The Whole Beautiful World Page 3

  It’s a shame there’s no marriage in heaven, she thought as she played the stale piano in church, because she knew that there she would have a new body. She wondered how it would be. Some glad morning when this life is o’er, the congregation strained as she played. They always sang a little slower than she played. I’ll fly away. None of the incessant blackheads dotting her nose, her ears smaller and closer to her head, her legs a little longer. And what would a perfect version of her face look like, she wondered? She glanced up from the hymnal to the pretty girls in the balcony, all done up in their flaring skirts and bright blouses. I’ll fly away, oh glory, I’ll fly away. They were moving their tiny painted mouths to the words exaggeratedly, and giggling to each other. Would she keep the length of her nose, but straighten it, shrink the nostrils a little? Withdraw her chin or stretch her jawline? When the shadows of this life have gone . . . Would she expand her eyes a bit, or would they look bulgy then, showing too much of the whites so she would have a permanently scared expression? Wouldn’t that be something, to appear constantly afraid in heaven. When I die, hallelujah by and by—What if God defined perfect differently than she did, made her what he considered immaculate, but far from what she wanted? Would she then have to spend eternity in a less than satisfactory figure? Or if she were in heaven, would she be powerful enough to make herself look exactly as she wished?

  “I’ve always been so glad to have a pretty friend like you,” Georgette told her in junior high while they sat squished into swings too small for their sprouting bums. “I thought if a pretty girl would hang out with me, I must be a little pretty too.” Their feet dragged sluggishly back and forth along the dirt grooves surrounded by gravel.

  “You are pretty,” she told Georgette, because it was a nice thing to say, and Georgette probably didn’t hear that from anyone but her parents and everyone knows that parents have to say these things. It was alright to lie because she barely believed Georgette’s words either. Neither girl had had a boyfriend yet, and she left Georgette for a fancier group of friends when they began high school. “I just have more in common with them,” she said when Georgette had curled up beside her in the pew one day after church and asked why they never hung out anymore, her voice shaking, her eyes strained and red-rimmed.

  BUT WHEN THAT which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. That had been the text of the young minister’s sermon on Sunday, and she woke up the next morning with the phrase running through her head. She said it over and over again as she rode her bike down the street on her way to school, twisting around cars parked and driving. The wind was catching her hair now, and she imagined that she looked beautiful simply because her hair was flowing in the wind like the branches of a weeping willow. The strands were dancing, were bringing life to her whole body, and she felt in that moment that it didn’t matter whether God healed her of her ugliness, her brokenness, the pieces of her which were only part. In that moment, feeling a sense of oneness with the yellow and red leaves skipping along the street and the thin streams of sun between the grey woolen clouds, with the wind surrounding her, lifting her beyond the things of this world, she was perfect.

  Turn your eyes upon Jesus, she hummed to herself.

  Look full in his beautiful face

  And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

  In the light of his glory and grace.

  It was at that moment, while she gazed up at the brilliance falling between clouds, that the man in the truck opened his door as she flew towards him.

  “I’M SO SORRY—so, so sorry,” she heard, and she could still see the streams of light, burning in a soft hollow circle of white, like a halo around his bearded face. Jesus, you see me, she thought, but couldn’t will the muscles in her waking face to smile at him quite yet. It’s alright Jesus, she prayed. I forgive you for making me this way. Now you are here, making me perfect. She forced the smile now, but as she did, she felt her lips press directly against her aching gums, and an emptiness along the front of her mouth. Still, as she lay there, and the sharp pain ran along the back of her head, there was peace, flowing thick down her cheeks, over her ears. She could see him in her peripheral vision, bending quickly and straightening, bending and straightening. She wanted to help him and as she pressed her fingers into the asphalt to push herself up, her hands burned and she felt a throbbing in her nose. “No, no! Lay back down,” he said, turning to her, holding a blue cloth cupped in his hand. “It’s better for your nose—I’ve called the ambulance—I’m so sorry,” he said again, and his eyes grew wet, and he bent down again, picked another tooth from the ground, placed it gently into the blue cloth. She lay down slowly, ran the back of her hand along her dripping chin, and hummed her song as he collected her little teeth one by one, like the crisp snail shells she found in the garden when she was young.

  This is what it feels like, she thought as they strapped her to the gurney, to be humbled by God. Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord, she mouthed. She saw the man hand a paramedic the blue cloth and wipe the back of his forearm roughly along his eyes. Her arms shook at her sides as they raised her gracefully, but she was not crying. She was shivering and her toes wiggled inside her sweaty shoes. She felt the ambulance jolt into motion down the busy streets. And he will lift you up. Now that she had the humbled part out of the way, she could be lifted up. The pain wasn’t so bad. They would replace all of the tenderly collected teeth into her longing mouth, straight this time. They could restore her nose, reconstruct the nostrils into beautiful curves. A paramedic reached out and took her hand, and she squeezed it with contentment. She started to laugh, a startling laugh chopped every few seconds with a shudder. She pictured herself rising, lifted up, like the Assumption of Mary, beautiful robes flowing around her, hair billowing in the wind, eyes lifted to heaven, immaculately gorgeous.

  MATERNITY TEST

  “I’M NOT EVEN SURE YOU’RE really my daughter,” Maurine’s mother said to her, pulling her boobs into her polka-dot bra. “Sometimes I swear they switched you at birth. Because they took you and that other jaundiced kid from the woman who shared my room at the same time and put you in the incubators. Every time I nursed my baby in that first hour, that other girl was watching like a pervert, watching my baby.”

  Maurine just sat there staring at her mother’s extensive nail polish collection, lined up against the vanity mirror. She knew some of the colours’ names by heart: Jungle Cat Pink. Champagne Fountain. Cherry Blaster Sparkle.

  “She was jealous,” Maurine’s mother went on, “’cause my baby was nursing like a champ, and hers couldn’t get anything out of her shrivelled, chapped tits. But of course the bitch blamed the baby for it. I think she switched the babies in the incubator and that was that.”

  Maurine grabbed a bottle of Sunlight on the Ocean and shook it till she heard the tiny silver ball inside shake.

  “Not that it matters!” Maurine’s mother practically shouted. “You know I love you the same whether or not you’re mine. It’s just that sometimes, when you get your asshole attitude on, like today, I wonder. It just makes me wonder if you wonder about it too.” Maurine opened the bottle and breathed in the fumes deeply. Her mother spoke almost under her breath: “Because you can’t love me if you’re not sure you’re mine. All that wondering makes you bitchy with me.”

  Maurine spread her chubby toes and began to wipe a bright blue coat over the chipping layers already there—Sex on the Beach over Sunflower over Midnight Madness. In that moment Maurine figured that, although the thought had never occurred to her, deep down she must have always known that her mother was not really hers, that there was no way she, with her chunky thighs and round face, had come out of this slender woman.

  “Don’t listen to that shit, Maurine!” her father said when she asked about it the next time she saw him. They were out for breakfast at Slim’s Silver Spoon and she let it slip, the stuff Mom said. “Don’t listen to her, Maurine—she’ll drive you crazy. You know she says crazy
shit just to get a rise out of you. Do you want to come live with me?”

  And she did—Dad didn’t yell, and he came home in the evenings drunk less often than Mom. She knew he would always have groceries, but he wasn’t affectionate. Mom would say crazy shit, but she also said all the time, “My beautiful, beautiful girl. My beautiful girl,” running her hands through Maurine’s hair, giving her a foot massage while they watched TV. Dad had said “I love you” three times in Maurine’s life, and she could remember each one as if it had happened only a second ago.

  “Who will take care of Mom if I leave?” Maurine said, and Dad shook his head. “Now you’re trying to make me feel guilty again,” he said. His hands all cracked with tar squeezed the mug. “I’m not,” shrieked Maurine.

  “YOU COULD DO a pat test,” said her best friend Andrea. Andrea was an idiot.

  “Pat tests are for dads, idiot,” said Maurine. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, chipping away at her toenails with her fingernails. “I know that,” Andrea said, watching her own knees as they sat on Andrea’s bed. “I know, but there’s got to be a mom version.”

  So Maurine visited the doctor with a fake cold and then asked the doctor about it. “I just want to know,” she said. “I’m afraid that’s very expensive,” said the doctor. “I’m sure your mom didn’t mean what she said.” He put his hand on her shoulder the way a teacher might. She looked down at her hands and wanted his hand to stay there, warm and heavy. Suddenly she knew for a second that he was right. But then in the next second she shrugged her shoulders to make him pull his hand away—she knew he was wrong, knew her mother would never say it unless she meant it. “It’s a tough stage in mother-daughter relationships, you maturing,” the doctor said. He said it like ma-touring. He looked at her breasts when he said it. “Mothers and daughters sometimes say things they don’t mean.”

  Maurine’s mother was on the couch painting her nails when Maurine came home. “Come here, beautiful girl,” she heard her mom say over the music in her headphones. “Come here and sit by me.” A bottle of nail polish remover was tipped over on the floor in front of her.

  “Mom, you stink!” yelled Maurine. She wanted to take the nail polish bottle out of her mom’s hand and throw it against the window. She would do it if she knew they wouldn’t get evicted for it.

  “I just want you to come sit by me,” her mom whined. “Take those things out of your ears and sit by me and tell me about your day and let me play with your beautiful hair.”

  “Maybe I would if you didn’t smell like poison!” yelled Maurine. But she sat on the floor in front of the couch all the same, careful to avoid the spilled polish remover in the carpet. Her mom ran the fingers of her unpolished hand through Maurine’s hair, as gently as a person could. “How was your day, darling? Did you have fun at school? Will you paint my right hand? I always do such a sloppy job. Do you have more friends? I don’t know why you don’t, when you’re such a beautiful, beautiful girl.” Maurine put her headphones back in her ears so her mother would stop talking to her with her wino breath.

  Her mother took her hand out of Maurine’s hair and smacked her ear.

  “Fuck, Mom! That hurt!”

  “What hurts is my own daughter won’t even talk to me anymore!” her mother cried, and turned her face into the couch cushion.

  “I’m not even your daughter!” Maurine yelled.

  Her mother pulled her blotchy face from the cushion. “Who said that to you? Did your dad feed you another one of his lies? Another lie so that you’ll go live with him? When did he tell you that?”

  “Mom, you said it,” Maurine said softly, now unsure if she had ever heard those words. The toxins in the air stung her nose. “You did, you did. I heard you.” She spoke quietly, convincing herself of something that maybe had never been.

  Her mother sat up slowly. “Come here, darling,” she said, pulling Maurine off the floor and into her arms. Maurine felt her strength float away. Her mom pulled her into her lap, pulled her towards her so that Maurine’s shoulder sank between her breasts. Maurine’s sneakered feet hung heavily off the end of the couch. She could feel the many layers of colours pressing her socks against the canvas toe of the shoe. “Beautiful girl—what a silly thing to think. Of course you are mine,” her mom said, and Maurine felt herself fade away again. “Of course you are mine. Of course you are mine.”

  THE MISSIONARY GAME

  THE DEAD COW WAS WHAT launched my childhood insomnia. I lay in bed each night and watched the moon drift behind black trees, dreading the moment when I would see the strip of light under my door disappear, meaning my parents had gone to bed, meaning it was long past the time at which kids should be asleep, meaning I was not like other kids and therefore would be plagued with doubt my whole life and therefore would go to hell.

  We went to the creek between two soy fields every day after school, jumping from boulders to the dried slanted banks of long grass, flattened neatly as if combed over by a giant hand. We played hide-and-seek in the outer edges of the woods, wedging our bodies under fallen trees and putting our faces against the smell of dirt and moss, climbed the crab apple trees and scraped off lichen with our fingernails, waiting to be found. One day while I was seeker, I stepped on the cow.

  It had been a Jersey cow, with soft tawny hide darkened around gorgeous bulging eyes, except the eyes were eaten away and its sockets stared at me as if possessed. I stepped on a hoof and as I looked down, I heard the dark hum of flies. I saw that the entire animal was falling apart in tufts. There was a sickening swelling in my throat and I willed it to freeze there.

  “Do you know what hell is like?” Reverend Thomas had yelled. “We don’t like to think of hell these days. We want to think only of what makes us comfortable, what feels good.” He drew out the word good, low and rattling in his throat, as if it were stuck there and he needed to excise it slowly. “But as long as we fixate on being comfortable—” his voice was rising, his eyes widening—“we’re destined for hell!” Des-tined was punched into the pulpit in two swipes.

  I wanted to plug my ears to shut out his vision of hell, yet I needed to see the horrors he described. The reverend’s words kept my body motionless, buried inside his throat. “You ever seen a rotten animal before?” he said, nodding his head and drawing ours along with his. He spoke softly. “Roadkill, or leftover chicken that’s been in the fridge too long.” A few nervous chuckles. “Maggots everywhere, the flesh pulling apart and oozing . . .”

  On the bank of the creek, beside the cow, the rustling leaves began to drown out the flies.

  “Friends, there is no death in heaven. But in hell—well, everything’s death.”

  A few cold drops of rain fell on the Jersey, on my arms, my face, stingingly cold. The grey sky was pulling in around the cow.

  “Anyone here afraid of the dark? Sure—a few brave souls aren’t afraid to admit it. But can you imagine, friends, perpetual darkness, never knowing where you are, not knowing why you are feeling such pain, such agony—not even being able to see the chains which tie you down!” He sounded so sad about this, his Jersey eyes drooping and the dry skin between them knotted.

  The wind wrapped around the cow and me, pulling the scent past us quickly. The trees scraped against each other, and I could feel the branches pulling along my gut from the inside. The darkening sky was spattered with flies, fluttering blue through drops of rain between my body and the rotting flesh.

  “See, we don’t want to talk about hell, or think about hell, but we’ve got to!” He rose on his toes to say, “Because, friends, for those of us who know God without a doubt, we are in his kingdom for eternity! And there will be all love and all light and all peace. But if there’s a place full of everything good and wonderful, ladies and gentlemen, there is a place entirely empty of those things as well . . .”

  The first bolt of lightning drew my eyes away from the carcass. I turned around to see all the other kids running towards the house. I looked at the cow once more then
ran.

  IT WASN’T THAT I didn’t believe, or that doubts constantly buzzed around my life. It was that life was an eternity long, and how could I be sure I would have no doubts between now and the end? What if I made it the whole way through and accounted regularly for my sins and didn’t embrace the comforts of the world, only to doubt God’s existence on my deathbed? “For those who know God without a doubt.”

  So my parents would tuck me in at night and we would say together, “I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake . . .” and I would mean it all, but what if I went to sleep and in a dream I doubted? After they turned out the lights I would lie there picturing hell, mad souls grabbing at my feet, pieces of my skin falling away in tufts, and yet always having more flesh to give, more organs for the maggots to infest.

  “What if I go to hell?” I asked my mother after our prayers. “Why would you go to hell?” she asked. She seemed scared, or disappointed, so I just shrugged my shoulders and closed my eyes. “You won’t go to hell.” She kissed me on the cheek and turned out the light. I didn’t know how to tell her I was afraid of doubt, didn’t want her to know what my dark heart was capable of.

  “IT’S YOUR TURN,” said Jamie. We were playing the Missionary Game, which was designed like Monopoly, except that there were Providence cards instead of Chance, and Trials instead of Community Chest. “One of your supporting churches has withdrawn funds,” the card I drew told me. “Give three hundred dollars to the Anonymous Donor Pile.” I pulled three orange bills from my stash and placed them in the middle of the board.