Here's Lily

by Nancy Rue

  “Water,” Lily said.

  “One water coming up.”

  But the minute Mrs. Johnson put the frosty pitcher and the glass with a curlicue straw on the bedside table and left Reni’s room, Lily turned her face to the wall and cried until she fell asleep.

  When she woke up, she heard whispering. She was sure someone was saying, “She nearly burned her father up, and all she could think about was her precious face.” But as she shook off the ugly cobwebs of her dream, she opened her eyes and saw Kathleen.

  She wanted to pull the covers up over her head.

  “Hey, there!” Kathleen sank—elegantly, of course—into a chair Mrs. Johnson had pulled up to the bed before she tiptoed out. “You gave us all quite a scare.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Lily said, “or you’ll really get a scare.”

  Kathleen surveyed Lily’s face and slowly shook her head. “This isn’t the best look for you,” she said, “but if anybody can pull it off, you can.”

  Lily blinked. “Pull what off?”

  “The show. Your mom said the doctor told her it should be no problem for you to walk down a runway a couple of times. We’ll have extra help for you for your changes, but—”

  “I can’t be in the show!” Lily almost shouted. Her voice was scratchy and pitiful, but she didn’t care.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You don’t want me in your show! I look like a baboon!”

  Kathleen sat back in the chair and folded her hands neatly in her lap so that all her nails lined up in a polished, white-tipped row. She seemed to look at Lily forever, until Lily had to turn her own eyes miserably down to Reni’s comforter.

  “In the first place,” Kathleen finally said, “it isn’t ‘my’ show; it’s ‘our’ show. It’s very much all of ours, and I can’t imagine it happening without you.”

  “But—”

  “And in the second place, you look absolutely nothing like a primate of any kind. You are a beautiful young woman with some bandages on her face. Yes, your forehead is swollen, but I’m practically watching it go down as I sit here.”

  Lily shrugged.

  “I’m surprised at you,” Kathleen said.

  “Why?”

  “I was convinced that you understood that we’re not about drop-dead gorgeous at Rutledge. We’re about poise and self-confidence. We’re about being healthy and setting a good example for other girls your age who think they have to wear gobs of makeup and labels to be someone.”

  The comforter began to blur.

  “And you are the most poised, the most confident, and therefore the most beautiful person in our class.”

  “I’m not beautiful right now. Look at me.”

  “Have you been listening?”

  “I’m ugly on the inside. I was supposed to look for God in modeling, and I never did. I got so wrapped up in being this show-off and wanting to throw it in Shad Shifferdecker’s face, that I—I burned the kitchen and burned my father, and when he was lying in some operating room, all I did was—was whine b-b-because I looked like an ape.”

  Kathleen probably didn’t understand half of that, but she leaned forward, nodding her head as if she’d comprehended every word. She picked up Lily’s hand and held it gently between hers. “Bless you, Lily.” Her usually very shiny eyes were velvet soft. “There’s a battle going on in there, isn’t there?”

  Lily could only nod and cry. She knew snot must be bubbling at her nostrils, but who cared?

  “And do you know who the enemy is?” Kathleen asked.

  Lily shook her head.

  “It’s you.”

  Lily took the Kleenex Kathleen handed her and swabbed at her eyes, which was pointless since more tears just kept coming out.

  “You’re being much, much too hard on yourself. Much harder than God is being, I’m sure of that.”

  “You know about God?” Lily said.

  Kathleen gave her air-filled laugh. “I’m a Christian too. If you’d told me you were looking for God at Rutledge, I’d have pointed Him out all over the place! And I would have started right here.”

  She put a shiny nail to Lily’s chest.

  “Not in me,” Lily said.

  “Yes, in you. How on earth do you think you got all that poise?”

  “You taught me.”

  “I taught you to look at the special gifts and qualities God gave you.” She smiled. “Actually, we shouldn’t call it self-confidence. We ought to call it God-confidence.”

  “Why would God have confidence in me? All I cared about was showing up Shad Shifferdecker.”

  “I don’t know who in the world Shad Shifferdecker is, but I do know we don’t need to worry about how much confidence God has in us. I mean, we disappoint Him all the time. It’s much more important to put all our confidence in Him.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Okay, let me ask you this: Do you have confidence that God loves you? That He forgives you for the things you’ve done that are obviously driving you into a frenzy?”

  “I don’t know,” Lily said. She looked down at the comforter again, but Kathleen reached over and lifted her chin with the tips of her elegant fingers.

  “Then we need to pray, my friend.”

  Suddenly it seemed to grow very still in Reni’s room. Kathleen took Lily’s hand again, and she sighed, soft and deep, as if she were letting out all her air to make room for God. And then she began to pray.

  “Father,” she said, “we have one of Your little ones here who has forgotten how much You love her. Will You please reassure her? Will You fill her with Your love and Your forgiveness? Will You help her to see past her shame and her guilt and run to You with open arms again?

  “Will You hold her on your lap and let her know that she’s beautiful—inside and out—because You made her? Please, kiss away the fear that makes her want to hide under the covers. Bring her out into the light again, Lord, where she can see You everywhere she goes. In the name of Jesus we pray.”

  Lily didn’t hear the “amen.” She was crying too hard.

  Kathleen stayed until Lily was calmed down enough to be talked into an orange juice with crushed ice. Before she left, Kathleen said to Lily, “God will show you what to do. You just have to have confidence in Him.”

  After that, it seemed like no time before Mom was there, wearing the smile she usually reserved for victories in state championships.

  “Your dad is doing great,” she announced. “The doctor said the operation couldn’t have gone better, and Dad’ll be able to have visitors tonight. You think you’ll be up for it?”

  Lily stared down into her second orange juice. It was going to be hard to face Dad, but Kathleen had said God would be there. She looked back at her mother.

  “I think so,” she said.

  Mom’s doe-eyes widened. “Well, I’m glad you ran off little Miss Let-Me-Go-Hide-Under-a-Rock.” She sighed and took the glass of iced tea Mrs. Johnson handed her.

  “You look exhausted,” Mrs. Johnson told her. “How on earth are you going to coach another game tonight?”

  Lily blinked. “Did you win last night?”

  “We did,” Mom said. “Even with me gone half the game.” Mom took a sip. “It’s funny. It just doesn’t seem that important to me now. Something like this sure changes your perspective.”

  Lily wasn’t sure what “perspective” was, but she recognized the guilty pang that went through her.

  Maybe I shouldn’t do the modeling show after all, she thought. It really isn’t that important, like Mom said.

  Mom tapped Lily lightly on the head. “What’s going on in there?” she said. “I can almost hear the wheels turning.”

  “Kathleen says I should still do the show because it’s about inside beauty and God-confidence, but it doesn’t seem important, like you said.”

  “Oh, I think it’s more important than ever now,” Mom said.

  Lily felt her puffy-red eyes bulging. “You do?”

  “I do.
But let’s see what your dad says when we talk to him tonight.”

  Lily swallowed down a big lump. This was going to be hard. She sure hoped God would show up.

  He will, she reminded herself. I have to have confidence.

  Twelve

  When Reni came home from school, Lily still had the urge to pull the comforter up over her face again. It hadn’t occurred to her until then: Would Reni still want to be seen with Lily—to have her as a best friend—with her face all bandaged up like a mummy’s?

  But Reni didn’t stare or act weird when she came into the room. She went straight to the bed, sat down, and hugged Lily’s neck. “Wow. Does it hurt?”

  “Yeah, some. I know I look funky.”

  “What’s it look like under the bandages?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When do you get to look?”

  Reni was making it sound like an adventure or something. Lily sat up and got interested.

  “I guess I could look tomorrow when my mom changes them,” she said. “What I think is weird is my forehead.”

  “It just looks like you have a sunburn. You could cover that up with a head scarf, though. Check it out.”

  Reni produced a fringy plaid scarf from her drawer and gently wrapped it around Lily’s forehead. She fiddled with it for a few minutes, her dimples deep, and then handed Lily a mirror. The overgrown forehead was swathed in color. She looked like one of those girls who could pull off funky stuff like that.

  “Wow,” Lily said. “That looks good.”

  “Of course. You’re the one who taught us to do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

  At the mention of the Girlz, Lily felt her heart sink. Reni frowned.

  “What’s wrong? I’ve got other scarves if you hate that one—”

  “No . . . It’s just, if I do the show, you’d better tell Suzy and Zooey about it before they come—you know, that I’m in it. Don’t surprise them.”

  “How come?”

  “Because. What if they’d feel weird sitting there watching somebody walking around on the stage in bandages? If you tell them now, they can, like, back out.”

  “I’m not backing out.”

  “Yeah, but you’re my best friend.”

  “Suzy and Zooey are your friends too. They think you hung the moon or something.”

  “They think I did what?”

  “My mom says that. It’s like if you told them they should wear garbage bags for dresses, they’d do it.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Yuh-huh.”

  “Not now.”

  Reni just shrugged, and they were quiet for a few minutes while that conversation evaporated.

  “So what do you want to do, I mean, right now?” Reni said finally.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It seems weird not having a meeting. That’s, like, what we do after school.”

  “We could just talk, I guess,” Lily said.

  Reni gave her a nudge. “Move over.” She crawled in under the comforter beside Lily.

  “You know what I’m thinkin’?” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m thinkin’ if you did the modeling show, you’d be like some girl in a book, bein’ all brave goin’ out there with bandages on your face.”

  “I don’t feel like a heroine.”

  “A what?”

  “That’s a girl in a book.”

  “What do you feel like?”

  Lily looked at Reni, and Reni looked back at her. “I’m scared,” Lily whispered.

  “Yeah,” Reni said. “I would be too.”

  Later that afternoon, Lily and Mom and Art and Joe checked into a suite at the Comfort Inn.

  “Live it up, kids,” Mom said. “It’s only for a week.”

  Joe made a dive for the TV remote. “Hey, cool! They’ve got satellite!”

  Art checked out the rates for various services posted in a book on the desk and said, “Who’s pickin’ up the tab for all this?”

  “The insurance company,” Mom said.

  Art looked at Lily. “Lucky for you, you little arsonist. Otherwise, you’d be forking over your allowance for the rest of your life.”

  “All right! Listen to me, both of you boys.” Mom’s voice had that sharp edge they hadn’t heard since the day Joe had tried to slide a pencil up Lily’s nose while she was sleeping. All three of them froze in mid-move and watched her. Mom shoved the sleeves of her sweatshirt up to her elbows and stared them down. Gone were the doe-eyes. She was no-nonsense from eyebrows to cornea. “I have let this go on far too long, and I’m putting a stop to it right now.”

  “To what?” Art said.

  “I think you know exactly what, but let me spell it out for you.”

  Even Joe had an uh-oh look by now, and Lily’s heart was doing double time. The burns on her face suddenly stung harder than ever.

  What did I do now? she thought. God, I’m having a hard time having confidence here.

  Just as Lily felt as if she were about to simply shrivel up and die from the agony of waiting, Mom said, “There will be no more of this putting-Lily-down-every-chance-we-get.”

  Lily closed her eyes and waited for the retorts from Joe and Art.

  I’m not putting her down. I’m saying it like it is, Art would say.

  I am! Joe would pipe up. It’s fun to put her down!

  But nobody said anything. When Lily peeked, Joe was wiggling his foot, and Art was just staring at Mom and looking white around the mouth.

  “I’ve let it go because we’ve always teased in our house and I thought your brand of kidding was just what boys did. I owe you an apology for this, Lily, but even I thought you needed a little humbling now and then.”

  “What’s ‘humbling’?” Joe’s face brightened, as if he saw a small chance to save himself.

  “Being shown that you aren’t perfect,” Mom said. “I thought Lily might consider herself to be a cut above the rest of us.” She looked at Lily, and her eyes got soft again. “But it appears I was wrong.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Art said. “She’d have to be a psycho to think she was perfect after what she pulled last night.”

  “Would you know what to do about a grease fire?” Mom’s knife-voice was back.

  “I wouldn’t have poured water on it,” Art said. “That’s why we have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. Du-uh!”

  “Stop,” Mom said. “You have never been in that situation, so I doubt you know what you’d do. Your father tried to put the thing out with his hands, for heaven’s sake. We just react. It’s something we almost can’t control. But we can control how we talk to each other. And from here on out, there will be no more teasing that hurts people’s feelings.” She raised her hand. “I’m just as guilty as anyone else. I’m going to have to work on it. We all will.” Nobody said anything. Lily waited to feel like she’d just won a trophy or something. But the feeling didn’t come.

  I think I deserve to get my feelings hurt, she thought.

  And yet, before the rest of that thought could curl through her head, it was as if Kathleen came in and snipped it off with a pair of scissors, leaving only the words, Father, will You help her to see past her shame and her guilt and to run to You with open arms again?

  She did run to one set of father’s arms—Dad’s—the minute she got into the hospital room. They were bandaged arms, but he held them out to her, and she ran into the circle they made and started crying all over again.

  “Hi, Dad,” Art said from the doorway. “Me and Joe are gonna go look for a Coke machine. We’ll come back when she’s done doin’ that.”

  “That Art is an old softie,” Dad murmured into Lily’s hair. “Hates to see a woman cry.”

  Lily heard her mother give a little snort, and she could feel her father’s chest vibrating with his laughter, and all of a sudden she was laughing too. Laughing and crying and snorting and snuffling until a towel had to be produced to wipe off the front of Dad’s hospital gown.

/>   “I brought you your own pj’s anyway,” Mom told him. “I hope you haven’t gone waltzing down the hall in that gown. It doesn’t close all the way in the back.”

  “Mo-om!”

  “And speaking of waltzing down halls,” Mom went on, “we need to talk to you about tomorrow, hon.”

  Dad was the “hon” she was addressing this time. Lily tried to keep her chin up. She could only do it as long as she kept remembering: Have God-confidence.

  “Ah, the big modeling show.” Dad nodded. “I’m sorry you have to miss that, Lilliputian. Life sure isn’t fair sometimes.”

  “But the doctors see no reason why she shouldn’t do it,” Mom said. “And Kathleen wants her to.”

  Dad’s eyebrows looked surprised. Lily noticed for the first time that they were a little singed on top. She felt horrible all over again.

  God-confidence. God-confidence.

  “How do you feel about it?” Dad said to Lily.

  Lily waited for Mom to answer for her, but she didn’t. Everybody, including, it seemed, the old man in the next bed, was waiting for Lily.

  “I’m mixed up,” Lily said. “Kathleen says it’s not about being beautiful; it’s about having God-confidence. But with you lying here in the bed all bandaged up and everything, I’d feel so, you know, shallow. I mean, it just doesn’t seem that important anymore, like Mom’s volleyball tournament. She even sent her assistant coach to start a tournament game so she could bring us here.”

  Dad’s eyes darted from one of them to the other, and Lily could almost see a little rubber ball bouncing around in his head. She watched him as he “caught” it. He was much better at collecting his thoughts than he was at finding his glasses.

  “I like that term, God-confidence,” he said. “In fact, that’s the first thing I’ve heard about this whole modeling business that I do like. I think that’s the operative phrase here.”

  “What’s an ‘operative phrase’?” Lily said. She felt like Joe.

  “The one thing that makes it all work,” Dad said. With a grunt, he wiggled himself up on the bed. “It takes God-confidence for your mother to go to that volleyball tournament tomorrow and put me out of her head long enough to do the job those girls are depending on her to do.”