You Should Pity Us Instead

by Amy Gustine

  “Maybe she doesn’t believe in premarital sex,” Simon joked.

  Helen has two PhDs, in anthropology and English. She wrote her thesis on Gertrude Stein. “What I’d really like,” she announced the first time Molly met her, “is to be a lesbian.”

  Molly laughed. “I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you choose.”

  Helen shrugged. “When I was twenty I moved to Israel. For two years I was a Jew.”

  Dugan is near retirement and Simon has caught wind of Helen scouting positions out East. Hence the dinner invite—as Chair it’s his job to make sure she stays. Molly serves pasta and brie with cheap white wine. Outside, on the patio, overgrown bushes along the edge crowd the chairs, requiring her and Dugan to scoot off axis to avoid being scraped on the neck. Helen winds her pasta around her fork like paint on a brush and scans the yard. A sparse patch of sun-starved lawn has greened up in the temporary gap between winter’s cold and summer’s worst heat. Within a few weeks it will be brown again, except for places where crabgrass has taken over.

  “I have to cut stuff back,” Molly says.

  “It’s too late,” Helen shrugs. “You’ve lost control.”

  Molly looks at the yard. “We haven’t had time, with the girls.”

  “Emma’s in first grade this year, right? You been working?”

  Molly shrugs. Simon likes to keep alive the myth that she hasn’t given up on a Ph.D.

  “So how’s it going with the crazy Christians?” Dugan asks.

  Simon laughs. “The usual. Death threats mailed care of my publisher. Oh, the new thing is Kate’s going to hell.” He tells them about Sarah.

  “That’s why the East Coast is better for people like us,” Helen says.

  Dugan’s face tightens, deepening the creases that divide his narrow cheeks into sections like a sliced loaf of bread. “Is it that bad, Molly?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say we’re terribly popular in the neighborhood. No one except Sarah’s mother gives me more than a perfunctory hello.”

  “Which is ironic,” Simon says, “since she’s the craziest Christian of them all.”

  Molly scowls. “Be nice. The Randolphs are good people.”

  “Are you sure she knows about the book?” Helen asks.

  “Everybody knows. This neighborhood has the Ford assembly line of rumor mills.”

  Helen looks at Dugan meaningfully. She’s published several essays on atheism with a feminist twist. Simon smells a book in them, another reason to worry about her getting snatched away to the Ivies.

  “Could be fun,” Dugan raises his eyebrows. “You enjoy pissing people off.”

  The doorbell rings and Molly goes through the house to answer.

  Elizabeth is there with Adoo to pick up Sarah. Molly invites her in, but Adoo remains on the porch.

  “Now that it’s warm, he likes to be outside,” she explains, keeping an eye on him through the storm door. “When he first got here he was afraid of the cold.”

  “So he’s adjusting?” Molly asks.

  “He’s doing great with English, and he’s teaching me his language.”

  “Does he always put those lines on his face?”

  “They’re from his tribe. They burn the skin and use a plant sap to dye the scar tissue as it heals.”

  Molly blanches. “So it’s permanent?” She puts a hand to her own cheek. “Have you talked to any of the plastic surgeons around? Maybe they could do laser removal.”

  “Oh no!” Elizabeth exclaims. “I wouldn’t want to take that away from him. He had a whole life before us, and I want him to hold on to it.” She pats Molly’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay. It’s all in Jesus’s hands.”

  As the girls come downstairs, Adoo opens the door and presents a garden snake to them with a big smile. Sarah screams and clutches at her mother.

  “Sarah!” Elizabeth snaps. “That’s enough.” She unwinds Sarah’s arms from her waist and gently pushes her backward, then takes the snake, muttering a foreign word to Adoo that sounds like “beda,” and releases the animal into the bushes. “Please tell Adoo you’re sorry.”

  Sarah wrinkles her nose. “Sorry.”

  “In his language, please.”

  “Minto,” she mumbles.

  Simon comes in from the kitchen. “What’s the uproar?”

  Elizabeth explains Adoo’s fondness for snakes, smiling at him as if he’s been discovered to like cubing three-digit numbers in his head.

  “He’s probably an animist,” Simon says. “Snakes are often seen as role models. He may even worship them as gods.”

  Sarah scrunches her face into exaggerated disbelief. “The Bible says snakes are the devil.”

  “The serpent in the Bible is a symbol of evil,” Elizabeth corrects. “He’s a form the devil took. Regular snakes are just snakes, all God’s creatures.”

  “How do you know the difference?” Emma has come into the hall, her lips rimmed in blue from an unapproved popsicle.

  Everyone looks at Molly. Why is she supposed to have an answer? “Go wash your face,” she orders. “And stay out of the popsicles.”

  That night when Simon goes to kiss the girls good night, he finds them on their knees, fingers laced together.

  “Pascal’s Wager,” he explains to Molly. “Sarah told Kate she should pray to God because nothing bad will happen if she’s wrong, but if she doesn’t pray and God exists, she’ll go to hell.”

  Kate looks sheepish. “I’m sorry, Daddy. Are you mad at me?”

  “No, of course not. Why would I be mad?”

  “Because you think praying is stupid.”

  “No, he doesn’t!” Molly repeats her canned speech on different beliefs being okay.

  “Do you believe in God, Mommy?”

  “I’m still thinking about it,” Molly says, “I do know this, though: I’m not going to hell and neither is Emma or your father. If there’s a God, He’s more interested in what we do than what we think.”

  “How do you know?”

  Simon sits on the bed and puts his hand on Kate’s knee. “Just think about it, honey. The idea of God is that he created all other beings, right?”

  She nods.

  “So if he created us, including our brains, then he must know how we think, sort of like the people who invented computers know how they work. It follows that if you pray without really believing in God, then God will know you don’t believe, and it won’t matter what you do.”

  “So I’m going to hell even if I pray?”

  Molly shoves Simon out of Kate’s room. Downstairs she tells him to lay off the logic. “You’re scaring the pants off that poor kid.”

  At one a.m. Molly wakes to sounds in the hall. Kate lies outside their bedroom door clutching Grubby, the musical bunny she’s had since infancy.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I was just hot.”

  Molly takes her back to her own room and they lie together like gears in the twin bed. Kate tucks Grubby under her chin and rubs his foot against her lips. “Mom, can I go to church with Sarah and her family? She invited me.”

  “Sure, why not? It’s fun to have new experiences.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you too.”

  While Kate’s breath slows and deepens, Molly does the math in her head. Twenty-nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty-four. The paltry number shocks her, so Molly does it again more carefully, but comes up with the same answer. If Kate lives to be ninety, that’s how many days she has left.

  The next morning, Molly feels as if she slept in the stockade. Simon cheerfully greets her at the breakfast table. “Where were you?”

  “Crammed into Kate’s bed. How about this for your next book? Parental fatigue is the source of religion. We don’t need God to explain things to ourselves. We invented him to shut the children up.”

  Simon laughs until she tells him about Kate wanting to go to Sarah’s church.

  “Isn’t it enough they’re trying to
convert that poor pagan kid, they want mine too?”

  “You’re trying to convert every Christian into an atheist,” Molly accuses. “What’s the difference?”

  “Technically, I’m an agnostic.”

  “That’s not what your book says.”

  Molly sits down and splays her hands on the table. “Has it ever occurred to you God is a comfort to kids? He answers a lot of tough questions.”

  “What we need is somewhere to take agnostic kids. I want to invite Elizabeth’s brood to a big room where we all sit around singing songs about logic and reading the Bible for inconsistencies.”

  “You work there. It’s called a university.”

  Simon waves this off. “I get them too late. The brainwashing has already taken hold.”

  “Yes, except Kate’s being raised by us. For us God is like the Easter Bunny and Santa, maturity will take care of him.”

  “That’s only because adults agree Santa doesn’t exist. As long as there are people like the Randolphs, that’s not going to happen with God. The girls are going to get confused.”

  Molly shrugs. “Life is confusing.” She remembers Emma, age one, falling through a banister down a flight of stairs. That night in ICU Molly caught herself praying to Jesus as if he were an old friend who’d moved to Bangladesh—these days, he could be reached only in case of emergency.

  “One visit,” she assures Simon. “Kate will be bored to tears and never go back.”

  But church neither bores nor comforts Kate. Rather it seems to strike a flame of curiosity edged with suspicion. Molly finds her reading Simon’s book.

  “Why does Daddy get to write a book about God if he doesn’t believe in him?”

  “That’s what the book’s about. Why he doesn’t believe.”

  “Does anybody besides you agree with Daddy?”

  “Sure, lots of people do.”

  Kate looks unconvinced. Molly takes the book away. “This isn’t really appropriate for you.”

  “Why? Does it have bad words?’

  “No, it’s just complicated.”

  “Yeah,” Kate conceded. “There were a lot of words I didn’t know. Some of them had fifteen letters!”

  The following week she announces she’s going to church with Sarah again.

  “Why?” Molly asks.

  “It was interesting.” She tells Molly about Adoo. “Sometimes he stays outside during church and Mrs. Randolph stays with him, or sends one of the big kids. And he doesn’t like music. He covers his ears when they play that gong piano thing.”

  “Organ,” Molly interrupts.

  “Yeah, organ. People started singing, and he crawled under the bench thing and wouldn’t get out.”

  “What happened?”

  “Mrs. Randolph laid down with him.”

  “In the middle of church? On the floor?”

  Emma appears dressed in her only skirt, a black and white hounds-tooth wool. She’s wearing a white blouse Molly doesn’t recognize with an orange stain on the sleeve.

  “I’m going too. Sarah said I could.”

  Simon gives Molly a told-you-so look. “Nobody’s going,” he says. “We don’t go to church.”

  Both girls demand a better reason.

  Molly takes Simon aside. “I told you encouraging them to think for themselves wasn’t a good idea,” she jokes.

  “Yes, and now seems like a good time to stop that.”

  “Come on, they’ll lose interest eventually.”

  “You said she wouldn’t go more than once.”

  “Adoo makes it interesting.”

  “Sounds to me like they’re torturing that poor kid.”

  The Randolphs arrive to pick up Kate, but there aren’t enough seats for Emma. Molly is about to offer to drive her and Simon is suggesting neither girl go when Adoo comes out of the van and signs something to Elizabeth. They talk in gestures and a few broken words of English and his native tongue. Molly gathers he is offering his seat to Emma.

  “Adoo can stay here.” Simon shrugs, Mister Innocent.

  Adoo seems to have understood and nods his head. “Stay, yes.”

  Elizabeth hesitates.

  “It’s fine,” Simon says. “It’ll be interesting.”

  Within half an hour Simon has exhausted what he can learn without a translator, so Adoo goes out to wander the yard and Simon goes inside to clean the fridge. From the porch, Molly watches Adoo examine plants and rocks, then climb up into the crotch of the willow tree and begin chewing on a leaf. When the Randolphs pull in the driveway, Molly goes outside to call him down. He hands her a long, shallow basket he’s made from the willow switches and mimes for her to collect flowers or pick up sticks. After he leaves, Molly looks up willow trees and finds out the salicylic acid their leaves and bark contain is the precursor to aspirin. She wonders if Adoo is in pain.

  The girls delight in the basket and next time Sarah comes to play Kate invites Adoo as well.

  Elizabeth thanks Molly. “He doesn’t have any friends yet. I really appreciate Kate being so nice.” She pauses. “Not everyone feels comfortable with Adoo.”

  He shows the girls how to make the baskets. It’s harder than it looks and the twigs leave narrow welts on their hands. To weave the bottom, crosspieces have to be inserted through slits in a thicker branch. Adoo demonstrates how to make the slit with your front teeth, holding the wood like corn on the cob, but the girls recoil from its taste, so he does it for them.

  The following week Elizabeth calls to say they can’t take Emma and Kate to church. “Adoo and Sarah don’t want to go, and I think I might have better luck with them if it’s just family.”

  “I hope the girls were behaving.”

  Elizabeth assures her they were, but Molly can tell there’s something more to it. A week goes by and Sarah isn’t free to play. Kate leaves four messages, none returned. After the fifth message, Elizabeth calls.

  “I enrolled Adoo and Sarah in Bible camp, so they won’t be around as much.”

  Molly stews for days, then calls back. “If you aren’t going to let Sarah be friends with Kate, I would prefer you tell me that straight out. I don’t want her to think Sarah is mad at her.”

  Elizabeth insists she adores Kate and that Sarah’s just been busy.

  Another week passes with no Sarah before Kate tells Molly she wants to attend Bible study too.

  “You can’t. You have to be a member of that church.”

  “I can go with Sarah. Please!”

  Molly puts her off with excuses about Simon not liking it and Emma wanting to tag along, but Kate continues nagging until Molly snaps, “No, we aren’t religious. We don’t belong to that church and you can’t go to Bible study. You can’t go to yeshiva or join a sangha or hang around the mosque either. We stay home Sundays. We do yard work and go swimming.”

  “You just read,” Kate says. “You don’t even like to swim.”

  Kate mopes around for nearly two weeks before Molly calls the Randolphs. Simon is lecturing out of town, so she won’t have to argue with him about it.

  On the phone Elizabeth sounds different, her tone less cheerful, more intimate. “Sarah would love to play, I’m sure.”

  “Kate would like Adoo to come too, if it’s okay. They have baskets to finish.”

  On Saturday Elizabeth drops them off. The kids, including Emma, go into the backyard.

  “How’s it going?” Molly asks.

  “Well,” Elizabeth shrugs. “It’s harder than I thought.”

  “Harder?”

  “Adoo. I knew he’d need a lot of love and patience and extra work to socialize…” She stumbles, correcting herself. “Acclimate himself.”

  “I admire you,” Molly says. “What you’re doing for him.”

  Elizabeth looks embarrassed. “I’m not so sure anymore I did the right thing. For him, I mean.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  She glances at the van. The one-year-old is asleep in her car seat and the three-year-old
is watching a movie on the van’s video system. “I think we’ll be moving to a new church.”

  “Why?”

  “The pastor and I disagree about Adoo.”

  “How so?” Molly makes her voice gentle to invite confidence.

  Elizabeth sighs. “He’s not sure Adoo can be saved.”

  “Maybe he should move in with us. He’d fit right in.”

  Elizabeth smiles, scuffing her sandal on the pavement. “You’ll be fine. God isn’t interested in what you think. He’s interested in what you do.”

  Emboldened, Molly asks, “How come you’ve been so nice to me? No one else is talking to me since Simon’s book came out.”

  Elizabeth shrugs. “Being offended is a sin of pride.”

  Molly bristles. “So I’m your good deed for the day?”

  “No, no. I admire you guys. Most people are afraid to be honest. What’s the point in having a friend if they aren’t who you think they are?”

  Simon has made a similar point about God.

  “I’m going to say goodbye to the kids.” Elizabeth nods toward the backyard. “Give me a call when you want to get rid of them.”

  Molly follows her along the garage through a tangle of shady plants she doesn’t know the names of. She’s beginning to suspect they’re mostly weeds.

  Three baskets sit half-finished on the table. The women poke their heads into the house, but don’t hear anything. Elizabeth goes around front while Molly does a quick check in the living room and calls up the stairs. Nothing. She goes back outside.

  “They couldn’t have gone anywhere. We were here the whole time.”

  “Maybe hide and seek,” Elizabeth says.

  They return to the yard and peer between the tangle of plants along the fence. In the back, where there’s a huge lilac, Molly catches sight of a bare foot on the ground. For a crazy second she imagines Adoo has dragged the girls’ bodies to a hiding place. Plunging into the bushes, Molly shrieks at the sight of Sarah, Kate, and Emma lying in a row, a garden snake slithering across their necks. In a flash the snake disappears into a pile of leaves and grass clippings.