Seeing Things (14 page)

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Authors: Patti Hill

BOOK: Seeing Things
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“You want something to drink?”
I squeezed my legs together. “I'm fine, Lupe. I just want to rest.”
She leaned the mop against the wall with a huff. “Fine. Take your shoe off and leave the walker in the garage—”
“Doctor's orders. Weight as tolerated, and I've overdone already. I've got plenty to keep me occupied.” Ruth's story about lowering her daughter to Jesus had really hit home. I longed to dig through this roof until my fingers bled.
“You want I should turn on the television loud so you can hear the crazy people on Jerry Springer? They have big, fat girls who love their mother's boyfriends on today.”
“Pass.” I pulled the door closed. From the soothing darkness of the garage, I yelled through the door. “I'm not here! Proceed as planned.”
The door opened. Lupe stood over me, hands on hips. “Take the shoe off, or I'll clobber you with the mop. I'll hold you up.”
“I'll mark the floor.”
“Not so much. I'm stronger than I look.”
I looked up in time to watch Huck march toward the bedroom, leaving a trail of muddy footprints.
“You win. Take me to my room.”
Once inside the room, I pushed back the recliner and let the upholstery envelope me. Huck sat at the end of the bed, his legs dangling over the footboard. Although his feet were muddy, he wore a clean coarse shirt and trousers that he'd rolled up almost to his knees. And a belt. The outfit looked new except for a brown stain near the collar.
I leaned forward to whisper. “This isn't a good time, Huck. Lupe's in the house. She's liable to hear me talking to you.”
Huck shrugged.
“That's fine for you. No one will think you're a loon.”
He hopped off the bed to stand over Bee who twitched and mewed in her sleep.
“She's fine. Go ahead and pet her. I'm just going to watch you. Mum's the word.”
The boy squatted next to Bee. He held his hand just above her shoulder.
“Go on,” I said too loudly. I covered my mouth.
Huck stood, shaking his head at Bee.
“She won't bite, boy. Her ears are like silk. There's nothing she likes better than a good scratching behind her ears.”
He hiked up his trousers to kneel beside Bee. Again, he held his outstretched hand over Bee for a long while. Finally, his hand fell to his thigh. “I can't,” he said.
“What? You can't what? Talk to me, boy. What is it you can't do?”
Lupe knocked and opened the door. Huck jumped up to stand on the bed. He smiled broad enough to show a crooked incisor and hopped tentatively until he gained his sea legs, so to speak. He reached for the ceiling with each jump. The springs groaned under his weight. I didn't dare scowl or say anything, not with Lupe there.
“I think maybe some ice would be good for your foot.” Lupe laid the ice pack on my ankle. “It's funny, but I think I heard you talking to someone. My sister, she talks to herself all the time. Long time ago, when they were still in grade school, my brother talked her into catching pitches for him. One pitch hit her smack in the middle of her forehead. She still has a dent. She never seemed quite right after that. She lives with my mother's sister. Otherwise, she wouldn't know to take a bath, and boy, she can stink.”
Huck landed on his hiney and slid off the bed. He walked backwards toward the door, waving and grinning. I sighed and my shoulders lowered past my ears. I needed to change the subject. “Do you believe in prayer, Lupe?”
“I have to believe in prayer. One of my sisters, she's a nun.”
“I thought I believed in prayer until—”
“No good will come of finishing that sentence, Miz Birdie.” She crossed herself.
“Yes, of course, you're right, but I've been thinking about this more than usual. Mostly it seems God answers prayers for other people. I've seen people healed. The head usher at my church lived with debilitating back pain for years, could barely get out of bed on a winter morning. The elders anointed him and laid hands on him, and then they prayed. Nothing happened just then, but a strange popping along his spine woke him up in the middle of the night. He lay there, he told us later, breathing heavy, afraid to move lest his spine shatter into a million pieces. And then, a peace settled on him. Jim's quite a fisherman, so he explained the peace like standing in the middle of a mountain stream unfurling his line in a graceful arc over and over again, never disappointed that the fly hadn't attracted a hungry trout. Finally, he threw the covers back, which made Martha, his wife, grouse at him, and he took a few gingerly steps. No pain. He stretched his arms over his head. No pain. He bent to touch his toes. No pain. Martha says he pulled her out of bed to dance around the bedroom. The pain had plum vanished.
“I've seen people battered by life find the courage to live another day and another. I've seen relationships rekindled. Hope restored. People set free from terrible addictions. I guess I'm a bit jealous. I'm feeling like a second-class citizen in the family of God.” I reached out my hand to Lupe. “Will you pray with me?”
“Now?”
“Is there a toilet you're dying to clean?”
“Nothing like that. Dr. Phil is coming on. I like him on the big screen. It's like he's sitting right in the living room with me. Some women don't like bald men, but he is very strong, don't you think? I like that. Besides, he has some catty sisters on today. I saw the previews. One of them looks like my third youngest sister.”
I moved to the bed and patted a place for Lupe to sit down. “This won't take long.”
“Shouldn't we kneel?”
“Jesus prayed standing up.”
“How do you know that?”
“It's in the Bible.”
“With all those funny words in the Bible, how can you be so sure?”
“It gets worse. At the Last Supper, he prayed reclining at the table.”
“You better watch what you say. Everyone knows he sat on a fancy chair at a long, long table for the Last Supper.”
Part of me wanted to pull my Bible out to prove how very wrong she was. Instead, I slid my aching ankle over the side of the bed to kneel as I'd done all through my growing-up years. To my utter amazement, Lupe knelt beside me, shoulder to shoulder. She smelled of bleach and Jean Naté and sweat.
“What are we praying about, anyway?” she asked.
“The Bible says: ‘For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.'”
“
With
us? Who you talking about?”
“Jesus.”
Lupe shot to her feet. “I should clear this with Sister Corazon Barbara first.” She started for the door.
I grabbed the back of her pant leg. “Wait!”
“Miz Birdie, I like you and everything, but I don't think this is a good idea.”
“Lupe, before you go, give me a hand up.”
She knelt beside me. “I guess kneeling here is okay, if I don't say anything.”
I patted her hand and bowed my head. “Lord, I'm lowering my family through the roof to you because I believe you love them and want them to experience how wide, how high, and how very, very deep your love is for them.”
Lupe whispered, “I have arthritis in my knees.”
“Oh. Okay. Lord, I surrender my family to you. Amen.”
Lupe grunted as she pushed against the bed to stand. “I think Jesus had the right idea when he prayed standing up.”
“Next time.”
Chapter 14
“Dad's going to kill me.”
“Your father complained about not having time to drive with you. I have tons of time. Now, adjust the mirrors and start the engine.”
Fletcher tapped the rearview mirror. “All I see is Bee's face.”
I turned and swatted Bee's rump. “For goodness' sake, you sorry excuse for a hound dog. Lay down!”
“Is she still on the towel?”
“You worry about driving. I'll worry about the
la-tee-dah
interior of your father's truck.”
“You don't know how Dad—”
“Any man who buys a Cadillac and calls the thing a truck . . . well, never mind. Let's see what you can do.”
Fletcher pushed a button, and the seat hummed away from the dashboard, toggled a switch to adjust the mirrors, and laid his forehead against the steering wheel.
“Do you want to pray?”
“I'm gonna spew. If anything happens to Dad's truck, I'm toast.”
“To learn how to drive, you have to actually drive a car. True, this is more like an ocean liner, but it all works the same—gas pedal, brake, steering wheel.” I placed my hand on his shoulder. His shirt was damp. “You can do this, Fletcher. If I didn't think so, I surely wouldn't be sitting here or let Bee go along for the ride.”
“Once a guy tapped the truck's bumper on Speer. You should have seen Dad. I thought he was going to kill that guy.”
Fletcher needed historical perspective. “Your dad ripped the bumper off our truck, pulling five of his friends along a snowy road in an inner tube.”
“Really?”
“Trucks are meant to work, and anything that works is bound to get tapped a time or two.”
Fletcher paused with his hand on the ignition key. “Grandma, I don't mean to be rude, but you
do
have a driver's license, don't you? I mean, how much can you see, exactly? If you're going to be teaching me . . .”
I missed most traffic lights, and stop signs flitted in and out of my field of vision. Other than that, a stream of houses and trees and lights floated by. “I think you're stalling. Put your seat belt on and let's go.” As for the driver's license, what the Department of Motor Vehicles didn't know wouldn't hurt them.
“I don't wanna go too far,” he said, his voice pinched like an air hose.
“How far is the park?”
“Pretty far, Grandma.”
“More than a couple blocks?”
“Maybe five . . . or six. I think five.”
“Since this is our first lesson, let's go around the block, shall we?”
Lupe directed Fletcher as he backed the behemoth truck out of the garage. Fletcher pointed to the rearview mirror. “Grandma, Bee's drooling.”
I put my hand over his. He gripped the steering wheel like a lifeline. “Fletcher, you're a smart boy, nearly a man. You're going to be the best driver on the streets today. Just step on the gas nice and easy and off we go.”
Fletcher nearly touched the windshield with his nose.
“Relax,” I said. “Imagine there's an egg under the pedal. Press down nice and easy.”
Fletcher followed my instructions perfectly, only I'd forgotten to tell him to shift into drive. We backed toward the house. He stomped the brake pedal, which sent Bee onto the floor, a good test of Fletcher's reflexes.
“Happens all the time,” I said. “That's why you always start out nice and easy. Besides, you knew exactly what to do. Slide her into drive and don't forget the egg under the gas pedal.”
It took us half an hour to drive around the block. We never topped fifteen miles per hour. The narrow streets, lined with parked cars on both sides, intimidated Fletcher terribly. Driving the Titanic down Broadway, quite frankly, would have been roomier.
“Someone might open a door or something,” he said when I told him to press the accelerator.
Teaching my children to drive on service roads inside Yellowstone had been very different. Our biggest concern was watching for deer and potholes, although Diane delayed getting her license a whole year after she'd hit a marmot.

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