perhaps this is a trick to make me trust them.
“Mom’s not going to Salvation Center anymore.” Aaron announces this in a way that might almost suggest our mother has just given up a serious heroin habit. He looks that proud.
“You’re kidding!” First I look at Aaron and then back at Mom. A mixture of doubt and astonishment come over me, and I’m not sure I can believe either one of them anymore. This is all just too fantastic. I wonder what they’re really up to now. I’m certain they’re trying to pull something over on me, an attempt to gain my trust before they whip the rug out from beneath me again.
“Is that really true, Mom? You’ve honestly quit the church?”
She looks down at the floor and presses her lips together. She looks as if she contains some dark secret. “Yes, it’s true, Alice.”
“But how?” I study her face, unconvinced. “You’ve gone there for … forever.”
“Not forever, Alice. Your father and I joined when you were a baby.”
“That’s forever to me. But really, Mom, what’s going on?”
“Something happened to me, Alice. It wasn’t long after we took you up to Forest Hills.” She shakes her head. “I really regret that day. But later in that week, Pastor John had me come to the church, for a session, you know …”
I nod, knowing full well what a Salvation Center session is all about. Personally, I would rather be locked up in the Queen’s Prison.
“Pastor John and the others just kept telling me that we’d invited this evil into our home by sinning. How it was wrong for you kids to be going to secular schools and how it’s all my fault that you’d become demonized. They wanted to do a cleansing on me and the house and you kids as well. It went on and on until something in me just completely snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore, Alice.” Tears stream down her face now, and my brother steps over and places a protective hand on her shoulder. She looks up at him and smiles with a quivering chin. Then she turns back to me with a look of pure determination in her watery eyes. “It was in that moment that I knew I had to get out. I felt that the church was killing me, probably killing you kids, too. Suddenly it was as if everything about that place seemed twisted and … and evil.” She opens her handbag and pulls out a handkerchief and dabs her eyes.
“So you just walked out? Just like that? You didn’t let them do the cleansing?” I struggle to imagine my soft-spoken mother standing up to the church leadership like that.
She shakes her head no. “I told them I’d had enough and to leave me alone. Then I went home. I was so scared that I locked the doors and took the phone off the hook. I didn’t know what to do. It’s not as if I wanted to turn my back on God. Just those people.”
I’m not sure what to say. It’s not that I don’t believe her, but it’s just so incredible. I glance over at Aaron and can tell by his expression that he’s buying all this. I wonder what makes me such a skeptic. “So then what happened?” I ask.
“I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared and distraught that I got down on my knees, and I prayed, but I didn’t pray a church prayer. Instead I just said how I honestly felt—about the church and what had happened to you and just everything. I guess you could say I poured my heart out to God. When I finally finished, it seemed crystal clear that everything at Salvation Center is all wrong—well, for me anyway. I guess I can’t really judge for anyone else. But it’s as if a little light bulb went on in my head, and I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that I needed to leave Salvation Center for good.” She sighs now, and her speech does sound believable.
But I’m still not completely convinced. She’s gone to that church for more than twenty years, and it seems almost inconceivable that she could walk away like that. I’m still not sure this isn’t a clever trick to get me to trust her again. Just the same, I definitely want to hear more.
“Then what happened?” I ask again.
“Well, just a couple of days after I decided I was done with Salvation Center, I had to go to the grocery store. Naturally, I was worried that I’d run into someone from church if I went to Grocery Outlet, and so I made a change and went to Safeway.”
Aaron lets out a low whistle as if this is some hugely daring move on Mom’s part. And I suppose it is since Salvation Center considers spending money unnecessarily to be sinful. Paying full price for groceries must be right at the top of the wasteful list.
“I ran into an old friend at the Safeway store, Sheila Bennett, and right out of the blue, she started telling me about this Bible study that she leads and how I’d be welcome to come if I liked. Well, something about her seemed so warm and genuine. So I actually called her that very same evening. She was so nice on the phone that I felt as if someone had popped a cork out of me, and I just poured out the whole story. And I mean everything!”
I am worried now. Has my mother jumped out of the frying pan and right into another kind of fire? “Uh, what kind of church is this Sheila lady involved in?”
Mom smiles like she knows where I’m going with this. She pats my hand. “Don’t worry, Alice. I checked it out. It’s just a regular church where they sing old-fashioned hymns and have ladies’ teas once a month. They even put up decorations and had a Christmas program where the children dressed up like elves and snowmen and put on a play about the real meaning of Christmas.”
“Elves?” I feel my eyes open wide. “Pastor John would have a conniption.”
She actually giggles about this. “I know. I think that’s the best part.”
She takes my hand in hers now, a surprisingly warm gesture for someone like my mom. “I’m so sorry, honey. I wish I had seen all this sooner. It’s as if I was blind. I can’t believe we stayed in that ch
urch for so long. I guess I felt trapped. I think your father was beginning to see that just before he died. You know he had stopped going to church and kept saying that Pastor John was wrong about a lot of things. And he started questioning everything. At the time I thought he was being sinful, and Pastor John actually told church members to have nothing to do with him. But now I can see he was just trying to find the truth. I hope he did.” She begins to cry again, and I am confused. I remember my father being controlling and mean—head of the household, and he wanted everyone to know it. He demanded our respect and punished us, even Mom, when we refused to give it. It is hard to feel too sorry for this man now.
And yet I could recall how my dad seemed to change just as I was getting ready to leave for college. He’d been so against it from the start, and I suspect that Pastor John had been riding him for being a bad leader in our family.
“No one from Salvation Center goes to a secular college!” he’d yelled at me when I’d first announced getting a scholarship from Portland State. Somewhere over the summer he had softened up, and by the time fall came, he even offered to drive me to school. We didn’t speak much during the ride; I was afraid to open my mouth, afraid that he’d launch into some kind of religious lecture. But amazingly, he didn’t. He even hugged me before he left to go home. I remember thinking how undadlike that had been, how totally out of character. Then he died from a heart attack early that winter, before I ever saw him again.
I look at Mom now. Studying her saddened face, I try to determine if this is really true or just another trick. My mind spins, remembering so many unhappy things all at once, yet at the same time hoping that somehow it’s all about to change. I’m not sure what to think, and my head is about to explode. I wonder how much contradictory information the human brain can contain.
“They hounded me for a while,” my mother continues. I wonder if she’s been talking the whole time and if I’ve been distracted, lost in my own thoughts. “Leaders from the church began calling constantly. I even considered changing the phone number, but by then you’d run away from Forest Hills, and I was afraid that you might try to call home and not get me.”
“I even suggested she get a restraining order for them,” says Aaron. “Get those creeps put in jail for harassment.”
I consider this as I stare at them both in wonder. If it’s an act, it’s a pretty good one. They should both get Oscars for their performances. And yet something about my mother seems genuinely different to me. I consider telling her about how I started talking to God yesterday, how it seemed more real than ever before, but decide to keep this to myself. I’m not totally sure she would understand. I don’t know if I even understand it myself. It could be just my imagination. But then so could my mother’s experience. How do we know what is really real and what’s our imagination? Especially when it comes to religion. Could that be what faith is, deciding the difference and then acting on it?
“So, Mom, are you honestly telling me that you really believe that Salvation Center is wrong? That Pastor John is a fake and a hypocrite?”
“Something like that.” She nods. “I don’t really want to judge them, but I know they were wrong when it came to us. And I’m so sorry you got hurt. I feel like it’s my fault that you’ve been so … so sick, you know. I keep thinking that if your father and I hadn’t forced you to go to that horrible church … well, all this might never have happened to you.” She glances over at Aaron with a worried look. “I keep telling Aaron that I don’t want to see this happen to him.”
He just shrugs. “Don’t worry, Mom. I don’t plan on going crazy anytime soon.”
“Thanks.” I try to look like a big sister now.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to say—”
“It’s okay. I probably am crazy.” I sigh and look down at my bruised arms, tracing the stitched-up marks along a dark red scar with my finger. Frankenstein’s bride.
“So maybe you will begin to get better now.” My mom looks hopefully at me. As if she thinks her decision to leave Salvation Center will make a real difference with my troubles. As if she honestly believes she has some sort of control over my life or even my brain. Thinking this almost makes me want to laugh.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say.
“And as soon as you’re well enough, you can come home,” she offers. “I can take care of you now, and you’ll get better in no time.”
A part of me really wants to believe this. I even tell myself that what she’s saying is true, that I can go home with my mother and she will make everything better. But at the same time, something more convincing keeps telling me it just doesn’t work that way—that if I go home, things will only get worse. And the mere thought of disappointing my mother frightens me. As if she is in a fragile state and needs to be protected, which really seems ridiculous if I think about it too hard.
So I decide to play her game. I nod and agree, and this makes her face relax a little. Suddenly I know how she feels. I understand her guilt. It’s terrible to blame yourself for someone else’s troubles. I feel like that about Simon right now. I know it’s my fault that he nearly died and his car got wrecked and he’s all messed up. I bet he wishes he’d never met me. I wonder if he will file some sort of lawsuit against me or if the police will come here and arrest me soon.
“Faye seems very nice.” My mother is talking, and once again I’m afraid I haven’t been listening. “I’m so glad that you were able to stay with her.”
I nod.
“I must admit that I was a little surprised at how many cats she keeps. You’d think the city would have a health ordinance against such things. Goodness, I never saw so much cat hair in one place.”
Aaron makes a face. “Yeah, and her house smelled like a giant litter box.”
I am defensive now. “That’s because it was my job to keep them cleaned,” I say quickly.
“Well, even if it’s not the most sanitary place,” my mother continues, “it was kind of her to take you in.”
“Faye is a kind person.” I hold my head up. “She’s more like a real Christian than anyone else I’ve ever known.” I realize that I risk hurting my mother’s feelings by saying this, but it’s the truth. Besides, I don’t like hearing my family faulting Faye for her love of cats.
“She seemed kind of crazy to me,” says Aaron.
I bristle at the word but then remind myself that Aaron probably doesn’t mean to sound malicious.
“I’m curious about something, Alice,” says my mother.
I wait a bit and then finally ask her what.
“Well, after you disappeared from Forest Hills, where did you go? Where did you stay before you went to live with Faye? I was so worried about you. I filed a missing-person report, and my new church even donated money to have posters made with your photograph on it.”
This horrifies me. I can’t bear the idea of having my face plastered on telephone poles across the state with the word MISSING in bold caps, as if I’m a lost dog. No wonder I am so lost most of the time if they have proclaimed it like that. Fortunately, I don’t voice this since I’m sure she wouldn’t understand.
“Yeah,” chimes in Aaron. “Where were you?”
I sigh and wonder why it matters now. “On the streets mostly.”
My mother gasps, but Aaron looks slightly impressed. “No kidding?” He pulls up a chair now, as if he wants to hear more.
“Yeah. It’s not much fun out there.”
He leans forward. “Were you scared?”
I want to tell him that I’m still scared, that everything about life scares me, and that most of all I scare myself. But instead I just nod and try to act cool. “Yeah. It can be pretty scary sometimes.”
He shakes his head. “Man, that is so weird. I can’t imagine my sister making it on the street.”
I can tell that my mom is getting more and more horrified with all this, and I actually feel sorry for her. What with the church and everything, I think she’s been through a lot.
�
�How’s school?” I ask Aaron, hoping to change the subject.
“Cool. We had a great football season. Almost made it to the playoffs.”
“Congratulations.”
“Yeah. Then I pulled a stupid hamstring.” He rubs his thigh.
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah, I missed the last two games, but the doc says I should be back in shape in time for next season.”
“Cool.”
So we sit and talk like a happy little family, but the whole time I am thinking I should stay away from both of them. I know I am more than they can handle right now. And I am certain I will only bring them more heartache and misery should I decide to go home. It’s sweet that my mom thinks she can make me better if I go home, but talk about delusions! Even though I can imagine her bringing me soup and sympathy, she has no idea what she’s up against. I’m not even sure myself.
Finally, and mercifully, visiting hours come to an end. Nurse Stacy comes in and tells Mom and Aaron that I need my rest now, and even though I feel guilty, I am relieved to see my family go. For a moment I think maybe I can just stay here forever, suspended between my crazy world and normal life, if there is such a thing. I don’t even mind taking my pain pills so much anymore.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Mom promises.
Aaron reaches over and pats me gently on the head. “I’d come too, Sis, but I gotta get back to class and work on getting the old GPA back up.”
“Yeah.” I remember those days like a previous life on another planet, remember how something as insignificant as a less-than-glowing midterm grade could obsess me. Oh, if only life could be that simple again.
Mom leans over and kisses me on the cheek. I am unable to remember her doing this since I was very, very little. It’s a sweet gesture, and I try to smile even though I want to sob.
At last they are gone, and Stacy hands me a pain pill, which I take quite willingly. I want to just drift away into fantasyland; it hurts too much to be real. I wonder how addictive these pain pills are. I wonder how hard they are to get on the outside. For the first time in my life I think I understand how addiction begins, and I think I am ready to give it a whirl. I mean, really, what do I possibly have to lose?
Finding Alice Page 21