Pew

by Catherine Lacey

  I stole groceries when I was //

  for some months I regretted having the baby //

  passing judgment // I’ve been testing God all year //

  I killed her pony because we couldn’t afford to //

  took cash from her purse //

  curse every day // I hit her sometimes // won’t stop watching porn //

  really don’t like reading the Bible but I pretend //

  I never want to go to church //

  I shot three squirrels for no reason // killed some //

  real drunk and lied about it //

  strongly covet my neighbor’s // hate the festival //

  My business partners don’t know I take more //

  feeding him expired chicken salad on purpose //

  Might not tell him ever //

  know I did not pay // don’t like the looks of them //

  hate this time of year //

  slash their tires in the parking lot //

  never ask forgiveness // why can’t I hate them //

  lie all the time about everything // said I didn’t have any //

  I stole my sister’s clothes and threw them out //

  I saw a murder and //

  take the Lord’s name in vain // I know who did //

  I want a divorce // don’t want to pay taxes for the //

  can’t manage to forgive //

  all year I’ve wanted to run away // but I’m lazy //

  I watch pornography //

  really do hate her and can’t stop //

  didn’t really hear God’s voice when I said I did //

  I take more than my //

  she thinks I’m clean //

  told my wife I was on business when // pay for sex //

  don’t want to give money to the poor // don’t trust //

  not sure if the Bible really tells us that all men are //

  what if there’s just no God //

  I resist my husband // I’m glad he’s dead //

  we were both drunk // I despise the new preacher //

  it’s a struggle to believe // I steal money from my father’s //

  no one knows that I’m the one who //

  I wish I was dead // made up speaking in //

  don’t love my children equally // I lied //

  I hide my money because //

  afraid everyone can tell that she’s not //

  never actually read the Bible //

  women and can’t figure why I shouldn’t //

  I have been sleeping with one of //

  lied to // I’m not really sure the festival is //

  I know I’m not fair to // can’t stop being glad he’s gone //

  want to have sex with almost anyone but my husband //

  I do not want to forgive him // premarital //

  cries every day at her desk and I pretend not to hear //

  dug up my neighbor’s tulip bulbs //

  a beer this morning // I wish I was dead //

  might never forgive him //

  every year I try to figure out who said what //

  blame them //

  forced her to //

  pretended I didn’t know why they didn’t bloom //

  hate this stupid thing and // I threatened him //

  I don’t think I’ll ever really forgive her // even right now //

  take bribes all the // proud and vain //

  I’ve tried to kill myself twice // made her do //

  feel sad that people need there to be a God just to be good to //

  Several bells starting chiming and the voices—some of them moving faster now, some of them choked with crying, some of them angry—began to splinter, fade, cease.

  don’t know how to stop hating her //

  don’t always think God’s creation is //

  I know I killed //

  I doubt all the time //

  took a magazine from the doctor’s //

  not sure I can stop //

  The bells drowned out the voices, washed them away, then the last bells sounded and the last sounds hummed and dissolved. Someone put a hand in mine—I forgive you. I forgive you, someone else said, shaking my hand again. I forgive you, said another, then another. Hands came into mine, and every hand felt both exactly the same and completely different. Everyone was forgiving everyone. I removed the scarf from my eyes to see some faces reddened, tear wet, some drained white in fear. Some kept their scarves on. Some people weren’t moving at all. Some weren’t saying anything. Just beyond the rumble of all this forgiveness I could hear every child in town, crying, their sorrow roaring like heavy rain, a storm of it.

  Children—they know sin so well and they know God so well, a voice behind me said. I turned. It was one of the women I’d seen in the kitchen the other day. They know greed and love more than adults remember. They know God; they know terror. Know it by instinct. All the growing up is to forget what we know at birth. Ain’t it true? They cry because they can’t confess—know their wickedness but can’t say it. That’s why they cry. But don’t you worry—they’ll quiet down eventually.

  She walked away from me. Others laughed or covered their faces. Some lay on the floor and some stood, holding one another. Some seemed not to be moving at all, not looking at anything, not thinking of anything. They were not anywhere, not anyplace at all. The lights were slowly brightening back on, and the curtains were being raised. The fans began spinning, humming above us, and the children came running in throughout the room, looking up at everyone from knee level, looking for a place to belong, for the person that would pick the child up.

  At the edge of the room I saw Tammy crouched on the floor, and Hal stooped over her, covering her, holding her still. She was moaning, shaking, covering her face.

  Some years you just hear too much is all, Hal was explaining to someone nearby. I felt relieved he didn’t see me passing by. I didn’t want either of them to remember me, to know I’d been here, that I’d gone through this time with them. A numbed feeling had overtaken the room and I didn’t want it to touch me.

  A town has a feeling, I remembered someone telling me long ago, because certain kinds of thought are contagious. I’d never known exactly what that meant and maybe I still do not know, but I think I came to know it then.

  Amen, a voice said. Amen. It was everywhere, all at once, like sunlight.

  Where is the voice coming from? a child asked, but the adult standing above the child didn’t answer, held a finger over her mouth. The voice began to list names—Edward—and slowly the crowd fell silent again—Earl—listening to them as if listening to music—Johnson.

  What are they doing now? the same child asked.

  Reading the names, the adult whispered back.

  Whose names?

  Of the dead.

  All the dead?

  Some of them.

  Which ones?

  The adult hesitated. The child listened intently, as if she might be able to decode what was happening. She stared at the ceiling. She was learning how to live.

  Which ones? she whispered again.

  The ones who were killed.

  Today?

  No, not today. In years past.

  Oh.

  The names that had no holders kept coming.

  Why did they die?

  We all do.

  But they were killed?

  Yes.

  Will we all be killed?

  No.

  Then why were they killed?

  The adult was quiet for a little while longer, then knelt beside the child.

  Because of what they might have done.

  Who killed them?

  The people we elected.

  Do all elected people have to kill people?

  Yes.

  Why would anyone want to get elected?

  Someone has to be elected, the adult said after some time. We have to elect people.

  And why are they reading their names?

  Because it’s the sin we’ve a
ll done together. Something we had to do even though it was evil.

  Even me?

  I don’t know. Maybe not you. Not yet.

  The child sat on the floor. Her face needed to be washed with tears, warm water from the body, the body’s way of saying, Yes, I am still in here.

  When the last name was read, the voice said, Amen, and everyone said, Amen.

  A picnic, the voice said, would be served in the parking lot, and the crowd moved peacefully toward the doors we’d come in through, but at the back of the room I saw an open door and just beyond it the moving shadow of someone who had just passed through it. When I looked around for anyone who might be accounting for me, all I could see was that numbness, no one seeing anyone, everyone walking away from here in the same direction.

  I walked toward the back door. I stepped outside. The storm of people’s voices faded behind me. Annie was standing there, looking out toward the fields that stretched far from us, went places it seemed we might never go. A few others were there, too, their faces not numbed, just still. Air sat between us all like it will sit between anyone. The sky didn’t know one of us from the other.

  What are we supposed to do now? Annie asked someone, perhaps me or herself or you.

  Far from us trees were gathered in twos and threes. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be here. It was all an accident. All of us were meant to be somewhere else. I stood and walked away, and once I was one step away from her, I was as alone as I had ever been but I also knew that Annie—this Annie who answers to Annie but who has another, truer name—I knew she was not lost to the world just because she was lost to this place. She and I were deeper inside the world now, farther inside the dirt, braided into your vocal cords, the ones hanging in your throat.

  No one knows where I went, and I don’t know where I went and I don’t know where Annie went or where you went, but I know that I went and was gone and was gone completely. That night, all was quiet, and all is still quiet. All is uncertain. Gray clouds churned overhead—and still they churn, still they cast shadows, will cast them long after we’re all gone. The ground is wet. I was alone then and I’ve been alone ever since. All of us are gone and were gone and have been gone forever.

  All is quiet now; the sky is uncertain. I am moving, perhaps I am moving toward you. The ground is gray and the sky is wet. I am uncertain. The ground is not uncertain. I am not alone; I am with the sky and ground and you are with another sky, another ground. Is this ours now? The sky is certain and the wet is certain and I am quiet. Will we find each other? The ground is silent. I am uncertain. The sky is quiet. It’s never known any of us from the other. We speak with borrowed air. The sky only seems to be blue and have an edge.

  BE ADVISED

  Emily Bell and Eric Chinski frequently disregard national borders, guiding people and supplies across them. Jin Auh drives an armored truck through hopeless, pitch-dark streets. Brian Gittis, Julia Ringo, Jackson Howard, Alba Bailey-Zigler, Ekin Oklap, and their many dangerous associates are not to be underestimated and could be leading a sizable revolution at this very moment. The Whiting Foundation and the University of Mississippi provided meals, medical care, and a canvas tent. Kathleen Alcott and Brenda Cullerton practice obscure forms of sorcery.

  Flannery O’Connor, Zora Neale Hurston, Carson McCullers, and Eudora Welty have been robbed. Ursula K. Le Guin is a high priestess of the universe. David Buckel walked away from Omelas. “Derek Parfit” mattered.

  Jesse Ball is a mysterious weather pattern that has never been directly observed and can only be measured by its aftermath.

  ALSO BY CATHERINE LACEY

  Nobody Is Ever Missing

  The Answers

  Certain American States

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing and The Answers and the short-story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. She was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Believer, and other publications. Born in Mississippi, she is based in Chicago. You can sign up for email updates here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Sleep

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Be Advised

  Also by Catherine Lacey

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  120 Broadway, New York 10271

  Copyright © 2020 by Catherine Lacey

  All rights reserved

  First edition, 2020

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © 1973 by Ursula K. Le Guin. First appeared in New Dimension 3 in 1973, and then in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, published by HarperCollins in 1975. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-72013-1

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