A Song for Nettie Johnson (19 page)

On January 2
, I was standing in the school hallway getting used to the smells again, when Ivan stomped through the front entrance, his shoulders bent forward, his head down, and clamping a bundle of papers under his right arm. He went straight up to Mr. Ross’s room without even taking his jacket off. I didn’t know what his hurry was. We had a few minutes before the bell, and his friends were still hanging around in the hall, bumping into each other and making noise.

It wasn’t long before I discovered the mystery. At 10 o’clock, in World History class, Mr. Ross made the announcement. He sat on top of his desk, dangling his legs in front of it, and told us, “Ivan has suggested a topic for a debate.” Ivan was his favourite because of his intelligence. “He thinks that because we’re studying the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism it would be useful if we debated that subject in class and wonders if anyone else would be interested.” He waited for a reply. Of course, no one spoke up. Who would be crazy enough to debate Ivan?

“He’d like to get to the heart of the matter and suggested this for the proposition: Resolved: that there is no God.”

I was dumbfounded. How could Mr. Ross even consider such an idea? And why did he always make us do stuff that got him in hot water? Like having us count the needles on the spruce tree across the road, taking the whole morning to do it and getting nowhere, not even the number of needles on one branch, and the people downtown complaining, is this what we pay him for? And why would Ivan bring up such a thing?

“Any takers?” Ross asked. “Anyone interested in meeting his challenge?”

I glanced over at Esther and Mike sitting in the row to the left of me. They were completely dead-faced. Mr. Ross stood up and walked to the window. He gazed out at the grey sky and stroked his chin with his thumb and fingers. Then he turned to us and said, “Does that mean everyone agrees with Ivan?”

Of course I didn’t. But I kept my mouth shut.

”What?”
my grandfather demanded at the supper table. “You didn’t stand up to an unbeliever?” He stabbed the air with his fork.

”I’m not a scientist,” I said. “I can’t prove anything about God.”

“You’re not called on to be a scientist,” Grandpa thundered. “You’re called to be a witness. To stand up for the truth.” And he began to sing, holding his fork upright in his fist, like a pitchfork.

Dare to be a Daniel.

Dare to stand alone.

Dare to have a purpose firm.

And dare to make it known.

Then he recited a verse from Genesis: “‘And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving upon the face of the waters, and God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’ There’s proof for you,” he said. “It’s in the Word.”

Finally, Dad spoke up. “I think what she means is that if someone doesn’t believe the Scriptures in the first place, you can’t very well use the Scriptures to prove your point to him.”

This silenced Grandpa for about ten seconds. Then he banged his fork down on the table. “The fool has said in his heart there is no God!” he roared.

“I don’t think Ivan’s a fool, Grandpa,” I said. “He’s very bright. The smartest in class.”

“Fools think they’re smart, but they’re not, they’re fools.”

Walking to school
the next day, I saw Ivan climbing the hill from his house. His whole body leaned forward and his head was lowered. I kept on walking as if I didn’t see him, but we met at the school steps.

“Scared?” he said.

“Of what?” I said.

He didn’t answer, just walked past me and climbed the steps.

In front of the door he turned around and looked down at me in a strange way, and I found myself breathing differently.

He didn’t have any reason to hate me, I thought. Hadn’t I delivered the box of cookies to their house before Christmas, cookies my mother had made, knowing that Ivan and his grandfather wouldn’t have many goodies since Mrs. Lippoway was dead? Hadn’t I trudged down the road and across the tracks to their house even though the wind was freezing cold?

In summer their whole yard was one thick vegetable garden. Mr. Lippoway worked in it every morning, digging and watering and sometimes covering plants with tin cans for protection against the wind. From the schoolyard we could look down and see their garden. In the late summer, tall yellow sunflowers swayed in the wind.

But on the Saturday of my Christmas delivery the yard was packed full of snow. The long path that led from the road into the yard and to their back door had a wall of snow on either side as high as my armpits.

I knocked on the door and Ivan answered. He looked shocked to see me. He didn’t even invite me in until his grandfather called out, “Who is it?” When I stepped inside I was surprised at what I saw. One room was the kitchen, living room, and workshop all combined. And maybe even someone’s bedroom as well; a couch at the far end of the room was covered with a quilt. I noticed the smells right away: leather, pipe tobacco, and the cabbage cooking on the stove. Mr. Lippoway was sitting on a stool at his workbench, which was littered with shoes, hammers of various sizes, boxes of tacks, pieces of leather.

The old man rose from his bench and stepped forward to greet me. He was thin and wore a dark blue apron. I handed him the parcel and said it contained a few cookies my mother had made. He seemed pleased and thanked me in his broken English. He held up the box in both hands and examined the wrapping, blue tissue paper with small silver stars pasted on it. He turned the box this way and that, shaking his head in admiration of my mother’s artistic ways. Then he placed it on the kitchen table, which was littered with Ivan’s school books, and shook my hand. His hand was hard and smooth, except for some nubs of thick skin that stuck out on a couple of fingers. Ivan didn’t move from the door. He just stood there, scowling.

Now, seeing him at the top of the school steps looking down at me, I thought of that box. I knew what was in it: shortbread, spritz, rosettes, fruitcake. I was quite sure he’d enjoyed eating all this, so why was he being so peculiar?

At 10 o’clock it was time for history. Again Ross challenged us to debate and no one responded. I don’t know yet why I did it, but I felt my hand go up and I heard myself saying I would debate Ivan.

“So Elizabeth’s decided
to have her head chopped off,” my brother said at the supper table.

“What’s this?” Dad asked.

“What are you talking about?” Mother added.

“She’s debating Ivan the Brain,” Peter said.

“I’ve accepted the challenge to prove there’s a God,” I said.

“My little jente,” Grandpa said. “So young but with courage like a lion.”

At school the next day
I began my preparations by looking up key words in the dictionary. All our library books were on a shelf at the back of the room: the dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica, a book on insects, and a play entitled
A Doll’s House.
I lifted the dictionary from the shelf, carried it to my desk, and settled down for some serious work. The room was quiet. Everyone was at their desks, busy with something or other. The sun was shining through the tall windows onto our desks. Mr. Ross was in his swivel chair, watching over us.

I found the words I wanted and wrote down the definitions in my scribbler. “God: the one Supreme Being, creator and ruler of the universe. Atheism: disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.” But I already knew all this, so I moved on to the encyclopedia for more information. I was surprised at how much there was under that one word, atheism.

I found out that in ancient Greece Plato had argued against the idea of atheism. Plato was quite famous, so I decided I might use him to prove my point. Then I came across something called logical positivism. It said, “Propositions concerning the existence or non-existence of God are nonsensical and meaningless.” This was my view exactly, but I was startled to discover that this viewpoint was considered atheistic.

I brought my problem to Mr. Ross, who was still relaxing in his chair. I showed him the article in the encyclopedia and described my conflict.

“Why don’t you look up gravity?” he said.

“Gravity?” I asked.

“It’s the power that holds the universe together so we don’t fly off in all directions.”

“Is that about God?” I asked.

“It could be,” he said.

I went back to my desk and looked up gravity. I found long equations in the article like w=g.
4
⁄
3
π r
3
∆ m/r
2
=g.
4
⁄
3
π r ∆ m.

I decided to just study the definition. “Gravity is an action between masses of matter that makes every mass tend toward every other.” I looked up
tend
and saw that it meant to be disposed toward or attracted to. This tendency is so powerful, the encyclopedia went on to say, that “a mass of matter in Australia attracts a mass in London precisely as it would if the earth were not interposed between the two masses.”

Every once in awhile I’d glance over at Ivan to see what he was up to, but he had no books in front of him at all. He just kept scratching away in his scribbler. I did catch a glimpse of one page, and all that was on it were numbers and mathematical signs. My heart sank when I saw this. If he was using algebra to prove his point, I didn’t have a chance.

That night
Grandpa asked me how I was getting along. We were in the living room after our family devotions. He was in the big chair; I was sitting on the piano bench. I told him not bad, but I hadn’t gotten a firm hold on God yet. He started to laugh. He slapped his leg and said: “A hold on God! That’s a good one. Ha ha.” Then he looked at me with one of his severe expressions and shouted, “God is not tame!”

Later, I told my dad I just didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t good enough in math or science to prove my point. And I couldn’t quote Scripture like Grandpa wanted me to. Ivan didn’t accept the Bible as proof of anything.

“You’ll find a way,” was all he said.

“Well, that helps,” I said.

But when I woke up the next morning, it came to me. Lines from a poem by William Wordsworth were moving around in my head, a poem Mr. Ross had made us memorize months before.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun is

Sinking down in its tranquility....

I knew right then the path I’d take. It would be poetry.
Beauty. Why was there beauty? Answer me that, Ivan Lippoway.

As soon
as I got to school I looked up the definition. “Beauty: a quality or combination of qualities that gives pleasure to the senses or to the mind and spirit. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’” I copied the definition into my scribbler.

Then I borrowed the thick poetry book Mr. Ross kept on his desk and looked up Wordsworth. If he’d written one poem about beauty, he’d probably written more. And he had.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils....

As I went through the book I realized that Mr. Ross had been reading us only the easy poems. Most of the others were beyond me. But even some of those contained a few lines that made sense, and I copied these into my scribbler. For example, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote:

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

Are all but ministers of Love

And feed his sacred flame.

I noticed that Love was capitalized. I knew what that meant.

Then I found this line by John Dryden: “From harmony, from Heavenly Harmony, this universal frame began.” I figured out what he meant by Heavenly Harmony, since he, too, used the capital letter. And I thought that this could be a strong point in my argument. Where did harmony come from? I would ask. Did the petals of a rose, the wings of a bird, the fingers of my own hand happen accidentally? Without a design or a designer? Could “The Hallelujah Chorus” by George Fredrick Handel have just appeared out of thin air? Without a composer? But as I continued my reading, I became less sure of my direction. It seemed to me that too many of the poems tended toward confusion.

I got up from my desk and walked back to the library. Passing Ivan’s desk, I saw that he was reading from a book I hadn’t seen before. I glanced down at it, but when he saw me looking, he covered the whole book with his arms, and I moved on to the library shelf.

It seemed to me that arguments could be made from the world of nature, so I picked up the book on insects and paged through it. I saw a picture of the parts of a beetle: head, thorax, abdomen, wings (both front and back), legs, feet, claws, antennae, all with their own work to do. I read how important legs are in an insect’s life, and how grasshoppers even sing with their legs by rubbing them together. On another page I found pictures of fireflies and read that these insects flash light signals to attract mates. Male fireflies signal as they fly in the summer night. Females flash back their light signals from the ground since they don’t have wings. Some species of fireflies even have glowing eggs.