Heaven and a Little Faith

Saturday, August 7th

The whole world is wilting. Shriveling. Giving up. Dying. Maybe not the entire world. Somewhere, I guess, it's not 110 degrees at four in the morning. I would like to be there, anywhere, where sustainable life feels possible and not smothered under a layer of heat and fear. I'm tired of waking up every hour, sweating, and I am tired of every day discovering there's something else ruined in my life. Yesterday it was the TV. Today, it's the ceiling fan, which I discovered while waking up wondering where the air went. I went to the backyard hoping for a miracle of some sort of cool wind or breeze, but I realize I can add the yard to my list of minor tragedies that make up my
life these past few days.

The backyard lights my dad put up last summer give just enough light that I can see the disaster the backyard has become because of the heat. Except I can't completely blame the heat. Honestly, it's looked like this since forever. Dad's involvement via the lights and also painting the ugly lawn furniture was just- monetary. For about 10 minutes last summer our family worked the way it's supposed to. The problems with the yard is just a symptom, really.

Everything out here reminds me of something. I can almost see the outline of my mom crouched at the base of our apple tree, mulching the roots, her brown hair held back with a red bandanna; elegant. Even just a few months ago, when she was passing- out drunk, she still had that same elegance. Classy is the word for my mother.

The clothesline strung up between the fence post and the metal bolt my dad screwed into the apple tree makes me think of the way he looked at her, laughing, when he said, "I can just imagine your bra flapping in the breeze on this thing, for all the folks around here to see. Your bra size might end up in the church newsletter if you're not careful!"

"That would be funny if it weren't true," my mom said, crossing her arms, but she smiled too, and I know she liked it. Dad teasing her that way. "Dad," I said , embarrassed. But I liked it too.

That summer it wasn't too hot, and when the heat did climb there was iced tea on the back porch, my parents playing cards together after the sun went down, the cards on the mahogany table. None of that lasted long though. Probably all my good memories of the last year add up to three days.

I walk through the yard, making a mental checklist of what needs fixing. The two butterfly bushes have grown into each other and taken over the spot where mom had once a herb garden, back when she still cared about things like cooking. The Mexican sage has completely run amok. The hollyhock plant that looks okay a few weeks ago has fallen over, and lies across the garden path like a corpse. I step over it, sweat dripping down the inside of my tank top. I try to get the hollyhock to stay standing  up, but it just flops back down.

I'm glad my mom isn't around to see this. Instead, she's got the resident's garden of New Beginnings Recovery Center, neatly landscaped and pretty. Her room is neat. The cafeteria is neat. The visiting area is neat. She's been lifted, as if by the hand of God but in truth by the long arm of the law, out of this messy life.

I could make this yard look like the one at New Beginnings. All it would take are some supplies and time and maybe a book from the library telling me how to do it. Then, when she comes home, she won't have to the see the same dead and dying things that were here when she left.

Ralph, our cat we found last month one the side of the road, is hunkered down in the kitchen sink when I come in, and he meows at me if there's something I can do about the heat. I'd sit in the sink too, if I fit. I lift him out and put him on the floor where he paces and meows and rubs his brown fur against my legs.

There's no cat food. There's barely any people food. I tear a few pieces of leftover chicken in the back of the fridge and toss them on the floor for Ralph, then pull an envelope from the stack of mail on the counter from the stack of mail and start a grocery list on the back of it.

Soon I hear Dad up and moving around, and within a few minutes he appears under the archway to our open kitchen. I lift my head and he's sweaty, his thick hair sticking up in every which way, and staring at me like he's thinking of how to form the words that will make whatever it is not sound so bad.

"What," I say. It's not a question, because I know it's something. Everyday it's something.

"Bad news..."

I wait for it, thinking of some of the information that has recently followed the statement.
Grandma's surgery didn't go so well.
We're not sure if we can pay the tuition at Amberton Academy next year.
You're mother's been in an accident.
"The air conditioner is broken," Sad says.
Of course.
He reaches down to pet Ralph's head. "At least, I can't get it cranking. Up on the side, the TV seems back in commission. I'm not air how, but we're getting a picture again."
"My ceiling fan isn't working either."
"You're kidding."
"No, and we need to buy groceries today." I hold the envelope I've been writing on. "I'm making a list."
He comes close, and takes the envelope, turning it over to look at the front. It's a bill of some sort. "When did this come from?" He rips into it.
"I don't know. The Mail has been sitting here..." For a while. "Don't mess up my list."
He pull out the bill, looks at it for a half a second, and stuffs it back into the envelope. "I guess I should go through all of this, " he says, looking at the pile.

"Yeah." There are a lot of things around here I can take care of, a lot of things I have been taking care of for a long time, but being fifteen and unemployed, money isn't one of them.

Dad searches through a pile of paper on the other end of the counter. "Doesn't your mom keep coupon around here somewhere?"

"Mom hasn't clipped coupons in at lest three years," I say. I know because it was my job to sit at the counter with the Sunday paper while Dad was at church getting ready for the service. I would scan the coupons  and deals, while Mom had her weekly anxiety attack on what to wear, and what to make me wear. She hated Sundays. Eventually I realized she wasn't even using coupons, and I figured I'd be of more use helping Mom get dressed and ready and calm. "You look perfect." I'd assure her. And she always did.