The Air We Breathe

by Christa Parrish

  On the wall at the front of the church, high above everything, hung a statue of a man, his arms outspread, his legs overlapping at the shins, muscles and ribs carved deeply into the figure. There were diamond shapes in his palms and on the top of the foot Hanna could see, and a wreath on his head. She thought it was creepy and beautiful all at the same time.

  “Who’s that?” she whispered.

  “Who?” Katie said.

  She pointed. “That.”

  “You don’t know who Jesus is?”

  “How would I?”

  “Because everyone knows.”

  Hanna didn’t, though. The only time she’d heard His name was when her mother or someone on the TV said it. She’d thought it was just a word grown-ups got to use, and kids got yelled at for using. Not a real-life person.

  “Why’s He floating up there like that?”

  “He’s hanging on the cross.”

  “Why?”

  “So we could have Easter. And so we won’t go to . . . you know. The hot place.” Katie smacked her lips. “Well, I won’t, at least.”

  “Girls, shhh,” Mrs. Torino said.

  Through the hour, Hanna sat and stood and knelt when everyone else did and listened to the chimes and the organ. She waited in the bench with Katie when her parents and older brother went up front to eat the body and drink the blood. “I know. Gross, right?” Katie said. “But my brother got a hundred bucks when he made his Communion. I get to next year. And it’s really just wine, anyway.”

  On the way out of the church Hanna stuck her fingertips quickly into the bowl of water and then scurried through the doors to the parking lot. There, she licked the water off.

  She didn’t die. Didn’t even get a stomachache or a cold sore. And the next day in school she had told Gregory Husker that he was full of baloney. She didn’t, however, tell her parents she had gone to church.

  Hanna wanted to go back inside today. But she didn’t want to go in with her mother.

  She wished she could go in with Claire.

  Once the church was behind them, Susan picked up the pace and Hanna kept up. Both of them were fast walkers, wanting to get where they were going, moving with purpose. They continued around the long block, and then the short one, and after a brief detour onto the main road—the shoulder was very wide, and the cars moved over the middle yellow line as they went by—they turned down their own street and climbed up onto the porch. Her mother unlocked the door and, as she took a bottle of Dr. Pepper from the fridge—another thing not allowed in the house when her father was alive, soda—Hanna saw the number one blinking on their answering machine. She pecked at the button with one finger.

  It was Claire. Of course they could join her at church tomorrow morning. She’d wait for them in the vestibule at ten o’clock.

  Hanna’s first thought at seeing Claire’s church was one of disappointment. New Life Christian was nothing like St. Catherine’s. It was a flat, dull building of brick—and not even the nice brick like at Stewart’s, with all different shades of brown and red and black and white, but one unvarying color—with plain windows. When she and her mother went inside, Hanna saw the ghost of old lettering on the door. Hughes Insurance Agency.

  “You made it,” Claire said when she saw them. “I’m always afraid I give bad directions.”

  They followed Claire into a large room with padded seats instead of benches, plain walls, and two fake trees in the corners up front. Someone had strung white Christmas lights through them, and the shiny, too-green leaves mirrored the glow. There were announcements at the beginning, some singing with instruments and microphones, but no elaborate rituals of kneeling and touching and speaking in unison. No smells, except for the coffee brewing on the table in the lobby.

  Hanna tried to listen to the man who spoke; he wore normal clothes and brushed his hair forward so the ends became his bangs. She was trying to grow out her bangs—Susan had always kept them trimmed before—and they were long enough now that sometimes they got stuck up in the folds of her eyelids when she blinked. Today her mother had combed them out of her face and fastened them to one side with a pink plastic clip, her hair so fine she could still wear barrettes meant for toddlers.

  The speaking bored her. She didn’t want to know about spiritual gifts, whatever those were; she wanted to know about the Jesus who helped her escape, the one who floated on the wall of St. Catherine’s, who had diamonds in His palms and love in His heart. Maybe Claire would tell her.

  In the end, though, she didn’t ask. Her mother kept shifting around in the seat next to her, using the pencil from the holder on the chair in front of her to draw sticks and circles in the margin of the papers someone handed them when they walked in, to poke holes in the paper and her pants, until the point broke. Hanna had heard her on the phone with Dr. Diane yesterday afternoon, asking why her daughter was “obsessed with religion” and was the psychologist sure she should be encouraging it. Apparently the answer was yes, because there they sat.

  Hanna reached for a pencil, too, and the card in the pocket next to it.

  I would like a pastoral visit.

  I would like more information on New Life.

  I have made a decision for Christ today.

  She drew a steady X on the line in front of the second option, since she didn’t know what a pastoral visit was and didn’t know what kind of decision Christ needed her to make. Susan snatched the card from her, folded it in half and tucked in under her thigh. That was what she did with things she planned to throw out but didn’t want to put in her pocket or bag because she might forget about it there. And then she kept turning around to look at the clock on the wall above the exit.

  When the time was up and everyone stood to leave, her mother grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from the seat. “You have things to do, I’m sure,” she told Claire.

  “Stay, please. There’s coffee and donuts.”

  “No,” Susan said. “We have things to do, too.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll see you Wednesday, Hanna.”

  She nodded, and her mother pulled her through the people talking, through the ones eating donuts and drinking coffee, Hanna as far behind her mother as their linked arms would stretch. On their way past a table piled with pamphlets and booklets and flyers, she reached out and snagged a small brown book stamped New Testament in gold letters from a basket with a handwritten Take One sign taped to the front. So her mother didn’t see it, she dropped it down the side of her mud boot, and it bounced against her ankle with each step she took to the van. When she got home, she carried her boots with her as she ran up the stairs and, standing in the middle of her bedroom, searched for a place to hide the book.

  “Hanna?” Susan called. “What do you want for lunch? A bean burrito or leftover ravioli?”

  When she didn’t answer, her mother came after her, and Hanna climbed onto her bed, sticking the book between the stuffed animals crowded into the netted hammock holding them.

  “What are you doing?”

  Hanna waved a wooly rabbit. “I wanted Mr. Checkers.”

  “Well, get him and come down to eat.”

  She nodded, bounced down onto the mattress, landing on her backside, and slid beside her mother, taking her hand. Susan squeezed back. “I love you, baby.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Her mother didn’t say it—“I love you three”—like they always used to do, counting up until her daddy told them to stop—“You’re driving me stinking nuts”—or they grew tired of all the syllables it took to say the whole thing. “I love you one hundred and twenty-seven” was a mouthful, but they only got that high when they were driving in the car and it was boring and they were sick of playing I Spy or listening to stories on tape from the library.

  Instead, Susan took both her hands. “You can talk to me, too, you know. More than anyone else. More than strangers. More than angels or things you can’t see. Because I know you, Hanna-Bee. No one will ever love you like I do.”


  But she couldn’t. She spoke with Claire because of the cross and the television and something inside her that tingled when she saw Claire on the bench that day, something she thought about every night as Susan slept beside her. She couldn’t understand why she sometimes felt closer to a woman she met only a few weeks ago than she did to her own mother.

  She talked to Dr. Diane because she had to, and even then not so much. She didn’t remember the things the psychologist wanted to know. Sometimes she tried, and there was a big black splotch over the picture in her head, and when she concentrated on it to move it away, she started trembling and her armpits flooded with sweat and she wanted to scream. And then Dr. Diane would tell her it was okay, but Hanna knew it wasn’t.

  And that’s why she couldn’t talk to her mother, because Susan wanted her Hanna-Bee, and Hanna didn’t want her to know she wasn’t coming back.

  13

  CLAIRE

  NOVEMBER 2002

  Claire started with a blank sheet of gridded paper. Many constructors used computer software, and sometimes she did, too, if she was in a hurry, but for the most part she liked pencil and paper, enjoyed the process of tracing the lines and shading cells, the scraping sound of the boxes being colored in by the side of the graphite point. Liked the challenge of coming up with her own words. She kept two pieces of lined paper near her, one for the across clues, one for the downs.

  She drew her grid, fifteen by fifteen, wrote in her three theme answers—each playing off of an ice cream flavor, filling in an entire row of open boxes—having thought of them last night, in bed. The clues, of course, allowed for a double meaning.

  Path having most boulders?

  THE ROCKIEST ROAD.

  Hanna had inspired the puzzle.

  Scattering some dark squares around the puzzle but still keeping the grid’s one-hundred-eighty-degree rotational symmetry, she counted the number of letters she needed in all the across entries and, on her lined paper, indicated those in parentheses.

  Snickerdoodles, in beige?

  COOKIES AND CREAM.

  It took her three to five hours to finish a puzzle by hand, and if it was published she’d be paid between fifty and three hundred dollars, depending on the publication. Most paid less. She had sold three Sunday puzzles to the New York Times at one thousand dollars each. But those were surprises, blessings, all coming at a time when she’d had a large financial need—the furnace had to be replaced, the transmission in the car went, an unexpected leak in the roof when the ice backed up under the shingles one particularly difficult winter—and she clung to the God who provided.

  Daniel had given her the house in the divorce and he paid a small amount of alimony; though there was still food and utilities and property taxes, which were unbelievably high, she had been able to make ends meet. It didn’t take much work or self-control because, for the longest time, she wanted nothing—except the impossible, which cost nothing.

  And then Hanna came along.

  Cocoa-covered sparrow?

  CHOCOLATE CHIPPY.

  She finished the puzzle in just over three hours and, later that afternoon, left the house for Hanna’s Wednesday counseling appointment. Diane Flinchbaugh said Hanna was more responsive when Claire was there, and while she didn’t want the girl to become completely dependent on Claire, it did help once a week to have her around. And on Saturdays it was ice cream and something—a walk in the park, a trip to the library, a crossword puzzle at Hanna’s home. Susan always drove Hanna, and Claire met them in her own vehicle. And then the mother would wait in the van or follow behind—far enough to give her daughter the privacy the psychologist insisted was important during these times, but close enough to step in should any problem arise. Hanna hadn’t asked any more questions about Jesus—in fact, she spoke very little when they were together, and about seemingly random things—but the girl wanted to say more. Claire saw that clearly. She could only wait until Hanna decided to speak what was on her mind.

  She didn’t blame Hanna’s mother for her distrust. Who would let their child out of her sight after all Hanna had been through? But distrust wasn’t the only thing there. Claire thought it was jealousy. She wished she could say to Susan, “Look, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m not trying to steal your daughter away from you.” Or, more bluntly, “Your daughter chose me. This wasn’t my idea.” But neither was completely true.

  No, she wasn’t trying to take Hanna’s affection from her mother, but she liked being needed. Liked it so much, in fact, that she found pockets of irrational jealousy brewing when Hanna spoke to Susan. And while getting involved with the girl hadn’t been her idea initially, she couldn’t imagine life without her now. She was certain God had put them together, for whatever reason. She hoped His plan was for Claire to help Hanna heal. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Most days, though, it seemed Claire was doing the healing, Hanna the salve beneath the bandage.

  At the psychologist’s office, Hanna remained withdrawn. Diane tried to prod her in different ways, asking her to explain past drawings, introducing the possibility she would return to school in January, asking her if she missed her friends, her teacher, homework. Hanna seemed content to tear paper into strips and write words on them. When Diane leaned over to read them, though, she folded them tight and put them in her pockets.

  “You’re quiet today, Hanna. Secretive.”

  The girl shrugged.

  “Is something bothering you?”

  She shook her head, traced her hand on a clean white page.

  “Have you ever made turkeys like that?” Claire asked, leaning closer to see.

  Diane’s head snapped up, but when Hanna said, “A long time ago,” the psychologist moved her chair to the periphery, giving Claire permission to come closer.

  “One year we made strings of paper handprint turkeys at Thanksgiving and hung them over all the windows,” Claire said, tracing her own hand in brown. She added black eyes and feet, a yellow beak, a red wattle.

  “We?” Hanna asked.

  Claire exhaled. “Caden and I. My son.”

  Hanna abandoned her handprints and cut another sheet of paper into strips. On one, in green marker, she wrote together.

  Diane said, “Hanna, I’ll be back in a few minutes. I need to speak with your mother.”

  Claire knew, because the psychologist had told her, that during these “parent-doctor conferences,” Diane actually went into a small viewing room where she could watch Hanna’s interactions with Claire through a two-way mirror. “I need to see the two of you interacting on your own. It gives me insight I cannot get when I am in the room.” So Claire agreed, reluctantly, because the psychologist said it would help Hanna. And Claire wanted that more than anything.

  “I noticed you write words,” Claire said.

  “I like words.”

  “What do you like about them?”

  “How they sound. Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Sometimes how they look. Sometimes what they mean. But mostly how they sound.”

  She nodded toward the strip Hanna held. “What about that one?”

  “What it does. That’s what I like about it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Hanna uncapped a blue marker with her teeth. She smoothed the paper strip in front of her and drew lines between the letters—to/get/her. “It means something different when it’s in pieces.”

  Together. Safe, firm, comforting. Break it apart and all the comfort disappeared. To get her. Claire thought of being chased.

  Diane would have pushed. She couldn’t. “I like words, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Claire said. “I like them so much that I use them in my job. I write crossword puzzles.”

  “You must know a lot.”

  “I use a dictionary and thesaurus a lot.”

  The girl folded the paper strip and tucked it down into the little fifth pocket of her jeans. “My mom’s a museum curator. My dad . . . he’s de
ad.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He worked at the college.”

  “As a professor?”

  Hanna nodded.

  “He must have been very smart.”

  “He was. He knew everything about science. But my mom, she knows everything about everything.” Hanna paused. “She’s talking about selling the house. She thinks I don’t know. But I heard her on the phone.”

  “I’m sorry. That sounds hard.”

  “Did that happen to you, when your son died? Did you have to move somewhere else?”

  “No,” Claire said. She wanted to choose her words with care, but Hanna was a perceptive child; she’d know if Claire was being dishonest. “But other things changed.”

  Hanna traced her hand again. This time she turned the paper around so her fingers were feet, her thumb a tail. She drew a long neck and head, and colored inside the lines yellow, adding brown spots. A giraffe.

  “Very clever,” Claire said.

  The girl shook her head. “Not me. I saw it on television.”

  “Well, I like it.”

  “My mother . . .” Hanna paused. “She wants to go back to work. She hates being home. With me.”

  “No, Hanna. That can’t be true.”

  “You don’t know,” she whispered. “She loves me. And she hates me. I see it.”

  Claire waited, but Hanna said nothing else, scribbled something on the paper, tore around the writing and rolled it under her palm into a tight, pointy scroll. The institutional clock on the wall ticked off the minutes. Diane came back into the room; Hanna’s time was over.

  “Think about school,” Diane told the girl, and Claire left the session with her and her mother.

  “So, Saturday?” she asked.

  “We’ll call,” Susan said.