Hush (8 page)

At night, my mother studies the Bible the way she once pored over her daily lessons, marking passages, researching the origins of them and reaching further to understand and explain it all. Who was Judas, Job, Hotham the Aroerite, Salome, Apostle John? Where was Gomorrah, Canaan, the Black Sea, Babylon, Eph esus, Patmos? Ask Mrs. Thomas. She knows.

That night back in Denver when the raspy voice called, my mother screamed and the bite of jelly sandwich I had just swallowed lodged in my throat. When I see her sitting in the bedroom bent over the Bible, I can still feel it.

Mama’s wearing one of her teacher dresses—the blue one with white piping along the bottom. She has lost weight over the months, and the dress sags at her waist and shoulders. Her hair is pulled back into a braid, pinned up at her neck. She is thirty-nine. Before all of this happened, she was making plans for her fortieth birthday party. Her invite list was two pages long. Her friends are gone now, too. Behind her. No contact. Mama looks down at her Bible. The Kingdom Hall is filled with new friends who call themselves her sisters and brothers. Mama goes every other night. On Sundays, me and Anna have to go with her. Her new sisters and brothers smile at us, don’t ask questions about our before life. When they did, Mama said
It’s nothing anyone needs to know about. Nothing even worth mentioning.
The sisters and brothers nodded as though they had lived their whole lives this way—full of things not worth mentioning. No one nosed too hard.
The future’s what matters,
the Witnesses said.
Jehovah’s plan.
It made me think that they were all hiding some part of themselves somewhere. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t pledge to the flag. They don’t celebrate holidays. They don’t celebrate birthdays.
We’re in the world but not of the world,
Mama says.
And anyway, a birthday is just another year.

“A job,” Daddy says again. He looks over at me, his eyes flickering recognition. “T,” he says. “Anna?” Then his eyes flick off, away from me.

“Leave him alone, Mama,” Anna says. And for a moment, the old Anna—Cameron—is there, looking at Daddy, her face all bunched up with worry. But then, just as quickly, she frowns, sucks her teeth at him and turns back to her schoolbooks. At night, Anna says
If I ignore him, he’ll go away. Like a rotten tooth.

Where will he go?
And I’m scared suddenly. Scared that Daddy will disappear as quickly and as permanently as Denver did.

And Anna shrugs, glares at me and says
Who cares. He ruined my life!

Now Mama looks over at Anna and frowns. “I’ll leave all of you alone!” She slowly puts on her raincoat, slips her Bible and some plastic-covered
Watchtower
s and
Awake!
s into her shoulder bag, and leaves.

I stare past Daddy’s shoulder out the window. Outside, Mama takes the magazines out of her bag and walks slowly, holding them up to people she passes. The people shake their heads or ignore her. Their eyes flickering pity or disdain. Some look straight ahead like Mama’s not even there.

Something’s gone dead on Mama’s face, like some part of her is remembering that this isn’t who she always was. That she was once a teacher. That her students loved her. At the end of the school year, students would put so many apples and “World’s Best Teacher” statues and mugs and T-shirts on her desk, we’d have to come help her carry all the stuff home.

She holds the magazines in front of her now. Maybe she thinks they’ll keep the memories from coming.
Hello. May I bring you some good news today?
she says to the people she passes.

My father takes my hand and pulls each finger gently. He looks up at me and smiles. “Evie,” he says, shaking his head and sighing. “My sweet copper piggy.”

“Penny!” I say, looking at him sideways, not sure if he knows he’s made a mistake.

But then he smiles slowly and pulls my pinky finger. “And this little penny stayed home,” he says, winking at me.

Then I laugh, relieved. He and I stare out the window, our shoulders touching. He needs a bath. But beneath that smell, there is the smell that has always been Daddy.

“I’m glad Randall and Dennis went to jail,” I whisper.

My father pulls my head to his shoulder and sighs. The rain falls and falls. Mama holds the
Watchtower
s up a little higher and walks on.

15

TOSWIAH’S DRESS IS GREEN AND TIGHT AND comes down past her ankles. It is sunny out, cold but not freezing. When she starts walking toward me, the dress seems to float out behind her. Lulu had a dress like that, and when Toswiah’s dress lifts up in the wind, tears start stinging. I bite my bottom lip and look away from her, but she keeps coming.

“You said you had a cousin named Toswiah? What was she like?”

Her voice isn’t mean when she asks this, just curious. And for the first time, I think that maybe she believes me.

I shrug. “She was nice,” I say, thinking of Lulu. “I miss her a lot.”

“She doesn’t visit you?”

“Uh-uh.”

Toswiah lets out a loud breath. When I look at her, she’s taking in the whole school yard, like the answers to everything are out there somewhere.

“Well, why the hell not?”

“Her mother and my mother are sisters. But they don’t speak. They had a fight a long time ago about I don’t know what. And that was the end.” I look at her and pull my lips to the side. The lie comes as easily as water.

“My mom has a sister that lives down South. She can’t stand her,” Toswiah says. “Grown-ups can be so stupid. That’s your sister, right?” She points across the school yard to where Anna’s standing with two other girls.

I nod.

“My sister’s retarded,” Toswiah says. She looks at me, one eyebrow raised.

I smile. “I think mine is, too.”

Toswiah shakes her head. The dress blows up a little, and she flattens it down against her legs with both hands. “No. I mean really retarded. Only everybody calls it ‘developmentally disabled.’ Only that’s too long to say. She’s seventeen.”

I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. We stare out at the school yard without saying anything.

After a moment, Toswiah says, “Well, I’ll see you later.”

I lift my hand and wave at her even though she’s standing close enough to touch.

“See you later.”

She stands there another minute like she’s waiting for me to say something else.

“Thanks,” I say.

“For what?”

I shrug and sort of smile. “For, you know. Coming over to talk to me.”

Toswiah looks at me for a long time. “Whatever,” she says. Then slowly walks away. When she gets halfway across the school yard, she turns and waves back.

I watch the wind lift her dress up around her ankles. It’s a warm wind, gentle. I feel it in my hair and against my ears. Maybe it’s a warm front. Coming in from Colorado.

16

ON SUNDAY, MY MOTHER GOT UP EARLY AND started fussing about me and Anna not going to Kingdom Hall enough. Anna put the pillow over her head and cursed. I sat up in bed and stared outside. Christmas lights flashed from people’s windows. We would not be celebrating Christmas this year or any holiday in our mother’s house ever again.

On Thanksgiving, Mama made lasagna and thanked her Jehovah for giving us another day. We ate the lasagna quietly, listening to Mama preach about how worldly holidays were wrong.
I don’t know how celebrating the fact that Pilgrims and Native Americans stopped fighting long enough to sit down and eat a meal together is a sin in God’s eyes,
Anna had said. I had never been a big turkey fan, but I missed Thanksgiving, missed all the people who stopped by to eat dinner or dessert with us and wish us a happy holiday. I missed us putting up lights two days after Thanksgiving and me and Anna fighting over how we’d hang them.

Now I stared out the window, wondering if those houses with lights had trees up already and if there were presents under them. The Christmas before last, I’d gotten so much stuff, I thought I’d never stop unwrapping. Most of it was still in Denver somewhere. Stuffed animals, games, clothes, gone. Even the ring Daddy had given me with TOSWIAH engraved into the gold.

I bit my lip, feeling the tears coming on.
Don’t think about the past,
Anna said.
Just the far, far future.
The sky was overcast. We’d been here over a year and I still didn’t know if that meant rain or snow. The windows rattled, which was a sure sign that it was freezing outside. I climbed out of bed slowly and stuck my feet into the ugly pink bedroom shoes Mama had gotten us.

“Get up, Anna. You hear Mama fussing. You know this means we gotta go to Kingdom Hall today.”

Anna groaned and rolled over toward the wall. Her side of the room was neater than mine. There were pink frilly things on her dresser and posters of musicians on her side of the wall. I didn’t listen to much music anymore.

“You stay in bed too long, you know she’ll pick out your outfit.”

Anna rolled back over and opened her eyes. “I hate this life!” she said. “Hate it!”

“Far, far future,” I said. Anna glared at me.

Every now and then Mama started making noise about how we’d all be destroyed in Armageddon if we didn’t straighten up and fly right. The first time she said it, Anna said
It’d be better than what I have now,
and Mama fussed at her for so long, I’m sure Anna was sorry she’d ever opened her mouth to say anything. Ever since then, Mama only once in a while made us go to Kingdom Hall. But when she did, there was no arguing with her about it.

I went over to the closet and pulled out a green wool jumper. Women weren’t allowed to wear pants at Kingdom Hall because the elders said it was being disrespectful to God—which made no sense to me. I mean, Eve was hopping around the Garden of Eden
naked
and God didn’t seem to be mad about that. I didn’t believe a whole lot that the religion said, but sometimes they hit on something that made me go “Oh.” Like once, this guy was giving a sermon about the Ten Commandments. I’d never really paid attention to them before, but when he was reciting them, they made sense—I mean, basically, they’re just saying be nice to people if you want people to be nice to you. It made me wish I hadn’t pointed to Carla’s lice-filled head all those years ago—giving her a first-class ticket to cootie-land.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe you go back to the dust after you die—that it’s like you never were. They believe a few people go to heaven and some go to the New World that God’s gonna create after He gets tired of how messed up this one is. No hell, though. Heaven, New World, or dust—those are your options.

Toswiah and Cameron? Dust. Evie and Anna? New World. Daddy? Already living in another religion’s hell. Mama? Heaven? Who knows.

Mama says in the New World, there won’t be any more hatred or disease or floods. She says the animals will all be friendly.
You’ll be able to pet snakes and hug lions,
she says, her eyes getting bright.

I pulled a dark green turtleneck off the hanger, got some underwear out of the drawers that Anna and I shared—she had the two top ones and I had the two bottom—then headed off to the bathroom, mumbling good morning to Mama and Daddy as I went past.

Our bathroom here is tinier than the downstairs
half-
bathroom we had back in Denver and three times as small as the upstairs bathrooms. I’d never thought of us as rich when we lived there, but now I know we had it good. I closed the door, pressed my head against the cool mirror glass and sighed.