JEWEL (60 page)

She pulls from the knapsack a purple sheet of paper, a flyer from school. She holds it up, says, Dance, Momma! and hands it to me, her face in its smile, her eyes alive with the prospect of going to one of these events.

I take the paper, read it. Snoopy is on it, there in his ranger hat and grinning. He holds a placard, on it typed DANCE!

For those with Developmental Disabilities, Their Friends, and Family.

When, Friday April 14 Where, GARDENA COMMUNITY CENTER 1600 W. 160th St. TIME, 7, 00-9, 30 P. M. COST $1.00

I look at her, expecting her to be watching me, but she is only digging in her knapsack for something else, her mind on the next thing she has to show me. She pulls it out, smiling again, shouts, Bingo! and hands me the next sheet. This one is yellow, the words on it set off in a square border decorated with butterflies and flowers, FAMILY BINGO FOR PERSONS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES, THEIR FRIENDS, AND FAMILY MEMBERS.

I quick read through it, see that this event, like all the others, is at the Center, the Friday two weeks from now, and that I have to call Jennie or Dawn to reserve a space. At the bottom of the sheet, in big balloony letters and with a smiling sun coming up behind it, are the words Have a Happy Day.

And again I turn to Brenda Kay, expecting to see her watching my face for whatever might come across it, evidence of whether or not we’ll go to either of these events. They’re at night, I am ready to say, l and I don’t like driving all the way out there. I can offer that reason up to her, something I know she can understand, and I ready myself for what she might say, whether she’ll cry or pout or push her knapsack off the table, and I start to smile, look up at her.

But she is still digging in her knapsack, and I say, How much more, Brenda Kay? and tilt my head to one side, ready and waiting to be annoyed at how the girls down to the Center organize too much for these children, too many events in lives already jammed and overflowing with the simple and giant tasks of making it through a day.

Then she pulls out the next sheet. Look, Momma! she shouts, and it seems her voice is louder than it has ever been, louder than me shouting into the school van, louder than my wailing in the delivery room, louder than the cries of my children at their father’s funeral, or the sounds of treefrogs on a night in Mississippi. Louder than anything I have ever heard, her small words filling the world, Look, Momma!

She holds up only a sheet of paper, a thin sheet of lined newsprint paper torn from a tablet not much different than I’d had when I was a girl, when the world was ready and willing to be filled with all I could teach it, she holds up a sheet of paper torn from a tablet like those she’s had all her own life, too, tablets she’s been filling for more than thirty years now, she holds up a single sheet torn from a tablet like the one I’d taught Cathe ral to write on, a woman who’d portended all this, who’d told me the truth all the way back then on an evening in Mississippi, the first day I’d known Brenda Kay was in me, this baby I’ve carried my entire life is my hardship in this world, my test. And the way God has smiled down on me, too.

She holds the sheet up for me to read, holds it in front of my face, a hand on either edge, those short fingers of hers gripping tight the paper, what is written on it everything that could ever matter to her here in this world, N 2 13 AB S Only letters, rows of them, the first letter of her name. She’s written thousands of these before, filled tablet and tablet and tablet, but on this night, they are enough. More than enough, the sky now black outside the kitchen window, the train tracks gone quiet until sometime late tonight, when the house will shudder once again, and God might wake me from my sleep, bring me to the bedroom window to see the train moving outside, that black shadow moving forward on into the night and leading me away from here, from Brenda Kay alone and asleep in the next room, from the rest of my children, from the ghosts of the lives I’ve been blessed enough and cursed enough to have led.

Only letters, labored, indifferent, yet full as she can make them of herself. Letters, I finally hear, singing with all they have, scores of them swirling round me in voices I’ll never understand, but beautiful.

the end. all the same, God smiling and smiling and smiling.