The Belief in Angels

by J. Dylan Yates

  “Wrong hole,” Yetta mutters.

  I am having a difficult time and don’t understand her. I whisper, “What?”

  “Wrong hole,” Yetta says a bit louder, in a strangled voice.

  All at once I lose my embarrassment. I am mystified and want to discover what she is talking about. The idea that there is more than one hole seems astonishing. I need to see this.

  Until this point I have been using my penis as a sort of shovel against the fabric between her legs. Now I lose my shyness and use my hands to part the onion folds of her negligee and at last see what she is referring to.

  Another hole. A hole of a different sort altogether—unfamiliar and covered with a pubic hair similar to mine, but surrounded by lobes of skin and a small bump that sits above a different hole than the one I tried to breech.

  Eureka! I almost shout my excitement in the discovery.

  I realized my actions expose my lack of knowledge, and I am shy again. I manage to keep my erection long enough to deflower Yetta, but then roll over in a heap beside her and stare at the ceiling while I wait for my body to relax.

  I wait for her to talk, but realize she’s waiting for me.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  She never responds, and I fall asleep. I have no idea how she feels. Did she enjoy what I did, or—if what I managed to glean from other men is true—is it a painful experience for a woman on her first time?

  When I wake the next morning, Yetta is already in the kitchen making breakfast. I see on the sheets that she’s bled a bit. I think she must have experienced pain.

  We made attempts a few more times over the next several months, but we never managed to find the right rhythms necessary to enjoy the act. And, of course, we never talked about it.

  We shared no chemistry—so, after those first attempts, we stopped trying. We stopped trying and never exchanged bodily contact again, with the exception of an occasional misplaced foot in bed. I managed to satisfy myself, when I found privacy and time, in our bath. I’ve no idea if Yetta ever found any satisfaction on her own. I doubt it. To be honest, at the time, I had no idea women enjoyed any sexual contact beyond kissing.

  I think if we had managed to find a way to satisfy our physical needs with each other, things may have gone differently for us. Maybe we would have created a more pleasant marriage experience or at least managed to become friends. But this is the beginning of what became a strained and combative relationship. We never talked to one another at all except to manage day-to-day details or share important information.

  Later, after the child, Wendy, came to live with us, we used her to pass information back and forth. She is ten at the time, and we found we could communicate through her and didn’t have to bother with direct conversation. It is only after the child left—young, married, and pregnant with her own child—that we began to find it necessary to talk to one another again. And it is only then that we found peace and comfort with one another. It is only then, many years into the marriage, that I begin to tell Yetta about the boy I had been and to share with her the man I had become. A man with his own mind and body who had been forced to leave a heart beating in a ditch.

  All the while, she had waited, patiently, like the earth waits for the winter to end and the soil waits for warmth to bring spring growth.

  Fourteen

  Jules, 10years | September 19th, 1971

  SUNDAY MORNING

  I WAKE UP and lie resting in Leigh’s bed. The twin-size bed is too small for us. Still, it’s always a good night’s sleep at her house without music blaring and people stumbling into my room in the middle of the night.

  The dance was fun. Leigh and I danced almost all night and Leigh’s new boyfriend kissed her for the first time. With so much to talk about, we hung out all of Saturday. It was one of those rare warm September days so we went swimming at the jetty and came back to her place to play Monopoly in the late afternoon when it started to feel chilly. Leigh asked her mother if I could stay over again and she agreed. We had the eggplant parmesan leftovers for dinner. My favorite.

  Being at Leigh’s is like having a vacation from my life—no chores, no loud parties with foul-smelling illegal things floating about, and only doing stuff kids are supposed to do. Lying in Leigh’s bed, it’s like I can feel my body—all my limbs connected, heart beating—for the first time in ages. I notice my fingernails need trimming and the hairs on my arm are bleached a light blonde. It’s the first time I’ve paid attention in a while.

  Ms. Westerfield, Leigh’s mom, never likes anyone to call her Mrs. It’s a women’s libber thing. Wendy has started making everybody call her Ms. Finn too.

  Ms. Westerfield also makes the best pancakes in the world. She obviously has an understanding that things are not great at my house, and she tells me, when I help her wash the dinner dishes in their cozy avocado green kitchen, that if I ever need anyone to talk to, she will listen and try to help. I appreciate her kind words, but I can never share the things that happen in my house with an adult. I worry we’ll be taken away if someone responsible knows. I thank her and smile and tell her “everything’s all right,” even though we both know it isn’t.

  I called, after dinner last night, to let my brothers know I’d been invited to sleep over again. They need to know to make their own dinners and feed the cat. Someone I don’t know picked up the phone, and when he set the phone down to search for my brothers I heard the party still going on.

  Moses came to the phone and told me that David had gone out with his friends, but he’d be okay. Moses said he’d managed to talk one of Wendy’s friends into taking him to Burger King for lunch. He’d gotten a ride there on a motorcycle.

  “Geesh, Moses. Did Mom know? Did you wear a helmet?” I gripped the phone cord.

  “Yeah, she let me go. I wore a helmet,” he said hesitatingly.

  “She’s high. What a stupid idea. Please don’t do it again.”

  “Don’t be mad, Jules. I won’t do it again.”

  “Good. Remember what happened to Mom?”

  “I won’t do it again,” Moses said, almost whispering.

  “What have you been doing besides riding around on motorcycles today?” I asked.

  “Hanging out, playing. I set up my car racetrack in my room and now I’m organizing my Hot Wheels. Hey, Dad’s coming to pick us up tomorrow. He called and talked to David yesterday and said he’s coming back to live at Aunt Doreen’s. We should wait for him in the morning.”

  “He probably won’t show up, Moses.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what? Why do I think that, or why won’t he show up?”

  “Never mind,” Moses said dejectedly.

  Moses, the only one of us who still looks forward to seeing Howard, is too young to remember the horrible way our father treated everyone when he was around. Moses still thinks good things about him and doesn’t like for David and me to say anything bad.

  “Hey, if he doesn’t show up, let’s go fishing tomorrow. Deal?”

  “Yeah,” Moses shouted back. “Yeah. That would be fun.”

  I hung up dreading the next morning and the possibility of seeing Howard and spending a boring Sunday reading the newspaper while he watched the football game. I hoped he wouldn’t show up and I would get to spend time out fishing with Moses.

  I lie on my side, my back to Leigh, her knee pushed against the back of my calf and her elbow pushed into my ribcage. I’m afraid to move because I know it will wake her. I lie still and listen to the sound of her breathing. Leigh sometimes skips a breath or two and gives a bit of a snort on her sudden inhalations. It sounds funny.

  I think about the day ahead. I should head back after pancakes to see Howard. Sadness starts to creep in and ruin my brief happiness.

  I realize that if I don’t go back he might not hang around and wait for me. It might be risky because Howard’s temper doesn’t have a predictable pattern. If he’s angry, and I’m not there waiting, I’ll be punished.
Then again, he might not care if I don’t show up.

  Leigh stretches and rolls over, bumping against me as she turns.

  “Morning,” she mumbles.

  “Aloha.”

  “You’re so weird.” Leigh calls me weird a lot, which I don’t mind, at least not when she says it.

  “Greetings earthling,” I add.

  “Come on. Let’s go downstairs and watch TV until my mom wakes up for breakfast.”

  I follow her down the stairs and into the family room, which smells like Pine-Sol, where we watch Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo, and Harlem Globetrotters.

  I’m thinking how much I love hanging out at Leigh’s as I hear her mom walk downstairs and start cooking in the kitchen.

  “You’re lucky,” I say to Leigh.

  “Why?” Leigh asks, not taking her eyes off the TV.

  “Because …” I pause, still staring at the TV—I want to be nonchalant, but don’t have the words to describe the things she takes for granted.

  “Because your mom makes breakfast.”

  Leigh’s older sister, Annie, stomps downstairs and across the room in front of the TV without saying anything to anyone. She slams the front door on her way out. Annie is six years older than us and a sophomore in high school.

  “She hates everybody. All she wants to do is skip school and smoke weed with her friends,” Leigh says.

  Wendy acts a lot like Leigh’s sister. I realize I have a teenage sister too.

  “You’re lucky,” Leigh says.

  She’s staring at me.

  “Why?”

  “Because you can do anything you want and nobody bugs you. You never have a curfew. Your mom has groovy clothes to wear and you eat pizza and Burger King all the time. My mom never buys Burger King. She says it has poison in the meat and sugar in the French fries.”

  “It’s not as fun as it seems,” I say.

  I wanted to tell Leigh that along with the fast food came stomach upsets. Most nights Wendy forgot to pick something up, and there was only cereal in the cupboard. And those nights were actually better than the rare nights she tried to cook something.

  Once she tried to bake an Angel Food cake. David couldn’t even manage to make a saw cut through the thing.

  But the worst times were when absolutely nothing remained in the refrigerator or the cupboards. And this was happening more and more frequently. On those nights David and I sometimes found a way to get invited to our friends’ houses for dinner. We both tried to bring back leftovers for Moses.

  I definitely couldn’t tell Leigh about the sex parties Wendy had been having lately after she thought we were asleep.

  Several nights that summer my brothers and I had been awakened by naked, sweaty people piling on one another and doing all sorts of gross things in Wendy’s bedroom or right in the living room. After seeing that, I was sure I would never have sex as long as I lived.

  All this information I needed to keep to myself. Once I started talking, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop. But mostly, I didn’t want Leigh to have to keep those secrets too.

  We sit in her kitchen and I gobble down my three plate-sized pancakes when I realize it’s close to ten o’clock. I jump up to call my house, but no one answers. I don’t know if it means that David and Moses are already with Howard, or that he isn’t coming and they’ve already gone off to play somewhere.

  I hope Moses didn’t take off with David. I’m still hoping we can go fishing together. But, I figure I can track him down somewhere in the neighborhood if he did.

  I wish I could stay here in the avocado green kitchen with buttery pancake smells. My body is present here. My skin absorbs oxygen. The pebbles in my stomach evaporate. It’s only now that they have disappeared that I realize they have been inside me all along. I realize this is what it feels like to be safe. But I know I’m only borrowing the feeling.

  I say thank you to Ms. Westerfield and Leigh walks me to the door. She remembers the leather vests we stole from Wendy for the dance the other night and runs upstairs to find them while I wait.

  “I’ll see you at school on Monday,” she says when she comes back, handing me the vests.

  “Splendid,” I say. “Oh, I might call you tonight about the science homework if I’m stuck.” Leigh loves science and understands the assignments. For me, science is like a different language.

  It’s about ten thirty when I round the corner to our road, and it seems unusually quiet. All the neighbors are at church, which usually provides a good opportunity for Wendy to play her music really, really loud. I see all the cars and motorcycles are gone from our yard, as well.

  When I walk in, there isn’t anyone around.

  In the kitchen, stacks of empty pizza cartons and Burger King trash sit piled up on the garbage can. Tons of glasses and dishes cover the counters and fill the sink. I decide I’m not going to clean up Wendy’s party dishes anymore. I am “on strike.” When I check Moses and David’s rooms, they aren’t there. Next, I check Wendy’s room to make sure no one’s in there sleeping or something. No one. I drag the leather vests Leigh and I borrowed out of my overnight bag and throw them in the back of Wendy’s closet. I’m disappointed Moses left and we can’t go fishing, but I don’t want to go find him in the neighborhood.

  It feels wonderful—rare to have every corner to myself. I decide to spend time doing what I love most. Drawing.

  In the den, I find my favorite record, Tea for the Tillerman. With no one there I can listen to the music I love all day. I go to work, drawing. I’m concentrating on a series of drawings of our cat Felix. Felix, a black-and-white long-haired tuxedo cat, seems to enjoy posing for me although her occasional position changes make things challenging.

  It turns into an unusually hot morning for September. Later, it rains and the dim thought of fishing occurs to me. Fishing is better in the rain.

  As the day wears on I lose myself in the process of drawing and fall into a trance-like state that I understand as precious and necessary. Time, in the physics sense, turns to energy, changes, evolves, and then disappears. I let myself become lost and found in it.

  At about five o’clock, still sitting there with a floor full of Felix on white paper, I hear sounds from the kitchen. Cabinets slam as someone searches for food; a plate and utensil are pulled out of a cupboard and drawer.

  Stretching, I hear the distant sound of the TV from the den. Must be David. He usually heads straight to the den for TV. It’s basically his den, except when Wendy’s making candles. I wait to hear Moses’s footsteps on the landing upstairs or the sound of his door opening and closing, but I don’t. I figure he must be watching TV with David. Moses never gets a vote about what to watch with David around, but he doesn’t seem to mind. I think David gets lost in his own version of time-suspension world when he’s watching his shows.

  I gather the drawings scattered on the floor, balling and ripping the ones I don’t care for. It’s like I’m assessing someone else’s work, like I’m removed from the process that created them. The selection goes quickly. I put the ones I like in a large binder I keep stored in my closet, shoot a last glance around, and satisfied with the tidiness of my room, make my way downstairs to pour myself a bowl of Raisin Bran.

  I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since the pancakes at Leigh’s. I never know if Wendy will bring back take-out or if we’re on our own for dinner, so, as I’m removing the cereal from the cabinet, I make a note of what is currently in there that might suffice for dinner.

  Wendy and Jack rarely eat dinner. As far as I can tell, they exist on alcohol and drugs with occasional hidden-cookie cache indulgences for Jack. Wendy’s most current fad diet food obsessions range from grapefruit to the grass in our yard.

  I walk to the other side of the kitchen and peek around the corner into the den. David sits in the aqua easy chair staring at the screen, but Moses isn’t there.

  “Hey, do you know where Moses is? I’m gonna make dinner soon if you’re hungry.”

  Davi
d pretends he can’t hear me, so I yell: “Hey, hard-of-hearing, do you know where Moses is? I thought he went with you today?”

  David breaks his silence to say, “Ask Freddy.” He still answers this way sometimes. It’s bizarre and I hate it when he does it. I’m outnumbered by the loony people in my family.

  I’m frustrated now and a bit worried that maybe Howard did come here but David avoided the visit as well. I ask again, “David, did Dad come today and take Moses? I stayed at Leigh’s until late this morning and when I got back there wasn’t anyone here.”

  “No, Dad never came.” He scowls. “I called Aunt Doreen and she found out he’s not flying back. He cancelled his flight. She doesn’t know when he’s ever coming back.”

  “Figures. So where is Moses?”

  I guess David is starting to worry now too, because he actually speaks nicely to me. “When I left, he wanted to keep sitting on the front steps to wait. I told him Dad wasn’t going to show up and he could come play ball with my friends, but he said he’d rather hang out here and wait for you to go fishing. What time did you come back?”

  “Around ten thirty. What time did you leave?”

  “About nine. Maybe he’s out somewhere on the beach?”

  “Maybe.” It’s been a long time for Moses to have been alone this whole time. He usually tags along with David during the day. I decide to hike down to the beach and search for him.

  I tell David, but he only nods, already lost in Lost in Space again.

  Down on the beach, the sun dips below the cliffs. The sun shines out in the ocean to the east, but the cliff casts shadows on the beach and it’s chilly. I shiver in my T-shirt and wish I’d brought a jacket with me.

  If he’s down here he’ll be cold and come back soon.

  Still, I walk the beach all the way past the rocky cove toward my hiding spot. Moses may have found it. But he isn’t there. Past the cove the tide swells against the cliffs. I turn and head back.