Friendship Cake (13 page)

Charlotte thought about the little girl's questions, the ideas of heaven, the notion of whether one could ever come back. She had never really considered if Serena would make a choice to return, if such a choice were possible. She wondered how it might be to see her sister back from death and resurrection.

Would she finally be whole, or would there always be hidden pieces, which she would spend eternity trying to uncover? Missing parts that kept her life and death an unsolved puzzle?

Had she been loosed from her previous binding life, or were there ropes still tied around her hopes and dreams? Was she young, or had the years of reflection on what had taken place and what had not taken place aged her in some way that made her different, unrecognizable?

Charlotte rarely allowed herself the opportunity to think about Serena, her life, her death, her whereabouts. Pondering the past created an emotional and mental spinning that, as a rule, Charlotte chose to deny. It was, in her mind, a futile line of
thinking. A process without a product. A task without a plan. A sinking, dropping, falling journey that could lead her nowhere.

When she realized that she had stepped back into a place she generally refused to go, she looked up, and Brittany, having grown bored with the organ, was standing in the doorway of Charlotte's office.

“Hey!” Charlotte was startled. She pulled the bulletin from the printer, dropped it on her desk, and asked, “How about we take a walk before your mother gets back?”

Brittany nodded, and Charlotte moved around the desk and headed towards the door.

“And here,” she said, as she walked back from where the toys had been and grabbed the little stuffed dog they had been playing with, “you can have this. It can be a Thanksgiving gift from me.”

Brittany seemed pleased, but then she stopped. “You don't give gifts for Thanksgiving,” she said. “You give gifts at Christmas.” She looked confused.

“Well, you can give gifts whenever you like,” the preacher responded. “And besides, you gave me a gift of the picture. So I give you this little dog as a gift back to you.”

Brittany thought about this a minute, then said, “Thanksgiving must be a good time to give gifts.”

“Why's that?” Charlotte asked.

“Because then you're really thankful.” And she took the dog and gave it a hug.

Charlotte laughed and held the little girl's hand as they walked through the cemetery and around the outside of the sanctuary, down the road to the parsonage, and then back to the
church. As they got back to the driveway, Nadine was pulling up.

She rolled down the window. “What are you two doing?”

“We went for a walk, Mommy. And Charlotte gave me this little dog for a Thanksgiving present.” She dropped Charlotte's hand and ran to her mother's door.

“How sweet of her. What a great puppy; he looks like Teddy.”

Charlotte walked around to the driver's side. “I hope everything's fine.” She noticed the groceries in the backseat.

“Oh yeah.” Nadine looked back at Brittany. “Did you have a good talk?”

Brittany was playing with the dog along the side of the car. “Yep. We talked about heaven. Charlotte's sister is there.”

Nadine looked at Charlotte, who smiled and nodded.

“Yes. Brittany had some very good questions.”

Nadine was a little surprised. “Oh?” she said.

Brittany nodded and looked up at the preacher. “And I told her all about the beef stew.”

“Yes. It will be a very special recipe in our cookbook.” Charlotte rubbed Brittany's back. “Well, give me a hug before you go. Did you leave anything in my office?”

Brittany hugged Charlotte and shook her head no.

“Thank you, Pastor.” Nadine was watching as Brittany moved around the front of the car.

Charlotte went around and opened the passenger's side door.

“Please call me Charlotte. Brittany does.” And she waved at the little girl and her mother through the window.

“Bye, bye now!”

Nadine and Brittany both waved good-bye, and Charlotte
went back into her office. She pulled the door shut and locked it. She sat down at her desk and was glancing over the bulletin when the sudden crash of metal and glass splintered the air.

Charlotte ran from the office and saw that Nadine's car had been hit by a large truck as she was backing out of the church driveway. Right away, the moments broke off in pieces, jagged and sharp. Charlotte was a blur of spectator and participant in a tragedy that was unfolding before her eyes.

She found her way to the driver's side of the car. Nadine was bleeding from her nose, but she was conscious, moving her hands, trying to undo her seat belt.

“Brittany?” she screamed. “Where's Brittany?”

Charlotte looked around frantically. It seemed time sped up and slowed down in the same moment. The truck had crushed the right side of the automobile; the passenger's side door was forced open by the impact. Brittany hadn't had time to put on her seat belt and had been thrown from the car. Charlotte looked on the side opposite Nadine. The child's body was in a parking lot, forty feet away from the stopped car. She ran to Brittany before Nadine could get free.

The little girl was dead. It was obvious from the vast amount of blood, and the way she lay, her neck broken from the impact. Charlotte swept the body into her arms and began to scream to the men in the truck, who sat paralyzed. “Go get some help! Go call an ambulance!”

A man jumped out of the truck, the passenger's side, and ran to the church office. The driver, dazed, got out and went to Nadine, who was still struggling to get to her daughter. “Brittany! I want to see Brittany!”

Charlotte was crying and holding the little girl. She watched as the earth split itself from the sky, the piece of time and matter of which she was a part float into space.

Finally, Nadine was freed from the wreckage, and Charlotte saw her running towards them, bloody and broken.

“Oh, God. No. Please no…” Nadine did not even feel the pain of her injuries. Only this. Only the torment of seeing this death. Charlotte gave her the body and held them both. Time stopped while the shard of torn life whirled out of control. The screams grew louder than the approaching sirens.

“My baby! Oh, God, no, not my baby!”

Charlotte held them tighter as the mother rocked her dead child. Then suddenly Nadine stopped. She focused on Charlotte with a wild, desperate look. “Do something!” she cried. “Here, take her, do something!” And she handed the dead body to Charlotte.

Charlotte fought the mother. Tears streamed down her face; words choked in her throat. “Nadine, I can't do anything…I can't…” And she struggled with Nadine to give the child back.

The ambulance attendants ran to the two women. They reached out for the little girl, trying to take her from Nadine. She screamed at them, a madwoman,
“No!”
She looked back at Charlotte, fierce and loosed. “Make her come back! You make her come back!”

Charlotte, only a wisp of life herself, took Brittany's body in her arms, and, for a suspended second, an eternal pause in the course of events, it seemed something was sewing her tattered shreds of faith together like a web of healing. Tighter and tighter it seemed to wrap around her heart. And suddenly she felt strong
and rooted, magnificent and tall. She was a tree, growing straight into the heart of God.

Maybe, she thought in that blast of temptation, just maybe. Maybe it could be so. Maybe God was saving up all of the grace I never felt until now. For this detail. This time. This place. Maybe something, somebody will come, just for this moment. For this child. For this mother. For me. And even though the thought never formed words that anyone heard, it rumbled in her mind like thunder.

She prayed with every cell and fiber within her. It was a whisper, a scream, a prayer beyond the borders of despair. “O God, please.”

But like a storm of wind that yanks and pulls everything into its funneled mouth, the prayer sucked her hope dry and left its remains scattered across the pavement. The web of faith pulled apart. The tree snapped in the wind, and the little girl did not breathe again.

One EMT took Brittany from Charlotte's aching arms while the other helped Nadine onto a stretcher. Charlotte stayed there on the ground, without moving, until all of the ambulances, fire trucks, and curious bystanders had driven away.

Lots of people came and tried to console her, but she would not move. She would not be lifted from where she had prayed and been turned down.

 

BEATRICE HAD GONE
into the office. Jessie and Margaret were sitting beside Charlotte. Louise was leaning against the wall of the church. It had been hours since the accident.

Everyone was relieved when Charlotte's mother, Joyce, drove up. She parked near Louise and Beatrice, talked briefly with them, then walked over to the three women sitting in the parking lot. Charlotte had blood smeared all over her. Jessie and Margaret got up, shook their heads towards Joyce, and left the mother and daughter alone.

Joyce sat down beside Charlotte but didn't say anything. She watched as the others, friends of her daughter, went into the church. She knew they were there if she needed them. She picked up a pebble and rolled it around in her hand.

Day turned to evening. Light faded, and still the two women sat in silence. Finally, as the sun dropped low and darkness hid their faces from each other, her mother spoke. “I'm going to have a cigarette if it's all right.”

Charlotte said nothing while her mother pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. She took a long, slow drag and fanned the smoke away from her daughter.

“These are Serena's brand. Menthol,” she said with a sigh. “I used to hate menthol. It's always felt like I was smoking a Tic Tac.”

Still nothing from Charlotte, who sat with her legs bent, her hands empty in her lap, her head dropped.

“I found a pack in her room after she died.” She took another drag. “I think it was the only thing you didn't clean out.” She tapped at the tip of the cigarette to release the ashes. “It's all I smoke now.”

A car went past. It slowed down while the passengers looked out the window at the two women sitting in the parking lot in the dark. Joyce waved them away.

There was another long, empty pause.

“You know, we had an argument before she went off and took all those drugs.” Joyce let the smoke fill her lungs. “It was about you.”

Charlotte moved for the first time. She didn't look up, but she shifted her legs from one side to the other.

“She said I drove you away with my drinking. That if I wasn't a drunk, you would have stayed at home instead of going to graduate school. She said I pulled the two of you apart. That since you had gone, you never called her anymore or tried to see her.” Joyce ran her hands across her arms. “She was terrible that night, loud and angry and so full of bitterness and rage. I had never seen her like that.” Joyce crushed the cigarette by her side.

A car horn blew in the distant, and a flurry of bats flew overhead.

“She wanted to come and see me over the weekend.” Charlotte spoke with her head down. “I said no.” She stopped. “I said that I was too busy or had a class or work. I don't know what I said. But it was the only time I said no to her.” Her voice trailed off. “So she killed herself.”

Joyce sat up. Someone was turning on lights in the church's Fellowship Hall.

“You think Serena killed herself because she couldn't go to see you for the weekend?” Joyce dropped the pack of cigarettes that were in her lap and took Charlotte's chin in her hand. She lifted her daughter's face so that they were eye to eye. “That's what you think? You made Serena commit suicide because you turned her down, once?”

Charlotte's eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, child.” Joyce felt her heart explode. “Child, my sweet Charlotte, child.” She reached out and hugged her daughter. “Serena got mad and took too many drugs. She was mad at everybody. Serena had been mad, out of control, for a long time. You knew that, didn't you?”

Charlotte did not respond.

“I was a terrible mother to her, to both of you, and I'll have to live with that for the rest of my life. But you, you've done nothing wrong. You were a wonderful sister to Serena. You were the mother to her that I wasn't. If anyone's to blame for her death, it's me, not you. You did nothing wrong. Nothing.” Joyce pulled away and looked at Charlotte again.

They were both crying now.

After a while Charlotte spoke. “Then why doesn't God hear my prayers?” She asked through the tears. “If I'm so good, Mama, why doesn't he hear my prayers? Why did he let Serena die?” she shouted. “Why did he let this little baby girl die? Why doesn't he hear me when I pray?” Charlotte sobbed and fell on her mother's shoulders.

It seemed like a long time before the older woman spoke.

“I don't know, child. I have wondered the same thing so many times.” Joyce smoothed back her daughter's hair. “Every time I drove by the liquor store or tried not to reach for the bottle, I would pray. I put pictures of you and Serena all around the house, and I would pray, ‘Help me not to drink, God. Help me to be a good mother to my daughters.' But then a bill would come due or I would make a mistake with one of you, and I felt nothing but the taste of vodka calling me.” She wiped a tear from Charlotte's cheek.

“But, deep down, I think God always heard me. Even though I wasn't good, I think God hears me.” She pulled Charlotte towards her. “And I know that God hears you when you pray. I know that.”

Another car went by and slowed down but then kept going.

“I think it's just that sometimes we want an answer from God that he can't give. And because we're so sure of what we want the answer to be, we can't receive the one he gives us.”