The church was high and white and packed with lilies. Families in Easter clothes crowded the pews. My mother and I slid into a pew near the back, near a stained-glass window that showed Jesus bending over a sick girl. He looked like a worried father, his hand on her forehead as if he were checking for fever. At the front of the church there were racks of tall white candles, and a gold crucifix high on the wall. The Jesus there wore nothing but a gold cloth around his private parts. He looked sad and dead, his chest bleeding, his forehead crowned with thorns. There was a long white cloth draped over the arms of the cross behind him. The church smelled like wax and spice and the mingled scents of all the women’s perfume. I hadn’t expected to feel holy there, but I did.
Just before the service began, a woman and a boy slid in beside us. At once I knew that this was Dale and his mother. The boy, dark-haired and dark-eyed, wore a crisp dress shirt and navy pants. His skin was a pale walnut-shell brown. His small silver-framed glasses gave him the look of an older boy, though I could see he was about my age. His mother’s hair hung lank and blond against her shoulders, and her arms were white against the blue of her dress. There was a fierce, open look in her eyes, a kind of challenge. She held Dale’s hand tight and whispered something to him. He seemed embarrassed by what she’d said. When he glanced at me I took a hymnal and opened it, not wanting him to know I’d been watching him.
A priest and some boys in white robes entered from the back. They walked up the aisle slowly as a great red swell of music rolled out into the church. I knew it was a pipe organ— I’d heard music like that on Sunday TV—but nothing had prepared me for the deep layered resonance I felt in my breastbone. I turned around to look up at the balcony, and there was a choir in white robes, and racks of silver organ pipes, some reaching to the ceiling, others so small they looked like little flutes standing on end. Behind the priest and the boys came the Communion children, each with a pair of adults whom I’d learned were their godparents. They all walked slowly and wore somber expressions. The children carried their white candles, the light falling gold on their chests. Carney came out last of all. Her hair was dressed in ringlets and she smiled with her mouth closed, her eyes lowered, as if she knew a holy secret she would never tell. I wanted her to see me but she wouldn’t look up from her candle. Her godparents, high school friends of her mother’s, smiled down at her as if she were their own child. Carney’s mother and father stood beaming in a pew near the front of the church. Her little sisters Patty and Eleanor crowded forward to see her, and her three-year-old brother Jonah reached out to touch her skirt as she passed. Carney didn’t look at any of them. She walked all the way to the front of the church, her face composed into that private sacred expression, and lined up with the other children on the altar steps. Dale’s mother bent to him and whispered, loud enough so I could hear, “That little girl all the way on the right is your cousin.”
The congregation sang hymns and said prayers, and the priest spoke about Jesus. He talked about how Jesus and his disciples took the Paschal meal together, and what Jesus said at dinner. After a while, I came to understand he was talking about Passover. The last supper had been a seder. Jesus and his disciples had eaten matzah, and that was why the Communion wafer was unleavened. I’d known Christ was a Jew, but I’d never pictured him having an actual seder. I imagined him singing “Dayenu.” It almost made me laugh. I nudged my mother to tell her what I’d discovered, but she put a finger to her lips. Instead I stared at Carney, trying to make her look up from her candle. After a few moments she did look up, her eyes moving over the congregation. When she saw the boy standing next to me, beside a woman who looked like a sadder, slimmer version of her own mother, her holiness seemed to drop away. Suddenly she looked like the Carney I knew from the playground at school, someone who liked to stir things up.
At the altar, the Communion began. The priest made his way down the row of children, starting at the left. He said their saints’ names and made each one of them eat a wafer. He drew an invisible cross on their foreheads with his thumb. Carney was still looking at Dale when the priest got to her, but when he said her new name, Caroline Veronica, she became holy and serious again. She opened her mouth and took the wafer. A shiver went through me as I imagined what was supposed to be happening at that moment: The wafer was supposed to change to Christ’s body, there in Carney’s mouth. The organ sent its blast of sound out into the church and all the congregants began to sing about the Lamb of God. Dale, too, knew the song. He moved his mouth, but I couldn’t hear his voice among the other voices. My mother took my hand and pressed it.
“You can sing if you want to,” she said.
At Carney’s house we all got Easter baskets. Mine was wrapped in pink cellophane and had three chocolate eggs with the real-looking white and yolk, a net bag of tiny pastel-coated malt balls, two boxes of marshmallow Peeps, and a rabbit in gold foil—all the things I’d seen in the grocery store, things that were not supposed to be for me. My basket was as big as Carney’s, bigger than the ones that belonged to Carney’s little sisters and brother. Dale got one too, just like ours. He took his basket out into the backyard while Carney and I opened ours on the porch, our mothers watching us. I began to unwrap one of the chocolate eggs, but my mother stopped me with a glance.
“What’s wrong, Lila?” Carney’s mother said.
“She can’t have that chocolate yet,” my mother said. “It’s still Passover.”
Carney’s mother gave my mother a quizzical look. “I thought y’all just gave up bread.”
“It’s not that we give things up,” my mother said. “It’s that certain things are forbidden.” She started to explain how most chocolates contained corn sweeteners, and why corn sweeteners weren’t considered kosher for Passover according to Ashkenazic tradition. I wished she didn’t have to make it all sound so foreign.
“Well,” Carney’s mother broke in, laughing. “I thought I had it bad, giving up ice cream for Lent.”
“We don’t feel like we have it bad,” my mother said. “Do we, Lila?”
I sat there looking at the chocolate egg in my hand. I wondered what would happen if I said, Yes we do! But my mother wasn’t going to give me the chance. She gave me a sharp look, as if to remind me I’d better not sneak any chocolates behind her back, and then she and Carney’s mother went into the house to set up the drinks. I stayed on the porch and watched Carney eat her Easter candy. She unwrapped two chocolate eggs and ate them quickly, not looking at me. I could hardly bear the smell of chocolate coming from her wrappers. She tore open her package of Peeps and bit into one of them, the marshmallow pure white inside its coating of yellow sugar crystals.
“You’re lucky, actually,” she said, chewing. “You’ll still have all of yours to eat when I’m done with mine.”
It was the kind of thing Carney said sometimes, the kind of thing that sounded like it was supposed to make you feel better but actually made you feel worse. I pushed my basket under one of the porch chairs and stood up as if to leave. Carney dusted the yellow sugar from her hands and folded the cellophane over what remained in her basket.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go out back.” She told me her mother had said she was supposed to mingle with the guests, but I suspected she was looking for Dale.
On the patio, the ladies drank cold drinks and the men smoked cigars. Carney’s father stood beside an outdoor propane burner and stirred gumbo in a tall pot. Her mother arranged trays of corn bread and miniature shrimp quiche. Aunt Marian sat at a picnic table alone and smoked a cigarette, looking out across the backyard as if she wished she were somewhere else. My mother was drinking lemonade and talking about Twelfth Night with Carney’s godparents, describing some elaborate problem she’d been having with the set design. Carney’s godparents nodded politely and sipped their drinks. It was clear they were only pretending to be interested, but that didn’t stop my mother.
Carney and I drifted from one group of adults to another. They smiled d
own at us and stirred their ice with Easter-colored swizzle sticks, but they went quiet when we approached, the way adults did when they were talking about something they didn’t want you to hear. Some of them kept glancing over at Dale, who was crouched by the toolshed, examining a pile of dirt on the ground. I knew Carney was paying attention to everything. She saw the adults looking at Dale. She saw them growing impatient when she drifted into their circles. Her forehead began to flush and she scratched at her silk-flower wreath. She took my hand and pulled me over to where her father was stirring the gumbo.
“We’re hot,” she announced. “We want Cokes.”
“Run get some in the kitchen, then,” her father said. He was a sturdy, beefy man, maybe six inches taller than my own father. He had an aluminum boat in which he’d once taken us fishing. Now he wore an apron emblazoned with the words CHEF DE CUISINE.
“You get them for us,” Carney said, fanning herself. “We’re too hot.”
“Well, I have to be the chef, honey,” he said. “You can go get them, can’t you?”
“We don’t want to.”
“Go play, then. It’s cooler in the yard.”
Carney shuffled to the edge of the brick patio. In the yard, her sisters Eleanor and Patty swung on the swing set and her brother Jonah pushed his dump truck around in the sandbox. Dale was still playing all alone by the toolshed. He’d abandoned his Easter basket on the patio, untouched, and had rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. His silver glasses glinted in the sun. In his cupped hand he held some potato-chip crumbs, which he was dropping one by one onto an anthill. If he knew the adults were watching him, he didn’t show it. Carney gave me a look and motioned for me to follow her. She crept up behind Dale, leaned close to his ear, and whispered, “Yah.”
He gave a little jump as if she’d poked him in the ribs.
“That’s just an old anthill,” she said, kicking its edge with her white shoe. “My daddy keeps pouring poison on it, but they just keep building it again in a different place.”
“You shouldn’t pour poison on them,” Dale said, squatting down to look. “Ants like these don’t even bite. They all have jobs to do. These worker ants here are bringing food to the queen.”
“You like ants or something?” Carney said.
He turned his head to look at her.
“You got an ant farm at home or something?”
Dale wiped his hands on his pants and squinted warily. “I have a book about ants,” he said. “I’ve read about them.”
“We all know about worker ants and queens,” I said. “It’s not like you have to do research. I learned about them in second grade.”
Dale shrugged. “Worker ants are just the beginning,” he said. “There can be five different classes of ant in a single hill. I just finished a ten-page report.”
“Well, whoop-dee-doo for you,” Carney said. She picked up a long stick from beside the toolshed and gave the anthill a good stir. The hill became a glittering confusion of ants.
“What’d you go and do that for?” Dale said, getting to his feet.
“Because I wanted to,” Carney said, and skipped over to the swing set. She twisted the chains of Eleanor’s swing until they wouldn’t twist anymore, and then she let go. Eleanor shrieked as she whirled around and around, her blond curls flying, her dress a yellow blur. Dale and I stood beside the toolshed and looked down at what remained of the anthill. I could see the white shapes of larvae amid the glinting brown of worker ants.
“I’m Lila Solomon,” I said. “I’m originally from New Orleans.”
“It could take them weeks to build another one,” Dale said, squatting to look closer at the ants. “That’s more than three years in the life of an ant.”
“I said my name’s Lila,” I repeated, but Dale didn’t seem interested in making my acquaintance. I wasn’t going to press the issue. Instead, I went inside the house to get the present I’d brought for Carney. I could tell she was working herself into a bad mood, but I knew the present would make her feel better. It was a china carousel-horse music box from Tinker-bell, our favorite store downtown. I’d left the package on the bureau in Carney’s bedroom. As I went upstairs to get it, I heard Carney’s mother and Aunt Marian come into the kitchen, arguing. I paused on the stairs to listen.
“Well, that’s just a lie,” Carney’s mother said. “I never said any such thing.”
Aunt Marian answered. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could tell she was almost crying.
“You’re overreacting, as usual,” Carney’s mother said. “You never did have any sense of proportion.”
“I know what I heard,” Aunt Marian said, louder now.
“You only hear what you want to hear,” Carney’s mother said.
“Don’t try to twist it around,” Aunt Marian said. “Don’t you try to blame me.”
Now Carney’s mother said something under her breath. Whatever it was, it must have been terrible. Aunt Marian came down the hall, a handkerchief pressed to her face. My heart pounded. I didn’t want her to know I’d been listening, so I ran upstairs and slipped into Carney’s room. From the hall came the sound of footsteps, and then Aunt Marian opened Carney’s door. Her face was wet, her eyes red, the handkerchief a crumpled ball in her hand.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think anyone was here.”
“It’s okay,” I said, and picked up the present from the bureau. “I was just going. It’s your room, anyway.”
She tilted her head at me.
“You’re Carney’s Aunt Marian,” I said. “I saw your name on the wall.” I planted my feet and pushed the bureau away from the wall with my shoulder. There was her name, in red crayoned letters against the pale wallpaper: Marian Beatrice Fortunot. I live here.
“Well, look at that,” she said, bending down to touch the letters. “Marian Beatrice Fortunot. I hardly remember writing that.” She ran a hand over the side of the bureau. “This was my furniture, too.” She glanced around the room, her eyes coming to rest on Carney’s shrine. She went over and knelt on the cushions where Carney and I had rehearsed the saints. For a moment I thought she might start praying, but then she gave a small, hard laugh, so full of bitterness it frightened me. I went downstairs as quick as I could, being careful not to drop Carney’s present.
When I came out, I found my mother sitting with a younger woman at the picnic table, dandling a baby on her knee. The baby kept grabbing handfuls of my mother’s hair. The younger woman kept saying, “No, sweet pea, no,” but my mother was laughing.
I touched her sleeve. “Can I give Carney her present?” I asked.
“Say hi to Lila,” my mother said, making the baby wave its pink hand at me.
“Can I?” I said, not waving back.
“May I,” my mother said. “I guess you may.”
I knew she might have wanted me to wait until we could give Carney the present together, but I went ahead anyway, leaving her with the baby. Carney was still playing with her sisters on the swing set. Eleanor and Patty were sitting on the swing-glider, and Carney was pushing them as hard as she could. Her face was flushed, her silk-flower wreath askew. She pushed the glider with such force that her sisters screamed as it soared up into the air. I ran across the lawn and held the gift out to her.
“Happy Communion,” I said.
“I’ll bet I know where that’s from,” Carney said. She took the present and gave it a little shake. Just then, the glider swung back and struck her on the shoulder, and she stumbled back and dropped the box. There was a tinkling sound, the sound of a delicate thing breaking. Carney stood there, one hand on her hurt shoulder, looking as if she might cry. She picked up the present and ran to the shade beneath the chinaberry tree at the edge of the yard. There she sat with her head in her arms, the present beside her on the grass. Dale had been watching all this from the toolshed. He took a few steps toward her, but when she heard him coming she raised her head and said, “Leave me alone.”
“Hey,” I said, going over to kneel beside her. “Are you okay?”
Carney shook her head.
“Open the present. Maybe it’s fine.”
She tore off the wrapping paper and broke the gold seal on the box. Inside was the carousel-horse music box I’d chosen, the one she and I had admired in the window. The china horse had broken off at the base of its pole.
“Maybe your dad can fix it,” I said.
She sighed and stuffed the horse back into its tissue paper.
“Let me see it,” Dale said, coming closer.
“No.” Carney held the box against her chest.
“I fixed a cuckoo clock for my mother once,” Dale said.
Carney got to her feet and stared at him. “This is not a cuckoo clock.”
“You could fix it with epoxy,” he said.
“Why don’t you go away?” she said. “No one invited you here in the first place.”
Dale stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. “Yes they did,” he said.
“Fine,” Carney said, and turned her back on him. “Stand there if you want. My friend and I are going to do a play, and you can’t be in it.” She turned to me and said, “What play should we do, Lila?”
“Well,” I said, trying not to look at Dale. “We could do an Easter play.”
“I know,” Carney said. “We can do Stations of the Cross. I get to be Veronica, and you can be the Virgin Mary.”
I didn’t think my mother would approve, but when I looked at her again she was still cooing at that baby. And anyway I was angry at her for not letting me eat my Easter candy, for talking about things people here didn’t care about, for reminding them that we didn’t belong. She wasn’t about to stop me from playing Stations of the Cross. Carney was offering me the best role, the role of Mary, tragic mother of God.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be the Virgin Mary.”
How to Breathe Underwater Page 21