A Fistful of God

by Therese M. Travis

  I had. Most of the girls and a lot of the guys in the youth group wore one. I wanted one, just to prove I belonged.

  “This one.” He pointed again and the woman working the booth unlocked the case and lifted it out. “How much? I’ve got fifteen dollars.” He grinned at me. “If you don’t mind skipping the ice cream.”

  “I don’t mind. But Miguel, I don’t want you to spend all your money on me.”

  “I do.”

  “Oh, Miguel—”

  “Sorry,” the woman said as she laid the chain over Miguel’s palm. “This one is twenty. It’s made with a special procedure called the ‘lost wax’ method. I make the mold from wax, pour in the silver and as it sets the wax is melted, or lost. Makes for a one-of-a-kind design.” She smiled and waved for me to take a closer look. Dull, like pewter, a tiny rose grew from the base and bloomed in the center.

  Miguel turned to me, stricken. “I don’t have that much. I’m sorry, Aidyn, if I could—”

  “That’s OK, really.”

  “Look at me,” the woman said.

  I turned to her. “What?”

  She tipped my chin up and lifted my glasses to stare into my eyes. Her face blurred, but I could still sense the way she studied me. Her eyes were so light a color they seemed to be light themselves. I thought she must be crazy—sincere, but crazy. I wanted to pull away so she couldn’t learn everything there was to know about me, but I kept myself from flinching.

  “I can see it in your eyes. You’re good people. I’ll let you have it for fifteen, all right?” She let go.

  “But…” I backed away, spluttering.

  “Don’t worry about it, honey. I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t a cross, but I can see you love what it stands for. You’re a good person; you deserve this.”

  Miguel handed over all his money and clasped the chain around my neck. I stood, wooden, sure I’d cheated her. As Miguel thanked her I felt the cross at my throat, felt the rose and tucked my nail under the edge of its stem.

  “Are you sure?” I asked before Miguel could lead me away. “It’s not right—”

  “There’s right and then there’s right.” She slipped the money into a box. “I’ve had that one for months and never found anyone I wanted to have it more. You need it, don’t you?”

  Not want, but need. I knew the difference, and still, I nodded.

  She smiled. “You’re good people.” Then she turned to another customer.

  I had no choice but to follow Miguel to where we’d agreed to meet his mother. I’d wear the necklace every day, I swore to myself. And I knew, whenever I said “Thank You” to God, I’d reach up and stroke my tiny rose.

  10

  Jackson, Miguel, and I huddled at the back of the church hall, waiting for Lucy to start the meeting. I peered over Miguel’s shoulder, hoping to see Shannon. If she knew the two of them had ambushed me, she’d come to my rescue. But she hadn’t come in yet, and no one else in the crowded hall paid any attention to the three of us. I was stuck arguing my way out.

  “You should go,” Jackson said.

  “It doesn’t hurt.” That was from Miguel.

  I raised one eyebrow at him. He had no idea what might hurt. “It’s not like I need to go.”

  Jackson’s jaw dropped. “How can you say that? I know kids whose parents have been sober a lot longer than my mom, and they still go. They still need the support.”

  “Well, I don’t. OK?”

  Why the need to lie? I knew the truth, and yet all I could do was lock it away until it burned a hole through my soul, until it blazed on my face like a badge of admission, until the others knew just as well as I did—maybe better—that I couldn’t allow myself to dance with the truth.

  Miguel shrugged, his head down and his elbows braced on his knees. “What are you gonna do if your mom starts drinking again?”

  “She won’t!” That time quite a few turned to look. I lowered my voice, but it rasped with the effort. “She won’t. I know my mom.”

  I don’t live a lie; I am a lie.

  “Don’t tell me she promised you she wouldn’t.”

  I glared at Jackson, at his eyes ice blue with anger, his taut jaw. “Of course not. But I know her.”

  “She’s like any other alcoholic—”

  “She is not! Don’t you say that, Miguel! She’s not like your dad.” I couldn’t even stop the lies for the one person on the world I knew I loved.

  Miguel got up, but Jackson grabbed his arm. “She’s honeymooning. Remember? Let her get it out of her system.”

  “You don’t understand.” But I was the one who didn’t.

  Jackson interrupted. “I do. Miguel and I both understand better than you do. Look, Aidyn, your mom’s sober, and that’s great. And she might be one of the lucky ones who never takes another drink. I don’t know. But there are plenty of other issues you need to work through.”

  “Everything’s fine with Mom and me. Perfect.”

  “Hey, guys, want to join us?” Lucy called over the PA, and I got my reprieve.

  But I pressed against Miguel’s side during the opening prayer and whispered, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about your dad.”

  He grunted, but after a bit he took my hand, and I knew everything was OK between us. If only he’d held it before, I’d have felt his strength run into me through his warm, cinnamon skin. I’d have been safe. I wouldn’t have had to lie.

  Lucy’s message that day centered on thankfulness. “Maybe I should wait for Thanksgiving, right? It’s only a month away, and then I’d be in season. But the thing is, we always have something to be thankful for. We ought to be thankful every single day we’re alive, just for the simple fact that we are alive. And then we go from there. We, each of us, have so many reasons to thank the Lord. We need to thank Him for the good things, the feasts, as well as for the bad things, the times when the feasts are going on but we’re not invited. We are called to be thankful in everything.”

  She waved her arms to include the whole world in her everything. I grinned to myself. I could do thankful. I’d come through the time of not being invited, and now I held my own feast.

  Later, when Miguel sneaked back to grab another handful of cookies off the snack table, Lucy stopped next to me.

  “I really liked what you said about being thankful,” I told her.

  She nodded. “You look so happy these days. I’m glad. I guess you have a lot to thank Him for right now.” She glanced toward Miguel, and I grinned. “Keep it, Aidyn. Remember this when you think you have nothing to be thankful for.”

  Miguel and I walked to my apartment holding hands, and the whole way I kept my other hand on my silver cross. Whenever I thought about it, I thanked God. I would go on thanking Him, and I would always be able to, because I knew there would never come another time when it seemed all my blessings had been taken away.

  ****

  The Saturday before Halloween I convinced Miguel to give up his teen support meeting to help me help Mrs. Donaldson get her boys ready for trick-or-treating. Lucas wanted to be Batman, and Andy insisted he wanted to be exactly the same as Lucas, who didn’t like that idea at all.

  While the four of us carved pumpkins, crowded in the Donaldson’s kitchen with newspapers thick under our knees, we tried to convince Lucas that Andy could be Batman, or convince Andy that he could be something else.

  Miguel dropped a glop of pumpkin innards onto the papers. “My little brother was just like Andy. Always copying me, you know? I hated it. Thought he was a real pain in the butt.”

  Mrs. Donaldson turned from her dinner preparations to give Miguel a glare of disapproval, and he returned it with one of his more angelic smiles. She shook her head but didn’t stop him.

  “But I thought about it a long time. Here was this little kid—he was just about Andy’s size then—and he wanted to be everything I was. Everything. Man, the things I could get him to do!”

  Mrs. Donaldson glared at Miguel. “Like clean your room?�
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  “Well, no.” Miguel leaned away from her. I pressed the back of my slimy hand to my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. “I wasn’t too interested in clean rooms, Mrs. Donaldson. But I wanted to be a superhero. Like you, Lucas. And I finally figured something out.”

  Miguel settled cross-legged again and held his hand out for the knife. “I figured out that I was already a hero to my little brother. No matter what, that kid loved everything I did. I could be a hero no matter what day it was, or how I dressed up.”

  Mrs. Donaldson nodded, but she went on watching Miguel. He bent over the pumpkin, cleaning the edge of the opening with short, smooth strokes.

  Lucas sighed. “Andy wants to be me.”

  Miguel looked up. “Feels kinda good, doesn’t it?”

  Lucas nodded. Not too long after that, he told his mom she could make Andy a black cape. “But it has to be shorter than mine, because he’s not as big as me.”

  After we got the kitchen cleaned up and Mrs. Donaldson thanked us and paid us extra, as usual, Miguel and I sat at the top of the stairs, waiting for Mom to get home.

  Miguel started to laugh. “I thought Mrs. Donaldson was gonna carve me up with her baby pumpkin knife.”

  “She’s pretty picky about what the boys are exposed to. She doesn’t want them to think it’s OK to not clean your room.” He leaned against my knee. “I didn’t know you had a little brother.”

  “I don’t.” He stared across the apartment courtyard. “I was talking about my older brother. He was my hero, Aidyn. Until he died on that stupid motorcycle, I wanted to be just like him.”

  I heard the pain in his voice. “You’re not.”

  “I don’t want to be like my dad, either. I’m gonna be strong, like my mom.” He laughed. “No, I’m gonna be Batman.”

  “You’ll be strong. Even if you’re scared, you’ll be strong when you need to be.”

  ****

  The afternoon before Halloween, Mr. Donaldson called me. “Margie has the flu, and I don’t really want to leave her. But we promised the boys we’d take them out. Do you think you and Miguel could take them? They’d be home early enough for the two of you to go to a party or whatever you had planned.”

  “I’m not sure if Miguel will want to.” But I knew how attached he’d gotten to those boys. My ploy worked. Mr. Donaldson promised to pay double, and I called Miguel to tell him we had a job.

  After we got the boys home, cleaned up, roughhoused enough to tire them out so they could sleep after the candy we let them eat, Miguel and I went back to my apartment. Mom sat with her feet up, reading one of her thousands of library books. “Help yourselves to some candy,” she said. “I’ve got almost a whole bag left. Hardly anybody stopped here. I heard the kids on the stairs, but they’d just run right by.”

  Panicked, I stared at Miguel. I knew why they hadn’t stopped. They remembered last year, when Mom would yank open the door and scream at anybody who rang the bell. I turned and, making sure Miguel stood between my hand and Mom, I flipped the porch light off.

  “You forgot the light, Mom. We thought you must have run out of candy and turned it off.” Because wasn’t it better to lie than to make her feel bad? Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Lucy or one of the priests at church, or even Mom, agreeing with me.

  Mom frowned. “I’m sure I—” She shrugged. “I must have forgotten.”

  I tried to think back. Even after Miguel’s mom picked him up and Mom and I had gone to bed, I lay in the dark, trying to make things come out right. Had Mom forgotten, blacked out as long ago as a year? Had it gotten that bad by then? Sour fear crept into my stomach. I didn’t want to remember times like those. I wanted to hold Mom’s sobriety to me, as close as I could, and never have to think about the past again.

  Shaking, I clutched my silver cross. “Thank You that it’s over. Help me forget all that.”

  ****

  I guess God didn’t want me to forget, because a few days later Mom staggered through the apartment door, collapsed on the couch and huddled over her lap. I stood in the kitchen doorway, feeling my whole life guzzled away. Mom had dropped her purse on the floor and I didn’t see any bottles but that didn’t mean she didn’t have one clutched to her heart. It didn’t mean she hadn’t already finished the whole thing off.

  “Mom?”

  “Aidyn?” She turned to me, wincing. “I have the worst headache.” She sighed. “I’ve had hangovers this bad, but not often.”

  “Do you want something?”

  She shook her head. “No. I think I just need to sleep.” But she stayed on the couch. “My stomach hurts, too. I should have stopped and gotten some ginger ale. That might have helped.”

  “Do you want me to go get some?”

  “Do you mind? I’d appreciate that.”

  So I ended up walking three blocks to get a six-pack of soda for her stomach and thinking mine needed it just as badly.

  When I got back I asked, “What’s for dinner?”

  “I don’t know. Can’t you just open a can of soup?”

  I backed away. “Yeah, I guess. What kind do you want?”

  “I’m not hungry.” She poured a glass of ginger ale and lay back on the couch. Even when I brought a bowl of chicken soup to her, she didn’t want it. I put it in the fridge and stared at my tiny pile of dishes. Nothing had changed, had it? Mom was drunk and trying to hide it. Just because I couldn’t see it or smell it didn’t change anything. Pretty soon she’d pass out, and my nightmare would suck me into its rancid mouth and swallow me whole. But it couldn’t, because I wasn’t whole.

  I tiptoed into the room. Her eyes were closed, her breathing heavy. No snoring, like when she was really drunk, but—

  I knelt next to her. “Mom, I think you better go to a meeting.”

  She jerked like I’d woken her. “Not tonight, OK?’

  Biting my lip, I got up. I’d given her another chance. She could have decided to go. I washed my dishes and finished my homework and spent a lot of time holding onto my cross. Please don’t let it start again. Please! And underneath my prayers ran the mantra—too late, too late.

  And here I’d convinced myself Mom went to those meetings three times a week because she had so many friends there.

  I headed for the living room and turned on the TV. Mom sat up, dragging her hair off her face. “Can’t you turn that down?”

  I did, but after a few minutes she stirred again. “Do you have to have that on?”

  “Why don’t you go to a meeting?” I muttered. “Then I could do what I want without you bagging on me.”

  “I don’t feel like it, OK? I told you that.”

  I switched off the TV and stared at the empty screen. I touched my cross, but it felt just as empty. Mom sat up and reached for her glass.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Ginger ale. You bought it, remember?”

  I shook my head. She’d sneaked something else into it. She had to have. And I knew why she wouldn’t go to a meeting. She’d quit quitting, and why would she go when she’d decided to drink?

  I turned off all but one light and crept to my room. A long time later I heard her stumble to the bathroom. I heard her heaving and gasping, the splash of vomit on the tiles. At least it hadn’t hit the carpet. I clenched every muscle in my body and hated her. It would have been so much better to never have hoped. I thought she called me, but I pretended not to hear.

  I hadn’t taken the cross off since Miguel fastened it around my neck, but I sat up then and undid the clasp. Shaking, I threw it at the wall. “Why? I believed in You. I trusted You. So why?”

  Mom called again, threw up again, and I fell asleep crying.

  In the morning, my head felt stuffed like I’d injected pillow fluff under my skin. When I got up I found Mom sprawled in the hall just outside the bathroom door. The apartment reeked of vomit. I swallowed. How many times had she missed?

  “Get up.” I grabbed her arm and jerked her up, but she could barely stand.
/>   “Call Toni. I’m sick.”

  She staggered against me, stumbled as I pulled her into her room. I pushed her as roughly as I could onto the bed. “I know better than to believe you’re sick.”

  I cleaned the bathroom and the soiled carpet, gagging as I lugged the dirty towels to the laundry room. I jammed in the coins and started the washer, then headed back to the apartment.

  “Aidyn.” Mom’s voice came weak and hoarse.

  Bad hangover, I thought, although I wasn’t sure she had reached that stage yet. She still acted drunk; she probably was.

  I leaned on the doorjamb and glared at her.

  “Call Toni. Tell her I have the flu.”

  “I’m calling her right now.” I punched in Toni’s work number. “It’s Aidyn. Mom won’t be in to work today. She’s got a hangover.”

  Toni swore.

  “I wasn’t drinking.” Mom hitched up on one elbow and reached for the phone, but I danced out of her way. “I swear, Aidyn. I’ve got the flu.”

  “Yeah, she was really drunk last night. I think she still is.”

  “I don’t need this,” Toni said.

  “You think I do?” I slammed the phone, making sure Mom couldn’t reach it from the bed. But that wasn’t good enough. I’ve known her to call a liquor store for another delivery when she couldn’t walk, so I grabbed the cord and yanked it from the wall.

  “Aidyn, I wasn’t drinking. I promise.”

  I slammed her door and the front door as loud as I could when I left.

  11

  I ran downstairs and hid in the laundry room and felt eleven again. That’s how old I was when I first realized Mom’s drinking wasn’t ever going to stop, that my life would never go back to the way it had been when Daddy was alive. I slammed the basket down on the lid of an empty washer and slammed my fist against the metal then I curled up between two dryers and hated myself for trusting her again. Why did she have to drink? Why did I have to get so mad?