Harmony House (8 page)

W
hen my dad knocks on the door it takes me several seconds before I realize where I am. The sun is low over the horizon, but pain cuts through the center of my forehead and makes it difficult to open my eyes. The sound of my dad's fist against the heavy door is like a drill bit against my skull—breaking through into the soft tissue of my brain.

“Just a second,” I say, trying to sit up.

The room spins around me and my head aches and my stomach turns.

I vomit into the wastebasket by my bed.

“What's going on?” my dad calls, pushing the door open. “Are you sick?”

“Uh, no . . . I feel great,” I say, and then vomit again.

Out of the corner of my eye I see my dad nodding.

“Our prayers are working. Your body is cleansing itself,” he says, “ridding itself of evil. Why don't you try fasting today? I'll do it with you.”

“Right now,” I say, gasping for breath, “fasting isn't gonna be a problem.”

“I had another vision last night,” my dad says. “The Lord spoke to me. The plan I have is the right one. He has great things in store for us.”

“I'm really not feeling well,” I tell him.

“We must pray together,” he says.

I try to sit up again and, this time, the room keeps more or less still for me.

“Fine,” I say. “Fine. Let me just get cleaned up a little.”

My dad comes over and takes the wastebasket full of puke from off the floor.

“I'll take care of this,” he says. “Get dressed and come down.”

“Okay,” I say—too weak to fight with him anymore.

He walks out of the room and I push myself up and
squint my eyes against the sun coming in too bright.

“Hey,” I yell, remembering suddenly. “Is the power back on?”

My dad shouts back from the top of the stairs.

“It was a circuit breaker. Just like I said.”

So he was right about one thing, I guess.

I walk staggering over to the closet. After last night I feel like I need to take ten thousand of those pills from Stephanie's dad. But I only take one. I dry-swallow it down and then go to the bathroom and drink water from the tap and wash my face and brush my teeth—twice—to try to get the awful taste of bile out of my mouth.

The sickness and nausea in me is replaced by an intense hunger. I hold my stomach—hands shaking—dizzy and aching. There's a vacuous pit opening up inside me that feels like it can never possibly be filled. The pain of the hunger shoots up and down my body and across from shoulder to shoulder.

Moving as quietly as I can, so my dad doesn't hear me, I make my way down the stairs. But it does no good. My dad comes out in the hall and calls out to me.

“Jen, where are you going? We have to pray together.”

“Dad, I'm so hungry,” I tell him, almost whimpering.
“Please, I've been sick. I have to eat.”

“We're going to fast today,” he answers back. “You can't give in to earthly temptation. The Lord will give you the food of life; you don't need anything else.”

“Yes, I do,” I tell him. “I need to eat. I have to.”

The sickness tears at my stomach. It climbs up my throat. I feel my tongue swollen. Sweat beads on my forehead. My legs are weak beneath me and I grab the banister and my dad yells, “You mind me now!”

“I can't,” I say. “I'm sick. Really.”

“God wants you to repent,” he says.

He starts toward me.

“No,” I say. “No.”

And then from above us a shrill, grating, high-pitched bleating makes me cover my ears. I look up to see the red LED light of the smoke detector flashing over and over—the sound bone-penetrating, like metal trying to cut metal. I set my teeth and call out loud, “I can't deal with this!”

The curtain starts to come down again and my head swims and I hurry down the rest of the stairs—away from the noise—not waiting for him to say anything else.

In the kitchen, the sun coming in through the narrow windows offers no warmth at all. My bare feet are
cold on the tile and I shiver and feel the aching in my stomach. The sound of the smoke detector going off is distant now and faint and when I close the kitchen door I can hear it only as a steady, pulsing rhythm like a too-rapid heartbeat.

I breathe out and try to figure out what to eat—still not sure what my body can handle. I decide to just put some toast in the toaster and boil water for tea. The hunger in me is combined with a terrible, unquenchable thirst now. The more water I drink, the more the thirst clings to my throat like I'm swallowing the desert.

I glance up at the clock then, waiting for the toast to toast and the water to boil. I wonder how long it's been since I took that pill. I need the relief it promises me so badly now.

“Jen,” I hear my dad calling—the sound of the smoke detector now gone completely. “Come on. It's fixed.”

I'm too weak and exhausted to call back. The hunger cramps my stomach and the thirst parches my tongue.

But when the toast finally does pop and I spread butter on it and try to eat, I find the sweeping nausea is too much for me again. What little I get down comes right back up again. I'm so frustrated and sick I bang my fist against the counter.

I sit down in one of the straight-backed chairs at the breakfast table and close my eyes. I wait, counting the seconds.

Finally, the cold in me begins to thaw. The pain and aching subsides. I feel a flood of beautiful warmth and weightlessness as whatever that pill was works its way into my bloodstream. I breathe out. And then I can eat. I take small bites, chewing the bits of toast well and swallowing them easily. I drink black tea with milk and no sugar.

“Thank God,” I say aloud.

But I'm not delivered yet.

My dad comes marching into the kitchen, his jaw held tight in anger—his ashen skin gone red in the face.

“I told you to hurry up,” he says. “You think this is a joke? I'm talking about your soul here. Your soul—your chance at salvation.”

I don't let him see me roll my eyes.

But I'm too blissed out to argue with him. The path of least resistance is to follow him up the stairs. And the greatest thing about whatever that pill was is that it's given me the freedom just not to care—and that is the greatest freedom of all.

When I do get to his room, though, the smell of
mold and something rotting makes me recoil, the dank, fetid air thick in my lungs.

Immediately, I go over to the window and start to open it, but my dad tells me to leave it as it is.

“Come kneel with me,” he says.

I turn away from the window, looking up at the bleeding Jesus on the cross—the crown of thorns cutting in—the nails piercing his flesh. There's a dresser painted a pale blue beneath the cross and on it my dad has lit a number of different-colored dripping candles. In the center of the candles is a beaded rosary and a small framed painting of the Virgin Mary.

I kneel down next to my dad.

He speaks the prayer out loud and grips his hands tightly together so I can see his protruding knuckles turning white. His hands tremble slightly. He asks God to show me the light of his love and grant my soul's salvation. He prays for my place in the kingdom of Heaven alongside his. He asks for mercy. He asks for forgiveness. He asks for guidance. He affirms the power and glory of the Lord.

I close my eyes and open them and feel deeply tired suddenly—but in a pleasant way so I almost drift off, my dad's voice droning on and on.

But through my nodding out I catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye that suddenly shocks me wide-awake, and almost instantly sober—at least, seemingly so.

On the dresser with the candles and the rosary and the Virgin Mary, beneath Christ and the cross, is that ring—the one I found—the one my dad took from me. It's been placed in the shadow behind the framed painting, but as the candle flickers I can see the light reflecting off the image of the coiled serpent embossed in gold.

The sight of the ring makes me feel chilled. I shiver from somewhere very deep inside me. But my dad doesn't take any notice. He keeps on praying with his eyes closed and his hands clasped together.

I look at him, then, studying the newly formed lines and creases in his hollowed-out face. I notice that his hair seems to be thinning on top—even more so than yesterday, if that's possible. And the veins along his temples and cutting down the middle of his forehead are protruding like a tangle of branches beneath his scaly, sallow skin.

Could it be that my mom's death is finally catching up with him, I wonder—that he's finally letting himself
feel it? Or is it what happened last night to me?

I close my eyes and keep them closed. I can't stand to look at him anymore.

Finally, though, he finishes the prayer.

He gets up and I see now that there are tears running down his face. He turns away from me.

The sun has risen higher up over the trees and is projecting the littlest bit of warmth in through the glass.

“You may go now,” he tells me.

The sun has risen higher up over the trees and is projecting the littlest bit of warmth in through the glass.

“You may go now,” he tells me.

I stand, feeling lightheaded. I step out into the hall—the walls collapsing in around me—a slide projector click, clicking in my brain—showing me images as though in sleep, but I am awake now.

I see the pretty nun. She sits on the grass beneath one of the live oaks in the back of Harmony House with the same little boy that was in her room. He wears blue wool shorts and a white, short-sleeved button-down shirt. He eats bread and cheese and the sister eats an apple. They work together on his catechism lessons. Wasps gather in the branches overhead—the steady droning buzz like an engine revving over and over.

“Okay, is the likeness in the body or the soul?” the young sister asks, putting a hand gently on the boy's shoulder.

The boy shakes his head.

“I don't know,” he says.

She smiles.

“Come on, yes, you do.”

The boy shakes his head again, eyes wide and glinting in the hot, bright sun, watching her lovingly—staring. The light casts shadows through the myriad colored leaves. A red-shouldered hawk cries hoarsely and dives down over the tall grass. A gray cat runs out from under the back porch steps and goes chasing after the low-flying bird.

But the boy remains fixed on the pretty young sister.

“I want to run away from here,” the boy says. “I want you to come with me. I want to run away together.”

The sister laughs.

“Because you don't like your catechism work?”

“Because I don't like Sister Angelica. Or monsignor.”

The sister glances quickly around and tells the boy to hush.

“You can't say that,” she says.

The boy bites on his thumbnail.

“I don't care,” he says. “I want to go away with you. We could go to the moon together and be happy there.”

Now the sister laughs again.

“The moon? How would we live on the moon?”

“We could grow vegetables,” the boy says, very earnestly. “We could bring a cow . . . and chickens . . . and you could read me stories . . . and I could make a fire at night.”

“That sounds nice,” the sister says. “Just you and me . . . on the moon.”

“You won't ever leave me?” the boy asks.

The sister hugs him to her.

“Never.”

She takes a striped rubber ball up from next to the catechism book.

“Should we take a little break?” she asks. “You want to play catch?”

The boy jumps to his feet happily. She tosses him the ball and he runs down the sloping hill to the edge of the forest. The sister throws him the ball back, but it hits the ground and goes bouncing off at a right angle, disappearing into the dense covering of trees. The boy laughs and calls out, “I'll get it.” Then he trudges through the wet leaves and ferns, searching for the missing ball.

He walks deeper into the forest, following a shallow creek bed until he sees another sister in a habit. She stands next to a thickset man with a shapeless fedora and a wool flannel
shirt and mud-caked work boots. The man leans his weight on a wood-handled shovel. His hands are giant, with wide tobacco-stained fingernails. The sister holds a bundle covered in coarse-looking cloth, her head bowed. The man and sister talk quietly back and forth. And the boy walks slowly forward—the ball now forgotten.

As the darkness of the forest envelops the boy more and more he hesitates, then stops, then looks behind him. The young, pretty sister is there now, holding her arm out to him.

“Come on,” she says, her eyes wide—her hands trembling. “Come away from here.”

The boy turns back to the man and the sister with the bundle. He takes another step forward.

“Come on, now,” the young sister says. “Let's go. We can go to the moon.”

The boy steps forward again.

The sister with the bundle turns toward the boy now. The coarse-looking cloth is pulled back to show the body of an infant, its face swollen and icy blue. The sister holds it in her arms. She sees the boy watching. She sees the young, pretty sister.

“Sister Margaret,” the older nun snaps. “Get that child out of here.”

The nun turns again toward the grave.

“Sister Margaret,” the little boy cries.

He bursts into tears.

The name echoes through the cavernous woods.

“Sister Margaret, Sister Margaret.”

She crouches in the ferns and wet leaves. The boy runs to her. She takes him up in her arms. And they emerge together—back out into the bright midday sun.