Pew

by Catherine Lacey

  She pulled open a dresser drawer and left it open. I reached into my pockets and pulled out their contents—a nail clipper, dirty toothbrush, ballpoint pen, three coins, an oatmeal cookie wrapped in a napkin. I let all these things fall from my hands into the dresser.

  The drawer was lined with old newspaper, the classified section, yellowed and falling apart in shards. One of the ads read—

  SON—You are not being

  hunted for anything but to

  find you. Come Home.

  —MOTHER

  —and I wondered if this SON ever allowed himself to be found, if this particular SON had seen this paper and knew that he was the SON this MOTHER was trying to find, and I wondered if the MOTHER was really only hunting her SON for no reason other than to find him, if anyone could ever seek anyone for only one reason. It seemed she must have wanted something more than to just find him, and it seemed to me that a person might have many reasons, many many reasons, to not Come Home. But it only seemed that way to me and I am only one person, ruined by what I have and have not done.

  Had there ever been a newspaper that would print the obituaries on the front page instead of the last?

  The Reverend is going to come over for supper tonight, Hilda said. He’s concerned about you, of course, wants to make sure everything is OK. The whole congregation is concerned, but we know God sent you to us for a reason. He will take care of everything. It may sound silly in this day and age, but we still believe it. We can’t help but believe it.

  Hilda looked out the window over my shoulder, looked to me again, away again. I felt this gentle urgency around her, a bruised kindness, as if something had been threatening to destroy her every day of her life and her only defense, somehow, was to remain so torn open. She kept shifting her weight from one leg to the other, looking at the floor. She told me she was someone that I could trust, that I could tell her what had happened and where I’d come from and whether I was a boy or a girl, and I could tell her how I’d gotten into the church and how it was I’d come to sleep there, and I could tell her everything—and even if I didn’t want to say a word to anyone else, it was safe, she insisted, to tell her where my family lived or what had happened to my family if I had no more family—even if they came here illegally, she said, even if they did something wrong, even if they did something not nice to you, or if someone else did something not nice to you—and she took a long time to say all this to me, speaking slowly, pausing to give me a chance to reply, to begin—it may not seem like it, but I really am someone you can talk to—and even then it seemed to me she was a woman hanging off the edge of a cliff, telling me not to worry about her, asking what she could do for me.

  But in her eyes—and not even so deeply—I could see she would not sleep so easily with a stranger in her attic, above her children. It’s difficult to say exactly how I could see all this in Hilda’s face. Perhaps an honest feeling will always find a way to force itself through, an objector crying out in a crowd, hoping someone will hear.

  Do you understand what I am saying? Will you at least let me know that you understand these words, that you can speak English? She paused for a moment, then spoke louder and slower—Do you speak English?

  I nodded, to which she nodded and smiled and said, Dinner’s at six, then went quickly down the stairs.

  All afternoon, alone in that attic, I listened to the noises that came through the floor—a rumbling of feet down a hall—a muffled conversation between Hilda and Steven—a door shut, a door slammed, a door opened and shut again. The caged parrot in their living room sometimes called out, Hello? Hello? Hello?—but no one ever answered. Silence for a while. Hello?

  I sat on the floor, looking out a small window, staring down at the yard, feeling the sky slowly turn dim as Jack pushed a lawn mower in straight lines over the grass—across and turning and across again.

  WHEN THE SUN STARTED GOING AWAY, I went down the attic stairs and stood in the hallway, hesitating in every direction. I could see Steven and Jack in the living room watching a television on mute, a football game. Steven explained each move to Jack, who nodded solemnly. The doorbell rang, casting a faint shadow over the room, though Steven and Jack sat comfortably in it.

  Hilda ran past me carrying a wooden spoon and wearing an apron. The two smaller boys trailed behind her, pushing each other to try to take the lead. The doorbell rang again, then a knock, then the front door opened just before Hilda could reach it.

  Hello, Reverend!

  The boys latched on to the Reverend, one on his left leg and the other scaling his side.

  Hello, Hilda! In the middle of cooking, I see?

  And I’m probably burning something right now, so if you’ll excuse me—Steven, the Reverend’s here!

  Hilda ran back toward the kitchen and Steven turned the television off, though Jack stayed still, stood only when his father punched his arm.

  And our guest of honor, the Reverend said to me as he stretched out both arms, half-laughing. And how are we feeling now? Get some rest? Have a nice meal?

  I remembered his voice from the church, but now that he lacked a whole sanctuary between his face and mine, his voice was simple and fragile, like anyone’s voice. I looked at the floor, at his feet in his shoes, thought of his toes in his shoes, here, standing in the living room like the rest of us. I looked up at his face, his neck. He stretched his arms out as if he wanted me to hug him or to allow myself to be hugged by him, to submit my body into his. I did not. He patted my shoulder, then left his hand there. He stared at me much longer and more carefully than anyone else had in a long time. I felt a kind of heat behind my eyes, a signal I couldn’t decipher.

  Now, what is it that we call you, dear? he asked. I looked at the empty television screen, saw ghostly reflections in it. A name? the Reverend asked again. Really, whatever you’d like to be called, that’s all we’re asking.

  I didn’t want to be called anything.

  I thought of leaving the room. I thought of leaving the house and going somewhere, but I somehow couldn’t. Some kind of force or threat was in the room, all over the house. The parrot called out, Hello? I gathered my hands in a fist behind my back.

  Well, the Reverend said, not much of a talker, now are we?

  All talk. No game, the parrot said. All talk. No game.

  Steven and the Reverend laughed and the sons did not laugh. Jack muttered something under his breath, and Steven stamped on the boy’s foot.

  When my daughter was a little girl, the Reverend said, detaching one of the smaller sons from his body, she found a stray kitten sleeping in a gutter near the church, and she just loved that cat and we still have that cat to this day and do you know what she decided to call it? She named him Gutter. How about that? Gutter!

  Hilda walked back into the room laughing and repeated the word—Gutter! What a fine cat, that Gutter. How is he these days?

  Oh, he’s doing fine, the Reverend said, rather slow and fat but still the same ol’ Gutter.

  Oh, how wonderful! Hilda said.

  So if it’s OK with you, the Reverend said, how about we call you Pew for the time being? He used that tilting tone meant for a question, but he wasn’t asking me a question. Until you get around to telling us something different? How about that?

  In the dining room Hilda ran from the kitchen to the table bringing out dish after dish, arranging them before us as we did nothing. Great heaps of fried animal parts. A bowl of potatoes, rolls, plates of meat and casseroles it seemed to take some strength to carry. Eventually Hilda sat beside me, smoothed her apron, and asked the Reverend to lead us in a prayer. Everyone had their eyes closed except for me and everyone had joined hands but I kept my hands joined to each other in my lap, so Steven put his free hand on the back of my chair and Hilda left her palm open on the table between our empty plates. The Reverend spoke a block of memorized text, nodding his head, agreeing with himself as he went.

  And, Lord, help those having such trouble over in Almoseville, help
them see that all things are possible through you, and God bless our new friend Pew, Lord, a child of God just as we are all your children, amen, and everyone else echoed the Reverend in that amen, all of them speaking together, even the smallest son.

  Amen, the parrot said from the other room, though it seemed no one heard the parrot. Amen amen amen.

  Well, the Reverend said, ain’t it nice to be here with a home-cooked meal?

  After everyone had eaten, the Reverend took me out to the front porch and we sat on a swinging bench he held still with his legs. He told me, quietly and not unkindly, that he really did need to know a few things about who I was, where I’d come from.

  These are strange questions to have to ask, but we need to know them in order to provide you with a safe place to live. For one, and I’m sorry if this is embarrassing to be asked, but we will need to know if you’re a boy or a girl. There’s no reason for you to be embarrassed or ashamed or anything, and we don’t think you’ve done anything wrong—we want you to know that. We really don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, exactly, at least not with regards to you not obviously being a boy or a girl the way everyone else is. What I mean is, you need not be ashamed of looking the way you do—as God loves all his children exactly the same—but it’s simply not clear to us which one you are and you have to be one or the other, so unless you want us to figure it out the hard way, I think you should just tell us which one you are. Much easier.

  The insects sang in the heat around us. I looked back into the house through a window. Through two open doors I could see the edge of the parrot’s cage, could watch the parrot sidestepping along its perch, bobbing its head, then stepping out of view, then into view again. I did not look at the Reverend. I had nothing to say.

  Now, you might know that some people these days like to think a person gets to decide whether they are a boy or a girl, but we believe, our church believes, and Jesus believed that God decides if you’re a boy or a girl. So when you answer this question, that’s the answer we want—did God make you a boy or a girl?

  I looked at the porch’s ceiling, its floor.

  It may be that you have some other feelings on the matter, that you’re not really a boy or a girl, and that really is fine with us—we’re very tolerant and you can think whatever you like, you really can—but just for our purposes, what is it that we would call you?

  The Reverend was silent awhile, listening to the insects and nothing. For a moment the Reverend seemed to realize that his questions and statements kept leading us to the same empty place.

  How about this—if you’re a boy, if God made you a boy, clap once, and if God made you a girl, clap twice.

  A mosquito was sucking blood from my wrist. I watched it swallowing and swallowing, then flying away. That blood was the bug’s blood now, not mine, never mine again.

  Whenever you’re ready. Whenever you feel ready to clap, just go on and do it. Once for a boy and twice for a girl.

  I thought of the message I’d seen in that yellowed newspaper—the mother hunting her son for nothing but to find him. I felt sure no one was hunting me for any reason, not even just to find me. I must have had a mother, but I also knew I didn’t have a mother. I wasn’t anyone’s son or daughter. What a freedom that was and what a burden that was—to not have a home to go home to, and to not have a home to go home to. All I could have told the Reverend, if I could have spoken, was that I was human just as he was human, only missing a few things he seemed to think I needed—a past, a memory of my past, an origin—I had none of that. I felt I wasn’t the only one, that there must have been others, that I was a part of a “we,” only I didn’t know where they were. We were and I was, not entirely alone. Maybe we were all looking for one another without knowing it.

  I tried to remember at least one thing that had happened to get me here to this porch with this Reverend. I tried to go over it all, each event, to count the minutes out. The church I’d woken up in—that pew—the people who had brought me here—the meal and this. And before that? There was not enough time to remember it all. A moment only happens once but some of them take so much longer than a moment to understand, to see.

  Well, if that’s too much to ask right now, there are other things we need to know. How old you are, for instance, and we’ll need to know where you came from … When were you born? And where? And what happened to your parents, your family? Did they … well. Are they somewhere else in the country? Or in another place? These are things we must know in order to give you the right sort of help.

  The Reverend leaned back in the swing for a moment, then used his legs to rock it and us at the pace of a sleeping or dying heart.

  I want to be your friend, you know. I want to be a good friend to you; I just need some help from you in order to be the best sort of friend I can be—do you understand? If you’re already eighteen—if you’re legally an adult, that is—then there are certain things we can do for you, but if you’re not, then there are a different sort of things we can do for you. But first we need to know these things. Do you understand? These are just how the rules work. I didn’t make them, but I do think it’s best that we follow them, don’t you? So that everything can be fair and orderly? You know, we treat everyone the same here—it’s what we believe. Everyone gets the same kind of respect.

  I stared out into the dark and still hot night and I listened to a thousand bugs singing the same note and I listened to the grass remaining still in the dark and humid air. There were many kinds of insects, I knew—I had seen many of them—but how many kinds of respect existed?

  MONDAY

  I WOKE UP still wearing my shoes and clothes, in the attic, on a bed, on my side, one foot already on the floor. Stray images passed through. A half memory of a place—a narrow hallway. I could almost see something else, could almost remember a word or sentence someone had said to me, but I could not tell if that had happened while I was awake or asleep. I could almost remember a feeling, an old feeling, the feeling of what it’s like to be so small that anyone could just pick you up and take you somewhere. Once, I don’t know when, I had been sitting in a diner and a small child was screaming and weeping and a person behind the counter was frowning at that child, telling the person with that child to make it stop, angry about being an audience to all that tiny pain. The person behind the counter must have forgotten the feeling of being so small that anyone could just pick you up and take you anywhere at any time. What a terror a body must live through. It’s a wonder there are people at all.

  HILDA TOLD ME that Steven had decided—and she agreed with him—that I could not be left in the house alone while everyone was at school and work and elsewhere, so she drove me down the block to a small white house surrounded by some flowering bushes, blooms all burst, the petals burnt brown.

  Mrs. Gladstone will look after you this morning. Then someone else—his name is Roger and he’ll come get you later. Roger is a very good friend of ours, so be good for Roger. He has something he wants to show you, or a sort of game the two of you can play together. Do you like games?

  Hilda hesitated, briefly, waiting on some kind of answer.

  Well, I bet you do. I think everyone likes games! Don’t they now? Well—be good for Mrs. Gladstone—I know you will. She’s very old and very tired. She’s had a hard life and she just wants to be quiet … I’m sure you’ll take to each other just fine. Hilda spoke quickly to me as we stood on the front porch, then opened the front door of this little house and shouted, Pew is here now, Paulina—all right? Bye!

  Hilda shut the door and I listened to the fast steps taking her away from here. An old woman was sitting in a wheelchair in front of a blank television. The room was cold and punctured by a ticking clock. I sat on a couch covered in stiff plastic, wondering if anyone was ever intended to sit there. Maybe the couch was supposed to sit on the floor and be left alone.

  It’s only the fools you’re fooling, Mrs. Gladstone said, speaking directly to the empty television. Only the fools
.

  We sat in silence for some time after that. It was not clear if she was talking to me. She could have been talking to herself or to someone I could not—for whatever reason—see. For a while there was this look on her face as if she were just about to say something or just about to sneeze.

  I married late, Mrs. Gladstone eventually said. I was already thirty-three if you can believe it, which may not seem so old now but back then it, well, I tell you, it was ancient. Everyone had given up on me ever finding someone and at that age no one has their pick anymore—even if you did once, you don’t anymore. I can’t be sure, since I don’t know hardly anyone who is marrying age these days, but I think this is still true. A decent woman will take care of finding a good man quickly because it only gets harder and harder.

  But I suppose I was lucky, in a way. Charles, he was a widower and a good deal older than me, but that’s what I mean about how you don’t have your pick anymore. His first wife had been very beautiful, everyone agreed about that, but she had died anyway. Not from being beautiful, of course—I believe it was the cancer, though nobody said as much. That left Charles nearly fifty and with two children he didn’t know much of anything about raising, so he had no choice but to go find another woman. Our mothers introduced us, then he decided it was best that we get married. And even though his children bothered me, I was more bothered by being so old and alone, so we did. It’s a simple arrangement—marriage. No one wants to say so, but it is. Maybe you’ll see one day—when you’re old.

  A silence.

  When you’re old, Mrs. Gladstone repeated. When you’re old like me!

  She laughed a long time, or what felt like a long time. Anyway—I was telling you about Charles. I keep getting sidetracked because I’m so old and useless—I forget everything. Everything.

  Charlie was beloved by the community—by everyone, every single one. And we were happy. He never even had to lay a hand on me, not even once, and there weren’t many women in those days who could say that without blushing. Charlie and I had many good years together. No children of our own, though we did try. It’s just that I was so old, and he’d already had two from his first wife, and they were a handful already. They were unhappy children, really just such a bother. I think he just didn’t want all the trouble of having any more if they’d be like the first two. We traveled a good deal, up the East Coast, now and then to Virginia, and once to California. Once to Canada. He liked to drive and that suited me fine.