Angel in the Parlor (7 page)

3

The Doctrine of the Leather-Stocking Jesus

On the day before Easter, in my father's garage, just before supper, I drew a chalk circle around Galen Malory, and said, “Now I am going to change you into a donkey.”

“Don't,” pleaded Galen.

He was five, three years younger than I, and the second youngest of eight children. His father had worked for forty years on the assembly line of the biggest furniture factory in Grand Rapids and was given, on retiring, a large dining-room table with two unmatching chairs. On holidays Mr. Malory sat at one end and Mrs. Malory sat at the other, and in between stood the children on either side, holding their plates to their mouths. The rest of the time, they ate on TV tables all over the house.

“Now you will turn all furry and grow terrible ears,” I said, smoothing my skirt. “Heehaw.”

“If I turn into a donkey,” shouted Galen, “my mother won't ever let me come here again.”

“Too late,” I howled, rolling my eyes up into my head. “I don't know how to undo it.”

Suddenly Mrs. Malory rang her cowbell, and all over the block children leaped over hedges and fences and fell out of trees.

“I have to go,” said Galen. “See you.”

As he ran out of the garage he bumped his big furry nose on the rake leaning against the door. He stopped, reached up and touched his floppy ears, and burst into tears.

Out of sight of God-fearing folk, we sat together on the compost pile where three garages met, and we wept together. I stared at Galen's ears, large as telephone receivers, and at his big hairy lips and his small hands browsing over all this in bewilderment.

His hands. His hands?

I looked again. I had not turned him into a donkey. I had only given him a donkey's head.

And I thought briefly and sorrowfully of all the false gifts I'd given him. The candy canes I hung on his mother's peonies, left there, I told him, by angels.

“Dear God,” I bellowed, addressing the one power I did believe in, “Please change Galen back.”

“Somebody's coming,” whispered Galen, terrified. “I think it's my father.”

An old man in a brown overcoat and curled-up shoes was crossing the snow-patched field, poking the ground with a pointed stick. He was spearing bunches of dead leaves and tucking them into a white laundrybag.

“That's not your father,” I said, “and he doesn't even see us.”

But who could fail to see us? The old man skinned the leaves off his stick like a shish kebab, put them in his pack, and sat down half a yard from us, nearly on top of the hole where a little green snake once stuck her tongue out at me. He pulled a sandwich out of his pocket and ate it slowly, and I saw he had dozens of pockets, all bulging, and sometimes the bulges twitched. We watched him wipe his hands on his coat, stand up, and turn toward us.

“Once a thing is created,” said the old man, “it cannot be destroyed. You cannot, therefore, get rid of the donkey's head. You must give it to somebody else.”

“Who?” asked Galen.

“Me,” said the old man.

“I asked God to get rid of it,” I said.

“I
am
God,” said the old man. “See if you can change me into a donkey.”

The smell of crushed apples and incense filled the garage when God stood in the center of the chalk circle and my voice weasled forth, small and nervous.

“Now I am going to change You into a donkey.”

And because it was God and not Galen, I sang the rhyme that expert skip-ropers save for jumping fifty times without tripping:

Now we go round the sun,

now we go round the stars.

Every Sunday afternoon:

one, two, three
—

Then I saw God stroking the tip of His velvet nose with one hand. His eyes, on either side of His long head, smiled at Galen's freckled face.

“After all, it is not so dreadful to be mistaken for an ass. Didn't Balaam's ass see My angel before his master did? Wasn't it the ass who sang in the stable the night My son was born? And what man has ever looked upon My face?”

“We have,” said Galen.

“You looked upon my God-mask,” said God. “Only the eyes are real.”

He stepped out of the circle, opened His bag of leaves, and peeped inside.

“What are you going to do with all those leaves?” I asked him.

“I save them,” said God. “I never throw anything away.”

The leaves whirled around as if a cyclone carried them, as God pulled the drawstring tight.

And suddenly He was gone.

And now I smelled the reek of oil where my father parked his Buick each night, and an airplane rumbled overhead, and Galen was jumping the hedge into the Malorys' yard, and Etta called me for dinner.

And, conscious of some great loss which I did not understand, I went.

My mother and my sister Kirsten had already left for church to fix the flowers for tomorrow's service. Etta the babysitter and I ate macaroni and cheese at the kitchen table, out of the way of the apples waiting to be peeled, the yams and the onions, the cranberries and avocados, and the ham which Etta had studded with cloves.

I wanted to tell Etta all that had happened, but when the words finally came, they were not the words I intended.

“Do you know what Reverend Peel's collar is made of?”

“Linen,” said Etta.

“Indian scalps,” I told her. “Do you know what chocolate is made of?”

“It comes from a tree,” said Etta.

“It's dried blood,” I said.

“Who told you that rubbish?” she demanded.

“Timothy Bean.”

“A nine-year-old boy who would shave off his own eyebrows don't know nothing worth knowing,” snorted Etta.

Etta gathered up our dishes and rinsed them in the sink.

“Can we go over and see the Malorys' new baby? I asked.”

When we arrived, Mrs. Malory and five of her daughters had already gone to church to make bread for the Easter breakfast. The Malory kitchen smelled of gingerbread, but nobody offered me any. It was so warm the windows were weeping steam. The corrugated legs of a chicken peeked out over the rim of a discreetly covered pot. Etta comfied herself in the Morris chair by the stove, mopping her face with her apron as she crocheted enormous snowflakes which would someday be a bedspread. Helen Malory, who was nineteen, plump, lightly mustached, and frizzy-haired, sat in the rocker nestling her baby brother in her arms. She was newly engaged to a mailman. Thank God! said my mother when she heard it. Helen's got so many towels and sheets in that hope chest down cellar, she can't even close it.

Today Helen had given Galen a whole roll of shelf paper and some crayons and now he and I were lying under the table, drawing. Because tomorrow was Easter, I drew the church: the carved angels that blossomed on the ends of the rafters, the processional banners on either side of the altar, the candles everywhere.

Galen drew Nuisance, the golden retriever who at that moment slept beside the warm stove. The dog's head would not come out right, nor the legs either, so he drew Nuisance wearing a bucket and walking behind a little hill.

Tenderly Helen tested the baby's bottle on her wrist and touched the nipple to its mouth. The baby squinted and pawed the air and milk sprayed down its cheeks. The lace gown it would wear tomorrow for its baptism at the eleven-o'clock service shimmered in a box on the kitchen table. Etta was allowed to touch it before Helen put it safely away on top of the china cabinet.

“What are you giving him?” inquired Etta.

“Scalded calves' milk,” said Helen.

“You could add a little honey. That won't hurt none. John the Baptist ate honey in the desert and he grew up strong as an ox.” As Etta spoke, she peered at the baby knowingly over her glasses. “Is that a scratch on his nose?”

“He scratched himself in the night. His nails are so small I don't dare cut 'em,” explained Helen.

“If it was mine,” said Etta, “I'd bite 'em off. 'Course I'd never bite anyone else's baby,” she added quickly.

A white star gathered slowly at the end of Etta's crochet hook. Comfort and mercy dropped upon me in good smells that filled the ktichen. I was in heaven. I was lying in a giant cookie jar. Cuckoo, cuckoo, shouted the bird in the living-room clock. On its fifth cry, the grandfather clock in the hall started bonging away, nine times.

“Galen, take your thumb out of your mouth,” said Helen sharply.

Galen took it out and examined the yellow blister on the joint.

“I had a niece who sucked her thumb,” observed Etta. “Her mother tried everything. When she got married, her husband said, ‘I'll break her of it.' She finally quit when she lost her teeth.”

“Better to suck your thumb than smoke,” said Etta.

“Why?” I asked.

“It's wicked,” said Helen.

“It'll stunt your growth,” said Etta. “I had an uncle who smoked young. He never grew more'n three feet tall.”

Deep in a shaggy dream, Nuisance growled and thumped his stubby tail.

“I think I'll latch the screen,” said Helen, and she stood up fast. “Caleb Suarez told Penny if she wouldn't go out with him tonight, he'd come and break down the door. But I do love the fresh air.”

“You want to go upstairs and see Penny's stuff?” whispered Galen.

“Sure,” I whispered back.

I was more comfortable in the same room with Penny's stuff than with Penny. Penny was sixteen and religious, but like every other girl in the high school, including my sister Kirsten, she dreamed of Caleb and would dream of him long after she was married to someone else. Whenever she looked at her mother, she would burst into tears, and her mother would shout, “So sleep with him! Go ahead! But let me tell you, you can't get away from your upbringing. You'll feel guilty all your life. It's a sacred act, you don't just do it with any boy that comes along.”

Caleb had black hair, all ducktailed and pompadoured, blue eyes, a handsome face, and a withered arm—the scar of infantile paralysis, my mother explained. His father was one-quarter American Indian and owned the Golden Cue Pool Parlor and came, when Caleb was six, from Sioux City to find his relatives in Northville. There were no relatives, and as far as anyone could see, there was no wife.

Caleb spent his days at the fire department, reading and waiting for fires, and his nights drinking at the Paradise Bar.

“He's read all the books in the library; now he's starting the second time around,” said Mr. Malory, shaking his head at such folly. “I will say one thing for him, though. I've never seen him drunk.”

Galen turned on the light in the room Penny shared with Helen. Over a dressing table littered with bottles hung a big framed picture of Jesus, surrounded by photographs of brides clipped from the newspapers.

“That's Penny's,” said Galen bravely, pointing to the picture. His voice was too loud for the room, as if he were shouting before a shrine. “We gotta go now.”

“Did you tell anyone about God?” I asked.

“I wanted to, but I couldn't,” said Galen.

“Me neither.”

Down the hall, Helen was putting the baby to bed. Suddenly it cried furiously, and Galen and I hurried back to the kitchen. Seeing us, Nuisance lifted his head, and his rabies tags jingled like harness bells.

“Here, Nuisance,” I called.

“His real name is Winthrop,” said Galen. “He has a pedigree. If he had the rest of his tail, he'd be worth a lot of money.”

Nuisance loped after me into the dark dining room, his nails clicking on the bare floor. China gleamed on the sideboard like the eyes of mice.

“Galen, get me a piece of chalk.”

“If you change Nuisance into a donkey,” said Galen weakly, “my mother will never let me play with you again. That's my dad's best hunting dog.”

But he brought the chalk.

“Sit, Nuisance,” I commanded.

Nuisance rolled over. I drew the circle around him and stepped back.

“Out of my way, Galen.”

Galen did not need to be told twice. I fixed my eye on the golden shape of Nuisance, motionless, save for the stump of tail which wagged.

“Now I am going to change you into a donkey,” I whispered.

And because it was Nuisance and not Galen, I sang to him:

Nuisance go round the sun,

Nuisance go round the stars.

Every Sunday afternoon:

one, two, three
—

The sweetness of apples and incense hovered around us again. But nothing happened.

Then suddenly Nuisance jumped three feet into the air and, barking wildly, charged across the kitchen and crashed through the screen door. Etta shrieked and Helen came running.

“Is it Caleb?” she yelled.

“Nuisance broke down the door,” shouted Etta. “You better lock him up good.”

Galen burst into tears, and Helen sank to her knees beside him.

“There, there, honey lamb. No one's going to hurt you. Helen will lock the doors and windows.” She held his head against her neck. “And I'll let you play with my Old Maid cards.” Galen's shoulders stopped shaking. “And I'll even let you touch my new lampshade.”

“Can I go down cellar and see your chest?” Galen said in a sodden voice.

Flicking the switch by the cellar door and taking each of us by the hand, Helen led us down the steps, dimly lit, past a clothesline sagging with diapers, to a big brassbound chest.

“Can I open it?” snuffled Galen.

“Go ahead,” said Helen.

So Galen lifted the lid very slowly. It was like a thing from dreams, this box, big as a coffin, full of bedspreads and blankets and dishes. This is the way I would like to keep my whole past, I thought, folded away where I could take out last year's Christmas or my first birthday and play dress-up whenever I liked. Resting carefully on top of a platter painted with turkeys, the lampshade waited. It needed a light to show clearly the man and woman walking in a garden painted on the front.