Marisol and Georgie called their first family conference one dark evening in January.
“We feel there are unresolved issues in the household,” they said to the four children, who sat there like a row of bowling pins waiting to be knocked down.
Bonnie’s left eyebrow was raised in bored sarcasm.
Keanan drummed his feet on the floor, his fingers on the table.
Twelve-year-old Ellen, lithe and long-haired, ended up sitting beside Charlie, who had gained twenty-five pounds in just the past six months. She felt him breathing beside her, but did not look at him.
The first line of Anna Karenina applies. Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
There they were, the Rompers, two hot-blooded ignorant parents with their four confused children before them. A swirl of problems and complexities boiled all around the family like a whirlpool of toxic ooze. From their counselling sessions, Marisol and Georgie knew something good might be able to grow out of the toxicity. If they could hang onto hope – if they could push past the anger – if they could rise above the problems – Perhaps it was the plethora of “ifs” that damned them. Somehow, they reasoned, if they solved the problems, the family would grow in love and unity.
They grasped the notion of salvation by now; they saw what the light of Christ had already accomplished in their lives: they were middle class working folk, drug- and alcohol-free. Their house was clean, their cars ran. They had healthy children and pets. It was a far cry from how they’d started, stringy-haired and strung out, shagging in the corner of a dirty room with no purpose in mind whatsoever.
Still, even as they approached a problem, any problem, they came at it like a train. Push, push, push, push, so-o-o-o-o-olve! They just ran it over, clickety clack. Then, when they surveyed the resulting mess – the fresh new pulp of betrayal, fear and loss – an old wicked anger resurfaced. For all their desire to solve, they’d forgotten about love. They’d forgotten that you can just touch something with love, even barely, and all the tangled terrible roots of hatred will start to wither and fall away.
“We’ve noticed a certain tension around here,” started Georgie.
“Your father and I realize there’s a lot of negativity to deal with,” bolstered Marisol. “Ever since last spring, things haven’t been as relaxed as we’d like.”
Last spring, thought Ellen, what about last spring?
Suddenly her cheeks grew warm. They were going to talk about what Charlie had done. In front of everyone.
Yes, they knew. She’d walked in fresh from the graveyard, from the highway pick with Mr. McGillicutty, preternaturally calm, and in the face of their raging worry told them her brother had been spying on her, for who knows how long. Within days, Georgie made Charlie putty up the hole in Ellen’s wall. Another hole in the shared bathroom downstairs also had to be fixed.
“What happened to Ellen is a violation, and it affects our whole family,” intoned Marisol.
Bonnie glanced over at Ellen, who began to retreat to the rocking chair.
“Things have been rough over the past couple of years, and we feel that what happened to Ellen is a manifestation of stress. Stress can make us do things we don’t want to do. Stress can make us act out. I know all of you kids acted out in different ways, didn’t you? But the way Charlie acted out toward Ellen was a violation. And that affects our whole family,” said Marisol.
Georgie absentmindedly cleaned his teeth with a toothpick.
“Yup,” he said. “The only way for us to move through this is to do what God tells us to do. Forgive.”
They let that sink in.
Bonnie sighed loudly.
Keanan jiggled his appendages till the floor creaked.
Charlie hung his head.
Ellen was far, far away, humming a papery old tune she’d heard once, how did it go? It was faint, something about joy of the Lo-o-o-o-ord. She smelled woodsmoke, wasn’t it nice, it curled up and up, all the way to the stars. That winter she’d brought her sled down to the Slimes and lain down on it, studying the stars. The sky was vast and clear. For a long time she reclined thinking about time, the distance of stars, the moon was the same one Jesus had looked at, she was nothing underneath the big black sky, nothing at all. The stars and her, just little pin-pricks in the universe.
“Are you listening, Ellen?” asked the mother sharply.
Her breathing shallow, she woke up for a moment to notice that her family members were staring at her. “Mmm. Uh huh.”
“It’s time for you to forgive Charlie.”
Now Ellen came to life abruptly, looking at Charlie for the first time. His eyes were shiny and swollen with tears.
Anger seethed in her chest; she wanted to spit on his sad face. Forgive him – now that his curly head contained all these pornographic images of her touching herself on the bed? What’s forgiveness?
“Charlie, go ahead,” said Georgie with a gesture that looked like he was flicking a half-eaten hamburger into the trash.
Charlie turned to Ellen, big fat tears dropping from his eyes to his cheeks to his lap.
“Will you forgive me for spying on you?”
Ellen sat, stupefied, roiling with rage and shame. She wished she could squeeze the images out of his brain like dirty water from a dishrag. But what could she do with them? Probably forcefeed them back through his mouth, making his gums bleed, here, do you like that, is it yummy?
She made an agreement within herself to lie, and lie absolutely.
No. The last thing I wanted her to do was lie. Have courage, tell the truth; don’t confuse yourself. I knew if she lied, she would slip farther away.
The white bird of my holy spirit fluttered worriedly around her head.
Ellen gritted her teeth, looked deep into her brother’s crying eyes, and uttered, very slowly and with icicles dripping from her cold dead heart:
“I forgive you, Charlie.” Cold, yes, a perfect triumph in its own way.
The following morning, Ellen went to feed Leander and found him dead in the cage. She knew it before she opened the door to the laundry room. He hadn’t whistled in recognition as her footsteps thumped down the stairs. There was no eager rustling of him coming to hear her, smell her.
Just a little black cold lump.
She picked up the body and hugged it to her chest, stroking the fur. Suddenly the warm bubble of a sob popped out of her throat. It surprised her how rhythmic and ferocious it felt to cry like this again, like a little child. She heard the door open behind her, but she didn’t care. Then, pressing her nose into Leander’s neck, she turned around.
Charlie stood at the entrance to the laundry room.
The sobs came of their own accord; she felt nothing else. He came closer, and soon he was the only alternative. She let him embrace her. There was nothing else to do. She cried with his arms around her, still thinking of everything he had done to and seen of her body, but too lost in grief to resist his offer of comfort.
In grade seven, they think someone who cries over a dog or cat is justified. But they’ve come close enough to adulthood to understand that someone who cries over a guinea pig is laughable.
Ellen cried on Pammy’s shoulder until it became too wet and the other girl shrugged away uncomfortably. Giving Ellen a pat, she said in a matter-of-fact voice, “He lived a good life. I’m sure you’ll get a new guinea pig before you know it!”
Then Ellen cried on everyone else’s shoulder; the boys held her the longest. After crying through recess, she lay her head on the desk and sobbed some more.
Mr. McGillicutty observed her in alarm. The girl was completely lost. She was lost to the point of oblivion. Her classmates started to snicker. “It’s only a guinea pig,” went round the room in a whisper.
“He’s my best friend,” cried Ellen, “my very best friend.”
They sneered, ridiculous.
At lunch, she walked home with a swollen face. It was frigid and blue; the snow twinkled under hard white sunlight. Thin tree trunks, shivering against a minus-thirty wind, laid out their long shadows like offerings at her feet.
The door was unlocked as always. Her parents were working; no one was home. Ellen boiled an instant soup and ate it. Then she went downstairs and fished the guinea pig out of the garbage can, where it was wrapped in an old towel. She unrolled the body. Now it smelled faintly of a sweet odd coldness she couldn’t describe. Yet the fur smelled of Leander’s life.
Ellen wondered, where had he gone? The night before, she’d held him in her lap while she watched television. She gave him a kiss on the head, he chuckled as she lowered him into the cage. Now, his personality, his love, his personal connection with her was nothing but a memory.
Ellen hugged the little black body. She rocked back and forth, keening, gnashing her teeth. She nestled it to her face, cradled it in her arms, rubbed it against her torso, lay it out flat on the basement floor. Looking at it there, she remembered me and Jesus. Maybe, she thought, if Jesus could rise again . . .
No, Ellen.
Ellen bent over the little prone black figure with its half-closed eyes and mouth. A hot red flame rose up from her heart, curling around her jaw and touching her eyes. She mustered everything in herself and in her will, and breathed out long warm breath on the body.
What was I supposed to do? Resurrect a guinea pig?
All afternoon she stayed there, hovering, rocking, working over this little piece of death, trying to bring it back to life. She knew she had it in her. She knew we had it in us. And yet I did not comply.
What if I had? What would that say to all the rest of you?
Ellen didn’t return to school that day. In a panic, Festus directed the secretary to phone the Rompers’ house, but even as the phone rang and rang, the girl was on her knees in the dark tomb of the basement, trying to find me.