Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

A confession: Even on the days I believe in God, and they are less frequent the older I get, the belief is shaky at best. It flickers like a candle caught in a draft. It goes against my Baptist raising to doubt. It often unnerves me.

I was taught faith is absolute and unwavering. I was taught prayers are always worthwhile and always answered. I was taught Bible stories and warned about the wages of sin. I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior when I was twelve although I had no idea what it meant and wasn't at all sure I trusted the minister not to drown me. I never questioned the existence of heaven or hell, never once thought the Devil wasn't real or that God didn't love me. My belief was natural, cast and hardened in concrete and I thought everyone shared it. I was in college and taking a course in comparative religions before I learned not only were there alternate theories but there was something called agnosticism (which was just collective ignorance according to family)) and atheism (which only the godless communists practiced, again, according to family). I didn't know any agnostics and I certainly didn't know any godless communists so neither concerned me. My faith remained unshakable.

It more or less stayed with me until I moved to the South and encountered my first wave of evangelical christians and the concept that anything from an ingrown toe nail to a terrorist attack to cancer could be mended by either a chiropractor, a republican president, or a heartfelt and widely spread prayer. I was rapidly discovering that prayer as a public strategy didn't much appeal to me and being a natural contrarian, in the face of religious zealotry, I was inclined to go in the opposite direction. I found myself thinking that while a word to the Lord couldn't hurt,

food and shelter and clothing donations would be more help to flood victims and chemotherapy would be more effective for the cancer ridden than a group hug. Little by little, I abandoned prayer and with it, the righteous and implacable certainty of a deity.

I still keep friends and family in my thoughts. I still believe in the existence of something - I'm not sure what - greater than myself. Some days I backslide and embrace the idea of an afterlife with both hands.

I hope I'm wrong but either way, faith should be more than a reflex.

Street Life

The mats began at the middle of her back. They were the size of my hand and as thick as my wrist. Her belly, back legs and tail were almost completely hairless. Patches of skin on her sides were raw and inflamed. She was rib-showing scrawny, black with fleas and smelled like some decaying dead thing. Annoyed that I didn't have a leash in my glove box, I undid the shoe laces of my Nikes, tied them together as a makeshift leash and led her to my car. She was docile as a lamb, following along without protest and immediately curling up on the passenger seat and laying her head on her paws with an exhausted sigh. She was asleep in seconds.

It was after nine on a Saturday night and the question was what to do with her next.

With three dogs of my own and no way to confine a possibly contagious stray, my house wasn't an option.

The animal emergency clinic turned me down flat and the local rescues were overflowing.

I drove home with no clear plan except the last resort - to call the pound - but after I'd let my own dogs out and back in and tried to lead the stray into the back yard, she balked and fought with every ounce of resistance she had left. I gave in and let her back in the car where she clearly felt safe, rolled down the windows (saying a thankful prayer that it wasn't 110 degrees) and brought her food and water. She wolfed two bowls of Pedigree without taking a breath and gulped down the water. I locked the car and went inside to do battle with animal control, who, predictably, wanted no part of the problem. I listened patiently to all the reasons they didn't want to do their job then calmly read them the law, which says they are required to pick up confined strays, even after nine on a Saturday night.

“I don't know how long it'll be,” the dispatcher tells me sullenly.

But I have played this game before. “I'll wait,” I assure her.

But of course Michael would have none of it. “Bring her to me,” he demands in a text message, “Mama and Papa will take her.” I refuse.

“You know they'll just kill her at the pound,” he continues. I'm sure he's right but I still refuse.

He actually cons his parents into agreeing to take her, swears he'll bathe and dip her, keep her quarantined from his dogs and deliver her on Monday.

“She can't spend the night in your car,” he finishes reasonably enough - a fair point - and besides, I realize grimly, he'll badger me until I agree.

In his kitchen, we cut off all the mats we can manage, ending up with enough fur to make a good sized cat, and she devours another two servings of Pedigree and empties the water bowl. After a warm bath, a gentle brushing and a flea pill, she settles into a crate and makes a nest in a pile of blankets and pillows. Cleaned up, the neglect is even more shocking but she falls asleep in seconds. As bad as she looks, she has a sweet, shaggy terrier face and I begin to think there might be a slim chance for a happy ending. That hope is shattered the following day when her owner surfaces - a brittle, most surely unwell old woman who can barely care for herself and who her neighbors think has some form of dementia - she has no transportation so they bring her to Michael's and she claims the dog. She has an excuse for everything, declines all offers of help, and he reluctantly surrenders her.

“I get you did what you thought was right,” I tell him coldly, “But you've sent an abused dog back to her abuser. If I ever see her on the streets again, I promise it won't happen twice.”

“It was her dog,” he says miserably.

The stark truth of this simple statement stops me in my tracks and my fury abruptly dissipates. He did more than most would have and there's no point in beating him up about it because he wasn't willing to become a dognapper.

I, on the other hand, am already a dognapper and if there's a next time with this particular dog, I'll write a different ending.

Inevitable Losses

I confess I think about the elephant in the room more often than I used to. I know he's watching me. Waiting. Maybe even taking notes. There are times I imagine I can hear him breathing or swishing his ears to chase away flies.

“If we could harness denial for good,” I sometimes remark to him, “We could remake the world.”

He doesn't answer. He is a patient elephant who knows his power and has no need to prove it. Not yet.

It's comforting to romanticize death and give it a Hollywood touch. I have my favorites, of course. Patrick Swayze climbing a shining, golden stairway to heaven in Ghost. A young girl who falls in love with Monte Markam as death in Death Takes a Holiday. Will Smith summoning Jack Lemmon in The Legend of Bagger Vance. After all, if death looked like Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black, who wouldn't be ready to go? The idea of an other side, one with peace and justice and all the animals I have loved so dearly, beckons charmingly when it's not an elephant.

These are the times, as a dear friend so elegantly put it, of inevitable losses. Not even denial will protect us. We start dying the very second we're born but somehow for the majority of our lives, we detour around the idea. The innocence of childhood grows into the invulnerability of youth and then into the distraction of adulthood. We build our lives, rebuild them when needed, and haven't a free second to contemplate how fragile and foolish it all is, until the people we have grown up with or loved or counted upon or wished away are gone. And when the day finally comes that a small voice whispers about mortality and another smaller voice whispers back, “You're going to die too” and you realize it's true.....well, there's that elephant again. Once you've seen him, you can't un-see him.

How did I not notice, you ask yourself.

Am I prepared, you think.

Where did it all go, you wonder.

Oh my God, this can't be happening, you protest, I'm nowhere near done!

Your thoughts turn to dying in your sleep. To cardiac arrest and strokes and unexpected falls.

To making a will and upgrading your life insurance if you have any. To catastrophic illnesses and dementia and memorial services. To assisted living centers or worse, nursing homes. Not all the time, of course - a person would go mad with worry and the elephant would win prematurely - but often enough to make you pay attention and feel just a little sick at the sheer hopelessness of it. Dark thoughts, depressing thoughts, reality thoughts. Thoughts about empty rooms and nothingness. Small wonder you reach for the blanket of denial and burrow beneath it.

What to do about the death thing, my oldest friend writes.

What indeed.  The next time I look up, the elephant has moved a little closer.  He makes eye contact and gives me a salacious wink.  I think I can hear him humming a toneless little tune.

"You underestimate the indomitable human spirit," I tell him under my breath and he smiles gently.

"I think not," he whispers back, "I feed on it."

"We will kick and scream and fight," I warn him.

"Some will," he concedes, "but once their work is done, some will come willingly.  And in the end, all will come, ready or not.  Writing about it or trying to understand will change nothing."

And that is what we do about the death thing.  We live, we endure, we wait.  Some of us hope that what we were taught as children is true.  Some expect to go into the darkness and wink out like a bad bulb while others plan on coming back as something else.  

We can't know the elephant, can't dismantle him or pretend he isn't here.  He won't be distracted by faith or denial or fairness or fear of the unknown.  We can't starve him out, can't bargain with him and can't hide from him.   

The elephant just is.  The best we can do is work around him and not let him blot out the light.

Mr. Morgan's Sermon

Accustomed as we were to a minister who liked planting flowers, making house calls and believed whole heartedly in fighting sin with forgiveness rather than hellfire, the Reverend Mr. Morgan's upcoming arrival in the village was a cause for some concern. James and Lily, called away to tend to Lily's widowed mother after a sudden stroke, hadn't had the time to greet him so it fell to the island women to ready the parsonage and be a last minute welcoming committee. Under the watchful eyes of Miz Hilda, they were still cooking and cleaning when the mail car pulled up and delivered our substitute pastor and his son.

He was impossibly tall, closer to seven foot then six, I thought blurrily, and thinner'n than a matchstick, nearly to the point of frail, with a mane of thick black hair, a badly hawked nose and sunken, cavernous dark eyes. From the dusty fedora to the tips of his scuffed boots, he was dressed all in black but the clothes were ill fitting - the sleeves of his frock coat ended above his scrawny wrists and his trousers hung on his hips for dear life – even without the dingy, telltale white collar, he could've stepped out of some dark and dreary Victorian novel. Everyone save Miz Hilda and Miz Clara took an involuntary step backwards, as if wanting to distance themselves from what was surely an apparition, surely some kind of evil.

“Ok,” I whispered urgently to Ruthie, “We've seen 'im. Let's go!”

“Not yet!” she hissed back at me, “I wanna see the boy!”

My heart was racing and I'd have rather faced down a barrel of snapping turtles but as I turned to run, a pair of leathery hands clamped down on my shoulders and held me in place.

“Stay put, child,” Miz Clara warned me quietly, “Remember your manners.”

Caught between a nameless fear, a wash of shame and Miz Clara's firm grip, there was no escape. Mr. Morgan, towering above the crowd and, I was quite sure, concealing a bloody ax beneath his frock coat, was listening to Miz Hilda's welcome speech impassively, his face mostly in shadow, his enormous frame blotting out the sun. The boy beside him was urchin-like, dark like his father but as short and squat as his father was tall and gaunt. Like Mutt and Jeff from the funny papers, I thought, only not so silly or entertaining and fearfully not so innocent even with his knickers (oh, Lord, what a feast the island boys were going to have with that) and his knee high argyle socks. Watching him kicking defiantly at the dust and refusing to meet anyone's eyes, all I could think of was a petulant and bedraggled Little Lord Fauntleroy.

“My son, Evan,” Mr. Morgan was saying and gave him a slight but rough-ish shove forward toward the crowd. The boy glanced up, scowling and unwilling, mumbled a few low words and immediately lowered his eyes and that was when everyone saw the deformity. Even Miz Hilda faltered midway through some British pleasantry and then several things happened all at the same time. Miz Clara's grip on my shoulders inexplicably tightened while a sudden chill shot from my tailbone all the way to my ears. A cloud passed over the sun and threw everything into shadow and worst of all, Ruthie went pale and without the slightest warning bolted like a startled deer. Far too late, Miz Clara reached out a hand to snatch her back and seeing my opportunity, I wrenched free and followed. Just before I caught up with her, there was a distant but very clear rifle shot of thunder and then we were caught in a fierce sun shower. We took what shelter we could under the overhanging eaves of the old post office and waited it out, cold, wet, too ignorant to know what we'd seen and too horrified to talk of it. After a time, Miz Clara's wagon passed on her way back to The Point and when she offered us a ride, we jumped aboard like fleas. Not a word about Mr. Morgan or his son was said but gossip rides a fast horse and word of the boy's affliction had already spread like fire. None of it was kind nor true but it didn't seem to matter. No one had ever heard of a cleft palate but they all knew about two headed calves and the mark of the beast.

Church attendance dropped sharply the next four weeks. Mr. Morgan's preaching, though eloquent and often delivered with the violent sort of passion that made you want to shout “Hallelujah!”, was never able to overcome that first impression of imagined evil. His final sermon, Matthew 7: 1-3, didn't just echo with the thin congregation, it ricochet'd all around them.

“Judge not that ye be not judged!” he railed, one hand clutching his Bible and the other a raised fist. My grandmother paled visibly and for several seconds I was sure my heart was going to hammer its way out of my chest or just plain stop and leave me in a cold, dead, and sinful heap on the floor of the Baptist church.

Mr. Morgan recovered himself admirably, Miz Hilda would say later. My last sight of him was as he stood quietly, head slightly bowed and hands clasping his Bible, something near a smile on his dark, brooding features and the boy at his side.

"Go with God," he called out clearly.

We were too busy hurrying out to return the blessing.

One For All and Each for His Own

From the front porch, I can see the old Bartlett Pear standing like a silent, solitary sentry in the very center of the front yard. It's a study in contrast and peaceful coexistence, a blend of living and dead. Street side, it's green and growing, willingly offering up its branches to bluejays, robins, sparrows and even the occasional crow. It welcomes all. But on the house side, it's split and dead as dead can be, its branches leafless, gray and brittle. The birds don't land on the house side, the squirrels avoid it, and the sun can't restore it, yet it perseveres.

“Cut it down,” Michael's daddy advises him sourly, “Told you thirty years ago this'd happen but you wouldn't listen. Told you to plant somethin' that wouldn't split and die but you knew better. Thirty years and all you got to show for it's a half dead tree in your front yard. Boy, you never did have the sense of a nigger field hand.”

The stark racism and casual cruelty of the words sent a chill of shame and pity up my spine. The old man, his body a right angle of arithitis and scoliosis, was so bent and crippled that he could no longer stand upright or walk without some kind of support. His mind wandered freely these days - Michael liked to say his train of thought had been permanently derailed - meals were a chore, he could barely still dress himself, and at home, he spent most of his time going from his inside motorized wheelchair to his outside golf cart. The majority of his conversations these days were with the television or his dogs.

“He depends on me for everything,” Dorothy liked to say. This was usually accompanied by a weary sigh - they were both in their mid eighties, after all - but her proud smile gave her away.

“Jack!” she fussed, overhearing the field hand remark, “Don't say such things! What will dear Barbara think of us!”

What was she objecting to, I wondered, the racial slur or the slam at their son?

The old man gives me a cursory glance then shrugs indifferently. With some difficulty, he drags himself up the steps, through the gate, and settles heavily into the wooden chair Dorothy has brought along and set up for him. The dogs swarm around him happily. A sudden breeze sweeps through and the leaves in the Bartlett Pear lift and sway, rustling like sandpaper. The dead side stirs imperceptibly. A young boy on a bicycle comes free wheeling down the empty street and the dogs abandon the old man to protest. They collide and slam into each other in a frenzy of hysterical barking and the boy gives a cheerful wave and shouts “Hey! How ya doin'!” Dorothy and Michael both wave back but the old man scowls.

“Niggers still breakin' in?” he asks Michael. His voice is sly, raspy and raw with confidence.

Looking past him at the half dead, half living tree, I realize that the limbs and branches on the dead side look like a claw hand. Michael gives me an uncomfortable but helpless look and the old man laughs and goes back to rough housing with the dogs.

The two sides of the Bartlett Pear tree grew from the same roots in the same soil, matured and aged as one for years and then for no apparent reason, split and went their separate ways. Now, they are inextricably bound together and the death of either would be the death of both.  

Dorothy's Way

I was working my way through the morning emails and halfway listening to the latest dismal round of political news on Morning Edition when there was a soft knock on the front door. There was instant mayhem as all four work dogs spilled into the room, barking frantically and running in circles, attacking the door and me and each other in a mad rush. I could barely hear myself think.

Just getting to the door was like trying to wade through a nest of frenzied alligators. The old pit slammed against my thigh repeatedly, the cur dog tore at him like a bone, and the two little ones shrieked and howled and danced around my feet like dervishes, biting and snatching at anything that moved.

“Hush!” I shouted above the roar, “Hush up and move, damn it!”

I could see Michael's mother through the glass panes, smiling at me and shaking her head at the commotion. She began calling each of the dogs by name as if to reassure them but all it did was raise the noise level by half and cause greater chaos. I got the door unlocked and stepped back, dragging the two big dogs by their collars and yelling for help from Michael. Dorothy came in and was immediately set upon. She is a small woman, shrunken by age and osteoporosis and more than a little fragile with skin like tissue paper and bones like china. One good hip block would easily produce a fracture if she were to be knocked down and one good scratch would be bloody and painful. She is also a fussy woman with strong opinions and a grim determination to have her own way. She has come (uninvited) to bring law and order and hygiene to Michael's house, whether he wants it or not. A mother and son confrontation is inevitable.

“Dear Barbara,” she tells me as she fends off the little dogs without much success, “I don't know how you manage.”

The cur dog gives a sudden yank and I lose my grip. He's on her in a second, joyfully jumping and pawing and salivating. She gives a little scream and falls backward into a chair with a thud. I abandon the pit, grab the cur by the collar and haul him backwards but he's a strong and healthy dog and it takes everything I have to hold him. The pit tries awkwardly to get around me, aiming, I'm sure, to climb into her lap, but I position myself and the cur in his way and block him. Fortunately for us all, he's an old and slow moving freight train of a dog without an ounce of aggression but he's massive and graceless and doesn't know his own strength. It can take a 2x4 just to get his attention and you might as well try and move a cow as displace him.

“No!” Dorothy is telling one of the small dogs, “Get down! Oh, my word, those nails!” She flails at him, nowhere near as helplessly as she would like it to appear but more than enough to make me feel guilty.  When reason doesn't work, she gives him a smart smack on the nose and looks pleased with herself.

“MICHAEL!” I finally roar, “WILL YOU PLEASE GET IN HERE!”

Dorothy has brought every cleaning product and tool she could lay her hands on. Between the three of us, we carry in one cardboard after another and another. There are numerous bottles of bleach and disinfectant, a gallon jug of Windex, a 12 pack of paper towels, four bottles of drain opener, two cans of lemon scented furniture polish. There are plastic buckets full of dishwashing detergent and hand soap and family size spray bottles of Febreze. The trunk of her cars offers a startling assortment of sponges, mops and wire scrub brushes and lint rollers. She unpacks and organizes every item, carefully arranging and laying them out according to their purpose.

“I'm going to start with the kitchen,” she announces briskly, “But I'll be here all day and some of tomorrow. It may take some time to pull all this carpet up.”

“Pull the carpet up?” Michael asks sharply, “We're not pulling any carpet up. Stanley Steemer can......”

“Don't be an idiot, son,” she says with an airy, dismissive wave, “Any fool can see these urine stains are embedded and go all the way to the foundation! Why, it'll be a miracle if the floors can be salvaged!”

“Where are you going to sleep?” I ask hesitantly.

“On the blue couch in the living room,” she says calmly, just as if the living room were not littered with dog waste and trash and empty dogfood containers. And, to be charitable, smelled vaguely like an outhouse.

“When hell freezes over!” Michael thunders at her and storms out of the room.

She ignores this outburst and continues with her unpacking, at one point giving me a frown and saying, “Dear Barbara, you do know he wasn't raised like this and we certainly don't live this way.” She waits for me to assure her, seeming to have forgotten that I've seen her perfectly kept, pristine home and that I know her dogs spend the majority of their time behind a gate in a utility room and are not only housebroken but trained in manners as well. When I nod, she resumes.

“The old place was bad but this..........this is........well, it's horrific. And appalling. And probably toxic. I don't wonder his health is so poor. Once we've put things right, you can help me find him a maid or a cleaning service. And these dogs! Let me tell you, their days of running this house are over! People are going to start coming first or I'll know the reason why! Dear Lord, the filth! You'd think a bunch of coloreds lived here! How you can run a business when you're too ashamed to let people see how you live.......well, poor eyesight or not, I won't have it. Do you see a bottle of oil soap, dear? You know, people, even the best people, go to the penitentiary for tax evasion but that's for another day. Did you know there are ants in the kitchen, dear? Why, they're practically swarming like bees! I do hope I remembered that extra can of Raid. I did not raise my children to live like trailer park trash!”

When confronted with a force of nature – fire, flood, tsunami or a single minded, disgusted mother – the chief difficulty is not getting caught in its approach or its wake. I felt it was time to make a strategic exit.

“Of course, dear Barbara,” Dorothy tells me generously, “I'm sure he often overlooks the fact that you have your own life. You run along. I'll soon have things here in order. I expect you won't recognize the place by Monday. Ah.......here's the Raid!”

She shivers delicately and gets to her feet with a small arthritic groan.

“Michael!” she sings out, “Come in here, son, I'm going to teach you how to properly polish furniture before you learn how to mop a floor!”

Not sure what to expect, I turn the key on Monday morning and walk into a house I barely recognize. It smells of air freshener and flowers. There's not a speck of dust or a dogfood container in sight. The waste baskets are lined, the shelves are neatened, the rooms arranged without a single throw pillow torn to bits. The ceiling fans turn whisper-quiet, all the kitchen drawers now open and every stick of furniture has been de-dog-haired. One end of the kitchen has been securely gated off and made into a feeding and play area. The kennels and pet carriers have been scrubbed clean, padded with newly washed blankets, and neatly arranged beneath the windows. Even the dogfood is carefully organized in one corner. The only battle Dorothy appears to have lost is the carpet and even that's a draw - it's still in place but clearly has been industrially cleaned and treated – and best of all, an assortment of colorful new throw rugs cover the worst areas and there's not a single new urine stain anywhere.

God bless the primal forces of motherhood and a woman whose way is the only right way.