I took a pencil and drew the shape of a heron flying some distance away. The paper was white and the pencil was white, but the faint shape of the heron—its wings, neck, head, body—made a smooth, raised shape on the page. I took a gray pencil and a blue pencil and filled in the rest of the page around the heron, filled it slowly with thin, hatched lines, then slid it across the table to Roger.
Thank you, he said, studying the page.
He said other things, said them all so quietly, carefully, explained something about the way that he works with his clients, what he does with the drawings, what they can tell him—what they can tell us both.
I listened but I did not listen. I avoided his eyes. Beneath the table the dog snored and sighed. Outside the branches on the tree had stopped moving, sat still as a photograph. Roger put more paper and pencils in front of me, asked me to draw what this drawing made me feel like. It can be abstract, he said. I felt some kind of sideways tilt in the middle of me.
Are you comfortable? And how are you feeling—are you feeling all right? Do you need any water, anything?
I shook my head.
All you need to do is try to remember what it was like to make this drawing. Can you do that for me? Just make a drawing about that drawing, a feeling about a memory. We’re just trying to create an understanding—do you understand? That’s what people do. We can’t live each other’s lives, and we can’t see each other’s memories or feelings, so we try to find ways to share them with each other. What is next to this memory for you? What are the other memories or feelings that sit close to it?
I thought of almost nothing. Roger watched me and made notes on a large yellow pad. I listened to the pencil whispering across the page. Roscoe was standing under the table, then jumped into my lap, and when Roger tried to pick the dog up, Roscoe just growled and snapped at him, then looked back up at me with still, watery eyes.
All right, Roscoe, have it your way, Roger said, but the dog did not respond to him in any way. Roscoe settled all his warm weight into my lap.
What has gotten into you? Roger asked the dog. The dog did not say. At least he likes you. Some people—I don’t know why—but he can’t stand most people.
I made no other drawings and had nothing else to say. Roscoe slept heavily in my lap and I watched the thick green leaves still or windblown all morning until Roger gave me a sandwich on a plate. Roger turned on the television in the corner with a remote and handed it to me. I put it down beside me and watched children eating bowls of cereal that made them grow wings and fly.
You can change the channel if you like. I’ll be in the other room doing some work. Hilda will be over in a few minutes to get you.
When I looked at the television again, the children were gone and a man with gray hair and a suit was speaking about life insurance. I ate the sandwich. On the television was a map of the town with an animated curdle of clouds moving across it. A woman appeared on the screen, smiling, and explained what she believed the sky would do for the next five days.
I finished the sandwich. A metallic, meaty aftertaste hung around in my mouth. Roscoe licked my hands, stopping to bark at the sound of the back door opening, but quickly returned to his task. We heard Hilda’s voice, a shutting door. Roger offered her a coffee. She declined.
Did it go all right? she asked.
Well, he drew something.
He?
Well—I don’t know, really—
Their voices lowered, nearly vanished. Roger shut the door between that room and this one. The woman with the map was gone, and for a while nothing at all happened on the television. The screen went completely white and still and a smooth, clear silence took over until two men appeared, just as suddenly. Beside them a little girl held a child-size guitar, plucking at it thoughtfully, seeming disinterested in speaking or being spoken to. One of the men said, Play us a little song now, won’t you? She began to strum the guitar, quickly and intently, as if she were a little machine that had just been plugged in, her expression unchanging and sad. The adults clapped along; the girl played her fast music and the camera focused closely on the child’s unmoving face, then cut to her quickly moving hands. Below it, a caption: CHILD PRODIGY STUNS LOCAL MUSIC TEACHER.
ROGER HAS ARRANGED for you to meet with someone out at Monroe Medical Center tomorrow morning, Hilda said after a minute of silence in the car. He’s concerned about what you’ve been through, and he wants to have a second professional assessment. She was quiet again, saying nothing as we drove past several blocks.
I think it’s a good idea, too. A second opinion. People always say that’s a good thing. And they can do an examination out there … just a simple checkup really. Just to make sure everything is OK. Anyway, right now we’re going to see the children’s minister. He asked for a visit. Sonny. Everyone calls him by his first name like that. He’s very casual. He runs the youth group and some other things.
When we got out of the car, I recognized the church where I’d been found and for a moment I wondered if they had decided to put me back in that pew, let me disappear into wherever I’d come from. I followed Hilda through a side door and down a hall covered in thick red carpet. I followed her up a wide staircase and down another hall to a black door on which the words THE CHILDREN’S MINISTER were painted clearly in white. Through the floor I could hear a piano starting and stopping and beginning again, someone practicing chords. Hilda knocked on the door and someone shouted, Come in.
The room was filled with plants, green vines climbing and hanging around a window. In several places around the room there were little bowls of small purple candies. Sonny came toward us, spoke some words, took one of Hilda’s hands with both his hands, and shook vigorously. Hilda turned to me and said, This is Sonny, then turned to Sonny and said, This is Pew.
Sonny smiled.
Well? Hilda asked all of us and no one at once. Suppose I’ll leave you to it, she said, and was gone.
Sonny looked as if he’d just been given some terrible news and was trying to keep it a secret. He took a small handful of candies from a bowl on his desk and pushed them into his mouth while he gestured to me to sit in a plush armchair on one side of the room. He took a seat in one across from it and pushed the bowl of candies toward me.
It’s my weakness. What a sugar tooth I’ve got.
He put another handful in his mouth. The little table between the two chairs held a potted flower, a deck of playing cards, and three thick books, their spines unbent.
You’ve made quite the stir in town, as I’m sure you know. It’s not often we get visitors. Tourism isn’t exactly a business here. He smiled, bent one leg over the other. Below us I could hear the piano starting up again, voices collecting in a room—something sounding almost like rain on a roof—someone laughing, someone else laughing, then everything stopped and one voice was speaking, then singing with a few simple piano chords.
Choir practice, Sonny said. Tuesdays are my favorite. Did you hear them last Sunday? Well, sure you did. Just beautiful. The piano began louder this time and a group of voices began singing in unison. Sonny was listening, his eyes lowered and his ear angled toward the floor. He made silent words with his mouth.
Oh, how great they’re practicing this one today … He leaned back in his chair. How perfect. The voices became clearer and Sonny sang along with them.
He hummed and mumbled along with the piano’s chords. I don’t know the verses by heart. Was never so good with memorizing. But I do remember the story about this one, I think. Was written by some guy in the nineteenth century, I think it was, can’t remember who, but he was a composer, a songwriter, wrote hymns, maybe other songs, too, and one day he gets the news that his four daughters—I mean, four daughters! Could you even imagine—anyway he gets the news that the ship his daughters were taking across to America from England, I think—anyway he gets the news that it wrecked and they’re all dead. I think maybe his wife, too, or maybe she had just died before this and maybe he had one son—I
feel like the son was dead, too, but for sure the four daughters all died in a shipwreck and he gets the news and sits down and writes this song—“It Is Well with My Soul.” It’s just all about how no matter how hard things get, no matter if Satan tests you or everyone you love dies or something else, you just have to keep your head up, you have to keep your eyes on the Lord. That’s what I take it to mean anyway. It’s real easy to feel sorry for yourself when bad stuff happens, even really bad stuff. But you can’t—you just can’t. You don’t even have to think about it. Of course, it’s not easy to do this, you know. It takes practice, and it doesn’t always come natural, you know, at least not for most of us.
Sonny nodded to himself for a while, listened as the choir below us sang those lines again. It is well, they sang softly, It is well. The piano stopped. Someone was talking. Sonny took another purple handful from the bowl. The piano began again. It is well, they sang, louder, then again even louder. It is well, it is well … with … my soul!
I hear you met Nelson? Sonny asked.
I nodded. Sonny threw the candies into his mouth and began talking through them.
What a guy, right? And he has seen a lot. He’s a lot like you, in that he doesn’t like to talk about it, but man oh man. Sonny looked out the window, quietly chewing and swallowing, his eyes scattered, his head shaking. He saw his whole family get killed, nearly got killed himself, then he had to go through all this difficulty with immigration—I can’t even tell you how complicated, just ridiculous, inhumane—even though there was already a family here ready to take him in and everything. He didn’t even get here until almost two years after he was supposed to. Had to live alone in a refugee camp, thinking he might never get out. Barely any school, barely anything at all. Now, of course, he’s got a good life, nice house, a family that can take care of him, the whole world opening up—but, man, he sure had to suffer.
Sonny looked out the window again, put his hand to his brow as if trying to shield himself from something. You know, everyone is wondering what you’ve been through. It’s not really anyone’s business, you know—and we know that. A person’s life really is just between them and the Lord and their family, but we do wonder what we can do to help. And we’d know how to help better if we knew a thing or two about where you came from.
Sonny shuffled a deck of cards and started to deal out a game of solitaire. I remembered watching that old woman at the gas station playing it, explaining it to me—It’s a game for people who don’t really like other people, she said.
It’s a confusing time, isn’t it? Sonny asked me. His teeth, when I saw them, were faintly lilac. Countries, governments, are killing people in heaps, tearing cities apart with war, killing women and children. He was playing his game rapidly, turning over this card and that, dwindling the deck, which was soft and worn at the edges. It’s a horrible mess, you know. Everywhere you turn, people are hurt. It even feels some days like men and women right here in our country have turned against each other. All this bitterness. Everyone wants to be the one who’s right.
He laid one card down slowly and firmly, then smiled some private smile.
Life is suffering—it really is. The Buddhists are right about that one, I tell you. Nothing is easy on this earth. Even that hymn I was just telling you about—well, only a few months after that guy finished the lyrics, the guy who’d written the music to go along with it was on a train and it fell off the rails and he died, too. So this one man loses his whole family, then loses the guy who helped him write the song about losing his whole family.
Sonny’s game of solitaire was already over. He had won, I suppose, so he shuffled the cards into a single stack again and took another handful of the candies.
What I am trying to say—and I’m not like the Reverend, not as good with the big speeches, you know, on the spot—and Sonny paused for a moment, his whole mouth a darker purple now, tongue and teeth unreal and inky. What I’m trying to say is that no matter what you’ve been through, there is a place here for you. I don’t think it was an accident you chose our church to sleep in, that we found you here. And when you’re ready to talk, kid, I am here to listen. We stood and he held my shoulder and looked down at me. Below us the choir was still singing. Their voices shook the floor.
FINE, HOW ARE YOU? the parrot said, facing a wall and nodding its head. Fine, how are you?
I sat in the little room just beside the kitchen, with a glass of cold milk, and something sweet, Hilda said, a square of black cake, to end the long day I’d had. I stared out the windows at the night sky, and when I reached out to touch the glass, it was still warm. The heat had not left, never left, was constant.
Through a wall I could hear the murmur of the television that Jack was watching, heard the thump of a ball he was throwing and catching.
Jack, Steven shouted from the kitchen.
Yeah?
Turn off the TV and go to bed.
But they’re about to show the replays—
Go to bed, Jack.
But Pew is still up.
It don’t make a difference—Pew is not my child. I am telling you to turn that thing off and go to bed.
The television stopped. Jack stomped down the hall and slammed a door. The air in the house was still and smooth, broken only by Steven and Hilda’s low whispers in the kitchen.
I shut my eyes and imagined a life in which only our thoughts and intentions could be seen, where our bodies were not flesh but something else, something that was more than all this skin, this weight. For a few moments I forgot where I was. I finished the glass of milk without realizing it, lost in the idea of a disembodied world, one where ideas could hold other ideas, where thoughts could see other thoughts and death couldn’t end thoughts, where one remained alive by thinking and was not alive if not thinking. Somehow our bodies wouldn’t hold us back the way they do here. Somehow our bodies wouldn’t determine our lives, the lives of others, the ways in which one life could or could not meet the life of another. We would not have to sleep or slam doors or exist in these cells that eat other cells and die anyway, these cells we live in.
Fine, the parrot said, drawing the word out this time, then pausing a long while—
Fine, how are you?
Hilda and Steven came in, looking reddened and wrung out.
I reckon you won’t start now, Steven said, but if there’s anything you need to tell us, anything you might need to come clean about … maybe you could tell us right now?
Hilda reached over to take the empty glass and plate from the table.
Tomorrow will be even busier than today was, she said in a rush, and you’ll have to see this specialist way out in Monroe, the one that Roger arranged for, and the whole thing might be easier if you could speak with us a little before then. They’ll need to do an examination. Just to make sure everything is OK. I could say nothing. I could tell them nothing. We all sat quietly.
This Saturday, you may have heard, is the festival. It’s a very important time of year and it’s very important to us that everyone in town participates and understands how important their participation is.
It’s really very beautiful, Hilda said, her voice spilling and loose, very meaningful—
Yes, and we expect that you’ll participate with the rest of us, even if you might not fully understand what it means. Hilda had begun to cry a little. She wiped lightly at one eye, then the other, the first again, and on like that. Steven wrapped a hand around one of her wrists, which seemed to end something in her.
People will be curious about having a new person in the community, Steven continued. It’s only natural. So we just need to make sure that all is well with you, and you’re suited to join us in this important event that we know outsiders don’t always understand.
We were all quiet for a moment. Some appliance in the kitchen grumbled.
Oh, Hilda said, there is one more thing. I just thought you might be more comfortable if you had a bath. You hadn’t had one since you got here, and I thoug
ht, well, you might like to have one. I’ve got one running in the washroom at the bottom of the stairs.
We all stood and walked toward the washroom and Hilda went in to turn off the tap in the nearly full tub.
And if you’d like, Steven said, Hilda could wash your clothes for you.
I shook my head.
Are you sure now? Hilda asked. It’s no trouble.
It’s no trouble at all. She’ll have them all pressed and ready for you in the morning.
I don’t ever sleep, Hilda added.
She doesn’t—she doesn’t sleep hardly at all, not with all the laundry there is to do.
That’s right.
Again I shook my head. They left me with the bath and shut the door. I took off my clothes. Steam wafted from the water and the water moved below, exerting the steam. I looked over at the water, then down at this body. Did everyone feel this vacillating, animal loneliness after removing clothes? How could I still be in this thing, answering to its endless needs and betrayals? The room was all white and gray and the air was warm and the air hung on me and I hung in this flesh that all those unknown centuries of blood that had brought into being. I had to tend to this flesh as if it were an honest gift, as if it had all been worth it. Why did living feel so invisibly brief and unbearably long at once?
I eased into the hot water and sat there for some time—seconds, minutes, I didn’t know—then got out again, dried myself with a thick towel, put my trousers and shirt on, and went back into the hall. Hilda and Steven were still there, still in the dark, leaning together as if they’d just been whispering.
Good night, they said, first one of them, then the other. I nodded as I held one hand out to trace the hallway wall, making my way back up to the attic.
In the attic I lay down and could see the moon through that round window, full and pure white, so bright it almost seemed to be making a sound. Even through shut eyelids I could feel the moon’s glare, so I lay there in that light, coming near something like but not entirely sleep, a stream of images or feelings going by, telling me nothing.
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