Jesus in Our Hearts

With Jesus gone, our home seemed empty and cold.

Jesus died on a Friday, May 22. After he passed Mom, Dad, Little Mary and I sat in his hospital room for a few hours and then for lack of something better to do, filed out of the room and went home. Once at home I could find no comfort in the familiar surroundings. Everything looked the same but was somehow different. It was like a can of soda with no fizz. The world just seemed flat.

Mom and Dad sat in silence on the sofa in the family room, staring at the television even though it wasn’t turned on. Mom sat with her face in her hand and Dad lay against the sofa's back with his eyes staring up at the ceiling. They both looked exhausted after a long battle.

Little Mary and I tried to play dolls in her room. I thought of how Jesus had butchered the hair of all of my dolls and used to throw my tea dishes across the room when he was two. I wish I had those dolls and those dishes. I wanted to play with them. I wanted to save everything Jesus had ever touched. But many of those things were gone and I was angry with myself for not relishing their importance.

Grand Mary came over and cooked us dinner and while we all sat down together, nobody was really interested in eating except Little Mary. Grandma told us we needed to eat to keep up our strength. Her little pep talk fell on deaf ears.

The next day mom began making funeral arrangements. They had already picked out a small casket and the thought of that made me sick. How could they go pick out a coffin while he was still alive? How do you walk into a shop, select the coffin and then go visit your son in the hospital? I thought they had given up on Jesus while he was still living. Maybe if they had more faith he would have never died? I started to blame Mom and Dad for the cancer. But it did not really matter how I felt, because Mom and Dad were not really there to receive my anger.

Mom and Dad walked around with blank faces. They hardly talked. Mom slept in bed throughout most of the day. She only dragged herself out of bed to go to the bathroom. She stopped eating with us in the dining room and then stopped eating all together. Dad began bringing her water and Fruit Loops with milk into the bedroom. Once in, he would close the door behind him. Little Mary asked me when Mom was going to wake up and I had to tell her that I did not know.

Dad tried to pretend that everything was normal. He continued to fix us the frozen dinners called Kids Cuisine or bring home Happy Meals that did not make us happy and only seemed to fill the emptiness for a few moments. They don’t fill the emptiness as much as push it away until it swings back.

Little Mary did not understand why our lives had become so different. She kept asking Dad when Jesus will come back to live with us. Dad said that Jesus was already with us, that we carry him around in our heart. Little Mary said that she didn’t want to carry Jesus around in her heart, that she wants him in the playroom so they can build towers with blocks or run toy cars around the tracks. Dad just looked down at the floor and walked away.

Little Mary also wanted to know when Mom would come out of her room. She was full of lots of questions that God couldn’t answer.

God sat in the living room most of the day, but he didn’t do much living in there. He dressed us up in the morning, brought mom a glass of juice and a piece of toast. Then he dropped us off at our classrooms and walked down to the first grade. He had to pass the classroom that Jesus would have attended had he still been alive.

At school most of the other kids looked at me as if I had the plague. As if by talking to me they might get Jesus’ cancer. I later realized that Jesus death had made everyone uncomfortable and nobody knew what to say. Nobody that was, but Jimmy Stein. Jimmy told me that he knew that Jesus could not really perform miracles. “No one named Merv could be the Son of God,” he said. I told him that we were all the children of God even his sorry little self.

After school, Dad brought us home. That’s when he warmed up our dinner in the microwave or emptied the fast-food bags. He brought mom a bowl of soup and took out the toast that might have one or two clefts in it. Each day we waited to see how much of the toast Dad brought out. On the days when it was mostly eaten we felt as though Mom might be getting better.

After dinner I attempted my homework. Dad sometimes helped but he had trouble focusing and sometimes he told me not to worry about it but I hated to bring my papers back to school without being checked.

I took care of my little sister once the sun began to set and Dad went to sit in front of the television. Only he rarely turned it on anymore. He poured himself a brown drink and sat in the dark. Sometimes, when he thought we were sleeping I could hear him cry. It was a soft, melancholy song and it made the whole house a little colder.

It had been a little over three weeks since Jesus had died and our routine had not faltered. I was tired of all the silence. I missed Jesus, but now I was also missing my Mom and Dad. I had to talk to someone. I went to Mom and she failed to move. She blinked her watery eyes and looked through me. I left her side and lay down next to Little Mary. After Little Mary fell asleep I walked out into the living room. The house was dark and God was sitting on the sofa. He was drinking his brown drink and crying; mom remained in bed.

I looked at the cup that sat on the glass coffee table. It was still full. For the last week Dad would only pour himself the drink. While he sat on the couch, he never brought the glass to his lips. After about an hour, I could hear him get up and dump the whiskey down the drain. I guess sitting down with the glass was just part of his routine.

“Dad?” I called to him.

He jumped at my words, not realizing that I had come into the room. “Oh Mary,” he said and touched my head. “Are you up again? You really should be getting some rest. Isn’t tomorrow a school day?" His sentences seemed disconnected, like individual beads strung together on a chain. He said, "To tell you the truth I kind of lost track of the days of the week. They all sort of seem the same.” I felt his fingers run through my head. I felt his warmth and realized that all along, in the middle of all the craziness, he always radiated love. It came in the gentleness of his touch, almost feminine.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said. I leaned up against him.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he repeated. Dad let his arm fall along my back and pulled me close to him. “You know Mary, it was easier last time. I was in Heaven and I knew Jesus would be up there with me in three days. It hurt to watch him suffer but I knew we would soon be together. I was almost happy that his Crucifixion had come to pass because I had missed him so during those thirty-three years on Earth.”

“But now, it is different. I know we will be united, but something. Something very small and deep inside of me brings doubt. And that little bit of uncertainty makes the sorrow so great and the loss even greater. I guess it is that little scrape of doubt that makes us human, and our lot tougher.”

“But we have him here in our heart,” I said trying to believe it. Actually, as I spoke the words I realized that I did believe it.

“Yes we do,” God agreed. “Like Little Mary, I too long to see him in the family room. I want to watch him play with his blocks and toy cars. I want to be able to comfort him when he is frightened. I want to watch him play Little League and help him learn Algebra. I want to help with his book report on “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I know that I will never be able to do that, even with Jesus in my heart. I miss him so much. I did not know that anything could hurt so much.”

“I miss him too,” Mom said walking into the room and sitting down on the other side of me. She looked thin, but a small patch of color had returned to her eyes and cheeks. “I want to be able to touch him. I can feel Jesus. I know he is with us. How I want to touch him though,” Mom said. “I want to see his smile, hear his laugh. I keep catching glimpses of him dancing in the rain at your tenth birthday, Mary.”

“I’m sorry,” Dad whispered.

“I know it’s not your fault,” Mom reached over and rubbed Dad’s back. She let her fingers wander over his shoulders.

“I felt so helpless. Watching those doctors try all those different medicines and all I can do is watch and hope and pray. I can’t get the image out of my mind of seeing him lying in that big hospital bed, wasting away within those sheets. I just wanted to take him away from all that suffering but there was nothing I could do. Now I feel like it is all happening again. Only this time it is you whom I am losing,” Dad’s voice shook.

“I just knew from early on that I was going to lose him before I was ready. I just didn’t expect it to be this painful,” Mom explained. “I didn’t know that I was capable of feeling this…just so much sadness. It hurt so much that I thought that at any moment I might just cease to exist. Like my heart would simply refuse to go on beating. And not being able to help my little Marys, knowing that I was being so selfish focusing on my own anguish only made it worse, and the pain more unbearable. I thought like maybe if I lay still enough I might just disappear and then I would not have to deal with any of this pain.”

Little Mary walked into the room, rubbing at her eyes. She clumsily made her way across the room and climbed onto Mom’s lap.

“I’m thirsty,” Little Mary said.

Mom gave her a big hug and a kiss. Dad stood up from the couch and picked up the glass that sat on the coffee table. He dumped the brown drink into the sink and returned with a glass of water for Little Mary.

We sat on the sofa together deep into the night. A family once again, we found the strength to speak about the loss in our life. At one point the conversation changed from missing Jesus to remembering how much we loved him. Laughing together as we shared stories about how he lived his life. I knew that the sorrow was not over and that Jesus’ death would touch every day of my life. But talking about him brought some light into the darkness. And I am not sure exactly how I knew it but I just did; we would all be okay.

We would be okay because we had each other and because we carried Jesus in our hearts.

Goodbye

Jesus remained in the hospital for two weeks after we were first told that he had leukemia. The doctors gave Jesus medications that made him lose his hair and have diarrhea. He came home for a week and then he had to go back. On his second trip to the hospital Jesus stayed for only two days. He was discharged home again, this time with the idea that he would have to go back in four days to have his counts checked.

Counts had something to do with blood cells and they told us whether or not the cancer was leaving. If his counts were okay then he could stay home. If his counts were too low, he would have to go back in the hospital and be started on antibiotics. Regardless of his counts, he would have to go back in the hospital in three weeks for the next round of chemotherapy. Each time meant more needle sticks, more x-rays and less hair.

Each time Jesus went into the hospital, he lost more and more weight. I would joke with him saying, “Come on Jesus. Show us some backbone.” And he would turn around and bend over, revealing a protuberant spine. I told him we were going to have to strap one of Mom’s Christmas fruitcakes to his back or the wind would blow him away. He said he was afraid that if he farted he might shoot across the room and we both laughed at that one.

I loved Jesus when he would come to stay with us at home. We could all pretend that he had never gone into the hospital and that he was well. Jesus and I would color and paint and talk about how life would be when we were older. I told him that I would have one or two Marys of my own, maybe a son who I would name Joseph.

“When I get older there won’t be any more needle sticks or medications that burn my arm,” Jesus said.

Jesus scanned the floor searching for the right crayon. He had taken out a piece of paper and was coloring a blue sky over an apple tree. I could see that he just wanted to have a normal life.

Jesus went back and forth to the hospital for close to two months. Each time that he went there was more blood tests and long waits in a small room to see the doctor. The people who came to draw the blood wore long white coats and carried a tackle box full of needles. I could not figure out why God would make a world that require anyone to carry a box full of needles.

After two months of tests, hospitalizations and doctor visits the cancer was still there. The doctor said that Jesus' cancer was stubbornly aggressive. That was Jesus’ luck, to get a stubborn cancer. The doctor recommended that a surgeon place something called a port in him. At first Mom said no but after the doctor explained that it would save Jesus many sticks, she looked at his scrawny, bruised up arms and agreed.

The day they put the port into his chest, Jesus had to go to surgery. We were all sitting in a big waiting room with other children and worried parents when two tall men in long, white coats came and got Jesus. Jesus stood up and went with them without hesitation. As they walked him away I told Jesus that they were going to turn him into a cyborg and he laughed. "I'll be back," he said. Mom started to cry as soon as Jesus left the room.

After the surgery they moved Jesus into a glass cube in a special part of the hospital. The doctors said it would protect him from germs. When we were allowed to visit, Mom and Dad could go inside the cube but Mary and I had to look at Jesus through the window, like he was a hamster in an aquarium. I would have given him a big metal wheel to run on if he wasn’t already so weak from the cancer.

When God wasn’t looking, Little Mary and I made funny faces by curving our mouths and sticking our tongues out at him. Jesus would giggle and Dad would quickly turn around to see what we were doing but we had made our faces right again. I gave him a look as to say "what" and he would turn back to talk with Jesus.

Some days stick in your mind like a brand or a birthmark. Mom told us that they were moving Jesus to a new room on Wednesday, May 20th, where we could all stay and visit with him. At first Mary and I thought that the doctors must have been moving Jesus out of the class cube because he was getting better. We talked about how we were going to throw a big party for Jesus when he came home and invite all of our friends from school. Mary even said we should have another piñata but we would not let God put anything in the animal’s head.

The moment I saw him, those dreams all disappeared.

I would not have believed that it was possible but Jesus had become even more thin and weak. His cheeks sucked into his face. His eyes sunk into his skull and his lips were dry and chapped with blood. He had small, purple freckles all over his body. It was the first time that we could touch him in over three weeks. I longed to touch his fingers like in the sandbox when we reached through the two holes in the tunnel and tickled each other’s hands. He was my brother and for some reason he already felt like he was no longer here. I hated myself for feeling that way. I was afraid to be near him. He looked like a touch could break him.

Jesus looked at Dad and said that he didn’t want to have the sickness anymore. He said that he was tired. God told him that if he could take the sickness and carry it within him then he would. He also said that none of us are given anything that we cannot handle. Little Mary looked at me and said that she didn’t know who was giving out this stuff but that she didn’t want any of it and that she wished that they would just keep it to themselves. I agreed.

Two days later it was Friday and Little Mary and I woke up and started getting ready for school. I was pulling my hair into a scrunchie when Mom said that we could stay home from school. Little Mary asked why and Mom said that we were all going to sit and play with Jesus today. Little Mary and I were all excited because we had not gotten to play with him in over three weeks.

Mom made us dress in some of our best clothes and we had to fix our hair nice. Dad brought out the video camera and Mom shot him a glare that made him put it back. I was about to ask if I could bring Chutes and Ladders but thought better after seeing that look.

Mary and I were hoping that Jesus might be coming home. When we went into his room we didn’t have to wash special and nobody told us “not to touch” everything we saw like they usually did. The excitement continued to build within me until I saw Jesus.

Jesus had become a ghost of himself. He appeared tired and small. He looked like a balloon that had lost all its air. He laid there in bed, buried in all those big, white sheets. At first I thought that they must have put him into a huge double bed, but then realized that he had just gotten smaller. His arms were like uncooked noodles and the small, purple freckles on his skin had been replaced by purple splotches. He had black, dried blood staining his lips and a little around both his ears and nose. I wanted to cry the second I saw him but knew I couldn’t because then he would know that I was scared and that would make him feel bad.

Mom walked right over to him and bent over and kissed his forehead. He looked as though he could brake with any touch but her kiss brought a smile to his face. “Hi Mom,” she seemed to wake him up.

“Look honey, Mary and Little Mary are here too.” Mom tried to smile as she gestured in our direction.

Jesus looked at us and smiled. “Hi Jesus,” we said together with as much excitement as we could muster. Little Mary ran over and gave him a hug. “No, Mary,” I cried. “You might hurt him.”

My Dad’s gentle voice quieted my fear. “No, no, no Mary; it is okay. It is absolutely okay. You can go over and give your brother a kiss,” Dad said rubbing my head. “It’s okay, Jellybean.” He bent down close to me and pressed his palm steadily to my back. “Go give your brother a hug; I know he wants you to.”

I walked over and gave Jesus a hug and a kiss. He reached out and grabbed my hand. As we held together I could feel his little finger tickle my palm and when I looked up at him he had a smile on his face. Even with the sickness, I could still find glimpses of his bright spirit.

“I love you Mary,” he said.

“I love you too Jesus,” I said back.

Our eyes said “I missed you.”

We sat together for hours, sometimes talking, sometimes watching the television but mostly just looking at each other. At one point Mom suddenly startled to cry. She walked out of the room and stood right outside the door, we could hear her whimpering in the hallway.

I asked Dad if I could sit alone with Jesus and he said that he thought that would be all right. He picked up Little Mary and brought her out of the room with him.

I looked around the small hospital room not certain what I should do or what I should say. Everything looked too delicate, like it was no place for children. There were thin, metal poles with bottles hanging from hooks. Out of the bottom of the glass bottles emerged tubes that snaked into my brother’s arms. The tubes scared me. It had never been difficult to talk to Jesus. I walked over to the corner of the room and grabbed hold of the ribbon hanging down from a giant, mylar, Tweetee Bird balloon that floated in the corner. I pulled it down while saying, “I taught I taw a purty cat.”

Jesus ignored my forced attempt at humor. But still it cracked the ice because he asked “How’s school going?”

“Oh, school is school. John splashes anyone who walks close to the water fountain and Mary Magdalene keeps getting into trouble for kissing boys. I haven’t been too interested in class lately. Math and science seem to have lost their color. Everything seems so bland.”

“Like the food in here.”

“Yeah.

“Is Ned still squeaking?”

“Of course. Oh, and Sister Ellers says 'hey'.”

“Tell her I said hey back.”

Our conversation carried on in this strained fashion for a few minutes with neither of us saying anything of significance. It felt good to talk to him though, to have Jesus back in my life. I knew what I eventually had to ask him and that until I did that we weren’t going to be able to talk. Really talk like brother and sister and the best friends that we had always been. But I needed to put it off a little longer. Eventually I came around to it.

“Jesus,” I said, “why can’t you just take that cancer out of you?” I fought to suppress my tears. I had cried so much over the last few months that I thought that there could not possibly be any more inside of me. Each day, however, I found new tears. “I mean why can’t you just make yourself better and then we can take you home and everything will be back to like it was.”

“I don’t know, Mary. I dream that I am better. I make up these stories in my mind where the doctor comes in and says that they were mistaken and that everything is okay. They pull the needles and tubes out and send me home, the whole staff apologizing for their mistake. I tell them that it’s no problem and I’m just glad they figured it out before they killed me. I rewind these dreams and play then over and over again. But each time that the doctor comes in he just listens to my heart and my lungs and asks me how I feel today and then walks out. He doesn't know how to heal me either.” Jesus shrugged his shoulders. "I think maybe that I have other things that I must do and this body is not the one for me to do them in."

I immediately wanted to change the subject. Go back to talking about nothing. It was safer. “Dad says you are an acorn and are going to grow into a giant tree.”

“Sweet. I always wanted to be an oak. With my luck, somebody might cut me down and make a floor out of me.”

“Or a toilet seat.”

“I miss hearing Dad tell stories,” Jesus said. “When I first had to stay in the hospital he used to sit up with me at night and tell me all about creating the world. Each night it was a different animal or plant or rock. He told me how he made bunnies and gave the girl bunnies big feet so they could push the boy bunnies away. He gave snails slime so they could always find their way home.”

“Are you afraid to die,” I asked him. I don’t know where it came from. The words burst out of me and then I wished that I could take them back but it was too late.

Jesus was unfazed by my outburst. “I used to be very afraid. Now it seems muted. I am so tired that it seems like it might be a relief. What I fear most is being away from you and Mom and Dad and Little Mary. I’m not sure what it will be like and I don’t quite understand why this is happening to me.” Jesus looked at the plastic tube sticking into his chest.

“God told me that I would be okay and I believe him,” he said trying to find some reason for something that appeared to have none. “Dad said that each person has an important place in this world and whether we are here for three minutes or ninety years, our impact can be great,” Jesus said.

“Jesus, I don’t understand you. I don’t understand how you can talk this way,” I told him.

Jesus scanned the room and focused on Dad outside the glass doors of his room. I followed his gaze. Dad was holding Little Mary and telling her a story, probably about how he created glass as a liquid in order to confuse humans. “Dad is not the God that people pray to in church; at least I hope that he is not." We both laughed. "However, I do know that I am both his and God’s son just as you are his and God’s daughter. Don’t you think that there must be a connection?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t you think that there is a reason why Dad is our father? He had a part in all of this and I would have never been able to realize my own role in this world without him. Maybe his part was to help me accept my cancer by smothering us with crazy ideas. Maybe with a different father I would feel more terror. I don’t know.”

Jesus and I looked out through the glass wall as a food service worker walked up and Dad preceded to get in an argument about getting some Fruit Loops for his son. He noticed our stares and put one hand towards his face, puffing out his cheeks and making his mouth wide with the aid of his pinky and thumb. With his index finger he pushed his nose up like that of a pig and with his other hand he waved. The food service lady walked off shaking her head and talking to herself leaving Jesus and me to laugh out loud, only not at what Dad thought we were.

“I want you to be in the future,” I said, “to experience it with me.”

“I will, Mary. I will always be with you. I guess just not in this shell,” Jesus picked at the loose skin on his chest. “As you go forward you will feel my presence because I will always be with you, in your heart. And wherever I’m going, I will have you in my heart."

I began to cry. I didn’t want to but the tears wouldn’t stay away any longer. “I don’t understand, Jesus.”

“You will.”

I hugged Jesus and the tears eventually stopped flowing. We talked about our favorite candy (Looney Toon Crunch) that Jesus could not taste because his mouth had lost the ability. We talked about Mom and Dad and Little Mary, playing in the sand, building forts, sledding in the winter and a million other things that last moments but stay with you for a lifetime. I hoped Jesus would be like that. Mainly, we just sat in the room together feeling each other’s presence. Jesus was the closest person in the world to me and on that day I learned that he would always be, no matter how distant our physical bodies traveled.

Mary came running in with a miniature box of Fruit Loops. “Had to pull some strings, son, but I was able to get those for you. After all I am...” Dad’s words trailed off.

“Dad, you can have them,” Jesus said, “but you are going to have to get your own milk.”

“I can have them. Are you sure, son? I mean well…if you insist. Wow, look at this,” Dad reached into his coat pocket, “just happen to have a carton of milk right here and a spoon.”

Dad sat down next to Jesus and ate the Fruitloops. Dad scooped the cereal into his mouth and in the quiet of the hospital room the crunch of the cereal seemed inordinately loud. I caught Jesus’ eyes and we laughed.

We played a game of Ker Plunk and as usual Dad collected the most marbles. We figured he needed them; he was obviously missing a few.

The day slid by us and we came upon the time that we would typically be leaving. Mom and Dad made no moves to depart so Mary and I settled close to Jesus to play a game of cards.

Jesus also realized that we were not leaving and he grabbed hold of Dad’s hands. He said, “Dad, I am scared.” His body quivered slightly under the sheets.

“I know son,” Dad said back to him. “It’s okay to be scared. We are all here with you. It will be okay.”

Mom sat down on the bed next to Jesus and stroked his head. She leaned in close to him and whispered, “You will always be a star in our sky, shining down upon all of us.” Mom kissed Jesus and told him how proud she was of him and how much she loved him.

“Dad, I don’t want to die. I don’t know what it will be like. If there’s anyway you can make this pass, please let it,” Jesus pleaded. “Please make it go away.”

“I can’t change it son," God said. "If I could take your cancer into my body I would. I wish I could. Jesus, we will always be near. You will never be alone. Try not to be scared; all of us will always be with you. You will feel us closer than ever before.”

Dad started to cry and it was like a cold going around the room. Soon Mom, Little Mary and I were also crying. Dad told Jesus that he felt so lucky to have such a great son and then didn’t say anything more. I didn’t know that all that sadness could be in one person.

Jesus fell asleep shortly afterwards. I sat near him and held his hand. I said, "I love you Jesus." He slept calmly.

It was close to three in the afternoon when Jesus died. He was lying in bed sleeping. His eyes had been closed for at least twenty minutes. He was taking slow, deep breaths that seemed peaceful. I watched those breaths, every one of them and had gotten to counting them, starting over with each passing minute. Jesus was now taking just eight breaths each minute. He breathed out and I said “One”. Time passed and he sucked in a second gasp, which came out a few seconds later. “Two,” I counted to myself. Then he took in a third breath and I got ready to say three.

But it never came out.

Fading Away

Sometime about three months after the cancer took hold of his body, we stopped waiting for Jesus to get better and began waiting for him to die. Mom and God didn’t say that we were doing this but by the defeated expressions that filled their faces Little Mary and I knew this was true.

Mom had a spark in her that could not be described, only witnessed. When my mother walked the flowers tried to bloom a little brighter in order to attract her attention. Their reds became like those of a cardinal and their yellows like the heart of the sun. Birds sang their prettiest song; even the grass stood up straight and brushed the dirt off its blades. My mother brought life out from the world. She made breathing easy. In our home we all, even God, competed for her attention because she had a way of making you feel like you were the most important thing in life.

On my tenth birthday Dad and Mom had planned an elaborate picnic. The two of them had decorated the side of a hill in South Austin Park to look like a candy forest from a Grimms' Fairy Tale. They took a Play School house and smeared frosting and whip cream all over the outside of it, then stuck candies into its wavy, creamy walls. Christmas candy canes were strung on licorice vines that reached from tree to tree. Big chocolate eggs were hidden among the real and plastic plants that made up the forest ground. Mom and Dad even dressed up like Gredel and Hansel. All of my friends were there and they had brought presents wrapped in beautiful paper. There was cake, hamburgers and games for all of us to play.

God, of course, was supposed to take care of the weather and he could not have failed in a more splendid fashion. While the day was warm, as is common in Austin in September, dark clouds filled the sky and soon rain began to fall, followed quickly by our faces.

The frosting on the witch’s candy house ran in multi-color streams as it washed down the hill. The chocolate eggs were ruined and the candy canes dropped sticky, cinnamon red and white tears to the grass below. Standing under the roof of a gazebo, watching the rain spoil the decorations, all of us stood with disappointment dripping from our eyes. God was trying to cheer us up, explain that we could have loads of fun playing under the roof of the Gazebo. He was trying to get us to play pin the proboscis on the JuneBug when Mom did something strange. She let out a small laugh and then walked out into the rain.

Without saying any words, Mom walked out from under the stifling protection of the gazebo’s rooftop and straight into the rain. Then she began dancing, throwing her skirt from side to side and laughing. God followed next, closely by the rest of us. Soon we were all out in the warm Austin rain, dancing and singing and playing the greatest game of rain baseball ever played.

We were wet, dirty and most of all happy. That was Mom; she brought life from a rock, water from the hard desert soil, joy to our life. Of course, she did not bring joy to the parents of the party guests. Most had expressions of shock and horror as they picked up their dirty, smelly, wet children from our home afterwards.

With Jesus sick, everything changed. Mom’s light faded. Her walk slowed. She moved around the house looking confused and little. She began forgetting where the cups went. She had trouble making macaroni and cheese. Once I watched her load up the dishwasher after dinner only to unload it fifteen minutes later. The dishes, still displaying the stains of the eaten meal, looked confused peaking out from behind the glass doors of the cupboard.

Mom’s energy had been drained and replaced with a heavy weight. Little Mary, Jesus and I knew she needed our help. But Jesus’ attempts to comfort her only made the strain in her face grow. She tried to be strong for him, but she just couldn’t. Little Mary thought that Mom needed our hugs and we supplied them in bushels hoping they might help, but none of our efforts could bring Mom to smile. Just like Jesus, she was slowly fading away.

Acorns

I stopped calling Dad God the night I learned my brother was sick. If Dad was God he should have been able to heal Jesus. If Jesus N.T. could heal all those strangers throughout the Gospels, God should have had the power to cure his own son. I knew my father and I knew his heart. If my father was God, he never would have let cancer invade Jesus’ body in the first place or even this world. I realized as I lay in the damp grass that my father was just a man with the same weaknesses of other men. He was a victim of this world.

Jesus spent most days in the hospital and Mom and Dad took turns staying there with him. Little Mary and I were brought to visit with him a couple times each week. Most of time, however, when we arrived home from school Grand Mary greeted us at the door and watched over us until one of our parents came home. We were only able to spend the evening with Jesus in the hospital on Saturdays. One day I arrived home from school with a runny nose and wasn’t allowed to see Jesus for a week. It was awful.

I think Mom and Dad used up all their strength with Jesus in the hospital because when they arrived home they appeared as though all life had been drained from their bodies. Mom often hid away in her room. We had frozen meals alternating with pizza or a precooked chicken for dinner. With little Mary and I still finishing our vegetables Mom would disappear to her room leaving most of her food still on the plate. After clearing the table, I ushered Little Mary to the bathroom and helped her wash up. We shared a bedtime story and finished with a kiss goodnight. Some nights before going to sleep, I would sit outside my parents’ bedroom door and listen to my mother weep. It was a mournful song and I wished she could stop singing it. I longed for the days when she tucked me in bed and sang of the wonderful day that would arrive in the morning. I longed to have my mother back.

Dad kept busy and filled any quiet moments with pressured thoughts on creation, making birdhouses, movies...anything that would wash away the silence. He might ask me how school was going and then not ten minutes later he would ask me again. I answered him each time. Little Mary would look at me and make her eyes roll up in her head indicating that she thought he was crazy.

A couple of times each week after dinner, Dad made it a point to help us get ready for bed. Standing around the bathroom as we brushed our teeth and hair, Dad talked about work, Principal Ned’s latest failure and the news. Little Mary wondered why he was always talking to us about grownup things but I was just happy that he was near. When Dad thought we were both asleep he often poured himself a drink and fell asleep in front of the television. He said he couldn’t sleep in his bed without our Mom.

“Dad,” I approached him one night when Mom was at the hospital. Dad sat on the sofa cradling his drink. The glass still appeared full and I think he poured the drink more out of habit than necessity.

“Oh, Jellybean.” Dad looked at me and smiled, “What are you doing up? I would have guest you fast asleep dreaming about porcupine quills by now.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Want to sit up with me?” Dad padded the sofa next to him.

I jumped up and rested my head against his side. He felt warm. The television was turned to a news channel and some old man in a suit was saying something but I didn't listen. We sat for a few minutes and it was the first time in a while that I heard Dad let the world be still. I could hear his slow, heavy breaths and I was reminded of the times he used to sit me on his lap and tell me the stories of how he became man.

“Dad, why can’t you fix Jesus?” I asked.

There was a long pause and for a while I thought maybe that Dad had fallen asleep. I waited, my head pressed firmly against his chest and heard a soft cry. I was a little afraid to look up at him. I don’t know why, but I thought maybe if we looked into each other’s eyes we both might just fall apart. The house had become too heavy and at any moment it might collapse down all around us. I felt like we were all slowly suffocating under its weight. “Well Jellybean,” Dad eventually said, “I guess it is because Jesus is not broken.”

“But he is sick,” I said. “He has cancer.”

“Jesus is not sick. His spirit, his soul, is as strong as ever. It is the vessel in which he is traveling that has become ill.” My father placed his drink down and I watched the ice shift in the brown water. They clinked together without effort or complaint.

“I don’t understand, Dad,” I said, confused by his answer.

“I know Jellybean; it is a difficult question that you ask and an even more difficult one to answer.” Dad looked at me and forced a smile for lack of a better expression. He reached up and dabbed at the corners of his eyes. I pretended not to notice. “Let me try to explain it this way,” Dad let out a sigh and began collecting some thoughts.

“Jesus’ body is like that of an acorn. It starts from a bud on a tree, one among many. In the autumn the acorn will eventually drop to the ground. Over time it becomes weathered and disappears into the dirt. If you go looking for the acorn during the spring after winter, you will not find it, Jellybean. The vessel is gone. But the spirit or soul lives on. If you watch the ground where the acorn had fallen, you will eventually see a stem with a leaf peaking out of the dirt. That sprout will become a tree. That tree will grow big and tall and ultimately produce hundreds of acorns, all of which will then do the same. The spirit continues to grow and give life, even if the form has changed. That spirit is passed to the tree and then on to each and every acorn. It is what makes all of us a part of God.”

I began to understand a little, but still remained a little confused. I asked Dad why the acorn must fall to the ground. Why can’t there be one tree that stands tall forever full of acorns?

“That is the nature of life. It does not conform to our expectations; it follows its own soul and the course that spirit dictates. Each acorn holds on to the tree for exactly the amount of time that is supposed to. The acorns all came from one tree and since all acorns can produce trees whose to say which one the creator is and which is created. God and all of creation are one. It does not matter which acorn grows into a tree because all of them carry the same spirit from the original tree within them.”

“Mary, these are simple words used to create a simple story, but I am using them to define thoughts that fall way beyond description. They can only give you a hint, a taste of the true message.” My father shook his head, possibly confusing himself. “Do you understand any of this?” he asked. He could have just as easy asked if I believed any of it. As he spoke I think he was trying to convince himself of its truth

“Sort of,” I replied trying to get my thoughts together. “If we are like the acorns and we all came from the same tree, which also came from a single acorn, then part of Jesus is already within each of us. As long as we live, then Jesus lives.”

“Jellybean, you understand ten times more than most people.” God kissed my forehead.

“Dad, if Jesus is not dying, only his vessel, then why does it hurt so much?”

“I don’t know, Jellybean,” Dad said, “but it hurts more than any pain that I have ever felt before.”

The hum of the television created a lullaby that tempted me to fall to sleep. “I wish Jesus’ acorn could hold on to the tree a little longer,” I whispered. There was a longer silence than before, and when I looked up I noticed that my father was crying. His tears fell from the corners of his eyes like pieces of glass.

“So do I,” he said. “So do I.”

The Last Supper

Mom and Dad didn’t just come out and tell us that Jesus was ill. Parents are rarely that direct with their children. Rather, they became angry easily and forgot basic things like packing mine, Jesus' and Little Mary's lunch for school. Often, they closed themselves in their room and argued. Later, I would learn that they were not arguing because they were mad at each other, but because they were just scared and concerned and they could not express it to anybody else. My parents took turns pacing behind the closed door with heavy hushed voices and allowed fear and innuendo out. They repeatedly assured Jesus, Little Mary and me that everything was all right even though we knew it could not possible be.

The day I learned that Jesus was going to die was March 12, 2002. I will not forget that date for the rest of my life. If I knew the terrible turn our lives were to make as that day drew to a conclusion I would have grabbed each second and held on tightly so as not to let a single moment slip by me. I know that a time will come when I will be in my sixties bouncing a grand-Mary on an arthritic knee and on March twelfth I will take a moment to think of my little brother and the light that fluttered in the wind. I say fluttered because even a hurricane could not extinguish his flame.

The morning sky greeted us with clouds and darkness prompting Little Mary to ask Mom when nighttime was going to be over and the day would begin. The sky was an ocean of undulating gray and black. Waves crashed with crests of electric light. It made staying inside our warm home feel like a vacation. Even lying around with Jesus and Little Mary seemed like a treat. It rained through most of the morning and early afternoon. Our hearts were shaken by loud thunderous claps as we crawled under the blankets and sofa pillows that we had assembled into a fort. Our eyes lit with streaks of lightning. The day felt alive and we along with it.

Jesus, little Mary and I passed most of the day by playing board games. Dad said they call them board games because you played them when you were bored. Dry, within the confines of our home, we plowed through the land of Gooey Gumdrops, spent an expensive evening in a hotel at Park Place and made each other feel Sorry as often as possible as we tried to get our four men home.

Shortly after lunch and with little forewarning the storm dried up. The sun came out of hiding to reconstruct our day. The rain that seemed to pound all morning long had made everything fresh; it had baptized our world. The trees, the grass, and the air: all seemed new after the downpour. The air felt heavy with the scent of rain. That was okay, because I loved the smell of rain in the air.

When the day changed, we changed also. Jesus, Little Mary and I jumped out of our pajamas and into some blue jeans and sweatshirts. The three of us ran outside to splash in puddles and make mud pies. We swam through the tall wet grass, flew with our heads stuck in cumulous clouds and basked under the protection of the sun. When we returned to the house we were covered from the tops of our heads to the bottoms of our toes with patches of mud and blades of grass prompting Mom to spray us off with a hose and then usher us straight into the bathroom for a wash.

“Bath before dinner.” Jesus protested as he disrobed. Mom winced at the sight of his thin body.

"Are you losing weight," she said.

Jesus did not reply. How would he know? He splashed into the tub. The water level in the tub failed to rise more than the thickness of a piece of paper. Jesus looked at Mom his face shrouded in guilt as if to say some things should never be seen.

I waited until Jesus was done drying off before entering the bathroom to take my shower. As I went into the room I took a second look at how thin Jesus appeared. He stood there with little more than a transparent layer of skin covering his bones and a heavy towel wrapped around his waist. I could trace his spine as it poked through the skin of his back. He was like a reptile or a shellfish with an exoskeleton. I tried to put it out of my mind as I cleaned up, but the sight of his translucent body made me worry. It was like he had already become a ghost.

The smell of mom’s cooking seemed to right everything and for a little while I stopped thinking about my parents’ conversations and Jesus looking so thin.

Mom had cooked dinner, which for starters meant no manna. Mother Mary roasted the juiciest chicken known to mankind. The meat fell from the bone in soft, wet chunks. Its aromatic steam filled the kitchen air and brought eager cries from my stomach. Mashed potatoes with thick, country gravy, steamed carrots drowning in melted butter and double chocolate cake with extra rich icing finished up the meal. I thought Mom may have been trying to make us all fat and was then again reminded of Jesus’ spine.

Dad said grace, thanking himself for all of creation, and then using my fork as a plow I made trenches through the potatoes and watched the gravy flow. Jesus laughed as Dad provided an account of the all-nighters he pulled with his artistic engineers as they struggled to fill the world with a menagerie of animals. He described what he thought was the most absurd animal of all creation. I think it was the platypus.

I studied Jesus from across the dinner table. He looked sick. How long could he have been this way? How could I have missed it? His cheeks sucked into his mouth and you could see the line of his jaw. He looked out of pale eyes that held dark circles like the valences that hung in the living room.

We did not talk about the way Jesus looked. I started to say something to mom and she told me to mind my own appearance and that Jesus looked just fine. She had brought Jesus to the doctors three times in the last two weeks and each time he had said that Jesus was fine. As an exclamation point to her words she plopped down on Jesus’ plate a second helping of mashed potatoes loaded with gravy.

There were other things that we did not talk about. Like how Jesus started taking naps and how his nose bled everyday. Mom had called our doctor when the nosebleeds started and the doctor told Mom that they were probably just growing pains, but Jesus didn’t seem to be in pain and with all his weight loss I kind of thought he was shrinking rather than growing. When the bleeding didn’t stop in a week, the doctor performed some blood work and then reassured Mom and Dad that everything was normal. The relief that settled in after the doctor called with the positive test results only lasted until the next nosebleed. Then the concern returned.

Dad had just said something about how he had wanted to give platypuses hands, no arms, just fat hands protruding from their enormous bodies so as to paddle the water along their sides. I thought about how funny the platypuses would look trying to pop plankton into their mouths with those little hands when Jesus snorted, spraying all of us with creamy potatoes.

Only it wasn’t potatoes; it was blood.

“Jesus,” I cried, “put a hand over your face when you sneeze.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled with a trickle of blood beginning to drip from his nose. He wiped his face with the back of his hand leaving a crimson smear.

“Oh, no honey,” Mom said. She was the first to realize that it was blood instead of potatoes. Mom stood up with a napkin and started to wipe the blood away. Her face crumbled as if hit by a fist and I could see her fight to hold back a cry. “You’re okay, don’t worry about it.” Her voice cracked and I struggled to understand why. It was just another nosebleed.

Mom sat back down in her place. She seemed confused. She tried to eat but dropped her fork in her plate and it let out a loud clang that made Little Mary jump. Mom then put her hand to her mouth and started to cry.

“Dear,” Dad said but Mom was already stumbling up from the table. Mom’s hands were trembling and her legs looked unsteady like when you were sick with the flu, only she hadn’t been coughing. Her face had gone ghostly white.

“I don’t feel well,” her voice broke. “Why don’t you all just finish dinner; I need to go lie down in the bedroom.”

Mom rushed from the table and we all knew that it wasn’t a cold but Jesus’ nosebleed that had made her sick. Dad sat with us and we finished the rest of the dinner in silence. Only I wasn’t very hungry so rather than eat I just moved my food around the plate until Dad excused us.

Jesus held his nose pressed tight so as to stop the bleeding. He said that he was sorry and his voice sounded funny like when he had a cold. Dad told him that it wasn’t his fault but you could tell that Jesus still felt the guilt of a confused child. That was Jesus; he always acted like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sometimes it was like he was born to suffer.

Dad asked me to watch the others and what I did was watch them go into Little Mary’s room. Jesus and Little Mary sat down and started playing with Power Rangers and Barbie Dolls. The Barbies were trying to get the Power Rangers to stop fighting and hang out at the beach. I left Jesus and Little Mary to their dolls and snuck down the hall and sat just outside of Mom and Dad’s bedroom. They weren’t yelling but they weren’t talking nice either. Mom was still crying.

“It’s not fair,” I heard mom say. “He’s only nine. I thought I had until he was thirty-three.”

God didn’t say anything; he just looked down at his feet. I looked at those feet through the space between the doors. The feet were big, covered with blue socks that had fluffy threads beading up like dew on petals. I didn’t see any answers in them and wasn’t sure why Dad studied them so intently.

“When you asked me to have your son, how could I say no to you,” Mom continued. “I loved you so much and I wanted to carry part of you in me. Create with you. I didn’t know what I was agreeing to,” she sobbed. “If it wasn’t bad enough knowing he would die, I also knew that he will have to suffer. Knowing all that as I felt him developing within my body. When I felt that first movement I already knew that I would have to watch him pass. It’s not fair to ask that of a mother.”

“Mary, you know this has nothing to do with me being God. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it is just growing stuff like Doctor Rodriguez said. The blood work all came back normal. We can bring him back in to the doctor’s office tomorrow and get him checked out again.”

“Oh come on. It’s not just the nosebleeds. Look how thin he is. A child his age shouldn’t be losing weight. And taking naps. I know it’s not good. Even you can’t deny that.”

Dad finally gave in to Mom. His struggle had been brief but he had already lost hope before the fight had even begun. “I know you’re right. I just feel so helpless. I feel as though I have no control. All my life I have believed like I authored my destiny, that while I could not direct the circumstances at least I could govern my reaction. And now...now I feel like even my emotions are in the hands of another. So desperately I want to help him, Mary. I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know if there is anything that I can do that will change anything. I feel helpless.”

“I felt him growing inside of me,” Mom sobbed. “I remember his first kick. Do you remember when he just learned to sit up? He was so proud of himself, he would smile. Remember that big smile he made when you walked into the room? I lived with this fear, though, like anyone must who has lost a child in the past. Each milestone carried the weight of inevitability. How do you think I felt realizing that I was raising a sacrifice to mankind? Somehow, I was strong for him. I was determined to make him happy. But now you take him early. And like this. I always thought that he would suffer but not the slow consuming death of cancer.”

“Don’t say that word,” Dad hushed. “We don’t know yet.”

“Oh come on, get your head out of the sand.”

Dad stopped looking at his socks and began pacing back and forth listening to her, but not saying much. When he did speak it was only to say that it was out of his control and he didn’t know it would happen like this. He tried to tell her that he was losing a son also. That he didn’t want to see Jesus suffer. He loved his son as much as any of his children, even more than himself. But it didn’t seem right to compete in grief.

I began to cry, but not loud enough for them to hear. I sat in the hall, my knees grasped firmly against my chest and I rocked. This was not happening. This was not our life. Jesus was okay.

“He’s wasting away,” mom yelled and I jumped back from the anger in her voice. It was a mean anger, rather than a hurt anger. It carried with it accusations, threats and heat. It still scares me today because I had never heard that sound in her voice before. I think it scared her also because afterwards there was a long silence. Next she spoke in a much weaker voice. “How long will he suffer?” she asked.

Dad shook his head and mumbled, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Mary, I don’t know. Life has to work at its own pace and in its own way. Knowledge of the future is not necessarily absolute. It’s like knowing a red light will turn green, but you don’t know the exact time.”

“And death?” Mom asked.

“Mary, you know what I believe,” Dad replied, “life and death are the same.” And that’s when I knew the truth. Jesus wasn’t going to be with us much longer.

My tears were starting to bring whimpers with them and I knew I had to go back to the room with Little Mary and Jesus. I didn’t want to get in trouble for spying. In a way, however, I was terrified to go back into that room. I was afraid to be near him, afraid that Jesus might see my fear. Afraid that seeing him would break me apart. But I also knew that I longed to be near to Jesus. I longed to sit down and play as if nothing was wrong because maybe if I could do that then everything might just be all right.

I desperately wanted to go hold Jesus and tell him how much I loved him but I didn’t want to upset him. I knew he would hug me back and tell me that everything would be okay because that was how Jesus was. I knew that I could not go into the room. Not now. So I ran outside and lay down in the wet grass. I didn’t care that it was wet. It all seemed so unimportant and I couldn’t help but wonder why God brought Jesus into my life only to take him away.

And on The Eighth Day, God Created Breasts

I know they just didn’t spring up over night, but it definitely seemed that way.

Even when I finally asked Mom and God about them they were still just little bumps on my chest not any bigger than a baby’s fist. The mounds were not firm or rubbery but soft like water balloons filled up all the way. The pair settled in place unobtrusively like a pack of Jehovah Witnesses moving into a new neighborhood. As is true to their nature, however, they soon started ringing the bell and knocking on the door as they stood up and demanded someone pay them attention. Unlike the Jehovah Witnesses, they were not selling salvation.

I first really gave noticed to my breasts when the pair started getting hung up when I pulled my shirts over my head. They protruded out like two groundhogs checking out the flat, dry plains of New Mexico. Some days they could be sensitive and on those days just having them rub up against my shirt made a tingle that both intrigued and tormented simultaneously.

I lived with this newly found curse in silence. I felt like Herbert, the whittling whippet, in that book by Mark Twain. Mom read the story to Little Mary, Jesus and me one night before laying us down for sleep. Mom tried to read us a story every night prior to bedtime. Jesus brought the book about Herbert home from the school library. In the story, Herbert was a racing dog that after a two year career, quite long in terms of racing dogs, was rewarded by being taken to “the farm” where all racing dogs go to live out their retirement in luxury. Only this was not a farm with pastures and trees and other animals with which to chase and play. The farm was actually a dirt pen where the dogs were kept until they died, starving of malnutrition and infested with disease.

One day Herbert found a bone, which he later learned was the leg of Maltreat, the greatest racing whippet ever. Herbert was so embarrassed by the fact that he was the only whippet with anything to gnaw on that he refused to eat it and instead chose to bury the bone. While on the “farm” Herbert discovered that he had a natural talent for whittling. So one day he dug up the bone and began to whittle a key to the front gate. Unfortunately he died of starvation along with the other abandoned dogs before he could get the key completed.

I think there was supposed to be a moral in that story but I could never figure it out. Mom said it was a sick and twisted individual who wrote Herbert the Whittling Whippet and definitely nothing that should ever be told to children. She finally said that she bet a lawyer must have written it and stormed out of the room after kissing Jesus, little Mary and me goodnight.

Like Herbert with his newly discovered bone, I did not speak of my breasts to anyone and endured their intrusion on my normal life without complaint. Unlike Herbert, I did not try to whittle them. I just tried to ignore them. Then I started to bleed from between my legs and that was more than I could handle.

It was midway between my twelfth and thirteenth birthday when I started to bleed. I had heard other girls talk about it at school, in fact Gina (September 8) and Allison (January 4) began keeping a record of when every girl started. I was beginning to think something was wrong with me because most of the other girls had already started to bleed and I didn’t want to be the last one picked, like Sally Struthers (who, by the way, began bleeding on February 2) in basketball.

All of my anticipation could not prepare me for what was going to happen. I had lay in bed on many nights feeling both excited and fearful for the day the dark blood might start to run and anoint me a woman. When the day came I felt neither fear nor excitement and I definitely did not feel anointed as a woman. I mainly just felt pain and the belief that my stomach was trying to jump out of my body through my mouth. I sat in the sixth grade, struggling to pay attention to Sister Murphy’s take on Napoleon, when my belly decided that it had heard enough. Like a French Serf, my uterus rebelled in the worst of ways. It picked up its spade and started hacking about at my vital internal organs. I raised my hand and asked to go to the nurse’s office. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the blood in my panties.

I immediately went to God; after all he was supposed to know everything and he did create the tempest that had become my body. I found Dad in the garage. He was building a birdhouse based on the desert home of Frank Lloyd Wright. He held a miniature chair in his left hand, which he gently sanded with a small file.

“Hi there Jellybean,” God said without taking his eyes away from the chair. “Ya know, that guy Wright understood the harmony that humans are supposed to attain with their surroundings in order to truly be content. All of this control and domination leaves man empty. Wright knew that at our core we are all symbiotic creatures. Rather than designing buildings that protrude unnaturally up from the landscape like boils on a person’s face, he tried to construct dwellings that blended into the landscape. The building became one with nature and with the inhabitant. He even believed that the furniture of a home should appear as a natural growth from within the home’s interior, almost like a mushroom in the shade of a giant redwood. This would allow one to feel as if they were a part of nature, a piece of the cosmic milieu, rather than a detached stranger occupying a foreign land. A feeling you hopefully will not come to know when you get older.”

I looked at the birdhouse. It was long and boxy with a low-pitched roof. “Why is it so ugly?” I asked.

“Well unfortunately, Wright never lived anywhere pretty: Southern Illinois and Arizona.”

“Oh, one other thing Dad,” I said.

“Yes, anything Jellybean,” God said while continuing his sanding of the chair.

“Why do I bleed from between my legs?” I asked.

God dropped the delicate chair from his hands and it landed on the bench unharmed. He rubbed at his forehead and then picked the chair back up. It was a recliner with little arm rests. The seat had been scraped out to create a pool that could be used to hold birdseed. “Well Jellybean, there is no really easy answer to your question. See we can answer it on a physiological, spiritual or even philosophical level.”

“Well I’m physically bleeding right now, so what if we hit that one first,” I said.

“Okay, well I guess that is a good place to start,” God scratched his forehead with his file. He was obviously stalling. “See Jellybean, the human body is really quite a fascinating and complex system. Actually group of systems,” he corrected himself. “And, well, see... they all work together under the influence of a group of proteins in the blood called hormones.”

“Forget about it,” I huffed. “I’ll go ask mom.”

I found Mom sitting on the floor in the family room playing Candy land with Jesus and Little Mary. She had just drawn a Plumpy card and Jesus and Little Mary were cheering with delight. Mom grudgingly moved her piece back to the beginning.

“I hate the complete randomness of this game,” Mom said to the two giggling children. “It is almost as bad as Chutes and Ladders. There is just no way for someone to formulate a strategy.” Mom was competitive, even when playing Candy land with her two children. I went to mom’s ear and told her that I was bleeding.

“Do you need me to get you a Band-Aid?” she asked.

“I don’t know if a Band Aid would be big enough,” I replied. “Also, I think that might hurt.”

“Oh,” she looked away from the game and gazed into my eyes, “you’re bleeding.” Mom looked back at the Candy land board below her and then at Jesus and Little Mary. “Why don’t you go up to my room and I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

As I ascended the stairs I heard her hurry the game along. I sat in my parent’s room wondering what Mom was going to say. I felt small in their big room and a little scared. Was there something wrong with me? Was it supposed to hurt so much? Maybe I was bleeding for some different reason? I needed to know how long this bleeding was going to last and more importantly how often it would occur. It did not bring along the liberating feelings I had expected. I hoped it didn’t happen more than once every couple years.

Mom opened the door and walked into the room. She was carrying a laundered pair of shorts and underwear. She looked at me and then sat down on the bed next to me. Mother Mary patted my leg, “Jellybean, I guess the first thing we need to do is get you cleaned up.” Mom stood up, ushered me into the bathroom and showed me a thick, white pad in the shape of an hourglass. She peeled off a strip of paper revealing a giant sticker.

My eyes blasted off to Mars when I saw that sticker. It looked just like a giant Band-Aid. In disbelief I said, “You mean you want me to stick that to my, uh my.... Won’t it hurt when I take it off?”

Mom smiled as she struggled to control a laugh. “You stick this part to your panties, Jellybean.” She then pressed it to the crotch of my underwear and I changed clothes.

I walked out of the bathroom and sat back down on her bed. The bed was big with a thick, soft mattress. The bed was also unmade: its covers pulled half way down as they usually were throughout the day. The flowery pillows that Mom had bought for the head of the bed lay piled on the floor in the corner of the room.

Mom stood in the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom staring at me. The light showered from behind, silhouetting her shoulder length hair, golden like the straw left in the pasture. She wore a long, comfortable t-shirt and blue jean shorts. Her eyes started to puddle. “When did you start to turn into a little woman, Mary?” I looked at her unable to answer, but I don’t really think she wanted one anyway because before long she shook her head and added, ”I just can’t believe it.”

“Mom, I hope you’re not going to start crying because right now I need someone with a level head on their shoulders. I’m bleeding, I’m cramping and right now I’m feeling a little emotional.” I lied. Inside, I did not just feel a little emotional, I was becoming frantic. Mom still had not explained what was going to happen next. I felt like my head might explode at any moment.

“Don’t worry honey I won’t cry. You do understand, Mary, that you’re not the first girl to start a period. It’s just that you’re growing up all over the place and I failed to see it. Now that I look at you, your face, your hands...I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought I might have you for another year or two.” She next told me that I needed to start wearing a training bra. Once again I was confused because I didn’t know what I was training them for.

Mom sat down on the bed next to me and we settled into a long talk. First she said something about bicycles and how every month I would bleed and need to wear a pad or something called a tampon: a spongy cork that you actually placed inside your body. I told her only a man could have invented such an awful contraption. She responded that actually tampons could be quite helpful. Next we talked about boys and girls and babies. Mom had a way of making me feel normal and most of the fear of the bleeding left me during our conversation.

When mom finished talking I asked her why girls gave birth to babies and had breast that leaked milk and became engorged and why not boys and that’s when she told me to go ask my father. As I got up to go find Dad again I told her that I would never touch a boy for as long as I lived and Mom said that she wished she could believe that.

“Honey,” mom tucked my hair behind my ears and clipped it up in the back. “I believe that your father thinks that he is God. I believe that a man crucified on a cross two thousand years ago is the Son of God and will bring me eternal salvation. Yet, I cannot bring myself to believe that you will not touch a boy during your entire life. I only hope that when you do that it is your free decision and that you do it responsibly.”

I left the room not quite understanding that last comment. I went to the garage but Dad was no longer working on his birdhouse. The birdhouse was near completion and I could see how in the right setting it might be beautiful.

I searched the house and found God lounging in the family room watching Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo. Yes, that is correct. God watches cartoons. In fact, he watches bad cartoons and enjoys them. Johnny was dancing the monkey and God was laughing.

God loved having the opportunity to elucidate on the inspiration of his many creations and especially describing how the seemingly inexplicable could have a very simple solution. “I’m glad your mom was able to clear up the technical stuff. She has always been good with mechanics. Still, she was wise to refer you to me for the more philosophical aspects of puberty. So let’s see, you’re interested in the breast and the monthly guest.”

My Father was insane. But he was the only one I had so I sat down besides him hoping he would tell me something helpful. “Sounds like the title of a Doctor Seuss book when you put it that way, God.” I repeated, “The Breast and the Monthly Guest.”

“I guess you’re right, Jellybean,” Dad turned down the volume on the television and began to recite:
“The monthly guest is such a pest.
He comes uninvited to bring unrest
I would not let him stay in my boat,
I would not let him wear my coat.

I would not let him borrow my car,
If he lived next door or traveled from far.
Each month he makes my wife nag and wail.
I sure am glad I was born a male.
Period.”

God laughed. He looked at me and realized that he was laughing alone. I was unable to see any humor in the situation.

“Okay Jellybean, what about bleeding?" God said. "Is that better?”

“It’s a little more accurate.” I rolled my eyes realizing that all had been lost. “But monthly. Come on God, what were you thinking?”

“Well okay,” he picked up an empty candy dish and started examining it. “Monthly does seem like a little much but the species had to survive. You know life was not always as easy as it is today. Famine, plague, wars: populations used to decrease. Humans needed numbers and monthly was a way to assure survival.”

“And you are probably wondering why women and not men,” he read my mind. “It was all part of the master design,” God placed the candy dish back down on the coffee table, stood up and began pacing. “You see, Mary, if you can recall from the O.T., I created man first. And when I created him I was not thinking about reproduction. I figured the animals could be his companions in the Garden of Eden. Since I created Jack to live forever, I did not give him the need for reproduction. Then I created Jill and Jack's reproductive organs were just sort of fashioned from clay and pressed on afterwards. Jack did not have the physical capacity to carry a baby, nurture or feed the child. I gave all that to Jill.”

“Sounds like you’re describing the trunk space of an automobile, physical capacity,” I said.

“It is more than just physical capacity, Jellybean. Man also does not have the emotional constitution.”

“Sounds like a cop out,” I challenged.

“Well a great cop once said, ‘a man has to know his limitations’ and Dirty Harry Callahan was correct. I created man with a need of independence, separation from those around him. What I did not anticipate was loneliness. I thought that Jack could be alone without being lonely. Boy was I wrong. Men need companionship more than they are ever going to admit. Well, when Jack asked for a wife I created Jill.”

“Now remember, I made man and I knew that woman was going to need something more. I constructed man without others in mind. So I did not give him social skills, cultural attractiveness or really any common sense. I had to shove all those things into the woman and hope that some would rub off on him.”

“Well that plan didn’t work,” I interrupted.

“You can say that again.” God shook his head lamenting his failure. “I also had to give Jill the ability to reproduce because I knew she would go crazy if she was stuck on Earth with just Jack all her life.”

“See,” Dad pointed to Mom resting on a sofa in the other room. She held Little Mary in her arms and had Jesus by her side. She was reading them a picture book. “The basic differences between man and woman go all the way back to creation. Together they make a wonderful pair, each drawing energy and strength from the other. People today try to deny the differences between men and women when really the distinctions should be celebrated.”

“But Dad, some things don’t make any sense. I don’t understand why you put nipples on Jack when they didn’t do anything. It seems like a waste of anatomy. And why do women have breasts that function? Why will I be the one who nurses the baby? While you were removing Jack’s rib you could have inserted some milk ducts.”

God skipped over the nipples-on-men question all together. “Jellybean, your breasts are a blessing from God. You have been created with the ultimate gift, not only can you create life but also you can nourish it. Your breasts fill with a milk that provides all the nutrients and protection that a defenseless baby needs. This is a part of you because you are the one who carries the baby and the whole process prepares your body for this awesome purpose. You should consider yourself lucky to be a woman and have such a wonderful present from your maker.”

“And what wonderful gift did God give man?” I asked him.

“Why I thought that would be obvious,” he answered, “woman.”

I told God what mom said about the pads and tampons and about how girls got pregnant and it really hurt when the babies came out.

“Mary, you may not understand this now, but one day you will consider yourself lucky,” God began but I interrupted again.

“Lucky. I should feel lucky to bleed every month and feel as if someone is yanking out my insides?” I cried.

“Mary, the ability to have a child is a gift. Your uterus develops a lining that is thick and nutritious and accepting to an embryo so small that a hundred of them could sit on the tip of a pencil. The baby is then able to grow and your body cares for it for the nine months while it is inside you. All during that time you create a special bond with your child which no man could ever share.”

“I noticed you picked to come to earth as a man,” I pointed out.

“Well,” he stuttered.

“If this period had to happen every month, why couldn’t all the blood come out at the same time and encased in some type of disposable bag.” God didn’t reply; he just shrugged his shoulders. “And with a handle,” I added. “Don’t tell me this was just an afterthought. We could pull out the whole thing, lining and all, and then just toss it away. I mean if a twelve-year-old girl could figure it out, why couldn’t you? Didn’t you have some of your assistants assigned to these details? No, I guess they were too busy putting nipples on men and designing slugs and sea cows.”

“First, as I have told your mother many times before, slugs are the most divinely spiritual creatures on Earth. They are both happy and content with their lives, which is a lot more than I can say for the majority of the human race. You will never see a slug racing to get somewhere. It enjoys its journey. Second, in regards to the nice little disposable bag idea, I kind of designed the system before the advent of biodegradable plastic and I thought the universe would be in better shape if the whole process was recyclable.”

“Recyclable!” I shouted. “Am I supposed to believe that you were thinking about recycling when you designed the female reproductive tract? Jesus Dad, that has got to be the lamest thing you’ve said to date,” I said.

I was flushed and I could feel heat racing up my back and across my head. I was way out of control but there was no way I could hold anything back. “And another thing, why’d you go and make my hormones go so crazy on me. You had to have done this on purpose just to torment woman.”

“Actually, I did that last part to torment man.”

I stormed out of the room, leaving Dad to his Johnny Bravo in silence.

Making my way up the stairs I looked down at Mom sitting in the living room reading the book to Jesus and Little Mary. I shouted out, “Mom, God is crazy.”

“Tell me about it,” she called back and turned to the next page of the book.

Trial

Ned was in a jam. He had his back up against the wall and the wall had a number of dysenteric pigeons roosting on its ledge. Ned sat in his office and reviewed the facts. The guinea pig was dead, there was no doubt there, and the second grade students wanted someone to blame. The students were threatening a revolt and how would that look on his resume. If he were a personal injury lawyer he would sue. He was not sure whom, but there was always somebody to sue. Fortunately for Ned, he was not a personal injury lawyer. Unfortunately, he was no great thinker either. The idea that he might explain to the children that death was the natural extension of life fully escaped him. So he did the only thing that the Principal of a school could do. Ned called a school assembly.

School assemblies were always held in the cafeteria, which also served as the school’s gym, art museum and theater. The children in each class lined up single file and marched into the large dining commons. We took our regular lunch seat places amidst a cloud of muffled accusations. The tables at which we sat created four long rows extending the entire length of the cafeteria. The older students sat near the back and the first and second graders up against the stage.

A rumble of anticipation swept through the audience as Ned walked to the middle of the stage and spoke into a microphone. I could see tables and props from last years Christmas pageant piled high on the stage behind Ned.

“Students, yesterday the second grade class lost a close friend and true hero," Ned said. "Today we have come together to mourn that loss.”

“And get satisfaction,” Sally shouted from her seat in the crowd. The students howled their approval.

“And get satisfaction,” Ned repeated nervously. “Although as a wise man once said,” Ned continued, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” He then laughed to himself and shrugged his shoulder as the congregation looked on in silence. Ned’s cheeks blazed red. He let go a squeak. “Well...pupils, after much deliberation I have decided that a one week suspension will be appropriate for the responsible student.” The students gave out a roar and many started clapping their hands and banging their fists against the table.

Ned leaned in close to the microphone. "First, we must identify the responsible student," he said.

The assembly went quiet.

The Principal ushered Jesus and another child up onto the stage. Jesus was immediately recognized by all of the students because of his recent notoriety. The other child was a second grader who had been caught stealing a carton of milk from the lunch lady.

The fact that the stealing of the milk had nothing to do with the guinea pig’s death escaped the Principal. It did not get pass the children, however. This student body had not gathered to admonish a scapegoat. They were here to condemn God for allowing death into his creation.

Ned asked each of the accused students to address the congregation.

The kindergarten students were normally kept separate from the rest of the school. However, today they joined the assembly as one of their own was on trial. Jesus stood calm, his confidence buoyed by the presence of his classmates.

Jesus was the smallest kid in school and on the large stage, backed by a fake donkey peering through a manger's window he appeared even more vulnerable. He walked to the front of the stage and did not appear nervous. He reached out to grasp the microphone, pulled it down and looked up so he could speak into it.

Jesus said, “There are things that we learn and others that we know."

The hall was silent and Jesus' words seemed to echo in its cavern. He continued with the knowledge that he held every child's attention. "I have trouble writing the letter J," he said. "I never know which way to curve its leg. I do not understand rhyming words and can not yet count to a hundred. I guess these are some of the things I might eventually learn."

"I do know that the power to heal is within each of us although the cured may not necessarily appear in the way that we desire. I know that each of you in some small but still very real way, control your own destiny. You need not look to others to create miracles for you because each of you is a living one."

"Rather than being troubled by the immutable nature of life you should focus on those things that you can change. The greatest miracle of all is the power that lies within you. You must seize this power and use it to the betterment of mankind. In this way we will create our own heaven.”

Jesus let go of the microphone and stepped back away from the microphone.

The children remained in their seats and gazed up on my brother, waiting for more. They had expected an apology or some final effort to raise Lazarus who lay in a Nike shoebox at the head of the second grade table. Some children stirred but nobody spoke. What Jesus said did not seem to make any sense to them.

Jesus looked over the crowd that had gathered before him and approached the microphone a second time.

"Finally, here comes the apology," I heard Steven Sodenberg say.

Jesus said, "My mind is full of ideas and I do not always know what they mean. I can see that you are all disturbed and seeking solace. There is comfort for those who depend on each other for strength; it is only by relying on each other that heaven becomes available to us. When sorrow touches our heart and we cry because of the pain of loss, it is in each other that we discover understanding and peace. We can see the true gift that is this world only when we become humble and realize our diminutive place in the great creation. When you place your neighbor above all human desires your thirst will be quenched." Jesus played with the hem of his sweater. He rolled the edge between his fingers as he thought. "We must learn to show mercy, then one day it might find us in our time of need. In keeping our hearts pure we will gain infinite sight and by making peace we will all become the children of God. There are blessings for those who are mistreated for the sake of love; justice will seek them out. This is the message I have for you."

I was so proud of him and began to clap my hands together, joined only by my father.

Our applause appeared lonely in the large auditorium. It soon found itself smothered by a slow stream of crescendoing “boos.”

"What kind of an apology is that?' Sally screamed. "We want Lazarus back."

The crowd showed its agreement with Sally by shouting even louder.

I stood up and cheered for my brother but Ned waved to me to sit down. I remained standing clapping my hands together until the last boo died away.

The Principal next asked the second accused to speak to the school. The little boy who stood near Jesus on the stage nervously stumbled up to the mike. The boy paused for a moment looking down at his feet unable to actually look at the jury assembled before him. Although the boy was not in my class, I quickly recognized him. He had dark, black, thick, curly hair. He was the only second grader to grow a full mustache and beard, which made him stand out from all of the other students. Mother had told me that he was on some medication that caused his body to become covered with hair.

“My name is Barabus,” he exclaimed in a deep voice, “I need to go pee.” He then backed away from the microphone.

Silence again descended upon the cafeteria.

Ned walked to the mike and asked whom we wanted to set free.

Sally stood up and yelled, “We want Barabus.”

Like a cloudburst breaking the night, the entire student body joined in a chorus of, “Set Barabus free. Set Barabus free.”

Barabus smiled. Always chosen last in kickball. Always wearing clothes bought at the Uniform Re-Sale held in the gym. Constantly ridiculed for growing a full beard in the second grade (children could not understand hirtsuism although they definitely knew how to hurt). Straddled with the heavy name of a famous thief, Barabus stood on the stage and beamed a smile. I think it was the first time he was chosen for anything.

“But what am I supposed to do with Jesus?” Ned asked.

The schoolchildren chanted, “Suspend him. Suspend him.” At first a handful stood and called out but soon all of the children from all of the rows stood and joined in the call. Jesus looked out from the rear of the stage, confused over what he had done to warrant such hatred from the multitude.

Satisfied that the matter had now been resolved, Ned wiped his sweaty hands off on the breast of his jacket. The students were sent back to the classrooms and the Principal carted off Jesus and called our mother to pick him up.

Jesus was forced to spend a week home from school. During that week Mom taught Jesus that the leg of his J curved to the left and that ignorance rhymed with fear.

The Lonely Life of the Miracle Worker

As the time passed since my Eighth birthday the sharp memories darned fuzzy edges and now as I place these words down on paper I can’t tell you for sure if Jesus really performed any of those miracles. He made the coin come out of my ear, but did he really turn water into milk or did we all just drink water with the cake that day? It does not matter now that I am older and Jesus is no longer with us. Well, no longer physically with us, Jesus will always be near by, guiding and encouraging me as life offers up its challenges. I do know that after my birthday party he refused to perform any more miracles.

Jesus said people placed the phenomenon of religion above the message. People were easy caught up in the spectacle of the show, and a miracle, a physical manifestation of God’s enormous powers, was the ultimate performance. People focused on these great occurrences while religion evaded their everyday life. God was not about miracles in extraordinary times; God was the way you lived your life in ordinary time. God was love, and love did not have physical boundaries.

Despite his refusal to perform miracles, word quickly spread around school that Jesus could execute wondrous feats and soon everybody was coming up to him and asking him to solve their problems.

Jimmy Sullivan, a third grader in my class, wanted to do well on a test. Jesus told him to study for exactly two hours and his wish would come true. The next day Jimmy got the first B of his life and attributed it to divine intervention on my brother’s part.

Jesus tried to explain that it was not a miracle, rather Jimmy’s effort. But everybody knew Jimmy and there was no way anybody would ever believe that Jimmy earned a B without either cheating or the work of God. It had to be a miracle and the myth of my brother, now labeled the miracle worker, became greater. If Jesus could help Jimmy get a B then he could provide most anybody else with an A.

The next day George Suttle broke the most important pencil in the entire world. It was a football pencil with the silver and blue stars of the Dallas Cowboys strung with footballs along the shaft. His father told people that it had been given to him my Tom Landry and that Tony Dorsett made the notches in its side as he nervously awaited the start of his first Super bowl. The pencil even came with a statement of authenticity signed by a real dentist. Many witnesses believed that George broke the pencil on purpose just so Jesus could fix it.

George brought the pencil to my brother and asked him to put it back together. Jesus refused and George was grounded by his father for the rest of the year. All the students began talking about how God could not fix a pencil. There were many theories circulated but the most popular included lead being to God like kryptonite was to Superman.

Jesus was now in kindergarten and struggling to make the large curves while drawing threes and esses. He told me that he also had trouble concentrating on learning rhyming words. He thought flower rhymed with favor. I told him that in a way it did. Eventually, however, he had to respond to all the inquiries regarding his godly nature. He told the other schoolchildren that we were all capable of making each other happy and that was the greatest miracle of all. All human beings were able to achieve divinity in their own life. The children looked on blankly. That’s not what they wanted to hear.

The second graders wouldn’t have it and their discontent soon infected the rest of the students. They demanded to see healings. They wanted to see water turned into Kool-Aid. They spent most of the lunch hour searching for a leper just so Jesus could heal him. Unfortunately, there were no lepers at Our Lady of Perpetual Pain Grade School. They settled for a fourth grader with a pimple but Jesus refused to touch it.

Everything kind of came to a head when Sally brought to Jesus the second grade’s pet guinea pig, Lazarus. Jesus knew that this was a test. Lazarus was sick and now, rather than sit on her belly and squeak, she merely lay on her side and panted. Sally asked Jesus to heal Lazarus and he said that he couldn’t. Jesus was refusing more than delivering good grades and mending a broken pencil; this was a guinea pig’s life. Still, he did nothing.

Lazarus died the next day.

Sally called Jesus a false savior and reported him to the Principal saying that Jesus had killed the class's guinea pig by failing to save it. My brother was called to the Principal’s office and under questioning explained that “allowing something to occur was not the same as causing it. Nature must be allowed its freedom.” He further stated that the guinea pig was still well and alive just not in the form that Sally desired. Confused by this second argument, the Principal sent Jesus back to the kindergarten class to learn to color within the lines.

The Principal of our school was a big man with nervous rosy cheeks. He laughed when he was flustered and often made statements that really did not make any sense. The second graders demanded retribution and Ned, the Principal, did not know how to give it to them. One thing was certain; Ned could not let any false saviors into the kindergarten class, especially if they were going to refuse to resurrect guinea pigs. Ned laughed and squeaked, much like the hamster when it was alive, then called a big meeting with our parents to discuss the possible suspension of Jesus for calling himself the Son of God.

Mom refused to attend the meeting and sent a letter in her place. In the letter, she stated the Principal was being ridiculous and obviously did not understand scripture. According to the Bible we are all the children of God and given that Jesus was male that made him the son of God.

Ned wrote a letter in response stating that capitalization was important. For clerical reasons he needed to know if Jesus was “the son of God or the Son of God.” Mom then wrote a second letter stating that Jesus was both, as we all are. She wrote that “rather than focusing on the grammatical nature of my Son maybe you should try keeping your Wife away from the Bottle. Tell me Ned, how important is bold lettering?” She concluded the letter with a postscript that said she would be bringing a pound cake to the next parent-teachers’ conference.

God was not pleased with the meeting and his first inclination was to destroy the school with a flood and start over again but that would have been the Old Testament God. My father felt that he had matured and to prove it, he chose to meet the Principal face to face.

God really had no other option than to meet with Ned since Dad was the first grade teacher and Jesus was going to be in his class next year. As far as God was concerned, his son had done nothing wrong by refusing to perform miracles and the threatened suspension seemed unfair.

After the meeting I sat on God's lap and he told me all about it. Gold told Principal Ned, "Many of the children at this school refuse to perform miracles everyday. Tell me, when was the last time that Galloway kid performed a miracle? He can't even write his name; he forms the G backwards and the two L's meet in the middle to make an H. Why don't you suspend him?" God told me that he concluded Jesus' defense by telling the Principal that he thought the other children were unfairly crucifying his son and made a motion for the complete dismissal of all charges.

The Principal told Dad that he thought “crucifying” was a pretty big word given the situation. Dad next told Ned that they were both adults and should be allowed to use big words. He explained that his son had never said that he was a savior and that it was the other children who referred to him in that way. Dad added that Jesus would confine his miracles to the house and hopefully mainly to producing grocery items of superior quality such as gallons of milk and Fruit Loops.

The principal did not know how to respond to this last statement, so he squeaked and sent my father back to the first grade.

God exited the meeting feeling quite satisfied that he had left the school’s head administrator in a greater state of confusion then the one that he was in upon his arrival.

Ned, however, had not yet washed his hands of the matter.

Miracles

It took forever for three o’clock to arrive. I asked God why he made time go by so slow when somebody was waiting for something special and he said that it was not the time that changed but the person. I guess he was right; I was now eight. Maybe time went slower when you were older. He then went into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal.

God loved Fruit Loops. He said it was the right combination of fruit, sugar and cereal. God wished that he had thought about it back in the days of the Israelites. He would have rained Fruit Loops down on his chosen people and they would have never doubted his love. Unfortunately, all he could think of was manna and since then the Jewish people have always considered their God a harsh, malevolent being that thrives on guilt and persecution.

Three o’clock came on slowly and then passed. The doorbell didn’t ring. I sat on the couch that offered the best view of the front yard and watched each car that traveled down our street waiting for one to stop. The cars seemed to crawl for the first half of the block and then accelerate just as they came close to our house as if they could not pass quick enough. Jesus kept running into the room and laughing at me. “Leave me alone,” I yelled and Mom made him go outside to help God finish setting up the yard for the party.

God had spent all day hanging decorations in the back yard. He was supposed to have the yard complete three hours before the party’s beginning but he kept trying to make the decorations more elaborate. At one point he stopped hanging the bull piñata and spent two hours installing a speaker into its head so that he could make it talk and roar.

“You could separate the sky from the earth in one day when you were God but now that you’re my husband it takes you all day just to hang a few favors for your daughter’s birthday party.” Mom shouted out the backdoor while holding Little Mary in her arms. They both looked on disapprovingly.

“I’m not as young as I used to be,” God spoke into the microphone and his voice boomed out of the bull’s head. “Not bad for someone who’s a couple billion years old,” God said looking at the bull with pride.

“Just get them done,” Mom said and went back into the house.

The doorbell rang and I was back in the house excitedly ushering each of my friends into the living room. Most of the games had been set up outside but God said we couldn’t go out there until the last finishing touches had been completed. “A moment of patience may brighten a lifetime,” he remarked to our disappointed expressions.

We stayed in the living room while God went back outside. Once God was out of earshot Jimmy looked at me and said, “Your Dad sure is weird.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, “He thinks he’s God.”

"So does mine," Jimmy said.

Mom finally sent us out back after she caught us fishing in the tropical aquarium using thread, a staple and bologna as bait. It was too bad because Sara almost caught the puffer fish. Mom said that we needed to go outside before she broke something in the house. I couldn’t figure out why we being in the house might make her break something but by the look of the veins on her forehead, I thought it was better not to ask.

When we all wandered into the yard God was nowhere to be seen, just like in the OT. The games had been set up, purposely scattered all around. There were canvas sacks lying beyond a line of tape that marked the start of a future race at one end of the yard. There was a metal tub, full of water and apples, over on the edge of the brick patio that led out of the family room of our house. What caught our eye most, however, was the multi-colored piñata that dangled from the tree in the center of the yard.

The piñata hung from a thick limb of our family’s Chinese elm tree. Covered in small scales of colored paper it shone like a rainbow in the afternoon sun. It was in the shape of a pudgy bull. As the day held a slight breeze, the bull slowly swung in the sky. A wooden, Louisville Slugger bat leaned up against the tree’s trunk inviting an assault.

Well we didn’t wait for God to return. John ran directly to the piñata and all the children gathered around to watch him hit it. We had transformed into an angry, fake-paper-mashie-bovine hating mob. John grabbed hold of the bat and swung it back over his shoulder. “Hit it John,” I yelled and that started a chant that all the other kids picked up.

“Hit it John. Hit it John. Hit it John.” We all sang and danced.

John choked up on the bat, encouraged by our chant and started his swing when a booming voice came from the head of the paper mashie beast. “John, please don’t hit me,” the bull pleaded.

The slugger froze at the apex of its arc. It was as if an invisible hand reached out and grasped the bat holding it high in the air.

“Help. Help,” the bull started calling to us. “Somebody, anybody, I’m tied to a tree and a bunch of kids are trying to beat the candy out of me.” The soft wind appeared to give the bull life. As it rotated, its face came to look directly upon John’s. The bull's eyes held John's. The bull pleaded for amnesty. “John, please, listen to reason. I’ll give you the candy. I’ll figure a way to get it out. Trust me; all you have to do is ask. Just don’t hit me with that stick,” the bull begged and wined.

The wind blew the bull away from us and its head tilted up towards the sky. “Oh, life can be so cruel,” it began to lament. “Especially when you are a kaleidoscopic bull with paper horns and a belly full of candy.”

John screamed and dropped the bat. He ran across the yard, in through the back door and out through the front. I was pretty sure he didn’t stop until he reached home because less than five minutes later the phone rang and it was John’s mother, Mrs. Dubold, calling up to scream at mom for letting “that crazy husband of hers scare the hell out of my little John.” Mom said that it was probably a good thing that the boy no longer had any hell in him and hung up the phone.

Jimmy was next and expecting the bull to scream he didn’t even pause before hammering it a couple of real good ones in the head. The bull shouted, “Look out behind you” but Jimmy swung anyway. He followed with “I see a bright white light in the distance, think I’ll just go over and see what it is” and “after that shot I think they can safely call me a cow,” but it did nothing to deter our enthusiasm.

Next, Suzie took the bat and started to strike at the bull. The booming voice made fun of her for swinging like a girl and after that she really socked the bull a good one in the head. The bull swung back and forth, dropping the first few pieces of candy. Suzie had drawn blood. The bull kept speaking, but stopped making any sense. I figured it might have a concussion from all the blows to the head.

The bull said, “Mary, what are you doing here?”

“It’s my birthday,” I answered.

And next rather than the loud voice of my father we heard my mother’s voice coming from the piñata’s head. The bull had become upset and she was yelling at God. The bull said, “Now listen here God, I don’t know what you were thinking scaring that little boy like that?”

“Nothing really, I was just playing a little joke on the kids,” God's voice reappeared from the piñata’s rear as it turned on its string and faced away from us. Suzie stopped swinging the bat and just looked at the bull confused along with the rest of us.

"Maybe the bull has schizophrenia," Jimmy whispered.

The bull continued speaking. “A joke. Really God, when are you going to figure out that you have an absurd sense of humor that nobody understands but yourself.”

“The koala bears think I’m funny.”

“That’s because they’re stoned all the time.”

“Stoned,” Jimmy repeated somewhat surprised and I shook my head in confirmation. “I thought they were just mellow,” he added.

“Notice how they’re always eating those leaves,” I said. Jimmy nodded yes.

The bull had completely lost it and was no longer making any sense. “People like my jokes,” the bull defended. “How can anyone take a look at the universe and not think that God has a sense of humor? Did you know that the katydid hibernates for seven years, emerges from its cocoon and dies within twenty-four hours? Now, that is funny. What about putting two foot long arms on a forty-five foot dinosaur. Maybe my humor is a little dark, but still you have to admit, it is funny."

"I blame the Biblical writers, you know,” the bull huffed. “They edited out all my good jokes. Oh yeah they wrote volumes about the plague of locusts, but what about the plague of bounteous flatulence that I unleashed on the Egyptian people. Of course, that did turn out to be worse on the Hebrews than the Egyptians. Kind of backfired if you know what I mean.”

“Hit it Suzie,” I whispered and she popped it in the side. It was a tentative jab filled with some uncertainty and the piñata only barely reacted. It slowly swung back and forth under the tree, continuing to speak as if her hit had not even occurred and Suzie’s second swing was definitely harder.

“Oh yeah, well tell that to Abraham,” the bull once again adopted my mother’s voice as Suzie struck it in the side.

“I never gave Abraham flatulence,” the bull defended in my father’s voice.

“I’m talking about your jokes.”

“How was I supposed to know he would take me seriously?” the bull asked defensively. “I figured it had taken Abraham so long to get a son that he’d think it was funny if I told him to take him into the hills and slaughter him like common livestock.”

“This is the strangest piñata I have ever seen,” Suzie said. I took the bat from her and whacked the bull in the middle. Three pieces of candy plopped out.

The bull, unfazed by the blow, continued speaking. “That is exactly what I am talking about. Why would anyone think it was funny that you ask Abraham to kill his own child?”

“Because it took so long for his wife, what was her name, I tell you I am awful with names. Did I ever tell you that I kept calling Adam, Jack, the whole time he was in the Garden? When I asked him why he ate the apple he said that it wasn’t him but Jack who did it. Anyway. Can’t you see the irony? It took that woman close to three hundred years to get pregnant. They even gave me credit for her eventual fertility. I mean come on, who could ever think that a loving God would demand that a man kill his own son. That is just plain cruelty. It’s not my fault Abraham didn’t have a sense of humor. He has a good one now. Just before I came to Earth he told me this great joke about these three nuns standing in line to get into Heaven...but obviously now is not the time. Thankfully, that lamb wondered on over.”

I handed the bat to Little Mary and she started swinging at the bull.

The bull asked, “You mean you didn’t even send that lamb over?” and then answered itself, “No, I guess I just got lucky.” And that was the last thing the bull said because with the very next swing of the bat, Little Mary crushed a hole in the belly of the beast and all of the candy, as well as small circular speaker sprayed out over the lawn. My friends rushed to grab the treats as they rained down all around Little Mary. Only she never stopped swinging and Jimmy caught one on the side of the head.

After a three-legged race we went into the house to have cake, ice cream and milk. And that was when the unthinkable happened. We ran out of milk. God had eaten five bowls of Fruit Loops earlier and finished the entire gallon.

“Honey,” mom yelled as she held the empty container in her hand.

“What?” God asked, hiding behind the video camera. The red light was flashing and I think God held hopes that the public record might temper mom’s words.

“We are out of milk, dear, and what do you suppose we do about that?” Mom's voice remained calmed.

“Well, I can see if the bull will give us any,” God laughed and continued laughing for a time much longer than his little joke warranted.

Mom just shook her head. “Jesus,” Mom called and I could see that my brother had a nervous look like he already knew what mom was going to ask. He walked up close to Mom. “Look son. This is your sister’s birthday party and it is really important to me that everything goes right.”

“Yes,” his eyes shifted over to me and then back to mom.

“Well, do you think you could make us some milk?”

“Mom, you know I’m only supposed to use my powers for good and to combat evil,” Jesus put out his arms and pretended to fly around the room.

Mom didn’t appreciate the joke. “Don’t give me any of that superhero stuff,” she said. “This is not the Justice League. First, this is a good thing. And second, it is carved in stone…”

“Don’t you chisel stone, Mom,” I interrupted.

“Yes, you are right Mary, one does chisel stone,” Mom looked directly into the video camera and smiled. Dad was capturing every moment on tape. Mom tried to control her voice but the strain of the party was beginning to get to her. The veins in her temples began to pulsate. Mom turned back to Jesus, “and second, it is chiseled in stone that you are to honor your father and mother. Now, please make us some milk.”

Jesus instructed us to fill two old milk jugs with tap water. All the kids looked on wondering what would happen next. It was obvious that something big was about to occur. We waited in absolute silence for about a minute and then Jesus said, “What are you guys waiting for? There is not going to be any bolts of lighting or flashes of smoke. This isn’t Vegas. There are no showgirls. It is already done.”

Mom poured the water into our glasses. Only it wasn’t water but the thickest, creamiest milk that any of us had ever tasted. Everyone in the room gave Jesus a standing ovation.

“Jesus,” God later said after sampling the milk, “if I knew you could do this I don’t think I would have ever gone to the grocery store. Can you make Fruit Loops?”

After the cake and ice cream we went back out into the yard and Jesus did some more magic tricks for us. He made coins come out of people’s bodily orifices, even a Susan B Anthony out of my left ear. He made a rabbit disappear and for his grand finale he sawed Mom in half. It turned out to be the greatest birthday party ever.