Waiting for Christopher
Read Waiting for Christopher Online
Authors: Louise Hawes
waiting for christopher
a novel by
Louise Hawes
Waiting for Christopher
All Rights Reserved © 2002, 2013 by Louise Hawes
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.
First Edition published 2002 by Candlewick Press. This digital edition published by Halcyon Hall c/o Authors Guild Digital Services.
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ISBN: 9781625360618
For Lily, born in love
You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?
—Charlotte Brontë, J
ANE
E
YRE
She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop
.
—Zora Neale Hurston, T
HEIR
E
YES
W
ERE
W
ATCHING
G
OD
W
henever she could, Feena brought Christopher something from outside. She sneaked in when he was supposed to be napping, when the steady
thump thump thump
of the washer meant their mother was in the basement, folding warm sheets, baby clothes and diapers, T-shirts that said things like I
MY CAT or U.S. BREATHING TEAM. Feena knew what the shirts said, because she’d asked over and over until she’d learned them all by heart. Which made her mother smile and her father laugh and pick her up. “Forget kindergarten,” he’d tell her. “You’re going straight to college.”
Sometimes she brought her brother little things, like a moth wing or an elderly dandelion, all whiskers and silk. They were pieces of the world she knew he needed to look at and touch, things her mother didn’t allow in the nursery. She slipped them between the bars of his crib, then pushed them to where he could see
.
Bigger presents, like the rusty sand pail she’d found, with a yellow handle and a circus seal painted on the side, she would drag with her to the top of the crib rail, then throw herself over, landing beside the baby, both of them laughing loudly until she put a hand over his mouth. “We’ll get time-outs,” she’d warn him, suddenly stern. “If you don’t be quiet, I won’t get you any more stuff.”
But as soon as she uncovered his mouth, Christopher would start giggling and wiggling again, like a wind-up toy you couldn’t stop. Feena figured he smiled at her so much because she was the only one who guessed how awful it was not to be able to walk around by yourself. Because she brought him bits of life that hadn’t had the fun washed out of them
.
She knew she was four years older than Christy, so she decided she would have to wait that long for him to catch up. But that was okay. It was worth it. Because when he got to be as old as she was, Feena wouldn’t need to be a big sister anymore. She’d never have to
Wait just a minute
or
Keep those dirty hands to yourself
or
Let the baby sleep, for God’s sake, can’t you see I’m tired.
As soon as her brother could walk, she’d show him the dead bird behind the garage, a wet, ragged hole where one of its eyes should be, its feet curled so tight you couldn’t open them no matter what. When he learned to talk, she’d tell him about the sneakers with red laces in the store that had elevators. Feena knew he’d be mad at Mommy. “She was bad,” he’d say, “not to let you buy those beautiful sneaks. Your feet grow fast; they’ll be big enough soon.”
The day she found the pinecones, she waited a long time, hoping her mother would come out of Christy’s room and go downstairs. She stood just outside his door, opening and closing her hands over them. She guessed he would like the way they smelled, but she worried they might leave sticky patches of brown sap on his cheeks, like the ones inside her palms
.
Why was her mother taking so long? Wasn’t there any laundry to do? She squeezed her fingers over the sharp, shaggy points of the cones and watched tiny half-moons appear and disappear in her skin. Was Christy going to skip his nap today? She tried to see through the hair- thin crack between the door and its frame, but it was dark in there, as if she’d closed her eyes and was looking through her
lids. When she heard someone crying, she knocked on the door, but nothing happened. The sobs grew heavy and hard, not at all like her brother’s high, stuttery wail. That was when she’d jammed all three pinecones into one hand and pushed open the door
.
Some surprises are good, like a ponytailed doll for your birthday. And some surprises, like the time Daddy spanked her and left the red mark of his hand on her leg, make you feel as if you’ve swallowed too much ice, as if you’re going to stay cold forever. Now, standing just inside the door, Feena saw so many people in Christopher’s room, she couldn’t tell which of them was crying. How had they gotten there? Had they all tiptoed upstairs while she was watching cartoons?
At first, she thought it might be her mother who was crying. She tried to see past the forest of trouser legs and jeans and shimmering nylons to the baby’s crib. He would be scared, she knew, with so many visitors at once. She pushed her way through a few of the clustered adults but was stopped before she could reach her brother. A woman with very red lips and a scratchy jacket picked her up. Feena arched back over the woman’s shoulder, stretching toward the crib. “Christopher?” she called, dropping two of the pinecones. “Where’s Christy?”
“Your brother’s not here, dear,” the woman told her, holding Feena’s legs too tight, carrying her
toward the door. “Aunty Bell’s going to take you outside for a bit. Would you like that?”
From her uncomfortable perch, Feena considered the woman’s face, its porous, vaguely familiar contours. Then she stared down at the single pinecone left in her hand. It was probably too prickly, anyway, she decided. She would bring him a tuft of the shiny green needles instead. “Where’s Christy?” she asked again
.
“He’s gone to heaven,” the woman said, mashing Feena against the hairy jacket. “He’s gone to heaven to play with the angels.”
But Christopher wasn’t playing with angels. Her mother explained things to Feena later, after the crying had stopped and everyone who didn’t live with them had gone back to their own houses. She told Feena that sometimes babies stop breathing and no one knows why. Even though it’s usually old people who die, she said, every once in a while, a baby dies, too. When Feena remembered the bird she’d found and asked if Christopher still had both his eyes, her mother made a strange, thin bleating sound. Feena had never heard anything like it before, and she tried to make it herself, rocking back and forth in the dim light from the hall, before her father came to put her to bed
.
Usually they read a book, but that night Daddy didn’t open the one they were already halfway
through. Instead, he sat beside her in the dark and told a story, a story about how Christopher was going to sleep under the ground. About how the three of them could go and talk to him, even though they wouldn’t be able to see him or pick him up or play so-o-o-o-o big
.
And that’s what they did—every Friday, as soon as her father got home from work. She knew when it was Christy’s day, because Daddy didn’t walk into the kitchen and open the refrigerator and drink right out of the orange-juice carton. He didn’t yell, “Feena, Feena, where you beena?” and pull her onto his lap. Instead, he stayed in the car and honked the horn until Feena and her mother had grabbed their sweaters and gotten in beside him
.
Each time they drove to the cemetery, she brought along something for her brother to play with. The day she remembered about the pine needles, her father helped her scatter them around the stone with Christopher’s name cut into it. “How will he get them?” Feena worried. “How will he know they’re here?”
Her father’s forehead was so pale, she could see a spider web of blue veins under his skin. “He’ll know,” he told her. He patted the ground once, then stood up. “He has to, Feenie. He just has to.”
But Feena wasn’t so sure. The only thing she knew for certain was that her brother was to be pitied
now more than ever. Being in a little cage with arms and legs that hadn’t learned to work yet was bad. Lying still behind the garage, with only one eye and feet as blue as nails, that was horrible, too. But sleeping under the ground, cold and alone and afraid of the dark—that was the worst thing she could imagine
.