The Center of Everything (15 page)

Samuel comes home a few days later. He is still so small, and now two scars, pink lines, crisscross his chest. But he is beautiful, even so, lovely to look at because of his eyes. They are like blue stained glass, the light shining from somewhere behind. Already he has eyelashes, so thick and dark that they catch ahold of one another when he blinks.

My mother keeps him close to her at all times, carrying him around the house in the crook of her arm. She sleeps with him next to her on her mattress, a stack of blankets around him so he can’t roll. When I try to touch his face, she pulls him away from me, her hand over his eyes. “Wash your hands first,” she says. “You have to be careful, Evelyn. We’re lucky he’s still with us. Very lucky.”

Just by looking at him, you can see he is still sick. His left arm doesn’t unbend at all, and most of the fingers of his right hand stay curled beneath the palm. Just the one pointer finger, instead of curling under with the others, stays straight.

“He’s like E.T.,” I say, leaning forward to touch the tip of his finger.

My mother frowns, pushes my hand away. “What a nice thing to say, Evelyn.”

So I leave them alone. I stay back in my bedroom, doing my homework, reading my green-and-gold Bible. I read a page a night, starting in the beginning, with the seven days and Adam and Eve and the subtle serpent. That story is also difficult to imagine, a snake talking like that. Animals talk in cartoons all the time, and sometimes in movies, but not in real life. Except for parrots. I would have liked to have lived when animals talked.

In all of the stories, God likes some people, and he stays on their side. He likes Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, and Moses. He doesn’t really like the other people as much, right from the start. He doesn’t like Egyptians at all.

Pastor Dave made it sound like when Noah and all of them came out of the ark and saw the rainbow they were all happy forever, but it wasn’t like that. Noah got drunk and fell asleep the way Mr. Rowley used to do, only Noah was naked. One of his sons, Ham, saw him, and instead of Noah getting in trouble for lying around drunk and naked, Canaan gets in trouble, even though he wasn’t in the story in the first place, and he has to have a special mark on him and be a servant for the rest of his life, just because he’s Ham’s son.

Really, it’s not important if you do bad things or good things. Some people are just blessed, and some aren’t.

I keep reading, every night, and now I have already finished Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus. I am already up to Numbers, the part where God helps Moses kill all the Midianites. The Midianites are not blessed, so they have to die, even all the boys, even all the women Midianites who have already known a man by lying with him. This, I think, is a nice way of saying women who have had sex. Adulteresses. Moses says they have to die, but the other women get to stay alive.

My mother knocks quickly and opens the door before I tell her to come in, Samuel quiet in her arms. She is still wearing the nightgown with the ketchup stain, although now it has faded.

“You’re supposed to knock and wait,” I tell her. “It’s my room, not yours.”

She clicks her tongue, using her free hand to point at the Bible in my lap. “What’s this?” she asks. “When did this start?”

I take a deep breath, getting ready.
In me I have the strength of the Lord, and I fear no evil
. “Pastor Dave gave it to me.”

“Pastor Dave.” She keeps standing there.

“Pastor Dave at the church Eileen took me to while you were in the hospital.”

She nods slowly. “The church Eileen took you to while I was in the hospital.” She waits, maybe counting to ten in her head. “What church would that be, Evelyn?”

“The Church of the Second Ark.”

“Ahhhh.” She bites her lip. “The
Second
Ark.”

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

She moves Samuel to her other arm. “Everything I say?”

I don’t smile back. I’m sick of her and her jokes. She thinks she’s funny, but really, there’s nothing for her to laugh at. “Just because you don’t go to church doesn’t mean I can’t.”

Samuel starts to whimper, his cry high-pitched and shrill. She shifts him again, blowing lightly on his face. “Well, who’s going to drive you there? Because I can tell you, Evelyn, I’ve got a new little baby here, who’s still very sick, and I’ve got other things to do with my time than take you to the Church of the Second Ark. Super sorry.”

“I’ve got a ride,” I say. It’s true. Pastor Dave’s wife, Sharon, gave me a hug at the end of the service and told me they would be
happy
to give me a ride to church.
More
than happy. They are going to come early, so Sharon can French-braid my hair.

“Were you going to tell me about this?”

“I’m telling you now.”

She leans against the door frame. “Let me get this straight. I go away for three weeks, almost die in the hospital, come back home, and you’ve turned into a carbon fucking copy of my mother.”

Evil. She is evil. Don’t turn back
. I sigh and look down at my Bible. “Please don’t use that kind of language in front of me.”

She starts to laugh, her hand over her eyes, then backs away, shutting the door between us.

She is giving Samuel a bottle in the front room the next morning at eight-fifteen. I wait in my room until the last possible moment, but I have to go past her to get my coat.

“Just a minute,” she says, holding up her hand. “How do I know who these people are? I don’t know how I feel about letting you ride off with total strangers.”

“Eileen knows them.”

“Great,” she says. “Great.”

I look over her head, out the window. Pastor Dave’s wood-paneled station wagon is in the parking lot, and he is standing beside it wearing the light blue suit again, squinting at our building. My mother follows me outside, shielding Samuel’s face from the cold with her hand.

“Well hello!” Sharon says, already stepping out of the passenger seat. She wears a pink coat over the same dress she was wearing last Sunday, nylons, pink flats, and pink earrings that look like large buttons. Her voice makes me think of water running through a faucet, a whistling sound, happy and light. “You must be Evelyn’s mother!”

“I am,” my mother says. She does not look at Sharon when she says this, but at the bumper sticker on the back of the station wagon:
WARNING: THIS CAR WILL BE UNMANNED IN THE EVENT OF RAPTURE
!

Pastor Dave is on the other side of the car. “Evelyn’s a lovely little girl,” he says, resting his arm on the roof of the car. “You won’t mind if we borrow her for a few hours?”

“I guess Evelyn will have to do what she wants.”

“Well, we’d love it if you’d join us too. I don’t know what Evelyn has told you about my accordion playing, but really, it’s not that bad.”

Sharon laughs. “I think he’s getting better!”

“No,” my mother says, not even trying to be nice. “No thanks.” I am so embarrassed by the way she looks. She sleeps in her clothes now, and you can tell.

Pastor Dave nods and gets back in the car.

“Bye now,” Sharon says, rolling up the window.

Even when I am in their car, my mother stays outside, watching me. I can actually feel her eyes on my head. Pastor Dave starts up the engine, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. “What about your father, Evelyn? Would he like to come to church?”

“I don’t have one,” I say. He and Sharon look at each other. I like this, the way this surprises them. I want them to know exactly what I’m up against, how bad she really is. I know they like me already, and the worse they think she is, the more they will think I am amazing to be so different.

“What about the baby’s father?” Sharon asks, turning around, still smiling. “Is he home?”

“No. The baby doesn’t have a father either.”

“Oh,” they say, both of them at the same time, not looking at each other now, not needing to. Pastor Dave puts the car in gear, and we shift smoothly into first, no problem at all as we glide away.

nine

P
ASTOR
D
AVE AND
S
HARON PICK
me up every Sunday before church now. I worry they’ll get sick of having to come all the way out of town to get me, but Sharon says, “No, Evelyn, no. Don’t be silly.”

I wish they were my parents.

When I am not at church, and not at school, there’s nothing to do but watch my mother sleep or carry Samuel around the house. When summer comes, I want to walk into town with Travis, but my mother says I can’t because I’ll get hit by a car. I tell her I don’t care, because I know if I die I’ll go to heaven and that’s why I’m not a coward the way she is.

“That’s why you can’t go,” she says.

Travis sometimes comes over, and we go sit up on the roof, watching cars on the highway. He tells me stories about the strip mall. He wants to get a skateboard, a nice one, but he doesn’t have the money. He has started stealing again, and every day there are close calls with security guards.

“I’m going to get one of those tarantulas,” he says.

“How are you going to steal that?”

“I don’t know.” He throws pebbles on top of the roof of Unit B, at the windows of his own apartment. It makes Jackie O bark, and when Mrs. Rowley opens the door to look up at the sky, Travis and I lie down on the roof so she can’t see us.

“Who is that?” she says. “Who’s there?”

I let Travis throw the pebbles, but I don’t throw any myself. God is watching us at all times, can see our every move. “You shouldn’t,” I whisper. “Travis. You shouldn’t do that.”

He puts his fingers to his lips, tosses another pebble. If it were anyone else doing this, I’d make them stop. But I can’t yell too much at Travis for throwing the rocks, or go back inside, because if I do, he might not come back.

The door opens again, and Mrs. Rowley leans out of the balcony. She is wearing a white cotton nightgown, her shoulder bones like metal rails to hang something on. “Who’s there?” She looks up, right at us, but doesn’t see us in the darkness. She goes back inside.

Travis throws another pebble, and another. She opens the door again, and for a quick moment, she does not look like herself. Standing there in her white nightgown, her thin arms pale in the darkness, she looks different, not so skinny as much as small. I have known Mrs. Rowley my entire life, heard her yell, watched her watch us with her mean fish eyes. But I’ve never seen her just listen, not wearing her glasses, just being still and looking up at the sky.

Travis says her name softly, his voice low, stretching it out like a ghost in a movie.
“Becky…”

“For God’s sake, who’s there?” She is scared now. Jackie O sees us, looking up at me with iridescent eyes.

“Rebeeeeeecaaaaaa. Rebeeeeeeeeeecaaaa.”

She leans over the cement railing, squinting up into the darkness. “Dad?”

Travis puts his face into the neck of his shirt. I shake my head and give him a mad look, but I can tell from the way his ears rise up he’s laughing.

“Is it you?” She leans farther over the balcony, looking up at the sky.

Travis reaches up and presses his hand against my mouth, his arm hooking quickly around my neck. I can feel his breath against my cheek, warm and humid. I say nothing.

When she goes back inside, he lets go of me, still laughing. “Come on, Evelyn. It’s nice for her. She liked her dad.”

“He’s dead?”

He smiles, his ears rising. “Not tonight.”

I won’t laugh, even though I can still feel where his arm was on the back of my neck. “You shouldn’t do that, Travis. It’s wrong.”

But the next day, Travis says his mother is being nice all of a sudden, speaking to him in soft, careful tones, as if there were a camera, or someone from child protection, right there in the room. And instead of lying in bed the way she usually does, she got up early and made breakfast for the two of them. She even brushed her hair.

When school starts again, Samuel is eight months old, but you can’t tell. He’s still small, and when you smile and talk to him, he doesn’t smile back. He doesn’t even look.

Still, whenever my mother takes him anywhere, strangers come up and tell her how beautiful he is. At the grocery store, they look over her shoulder and smile and make kissing sounds as if really, they know him well, maybe better than we do. Carlotta at the Kwikshop tells my mother he is the most gorgeous baby she has ever seen, and other people say the same thing.
“Look at those eyes!”
they say.
“What beautiful eyes!!”
People we don’t even know try to touch his face, and my mother has to turn quickly and explain that he has been sick, and that she has to be careful about germs. When we’re at the Laundromat, a woman asks if she can hold him, and my mother says only if she washes her hands first. The woman says fine, and she does. She goes into the bathroom of the Laundromat and comes out drying her wet hands on a paper towel. This is how much people want to hold him.

But people talk only about his eyes. They don’t talk about how one of his arms still won’t unbend, or how his fingers stay curled underneath his palms so his hands look like claws. My mother has to pry his fingers open every night to wash his hands and trim his fingernails. She pats baby powder on them so he won’t get a rash. Sometimes she blows on them with the hair dryer. Still, his fingers smell strange, as if he has been holding pennies.

People in grocery stores and at the Laundromat never talk about how he doesn’t smile, and how he doesn’t look back. But I can tell the moment they realize it, that something is wrong, because their voices get louder and they talk about his eyes more and more, about how beautiful they are, the most beautiful eyes they have ever seen.

The Day After
is going to be on television in November. It’s about nuclear war. The people who made the movie picked Kansas because we’re in the middle, and that way it would scare the most people. I’ve been to Lawrence. My mother and I stopped there once and got pizza on Massachusetts Street. The commercial for
The Day After
shows Massachusetts Street turning black and white in a flash and then just going to darkness. A man keeps saying, “This is Lawrence, Kansas. Over. Is anyone there? Anyone at all?” No one answers, and you can guess that’s because everyone else is already blown up and dead.

I want to watch it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to because the school sent home a note.

Dear Parents,

As you are probably well aware,
The Day After
is going to be on television next week. The film attempts to depict what would happen to a small town in Kansas in the event of a nuclear war. Because the film is primarily set in Lawrence, Kansas, only fifty miles away, we at Kerrville Middle School are concerned that the program, meant to be realistic and upsetting, might be a little too realistic and upsetting for young people in our community. When deciding whether or not to allow your child to watch
The Day After,
please take into consideration his or her ability to deal with anxiety and fear, as well as his or her understanding of fiction versus reality.

My mother reads the note and looks at me carefully.

“What?” I say. “I’m fine.”

My mother says I can’t watch it. I have to stay in my room while it’s on. I scream and yell, but it doesn’t matter. Sorry you don’t like it, she says. That’s the way it is.

She watches it, though, sitting out in the front room with Samuel in her arms. I listen to what I can through the door. There are just people talking at first, but then there are sirens, loud crashing sounds, people screaming. Sometimes there’s laughing and music playing, but it’s just the commercials.

When I come out of my room to go to the bathroom, I can see her face, tear-streaked and watching the screen, holding Samuel close as if the bombs were really going off, not just on television, but all around her, right there in the room.

Even when he’s a year old, he can’t roll over. My mother says it’s because of his bad arm. His legs are weak too, still so small, she says. The doctor says yes, maybe that’s what it is. But he’d like someone from the university to have a look at him, just to make sure.

Two women come over. They are very nice, and both of them wear long overcoats with blazers and turtlenecks underneath. They carry clipboards. One of them has a green ball, and she tries to get Samuel to take it. They hold him on their laps, and they tell my mother how beautiful he is, especially his eyes.

My mother sighs and crosses her arms. She is tired of hearing this.

And, one of the women says, putting down her clipboard, there seem to be some developmental delays.

“Right,” my mother says. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

The woman nods, keeping her eyes on my mother’s face. “Of course, there are the physical disabilities, but I suspect mental delays as well. We would have to do more tests, but I imagine they’re fairly severe.”

My mother stares at the lady with the green ball, her face still with fear. I understand, just from the quiet in the room, that this is very bad, what the woman is telling us. Samuel is retarded. That’s what she’s saying. He will ride the short bus with the kids who use crutches, wear crash helmets. When you do something stupid at school, you get called a retard, and this is what they mean. They mean Samuel. There’s nothing to be done.

My mother looks at Samuel, still lying in the other woman’s arms, and makes a whimpering sound, something inside her crumpling up, or getting pulled apart.

One of the women gives my mother a card with a phone number on it. She says the sooner she calls, the better, the more they can help. They have special classes. My mother winces when they say “special,” and she goes to the door and stands there until both of the women put on their overcoats and leave.

She gets her own green ball. For days, she tosses it lightly in Samuel’s lap, again and again, saying, “Catch the ball, honey! Catch!” as if all he had to do was catch it, just once, and that would prove them wrong.

When I go to church now, I pray for the baby, because he is still innocent and does not deserve to be retarded. Pastor Dave says we should wait and see, and not listen to everything so-called experts say just because they are from so-called universities. They don’t know everything, he says. And miracles happen every day.

Driving me home from church, he says he has thought about Samuel, prayed about him, and has heard from God himself that we should not give up. He says I should try to get my mother to bring Samuel to church next Sunday. They are bringing in a faith healer from Arizona, one of the very best. “We’re so blessed to have him,” he says, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Harry Hopewell.”

“What a marvelous name for a healer,” Sharon says, turning around. “Hopewell. Hope-well!” She is wearing blue earrings shaped like telephones, the receiver hanging onto the outside of her ear, the cord a hoop underneath her earlobe.

“He saved the life of a man in Nevada, dying of so-called cancer,” Pastor Dave says, scratching his mustache. “The doctors had given up hope, but then Hopewell laid hands on him”—Pastor Dave holds his own hands up for a moment, letting go of the steering wheel—“and the man was cured. Boom. My brother in Texas saw it with his own eyes.”

The next time Eileen comes to visit, I tell her Harry Hopewell is coming. Her mouth goes in the shape of a capital
O,
her eyes wide. “Harry Hopewell? In Kerrville? Oh Evelyn, he’s amazing, truly amazing,” she says, her hand over her mouth. “He’s the one who’s been curing all those boys who thought they were homosexuals.” When she says “homosexuals,” she leans forward and whispers, as if really, she doesn’t want me to hear. “He put the spirit of God in them, and they don’t think that way anymore. Some of them are already married.” She’s holding Samuel while my mother is in the bathroom. He is awake, but you can tell this only because his eyes are open. For him, that’s the only difference.

Eileen sways him gently back and forth. “If anyone can help this baby, it’s that man.”

“She won’t come, Eileen,” I say. “She hates church.” Really, I don’t want her to come. She’ll ruin it, contaminate it just by being there. Pastor Dave and Sharon like to remind me that my mother is always welcome at the Second Ark, and that I should keep inviting her. When they say this, I shake my head sadly, and say I don’t think she’ll ever come. They hug me then, and they tell me how amazing it is that I have turned out the way I have.

But now my mother is coming with us to church, and she’s bringing Samuel. Eileen got her to come. She said all she wanted for her birthday this year was for all four of us to go to church together. She said it would be nice if we could
all do something together,
and when she said this, she nodded in my direction.

“Fine,” my mother said. “Just this once.”

And already it is just as bad as I knew it would be, her coming with us. When she sees the church is also a roller-skating rink, she starts laughing. She says the Second Ark might be more successful if they let everyone bring their skates. The pastor could stand in the middle and preach how everyone was going to hell while the congregation glided around him, bending down to do the cold duck, grabbing hands and spinning in pairs.

I glare at her. Eileen shakes her head.

“Sorry,” she says. She looks down at Samuel. “You thought it was funny, right?” His blue eyes gaze up past her head. He is her only friend these days, the only person who isn’t mad at her, trying to get away.

When Pastor Dave and Sharon see us, they walk toward us quickly, their hands reaching forward. “Tina!” Sharon says. “We’re so happy you could come today. It’s so good to see you!”

“What a beautiful baby!” Pastor Dave says. “Look at those eyes!” Pastor Dave is holding the accordion, but Sharon reaches over the blanket to touch Samuel’s face. My mother pulls him away.

“Sorry,” she says. “He was sick for so long. I have to be careful.”

Pastor Dave and Sharon look at each other quickly, then back at my mother. She tries to smile. “If you wash your hands you can hold him.”