Beautiful Ones

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Solomon Church 07, Dan Tantrum, flickr

On Good Friday Mama and I saw the blood dripping from Jesus’ cross. The cross hung from the church ceiling with wires at the front of the sanctuary. It hung over the communion table where Daddy in his robe broke a big round flat cracker and said Jesus’ words to his congregation: “This is my body, given for you.” Where he held up the silver cup and said “This is my blood shed for you.”

Mama and I sat in the front, our usual place. While Daddy passed out the plates of crackers to the ushers to take to everybody, the choir stood in the balcony behind everybody and sang some of my favorite hymns.

“On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame.” Some of the voices of the choir were very wavery. They were very old. A lot of the ladies hugged me after the service. Some even brought me a candy or cookies they had made.

A cluster of fat drops of blood fell from the cross and dripped on the white cloth pressed out by Mama the night before.

Mama stood up, shaking. She let out a tiny cry. She whispered to me “Did you see that?”

I nodded. I did see it. I put my arm around her and helped her out of the church. Recently, Mama had been seeing things at church, and I had too though I was trying to be strong for her. Mama wasn’t as strong as I was.

We hightailed it out. The ladies in the pews would be wagging their heads and clucking, gossiping, especially the ladies who had made it a big point to wear all black on Good Friday for Jesus. These same ladies would look like iced cakes and Easter eggs on Sunday. The men would draw up their brows and grow stern and pick at their hands and mustaches and wonder what they should do.

Early the next morning we had to drive Mama to the Florida state mental hospital in Chattahoochee.

“I’m sorry to tell you, your Mama has schizophrenia,” said the doctor, for some reason looking directly at me. Maybe he wanted to treat me like a grown up so I could believe I would understand it. He laced up his fingers across his white doctor coat and leaned back in his chair behind the army green desk.

Daddy and I were sitting in the doc’s office on the other side of his metal tank. The nurses had taken Mama down the hall to help her change.

“No,” I said. “She saw blood. It was Jesus’ blood coming down from the cross in Daddy’s church.”

“She shouldn’t be seeing these things, Shawna. She’s ill.”

Daddy didn’t stand up for me, he didn’t say These things are real. He didn’t say I preach about them every Sunday. And I preached them on Good Friday.

And I didn’t say And I saw it too. I saw the blood Jesus shed. It dripped down high from the cross and splashed on Daddy’s communion table.

I didn’t say it because I wondered if the doc would call me a crazy bones and lock me up. Besides, I had to be Mama’s protector. I couldn’t be crazy.

The Doc took us down to Mama’s room where a nurse was shooting her up with something. Mama would never have been caught dead in the clothes she was wearing, not even just to hang out around the house. She was drooped over, barely holding herself up.

“Why are they making her more tired?” I asked the Doctor, looking up at his big granite face, not really know if what I said meant anything.

The Doc let me go in and give her a hug. I took her in my arms and it was almost like I was the Mama. Her hair smelled like it did more and more recently, unwashed, wild, like an animal’s who slept out in the woods.

Daddy took me home when we got back from Chattohoochee. He dropped me off and went to the church to finish up some business for Easter Sunday.

Pony and Todd were out back when I got home. They were boys from the tracks and overpasses who slipped in through our back fence. They were always around to make me laugh if I was lonely. It was almost magic the way they showed up just when I needed someone. And I was nice to them even though they could do bad things. Mama had taught me Jesus loved everyone.

Pony had a burlap bag holding something big and wiggling around. They had both been huffing paint, their mouths were ringed with the white. Their lips were always red and chapped.

“Shit, Shawna, bout time,” said Pony. “Ma got stashed away in the loony bin.”

I hadn’t said anything. I don’t know how he knew. I had half a mind to haul off and whop him.

In Orlando Daddy bought us a house that backed up to a railroad track. It used to be orange groves but there was still one orange tree in our backyard which pops out tough dry fruit. No one eats them. They’re kinda gross. The fruit falls and molds and rots in the grass, turning green. Pony, Todd, and I throw the rotten fruit at each other, the dried mold flying up in little puffs from our clothes.

We used to crawl through the fence to the tracks and follow the tracks where the women sell their bodies on Orange Blossom Trail and the pornographers sell whatever they want. I heard a news person on the tv say the tracks have a reputation like the killing fields of Texas because the sounds of murder are covered by the trains just like they were by the oil rigs in Texas.

I have no idea now why Daddy bought us this house but at the time I didn’t think much of it. It was an exotic adventure compared to my life in a small town in Arkansas. I’m pretty sure Mama and Daddy had no idea who I hung out with or where I went. They knew I was happy and occupied. They had bought me a bike so I could get around places. Kids weren’t often in too much danger back then. And our house and other houses just sat on this kind of edge that backed up against something dark. They weren’t super fancy but they weren’t poor people’s houses either. No one seemed to worry. Besides, the only people who were killed were the homeless.

It turned out the contents of the burlap was a baby. I was shocked Pony could lift the sack his arms and body were puny like Alfalfa but he was wiry from living on the street and scrapping. He and Todd often ripped people off and pulled schemes to eat, find supplies to huff, pad out their living quarters in cars in a scrapyard or in the underdeveloped woods between neighborhoods.

“We stole this baby,” said Pony. It was always him speaking for the two of them. A train screeched past on the other side of the fence, creating a dry wind of metal on metal and dust pouring through the cracks. The baby, startled, started to scream and pump its fists.

“Shut up, baby!” shouted Pony, bending over to yell in its face. “Shut the fuck up little stupid baby!”

Todd toppled over on the grass, his raspy laugh gaining hold on his throat.

I kind of didn’t care they stole from stores or people’s pockets but I couldn’t tolerate this.

I picked up the baby.

“We’re putting the baby up for ransom,” said Pony.

“You’re clueless.”

I walked into the house with the baby who was nice and chunky in my arms, like the huge sacks of oats they sold at the feed store in Arkansas. The two of them followed me in and draped themselves across the table where Mama served us waffles for breakfast with strawberry syrup.

“We were going to tie you up and make you a sex slave,” said Pony.

I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. I couldn’t be sure they weren’t serious.

“Now your Mama’s gone and Daddy’s always away, we can do whatever.”

I put the baby on a little couch next to the kitchen and kicked Pony boy in the nuts. I cracked Todd’s shoulder with a cast iron skillet. They flew out the back door, wailing.

The light was fading from the sky and it was getting dark. The cicadas were out in force. It sounded like one was just on the outside of the back door.

It made me sad Mama couldn’t help me with the baby. She would have liked to. I found soft cloths and safety pins and changed its diaper. I put her in an old tshirt of mine, one that was too small for me. It was soft and smelled like softener. I found an old sippy cup Mom had kept and warmed some milk.

I fell asleep with the baby in my bed. I missed Mama but I wasn’t as lonely as I had been when she started checking out on me at night when Dad was at the church late, working. She had stayed in the living room, silent, no tv, the fading light invading the cracks of the room. It made me feel strange and sad, all at once. She hadn’t always been that way. We used to play Operation, my favorite game.

“Mama, at least turn lights on,” I would say, and I would turn a light on. I made us dinner. Later I put her to bed. I never told Daddy about these nights. I didn’t see any reason to. In the morning, she was Mama.

When Daddy got home it was almost midnight. I had fallen asleep on my bed with the baby. I would tell him all about it. He would know what to do just like he always did.

But he didn’t come up to my room. I heard him crying. He was in the living room and I could hear the loud cries all the way in my room. I had never heard my Dad cry.

I walked down the stairs with the baby. I had decided to name her Leanna.

“Daddy,” I said, “Are you alright?”

Leanna was passed out on my shoulder, sucking her thumb.

“I’m alright sugar, just a rough day,” his voice was wavering in a way that made me not sure of what to do.

“Daddy, some bad boys in the neighborhood stole a baby. We have to get her back home.”

“Do they have her?” he said. I thought maybe his eyes were too jammed up with tears to see her. She was right there in my arms.

“No, Daddy, she’s right here, with me. Don’t you see her?”

“No, Shawna. Look, I’m in no mood. Go to bed now, ok? We’ll talk about it in the morning, I love you, sweetie.”

The shadow of the branches moved over the white blanket on my bed, the white blanket Mama said was really a cloud that would take me to a castle if I wanted, or a beautiful beach, or high up on the mountains. I saw the blood, Mama, I say to her out loud. I knew she could hear me. She had told me people with similar thoughts can communicate with each other even when they are not together. She had told me people who love each other can meet in the air in their dreams.

I hoped Mama would meet me. I knew the bars at the insane asylum wouldn’t hold her. She would be proud of me for saving the baby and beating the bad boys. She would tell me she and I could see things others couldn’t. Sometimes even the friends we know that others can’t see are still not good for us. We need to find better secret friends. And she would say not to trouble Daddy, I could save Leanna on my own.

I wanted Jesus to suffer me to come to him. I wanted to sit in his lap. I wanted him to see Leanna, to tell me what a beautiful baby she was.

I wanted him to slip through the cracks of my back fence to be with the sinners and prostitutes on Orange Blossom Trail, the paint huffers and murderers.

I wanted him to come down from the clouds. I wanted him to bless us with a beautiful light. I closed my eyes and could feel his warmth.

I asked him to bless Mama and Daddy.

And I asked him to bless me too.