Pew(6)

I tried to remember at least one thing that had happened to get me here to this porch with this Reverend. I tried to go over it all, each event, to count the minutes out. The church I’d woken up in—that pew—the people who had brought me here—the meal and this. And before that? There was not enough time to remember it all. A moment only happens once but some of them take so much longer than a moment to understand, to see.
Well, if that’s too much to ask right now, there are other things we need to know. How old you are, for instance, and we’ll need to know where you came from … When were you born? And where? And what happened to your parents, your family? Did they … well. Are they somewhere else in the country? Or in another place? These are things we must know in order to give you the right sort of help.
The Reverend leaned back in the swing for a moment, then used his legs to rock it and us at the pace of a sleeping or dying heart.
I want to be your friend, you know. I want to be a good friend to you; I just need some help from you in order to be the best sort of friend I can be—do you understand? If you’re already eighteen—if you’re legally an adult, that is—then there are certain things we can do for you, but if you’re not, then there are a different sort of things we can do for you. But first we need to know these things. Do you understand? These are just how the rules work. I didn’t make them, but I do think it’s best that we follow them, don’t you? So that everything can be fair and orderly? You know, we treat everyone the same here—it’s what we believe. Everyone gets the same kind of respect.
I stared out into the dark and still hot night and I listened to a thousand bugs singing the same note and I listened to the grass remaining still in the dark and humid air. There were many kinds of insects, I knew—I had seen many of them—but how many kinds of respect existed?



MONDAY




I WOKE UP still wearing my shoes and clothes, in the attic, on a bed, on my side, one foot already on the floor. Stray images passed through. A half memory of a place—a narrow hallway. I could almost see something else, could almost remember a word or sentence someone had said to me, but I could not tell if that had happened while I was awake or asleep. I could almost remember a feeling, an old feeling, the feeling of what it’s like to be so small that anyone could just pick you up and take you somewhere. Once, I don’t know when, I had been sitting in a diner and a small child was screaming and weeping and a person behind the counter was frowning at that child, telling the person with that child to make it stop, angry about being an audience to all that tiny pain. The person behind the counter must have forgotten the feeling of being so small that anyone could just pick you up and take you anywhere at any time. What a terror a body must live through. It’s a wonder there are people at all.



HILDA TOLD ME that Steven had decided—and she agreed with him—that I could not be left in the house alone while everyone was at school and work and elsewhere, so she drove me down the block to a small white house surrounded by some flowering bushes, blooms all burst, the petals burnt brown.
Mrs. Gladstone will look after you this morning. Then someone else—his name is Roger and he’ll come get you later. Roger is a very good friend of ours, so be good for Roger. He has something he wants to show you, or a sort of game the two of you can play together. Do you like games?
Hilda hesitated, briefly, waiting on some kind of answer.
Well, I bet you do. I think everyone likes games! Don’t they now? Well—be good for Mrs. Gladstone—I know you will. She’s very old and very tired. She’s had a hard life and she just wants to be quiet … I’m sure you’ll take to each other just fine. Hilda spoke quickly to me as we stood on the front porch, then opened the front door of this little house and shouted, Pew is here now, Paulina—all right? Bye!
Hilda shut the door and I listened to the fast steps taking her away from here. An old woman was sitting in a wheelchair in front of a blank television. The room was cold and punctured by a ticking clock. I sat on a couch covered in stiff plastic, wondering if anyone was ever intended to sit there. Maybe the couch was supposed to sit on the floor and be left alone.
It’s only the fools you’re fooling, Mrs. Gladstone said, speaking directly to the empty television. Only the fools.
We sat in silence for some time after that. It was not clear if she was talking to me. She could have been talking to herself or to someone I could not—for whatever reason—see. For a while there was this look on her face as if she were just about to say something or just about to sneeze.
I married late, Mrs. Gladstone eventually said. I was already thirty-three if you can believe it, which may not seem so old now but back then it, well, I tell you, it was ancient. Everyone had given up on me ever finding someone and at that age no one has their pick anymore—even if you did once, you don’t anymore. I can’t be sure, since I don’t know hardly anyone who is marrying age these days, but I think this is still true. A decent woman will take care of finding a good man quickly because it only gets harder and harder.
But I suppose I was lucky, in a way. Charles, he was a widower and a good deal older than me, but that’s what I mean about how you don’t have your pick anymore. His first wife had been very beautiful, everyone agreed about that, but she had died anyway. Not from being beautiful, of course—I believe it was the cancer, though nobody said as much. That left Charles nearly fifty and with two children he didn’t know much of anything about raising, so he had no choice but to go find another woman. Our mothers introduced us, then he decided it was best that we get married. And even though his children bothered me, I was more bothered by being so old and alone, so we did. It’s a simple arrangement—marriage. No one wants to say so, but it is. Maybe you’ll see one day—when you’re old.