Pew(15)

I hear you met Nelson? Sonny asked.
I nodded. Sonny threw the candies into his mouth and began talking through them.
What a guy, right? And he has seen a lot. He’s a lot like you, in that he doesn’t like to talk about it, but man oh man. Sonny looked out the window, quietly chewing and swallowing, his eyes scattered, his head shaking. He saw his whole family get killed, nearly got killed himself, then he had to go through all this difficulty with immigration—I can’t even tell you how complicated, just ridiculous, inhumane—even though there was already a family here ready to take him in and everything. He didn’t even get here until almost two years after he was supposed to. Had to live alone in a refugee camp, thinking he might never get out. Barely any school, barely anything at all. Now, of course, he’s got a good life, nice house, a family that can take care of him, the whole world opening up—but, man, he sure had to suffer.
Sonny looked out the window again, put his hand to his brow as if trying to shield himself from something. You know, everyone is wondering what you’ve been through. It’s not really anyone’s business, you know—and we know that. A person’s life really is just between them and the Lord and their family, but we do wonder what we can do to help. And we’d know how to help better if we knew a thing or two about where you came from.
Sonny shuffled a deck of cards and started to deal out a game of solitaire. I remembered watching that old woman at the gas station playing it, explaining it to me—It’s a game for people who don’t really like other people, she said.
It’s a confusing time, isn’t it? Sonny asked me. His teeth, when I saw them, were faintly lilac. Countries, governments, are killing people in heaps, tearing cities apart with war, killing women and children. He was playing his game rapidly, turning over this card and that, dwindling the deck, which was soft and worn at the edges. It’s a horrible mess, you know. Everywhere you turn, people are hurt. It even feels some days like men and women right here in our country have turned against each other. All this bitterness. Everyone wants to be the one who’s right.
He laid one card down slowly and firmly, then smiled some private smile.
Life is suffering—it really is. The Buddhists are right about that one, I tell you. Nothing is easy on this earth. Even that hymn I was just telling you about—well, only a few months after that guy finished the lyrics, the guy who’d written the music to go along with it was on a train and it fell off the rails and he died, too. So this one man loses his whole family, then loses the guy who helped him write the song about losing his whole family.
Sonny’s game of solitaire was already over. He had won, I suppose, so he shuffled the cards into a single stack again and took another handful of the candies.
What I am trying to say—and I’m not like the Reverend, not as good with the big speeches, you know, on the spot—and Sonny paused for a moment, his whole mouth a darker purple now, tongue and teeth unreal and inky. What I’m trying to say is that no matter what you’ve been through, there is a place here for you. I don’t think it was an accident you chose our church to sleep in, that we found you here. And when you’re ready to talk, kid, I am here to listen. We stood and he held my shoulder and looked down at me. Below us the choir was still singing. Their voices shook the floor.



FINE, HOW ARE YOU? the parrot said, facing a wall and nodding its head. Fine, how are you?
I sat in the little room just beside the kitchen, with a glass of cold milk, and something sweet, Hilda said, a square of black cake, to end the long day I’d had. I stared out the windows at the night sky, and when I reached out to touch the glass, it was still warm. The heat had not left, never left, was constant.
Through a wall I could hear the murmur of the television that Jack was watching, heard the thump of a ball he was throwing and catching.
Jack, Steven shouted from the kitchen.
Yeah?
Turn off the TV and go to bed.
But they’re about to show the replays—
Go to bed, Jack.
But Pew is still up.
It don’t make a difference—Pew is not my child. I am telling you to turn that thing off and go to bed.
The television stopped. Jack stomped down the hall and slammed a door. The air in the house was still and smooth, broken only by Steven and Hilda’s low whispers in the kitchen.
I shut my eyes and imagined a life in which only our thoughts and intentions could be seen, where our bodies were not flesh but something else, something that was more than all this skin, this weight. For a few moments I forgot where I was. I finished the glass of milk without realizing it, lost in the idea of a disembodied world, one where ideas could hold other ideas, where thoughts could see other thoughts and death couldn’t end thoughts, where one remained alive by thinking and was not alive if not thinking. Somehow our bodies wouldn’t hold us back the way they do here. Somehow our bodies wouldn’t determine our lives, the lives of others, the ways in which one life could or could not meet the life of another. We would not have to sleep or slam doors or exist in these cells that eat other cells and die anyway, these cells we live in.
Fine, the parrot said, drawing the word out this time, then pausing a long while—
Fine, how are you?
Hilda and Steven came in, looking reddened and wrung out.
I reckon you won’t start now, Steven said, but if there’s anything you need to tell us, anything you might need to come clean about … maybe you could tell us right now?
Hilda reached over to take the empty glass and plate from the table.
Tomorrow will be even busier than today was, she said in a rush, and you’ll have to see this specialist way out in Monroe, the one that Roger arranged for, and the whole thing might be easier if you could speak with us a little before then. They’ll need to do an examination. Just to make sure everything is OK. I could say nothing. I could tell them nothing. We all sat quietly.