Zach was right.
Daddy doesn’t know. Mom doesn’t know. But on those trips, I think I started wondering about a god that would let all this bad stuff happen. All of it so awful. I was changing. Stretching from my old religious skin. Feeling itchy with the worrying and the cracking free.
And just know this. You don’t have to be the daughter of a missionary to know what’s going on. Watch the news.
Read the paper. Check online.
I told you so.
So when I was little, Daddy said, “God answers prayers through Jesus Christ.” And I believed. One day, believing, I wrote this note to Jesus. It was like, Are you there? Check one box, yes or no. And I folded the note up small and set it on the bar in the kitchen. I spied around for a while, watching, to see. Left. Came back.
“What are you doing?” Zach said.
“Waiting,” I said.
“For what?”
I couldn’t say, “For Jesus.” Or maybe, with Zach then, I could have. But I didn’t. That’s all I’m saying now.
I didn’t.
Now with this company I don’t look for a quiet moment. In fact, there’s nothing quiet about Lili. She runs her mouth and never takes a breath, I don’t think.
She’s here, that strange Lili. Sitting up close, hands folded, ponytail falling forward, leaning at me as she chatters.
Utah this and that, she says.
Grammy and Grampy this and that, she says.
And what about Disney World, it’s waaaay better than Disneyland, right?
Sure.
I look at her and stay quiet. I let out a sigh.
She can talk. Wow.
This talker saves me from having to speak.
This talker is better than being alone.
How did Lili happen upon me here at the library? I shift in the sun, glance at the clock. Forty-five more minutes before Daddy will pick me up.
“Tell me about your family,” Lili says. “Do you have any brothers or sisters, London?”
Just like that. Like she has a right to know.
I swallow, swallow, look at her side-eyed, back at the clock. In the sun her dark hair has a red tint. She’s thin, looks like an athlete. I catch my breath and there’s time for my words because she’s stopped talking. She waits. Quiet.
After the account of the long drive from Utah, after Provo High, after being the middle of five kids (four boys and her) and being an aunt when she was twelve, after how her father is the new football coach at the local university, after how her mother can’t get bread to rise in the Florida humidity, she looks me right in the eye and waits for my answer.
That’s an ugly question sitting on the books between us.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
My body takes over.
I’m up, going, headed toward the door. Leaving everything behind.
I look back once, flip her the bird. Her mouth drops open.
How the hell did she find me, anyway? All tucked away in the back like that?
For a moment I imagined her as a friend. A good friend.
I could have lived with all the talking, turned my ears off, nodded when I needed to, if I had a friend again.
But she is, I see, just like everyone else—wanting to know the end.
Daddy beeps as he passes, makes a U-turn. Pulls up alongside me. I climb in the car.
“London, you didn’t wait for me.”
My mouth is dry as a sock and I’m cold. I want to say something, answer him, tell him what just happened, but my voice is trapped in a box.
Lili and her stupid T-shirt and shorts.
“Honey, I told you I’d pick you up. You’ve been walking a long while. You’re halfway home.” He sort of looks at me.
We pass a huge orange grove. This is why we live here now. After Daddy retired and decided to settle down in one place. We came here for the oranges and avocados and hot, steamy weather.
“Are you okay, London?”
I glance at my father. My eyes are dried out too. Now
I’m hot all over, though my fingers remind me of ice chips. And I can’t stop trembling.
“Let me get you home,” Daddy says.
I open my mouth to speak, to say anything, but Lili seems to have used up all the words I might have said today.
She has four brothers.
Count them. One, two, three, four.
And my one is none.
When almost all the shivering has stopped, Daddy says, “Honey, your mom’s resting again today.”
I look at my hands, empty of everything. Not one library book, not even a magazine, though I’d thought of putting together a stack on the table, if I hadn’t been so tired, and checking them out.
I stare at what might be the lifeline on my palm.
The truth is, books used to connect us.
They’re something we always had, even in Africa, though not like what’s here in this house.
I can do without the books this weekend—I haven’t read anything I wasn’t forced to in months. What I need is to share the air with what’s left of my family. Take small steps. Sleep on the edge of life.
“I’m going back to the church to look over photographs for this next book. I’ll work in my office some more.”
Sunnyside Baptist Church opened its arms to us when we arrived, because Daddy is a well-known missionary. They wanted him here. Gave him an office to work from. He’s even spoken from the pulpit several times over the past three years.
I mean, Before.
Not as much now.
He needs time.
When I glance at Daddy, I see he doesn’t look in my direction. He grips the steering wheel. Holds tight. Stares ahead. Just stares ahead, hanging on to the steering wheel. Looks at the road like it’s his best friend.
I bet it is. I bet the road is his best friend, because he has always loved to travel.
“Right,” I say. I’m surprised I found my voice, like all along it was hiding in the backseat or near my lifeline or something. “Thank you for picking me up.”
“Sure thing, honey.”
We drive down our street, so green. Trees hunch over the road, cold sunlight splashing through, houses set far apart, wide spaces between, and a breeze moving American flags like a gentle wave, like they’re saying good-bye to an almost-friend. A talkative almost-friend.
“I’ll be home by dinner.”
I nod.
We pull in the driveway. The house seems all closed up, the windows dark-eyed. The sidewalk even feels like it might roll up and pull the welcome sign off the tole painting Mom did so long ago.
“Check on your mom for me, huh, London?”
When I touch the car door handle, a shiver runs up my arm, makes me look Daddy in the eye.
For a moment we stare at each other.
Who would think someone could get old in just a few short months? But it’s happened to my father. His hair graying like it is at the temples. Wrinkles that make him look sad, even if he smiles. He just seems brittle somehow. We all are, I know.
Then I see it. Past the age. Past the gray and sadness. I see him—
Zach, my older brother,
hidden in my
daddy’s face.
“London, come with me.”
That long-ago night, my eyes popped open. Zach stood over me, in his pajamas. His hair was all messed up from being asleep. He was right in my face, so close I clapped a hand over my nose to keep from smelling his breath.
He laid a finger on my hand like he was silencing me. “Come on. You have to be quiet.”
I got out of bed, clutching Mandy, my little one-eyed doll.
The wooden floor was cold.
“Guess what I found?”
“What?” My voice came out low and full of gravel.
“Shh!”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re going to like this. You will.” He took my hand in his.
We went down the hall to Mom and Dadd
y’s room. The door was open just a bit.
Everything was gray. Even Zach. But the hall night-light was a yellow blob with shadows spreading away. It scared me, seeing it like that, but I didn’t tell Zach.
“They’re sleeping in there. So really shush now.”
“Okay.”
He pushed the door open. I could see our parents in bed. He pulled me to the closet. Their big walk-in closet. Opened that door. Led me in. Closed the door. I could smell the leather of Daddy’s shoes and Mom’s perfume.
He flicked on the flashlight.
“Look.” The beam of light circled the tippy-top of the closet. Christmas presents. Wrapped already. Way up there. “Santa’s been here.” He lighted the presents again.
“How do you know it was Santa?” My voice was a growl.
“Right there. See?”
I saw. FROM SANTA in black marker.
Zach flipped off the light. We stood in the dark closet.
The space smelling of our parents. I felt disappointed. I had thought, well, that Santa did work at the North Pole.
That he brought things from there on Christmas Eve.
Not that he stored presents in my parents’ closet.
I felt Zachy’s hand. He tugged me out into the bedroom, out the door, back down the hall. He tucked me into bed.
“We won’t tell them we know,” he said.
And we never did.
Mom is in her room. I knew she would be when I stood on the front porch and watched Daddy leave. I open her door, which is closed almost all the way, remembering that Santa night even though we lived in a different house then.
“Mom?”
She moves in bed. I can see she’s lying on top of the covers. She’s fully dressed, so that means she’s been out.
But she doesn’t answer.
“Daddy wanted me to look in on you. Is there anything I can get for you?”
Nothing.
She hasn’t spoken to me in months. Not when it’s just the two of us. Not when Daddy is home. Not at all, not at all, not at all.
“He’s put dinner on,” I say.
Has she plugged her ears?
Does she hear me?
Do my words make their way to her?
I see her roll over, turn her back to me.
A part of me wants to run in there. Run in and shake Mom. Scream in her face. Make her SEE me. I touch my throat, squeeze my eyes shut. Turn around and pull the door to, leaving it cracked open just a bit.
I finish making dinner—glass pitcher of iced tea cooling in the fridge, brown-and-serve rolls ready to bake as soon as Daddy gets home, a Sara Lee pie pulled out of the freezer to thaw.
It’s quiet here. Like I live all alone. The house breathes opposite me, breathing in when I breathe out. Presses its memories on me. If walls could talk, what would these walls say? Would they close their eyes to memories, like I want to?
When I can’t stand it, I turn on some music, classical, so soft it can’t be heard down the hall.
Sometimes, when it’s late, really late, I’ll pull out some of Zach’s music. I hid his iPod when Daddy searched my brother’s room for answers. I don’t listen often. But on a night like this, maybe someone else’s wailing will help me
out.
I dream he’s alive.
He wakes me with a low, “London.” I cover my face, hide my nose from his breath that is cold as frost. “I’m okay,” he says. “I promise. Come with me.”
“You’re taller,” I say.
He nods. “Maybe,” he says. “Anything is possible here.”
“Where?” I say. And I’m up, following him. “Where?”
I open my eyes when my feet touch the floor.
He’s gone.
Zachy was so good-looking, even grown women did a double take when they saw him.
His hair was blond (mine is sandy-colored with a highlight of auburn)
his eyes so blue they made you think fake and he was way taller than me, more than six three. He might have kept growing forever if he’d stayed alive.
But the best part of my brother was when he was happy, and he was, mostly—though there were times— how he would throw back his head and laugh.
No one had a laugh like that.
Daddy misses dinner. Again.
(This never happened Before.)
Mom eats in her room with a bottle of wine I didn’t even know we had.
It’s me
alone
looking at three empty chairs and wondering.
“Why do I even bother to eat?” I ask Zach’s chair. “I can hardly do it.”
And that’s true.
It takes real effort to lift the fork open my mouth chew swallow breathe lift the fork open my mouth chew swallow breathe lift the fork . . . you get the picture.
And if there isn’t anyone to help by just being there, well, what’s the use?
So in the end I just eat a huge slice of Sara Lee pie.
“Before you get it, Zach,” I say. My voice is a whisper, but I can imagine him reaching for that pie, eating it from the tin, and Mom laughing. “Before you hog it all.”
I’m doing my homework at Zach’s desk when the phone rings.
(Right after, there were a lot of people who called.
And then they found out more and the calls stopped coming. People didn’t know what to say. At church they wouldn’t look any of us in the eye.)
It’s weird hearing the phone ring.
I stand, step into the hall, and I hear Mom answer,
“Hello?”
Her voice is soft as warm air. I can almost see her in my head, in her room in the dark, sitting on the edge of her bed, hair a bit messy from lying down.
“Yes, she lives here.”
She?
Me?
“Yes, I’ll get her.”
I stop walking.
She’ll get me? She’ll get me? That means, that means, she’ll have to call for me. I don’t move. Can’t move.
I can hear sounds coming from her room, but I don’t volunteer anything. Just wait. Wait. Wait.
She says nothing.
I’m still.
I hear her settle on her bed.
My stomach is thin as paper.
After a while the phone starts that loud beeping sound, and I turn and go back to Zach’s room, where I crawl under the desk and sit where his feet used to be.
“Jesus,” our pastor says, “is the answer.”
He says it to a room full of people. We sit in the front, just me and Daddy, almost alone . . . except for the Smiths at the far end of our pew. (People are afraid. Don’t look and it won’t happen to you.)