The Second Yes

by Amanda Tru

  But I still was trying to cheer her up, so I asked her to tell me some about Aunt Rhonda. That seemed to be a safe question on account of her always wanting to tell me more about our family history. But I guess she and Aunt Rhonda didn’t always get along too great, and Mom even admitted it’s a little embarrassing to ask her sister to fix the dress on account of how Aunt Rhonda sometimes says rude things to Mom about her weight. But I’ve seen pictures of Aunt Rhonda, and I think Mom’s way prettier, and when I told her so she smiled and said, “That’s nice of you to say, dear,” but she said it in a way that I could tell she really didn’t think I meant it.

  And maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up in America, at least not at the beginning, or maybe it’s just on account of me being a boy, but I really don’t see why people get sad about gaining weight unless for example you’re someone like Dad. It’s actually dangerous for him to be too fat because of the diabetes he has, but if you don’t have that, I really don’t see what the problem is. But it felt like I kept finding bad things to say to Mom in the car that got her thinking about sad things, so finally, I said, “Mom, how do you know if you’ve got a crush on someone or not?” And at first, I seriously thought she was going to crash the car right then and there, except that’s not what happened (thank goodness).

  So we talked about that the rest of the drive home, and by the time we got back to our house she was all smiles again and I think she forgot about her extra weight and her mean-looking sister and Auntie’s sick little baby, at least for a little bit.

  I woke up with a sore throat today, which I thought would mean that Mom would let me take some time off my assignments, but she said I still had to do those, and I’d just have to take a nap in the afternoon if I got tired. Sometimes I think that making your son do homeschool all summer long must be breaking one of the commandments, and I’m pretty sure Dad would agree with me except he’s busy at work, so it’s just Mom telling me what to do during the day.

  By the time I finished my workbooks, I really was too tired to do much of anything else, but I think that napping’s for babies, so Mom and I sat on the couch. I asked her to show me more of the pictures of Spencer, the sick baby she adopted.

  Spencer was always smiling. That’s the first thing you’d notice if you were to see his pictures for yourself. And you’d be able to tell there was something a little wrong with him. It’s hard to say what, but you would guess he was kind of sick. But he looks really happy too, and Mom said his personality was just like that. Always cheerful and content. She said that even if he got a fever, he’d still smile, and she said he was one of the cuddliest babies she’s ever taken care of, and she’s taken care of plenty.

  In one of the pictures Dad’s asleep on a reclining chair (not the same one he has now but a lot like it, just a different color), and Spencer is asleep on his chest. And even in his sleep, that little baby’s smiling. Except it’s a crooked smile like he started to do it but then fell asleep before he remembered you’re supposed to lift up both halves of your mouth and not just one.

  Once Spencer had to spend a few nights at the hospital, and some of the pictures are when my brothers and sister went to visit him in his room, and everyone’s playing a board game, and there are even some balloons. Mom says it was one of my brothers’ birthdays (except she can’t remember which one), but they were celebrating there because it didn’t feel right to have a party at home while Spencer was sick in the hospital. And you can tell in those pictures Spencer doesn’t feel too good on account of him not being quite so smiley, and in one of the pictures he even had to have a needle stuck right in his forehead and taped on so he looked like he was trying to be a unicorn.

  But thankfully Spencer got better. Mom said he just needed some stronger medicine than they could give him at home, and that’s what the needle he had to keep poked out of his forehead was for. And in the pictures, after he got home, he looks just as happy as before, and on the very next page in the album, he got to go to a game where the Red Sox were playing the Yankees, and would you believe that Mom went to that game but can’t even remember who won? I’ll have to ask Dad when he comes home because there’s no way he’d forget something like that.

  Seeing all those pictures of Spencer got me thinking about Baby Grace, and I asked Mom if she thought we needed to make a bucket list or buy a camera for her, and Mom got real quiet and then said she didn’t know.

  “It’s all in God’s hands,” she told me. “I guess it’s up to him. All we can do is pray.” Those are the kind of answers you expect to hear in Sunday school, but they’re more annoying when you’re asking your Mom about your most favorite person in the entire world and her baby the doctors say is bad off. I hope Grace isn’t as sick as Spencer was. I hope she doesn’t need a bucket list of her own. At least not for the same reason Spencer had his. But I guess Mom’s right. It’s in God’s hands like she said.

  And all we can do is pray.

  Mom has a new devotion book. She downloaded it from one of the homeschool blogs she follows, and we’ve been reading it together every morning. Today’s story was kind of interesting. We were reading about King David and about how God ended up deciding that the baby he had with that other guy’s wife should die because his parents sinned.

  I’m really glad God doesn’t do stuff like that today, know what I mean? Because what King David did, it wasn’t the baby’s fault. And Mom says it may not have even been the woman’s fault because back then if the king tells you to do something, even if you’re married, it’s kind of impossible to say no. So maybe the mom wasn’t sinning either. We’re not sure because the Bible doesn’t say. But I do know the baby couldn’t have sinned, but God still decided the best thing to do was make him die.

  I could tell. Mom didn’t like the story, and it probably is because she was thinking about Auntie’s baby, just like I was.

  Or maybe she was thinking about Spencer.

  “Why do you think God didn’t answer David’s prayer?” I asked her. “Because it sounded like he was real sorry for what he’d done.”

  Mom shrugged and gave one of those Sunday school answers like, “Sometimes God’s ways are mysterious to us, but we know he’s always good.” Dad was already at work by that time, or I might have asked him what he thought because even if you’re God and can do whatever you want, it’s not very nice to make a little baby die.

  Which is why I’m praying extra hard for Baby Grace. I know it’s too late to pray for my little brother Spencer. (Technically, I guess he’s my big brother on account of him being older than me if he were alive today, but he never grew out of being a baby, so I still think of him as being littler.) Dad says only certain kinds of folks pray for people who’re already dead, and we’re not that kind of folks. But every once in a while, I wonder if it wouldn’t be all right to ask God if he could just tell Spencer his parents miss him or something like that. Or maybe he should warn him about me. I mean, imagine being in heaven your whole life and then eighty years later having an angel come up to you and say, “Oh, by the way, I want to introduce you to your brother Woong,” and you never even knew you had a brother with that name!

  But I don’t want to be superstitious either, which is why Dad says we don’t pray for folks who’re already dead. But I’ve been praying lots for Baby Grace. Sometimes my mind wanders, like last night before I went to bed, I was praying for Auntie’s baby and wondering what she’ll look like. Auntie and Uncle Simon are both Korean, so I know Grace’ll have black hair, but I’ve actually never seen a brand-new Korean baby, so I don’t know what to expect. And then I started wondering how come Asian babies usually don’t have curly hair, and that got me wondering about Becky Linklater and all the springy curls she has. I decided I’d go ahead and ask her if she was born that way or not, and that got me thinking about whether or not she’ll grow up to be one of those adult women who buy fancy irons to make their curly hair straight. Which is pretty silly if you think about it because there is a whole other group o
f adult women who buy fancy irons to make their straight hair curly. And I like Becky’s hair just the way it is so I wouldn’t want her to change it, and before I knew it, I was thinking about what Becky would look like as a grownup and wasn’t praying for Grace at all.

  But I hope God still knows how bad I want Grace to be okay. Because think of how terrible it’ll be if she isn’t. Then Auntie will have to be just as sad as Mom is about Spencer, and that doesn’t seem right.

  Well, this morning at devotions, I had a question, so I said, “Hey, Mom?”

  “Yeah, baby?” she said, and since nobody else was around, I didn’t care all that much if she called me that.

  “Do you think all babies who die end up going to heaven?”

  She sighed. “Well, let’s think about that.” And right then I was almost certain she was going to make me write down and look up a whole bunch of Bible verses, but all she did was say, “In that Bible story we read, what’s David tell the men after his son dies?”

  “That they should go ahead and have dinner?” I still don’t get that part, by the way, because who would be thinking about eating when your kid’s just died?

  “After that,” Mom said. “He tells them, ‘I will go to him, but he will not come to me.’ I think that means that David knows he’ll see his son in heaven one day.”

  “Oh.” I wonder how come I read that exact same story in the Bible and didn’t get that part at all. I wonder if that’s part of being married to a pastor or if any adult who goes to church and loves God long enough can do that sort of thing.

  “So Spencer’s in heaven, right?” I asked.

  Mom nodded. “Yes, he is. Your father and I are certain about that.”

  “And so Baby Grace …” I didn’t want to say anything else, but Mom seemed to understand.

  “God’s going to take care of Baby Grace too. What’s the Bible tell us about sparrows?”

  “That not one of them will die outside of God wanting them to.”

  “And what does that teach us about humans?” she asked.

  “That God takes care of us even better than the birds.”

  So I guess all that kind of makes sense, but you know what I’d like even more? I’d like an angel to just to show up and talk to Mom or Auntie Hannah or me and say something like, “Hey there. You’ve been a really good Christian your whole life, and God really loves you so much, so he sent me to tell you Baby Grace is going to be just fine. You don’t have to worry about any holes in her heart or stuff and nonsense like that.”

  I think that if something like that could happen, I would feel a whole lot better.

  And I bet Auntie would too.

  I had to go to the doctor’s today. I’m still littler than other kids in my grade, so the doctor needs to see me every so often to make sure I’m growing. Once I even had to take this medicine on account of Mom thinking, I might have a snake or a worm in my stomach that was eating all my food, and that’s why I was hungry all the time. The good news was it ended up not being a snake or a worm in my stomach, except Dad says if it had been and they took it out, then he and Mom wouldn’t have to spend so much on groceries.

  The good news was the doctor was quick, and I didn’t even need any shots. I’m at the third height percentage for my age, or at least the age we’re guessing I am, which sounds pretty tiny, but a few years ago I wasn’t even on the charts, so it’s gotten better. I’ll have to tell Becky because she’s always teasing me, but in a fun way not in the mean way like you might think.

  After the doctor’s, Mom took me to get some hot chocolate at a little shop she likes to go to, and she got a tea and started talking with the waitress there. And pretty soon the waitress was taking a break and sitting at our table and crying because her best friend’s real sick, and all of a sudden Mom started praying with her, and before you knew it that waitress wanted to become a Christian. It happens a lot when we go out, truth be told. Dad jokes that we’d be a lot more on time to places if Mom wasn’t so concerned about making people Christians. But he’s just kidding of course, on account of him being a pastor and wanting to see everyone saved and whatnot.

  So on the drive home, I asked Mom if she thought God was mad at me since I haven’t ever made anybody a Christian yet. And she said, “What are you talking about?”

  So I told her about all the people I’ve seen her pray with to ask Jesus to forgive their sins, except I haven’t ever done that for anybody, and she reminded me that Becky didn’t ever go to church before I invited her. And I guess in a way she’s right, except Becky used to go to church with her grandma and even asked Jesus into her heart once at VBS or something, so I’m not sure that counts.

  “Maybe I’ll just tell people about Jesus when I’m older,” I said, and I should have known better too because then Mom started lecturing me about not letting anyone look down on me because I’m young and how it was just a little boy probably smaller than me who brought those loaves and fish for Jesus to share with everyone and that David was probably just a teenager when he went to battle against Goliath.

  “Don’t ever say that you’re too little for God to use you,” she told me, and then she started talking more about Spencer. She said that Spencer never learned how to talk, first of all, because he died when he was still so little. Even if he hadn’t died, his brain wasn’t working exactly right, and the doctors thought he probably didn’t have any hearing either. But God used Spencer to help people become Christians. Well, I didn’t understand, so I asked what she meant and how a baby that little could do a thing like that.

  I guess when they brought Spencer home after soul-adopting him, Mom and Dad had to drive him to all kinds of doctor appointments. Well, I should say Mom had to drive him on account of Dad working at church all the time back then just like he does now. And Mom tried to remember if it was two or maybe it was as high as three or four nurses she met and started talking to about Jesus and how they ended up becoming Christians, and it was all because of Spencer.

  “Yeah, but you were the one doing the talking, not the baby,” I reminded her, but she said it didn’t matter. God used Spencer to help those people become saved, and even after that, one of the moms she met at something called a grief support group got saved too.

  Dad says Mom has the gift of evangelism, and that’s how come she’s always praying with folks and asking them to invite Jesus into their hearts. But I wonder if Spencer had the gift of evangelism too. Mom said he did, so then I asked what she thought my gift was on account of me hearing in one of his sermons Dad talking about how we’re all given spiritual gifts. Like some people are really good at preaching and others at praying. Mom said she wasn’t sure what my gift was and that sometimes, God doesn’t show us our gifts until later. And sometimes she said our gifts can actually change. Like Mom used to be really organized and said she had the gift of admissions or something (I forget the word just now). But it means being really good at helping put things where they need to go and remembering important dates, and she used to help Dad with stuff and nonsense like that. But when she became a mom, she said, her brain stopped working that way, and maybe it was sleeping less, or maybe it was the stress, or maybe it was something else entirely, but now she’s so forgetful she says she doesn’t have that gift anymore.

  Well, it doesn’t seem fair to me that Mom’s gotten one spiritual gift and lost it and replaced it with another and I still don’t have my first one yet. But Mom said I probably have it and just don’t know what it is, but maybe if I pray, God’ll tell me. So I’m going to try to remember to do that tonight, and I’ll be sure to let you know if I find out what it is.

  I guess that’s all for now, so good night!

  Woong

  Well, it’s Friday, which means soon I’ll get to take the weekend off of writing. Tomorrow should be a really fun day. Becky’s mom doesn’t have to work, and she has gas money now, so she’s driving Becky and me to go bowling and then after that ice skating so Becky can keep on teaching me how to go ba
ckwards. I’ve been thinking about what Mom said yesterday about how maybe God used me to help Becky become a Christian (or at least start going to church again), and I wonder if he wants me to do the same thing for Mrs. Linklater too.

  I’d ask Mom about it, but she’s in a bad mood today on account of her and Dad getting into a fight. It started when she was on the phone with her sister, and when she was done she called Dad and started crying and saying things like, “I don’t know why she’s being so stubborn,” and “It’s just a silly dress,” and “This happened more than half a lifetime ago.” I don’t know entirely what she meant, but I suspect it has something to do with so many of Mom’s family getting mad at her for marrying a black man back in the old days when folks didn’t tend to do that too regularly. But I figured that people from Mom’s family would be just fine with it by now, especially when they find out what a good guy Dad is.

  Anyway, Dad came home. I think he wanted to cheer her up, but they ended up getting into a fight. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, by the way, but they can get kind of loud. Dad kept saying things like, “If it’s just a silly dress, then you should let it drop,” and “If I knew the ceremony was going to get you like this, I would have suggested waiting another ten or fifteen years.”

  Well, finally they both apologized and made up, and then Dad had to go to a meeting at work even though he said he’d rather stay home and be with us. Mom’s not crying or yelling anymore, but I can tell she’s still upset. Except I’m not sure if she’s mad at Dad or Aunt Rhonda.