The Heart is Deceitful above All Things (7 page)

I look down at the book, flip through some more pages. I still can't find the cartoons.

A boy a little taller than me comes down the hall. He's whitish blond, like me, hair combed back. He's in white pants and a blue blazer, and he has a tie on. I've never seen a kid in a tie. I feel jealous.

‘How old are you?' he asks me, and pushes himself up on his tiptoes.

‘Seven . . . in ten days.' I stand straighter and stretch my neck up.

‘Tell him you want a big birthday party.' He smiles, his teeth biting into his bottom lip, his opalescent eyes guarded yet prowling.

‘You'd like that, wouldn't you, huh?'

‘How old are you?' I ask.

He points at my book. ‘I know the Psalms One through Fifty. How many do you know?'

‘I know a lot of songs.'

‘What?! Damn,' he whispers, ‘you're an idiot.'

‘I'm not. I can read.' I stare right back at him. He smiles wider, crinkling his small upturned nose, finely sprinkled with freckles like nutmeg.

‘Tell him you know songs . . . from there,' he says, pointing at the book and laughing. I laugh because he is. ‘What songs do you know? Sing some.'

I roll my eyes up to think. Sarah's next to last boyfriend had a Mohawk. He'd given me one, but I didn't like it; people pointed and kids laughed. ‘That's the idea of being a punk, you gotta shock 'em,' he told me. I wet it down, making it look like a raised yellow highway divider line across my otherwise bald head. In disgust he shaved it off. He dyed his pink until the sheriff threatened to arrest him for disturbing the peace. Then he shaved his off, too. He taught me to sing along with the Sex Pistols. I didn't understand the words, but it made Sarah laugh when we sang them, sneering and spitting. Sometimes she joined in.

‘I am a annie-christ. I am a annie-kiss, dunno what I want, know how to get it, wanna this toy, the buzzer by.' He stares at me wide-eyed, mouth hanging open. ‘I wanna be annie-key.'

‘Jesus Christ,' he gasps.

‘Go piss this toy,' I finish singing, and spit. It lands in a little bubbly pile on the wooden floor by his black, shined leather shoes. ‘Sex Pistols,' I say, smiling at him.

‘You're possessed,' he says, not smiling anymore. ‘You gotta sing that for him.' He nods and smiles slowly. ‘You gotta.'

‘I know more, too.'

‘Uh-huh, he'll love it.' He laughs.

‘I know Dead Kennedys.'

‘How's that go?'

‘Too drunk to fuck,' I sing, ‘I'm too drunk to fuck.'

He slaps his leg. ‘Yeah, yeah, sing,' he says, covering his mouth, but I can still hear him laughing. ‘Sing that one, too. Promise you will?' I nod. ‘But don't say I told you to. It'll be a secret. I'm just helping you out.'

‘What's your name?' I ask.

‘Aaron,' he says, wiping the tears from his eyes.

‘Do you know Sarah?'

‘Sarah, yeah, she's one of my older sisters, yeah, she's a sinner.' He adjusts his tie.

‘She's my momma.'

‘Yeah, I know, that's why you gotta sing for him . . . got any more?'

He takes my hand and leads me to our room.

At five
A.M.
Aaron wakes me up. I reach around for my Bugs Bunny and then remember what Job, a different blond boy with rosebud lips and sleepy eyes, told me before bed.

‘It's worshiping idolatry, you'll burn in hell.'

He took it from my bag, and I never saw it again. I slept with my thumb in my mouth, and I wake up to a girl that looks like a smaller version of Sarah yanking it out. ‘No, no, you can't do that.' She says nothing else and leaves the room.

Aaron is dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. He's standing next to a carved wood-framed bed, same as mine, with the same thin mattress, except that he has a pillow. His bed is tightly made, with no blankets hanging over the edges.

‘Make yours and get dressed. We got chores to do before prayer.' He points to a wooden dresser. ‘Clothes in there, they should fit ya. Fit me when I was your age.'

I get dressed, staring at the stark, blank walls.

‘Let's go!' Aaron half shouts. ‘We got chores to do.'

We sit on a worn grayish wood stool in a dirty brown brick room next to the kitchen, peeling potatoes. A huge sack of potatoes sits beside us.

‘So, you'll tell him about your songs.' He points at me with the peeler. I nod and yawn. He smiles down at the potatoes.

At six-thirty
A.M.
Aaron and I stand upstairs in another long, wood-floored hallway. The walls are bare, reflective white. Four other blond boys stand behind us. They're wearing the same long, scratchy robes that Aaron and I are wearing. They keep leaning over and staring at me. Someone hits the back of my head. When I turn around, Aaron smiles. ‘It wasn't me! And I'll swear on Christ's nails!' They muffle their laughs. A wooden door opens next to me, and the escaping steam makes my lungs hurt. A tall, sinewy, but fleshy blond boy motions me in.

‘Get in.' He points at the huge porcelain tub, steam rolling off it like fog. I stare up at him. His catlike face scrunches up. He sighs, rolls his eyes up, and says like he's bored, ‘If any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water and be unclean until the even.' He licks at the beads of sweat above his lip. ‘Leviticus.' He shakes his head. ‘Come on.' He reaches out his hand. All he has on is white boxers. His chest is bare and covered with a light film of sweat. I take his hand, and he leads me to the tub. Its edges are covered with small black cracks that look like bloodshot eyes. His hand is warm and moist. ‘Let's go,' he says softly. He leans over and slides off my robe and underwear, his hand brushing against me as he does. He smells like salt and chlorine. ‘Here, I'll help you in.'

He clasps his arms around my waist. I feel his breath against my neck, and it tickles and I laugh. ‘You're a light one.' He lifts me up and holds me over the tub. I lean
my head back against his chest. ‘OK, here we go . . .' He lowers me down fast. It takes me a few seconds to feel the heat of the water. I yell and grab for the edges. ‘No, you don't!' He grabs my hands with one of his and covers my mouth with the other. ‘I ain't gettin whipped 'cause of you. Now, come on, shut up,' he says in a low voice into my ear.

My vision is blurred with tears. I scream into the hand across my mouth. ‘You'll get used to it,' he says. He reaches past me to a thick bristled scrub brush resting on an edge of the tub. ‘But ye are washed . . .' He reaches into the water and rests the brush against the skin of my lower stomach. ‘But ye are sanctified . . .' He presses the brush into my flesh. I smash my lips against his palm, trying to escape it. ‘But ye are justified in the name . . .' He begins to move the scrub brush slowly across my stomach. ‘Of the Lord Jesus . . .' His eyes close. The brush moves down lower. ‘And by the spirit . . .' His eyes open and roll around in their sockets. He moves the brush in deliberate strokes between my legs. My teeth press against his palm. ‘Of our God . . .' I bang my head in small stiff bounces against his chest. He leans his mouth against my neck. ‘Amen,' he whispers.

He lets go of the brush, wraps his arm around my hips, and, while still covering my mouth, lifts me out of the tub. He stands me next to him. ‘If you scream or cry, you'll go back in.' I nod. ‘So be quiet.' I nod again. He removes his hand, and I gasp. He stands over me. ‘That wasn't so bad, was it?' My body feels numb. I look down
at myself, a bright pinkish red with blood pinpricks and scratches marking my skin where he scrubbed. I feel the burn between my legs. A towel is dropped around my shoulder. He begins patting me dry.

At seven
A.M.
I stand in a hall downstairs, outside my grandfather's thick oak door. Aaron lines up behind me, other boys behind him. They all look unnervingly familiar, like seeing a mirror cut up of parts of my face stuck on different people. They're all dressed like I'm dressed, like Aaron, in a blazer, tie, and soft black pants. Aaron whispers in my ear, reminding me, again, to sing my songs and to complain about the tub being too hot. My skin still aches, and I've left off my underwear because of it. ‘Tell him you're not wearing them, tell him!' Aaron said when he saw me getting dressed. His skin was red, too. He didn't seem to care.

The door opens and an older blond boy dressed like I am walks out slowly, wobbly. His face is turned down. He doesn't look at me. I watch him walking carefully down the hall like he's on a tightrope. He puts his fingers out against the wall to balance himself now and again. ‘Jeremiah,' my grandfather calls from inside his study. I jump and then press myself against the wall and quiet my breath. ‘I will not call you again, Jeremiah.' His voice is flat, commanding. My body involuntarily moves to the doorway.

The morning light streams from the window onto his desk. ‘Step in. Close the door, Jeremiah.' I walk in,
closing the heavy door behind me. I watch my hands move the brass knob that sticks out like a dog's tail until it clicks in its lock. ‘Jeremiah . . .' I turn around slowly. Long rows of books, not library books, but leather bound, in blacks, burgundies, and browns, line the wooden shelves up to the ceiling. They're the kind of shelves where if you remove the right book, a secret passage opens and a slide takes you to a secret dungeon. ‘Jeremiah . . .' He taps his foot in rapid succession. I turn back to face him. As my eyes adjust to the light, I can see him better. He's frowning. His hands are pressed flat on the black inlay on top of the wide desk. I want him to smile, to be better than my fucking fosters' grandpa, and to know I'm me: who he saved. ‘I know songs, sir,' I whisper, and immediately I feel as if I've tossed a water balloon off a roof and I'm watching it, powerless to stop it, as it hurtles toward a crowded street.

‘You've learned Psalms, Jeremiah,' he says, half like a question.

‘Aaron told me to sing them to you,' I take a breath, ‘sir.'

‘Aaron told you to sing them to me, Jeremiah,' he repeats. He folds his hands one on top of the other. His hands are bright white with delicate blue veins, raised like worm tunnels. His little pinkie taps slowly.

‘I am a Annie-christ,' I sing without melody, ‘I am a annie-kiss––'

‘Jeremiah,' he interrupts, ‘what psalm is that?' He
cocks his head to the side like a dog listening to a silent whistle.

‘Sex Pistols,' I say, excited he's interested.

‘And where did you learn the Sex Pistols psalm, Jeremiah?' Now his ring finger is tapping along with his pinkie.

‘Um . . . from Stinky.' I examine the bookcase again. There's only one white book on the fifth shelf; that must be the one you pull.

‘Jeremiah . . .' I turn back. He tilts his head to the other side. ‘And who is Stinky?'

I laugh and cover my mouth. He smiles back without humor. ‘Stinky has a pink Mohawk, but he cut it.'

‘Yes . . .' His whole hand is tapping now. It's making me jumpy.

‘He lived with us, he's a punk rocker, and I get to be one, too, he said. He's learned me guitar so I can be one, too, but we ran away because he was boring, Sarah said . . . we didn't even say bye-bye. We sole his guitar at the pone shop. We didn't say bye.'

My grandfather just nods.

‘Oh, Aaron 'minded me to tell you the Dead Kennedys, I know them, ‘Too Drunk to Fuck'. I know that one, too. I know more. Wanna hear?'

‘No, Jeremiah, I––'

‘Oh!' I interrupt him. He looks down at me with surprise, his eyebrows raised. ‘Aaron 'minded me to tell you my bath was too hot, it hurted. And Job scrubbed
me hard. And I taked the bath at the hospital before, anyways. They don't scrub ya.'

‘What other things did Aaron remind you to tell me, Jeremiah?' His teeth lightly bite into his bottom lip.

‘That I ain't got no pillow, and the blankets ain't warm enough, and we haded too many potatoes to peel. But you know what? He can make 'em look like naked peoples.'

‘What else did he say or show you, Jeremiah?'

‘Well . . . he said he gets candy from your drawer, and if I do his bed for a week, I can get me some.' He says nothing, only nods like he wants me to tell him more. I rub my head. ‘Oh . . . he says my mom is a sinner and a slut.' His hand starts tapping again, louder. ‘Um . . .' I can't think of anything else. I think about making stuff up because I'm enjoying the attention, but I decide not to. ‘That's about it.' I sigh. ‘Sir,' I remember and add on. I half smile up at him.

‘That's all, Jeremiah,' he says with his white lips thin as a woman's eyebrows pulled together.

‘Oh yeah, I'm not wearin' any underwears.'

‘OK, Jeremiah.' I smile wider, but he frowns back. He stands up and moves rigidly to the door. He opens it, steps into the hall, and says Aaron's name. As they enter, Aaron stares at me from the corner of his eye. My grandfather sits behind his expansive desk and folds his hands one on top of the other. He's only looking at Aaron. Aaron's head is turned down. I watch the dust swirl from my grandfather's breath as he repeats
to Aaron all that I told him. Aaron never raises his head. Never moves. My grandfather stands and leans forward on his knuckles.

‘Is this what you said, Aaron?' Aaron's body twitches, but he says nothing. His gaze stays fixated on the floor. My grandfather walks around his desk in front of Aaron and repeats the question. I didn't realize that I'd been staring at the floor also, until the loud slap makes me look up. Aaron's face is askew and bright red. Fingerprints are across his cheeks. I look up at my grandfather standing tall and dignified above us, his hands calmly at his sides.

‘I didn't say it, sir,' Aaron mumbles to the floor.

‘What didn't you say, Aaron?'

‘None of it, sir,' he whispers.