Daydreams of Angels

by Heather O'Neill

  Then we started to make money. Sometimes I was shocked by the amount of money that was in the collection plate after sermons, especially considering the average income of people in our neighbourhood. But there were people who believed in Edward so much that they insisted on giving him amounts of money that were quite large for them—even twenty or fifty dollars. When I sometimes tried to give it back to them, they held my hands in theirs and told me that I did not understand the value of what it was that Edward had done for them.

  There was one guy who won the lottery. His winnings were $250 and he insisted on giving $125 of it to Edward. He told Edward that his life had, without a doubt, become incredibly lucky ever since he started going to the church.

  We started to see more and more well-dressed people showing up. Some had fur coats and three-piece suits. I kid you not. They came from different parts of town. I mean, you would never see that type of person down there. I don’t even know where they were parking their cars!

  I had to open a bank account. Jimmy and I even built a website together that received donations. It was the first time that Jimmy and I got along. It was amazing to be working on something that mattered like that. We couldn’t believe that we got to be a part of something important.

  Nikki went around handing out flyers and ranting and raving to people about the church. She would go knocking on doors. She had to be a big part of this too. Edward and Jimmy and I laughed because we thought that surely she must be driving people away. But a lot of people showed up with her flyers in their hands. She was very proud of herself. I guess she had a right to be.

  * * *

  And then you started hanging out at the church. We never did take away the gold letters on the window of the store, so every now and then a little kid would come in with a fist full of change, asking about the different flavours. There were a lot of kids in that neighbourhood. There were always little girls skipping rope on the sidewalk, like they were popcorn kernels exploding on a frying pan.

  In the paper it said that one of the reasons that we ran an ice cream parlour was so that we could lure children into our trap. But who thought like that? We weren’t sinister. We liked kids. We acted like kids who had no rules ourselves. There was this aura of wildness about us then and that was why children were always drawn to us. There was no ice cream for sale!

  When you first came in we thought that you were full of light. (Is your hair still so blond? No one will ever send me a picture.) You came in with a shoe box that had a sparrow with a broken wing in it. You wept and wept. Edward had never seen a child so full of compassion. And when that bird’s wing was mended and it was brought back to life, you declared that it was a miracle. And we liked that you believed in miracles. And we all thought that you sure fit so well into our world.

  You were so daring. Once you stood up on a chair in the back row in the middle of one of Edward’s sermons and you called out, “Hallelujah!” We loved that. Everybody in the ice cream parlour cheered. Edward said that you were going to be a powerful preacher one day.

  You probably don’t even know how wonderful you are. You were always offering to help out. You even got along with Nikki. She rode you on the handlebars of her bicycle while you shouted through a bullhorn, “The Holy Dove Parade is the place to be on Sundays!” There was the sound of a card in the spokes of the wheel, like machine-gun fire. A police officer told you guys to knock it the hell off.

  Maybe we just liked having a kid around. Then it really felt like we were a family. We could all do away with the memories we had of our other families. They were nothing to us. And you were always so sad when you had to go “home” to those horrible people who claimed to own you.

  Your parents did not worship you properly. They were not very spiritual or enlightened people. One day you came in with a black eye and Edward just about went crazy. He went to speak to your father, but he wouldn’t listen to Edward. He slammed the door in his face.

  I had never seen Edward lose his temper the way he did when he came back from your apartment. He upturned the kitchen table. He didn’t like me seeing him like that. I was staring! He went into the bathroom, turned on the faucet and screamed. I think that it had reminded him of things that he was pretending not to remember from his own childhood.

  * * *

  Why did we go along with Edward’s final plan if we hadn’t been brainwashed? the newspeople asked. Nikki and Jimmy came along with us because there was no way to get rid of them. Jimmy generally didn’t give a shit about anybody’s feelings, so long as he was doing good. And Nikki had been breaking the law since she was in diapers. And the only meaning that they had in their whole lives was the Holy Dove Parade Church. So if Edward said that we were picking up and moving, then they were picking up and moving too. They couldn’t imagine a life without Edward. Although I guess that’s what they have now.

  And why did I get into the van? everyone wanted to know. Why did I even hook up with such a character to begin with? Well, he made my life exciting.

  There was something else too. Edward said that we could never, ever have a little kid of our own because he didn’t believe in biological families. He thought that the root of capitalism was that when we were born, our parents owned us. And he said that biological families had a knack of teaching people to band together and hate outsiders, which was essentially just getting them prepared to wage war against others. It taught us that we had no responsibility to anyone that wasn’t related to us and so we could go around treating everyone like dirt.

  If we were ever going to have a child together, this was the way that we were going to have to do it.

  * * *

  You got very upset about being taken away from your parents that first night. The moon was light brown like a slightly roasted marshmallow. And there were so many stars.

  I was surprised that you started crying when you were separated from a family that treated you so badly. But that was probably because you were so confused. Sometimes we cry and it’s only because we are bewildered and not because we are sad at all. When we told you that your parents had said that it was okay for us to take you, you stopped crying. I know it was a lie. But you see, you weren’t really missing them. You were only worried about their feelings because you were sweet and compassionate.

  You were happy in the country. We rented a big house in the middle of nowhere. We stayed up at night collecting fireflies in a jar, and it was like those bugs were writing gold letters in the air. You had never even seen fireflies before, and it was wonderful to watch your expression. I had never seen anyone look that way before: you were bewitched. We made a big collection of butterflies that we pinned behind a frame. We had always been so busy in the city that we never had time for all of that.

  We once saw a baby deer and it looked like it had just learned to walk, like it was wearing leather cowboy boots that it hadn’t had a chance to break in. The raccoons were all wearing their sunglasses.

  In a funny way, we were all having the kind of childhood that we had wanted through you.

  * * *

  Your photograph was everywhere! You were on the television. You were on the front page of every newspaper. Everybody in the whole province was wondering where on earth you were. Everyone thought that you must be dead.

  Edward said that this was exactly as it should be. Because when you reemerged, it would be like the original Jesus coming back from the grave. People would think that you were the Second Coming and, oh my goodness, they would listen to your words then. And they would be the words that Edward had taught you. He became convinced that he was going to teach you to be a much, much better preacher than he was. He had such high hopes for you.

  I was lying in bed once and I woke up and Edward was staring at me. The light from the kitchen door behind his head made him look like he had a halo. And he was looking at me with so much love. He was happy. He didn’t care about anybody in the whole world except me and you.

  Maybe it was because it was the first
time that Edward had ever had a family of his own that he became protective of it. He became defensive of us all in the way that he had always criticized other fathers for being. He bought himself a rifle and began staying up all night keeping guard. Then Edward began stockpiling weapons. He had the whole area rigged with explosives. It was crazy. He spent every cent we had.

  Maybe it was his childhood abuse that was pushing him over the edge, even though he always swore black and blue that it was nothing to him. He had spent his entire childhood locked away. I guess it was only natural for him to think the enemies would be coming back to put him in prison. How could he not figure that it was only a matter of time?

  Nikki went around with a holster and a gun on her at all times. Even when she was singing in the backyard while hanging up laundry, she still had a gun hanging around her waist. I began to find her terrifying. Jimmy was always practising with a rifle at blowing the head off a scarecrow. He was a really good shot, which figured, seeing as how he was a jock in high school. I guess judging by their actions out in the woods, it might be accurate to call them sociopaths. But who am I to judge?

  I didn’t have anything to do with all that. I would bring you down to the river to swim and read you a copy of Winnie-the-Pooh that I found in the house. (You used to say that you were Piglet and I was Pooh Bear. Remember? You must.) But I was probably the most delusional of all of us, because I believed that we were safe and that no one was going to come find us. I thought that we could live that way forever.

  * * *

  We were running low on money. And then Nikki was caught soliciting a police officer while she was in town. They found a shotgun in the trunk of her car and your little sweater in the backseat. Two police officers were blown to pieces by booby traps when they surrounded the place. Three others were shot dead.

  * * *

  Why I’m writing all this to you now is because you are a little bit older, and I thought that maybe there’s some possibility that you would want to carry on Edward’s teachings. Because whatever the papers say, he had some wonderful, wonderful ideas.

  The world needs more preachers. And if Edward saw that in you, then it probably was inside of you. Because Edward was never wrong about what he saw in people. Edward always saw the best thing about a person.

  But even if you don’t want to take over the Holy Dove Parade Church, you could just carry around some of his ideas in your heart. They will make you live in a much bigger way. No matter what other people are saying.

  Love, Pooh Bear

  DOLLS

  The rummage sale was set up in the church basement. All the dolls were put together on one table. They started chit-chatting immediately. Dolls are social. That’s what they were invented for after all, to always be up for playing with children when no one else is.

  Humans can barely make out their voices when they talk. They make an almost inaudible sound that is similar to that of hair burning. It’s a small noise that you assume is coming from someplace far away.

  None of the dolls here were in particularly good shape. Everyone had lost their shoes. They wore dirty socks and their dresses had chocolate-milk stains. There is no laundry for dolls to go to. Once you are dirty, you are dirty forever. You are stuck with a bad haircut into eternity.

  The marks of ballpoint pen were on most dolls. But the worst is what the dogs had done. There was a doll whose red jacket and matching trousers had been taken off. Without these, she was almost certain not to be bought. The worst thing is to be a naked doll. She was terrified that she would be mistaken for garbage.

  There was a doll that used to be named Mary. The doll with four fingers. She had been operated on by a child with a pair of blunt scissors and black yarn. Her intestines were filled with hidden things, a key to an old diary and a few coins from Poland.

  She was fifty years old, but she had the face of a baby girl. She once came in a marvellous box filled with trinkets. There were postcards of the Eiffel Tower and bottles of perfume and powder. There was a pill bottle filled with baby teeth. There were porcelain teacups with zebras and birds with winding tails on them. She came from a good time.

  Now she wore a dirty white coat and a blue nightgown that she had borrowed from another doll twenty years before. She liked to talk about the war, about how it made everyone feel so alive. “What we would do for a pair of stockings!” she cried. Her hair had gotten into a mass straight up over her head and had a plastic barrette with a duck stuck in it. She had long eyelashes drawn around her eyes by a child with a ballpoint pen. They gave her a misty-eyed drunk look.

  * * *

  Next to Mary was a doll in a black dress named Clemente. Clemente had a faded, faraway look about her. Her eyebrows and lips, which had once been painted carefully on her face, were worn off. She had been left under the snow for an entire winter once. She claimed to have had an affair with a rat at that time. The rat’s name was Charles. They ate cake all night long. Often he would set the tip of his tail on fire to please her.

  Once she was brought back inside, she became friends with a taxidermied rabbit in the hallway. They were always pretending that they were married. He had a little piece of paper with his Latin name on it written in black ink. He thought this was his ticket to a museum. Clemente had once believed she might end up in a museum just like some other dolls she knew, but she had been wrong. She had ended up here, at the rummage sale, with a price tag for seventy-five cents on her wrist.

  * * *

  Then there was a doll with fancy clothes named Marguerite. She was from England. She had been bought for a child by an aunt while on vacation. She had once had a parasol, but her accessories had all long since been lost.

  She came with a book that described her. According to the story, her father owned a manor, where she had a horse named Phillipe. She was given French lessons on Wednesday by a tutor. The little child who owned her believed all of this, but Marguerite knew it was a lie. She had come from a toy shop in downtown London. She had always felt guilty about her forged identity. She hoped that she would be able to start all over with a new kid.

  * * *

  Then there was Esta. She was a rather cheaply made doll. She hid the information on her behind that said her date and place of birth. She couldn’t have anyone know that she was only five years old and had been made in China.

  * * *

  There was a German doll named Karmen. She talked about how in Germany all the dolls wore black boots and were given their own beds. They were driven in baby carriages down the street. She used to go to a tea party every day of the week. She was not ashamed to admit that now she was addicted to tea. She had spent the past few nights going through withdrawal.

  * * *

  One doll named Ella had an eye that fell into the back of her head. You had to shake her violently to get the eye to go back into its place. But she claimed that when her eye was in her head, it had visions. She was able to see the little girl who used to own her standing on the back of a bench, waiting for a bus. She was able to see her wearing a long black coat at her mother’s funeral.

  * * *

  And then there was a doll in a blue dress named Hannah. She claimed she had been owned by a lonely child with no other toys. All the dolls became quiet to pay attention to this story. To have a child who has nothing and is miserable without you is a rare treat indeed.

  “She lived with her grandmother and her grandmother did not buy her any gifts,” Hannah told them. “The little girl used to pray that her mother would come and visit her, but she never did. The little girl was always hungry. She never had anyone to play with after school. She had ugly clothes. She never went on holiday. She had one seashell that she would dust.”

  “She must have loved you,” Mary whispered.

  The dolls all knew how it went. You were taken home and told you were special. You were defined by being loved. Love exposed you to loneliness. Love gave you a personality but damaged you, too.

  None of the dolls at the rumm
age sale wanted to see themselves as trash. Each one knew that once, she had been special. Once, she had been loved.

  WHERE BABIES COME FROM

  My brother and I became experts at knowing when the next trip to Grandmother’s was coming. The signs started popping up weeks ahead of time, with Mother’s notebooks piling up on the kitchen table and her records getting louder and louder. She had rough drafts of her poems thumbtacked to the wall above her desk, which kept spreading out until they were wallpapering the room. And the business of doing dishes started to slow down and eventually ground to a halt, forcing us to start drinking orange juice straight from the carton and eating Chinese takeout almost every night. All in all, these were pretty good days.

  But then we’d hear it: “It’s time you kids had a visit with your grandmother. She’s a wise woman and you have much to learn from her. So pack your suitcases, my darlings.”

  There was no arguing with Mother when she was in one of her creative moods and needed to be alone. We loved seeing our grandmother, but we couldn’t help but feel a little left out of our mother’s life, too, and so my brother and I gently sobbed as we stuffed our clothes into our bags. And then that very night we found ourselves at Grandmother’s house, sitting in our pyjamas on the chesterfield, sipping hot chocolate.

  “Mother says you have wise things to teach us,” my brother said, making it sound almost like a challenge.

  “That’s true!” Grandmother said, laughing. “What can I teach you about tonight? Shall I tell you where babies used to come from? Well, they weren’t delivered by storks. That’s the silliest idea anyone ever had. And cabbage patches? Don’t make me laugh. When I was a girl in the 1940s, we all got our babies at the beach.”

  “At the beach!” we yelled. She put her fingers to her lips to quiet us down and then she began the story.

  “Back when I was a girl, babies were washed up from the ocean when the tide went out. You would see their little bottoms peeking up from out of the sand, and if you dug them up quickly, they would be yours to keep. You had to wake up and get to the beach very, very early if you wanted a baby, because there were always loads of girls at the seashore looking for them.