The Heavenly Heart (3 page)

“So,” Pete says, “I meet this guy at the Pearly Gates who heads this HMO and I tell him of course he can stay. But only for three days, then he’s out of here.”

With that, I am out of my funk.

“Why do you look old, try to talk cool and act young?” I ask.

“I don’t,” he says. “That’s how you hear and see me,” he says. “Everyone perceives me differently.”

“Why?” I ask.

“It wouldn’t be heaven without that provision,” he says, “What if they thought the real me was a jerk, and they were stuck with me for all eternity?”

“I thought
that
was eternity?” I say, and point to the purple and gold mist above us.

“It is. But so is this,” he says.

I’m confused.

“Lorelei, up there’s the living room,” Pete explains. “This here’s the front porch. It’s all the same mansion.”

I laugh. Pete has answers for everything. I lie back on the pillow and stretch my legs. Maybe I’ll take a nap. I never used to like naps, but here they’re nice. And you can take as many as you want. No one calls you to dinner or asks you to water the plants or answer the door. We set our own schedule. We do what we want, when we want. You want to sleep till noon? Hey—no problem. That part of Heaven
is
heaven. But I miss what’s going on below me. And I know I’ll never be ready to go upstairs until I no longer do.

*     *     *

 I curl up in the Golden Window and peek in on my parents. I see that they’re trying to go on with their lives and I’m relieved. Magazines and talk shows are full of stories where tragedy strikes and alcoholism, divorce, and addiction take over.

My father is home and taking long walks. He’s getting stronger every day. His cheeks have so much color it’s hard to believe it’s really him.  He’s been sick for as long as I’ve known him. Now he looks younger and leaner. I never really noticed when I was down there, but now I see that he’s very handsome, with sandy hair and deep blue eyes. Of course, his hair is graying at his temples, but on him it looks really cool. My mother says it isn’t possible for him to be more
appealing
, and thank God for that. She’s always thanking God, but it sounds like she could substitute any name, Harold or Joe or Bob, and it would be the same.

“Thank God. I thought they’d never leave,” she might say. That would be in reference to the Hillermans, business friends of my father. My mother finds them especially boring. They bring scads of photos from their trips around the world.

Or, “Thank God, Onetta will be here early today,” she will say, usually on a Monday, since there is always a weekend of messes to clean up by then.

Onetta is our housekeeper. Before that, she was my nanny. She took me from my mother’s arms the very day my parents brought me home. My father said my mother needed rest. My mother said, “I certainly did!”

I’m told it took too many hours for me to get here and my mother nearly died, and Onetta cared for me until my mother felt up to it, and tried to, but never did.

So it’s Onetta’s face I remember most—the one who made my heart leap and my legs jounce and my arms dance, each and every time she leaned over to take me out of my crib. She was sun and I was morning.

She and her family are African-American, but my parents call them Negroes. I told them they didn’t want to be called Negroes anymore. My parents said they didn’t care.

Onetta’s skin was rich and creamy, shiny and black as tar. I noticed when I was little that mine was white and pasty. It didn’t shine at all. It made me very sad. I spent hours rubbing baby oil on my arms until they glowed. The oil rubbed off and stained my clothes. My mother saw and asked me why in heavens name I would do such a thing.

“I want to have pretty skin like Onetta,” I said, and dumped even more oil on my arms. She snatched the bottle of Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Oil out of my small hands.

“Stop that!” she said. She was very angry and I wondered why. Onetta could wash my clothes. But Mother was on a tirade. She was spitting out words that didn’t make sense. She grabbed hold of my arm.

“Silly child,” she said, and gave it a good shake. “You are not to do that! Ever! Do you understand? Do you? You will
never
be like Onetta!” she screamed. “You are never to try to be. Do I make myself clear?”

I was hiccupping and crying, but nodded that I did. She let go of my arm and went to the sunroom to make notes for a dinner party she and my father were planning.

I ran to the kitchen to find Onetta and hid behind her backside, which was wide enough that I could. I’d be safe until mother calmed herself. I told Onetta what I’d done. She laughed and picked me up.

“Chile, you be wasting your time. Come sit down and eats this lunch I makes you.”

It was always something delicious. Food was putty in her hands. She could prepare a vegetable you hate and make you beg for seconds.

“The good Lord give you the kind skin he wants you be have,” she said and tied a dishtowel around my neck. She smelled like lavender and honeysuckle.

I settle back in the Golden Window and realize I miss her more than all the others. She is the kindest, hardest working person I know.

Onetta came every day, but Sunday, the Lord’s Day, she said. It’s wasn’t negotiable she added, when my mother mentioned New Year’s Eve fell on it some years. They always had a grand party. My mother said it was to welcome in the New Year with joy, and to say goodbye to the old one with respect.

If my mother’s conscience could speak, hers would have said she was lying. Hers would have said, “Good riddance, you pathetic year.” There were many, but my mother pretended they belonged to other people. The privileged are required to have good ones, she said, or it’s a waste.

I was happy that Onetta came each day. I loved everything about her. She talked to me while she cooked and worked around the house.

“Don’t bother Onetta,” Mother told me later. “She’s here to work. It makes our lives easier.”

It must have made hers very difficult. She had four children who had no father. I mean, they had a father at one time. Onetta didn’t hatch them like eggs. But she didn’t mention him, except to say his name was Clarence and he was friends with the Devil, and she was waiting for Jesus to bring him back into the fold.

“Will that be soon?” I asked.

I knew it must be hard for her to feed all those children on a maid’s salary. And she needed a new car. Hers was very old and moaned like Marley’s ghost come back to haunt us.

Mother had her pull it completely around back from the circular brick driveway and park it next to the gazebo which was surrounded by trees.

“It’s closer to the kitchen,” she chirped gaily to Onetta.

But I knew it was so the neighbors wouldn’t notice. Onetta knew that, too and winked so only I could see.

“Such an eyesore,” Mother whispered and shook her head.

I didn’t respond, but I wanted to. I wanted to say, “If it’s such an eyesore, why don’t you buy her one that isn’t?”

They could have easily done that. My parents were rich. But I kept that thought to myself, next to all the others I stored up through the years. My mother said what a sweet child I was—she wanted to
absolutely, positively
gobble me up. I was adorable, just adorable, she said, and smothered me with kisses.

Actually, I was a frightened child, who thought she would never love me like that again, if I told her how I really felt. I was a coward.  But her love was very important and her kisses were equally delicious. I felt I must have them for always. I couldn’t risk it. I stayed mute. I didn’t stand up for Onetta. It burned a hole in my chest.

I prayed to Jesus to make me strong, to say what was right and why. Nothing happened. I was as fearful as ever. I told Onetta my prayers didn’t work. They didn’t get answers. She said, “The Lord be working in his own good time.” I told myself she was probably right. She knew a lot about working.

“You got to get some that patience, Miss Lorelei.”

I was four years old and had no idea what patience looked like, or where it could be hiding.

I set out to look in the back of the enormous hall closet. If it was there I could grab a handful while no one was looking. It wasn’t, but I stumbled upon my Easter basket which wasn’t due to be there until Sunday. I sat wondering how it got there so early. I climbed out from under my mother’s furs and my father’s cashmere trench coat and slipped on a family of dust bunnies.

I wanted to tell Onetta I found my basket, but I was afraid it would magically disappear, punishment from the Easter bunny or someone close to him for finding it days before I was supposed to. I said nothing.

I stopped looking for patience.  I was too scared to continue searching through the house my parents insisted was just the right size. They were wrong. There were too many rooms. I got lost in it.

The ceilings were taller than giraffes standing on stilts. The rooms were large and cold, even when the fireplaces were lit up like Christmas. Even when the thermostats confirmed it was seventy-two degrees, which mother assured me was perfectly comfortable and not to say another word.

“You can’t possibly be cold, Lorelei,” she said very sternly.

But I was, right down to my heart. Even so, I nodded that I wasn’t. My mother scared me. If I wasn’t careful she would start to yell. Tirades, my father called them.

What scared me most about our house were the elaborate lanterns mounted close to the ceiling, which my mother loved.

“From England,” she told our guests. “Still fueled with gas.”

They had tongues that flickered menacingly. They sent shadows across the walls that frightened me more than anything that might have hidden under my bed. I stayed in the kitchen with Onetta, where it was safe and warm.

I prayed every night to be brave, but nothing happened. I told Onetta God still didn’t hear me.

“He hear you fine,” she said, and tried to smooth the creases out of my dress. I’d been running wild in the back yard all day, though Mother stated clearly that I wasn’t to.

 “I can’t hear
him!
”

“In time you gonna, Miss Lorelei,” she said, and cupped my chin in one soft brown hand and gently wiped a smudge of dirt from my cheek with the other.

I asked her why she called me Miss Lorelei.

“’Cause your mama say to,” she said, and I climbed up into her lap. It was better than a warm feather bed.

I wrapped my arms around her fat neck and squeezed. I loved her more than candy.  She kept her mouth shut and did exactly what my mother said, like me.  Maybe I wasn’t a coward. Maybe I was smart.

You needs to listen with your heart, poor chile,” Onetta said, and patted my back like I was a baby in need of a good long burp. She was always calling me poor chile. I liked her words. They were soothing. They glided off her tongue like they were made of velvet. Still, my mother insisted we were very rich, so being called a poor chile confused me.

“Listens with your heart, chile.” She said once more, and tapped the spot to the left of her bosoms. They were large as bed pillows and soft as duck down.

I tried very hard to do just that, but my heart didn’t hear any better than my ears. I gave up, and relied on Onetta to pray for me. She prayed about everything, so I knew I was included.

“Praise Jesus!” she said if the newscaster reported they’d caught a dangerous fugitive. But it wasn’t a figure of speech for Onetta.

“Lord of all the glory, what that man doing now?” she said if our gardener was working with some new contraption to trap the Japanese beetles, which ate my mother’s hostas.

Onetta prayed over her food, too, which I thought was nice. I told Mother we should do that.

“What a
splendid
idea,” she said, like I’d suggested we take in a movie after Sunday brunch.

Onetta ate her meals in the kitchen. “We don’t eat”, mother said. “We dine.” It was served to us on pretty plates in the dining room, except for breakfast, which we had in the sunroom around an enormous glass table that always had fresh flowers.

Onetta brought it in on a fancy tray.  Soft-boiled eggs in little cups, wheat toast with just a trace of butter, fresh strawberries and pineapple and bananas. And there was thick creamy oatmeal! Mine was cooked with whole milk (not water like my father’s) and laced with brown sugar and honey and just the right amount of cream on top. It was my favorite.

We didn’t have bacon, which was my other favorite. I knew it was because my father might croak, but I pretended like my mother that it was because we choose not to eat food that came from a pig.

“Filthy animals,” my mother said, and I nodded.

My father would read the Wall Street Journal. My mother would put just the right amount of skim milk and a teaspoon of his favorite artificial sweetener in his coffee. He would stir it without looking up. She would pour herself another cup.

 “Stock report pleasing?” she would say, and raise her brow while she set the silver coffee pot back down on the sideboard.

When it was, my father was happy all day. He’d whistle softly or kiss the back of my mother’s neck while she leaned over the stove to taste whatever delightful concoction Onetta had left us for dinner.

If the Dow-Jones was down there was gloom everywhere. My father worshipped money like Onetta worshipped Jesus.

Onetta told me when her youngest boy Thomas got sick with meningitis she prayed all day and night.

“Even while you worked?

“Every precious minute till that boy be well.”

We didn’t pray at our house, but we probably would have if someone were dying. Of course my father was in danger of doing just that, but he and my mother refused to believe it. They refused to consider things that were unpleasant. The ones they couldn’t, they ignored. They were very strange people. But I loved them like they were normal.

“That’s unconditional,” Paige said. She was my oldest friend. “Good for you,” she added. She didn’t like my mother. She thought she was a phony.

I knew there were others who didn’t like her, either. It made me love my mother even more. I told myself when she was born her parents put her in a pot to grow like a flower. She was fertilized and given sunlight so she would flourish. Then she was nurtured with poison, instead of water, and her insides ended up like weeds.