Pew

by Catherine Lacey

My whole family was killed in the name of God and now these people want me to sing a hymn like it was all some kind of misunderstanding. Must have been some other guy.

Nobody’s mother should ever not be there, but my mother told me all mothers eventually are not there. I can’t understand it. I don’t even want to.

I felt so sure then—of course I was younger. It’s easier to be certain of things then—and the older you get, the more you see how certainty depends on one blindness or another.