JESUS WALKED BESIDE HER. Climbing the Depot Street hill she would realize he was with her, with a little shock. For Jesus was so quiet.
Alone and feeling sorry for herself like some sniveling silly girl and there came Jesus at her left side, for always it was her left side, where there was some cloudiness in the edge of her vision; and Jesus would nudge her left arm light as a curtain stirred in the breeze and say in his gentle voice Rejoice rejoice! and she would say Oh—why? and Jesus would say Because this day you shall be with me in paradise. In that instant all doubt and suspicion melted away and it was like long ago before her father was taken from them and before Daphne was taken from them and they’d never seen their baby sister again.
These were words like music. These were words she’d heard at church on Good Friday. At the time of hearing she had not fully comprehended the words for anything at church gave her trouble to comprehend, any public utterances, meant for others to hear and so floating over her head. For somehow she found it difficult to concentrate when others were around, it was like riding in a car—someone was driving, but it was not you; so you didn’t pay attention to where you were going.
Luke had his license and was driving the car. Not Edna Mae, not often now. And Luke was a skilled driver, maneuvering into a parking place, backing up the car in cautious little surges as if he’d been driving all his life.
Now he’d quit school Luke had a job with the county. This meant outdoor work repairing and clearing roads, cleaning up storm debris, snow removal. If it wasn’t for tax deductions he’d have made very good money. Dawn was disappointed, her brother moved out of Aunt Mary Kay’s house as soon as he could.
Because this day. With me in Paradise.
Meaning that Dawn Dunphy was singled out for some special reason as Luther Dunphy had been singled out. The choice had been made and was out of her hands.
Still she had to ask if her father would come back home soon?—and Jesus whispered to her Your father will come back home when there is a home for him. Pray.
OUR FATHER who art in Heaven.
She began to pray as soon as she woke in the morning. Falling asleep at night was stepping down stairs and each step a prayer until the bottom step just—vanished!
She would not take the school bus with her young sister Anita and her young brother Noah. She preferred to walk to her school—two miles each way. Her hard hoof-feet bore her urgently forward. Her muscled thighs grew ever harder, stronger. And as she walked, she prayed. Each step—right step, left step—and each step a prayer. And each square of pavement a prayer. (But she must never step on cracks in the sidewalk, that nullified all the prayers preceding.) Approaching the new school which was Mad River Junction Middle School she dared not look up (to see who might be watching her) but had to concentrate fiercely on the pavement riddled with a network of cracks. For even the smallest crack had the power of nullification and mockery of the Lord.
Ringing bells in the corridors hurt her ears. Here too was mockery if you listened closely.
The first day at the new school she’d had to go alone. For Edna Mae had to take the younger children to the elementary school and Aunt Mary Kay had to work at Walmart—her workday began at 4:00 A.M. in the stockroom. Of course Dawn Dunphy was registered at the new school—(Aunt Mary Kay had seen to that)—so it was just a matter of returning to the school on a Monday morning. But something like a hawk’s talons gripped her heart, icy-cold, soon as she pushed inside the front door of the building, so she had to turn back blindly, and flee; and the next day she got a little farther, to the doorway of the “homeroom” to which she’d been assigned, and then again she had to flee, for she could not breathe; but the third day she managed to get inside the room, staring at the floor, panting and shivering, and the homeroom teacher known to her as Miss Schine spoke gently to her—“You are—Dawn? Dawn Dunphy? Welcome!”
THEIR EYES like broken glass. She could feel the small shallow cuts in her skin oozing blood.
“OK if I sit here?”
“Actually no. It is not OK.”
Stiffly she smiled. Felt the hot blood rush into her face and knew that her distress was visible and that they would laugh all the more at her, still she smiled for that was Jesus’s way.
“There’s plenty of seats over there. See?”
“OK. Thanks.”
Thanks! Now the eyes laughed, for this was such a craven reply. Her face aflame she turned blindly, and went to another table where boys had sprawled amid a greasy clutter of paper bags, paper plates, glistening patches of wet. Hyena laughter and moans of strangulated hilarity. And here too eyes shifted upon her but these were not sharp cutting eyes of the girls, sly and sidelong; these were blunt, thrilled.
“Hiya. You gonna sit with us, Daw-en?”
Daw-en was Miss Schine’s way of pronouncing her name. Daw-en Dun-phy a way of such extreme care, caution and frank unease it had become a joke.