Child of Gilead

by Douglas S. Reed

  “I don’t know what goes on. Could be counting money.”

  “After an honest day’s work?”

  The Chef smiles. “Perhaps.”

  The Chef’s son brings over a plate covered with dumplings and slides it in front of the Old Man. He, too, takes a look out the window. The son knows what the Old Man and his father are looking at. Staring at the old candy shop late at night has become a nightly routine.

  “Nothing happens there.”

  “He don’t understand,” says the Chef to the Old Man.

  “Help me, then,” says the son.

  “Things happened long before your father sent for you,” says the Old Man. “It doesn’t matter if nothing happens there. All I care about is who comes in and out.”

  “Who are you looking for?”

  The Old Man and the Chef just look at one another. They say nothing. The Chef tells his son to finish cleaning up in the back. “It’s time to go home.”

  “You looking for ghosts,” says the son, with a shrug, as he leaves to do as he’s told.

  The Chef looks over to his friend, the Old Man. “My son has point. You are looking for a ghost. That boy’s never coming back. The story goes, Pretty Lady Dame saw to that.”

  “What else have you heard of the story?”

  “Boy harm girl. Candy Man and Pretty Lady Dame avenge their child. Boy vanishes. Simple story.”

  The Old Man finishes his late-night snack and heads for the door. The Chef unlocks the door and lets him out, but not before asking, “See you tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” says the Old Man. “Because I believe in ghosts.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  I’m stretched out across the foot of Mama’s bed. I’m watching her and trying my best to be patient, so we can make our way to the park again. There’s a large mirror atop her dresser that Mama stares into. She’s not doing anything but gazing at herself. There’s no expression on her face. I wonder what Mama sees. I wonder if Mama sees someone weary of daily trips to the playground.

  I tell Mama, “We can do something else if you want.”

  Mama turns away from the mirror, and looks my way with a smile that’s genuine.

  “I like going to the park with you.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “No, I’m serious. I do like to go. I want to see if I can prove myself wrong.”

  “I don’t understand. Prove yourself wrong about what?”

  “I’ve come to learn a hard, uncomfortable truth: there are a lot of unloved children in the world. It breaks my heart because unloved children have a way of harming others. I wish it wasn’t so. But that’s what happens when you have unloved children. They’re just out there in the world on their own. They’re out there raising themselves because the adults in their lives are too busy to show them love or don’t want to show them love or guidance. These unloved children lash out and hurt others. So, I go to that park everyday with you, hoping I will see a whole playground filled with children who are loved.”

  ∏

  I wonder if Pretty Girl is one of the unloved children Mama talks of.

  I ride up to the park and see Pretty Girl by the swings again. But I stop at the edge of the playground, and I stay hidden out of sight. I don’t ride over to her because she is not alone. The Thin Man is there. His face is concealed underneath the same baseball cap he wore both days. I can’t see if he’s happy or if he’s bored. He’s just standing on the other side of the fence quietly watching Pretty Girl swing high and free up into the sky.

  The Thin Man motions for Pretty Girl to stop. Without saying a word, he turns and starts to walk away. He doesn’t wait for her. Pretty Girl rushes off the swing and races after him. She catches up to him and takes his hand. They walk out the opposite end of the park.

  I go over to the swing that Pretty Girl was on. It is still swaying back and forth. I take a seat and then notice something sparkling on the ground. It’s the anklet that Pretty Girl wears. It somehow fell off without her noticing. I reach for it quickly. But when I glance up, Pretty Girl seems to have disappeared. Before I can put the anklet away, a voice creeps up from behind me.

  “What you got there?”

  It’s Tum Tum. He has appeared from out of nowhere, as usual. But he doesn’t enter the playground. He stays on the other side of the fence.

  “What is it? Let me see. Bring it here.”

  At first, I hesitate to go over to him. But I do. I hold it up to Tum Tum. I’m thinking he’ll probably think it’s nothing special. But the anklet and its diamonds sparkle in the palm of my hand. Tum Tum is amazed by it. Then Tum Tum asks, “What does it say?”

  The anklet has a small gold plate with an inscription. I show it to him.

  He’s astonished and starts to reach for it through the fence. I pull it away from his reach. Tum Tum asks, “You think it costs a lot of money?”

  “I’m sure it does. But I don’t care about that.”

  “You should. That’s good money you got there. What are you going do with it?”

  I shrug. I haven’t given it that much thought.

  “You should sell it. Those are diamonds. Real ones. They’re worth something.”

  “I won’t sell it. I know the girl it belongs to. I just have to find her.”

  “What girl? Tell me about her.”

  There’s really not much to tell. I’ve only seen Pretty Girl twice. I tell Tum Tum that wherever Pretty Girl is, the Thin Man is nearby.

  “You’re talking about ghosts.”

  “And you’re talking crazy.”

  “Nobody has seen them but you. I come by this park all the time, and I’ve never seen this little girl and her father. That makes them ghosts.”

  “Ghosts? You’re a fool, Tum Tum.”

  Tum Tum points towards the Tower of Gilead. Then Tum Tum leans closer to the fence as though he doesn’t want anyone else to hear him. “Listen up. I come from Gilead. So, you can choose to not believe me if you want. You won’t be the first one to fall for the greatest lie ever.”

  “And what lie is that?”

  “That monsters don’t exist. But the stories out of Gilead are true—like the story about a little girl whose stepfather, the devil, took her away. Nobody knows what’s become of her. Some wonder if she’s even still alive. Most believe that the father has this little girl locked up in a cage and lets her out only in times of darkness. It’s said in Gilead that whenever you hear a child cry, it’s a warning. Round up your children and protect them because the Devil is coming.”

  “Sounds like a stupid story to me.”

  Tum Tum laughs at his own story. “Think what you want. This story is the truth.” He straightens up and sits back on his ratty bike that he dropped to the ground by the fence.

  “It’s boring in this baby park.” Tum Tum nods in the direction of Mama who is just getting to the park. “I would ask you to come hang, but I know that your mom won’t let you go. See you later, mama’s boy.”

  Tum Tum rides away towards his home in Gilead—laughing at me.

  ∏

  From the park, I can see the Tower of Gilead in the distance. The tip of its grimy brown tower reaches high into the sky. Tum Tum is right; I don’t know much about Gilead. What I do know about the place comes from the overflow of kids they’ve dumped into my school—kids like Tum Tum. He’s a Child of Gilead. But how can I take what he says seriously? He’s a kid who tries to scare you with stories of a monster-like brother named Scarface, who hides in the shadows. He tells tales of an evil stepdad stealing away children. And Tum Tum likes to spin tales about young gangstas jumping you and runnin’ pockets. Tum Tum gets a kick out of talking about people doing the nasty in the stairwell. He tries to spook you with tales of walls filled with posters of missing children. Tum Tum is always talking about how,
if you don’t know somebody in Gilead, you’ll be entering at your own risk. Tum Tum likes spreading fear. I don’t believe what he tells me about Gilead.

  They’re just stories to me. But then again, I did tell you what Mama once said about stories. “Stories don’t have to be real. Stories just need to reveal the truth.”

  ∏

  When I race over to Mama’s quiet spot in the park, I find that she hasn’t even taken out her sketchpad. She’s just sitting there with her eyes closed, kind of like she’s meditating. When she opens her eyes, I’m standing right there.

  “Mama, what can you tell me about Gilead?”

  “It’s a place where people live.”

  “I know that, Mama. But what do you know about the people? A lot of kids from your school live there.”

  Mama doesn’t say anything. Mama glances off in the direction of the Tower of Gilead. She is quiet, except for a sudden, exhausted sigh that seems prompted by a sadness flowing through her thoughts. Perhaps she is thinking about the little girl of the portfolio? Perhaps some other child of Gilead? I want to ask, but what follows is that look. It’s that same dead, lifeless stare that usually falls across her face whenever there’s talk of the Candy Man. It’s that mask of disillusionment I was telling you about before. But Mama finally speaks up. She doesn’t give me an answer. Mama says simply and quietly, “Go and play.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Pastor travels along a path, one he has taken many times before. At a familiar point along the way, the young pastor’s pace begins to slow, and his lengthy strides shorten. Up ahead is a home, neat and tidy. Sometimes, a little boy sits out front alone with a book. Sometimes, his mother, who’s an artist and a teacher, is out there too with a sketchpad in her lap. The Pastor likes the boy’s mannerly ways, while the beauty of the mother awes him. Warm and gentle smiles from mother and child always greet him. The Pastor likes to pause here on his journey. Joy can be found here. There is peace.

  But now a stranger sits in their place.

  He is a grizzled older man who looks at the young man with a knowing gaze. The stranger seems to understand why the Pastor has stopped by this place.

  “The mother and the boy are not here.”

  The Pastor says, “Thank you.” He is about to continue along his way, when the old man says, “The boy told me about you. He says you’re a friend.”

  “I am. And who are you to them?” the young pastor asks.

  “I’m a friend as well.”

  The stranger continues to study the young man, “The boy says you’re from their church. He says you’re their pastor. That must mean you’re in the business of saving lost souls.”

  “Yes, that is what I do.”

  “Some would say that makes you a magician.”

  The young pastor smiles and tells the stranger that there’s no magic in what he does.

  “Then how do you go about this job of saving souls?”

  “You listen to people’s stories.”

  The old man neither smiles nor frowns—he simply nods in understanding. “Well, I should let you go on your way to do God’s work. You’ll find the mother and boy are up ahead.”

  ∏

  The Pastor continues on his way. The stranger is right—the mother and boy can be found along this path. They’re alone in the park, just the two of them. The young man slows his steps and watches the boy ride away from his mother.

  It occurs to the young pastor just how little he knows about the mother. He knows this pretty lady only through the few words they’ve shared during the let-out at the end of church service, and the chats when he’s paused out in front of her home. Theirs is a relationship of brief, pleasant encounters. It has never been anything beyond that.

  The Pastor walks up to her, and says, “Good afternoon.”

  The pretty lady offers a pleasant smile, and asks, “How are you, Pastor?”

  “Fine,” the young man says. “It’s been a little while since I’ve seen you. I used to see you at the end of service, even if only for a few minutes. How were the children this year?”

  The pretty lady smiles at the young pastor’s kinder, more profound way of asking, “How was school this year?”

  “Long... and trying.”

  “You no longer enjoy what you do?”

  “It will always bring joy. All day, children surround me. They go out of their way to see me smile. The children say, ‘I love you,’ a hundred times a day to me. No one can ever take away the beauty that comes with that.”

  “But I imagine it’s hard to keep that smile at times.”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess the question is: ‘did you learn anything from the children this year?’ Teaching goes both ways.”

  “I’ve come to learn what my job as a teacher is.”

  “Which is?” the young pastor asks.

  “I’m just a guardian of fragile children who come to us broken. My job isn’t so much to teach, but rather to be like a cobbler and put them back together. But I’m not a cobbler. So, I end up just trying to do my best, and show them another path, give them structure. My job is to build up their self-esteem... show them love. Still, after all that, the end of the school day arrives, and I have to send them back out into the world.”

  “And the world corrupts.”

  “The world does more than that. It swallows them whole and takes them away, never to return. And then the world laughs at me, and reminds me how powerless I am to truly help them... to protect them. The world lets me know the futility of noble intentions.”

  “You must feel hope at some point?”

  “My favorite part of the day is when I read stories to the children. Fairy tales and folktales from around the world. They speak of things we all can relate to—courage, family bonds, love. But at the end of the day, they’re just stories of monsters and big, bad wolves, and witches and mean giants—things the children don’t have to be afraid of because they are not real. I need to teach the children something more important: it’s man they should fear. They need to fear man’s cruelty. Fear man’s ignorance, because man’s ignorance makes him dangerous. Man is the real monster.”

  “You know our doors are always open for you to talk about how you feel.”

  The pretty lady says softly, “I doubt you have the words to explain away broken children. I doubt you have words that justify why these children are being allowed to suffer.”

  “Not being able to see or imagine a reason why God might allow something to happen doesn’t mean there isn’t one. The lack of a clear answer doesn’t mean that a credible, but hidden, explanation for such brokenness doesn’t exist.”

  “I have little use for the argument that God has reasons for His actions that go beyond our rational understanding. Nor am I in the mood to hear that suffering is a part of life.”

  “You have a sense of fair play and justice. Most people do. You have the noble view that people should not suffer… that people should not be excluded, should not die of hunger or be oppressed. But you must acknowledge that this life requires death, destruction, and violence by the strong against the weak. It’s natural. So, if this is the reality, how can the non-believer judge the natural world to be wrong, unfair, and unjust?”

  “It’s hard to blindly accept the notion: ‘be not afraid, at the end of the day victory is assured if you just believe.’ That is just a notion religion sells to people in order to pacify us like little children. They’re just things said to us in order to explain away the bad things that happen.”

  The young pastor has learned that when people are in pain, sometimes the best thing to do is offer them a respectful silence. He says nothing. He just watches her. The young pastor waits for the pretty lady to say more.

  “I shouldn’t talk this way around you,” she says, in a near whisper. “I shouldn�
��t talk with so much doubt. I shouldn’t sound like I’m questioning God. Not to you.”

  “God is big enough for your questions. These questions can, one day, end up reaffirming your faith.”

  With a smile meant to disarm, the pretty lady asks, “Is that truly so?”

  The young pastor tells her, “It is what I believe. You know, we all strive to live as if it’s better to live in peace rather than in war; that it’s better to tell the truth instead of lie; to care and nurture, rather than destroy. These choices are not pointless. It matters which way we choose to live. The struggle is, if you believe the universe is empty and one where there is no higher authority, then who is to say one choice is better than the other? Who is to say whether or not we should be loving or cruel? If that’s the case, in the end, it will make no difference.”

  “What does it mean to believe then?”

  “There are two options: we can believe in this empty universe with no God but still choose to live life as though our choices have meaning, that we know the difference between love and cruelty. But that’s having one’s cake and eating it too. You get the benefit of having a God without the cost of following Him. But there’s a second way, and the one I choose: live as though you know for sure there is a God. Choose to live as though beauty and love have meaning; choose that there is meaning in life; chose that humans have inherent dignity. You accept all this because you know God exists. Because, in the end, it is dishonest to live as though God exists but not as though He was the one who has given you all the gifts.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  There’s a stranger along the Road Less Traveled. It is Fox, the young guy I first saw at Injun Rah’s. He is standing by one of the park benches. He is on the outside of the playground, in the area where the older boys used to hang out and play basketball. However, the two hoops now hang broken on the fence. No one can use them anymore. But Fox is here now. And like at the pizza shop, he is watching me. Mama warned me about talking to strangers. But I don’t always listen. Since Mama sent me on my way, I ride over to Fox. Maybe he’ll talk to me.