What are you? I was sometimes asked and I know it’s rude to answer a question with a question but I have sometimes allowed myself to be rude in this way. I used to ask those askers, What are you? And what a horrible question to say or hear. I regret ever asking it. Sometimes they answered me: I’m a Christian, an American, I’m black, white, not from here, I’m hungry, I’m tired, angry, a woman, a man, a gay man, a pastor, Republican, mother, son, I’m forty-three years old, I’m homeless, or sometimes they answered me with a laugh that rose and fell in their chests before it wandered away, leaving nothing behind.
When dawn came that morning in the gas station, the cashier gave me a carton of milk, said to come back if I ever needed. She never asked me what I was.
In the dark of the night with no one else around, she spoke to me—
I’m the only one who will work on Sunday. They all want to buy gas on Sunday, sure, but don’t ask them to sell it. Strange thing is, people not working on Sunday is all that makes this place any good but it’s also everything that’s wrong with it.
She was quiet a long time, shaking her head, riffling through the newspaper.
Anyway the only good preacher I know isn’t sitting up in any church just to get looked at. She’s just the one that keeps the children all day, and sits in the hospice at night. She don’t say nothing about God, the Bible. Don’t have to. You see the way those children look at her—ask them what they know about. They know plenty.
SUNDAY
I WOKE UP ON A PEW, sleeping on my side, knees bent. I did not move. I felt the warmth of another body near my head. I looked toward the floor, saw navy blue pant legs and two pale brown shoes. Above: the underside of a stubbly jaw. A large voice in the room like faraway thunder. My joints ached. I felt I’d been sleeping for weeks, heavy, immovable, mind empty, this body stiff against thin cushions.
Nearby was another person, in a blue dress that hung loose and long. Pale brown hair pulled into a knot at the neck. On the other side of this person were three children, boys, in little suits like the person sitting beside my head. The smallest was asleep. The largest was alert, staring forward, thick navy book in his hands. The middle-size boy was staring at me, and when our eyes met, he tugged on the dress. The person in the dress reached down and held that tiny hand still a moment, squeezed hard. The child grimaced. Hand released hand. A thought slowly came to me that this is the sort of person called a mother. A mother wears dresses, holds hands. Sometimes a word like this would appear, spoken by some silent voice.
Again the middle boy’s eyes fell on me, his face more troubled this time, an angry, excited pain. The voice at the front of the room said some well-worn words and every voice in the room replied with their own well-worn words and the boy, still staring at me, murmured along.
The organ shouted a long chord, an opening, a call. The pews creaked as the bodies stood. The boy who had been staring at me grabbed the smallest, sleeping boy by the armpits and shoved him up to stand. Everyone sang in drone-y unison. Still, I did not move, stayed still on my side. The boy crawled down the pew toward me, pulled at my shoe until the mother reached back to smack the child’s head. A mother smacks heads. A mother wears a pale blue dress and smacks heads.
Slowly, I stood to join them, was handed an open book, a hymnal. A finger pointed to a line of words, traced them along the page. I did not sing. Of most things I felt uncertain, but I was at least certain I would not sing.
Everyone sat again so I did as well. The larger bodies—the mother, the father (The father? The father)—did not look at me, acted as if I had always and would always be sitting and standing in this church, this pew. I was one of the things here: a hymnal, a Bible, an offering envelope, a tiny pencil. A person draped in heavy cloth stood at the front of the church and said things in such a way to make those words seem obvious and true, how simple the world was, how no one need worry about anything, how everything was here, all the answers were here and we could all just accept them, roll over and accept them like a sleeping body accepts air.
A gold plate was passed up and down the aisles, hand to hand to hand. People dropped in coins, bills, and envelopes, then passed the plates back to people who carried them to the altar like a casket toward its hole.
All the while an organ played. Someone stood near the organ, swaying and singing. Another someone carried a baby up to the altar and the person in the robes put water on the baby’s head and the baby cried and the person in robes carried the baby around the room just as the money had been carried around the room.
The baby, wet and held out for all to see, wailed. The people in the pews smiled and the organ drowned out the baby’s crying. An organ is a machine that can always cry louder than a human will.
At some point the father put a hand on my shoulder, looked down at me. The room of bodies stood again to sing, then sat again, listened to the person in robes speak, then stood to read words plainly from a page, then sat. Every time the bodies lowered themselves back into their pews there was a wooden ache, then a gust of silence.
Later, everyone left the church, flooding the aisles toward the church’s many doors. I saw someone was carrying that wet baby, carrying it away, a limp human that belonged to whoever could carry it.
THE SIX OF US—the father, the mother, the boys, and I—sat around a table draped with a white cloth. Plates of gravied meat and bread and stewed-soft vegetables were passed around, consumed in silence. People in white dresses carried dishes to and from the tables. Across the room I saw one of the people in the white dresses whisper to another, glancing at me, then away. No one at the tables looked at the people who brought the food to them, or if they did look, they looked without looking.
I ate as quickly as I could, as much as I could. The smallest boy stared at me while he was chewing. He opened his mouth, showing me the mashed contents, sticking out his tongue.
Hilda and I have something we would like to say, the father said.
Yes, Hilda said, putting her folded hands on the table. Hilda looked at the father until he nodded his head. Steven and I decided that you can stay with us as long as it takes.
As long as it takes, Steven said. We’ll move Jack down to the boys’ room and you can have the attic.
As long as you need, Hilda said. Her attention was turned inward and outward like a tightrope walker. I could hardly look at her. Everyone at the table was looking at me except for the smallest child, who stared at the ceiling, mesmerized, face smeared with food. I looked at my hands, at the empty plate, at the soiled napkin in my lap.
And what do you think of that? Steven asked, his voice raised and hard, a ceiling.
I leaned back in the chair and nodded. It was all I could manage.
Steven and Hilda spoke to each other, to the boys. Several times Steven made long statements, then asked the boys, Do you understand? The boys replied by not replying but that seemed to be enough. When Steven eventually rose from his chair, the rest of them did the same. He joined a line of men beside a cash register and Hilda disappeared behind a pink door.
Boys, Steven said, go on outside, go ahead and wait by the car and take our new friend with you. You’re in charge, Jack. Be nice.
Jack picked up the smallest boy and held him under an arm. The middle-size boy trailed behind them. I followed last. In the parking lot Jack dropped the smallest boy to the ground, then leaned against the family car, a big wide thing with huge wheels. The littlest boy moaned but stayed still at Jack’s feet. Jack stared off, squinting, fists in pockets.