“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m . . .” She doesn’t finish. “Is confession really good for the soul, Lily? Everyone says it is.”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe we’re born in sin,” she says. “Most of us are born in innocence. You’re the smartest, most innocent person I know, Lily.”
It’s not true. There’s a ball of mean black tar rolling around inside me, she just doesn’t know it. Sometimes when I draw something or write a story, or the cracks in the tiles (between the cafeteria tables where I sit for lunch) are a multiple of nine, it shrinks and you can’t even find it with a microscope. But it’s still there, maybe stuck to an organ I don’t need anymore. They say we don’t need our gall bladder. Or is it our spleen?
“Is it important to you?” Mom asks. “Confession, I mean?”
I shrug. My confession dance is more complicated now that I’m taller. And a teenager. Everything is. Whatever I do, it’s important to stay within the cubit-sized square of Mrs. Wiggins’s old towel that I keep under my bed.
A cubit is a twenty-inch measurement from the Old Testament. The cubit makes every position I squish my 5'6" into uncomfortable and challenging, but things have to hurt if you want them to work. I learned that from Siddhartha and the Bible, from werewolves and vampires and voodoo goddesses and twirling dervishes and snake handlers and people who talk in tongues, making themselves crazy with spells, prayers, and entreaties (an earnest or humble request, origin late Middle English, Oxford Dictionary). Thomas More, Joan of Arc, and all kinds of people were tortured in horrible ways, some for years. So hurting myself just a little, maybe even hurting myself a little more each time I do a dance or pray or bark, isn’t such a bad thing.
“Yes it is,” Jesus says.
I thought He’d left.
“I’m counting on you not to go battery-cables on me, Lily.”
I don’t want to go battery-cables, but I don’t want to be told what to do either. “I’ll do what I want,” I say and, gritting my teeth, make three increasingly threatening hisses.
Jesus moves to the windowsill. “Just hang on a little while longer,” He says. “It’ll all shake out. I promise.”
“Doubt it,” I say, tucking the sacred square under the bed.
* * *
There’s a cubby over my closet.
In the back of it, behind old toys and extra blankets, is hunchbacked, prune-faced Agnes, the creepy apple doll Gramma Frieda had when she was a girl. I hear her walk around up there sometimes, hear her dentures click and her knees crunch like Frieda’s.
Martin Hornbuckle is old now; do his knees crunch too?
With one foot on the closet doorknob, and the other on an open dresser drawer, I open the cubby door and peek in. When a tiny figure shuffles toward me, I say, in my bravest voice, “I’m not taking you to the new house,” and slam the door shut, hoping it blows Agnes, the apple doll, in her dusty flowered scarf and patched black apron, back into her corner again.
Things will be different at the new house. I’m leaving my imagination behind.
There’s a knock at my door so I quickly climb down.
Mom sticks her head in my room. “It’s eight o’clock,” she says, looking at the floor. “Can I get you anything?”
“No thanks,” I say, but she leaves before I can tell her that I love her, that I don’t care what happened in Mr. Marks’s bedroom, that I won’t tell anyone, and most of all, Please don’t be mad at me, Mom. Please.
As I lie on my bed, the light changes and shadows grow long, then shrink up and disappear. The room becomes the inside of a peach, warm and orange-pink as if Mom dipped a watery paint brush into the color and soaked my shelves, dressing table, and closet door with it. As it fades, it becomes the color of Aunt Cass’s scalp and the freckled gums of the dog next door; it spotlights the porcelain faces of my Hansel and Gretel dolls too, and the little jade tree that doesn’t grow, but doesn’t die either.
Martin Hornbuckle’s favorite color is green, the article said.
Connie’s kitchen counters are green too, green like stuff that gets old and moldy. Mold like the gangrene that’s rotting Mr. Marks’s back. I draw his face in my mind and give him an extra-big Jimmy Durante nose, even bigger than Martin’s. I make Mr. Marks a scared, unhappy little boy trapped in an old man’s body, and draw big black Xs on his eyes.
It doesn’t matter what happened in the bedroom. Mr. Marks is old and ugly and mean, and soon he’ll probably die.
Even-steven.
* * *
Lauren and I are surprised when Mom asks Gramma Frieda to pick us up for church the next morning. The house rule is, if you’re sick you don’t go anywhere. Period.
“Don’t worry about getting dolled up,” Mom says, pouring herself another cup of coffee. “Just put on some clean clothes. That’ll be fine.”
“But Lily and me were going with you to the airport to pick up Dad,” Lauren says.
Mom turns to face me. There are dark bags under her eyes; her hair’s a mess.
“You’ve been sick, young lady. You’re lucky I’m letting you go anywhere.” She’s talking to me, but looking past me, over my shoulder. “Frieda wants you girls to hear that poor little boy speak at church, and I said fine. Besides, I need some time with your father.”
“But Mom, that little kid is gross,” Lauren whines.
I grab her arm and pull her down the hall. I want to see poor Martin Hornbuckle. I want to be a good Christian and Buddhist and Hindu too, and forgive Mr. Marks, but seeing him with Mom yesterday reminded me of the time he kissed me.
I made Jesus sit in the closet when I confessed it to Him, whispering it through the door slats. Just like the confession booth Lauren and I played in during the big spaghetti feed at St. Rita’s years ago. We took turns playing sinner and priest. “Bad girl,” Father Lauren giggled after I confessed to stealing Colonel Sanders’s secret recipe. She made me do twenty-five jumping jacks, which I’d barely started when Sister Marguerite chased us back to the dining hall.
Gramma Frieda says Westmont Presbyterian is full of good Christians. She also says they count on her “to keep things rolling” at church.
“I was gone until dinner three times last week!” she says as she drives us to church that morning.
Dad says Frieda’s “high opinion of herself” makes him sick. Mom says Frieda’s lonely.
She seems to have a lot of friends though. In the church lobby, several frantic ladies approach her. Pastor Mike’s wife is eager for Gramma to organize the next potluck. “Have you seen the charity envelopes?” . . . “What’s the name of that Indian orphanage in South Dakota?” . . . “One of the deacons is out sick. Could you help with communion today?”
Gramma declines. “I have my granddaughters,” she smiles, giving the hem of my dress a tug. “I just love baptisms,” she says to no one in particular when we finally sit down. A tiny white-haired woman seated in front of us turns and smiles in agreement. A young man and woman stand at the altar while Pastor Mike draws a wet sign of the cross on their squirming baby’s forehead.
Gramma Frieda looks at Lauren. “You’ll have a family of your own like that someday,” she whispers as the couple returns to their seats. My sister rolls her eyes.
Earlier in the week, Lauren and I decided we’re not having kids; we’re not marrying men who want kids either. We might not get married at all.
The congregation breaks for coffee and pie, “until we hear what happened to poor Martin Hornbuckle.” He’s late.
Gramma Frieda asks me to fetch her sweater. Earlier, her sweater snagged her wedding ring when she pulled it off her arm and tossed it to me. “Hang it up, will you, Lily?” she said, strutting into her admiring crowd before I had time to say, Do it yourself, old lady.
Not that I would. At our house, Mom makes us hang up our own clothes. I turned Frieda’s sweater right-side out and hung it up for her. The sweater’s pink shoulder pads are the same color as the und
erarm pads she pins to her slip, “so I don’t stain my church clothes,” she explained. Church is the most important thing in Gramma’s life.
The pie is good at Westmont Presbyterian, though Lauren and I usually pass after spending Saturday night at Frieda’s house. She fills a cookie jar with peanut butter cookies for us, each one with crisscrossed fork marks on top (I line them up and compare patterns).
After dinner she brings out soft vanilla ice cream, “stirring ice cream” she calls it, and Lauren and I fold in fat ribbons of chocolate syrup—or chunks of fresh banana or canned pineapple—with our long-handled spoons. We add maraschino cherries too, from individual jars with our own names on them. We sit on the end of Frieda’s bed and eat ice cream and cookies while she watches The Lawrence Welk Show. She especially likes it when Mr. Welk dances with someone from the audience, or Norma Zimmer sings patriotic songs.
Seventeen-year-old Marvin Peters, Westmont Presbyterian’s most notorious dropout, takes two servings of peach pie, but wrinkles his nose like Elvis when an elder offers him coffee. Marvin makes a late entrance to service each Sunday, popping the clutch and spitting gravel when he enters the church parking lot in his shiny ’58 Chevy. He sits on the hood finishing his cigarette before he comes in, slamming the door behind him, embarrassing his mom and dad.
“Always late, always on the aisle,” Gramma tsks.
Marvin leans against the wall, stuffing his face, making fun of poor Martin Hornbuckle. “Freaky little fairy probably croaked. That’s why he’s late,” he laughs.
Dad says Marvin ought to be thankful he’s got flat feet and a job in his father’s garage, so he doesn’t have to go to Vietnam. I think Marvin ought to go to Hollywood—he’s cute.
I hear Mrs. Marks laugh and look across the room. Mr. and Mrs. Marks each cradle a cup and saucer while Pastor Mike tells them “The World’s Biggest Afro” story. He tells it a lot; I recognize his hand gestures. I glare at Mr. Marks, until he looks my way and smiles. When he mumbles something to Connie, she waves.
I look away. I don’t remember much about the Afro story except that it wasn’t very funny and more unkind than Christian. When Mr. Marks smiles at me, he’s being unkind too.
Ten minutes later we’re all back in our pews.
Pastor Mike stands at the podium, ready to speak. He nods to Mrs. Chester, the church organist, to stop playing when the church doors fly open with a bang.
It isn’t Marvin Peters this time.
“Lily?”
My heart jumps in my throat. Mom?
Her voice is high-pitched and shaky. It comes from behind us, from the back of the church, from the aisle where she stands in the same blue cotton shirt and grass-stained capris she wore yesterday; barefoot too, like Daisy Mae, Dad’s favorite cartoon “gal” from Li’l Abner.
Marvin whistles.
The room is stunned quiet. Everyone turns in my mother’s direction, even Mrs. Chester, whose fingers hang over the organ keys like bird talons.
“Lily?” Mom calls again.
“Coming,” I mumble.
But when I lean forward to stand up and inch my way down the pew toward her, Frieda grabs my arm and pulls me down. “We’re in church, not your backyard,” she says without turning around. Her voice is stern. “Sit down. Show some respect.”
“But it’s Mom!” I say. Doesn’t Gramma recognize her voice? Across the aisle, Mr. Marks looks straight ahead too.
“Mom?” Lauren cries.
“I said to ignore her,” Frieda says. “You can talk to her later.” Her cheeks are red. Mom’s embarrassed her.
When I don’t sit down, Gramma gives my arm another yank. I jerk away. “Sit down,” she repeats, talking through her teeth.
“I’m sorry, Lily!” Mom calls again. Her head wobbles nervously as she looks for my face in the congregation. When she sees me holding up my hand, she hurries to our pew. “I couldn’t wait until after the service,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry but it has to be said now. I don’t want another awkward minute between us. I’ll confess, I’ll do whatever you want me to, Lily.”
“Lily?” Frieda says.
“Please forgive me, sweetheart.”
“You’re drunk,” Gramma says loudly. “You smell like alcohol.” She looks around, explaining Mom’s behavior to everyone.
Lauren stands up beside me and slips her hand through mine. “It’s not alcohol, it’s turpentine. She’s an artist.”
“I’m sorry, my darling perfect daughters. I’ll be a better person from now on, I promise.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Kit,” Gramma moans, “must you always make a scene?”
I hate Gramma. Even if it were true and Mom did always make a scene—which she doesn’t—so what? It’s Mom, isn’t it?
Mrs. Chester, the church organist and our piano teacher, hits a chord and everyone looks toward the lectern.
“Mrs. Asher?” Pastor Mike smiles. “Would you like to take a seat and join us? You’re always welcome in the Lord’s House.”
Gramma umphs.
Mom shakes her head and looks back at me. “I love you like crazy,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks. I love you like crazy is Mom’s supreme compliment. “Crazy’s when you got to do it, no matter what,” she explained once.
Mom loves me that much; I can’t stop smiling. Now everyone will know that—even if I grow scales or a kidney on the outside of my body—she stopped a church service once and told me so in front of the whole stupid congregation.
“We love you like crazy too!” Lauren cries, and the two of us smile and wave like Rose Festival princesses. Our waves are big and wide too, like we’re wearing ball gowns and tiaras and sitting in the back of a pink Cadillac convertible with marching bands on either side of us.
“See you at home,” I call out.
“See ya,” Lauren says, but Mom is already gone.
And we stand side by side. In front of everyone.
During the next hymn, old Daisy Pedigrew touches Gramma’s shoulder. “Kit will be fine, Frieda,” she says loudly, struggling to be heard above the singing. “It’s just losing the babies, Paul’s gambling, Lily’s problem—”
Gramma’s been gossiping. “Shhh!” she spits.
We should have gone home with Mom.
When Pastor Mike finally announces that poor Martin Hornbuckle had to be rushed to the hospital, Frieda stands up and hurries out of the chapel. Lauren and I look at each other in surprise and follow, passing cute half-asleep Marvin Peters who is sitting on the aisle just like Frieda predicted.
In the foyer, she takes a right down the hall toward the women’s room, but I throw open the front doors of the church and let them bang against the stops, pretending I’m as brave and beautiful as Mom.
Lauren walks behind me to Frieda’s car. We look for our mother’s car but don’t see it.
“Why did she come to church like that?” Lauren asks as we climb into the backseat of Frieda’s old four-door Chrysler.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
Leaning against the baby-blue vinyl, I press my hands against the thick curved glass of the sun-warmed back window. Overhead, the sky pitches and rolls and Jesus cruises by in a bright red Chris-Craft. His disciples wave their beers at me, while Jesus sings a verse of “99 Bottles of Beer.”
My old Sunday school friend, Constantine, who used to be Catholic, says nuns marry Jesus. If you want to be a nun, you wear a white dress, a wedding ring, and a bridal veil, and you lie on your stomach on the ground in front of your family and say a bunch of stuff in Latin and you’re married to Jesus forever.
If I married Jesus, I’d never be a writer or an artist or move to France or Greece or Tibet like I want to someday. I’d never open the door to the fancy bathroom of my honeymoon suite and, wearing a low-cut lace negligee, greet my movie-star husband who would hand me a glass of champagne and tell me I’m as pretty as my mother. I’d never do a lot of things.
Dad says it doesn’t matter what you look like.
<
br /> Mom says, “Marriage is work.”
Lauren says I was “making goo-goo eyes at Marvin Peters,” but she’s younger than me so what does she know about goo-goo eyes?
Frieda finally gets in the car. “Anyone for foot-long maple bars?” she asks, starting the engine.
“Me!” Lauren answers. Did she forget how mean Frieda was to Mom? Lauren looks at me and says quietly, “I’m glad we didn’t have to listen to poor Martin Hornbuckle. He creeps me out.”
I rub my arm where Frieda grabbed it, and for a minute I feel sorry for her. Her friends at Wednesday-night Bible study will ask what was wrong with Kit. And why she left before the closing doxology—nobody leaves before the doxology.
He told me to stay in bed until she got home.
“Maple bars, Lily?” Gramma asks.
I promise to stay in the car while Frieda and Lauren go into the bakery, but I duck into the record shop next door instead.
Ivy’s Bakery and Don’s Disks share a brick wall. Inside the incense-perfumed record shop, the bricks are painted with brightly colored flowers, peace signs, and words like Psychedelic, Far Out, and Viva Che. Teenagers and longhaired college kids stand over record bins, studying album jackets.
Usually Little Richard look-alike Crazy Ricky is working the cash register. Mom said he’s black, gypsy, and Mexican. I like his greasy pompadour, long fingers, and pencil-thin mustache.
No Crazy Ricky today, but Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” is on the turntable.
The turquoise wall-to-wall of Mr. Marks’s bedroom soaks my shoes. I kick them off and walk around.
“Shit, Dennis,” a chubby clerk says to a guy in wire-rimmed glasses, “what’s with the old-fart music? Gramps left ten minutes ago.” He jerks the record off the turntable and jams it into its album sleeve. “Don’s Disks is rock ’n’ roll, man!”
When he puts a Rolling Stones record on, a white boy, with an Afro half the size of the one in Pastor Mike’s story, turns and smiles.
The bossy clerk catches my eye. “These yours?” he asks, holding up my shoes.
Back in Frieda’s car, I stick the same Rolling Stones album under her nose.
The Shark Curtain Page 23