by Abby Bardi
“Does she miss her family?”
“Of course she does.” Sometimes when we walked around the neighborhood, Mary Fred would see small children playing, and her eyes would well up, but she never said anything about it. “Naturally. But I think she's made a good adjustment to being here.”
“So everything is totally rosy.” Diane went on scribbling on her clipboard.
“That's right. I mean, except for poor Buddy.”
“Buddy?”
“The man from the shelter. The one who died.”
“Oh, right.” Diane did not look the least bit interested in Buddy. “Okay, Alice. I'll turn in a positive report. Even glowing.”
Though I hadn't been consciously worried about it, I felt relief flood me. I guess in some dark part of my mind, I'd been afraid that Diane would take Mary Fred away.
By the time dinner was ready, the girls had sufficiently recovered from their grief to regale Diane with stories about the soup kitchen—how difficult it was to plan meals because you never knew who was coming, and how funny and sweet some of the clientele were, though some of them were obviously drunk or on drugs. They took turns talking, and it was like listeningto one long sentence. Diane just kept nodding and looking at me every so often as if to suggest that something one of the girls had said had some kind of special significance. I went in and out of the kitchen, bringing food, while they chattered on. (Roy wasn't there. He had excused himself, since he preferred to avoid Diane when possible.)
Diane looked a little uncomfortable during the B.P.— despite her church membership, I knew she was a devout atheist. When we finished, she asked Mary Fred how she had liked going to church. Mary Fred said diplomatically that it had been a very nice church, though not exactly what she was used to. Diane seemed to accept this without question, and I was relieved that she didn't ask me if I had taken Mary Fred to any other churches. I wasn't sure what would make Diane the happiest, if I hadn't or if I had.
“Oh, Diane,” Puffin said, her mouth full of fish. “How are the cows?”
“The cows?”
“Mary Fred told me about how you were on that committee to send cows to Nicaragua. Cows for Kids?”
Diane wiped her mouth with a napkin, which was a good thing, since she had broccoli on her upper lip, and cleared her throat. “We had a little problem with the cows.”
“Really? What kind of problem?” Mary Fred asked. “We had a lot of trouble with our cows too. Sometimes they just colic for no reason at all. I've spent many a night with a sick cow. Did your cows get sick?”
“Well, not exactly.” Diane looked very uncomfortable. Her little eyes darted around as if looking for an exit.
“Have some more fish, Diane,” I said, passing her the platteron which I had arranged the pieces of tilapia and some sprigs of thyme from the garden. Mary Fred had weeded theherb patch and it was now growing so rapidly that we put herbs in almost everything we ate.
“Thank you,” Diane said, taking the plate and busying herself with selecting a piece of fish. I found myself hoping that its oil would clear up her skin, which was always blotchy and acne-scarred. Eating fish several times a week had been very good for our complexions.
There was a small silence while Diane put a chunk of tilapia in her mouth and chewed slowly, and then Puffin said, “So what happened to the cows?”
Diane looked down at her plate and said, “The cows aren't doing very well.”
“What happened?”
“There was a problem with their food, apparently.” Diane coughed.
“Oh, no!” Mary Fred clapped her hands together. “We had a cow that had a terrible allergy once. We finally had to give it oatmeal—that was all it could eat. Was it something like that?”
“Well, evidently the problem was not with the food, per se. The problem was with the lack of food. Evidently, no one knew how to take care of cows down there. You see, in a small third-world village, people lack the fundamental agricultural skills that we take for granted,” Diane said in a didactic voice that I remembered from college.
“So the people didn't know how to take care of the cows?” Mary Fred asked.
“That's right. They didn't have the requisite knowledge base.”
“So the cows all got sick?” Puffin asked, putting her hand over her mouth.
“Yes,” Diane said. “They got sick.”
“Are they all better now?”
“Well . . .” Diane cleared her throat again and looked intently at her salad. “Actually, they died.”
“They died?” Mary Fred looked at her in horror. “How?”
“They starved to death.”
“Oh, my goodness gracious!” Mary Fred said. It was the most extravagant exclamation I had heard from her yet.
When Diane had gone, we went and sat out on the porch. I think all of us felt relieved that she was gone, though I'm not sure the girls knew why she'd been visiting. I poured us some fresh lemonade that Mary Fred had squeezed for us and put mint from the garden in it.
“Alice, I don't think I understand about the cows,” Mary Fred said. “Why did they send the cows down there if the people didn't know how to take care of them?”
“I don't know, Mary Fred. I guess they were trying to do the right thing. It's not always easy to know how to do that, though.”
“But didn't they realize that the cows would need to eat?”
“I'm not sure they thought it through all the way.”
“But they had all those pamphlets. With the cow patterns on them. It looked like they knew what they were doing.”
“I guess people don't always know when they don't know what they're doing. That's what life is like, you just kind of stab around in the dark until you find out, I guess.”
“It's horrible,” Mary Fred said. “Those poor cows.”
“It is horrible,” Puffin said, “but it's also just so incredibly—” She started to laugh, and before we knew it, Mary Fred and I were laughing too. “The poor c-c-cows,” Puffin gasped, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“What's all this?” Roy came up the steps and looked at thethree of us. “You ladies are insane.” Mary Fred and Puffin tried to explain to him about the cows, but they were still laughing too hard to talk, and finally he just shook his head and went indoors.
After we had calmed down, we just sat there for a while without saying anything, looking out at the street whenever anyone walked by, usually someone with a dog. The girls rocked back and forth on the porch swing, kicking their feet in the air. Finally Puffin said she was going to go take a shower— she always showered at night and then put her hair up in a little ponytail to sleep, to keep it from frizzing. She had been doing it since she was old enough to bathe alone, and the ponytail still seemed to transform her into little Puffin, the little Puffin I still often thought of her as.
“Alice,” Mary Fred said when Puffin had gone. “How long will I be here?”
“I don't know, honey. I guess until things get—back to normal. With your family.” I looked at her. She was chewing a strand of her hair, and her face looked strained, as if she were anxious. “Are you okay with that, Mary Fred?”
“Well—seeing Diane reminded me. . . .” Her eyes started to fill up with tears. I reached over to grab her hand, but the swing went backward as I reached and I just grasped the air.
“Aren't you happy here? You seem so well adjusted. And we just love having you here, you know that.”
“I know. I mean, it's great and all, Alice, I really like being with you—at least, part of me does, in fact part of me really likes it, and sometimes I feel bad about that. Like I don't even know who I am anymore. Puffin and I get along great, and I love everyone at the soup kitchen, and you're so good to me, ma'am, Alice, but—”
“I know. It's hard. You miss your family.”
“Alice, here's the thing. It's not just that. Oh, I miss them really bad sometimes, so bad it makes my heart just hurt. But I know there's nothing I can do about it. The only t
hing I can do is just wait and travel in the One. I know the Littles must be all right, wherever they are, and Mama and Papa will be fine too, because the One will see all of us through all our trials. . . .” Her voice trailed off, as if she had said this so many times that it was hardly necessary to finish the thought.
“Yes, I'm sure they're all fine.” Actually, I wasn't sure at all about this, and I felt bad saying something I didn't believe, but she seemed to accept it. “Does it worry you to be away from your, um, people?”
She swung back and forth, not looking at me. “It's not just that I'm with Lackers and watching television and all that kind of thing. That's bad enough. And I haven't been reading the Book nearly as often as I should—we've just been too busy in the soup kitchen, and cooking dinner and stuff like that.”
“I know.”
“But I'm worried about something, and I might as well tell you right out.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “See, Alice, there's this thing that's going to happen. And happen soon.”
“Do you mean the Big Cat?”
“How'd you know that?” She looked startled.
“You've mentioned it a few times.” Though I already knew that I didn't want to hear the answer, I asked, “Mary Fred, what is the Big Cat?”
“Well, I told you it's not a cat.” She put her feet on the floor to stop her swinging and looked at me. “Cat is sort of a nickname. We have names for things.”
“I know. What does it mean?”
“I guess it's short for cataclysm. Or catastrophe. I'm not even sure. But you see, the Book has predicted it. And it's supposed to happen at the end of the century.”
“I see. And here we are—the century is almost over. But you're stuck with us.”
“Well, stuck isn't quite the right word.” She smiled at me, but her smile looked pained. “But that's the problem, see. All my life, we've been planning for this year. We've waited for the time, knowing it's going to come—for a time, and times, and half a time. And it's coming, and coming soon, Alice, and I don't know what to do.”
“What are you supposed to do when the Big Cat comes?”
“Well, first of all, we have to be at the Compound. We had buses at the Outpost ready to take us there. We had to go where we'd be safe, and alone, I mean without Lackers, and there we would wait for the—oh Alice, I'm not supposed to say what will happen.”
“That's okay, Mary Fred. You don't have to tell me.”
She dropped her voice to a whisper and said, “The Imminence.”
“I see. Is it a sort of second coming?”
She looked away and said, “We think it's a third coming. But yes, and there we will be at the foot of the mountain, waiting for the Glory, all of us together, and we will be translated— that's the word he uses in the Book, translated—into the light.”
“And what happens to all the Lackers?”
Mary Fred's face crumpled and she began to sob. I went and sat down next to her on the swing and put my arms around her. When she had cried for a while, she lifted her face up and said, “Ma'am, that's the terrible thing. I realize now that I never cared before. I never minded that all the Lackers weregoing to be turned into dust, and were going to go to seven and seven hells and stay there. I mean, I thought it was too bad, but I didn't—”
“I understand,” I said, stroking her hair, which was soft and kind of sticky from sweat. “You care about us. I know.”
“It just hurts so much. All of it. Everything that happened, Fred and Little Freddie, and Mama and Papa, I never felt all the hurt of it, not at first. I was always protected by the idea of the light. But now not even that is a comfort to me—it's all just dust and ashes, Alice, just dust and ashes.”
She cried some more and I let her. After a while, I dried her eyes and said, “Okay, Mary Fred, let's be practical. When exactly is this Big Cat supposed to come?”
“In the new year, on the seventh day.” She took a breath, and her shoulders shook a little.
“January seventh?” She nodded so I said, “All right, Mary Fred. I'll make sure we can take you to the Compound that day, somehow. So you'll be there.”
“You mean you'll drive me out there?”
“Yes.”
“So you'll be there too, then. For the Imminence.”
“Yes. Though being a Lacker and all, I'm not sure it will do me any good.” I smiled and wiped her eyes with my hand.
“Maybe it will, Alice.” She looked very serious. “Can Heather come too? And Uncle Roy?”
“Sure, we'll all go. It's probably not that far away—only a few hours from here.”
“Really?”
“Sure. See, problem solved.”
She looked relieved for a moment, but then she said, “But what about my parents? And the Littles?”
“Mary Fred, don't you think the Imminence is large enough to reach them wherever they are? After all, it's not as if they're Lackers.”
“Oh, Alice, I don't know. I hope so.”
“Of course it is.” I made my tone as reassuring as I could, and said some more little comforting words. Then Puffin came back onto the porch with her hair in her funny ponytail and her flowered nightgown. She asked us what we were doing, and Mary Fred dried her eyes and said we were just talking, and that sometimes talking could be hard work but that we were doing a pretty good job of it. She didn't mention the Big Cat again that night, but I could tell she was still thinking about it, and I hoped that maybe I had managed to make her feel better, even though as far as I knew, there was no substance at all to the comfort I had offered her. But then I thought, sometimes comfort is like that.
When the girls had gone to bed, I sat for a while on the porch swing, feeling the humidity against my skin, almost as if someone were touching me. Like Mary Fred, I needed comforting, but since there was no one there but me, I had to make do with the night air. When I finally went inside, I walked through the house, turning out each light one by one, then lay in bed alone for a while, with darkness all around me.
THE BOOK OF HEATHER
When I took my first look at Mary Fred, I was sure there was no way we could ever be friends. In fact, I didn't even want to be seen with her in public. She was wearing a dress the color of mud, she hadn't shaved her legs, and her hair was in these weird braids—there was no way I would ever dream of going anywhere with her, not even to the Safeway.
Luckily, Mom didn't suggest any field trips, at least not for a while. By the time we had to actually leave the house together, I was okay with her. It wasn't that I didn't care what she looked like—I still did—but I got to the point where I could handle it. I had never been friends with a person like Mary Fred before, someone who was basically a dork, and it was hard for me at first. But after a while I almost liked that about her, and I kind of enjoyed going places together because people would look at her and wonder what her problem was. It made me feel like we were outlaws.
I was incredibly bored when we first met. Life was just dragging on. I hated school, though at least when you go to school there are people around you, all making noise, especially in the cafeteria, there's this roaring of people's voices. Their sounds make me feel better, like I'm not alone in thewhole world. I guess that's why I watch TV, for the sound of it. Sometimes I used to cut school and take the Metro downtown and just walk around, up and down Connecticut Avenue. I would look in stores but mostly I pretended that I was going somewhere very important, like down Sixteenth Street to see the President, and that everyone was waiting for me there, a whole crowd of people sitting around in the White House going, “Where's Heather Cullison? Is she here yet?” And then finally my cab pulls up, or no, wait, my limo, and when I come into the room, everyone claps. I walk down the aisle to the front, where Bill Clinton and Al Gore are standing there, smiling at me. Bill probably wants me to meet him in a hallway somewhere, but I just smile back and stand at the podium facing the audience. They don't scare me at all, all those faces looking up at me and waiting for me to spe
ak. “Greetings,” I say, and everyone applauds again. I love the sound of applause, and sometimes when I hear it, like on a record, when my mom is listening to the soundtrack from Woodstock or something, I feel myself starting to almost cry, thinking about how it's all waiting for me somewhere, I just don't know where yet.
At first, Mary Fred and I did nothing but veg out in front of the TV. We just sat there and watched all the stuff I usually watched. She didn't have any particular preference, and that was a good thing since we never argued about the channel like I sometimes did with my uncle Roy. Although Roy had been keeping mostly to himself for a while now and didn't even try to grab the remote anymore. We sat there and for the first few days, we didn't say much to each other, though sometimes I'd have to explain the plots of particular TV shows. Mary Fred had a lot of weird questions, and I would answer them during commercials. Every so often we'd watch something on Nickelodeon, and she always wanted to discuss why theSkipper's clothes never got old or dirty on Gilligan's Island, or why the people on The Beverly Hillbillies didn't just go back where they came from, since it was obvious that they didn't like it in California. Sometimes I had the feeling that she didn't realize that these weren't real people, but just actors on TV, especially when she'd get scared that Gilligan was going to get eaten by a lion or something, though I told her he'd be okay.
I can't explain it, but after a while, I started to be glad she was there. I liked that there was always someone with me, that when I sat in front of the TV, I wasn't the only one who could hear it. It was a beginning to my search for the crowd who waited for me—Mary Fred was just one person, but sometimes it felt as if she was clapping for me. I liked that she didn't say much—it was like we both just listened to the same things, as if there was now more sound in the room. A hubbub. That was one of my SAT words, and I liked to say it to myself. Hubbub. Hubbub.
I think the moment I knew she was really my friend was when I came back from France. It had felt so bad to leave Paris. One minute it was my birthday, and we were in the Tuileries watching the old men roll metal balls, and throwing francs to mimes, and the next minute we were back at Baltimore-Washington International at the same terminal we had left from, only it looked different now, tacky and ugly and full of boring Americans in T-shirts. Paris had been full of just the right kind of people, with interesting clothes on, like they had really thought about what they were going to wear and studied themselves in the mirror, like I do, to make sure they looked just perfect. And sometimes couples had stood on the corner and kissed in ways that you never see anywhere but in movies. Everywhere we went, people had smiled at us because we were a cute family, and my father spoke really good French so people didn't hate us for being Americans, and the twins were dressedin identical outfits every single day and were always carrying balloons or something that made them look like cartoon characters. Dad and Jemma held hands as we walked around, and though I like Jemma a lot, sometimes I found myself wanting her to just disappear, get poofed away like someone on The XFiles, so I could have my dad back. Though then I would think, well, the twins need their mom, and Dad really loves Jemma, and what good would it do anyway, things with him and Mom are over forever. Unlike most divorced kids, I knew that.