After the Parade (12 page)

“Of course playing is fun,” Zilpah said. “Don't you like to play?”

“I don't know,” he told her. “I don't think I've played before.”

“That's silly. You must play sometimes.”

Aaron gave this some thought. “No, I'm pretty sure I've never played. Not with other kids. I play by myself sometimes.” He could feel Zilpah's breath on his toes.

“I know what,” Zilpah said. “I'll ask Matthew and Mark to play with you. That way, you can see if you like it.” Her voice was so kind that he felt he might cry. “I love Matthew and Mark,” she said in a slow, sleepy voice.

“Don't you like the others?” he asked. The topic of siblings interested him.

“Not so much,” she said. “I love them, but they never do anything that would make my father angry, even if it's something really fun.”

“What are their names?” Aaron asked, wanting to keep her awake because he could not imagine being awake without her.

“Leah is the oldest, then Ruth. They always wear braids. Jonah is next. He's the fat one, and my father always says to him that he named him after Jonah and not the whale and to go out and ride his bike.” Zilpah giggled. “Then Matthew and Mark are the ones that got switched after supper. They get switched all the time, but they don't care. They hate onions. My father tells my mother to put onions in everything so they'll learn to eat what's put in front of them. My father loves onions.”

“My father liked them also. He hated pancakes, so we only had them when he was at work. He died, but we still don't have pancakes because my mother forgets to go to the store. Do people who don't have legs eat less?” he asked, now that he knew people could be legless.

“I don't know,” said Zilpah. “I don't know anybody who doesn't have legs.”

“You didn't meet any in the hospital?”

“The only person I met in the hospital was the foster. She was my roommate.”

“Who's the foster?” he asked.

“She's the one who helped my mother clear the table after supper.”

“Is she your sister?”

“She is
not
my sister,” Zilpah said.

“Who is she then?”

“She's just . . . foster.”

“Why don't you like Foster?”

“Her name's not Foster. It's just what she is. She doesn't belong here.”

“Am I foster?” Aaron asked, thinking it sounded awful to be foster.

“No,” Zilpah assured him. “You're not foster. For one thing, I wouldn't let you sleep with me if you were foster. They wanted her to sleep with me, but I said no, so she has to sleep with Ruth and Leah. They like her, so it doesn't matter. I get to have my own room because of the condition. I need lots of rest. But I don't mind if you're here. Besides, my mother said you wouldn't be here long, just until your mom's better.”

“She said that?”

“Yes, and she said we have to pray because she might have the devil in her like Edgar Allan Poe.”

Aaron sat up. “She doesn't have the devil in her.”

“How do you know?” Zilpah asked.

It was true. He didn't know. His aunt opened the door. “I'm going to have to move Aaron if I hear anything else out of the two of you,” she said.

After she shut the door again, they giggled quietly, and soon Zilpah's breathing became slower. He had awakened that morning in his own bed, his father squinting at him from the night table, but he would fall asleep in this bed, a bed belonging to a stranger who was his cousin, and when he woke up, still in this bed, it would be a new day and there would be nothing connecting him to his real life. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, it was morning.

T
hree days later, school started, but Aaron was not allowed to go, despite the new dress shoes. He stayed behind with his aunt. Each morning she packed lunches while his cousins readied themselves, chaotically, for school, the mood in the house lighter because his uncle had already left for his job managing the first shift at the beet plant. At eight o'clock, somebody—usually the Foster—announced the arrival of the school bus, which led to one final burst of activity before the house became still, the front door standing open in his cousins' wake because the last one out never knew he was last. Closing it became Aaron's job, and because he craved duties, was comforted by routine, he liked being in charge of the door, though his heart ached at how easily he had stepped through the gate into this new life.

Only then did Aaron and his aunt have breakfast. She said a prayer, and they ate English muffins, which were his aunt's favorite, but he could not get used to their sourness or the way they scratched the roof of his mouth. While they ate, she told him stories that would have scared him at any time of day but seemed particularly terrifying at breakfast. She said that if he passed a pigsty and the pigs were leaping in the air, it meant the devil was floating overhead and the pigs were trying to devour him. Another morning, she took a can of corn from the cupboard and pointed at the bar code on the back. Someday, they would attempt to put a bar code just like it on his body, she said, taking his wrist and tapping it to show where the bar code would go. It was called the mark of the beast and he must never let them do it. He did not know who “they”
were, but he liked the way she held his wrist, leaving buttery fingerprints behind, and he assured her that he would not.

Next, they took out the cleaning supplies, and his aunt let him help her clean, though it had to be their secret. He discovered that he liked cleaning, and he thought that his aunt liked having his help. It was always noon when they finished, so they sat at the table and ate again, usually bread with a slice of Velveeta and cottage cheese, his aunt chatting the whole while about everyday things that did not involve the devil or the mark of the beast. Mainly, she talked about a church luncheon that she was in charge of planning. “It's a big responsibility,” she said. He nodded, and she turned over an envelope to take notes. “There will be buns with ham. Do you think it's better to serve them open-faced or with the tops on?”

“What will you do with the tops if you don't put them on?” he asked.

“Well, the tops will be another open-faced sandwich,” she explained. “With ham on them.” Her reddened hands made a somersault, demonstrating how this would work.

“That sounds nice,” he said.

“Do you think so? I just don't know.” This was where the conversation about the luncheon usually ended.

One day as his aunt sat looking defeated and he sat wondering how to reassure her, the telephone rang. She stood up and answered it. “Yellow,” she said, her voice sunny like the color, and in a quieter voice, “Oh, Dolores. How are you?” He moved closer so that he could hear his mother's voice. “Rusks,” his aunt said, and then, “I'll put him on.”

He took the receiver, which was still warm and carried a cheese smell. His mother sounded far away, like she was asleep and was calling him from inside her dream. “Are you being good for your aunt and uncle?” she asked.

He nodded, unaccustomed to using the telephone, and then, realizing she was waiting, he said, “Yes, I am. Are you in the hospital?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you sick?”

“I guess I am.”

“Where does it hurt?” he asked.

“I'm very tired,” she said. “Have you ever felt like that? So tired that you only wanted to sleep?” He waited for her to say more. He could hear something in the background, a television maybe. Finally, his aunt said, “Time to hang up, Aaron,” and she held out her hand for the receiver. He turned away and said what his mother always said to him after the book and the kiss and just before the dark. “Sweet dreams.” He handed the phone back to his aunt because
sweet dreams
was always the last thing.

*  *  *

At his aunt and uncle's house, the day after Saturday was not called Sunday; it was called the Sabbath, a name that appealed to Aaron because it sounded clean. On the Sabbath, the entire family—his aunt and uncle, his cousins, and the Foster—went to church, his uncle driving them in two batches. Aaron wore his new dress shoes on the Sabbath because his aunt said that sneakers were not appropriate in God's House. God's House was not a house at all; it was a church, of the sort that he had passed with his parents many times though never entered because his parents were not interested in churches. On the second Sabbath, all the adults in the church, including his aunt and uncle, took turns going to the front and kneeling while the pastor stood over them. Aaron was used to seeing his aunt on her knees because they scrubbed the floors together each morning, but he could not reconcile his stern, unbending uncle with the contrite figure kneeling at the front of the church. When they returned to the pew, his aunt had purple commas turning up from the corners of her mouth. The sight of them made him queasy.

“What do you do when you go to the front of the church?” he asked his aunt at breakfast the next morning.

“We eat the body of Christ, and then we drink his blood,” his aunt said.

“Does God know you do that?” he asked. She had explained that Christ was God's son.

“You're such a funny boy,” his aunt said. She giggled as if he had
said something clever. “Of course, God knows. Remember what I told you? He knows everything.”

His father had had a name for people who wanted to know everything, like their neighbor Mrs. Severson, who spent her days peering out the window. When his father pulled up each evening, she'd rushed out to ask him how many arrests he had made that day. His father called these people
busybodies
.

“Is God a busybody?” Aaron asked.

“Oh, Aaron,” said his aunt, her voice like a slow shattering of glass. She stared at him the way that people at his father's funeral had, then took his hand between her own, which were sticky with jam. He could tell that he had disappointed her, though he wasn't sure how. He took in one, tiny breath, but it exited his body in great, hiccupping sobs.

As he cried, his aunt continued to hold his hand, her mouth forming words he could not understand. After a while, she led him to Zilpah's bed, where he fell into a deep sleep. When he awakened, she was still there, peering down at him, her face flushed. “You beat him,” she said. He lay still, his right hand flung up across his sweaty forehead, breathing in and out and missing his mother, who always awakened him from naps with a glass of water in hand because she knew how thirsty it made him to rest. “He was in you, Aaron. I prayed, but you did it.”

“Who was in me?” he asked, alarmed.

“Satan,” his aunt said. She too was sweaty. “You called God a busybody, but he was making you do it. He was using your voice. Satan is clever, but you defeated him.” She stood up. “You rest some more.”

“I already rested,” he said.

“You weren't asleep even fifteen minutes,” she said. “You must be exhausted. I'll take care of things around here this morning.”

He stayed in Zilpah's bed, listening to the now-familiar sounds of the toaster being depressed and the tapping of a spoon inside a cup. He could picture his aunt measuring sugar into her coffee as she sat in her robe beneath the broken Last Supper eating a second English muffin. Finally, he heard what he had been listening for: the muted swish of his aunt's slippers against the hallway carpet, the bathroom door being closed partway.

His aunt suffered from constipation.
Constipation
was not a word he'd known when he came to stay, but during one of their first breakfasts together, she explained it to him with a clarity that was rare for her. She spoke matter-of-factly, and he tried to match her tone, though he was deeply embarrassed by talk of bathroom activities. “I've tried everything,” she said. “Now, your uncle, he eats one minute and goes the next.”

Aaron nodded, knowing this to be true.

“Do you know, I've suffered from constipation since the day I married him.”

He thought about this, remembering how the doctor who talked to him and his mother after his father's accident had said that his father had not
suffered
. His aunt had stood then and trudged down the hallway to the bathroom, leaving the door open several inches. While he sat at the table nibbling his English muffin, she labored loudly to expel waste from her body. When she reappeared, her face pale and sweaty, she shook her head, indicating failure, and he felt then, keenly, that his aunt did indeed
suffer
.

The morning he defeated Satan, Aaron listened to his aunt moving around in the bathroom, before covering his head with his pillow against the sounds he knew she would soon make. After what seemed a very long time, he removed it. Nothing. He rose and remade the bed and walked quickly down the hallway, noticing too late that the bathroom door still stood ajar. “Aaron,” his aunt called from inside. “Are you up?”

“Yes,” he said. “I want to clean.”

“You're not tired anymore?” she panted.

“I'm not tired.”

“Well, then, I need you to bring me a roll of toilet paper.”

“What?” He was sure he had misheard.

“I didn't check the roll before I sat down. I need you to bring one, from the closet at the end of the hallway,” she said.

“Do you really need it?” he asked.

“Someone else will need it if I don't.” She sounded glum, but then her voice lifted, as it did when she was about to pray. “It's best to be prepared.”

Aaron had never seen anyone sitting on a toilet, but he knew
how he felt—awkward and ashamed, his legs dangling helplessly, ankles bound by his trousers. His father had been the opposite. He'd thought nothing of pulling to the side of the road and urinating as cars whizzed by. “Taking a leak,” he called it. His father had also liked to tell
bathroom stories,
though not all of them took place in the bathroom. His father's favorite, which he retold at the supper table every few months, involved a man with a name that was not really a name at all, more of an adjective—
Stinky something or other
. Each fall, Stinky and Aaron's grandfather, as well as several other men, went on a hunting trip together, and when Aaron's father turned thirteen, he began accompanying them. These men were willing to rise at four in the morning and sit for hours in the cold inside a blind, which Aaron found a strange name for a place from which one did nothing but
watch
. They also trekked through the woods, sometimes for twelve hours before giving up and returning to the cabin. The story that his father liked to tell at the supper table was one that had been told in the hunting cabin one night at supper by Harvey, who was the town barber as well as Stinky's hunting partner, and when his father told the story, he liked to pretend he was Harvey telling it.