50
THAIS
It was Tuesday. Again. Atticus and I sat on the back porch sipping coffee, waiting for Jeffrey to come running through the woods any moment now.
“It breaks my heart to think about how he might’ve been treated by others,” I said angrily. “He’s so kind—I don’t know how anyone can be so cruel.”
“Cruelty is a human defect,” Atticus said. “Like racism and bigotry and homophobia and all that other shit that sometimes makes me ashamed to be human.”
Surprised by his confession, I decided against taking another drink, and I set the mug on the table between us.
“I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about such things.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “I’ve seen things, Thais…really bad stuff…” He shook his head, stared into the woods as if the chilling images were torturing his thoughts.
“What have you seen?” I asked raptly.
I wanted to know, but, a part of me didn’t, the same part that could never erase the terrible things I had seen.
ATTICUS
I continued to stare into the woods as the scenes played in front of my eyes: the hangings, the bodies burned alive, the brutal, archaic executions—I breathed in sharply, and tried to shake the memories out of my head.
Then I looked at her.
“Let’s just say there are only…certain kinds of people in Lexington City,” I hinted.
“Certain kinds?”
I nodded. And then I looked away, unable to shake those memories from my head, after all. I never could.
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
I thought back to my time in Lexington; I thought of the people: the soldiers, the citizens in the street waiting for supplies, the workers, the wives, the women in the brothel; it was so easy to remember each face, even those I’d only seen in passing. But what kind of people were they? What did they all have in common?
“I went on one scouting mission after I joined Wolf’s army,” Atticus began. “I’d been there for a year before I signed up to be a scout; I didn’t know what went on outside the city with Wolf’s men—I knew they were bastards; I knew they weren’t good men, but what I didn’t know was just how cruel they were, how…inhumane.”
He looked down at his hand, opened and closed it three times; I heard the bones in his fingers crack lightly.
Sensing his guilt, I reached out and touched his wrist; he looked away from his hand and into the woods again.
“What I saw…I couldn’t do anything; it happened so fast I didn’t even have a chance to react. After that day, I decided scouting wasn’t the job for me. So, I put in for city patrols, and that’s what I did until I was appointed temporary Overseer.”
He scoffed, shook his head. “I actually thought I could change things if I became Overseer.”
“I know you could have,” I said.
He scoffed again, and drank down the last of his coffee.
“Thank you for the confidence,” he told me, “but the reality is that no one could’ve changed the things I wanted to change there. Not even if I’d killed Wolf and Rafe. The rest of the men—most, anyway—were just as bad. If I tried to take away their women, and tell them that people of all races were welcome in Lexington, they would’ve killed me on the spot.”
The faces of Lexington’s residents went through my mind again, but this time in a different light as realization finally set in—they were all White. Every single one of them. I tried to recall any person of color—just one—but I couldn’t. Wait—did Marion count? I thought he might’ve been Latin. No, I resolved, accepting that he was just incredibly tanned.
Fernando and Emilia…Oh no…
The terrible truth about their deaths became real then. And it broke my heart.
I could only imagine what horrors Atticus could have seen on that scouting mission he spoke of. And I was glad he did not tell me.
“Tell me about your mother,” Atticus changed the subject; he turned to look at me and smiled with encouragement.
But just as Atticus did not want to talk about his past in Lexington City, I did not want to talk about my mother.
Hiding the true measure of my discomfort, I smiled at him and said, “How about you tell me about yours?”
(Thais had no idea how much worse this topic was for me than the one before it.)
I turned around fully on the chair to give Atticus my undivided attention.
“Tell me something funny you remember about her,” I encouraged. “What color was her hair? What did she love to do? Tell me anything.”
“There is one thing I remember,” Atticus said after a moment. “She had the foulest mouth for someone so kind—but I’ll never forget her beating my legs with a switch when I said goddammit once.” He pointed at me. “Once being the keyword—I never said it again after that while under the same roof as her. But she used every curse word there was, except for that one. I always thought it was strange, one of her weird quirks.”
“Was your mother religious?”
“No,” he said right away. “She wasn’t religious—she was confused. I remember every Sunday morning we were late getting to church. We—my sisters and me—hated going to church because it was so stuffy in there. ‘Those big fancy churches that cost millions to build,’ my mother had said, ‘you can tell what’s important to them just by looking at the building. It’s the little churches on the hillsides, or tucked away in the woods that are blessed by the Lord. Because the people who worship there don’t care about fancy pews and extravagant carpet and high vaulted ceilings. The preacher doesn’t drive a forty-thousand-dollar car. His wife doesn’t have a new face every five years,’ and blah, blah, blah”—he pressed his fingers and thumb together, simulating a moving mouth—“So we never went to churches with air conditioning. And we hated it!” He laughed.
I chuckled.
Atticus lost his train of thought suddenly as if something bothered him. Was it the memory?
Noticing the dark shift in his face, I reacted quickly to combat it.
“You said she was confused?”
He nodded. “She was a complicated woman, my mother,” he said. “One day she was all about Jesus, the next day she was telling my father how religion was dangerous, that it was the true wolf in sheep’s clothing. Then she’d be back to church the next week, telling me and my sisters to read our bibles before bed”—he shook a pointed finger and cocked his head to one side, pretending to be his mother, mimicking her voice—“‘Say your prayers and learn the Word of God so you can make it into Heaven,’ she’d say. One year she declared herself a Buddhist!” He laughed again, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of it all.
“The truth was,” he went on, letting the laughter die, “my mother just needed to believe in something, like so many people do, I guess.” Then he smirked, and said critically, “It just needed to be something that didn’t take too much away from the things she liked. When someone in church pointed out to her that God didn’t approve of half the things she enjoyed, she decided she didn’t like Christianity much.”
We laughed together.
“Is she why you don’t believe in God?” I asked. I didn’t know why I’d said it; it just came out.
The question caught him off-guard; it stripped the smile from his face, and the humor from the moment. He looked me right in the eyes with a sort of determination I could not place.
He did not answer.
“Why do you believe in God, Thais?” He paused; wrinkles of curiosity deepened in his forehead. “Why do you believe in someone who took your family from you?”
I had never told Atticus whether or not I believed in God, but it was never something I neither openly displayed, nor tried to hide.
“God didn’t take my family from me,” I said with no emotion. “We all die, Atticus. Today, tomorrow, years from now; life and death go hand in hand like darkness and light—one cannot exist without the other. But God had nothing to do with their deaths.”
“He had nothing to do with saving them, either.” There was a contemptuous bite in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Thais,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I guess I’m just still at war with…God, for what He allowed to happen to my family—and yours. I’ll always be at war with Him.”
“But how can you be at war with Him,” I said gently, “if you don’t believe in Him?”
ATTICUS
I thought about it, and in the end had no worthy rebuttal so I said nothing.
“Look who’s back,” Thais said, her frown turning up again.
I expected to see Jeffrey coming through the woods, but it was George, crawling through the grass.
Thais went down the steps and picked the turtle up, her fingers latched to the sides of its shell. She smiled and peered in close to its face as its neck stretched out toward her; its little scaly feet moved back and forth in the air as if it were swimming.
“Thais, please don’t kiss the turtle; they carry diseases.”
She made a pffft sound with her lips at me and then turned back to George. “If he was good enough to eat,” she argued, “then he’s safe enough to kiss,” and then she planted a little kiss right on the top of its cartoonish head.
I laughed under my breath, even though I really, really wished she wouldn’t kiss the turtle with the same lips she kissed me with.
Thais put out a few blackberries in the grass for George and left it alone to wander in the yard. Eventually, it disappeared again.
And like clockwork, Jeffrey reappeared.
“Hi! Thais!” Jeffrey shouted as he shot through the trees and into the backyard, his arm raised high in the air. “I got you flowers, Thais!”
She glided gracefully down the steps to meet Jeffrey halfway.
“Oh, how beautiful, Jeffrey,” she said as he eagerly put the bouquet into her hands. “Thank you so much.” She buried her nose in the tiny petals and inhaled deeply.
“I got them for you,” said Jeffrey, beaming, his crooked teeth on display.
“Good morning, Jeffrey,” I said from the porch.
“Morning, Atticus! I got Thais flowers today!”
“I see that,” I said with a nod and a smile. “They’re very nice.”
“Come inside so I can put them in some water.” Thais grabbed Jeffrey’s big hand and pulled him along.
Jeffrey followed happily, ran up the porch steps and gave me a high-five on his way past.
While Thais rummaged the kitchen for something to put the flowers in, Jeffrey went on and on about how he had been helping his Grandpa Esra clean and smoke the fish Jeffrey had caught in the pond yesterday. And when I asked Jeffrey how Esra and June were doing, Jeffrey told us that his grandma and grandpa were doing “good, good” but that June was too tired to leave the treehouse “past day and yesterday and probably tomorrow, too”.
“Is she sick?” Thais asked, concerned.
Jeffrey shook his head. “Just tired,” he answered. “And maybe tomorrow too. She’s so old, Grandma June.”
Then, as if Jeffrey couldn’t hold onto a thought for more than a moment, he went across the living room toward the window overlooking the front porch.
“Mr. Graham said he would make me a rowboat come February,” Jeffrey said. He pressed his childlike face, full of wonder and innocence, against the glass as he tried to get a better look at the skeleton in the rocking chair. “But he’s dead now, so he can’t make me a rowboat.”
Thais and I glanced at one another.
Then I noticed Jeffrey wasn’t in his usual yellow-and-red-striped swimming shorts. “Are you going to swim today?” I asked.
Thais set her flowers in a cup with water on the windowsill next to Jeffrey.
Jeffrey looked down at his baggy blue jeans, then over at me with a look of frustration.
“I…forgot my shorts. Oh no, now we can’t go swimming.” Dramatically, he brought up a hand and ran it over the top of his partially shaved head—hair was growing back in an odd formation, longer in some spots than others.
“That’s okay,” Thais said, taking Jeffrey’s hand again. “We can do other things.”
Jeffrey’s face lit up again. “We can climb trees.” He gripped her hand with excitement. “Or! Or, we can build me a rowboat!” He became animated suddenly, as if the idea that had just come to him was the best idea ever.
He dropped Thais’ hand and smacked his palms together.
Then he looked right at me.
“Can you help build me a rowboat?”
“You know what, Jeffrey”—I pursed my lips in contemplation—“I think I can help you out with a rowboat if you know where to get some supplies.”
Thais beamed, and thanked me with her eyes.
“I get you supplies—I mean us! We can build me a rowboat!” Jeffrey glanced over at Thais. “You can help too,” he said. “If you want.”
“Oh, of course I want to help,” she said right away. “You name it and I’ll do whatever I can.”
Jeffrey smiled with teeth, and turned back.
“Okay,” he said with urgency, “what do I need to get you to build me a rowboat?”
I gave Jeffrey a verbal list of everything I’d need, and although I didn’t expect him to find every item on the list, I told him not to get discouraged, to only bring back what he had, and that I’d still somehow make it work.
“And don’t go anywhere you haven’t already been,” Thais said, taking him into a hug, “because I don’t want you to get yourself hurt, okay?”
Jeffrey squeezed the life out of her.
“I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”
He high-fived me again before rushing out the back door.
“I’ll be back later!” Jeffrey shouted as he ran down the steps. “And you can build me a rowboat!” The bushes and trees shook as Jeffrey rushed past them and darted into the forest, and then he was gone.
“I didn’t know you were a carpenter,” Thais said as I closed the back door.
“My grandfather was a carpenter.”
Thais pushed up on her toes, reached out both arms and hooked her fingers behind my neck. I lifted her; her legs went around my waist.
“So, he taught you?” she asked, looking into my eyes.
I leaned in and pecked her on the lips.
“Yeah. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather before he died. He was a good man.”
Thais regarded me.
“You’re being very sweet to Jeffrey,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
She smiled. “I guess I’m just glad you are the way you are.”
“And what way would that be?”
“Almost perfect,” she answered.
My eyebrows pinched in my forehead.
“Almost?” I questioned; a lopsided smile on my face.
Thais kissed the tip of my nose.
“Well, nobody’s perfect,” she reasoned.
I squeezed her, and my smile grew and grew.
“I don’t suppose it only takes a week to build a rowboat?” she said seconds later.
Ah, she caught that, I see. I hugged her closer.
“No,” I answered. “I don’t suppose it does.”
“How long does something like that usually take?”
I shrugged. “It really depends on what I have and don’t have to work with—I’m guessing a month at the least.”
Thais beamed with a burst of happiness, and she wrapped her arms around me in response to my decision to stay longer.
Just a little longer, I thought. Not indefinitely; we had to leave sometime; we couldn’t press our luck.
What am I doing? I know we should go, but why are we still here?