Page 46 of The Sign for Home

“Not short! You are too big! Like a cow! You are half cow, half boy. You are Cow-Boy!” she teased.

You both fell into each other’s arms laughing, letting your bodies slowly settle, until there were only aftershocks and, finally, stillness and breath.

“Question,” you ask. “From now on, you and me best friends and sweethearts? Okay?”

S caressed your face and pressed her soft lips against yours, holding them there for a long time.

“Okay,” S signed into your hands while simultaneously kissing you. “We will sweethearts! Also… now, we family. I am mama, papa, sister, brother, auntie, uncle. I all your family!”

Then, after she moved her head away from yours, she signed something you had never been told before.”

“You so beautiful.”

“Finish you! You tease?”

“No. True! Your face and body… beautiful. Handsome like movie star. When you bawling tears? Doesn’t matter. Still most beautiful boy in school.”

S’s words made the ceiling open up and the sky poured soft warm clouds all over your heartbroken body.

“You beautiful too,” you signed.

“Can you see me?”

“Not now… too dark. But before, after you beat up Crazy Charles, I saw a little. But can also feel.”

You touched S’s face, tracing the outlines of her nose, cheeks, eyes, lips. You needed to carve it into your brain, locking in every detail, before S disappeared into the darkness, like your mother had. Like everything would.

18THE GREAT TRIBULATION

Writing class is off today for the Fourth of July break. It is another holiday that JWs do not celebrate. Instead of going to a picnic like other people, you sit alone in your hot room, in front of your computer, thinking about the assignment you are supposed to finish by Friday, the one about the Day That Changed Everything. Snakes of discomfort squirm in your stomach.

To write the essay, Professor Lavinia Bahr says, means becoming a better writer.

To write the essay means opening the gates of your brain to all the sad monsters you’ve been trying to forget for the last five and a half years.

To write the essay could mean letting them live somewhere else (inside your computer) instead of only in your brain.

To write the essay means breaking your promise to Brother Birch, Molly, Jehovah God, and yourself.

You stare at the blank screen. The giant white cursor blinks impatiently, like a tapping toe, waiting for you to write. So you type the letters R-E-M-E-M-B-E-R and stare at them. Then you zoom in even tighter on the word, making the letters grow like a monster, until the whole word cannot fit on the screen in one piece. So instead ofremember, the screen is filled with the wordEMBER. Embermeansa small piece of burning or glowing coal or wood in a dying fire. This makes you think of the Lake of Fire. So you delete it.

Write. You need to write. Write.

You don’t.

Get up and stretch.

Scratch Snap behind her ears.

Think about your new friend Hanne and wonder if being a nurse is as hard as writing a personal essay about something you’re supposed to have forgotten about.

Think about whether Hanne is practicing sorcery every day or just sometimes. Is it safe for a nurse to also be a witch?

Think about that “special” lunch chicken marsala, and plan to ask Molly if they have it the next time you eat lunch in the cafeteria.

Think about bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches.

Think about how, earlier in the day, a strange woman walked you to the Able-Ride stop. You held her on her naked upper arm and felt the softness of her skin.

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