Raising Jake

by Charlie Carillo

  My mother rose from her bed. “We should go downstairs and join the others. Do you have to go to the bathroom first?”

  I did have to go. I snapped the paper band off the toilet seat, took a piss, washed my hands and face with a tiny bar of motel soap, and then I was as ready as I’d ever be to see the Bleeding Jesus of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

  It was a three-block walk to the church, but it took us the better part of an hour, at a crutches and wheelchair pace. Inevitably my mother wound up leading the blind man with the jet-black glasses, his bony hand clutching the crook of her elbow, and though a local church guide had been sent to lead us it was obvious to all that my mother was the one in charge.

  She appointed (or should I say anointed?) me to push one of the wheelchairs, containing what was left of a once-vigorous woman named Helen Paulsen, who claimed to have been a member of the U.S. Olympic swim team during the 1920s. She blamed her decrepit hips on all those years of kicking her way up and down swimming pools, but she had no regrets—God was good, she said, God will look out for me.

  God, and the pension left to her by her late husband, who’d been a member of the Steamfitters Union before lung cancer claimed him.

  “Oh, Samuel,” she said, looking straight ahead as I pushed her along the sidewalks of Scranton, “it is so awfully good of you to push me this way.”

  For some reason Mrs. Paulsen, a lifelong resident of Flushing, had acquired a half-assed British accent.

  “I don’t mind, Mrs. Paulsen.”

  “And aren’t you a lucky lad to be taking part in this thrilling expedition?”

  You’d have thought we were hacking our way through a jungle on our way to find Dr. Livingstone. She turned her head to look at me. “I said, aren’t we lucky—”

  “Yes, ma’am, we sure are lucky to be here.”

  “Why, you’re the only child on the trip! Are you aware of that?”

  I was aware of it.

  The church was a small gray building with a plain metal cross out in front, over the front doors. Buses with logos from all over the Northeast were parked along the curb, and a steady stream of people was flowing in.

  They were prepared for it, too—a makeshift ramp had been built to cover half the stone stairway leading into the church. I joined a line of wheelchairs at the ramp and slowly pushed Mrs. Paulsen into the cool, incense-smelling church. To my right, my mother was leading the blind man up the steps. We inched along at an identical pace, side by side. My mother winked at me, her partner in this mission of mercy.

  It was now five o’clock in the afternoon. All the kids from my class were at home, getting ready for the dance. I was pushing a cripple, on my way to watch a statue bleed.

  We shuffled toward the altar, where flashbulbs popped. Mrs. Paulsen rocked from side to side, unable to contain her excitement. A pale priest with a butterfat face but a slim body stood in front of the altar, smiling benignly at the approaching hordes. He wore rimless glasses that seemed to be buried in the flesh around his eyes. I could smell the Vitalis that held his thinning, slicked-back hair in place.

  “Keep moving, please,” he said softly, to nobody in particular. At last we were in front of the altar, where our shuffling steps came to a halt before the strangest sight I had ever seen.

  A huge cross stood behind the altar, bearing a life-sized wooden Christ figure that was held to the cross at the hands and feet by nails that seemed to be the size of railroad spikes. The figure must have been made from some kind of fruit wood, a dark brown color that had never tasted paint or varnish. The only real color was the bright red liquid that dripped from the holes in Christ’s feet into a golden bowl that had been placed on the floor below.

  I didn’t know what to feel. I suppose I should have felt afraid—I mean, how creepy was this?—but before I could feel anything, here came the voice of my mother, all but choked with joy, describing the sight to the blind man who clutched her elbow:

  “He’s bleeding from his feet…there, a drop just fell…Oh, Mr. Campbell, it’s an amazing sight…the blood falls into a little golden bowl on the—there! Another drop just fell from his feet! It’s very bright red…absolutely beautiful…”

  Mrs. Paulsen turned around to look at me, her eyes brimming with tears. For a moment I thought she might spring from her wheelchair and run up to embrace the dripping Christ figure, but instead she just smiled and said, “Thank you, thank you, Samuel, for bringing me.”

  “You’re welcome,” I replied automatically, and a moment later we were moving to make way for the crowds behind us. There was no time to get a really good look at the crucifix, so it all seemed like a dream. We moved past the altar and hooked around toward the back of the church—wheelchairs to the left, ambulatory people to the right. Silent nuns stood at the corners of the church with collection baskets, into which everybody dropped paper money and coins. My mother had given me a dollar to contribute, which I dutifully donated.

  We would all meet out front to begin the walk back to the motel, and our already-paid-for buffet dinner. My mother had the dreamiest look I’d ever seen on her face. She was literally happier than I’d ever seen her—or had I ever seen her happy at all before?

  I was troubled, though. I had questions I wanted to ask, questions I didn’t want Mrs. Paulsen or the blind man to hear. I would have to wait until later.

  Dusk was coming, and with it a chill in the air. I helped Mrs. Paulsen put a shawl across her shoulders before beginning the push back to the motel. My mother was a big woman, but suddenly she seemed as light and graceful as a ballet dancer. Her feet seemed to barely touch the ground, and I half expected her to take wing and fly back to the motel, with Mr. Campbell hanging on like a pilot fish.

  “Oh, Samuel,” she said, bending to kiss my cheek, “wasn’t that just amazing? Aren’t you just…”

  She paused, struggled to find the right word, found it at last “…tingling?”

  “Yes, Mom,” I lied. “It was amazing.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes.” At least I was telling the truth about that.

  “So am I,” she said. “Hungrier than I’ve ever been!”

  She looked wide-open, innocent, joyous—all the ways she could never be in my father’s presence.

  I thought that maybe I shouldn’t ask her the things I wanted to ask her. I didn’t want to wreck this perfect experience for her. But I was a kid, and I was curious, and in the end I went ahead and did it.

  At least I waited until after we’d eaten.

  The motel buffet was a lot more dazzling to me than the Bleeding Jesus, a long row of metal pans heated from below by flaming cans of Sterno. There was lasagna (overcooked, not nearly as good as my mother’s), southern fried chicken (tasty but a bit greasy), creamed corn, french fries, breaded flounder fillets (for Catholics who still adhered to the no-meat-on-Friday ban, even though the pope had lifted it), and string beans (straight from the can, and limp as a priest’s handshake).

  There were also bowls of cold stuff on offer—potato salad, sliced beets, coleslaw, and sliced dill pickles. Everything had a large metal spoon in it, and you just helped yourself.

  I stuffed myself with chicken and creamed corn, while my mother must have fired down half a dozen fish fillets drenched in tartar sauce. It was hard to tell exactly how much she’d eaten because the fillets were boneless, while I had a mountain of chicken bones on my plate that testified to my greediness.

  Everybody stuffed themselves. Apparently nothing stokes an appetite better than a good old-fashioned miracle. The conversations were loud, almost raucous, as if we’d all just been to an exciting ball game. The motel staffers cheerfully refilled the food pans as they emptied. The Bleeding Jesus was bringing in the kind of business this small town had never known before. For a little while I was glad to be here, and then I was jabbed by thoughts of the dance. Would I ever have worked up the courage to ask Margaret Thompson to dance? This was a question I’d never be able to answer. Who would be holdi
ng her in his arms, instead of me? That was a question that would torment me all night.

  When we’d laid waste to the main meal, out came the desserts—chocolate cakes and cherry pies, gallon containers of chocolate and vanilla ice cream, plus chocolate and butterscotch sauce in squeeze containers, whipped cream in cans, rainbow sprinkles, and a huge jar of maraschino cherries.

  My mother built us the biggest ice cream sundaes I’d ever seen—three scoops apiece, topped by whipped cream, sprinkles, butterscotch sauce, and maraschino cherries. We were certainly getting our money’s worth from the Bleeding Jesus package deal. The crowd got even louder during dessert, probably from the sudden sugar rush. It was almost like being at a pep rally. In the midst of the noise and halfway through my sundae, I chose my moment.

  “Hey, Mom, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course you can, sweetheart.”

  “How come Jesus wasn’t bleeding from his hands?”

  The smile fell from her face. A bit of whipped cream on her upper lip was giving her a white mustache, but I didn’t think this was the time to mention it. Instead, I plunged ahead with more questions.

  “I mean, shouldn’t he be bleeding from his hands, too? There are holes in his hands, aren’t there?”

  “Of course there are.”

  “But the hands weren’t bleeding. And what about the crown of thorns on his head? The thorns made Jesus Christ’s head bleed, didn’t they?” I swallowed. “Well, the head of the wooden Jesus wasn’t bleeding,” I said in a voice that had suddenly become a whisper. “I just don’t understand…why it wasn’t bleeding in those other places.”

  My mother detected the whipped cream mustache on her lip, wiped it off with a napkin, rolled the napkin into a ball, and tossed it on the table.

  “Samuel. Why must you ask these questions?”

  My scalp tingled, as it always did when I feared I was letting her down.

  “Mom. You said I could ask.”

  “These are the sort of questions your father would ask.”

  Oh boy. Now I’d done it.

  “Mom. I’m sorry I said anything.”

  “No, no, sweetheart, that’s all right. I’m glad you’re so…observant.”

  She didn’t mean that. She reached across the table, patted the back of my hand. A smile returned to her face, but it was like the smile of a clergyman, bland and vague.

  “I can’t answer your questions, Samuel. I can’t say why the head and the hands aren’t bleeding, because I don’t know why. I also don’t know why his feet are bleeding. You see? That’s the way it is with a miracle. We can’t understand it. We can only appreciate it.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “Does that make sense?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “I’m very glad you’re here with me.”

  “Me, too, Mom,” I lied again.

  “Now, this is a night to celebrate, so let’s finish our sundaes and go back for more. How does that sound to you?”

  Later, up in our beds, we lay on our backs, bloated with food. The waistband of my pajamas bit into my belly and I wondered if the hum of highway traffic would lull me to sleep or keep me awake.

  I’d never slept in a room with my mother before and it felt strange. She was groggy from the feast and lay staring at the ceiling, a dreamy look on her face.

  “Samuel.”

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  She’d never asked me anything like this before. The question frightened me a little. I didn’t want to disappoint her.

  “Uhhh…”

  “It’s all right if you don’t know. It’s perfectly all right if you don’t know.”

  “Well…”

  “I just want you to know that I think you’re a very special boy. Can you think of any other boy in your class who could have appreciated this experience the way you do?”

  “No, Mom.”

  That was the truth. Most of the boys in my class were baseball players, roughnecks, troublemakers, and some of them were just plain crazy. Marvin Kelly’s specialty was turning his eyelids inside out so that the red showed above his bugged-out eyeballs. He’d do that to himself and then hide in the girls’ cloak closet, waiting for someone to open the door and shriek with terror. Craig Jancovic was an albino with white hair and pink eyes who once caught a big beetle in the schoolyard, rubber-banded it to a firecracker, and blew the creature to smithereens.

  And the wildest kid of all was a dark-eyed terror named Alonzo Fishetti, who came to school each day as if he were doing the nuns a favor. At twelve he was already shaving and flirting relentlessly with the girls. He didn’t seem to mind getting hit with the yardstick, or any other punishment they could dream up for him. Fishetti became a legend one afternoon when he climbed out of our second-story classroom window and began walking on the ledge, intending to go around the corner to the other side of the building. That’s where the girls’ bathroom was, and that’s where they were changing their clothes for a basketball game. Fishetti figured he could get a good look at half-naked girls through the window, but halfway there he lost his balance and fell to the ground, breaking his ankle. He didn’t even cry. He just lay there on the macadam, lit up a Camel cigarette, and waited for help to arrive.

  I never did things like that. I never even dreamed of doing things like that. I was a good boy. That’s what the nuns always wrote in the “comments” section of my report card—a good boy, polite, well behaved.

  But I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and before I could say anything more, my mother spoke.

  “I wanted to become a nun.”

  Her words jolted me. She didn’t even sound like herself, maybe because she was crying. She rolled on her side to face me, blinked back tears.

  “You did, Mom?”

  “I certainly did.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your father happened.”

  I swallowed, tasting something disagreeable from the buffet feast brewing deep in my guts. “You mean you fell in love with Dad, and decided to get married?”

  She didn’t answer me right away. “Well,” she finally said, “something like that.”

  “But if you’d become a nun—”

  “I never would have had you. That’s true, Samuel. Obviously things worked out for the best.”

  She didn’t mean it. My own mother was telling me that if she had her way, a second chance to do it all again, she’d want to spend it as the Bride of Christ. I was the only person in the world she could share this with, and the only person who shouldn’t have been hearing it.

  I stared up at that unbelievably ugly perforated ceiling. It was like the night sky in reverse—black dots instead of white for stars, a white background instead of a dark one.

  “Samuel.”

  “Yeah, Mom?” I figured she wanted to apologize for what she’d just said, but I was wrong. She cleared her throat, hesitated.

  “If you should decide to become a priest…well, that would be all right with me.”

  I sat up and looked at her, my blood tingling. She was beaming at me, her eyes bright and hopeful, and through my shock and confusion it did dimly occur to me that maybe, just maybe, this was the real purpose behind our trip to see the Bleeding Jesus of Scranton.

  “You want me to be a priest, Mom?”

  “I didn’t say that. I want you to be whatever you want to be. If you wanted to be a priest, I would be…”

  She couldn’t find the right word. “Happy?” I guessed.

  “Pleased,” she decided. “Pleased for you, and the life you would lead.”

  I lay down again, stared at the ceiling. For the first time ever I began thinking about the life of a priest—saying Masses, distributing communion wafers, going to people’s houses for Sunday dinners…hearing confessions! What would that be like, sitting in a dark box to hear people tell me their sins!

  And what about those white collars that always se
emed to be choking the men who wore them? Every priest I’d ever seen seemed to have the edge of that collar biting into his neck fat, like the collar of a dog being restrained by his master. That particular detail of the priestly life seemed to be the worst of all—I’d be forever digging my forefinger into my collar, pulling it away from my Adam’s apple to get a few unblocked breaths of air. Could I live with that? Could anybody? Apparently, they could.

  “I don’t know if I could do it, Mom,” I blurted.

  “Oh, sweetheart, you don’t have to know! You have years and years to think about it.”

  I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about anything. I guess I just wanted to be a kid.

  It was getting late, but I wasn’t sleepy. I realized that by this time the school dance was over, and I couldn’t help thinking about which of my classmates had gotten to dance with Margaret Thompson. By missing the dance I feared that I’d be completely out of the running for the winning of Margaret’s heart. That thought saddened me beyond words. All I could do was sigh.

  My mother heard me. She sensed my anguish but completely misunderstood it.

  “Samuel, please stop worrying. Forget I said anything. Don’t even think about being a priest.”

  “Mom. If I became a priest, I couldn’t get married, could I?”

  “That’s right, Samuel.”

  “So I couldn’t have children, could I?”

  “No, you couldn’t.”

  “I might want to do those things, Mom.” Even though you didn’t want to!

  “Of course you might, Samuel. You’ll make all those decisions when the time comes.”

  She wasn’t being sincere. Her words were like the warning on a cigarette package, something she was forced to say by law. She’d planted the seed she’d wished to plant, far from the wrath and mockery my father would certainly have rained down upon the life path she was suggesting for me with all her considerable will and might.