God Says No

by James Hannaham

  Of course, Mama and Daddy wouldn’t let me go on some rides. Roller coasters were okay, but haunted houses came in high on the list of Christian no-nos, because they made Hell seem like fun, like eternal damnation would end in five minutes. Mama hated the Black Witch the most. They’d painted the head of a witch on the front, with black skin and yellow eyes. The grinning old crone didn’t look like a black person, though; her skin seemed like it had gone black from dirt, falling down a chimney, or pure evil.

  On the first fair day that spring, Joe and I were supposed to be looking for my daddy, who had gone out looking for Joe to beat him the night before and hadn’t come back. He’d just found out about Joe’s Gullah girl Desiree, but not her pregnancy. Daddy called Gullah people “countrified niggers” and told us to mind that our people were from upcountry, around Bishopville and Columbia. “Why the fuck would I want to find Daddy?” Joe said once we got far enough away from the house. “So he could beat the shit out of me?”

  I covered my ears. “Joe, don’t curse!”

  Joe hooked his hands into my elbows and pulled my hands away from my head. “Don’t you get sick of being a goody-goody all the time, Gary? Don’t you want to live?”

  “All I know is we’ve got to find Daddy.”

  “You can look for him if you want. I hope they find the motherfucker hanging from a fucking oak tree by his nut sack.” Joe pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his sock and tugged a matchbook from behind the cellophane. When he blew smoke through his nose, his nostrils flared like a dragon’s. “I know who I’ma find, and her name is Desiree,” he breathed, saying the name like an enchanted city.

  Blabbing about trivial things, I walked him to the bus stop and waved when the bus pulled off and covered me in a black cloud of exhaust. I watched the bus, thinking Joe had crossed a bridge into a world where I could never follow.

  Even though it felt dumb, I looked into people’s side yards, over their walls, and around the thick trunks of sycamores. I pressed my face against the windows of the shops on King Street, though I knew my father would sooner be caught in a cathouse. I zigzagged through the tight cobblestone streets downtown until it hurt to walk. My steps came to a crawl and I took deep, sweet breaths by a brick wall draped in honeysuckle.

  When I got to the Battery, I climbed up the railing and watched sailboats leap over sharp waves in the harbor. I dropped some pebbles into the water. Stretching my arms, I closed my eyes and pretended to be a seagull soaring out to the Atlantic Ocean over Fort Sumpter and Sullivan’s Island. Feeling the breeze on my cheeks, I said my usual prayer to Jesus to stop me from being evil.

  But when I opened my eyes, I saw Eugene McCaffrey down the walkway. He stood with his back against the iron railing. I hadn’t spoken to him in two months. I caught my breath because he didn’t have a shirt on. Euge kept his elbows hooked over the top bar and turned his round face up into the sun. The gold in the tips of his messy hair glowed in the light, and that made me think of the Savior, who was also blond, on the cross. Eventually Euge saw me, waved, and galloped in my direction. I didn’t move.

  Euge and his sister Kinky were waiting for their aunt and uncle. Gizzy, their mom, wasn’t recovering well from a third bout with lymphoma. Eugene Sr. had a drinking problem worse than my father’s, so Lorna and Dave would take the kids off their hands sometimes. Euge bragged that he’d conned them into driving up to Haunted Harbor on opening day, which was that day. I couldn’t have improved my luck if I’d had three wishes.

  “Got plans?” Kinky asked me, biting candy dots off a strip of wax paper. For some reason I thought about Joe kissing Desiree right then.

  Pretty soon Dave and Lorna caught up to Euge, Kinky, and me. They asked if I needed my parents’ permission to go with them to Magic Harbor and I told them no. Eugene grinned at me and his eyes twinkled because he must have known I lied. Technically, Mama hadn’t said I couldn’t go there, and as long as I kept looking for Daddy, how could she complain? As we walked to the car Euge put his nose right up in my ear and whispered, “I’m glad you’re my friend again.” A big shiver went down my spine, so big that it made me sort of wiggle my butt.

  I won the coin toss for the front seat and we piled into the Plymouth Duster. Being included in a white person’s family felt strange but familiar, like stepping through a mirror. Euge’s people talked more like Negroes than Daddy ever allowed Joe and me to do at home. They used a lot of slang, all sorts of bad grammar, and rude expressions-Dave cursed in front of us and let Euge call him by his first name.

  Up front I had the best view, and a ringside seat to Dave. Dave had what you might call an eager smile. When he flared his soft gray eyes, you thought that he might lick your face next. He reminded me of a performer who came to Sanders-Clyde Elementary School once and made balloon animals for us, including a parrot that sat on its own balloon perch. I’d never seen such thick veins on anybody’s arms.

  Dave never stopped fidgeting. He could drive, smoke, listen, and talk all at the same time. When everybody else got quiet, he sang along with “Black Water” on the radio. I mean screamed: And I ain’t got no worries, ‘cause I ain’t in no hurry at all.’ It sounded like a dog howling, so we all covered our ears. Dave drove fast, and when he talked, the cigarette in his mouth bobbed up and down in time with his voice, hypnotizing me. He tapped the long ash outside before it fell, and patted his stomach. “I got me a letter in wrestling ‘fore I turned into a lardball,” he said.

  We laughed at everything he said. When Dave smiled, he showed off all his teeth, top and bottom, and he made me guess which one wasn’t real. I chose the wrong one. He gave us a lot of advice about how to get divorced, what fishing poles to buy, and how to cheat Breathalyzers and polygraphs. “You stick a thumbtack in your sneaker, see, and ever’ time they ask a tough question, like ‘Didja kill him?’ you step on that sucker. Remember that.”

  Clouds blew in from the west as we sped north, cooling the air and bringing down little pinpricks of rain. Euge pulled a T-shirt over his head. The weather sure could change fast in South Carolina. Windy and cool in the morning, warm and smelling like the ocean around midday, then sweaty like a hog in the afternoon, with delicious barbecue smells from every smokehouse in town hanging in the air.

  Euge and I broke off from the other three when we hit the park. We stood under a British flag. “They call it the Union Jack,” he said, almost proudly. “Don’t that sound like a dude? Like, ‘Hey, my name is Union Jack!’“

  Everybody agreed to meet back under one of the metal umbrellas near the King Charles Pub in an hour or so if the rain got heavy. I started to feel guilty. What if God had sent the clouds because he disapproved of my running off to Magic Harbor? What if my father was lying facedown in a ditch somewhere? How would I feel then? Before he whipped me and Joe, Daddy would sometimes remind us that the commandment “Honor thy mother and father” ranked higher than “Thou shalt not kill.”

  We started with the Tilt-A- Whirl, braved the Scrambler, and made our way to the Trabant. To get to the Trabant you had to pass the Black Witch. I hadn’t told anybody that I couldn’t ride some rides. I took a deep breath as we passed the nasty mural, staying behind Euge so he couldn’t tell I was nervous. A chilly breeze flew up my shirt-maybe it was her breath! I tried not to look, but I couldn’t resist a peek over my shoulder. Looking away quickly, I warded her off by reciting the Twenty-third Psalm.

  Aside from the Magic Mountain, where you paid a separate fee, the only ride with a line was the Bumper Cars. We got in line and Euge spotted Ye Merrie Sweet Shoppe across the walkway. He got an urge for almond toffee, so I held our place. When he came back, I was leaning against one of the guideposts, like Euge had done earlier. I was lost in a daydream about living at Gizzy’s and going to Magic Harbor with Dave and Lorna every weekend.

  Euge had a white paper bag full of chocolate-covered squares shoved into his armpit. I hadn’t moved forward in line very much. With a sigh, Euge turned and rested his back against me. His shi
rt heated up my chest, the bag crinkled, and I felt his body up against mine, from his chunky legs to that silky mess of hair. When it brushed across my face, it smelled like soap, and that took me by surprise. Euge turned around and smiled, at the same time as he put one hand in the bag and offered me a toffee. For a split second I wanted to pull him closer. I thought about resting my nose against the sweet skin behind his ear, pulling his scent up into my lungs. But I suddenly thought of his naked, rubbery body trembling next to me, my hand pulling on his slimy peeker and getting all dirty. Suddenly I couldn’t take the lovebird stuff and I pushed him off. “What do you think you’re doing?” I burst out in a whisper.

  Euge stumbled forward, caught himself, and turned around. Carefully, he showed me how to bite all the chocolate off a toffee until there was just the gold under it. Talking with his mouth full, he started prattling about Mr. Mullen, one of our English teachers, and how he had no ass. Euge loved to talk loud about stuff you shouldn’t talk loud about.

  On the Bumper Cars, he creamed me. Grinning like a demon, he called me a new curse every time he blindsided me. Sparks flew on the wire grid up above. We rode alongside one another and he bumped from the side. Then he reversed his car so he could collide with me head-on, even though you weren’t supposed to do that. Once the cars slowed down, we stumbled to the exit, wild and dizzy.

  Still flushed from the ride, we headed toward the King Charles English Pub. “Say you’re sorry,” Euge demanded. In the collision I had jammed my funny bone, so I was focused on massaging away the tingle and throb.

  “For what?” He’d nearly given me a concussion and now he wanted an apology?

  “You know what.” I couldn’t figure out what to save my life.

  During the rest of that trip, Euge kept giving me one-word answers and acting bored when I talked. He put his nose up at everything I liked. Playing keep-away with the toffee, he sat as far away from me as he could at the pub. I tried to sneak a chip off him and he pulled them away.

  “We’re going to ride the paddleboats,” Lorna announced after lunch. we meant her and Kinky. “Who else is going?” I said I didn’t want to, thinking that would win Euge back. But he volunteered to go with them. Paddle boats were suddenly the coolest thing in the park. I sulked, and I reckon it showed on my face.

  “Union Jerk,” I muttered.

  “Hey, are Fric and Frac having a lovers’ quarrel?” Kinky asked.

  “Shut up, Kimberly,” Euge spat back.

  She kicked him in the shins under the table, and he howled. “Don’t ever call me The Name!” she barked. He showered her with fries. Lorna broke up the quarrel by smacking them both in the arm. They told Lorna that she didn’t have the right to hit them, and Dave hit them for complaining and sassing Lorna. When the hitting stopped, a tent of silence collapsed on us. We picked at the hard fish filets. I watched a piece of Kinky’s hair wave in the wind like a feather above her shiny forehead.

  “Hey, Gary,” Dave said to me with his licking expression. “I’ll bet you want to ride the Black Witch with me, don’t you?”

  Terror shot through me. I’d been so wrapped up in figuring out why Euge suddenly hated me that I’d forgotten about the Black Witch. It was like Dave reached into my mind and pulled out my worst fear, right when Euge betrayed me and I couldn’t protest.

  “I can’t, sir,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t have to admit why.

  “C’rnon, don’t be a wimp.” Dave yanked me to my feet and started walking. I had to follow him just out of respect.

  I still didn’t know why Euge wanted me to apologize. When we got halfway to the ride, it fell on me like a sack of cornmeal. Without excusing myself, I ducked under the fence and ran toward the paddleboats. I’d swim across the moat and kiss Euge’s paddling sneakers. If I could’ve swum. I’m sorry, I would tell him. I’m real sorry. But Dave came after me, grabbed me by the wrist, and dragged me back to the same place in line. People around us raised their eyebrows.

  “You can’t wimp out on me,” he said. I failed to catch my breath. “If you see the Devil in there, we can turn around. But don’t worry, he’s an old buddy of mine,” he giggled. I leaned my forehead against the rail, thinking it wasn’t funny to pretend to be friends with the Devil. Slowly we edged toward the ticket-taker.

  Dave kept talking. A book he’d read said that nobody needed a high school diploma to make a good living, and he agreed. Then he changed the subject, like something had just come to him. “You and Euge are real close, huh,” Dave observed. I didn’t agree but I nodded anyhow. “Do you think that’s natural, Gary?” I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t tell if he thought two boys spending too much time together was unnatural, or if a black boy and a white boy spending time together was unnatural. “Don’t you got other friends?”

  “Yeah, plenty, sir,” I lied. My nervousness increased with every step forward in line. Could he tell I was ashamed not to have other friends? Did he want to break me and Euge up? In my mind I started to recite the Twenty-third Psalm again. There were only five riders ahead of us. That meant three gondolas. I counted one, two, three. We were going to sit in that empty car bobbing toward us.

  “You know what I think?” Dave said when we hit the front of the line. He never stopped smiling, did he?

  “No, sir, what?” Dave kept me guessing; he didn’t say anything else until we’d slipped into the gondola and the attendant locked the iron bar across our laps. The cars on the Black Witch were the hooded bell kind, more like little private places than roller-coaster cars. Dave leaned down, put his hand on my opposite shoulder, and let it rest there.

  Poking me in the center of my rib cage, he said, “I think you’re a fudgepacker. “

  I didn’t know what that meant, and I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. He didn’t explain. Did it have to do with the toffee? We entered the darkness, bumping through a pair of scary doors. The gondola took a twisty path, tripping lights on terrifying scenes splattered with brightly colored paint. You’d go toward one like you were about to crash into it and the monster inside would get you, then it turned at the last second. First we saw a coffin draped in cobwebs. When we bumped into it, a skeleton sat up from the casket and went Ha ha ha ha hal

  I tried not to scream like a girl, but I did. Boy, I covered my face lickety-split when that skeleton popped up. Dave put his arm all the way around me. His beer gut was right up beside me. That should have made me feel better but it didn’t. Dave held on to my shoulder blade and stroked it, gently at first. Then he took to pushing on it so I would lean into his lap. “Don’t be afraid, Gary,” he soothed. He pushed me harder.

  I peeked through my fingers and saw Frankenstein tipping his hat. That big old ugly head was still attached to the hat! Terrified, I let Dave push me down. “Don’t be afraid, Gary,” he whispered. “Be a man.” Dave had pulled down his sweatpants. It smelled like an armpit down there. He held the back of my neck in place, pushed my hands apart and gripped my shaved head like a basketball. “Open your mouth,” he said. “Open your fucking mouth.” His movements got real strong and sharp. He twisted one of my ears and wouldn’t let me sit up. I couldn’t see anything, but I could still hear all the monsters whooping and cackling.

  After the ride, I didn’t stop crying for a while. A woman came by and asked why-did I lose my mama? Dave said, “He’s with me. He got scared by the ride,” and pointed to the Black Witch with his chin. Dave patted my hair. He blotted my tears with his T-shirt and threatened to tell everybody I’d cried if I didn’t stop. He bought me a cotton candy and said that oughta shut me up. “Don’t say I never did nothing for you,” he joked. Except for inside the Black Witch, he never stopped smiling and acting friendly.

  We sat on a bench where we could hear cartoon noises from the shooting gallery. After I bit all the sweet pink fluff off the cardboard stick, I pulled my arms inside my shirt to keep warm. A long, quiet mood came over me, like a movie that ends on a beach. It had gotten colder and darker outside, but that didn’t bothe
r Dave. He flicked his lighter again and again but couldn’t get fire. He kept asking me how we were going to explain what happened. “What should we tell them, Gary?” he asked, “Huh?” the cigarette wagging in his mouth like a blaming finger. “Better not tell them you cried like a sissy.”

  I was teary-eyed when I got done typing all this up. I remembered most of what I thought had happened. But even through my tears, I couldn’t remember for sure if the sexual abuse part happened for real or not. I tried pretty hard to be sure, but see, a little bit after that, I took a job at Dave’s gardening center. Would I have done that after him sexually abusing me? I still am not quite sure. So when I told it to my brothers in Group, I made sure to say that I didn’t know if the sex part really happened. But my brothers said it didn’t matter, that the story felt true enough. George even said, “I think it happened.” If a story can heal folks, then I suppose the truth of it doesn’t matter so much.

  The Black Witch was dismantled a few years after Dave and I rode it. A lady stood up in one of the gondolas and got her head chopped clean off.

  With all the different types of silence, my calls with Annie got very heated over the next few months. Annie liked to remind me how much the program cost her. She felt like I had been away so long that she had forgotten what it was like to have a husband. She’d mention divorce and I would panic and weep.

  Cheryl kept refusing to speak to me. Annie thought it had a lot to do with the promise I had made. She reminded me of the many betrayals I had subjected her and Cheryl to. Sometimes she threatened to divorce me and not to help pay for the program and never let me see Cheryl again. Once she even got Cheryl to agree. I cried a lot, and said that my SSA problem made me do terrible things that I couldn’t even describe. I even confessed my belief that God had planned everything. She laughed at me and blamed me for not taking responsibility for anything, which hurt a whole lot. “No matter if Jesus told you to do it,” she said. “He might have told you to do the wrong thing just to test your judgment.”