Pew(5)

Now, what is it that we call you, dear? he asked. I looked at the empty television screen, saw ghostly reflections in it. A name? the Reverend asked again. Really, whatever you’d like to be called, that’s all we’re asking.
I didn’t want to be called anything.
I thought of leaving the room. I thought of leaving the house and going somewhere, but I somehow couldn’t. Some kind of force or threat was in the room, all over the house. The parrot called out, Hello? I gathered my hands in a fist behind my back.
Well, the Reverend said, not much of a talker, now are we?
All talk. No game, the parrot said. All talk. No game.
Steven and the Reverend laughed and the sons did not laugh. Jack muttered something under his breath, and Steven stamped on the boy’s foot.
When my daughter was a little girl, the Reverend said, detaching one of the smaller sons from his body, she found a stray kitten sleeping in a gutter near the church, and she just loved that cat and we still have that cat to this day and do you know what she decided to call it? She named him Gutter. How about that? Gutter!
Hilda walked back into the room laughing and repeated the word—Gutter! What a fine cat, that Gutter. How is he these days?
Oh, he’s doing fine, the Reverend said, rather slow and fat but still the same ol’ Gutter.
Oh, how wonderful! Hilda said.
So if it’s OK with you, the Reverend said, how about we call you Pew for the time being? He used that tilting tone meant for a question, but he wasn’t asking me a question. Until you get around to telling us something different? How about that?
In the dining room Hilda ran from the kitchen to the table bringing out dish after dish, arranging them before us as we did nothing. Great heaps of fried animal parts. A bowl of potatoes, rolls, plates of meat and casseroles it seemed to take some strength to carry. Eventually Hilda sat beside me, smoothed her apron, and asked the Reverend to lead us in a prayer. Everyone had their eyes closed except for me and everyone had joined hands but I kept my hands joined to each other in my lap, so Steven put his free hand on the back of my chair and Hilda left her palm open on the table between our empty plates. The Reverend spoke a block of memorized text, nodding his head, agreeing with himself as he went.
And, Lord, help those having such trouble over in Almoseville, help them see that all things are possible through you, and God bless our new friend Pew, Lord, a child of God just as we are all your children, amen, and everyone else echoed the Reverend in that amen, all of them speaking together, even the smallest son.
Amen, the parrot said from the other room, though it seemed no one heard the parrot. Amen amen amen.
Well, the Reverend said, ain’t it nice to be here with a home-cooked meal?
After everyone had eaten, the Reverend took me out to the front porch and we sat on a swinging bench he held still with his legs. He told me, quietly and not unkindly, that he really did need to know a few things about who I was, where I’d come from.
These are strange questions to have to ask, but we need to know them in order to provide you with a safe place to live. For one, and I’m sorry if this is embarrassing to be asked, but we will need to know if you’re a boy or a girl. There’s no reason for you to be embarrassed or ashamed or anything, and we don’t think you’ve done anything wrong—we want you to know that. We really don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, exactly, at least not with regards to you not obviously being a boy or a girl the way everyone else is. What I mean is, you need not be ashamed of looking the way you do—as God loves all his children exactly the same—but it’s simply not clear to us which one you are and you have to be one or the other, so unless you want us to figure it out the hard way, I think you should just tell us which one you are. Much easier.
The insects sang in the heat around us. I looked back into the house through a window. Through two open doors I could see the edge of the parrot’s cage, could watch the parrot sidestepping along its perch, bobbing its head, then stepping out of view, then into view again. I did not look at the Reverend. I had nothing to say.
Now, you might know that some people these days like to think a person gets to decide whether they are a boy or a girl, but we believe, our church believes, and Jesus believed that God decides if you’re a boy or a girl. So when you answer this question, that’s the answer we want—did God make you a boy or a girl?
I looked at the porch’s ceiling, its floor.
It may be that you have some other feelings on the matter, that you’re not really a boy or a girl, and that really is fine with us—we’re very tolerant and you can think whatever you like, you really can—but just for our purposes, what is it that we would call you?
The Reverend was silent awhile, listening to the insects and nothing. For a moment the Reverend seemed to realize that his questions and statements kept leading us to the same empty place.
How about this—if you’re a boy, if God made you a boy, clap once, and if God made you a girl, clap twice.
A mosquito was sucking blood from my wrist. I watched it swallowing and swallowing, then flying away. That blood was the bug’s blood now, not mine, never mine again.
Whenever you’re ready. Whenever you feel ready to clap, just go on and do it. Once for a boy and twice for a girl.
I thought of the message I’d seen in that yellowed newspaper—the mother hunting her son for nothing but to find him. I felt sure no one was hunting me for any reason, not even just to find me. I must have had a mother, but I also knew I didn’t have a mother. I wasn’t anyone’s son or daughter. What a freedom that was and what a burden that was—to not have a home to go home to, and to not have a home to go home to. All I could have told the Reverend, if I could have spoken, was that I was human just as he was human, only missing a few things he seemed to think I needed—a past, a memory of my past, an origin—I had none of that. I felt I wasn’t the only one, that there must have been others, that I was a part of a “we,” only I didn’t know where they were. We were and I was, not entirely alone. Maybe we were all looking for one another without knowing it.