Lemon (32 page)

‘Who are those people?' I ask, noticing blobby types in the living room ripping open chip packets.

‘We're having a prayer meeting. You can't stay here.'

‘Why not? I won't bother you. I'll be totally quiet.'

‘I don't want you singing or anything, Limone.'

‘Cross my heart.'

She sits on the bed and pats my hand. ‘Jesus would watch over you, baby, if you'd only let Him.'

‘Maybe if I listen in on the prayer meeting, I'll feel Him and let Him watch over me. I'm still a little feverish so I think I should stay in bed.' Sperm can survive forty-eight hours. I don't want to disturb it.

‘Promise me you won't sing, honeybunch, it's so embarrassing when you sing.'

‘Cross my heart. Can you bring me some juice and chips?'

I can't make out what they're saying. It's almost spooky. They hold their hands above each other's heads, I guess to heal each other or something. Every twenty minutes one of them keels over in a fit of Jesus fever. They all huddle around the forgiven until he or she can stand up, then they start praying again until the next sinner keels over. Must sound pretty strange in the apartment below. All that believing works up a sweat, it's starting to smell like a locker room in here.

I eat chips, drink juice, keeping my pelvis elevated. I have a life purpose.

‘What did you think?' she asks after the last blobby type departs.

‘Awesome.'

‘Could you feel Him?'

‘Definitely.'

‘He'll forgive you, baby, if you forgive yourself.'

She brews chicken soup from a package and grills some cheese sandwiches. This used to be my favourite meal.

‘Maybe you can come to the next one,' she says.

‘What?'

‘Prayer meeting.'

‘I'll have to check my calendar.'

‘You have to
demonstrate
your devotion, Limone. He can't be deceived. And He knows there is not one human on Earth who has never sinned. His wish is that we all come to repentance and stop rebelling against the truth.'

‘What about Mars? Is there not one Martian on Mars who has never sinned?'

‘You can make as much fun as you want.'

‘Seriously, does He oversee the whole universe or just Earth?' I shove more grilled cheese in my mouth.

‘If you let him,' Zippy says, ‘He will help you to be obedient by giving you the power to become a true witness and follower.'

I stick my fingers into the pickle jar and wriggle out a cornichon.

‘There is no other name among men,' she says, ‘whereby we can be saved.'

‘Are you eating?' I ask.

‘Jesus will free you if you let Him,' she says. ‘He'll help you overcome every wicked habit that you can't conquer on your own. Promise you'll come?'

‘Where?'

‘To the next prayer meeting.'

‘I'll try. Drew's in pretty rough shape these days. I don't like to leave her alone too long.'

‘I thought you said you needed a change.'

‘Right, well, I just meant for a night or two.'

‘You felt Jesus calling you, baby, that's why you needed a change.'

‘Maybe that was it.' I suck up more noodles.

‘I was so lonely before I let Jesus in,' she confides. ‘You're so lonely, honeybunch, I can see that.'

‘I'd kind of like to just be with
you
for a bit, no offence to Jesus.'

‘He's watching us, baby. He's all around us.'

It's worse than when she was on drugs. On drugs it was just the two of us. Who wants Jesus hanging around?

We watch a movie about grand theft auto. Nick Cage skulks around in faded denim. He's tired of being a car thief and wants to live the quiet life in Monterey. But his associates say, ‘Just one more time, boss, it's the Big One, it'll set us up for life.' So old Nick has to chase the dollar and neck with Angelina who's also in faded denim. I keep getting distracted by his rug. Is America ever going to be ready for a bald Nick Cage?

The commercials are bursting with perfect people and children and I start thinking about Kadylak again, the fact that I can't touch her, smell her, hold her. That she's gone. My only friend. A lung-stiffening panic sets in and I start sweating and hyperventilating and I know this can't be good for conception. I try to think about the baby, that she'll have Kadylak's eyes and she'll look at me the way she did and I'll be able to hold her whenever I feel like it.

‘What's wrong, honeybunch?'

‘Nothing.'

‘It's Jesus, isn't it? Don't fight Him, baby.'

‘It's not Jesus, for fuck's sake, would you shut up about Jesus?'

She pulls away like I've slapped her. I've hurt her, I didn't mean to hurt her.

Nick Cage drives a stolen Ferrari at high speed over a bridge.

‘It's just I want it to be you and me again,' I say. ‘Like the old days. Why can't it just be you and me?'

‘That's very selfish, Limone.'

A chopper shot reveals that the bridge is blocked by traffic and that Nick is going to have to stop speeding and get nabbed by the lapd.

‘I am grateful for what He has done for me, Limone. And you should be too.'

‘He hasn't done shit for me. My best friend died today. He killed my best friend. So you can take Jesus and shove Him up your ass.'

Nick guns his engine and drives up over the cars in front of him. Cops scurry out of their cruisers, shaking their heads in disbelief. Zippy closes her eyes and starts talking to Jesus.

She lets me sleep beside her on the bed. We used to do this. She's always talked gibberish in her sleep, sounding anxious and afraid. I used to pat her shoulder till she settled down. I don't tonight. Let Jesus do it.

I'm woken by voices in the living room. At first I think she's talking to her Saviour again but then I hear the ape. He's got her bent over the sofa so he can do her up the backside.

‘Stop that!' I shout.

‘What the fuck … ?'

‘What kind of sick pervert are you!' I scream because I need to scream at somebody. I start kicking him the way I kicked Bonehead and company. The ape, with his plumbing dangling, starts swinging at me. I grab an umbrella and aim it at his eyeball while he's yanking up his pants. ‘That is one ugly set of jewels,' I tell him. ‘Now get out before she calls the cops.'

‘She's not calling anybody.'

‘Pick up the phone, Zippy,' I order. ‘
Now
. Pick it up now.' She does and holds the receiver as if it might catch fire.

The ape tries to snatch the umbrella but I keep swinging it the way Doyle swung the golf club. The ape retreats but of course has to say, ‘Don't bother showing up at the store tomorrow,' before he slams the door. Zippy puts the phone down and squats on her pouffe.

‘Where's Jesus when you need him?' I say.

‘You hurt people and you don't care,' she says. ‘You're destructive. That's what they've always said about you.'

‘I care about
you
.'

‘No you don't. You just lost me my job.'

There's no point in saying she's a whole lot better off without the ape plugging her orifices. ‘I'm sorry,' I say.

‘No you're not.'

I don't argue. She starts rocking on the pouffe, humming some hymn.

‘I want you to leave in the morning,' she says in a voice that doesn't sound like hers, more like the Almighty's. This is not good. I was planning to lie around eating crumpets with my ass held high.

‘I'm still feeling a bit feverish,' I say.

‘
Please
leave in the morning. You
must
leave in the morning.' She runs her hands over the scar tissue on her wrists from all that self-mutilating. She won't look at me.

‘If that's what you want,' I say.

She closes her eyes and talks to Jesus.

30

I
don't stomp but walk carefully with my secret inside me, staying far from school and the mall where I might be detected. I talk to her in my head, tell her about all the fun we're going to have, all the places we're going to see. I sit in a park and watch the children, awed by their freedom and wonder. I watch the old people, gnarled and broken. What happened to their freedom and wonder?

I sip steamed milk, slumped on an overstuffed chair at a Starbucks. The milk warms my womb as the wired around me fiddle with their techno-gadgets. A woman wearing a ponytail so tight it looks like it'll rip her face off speaks heatedly into her cell. ‘I'm confronting you as a mature man. Am I wrong in presuming that you would like to be treated as a mature man?' Outside the window a little shaggy dog is watching her with its tongue hanging out. ‘I thought you could handle this,' the woman says. ‘Clearly I was mistaken. It's obvious you're putting that up as a block.' The dog yaps and paws the glass. ‘That's baloney. That is
absolute
baloney. You are so not the man I thought you were.' Who is? I want to ask. Who is who we thought they were? Didn't we make it all up?

I linger in the baby store, press my face into fuzzy sleepers. Two hugely pregnant women can't get over the news that some teens glued broken glass on slides and monkey bars. ‘They could have seriously injured somebody,' the squatter one says.

‘What's the world coming to, I ask you,' the other responds. I could tell her, but she wouldn't listen. She'll buy albatross-killing plastic baubles for baby and speed off in her guzzler, not believing that Junior could grow into a teenager who glues glass on slides and monkey bars.

I only have eight bucks on me, not enough for cute little slippers decorated with animal faces. I decide to choose a pair anyway. Kittens or puppies? What about bunnies? The saleswoman hovers. ‘Can I help you with anything?'

‘I'm just looking, thanks.'

‘How old is the baby?' She has pencilled lips and tweezed eyebrows.

‘It's not born yet.'

‘Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?'

I want her off my case but act dull-eyed because I want to stay here where it's warm and fuzzy and pink and blue. Full of potential.

‘Because we have some really cute unisex slippers in green,' she says. ‘Do you like turtles?' She holds up turtle slippers. I smile like a good cretin. ‘And these are skid-proof,' she says. ‘You'd be amazed at how many baby slippers aren't skid-proof.'

Saved by the bell. She gets on the phone to plot with hubby. He'll take Kyle to hockey, she'll take Emma to gymnastics. Dinner plans cause friction, nobody has time to stop at the store, to cook. ‘Fine,
we'll have pizza again,' she snipes. I sense the chat drying up. I stuff the pink bunny slippers in my jacket and exit before she hangs up.

I walk softly, cradling the slippers. I take them out of the plastic and rub their fluff against my face. I sniff them, trying to smell Kadylak. I think of Mischa and Sweetheart the penguin on the bed waiting for her.

White vans without rear windows pass me by. I scan the licence plates. kwr 395. Don't know what I'd do if he were in front of me. Couldn't stand it if he looked away.

I withdraw my last twenty bucks and sit in the library, staring at baby books while desperate folks reeking of the street nab the seats around me. Can't stand the photos in the books, everybody happy happy happy, plus all the rules about looking after baby – doesn't baby make the rules? I pitch the baby books and read Emily Dickinson:

I stepped from plank to plank
So slow and cautiously
The stars about my head I felt
About my feet the sea
.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch –
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience
.

She became a recluse, never left her house, died at fifty-six. Childless. The way Drew's headed.

‘Have you seen my umbrella?' a hyper Jamaican woman demands.

‘No.'

‘I left it right here.' She points where I'm sitting.

‘I didn't see it,' I say.

‘I left it right here. Did you see it?' The cuffs of her jacket are frayed, buttons are missing. I look behind and under my chair, go back to Emily.

The earth reversed her Hemispheres –
I touched the Universe –
And back it slid – and I alone –
A Speck upon a Ball –
Went out upon Circumference –

‘Have you seen my umbrella?' the Jamaican woman demands of another bottom-feeder. ‘I left it
right
here.' She points at me again and I know she thinks I've swiped it. ‘It was striped.'

‘I can't see it anywhere,' I say. ‘Sorry.'

‘I left it right here. Striped.'

The movie theatre should offer peace. I buy popcorn and sit at the back, try to get interested in a romantic comedy about some blond and a stud with get-rich schemes. He thinks she won't want him unless he's rich. She thinks he doesn't like her because he never asks her out. She's educated, he's streetwise. How many times have we seen this movie? I try to catch some shut-eye before they discover they truly love each other and get naked. But movies are so loud these days and there's the inevitable spit-swapping going on a few seats over. I move up, keeping an eye out for geezers with hands down their pants. I hook my knees over the seat in front of me to tilt my ass up. The streetwise stud is stalking the blond in the rain. She meets up with a male co-worker who our hero takes to be a rival. He festers with jealousy in the rain while the blond and the co-worker grab a latte. I close my eyes and try to make a plan. I could steal from Drew. I know her pin. If I can sneak in without her, or Treeboy, noticing. Around three in the morning. Take out the daily max till it twigs that her card's missing. Find some cheap digs and buy myself some time. Sleep. Research the soap thing, maybe track down that human-rights lawyer, offer myself as an apprentice. Move to the country. Let baby grow. I'm so tired. Should get some prenatal vities. The books say the early stages are crucial, need that folic acid.