still lying in the other woman’s arms, and makes a whimpering sound, something inside her crumpling up, or getting pulled apart.
One of the women gives my mother a card with a phone number on it. She says the sooner she calls, the better, the more they can help. They have special classes. My mother winces when they say “special,” and she goes to the door and stands there until both of the women put on their overcoats and leave.
She gets her own green ball. For days, she tosses it lightly in Samuel’s lap, again and again, saying, “Catch the ball, honey! Catch!” as if all he had to do was catch it, just once, and that would prove them wrong.
When I go to church now, I pray for the baby, because he is still innocent and does not deserve to be retarded. Pastor Dave says we should wait and see, and not listen to everything so-called experts say just because they are from so-called universities. They don’t know everything, he says. And miracles happen every day.
Driving me home from church, he says he has thought about Samuel, prayed about him, and has heard from God himself that we should not give up. He says I should try to get my mother to bring Samuel to church next Sunday. They are bringing in a faith healer from Arizona, one of the very best. “We’re so blessed to have him,” he says, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Harry Hopewell.”
“What a marvelous name for a healer,” Sharon says, turning around. “Hopewell. Hope-well!” She is wearing blue earrings shaped like telephones, the receiver hanging onto the outside of her ear, the cord a hoop underneath her earlobe.
“He saved the life of a man in Nevada, dying of so-called cancer,” Pastor Dave says, scratching his mustache. “The doctors had given up hope, but then Hopewell laid hands on him”—Pastor Dave holds his own hands up for a moment, letting go of the steering wheel—“and the man was cured. Boom. My brother in Texas saw it with his own eyes.”
The next time Eileen comes to visit, I tell her Harry Hopewell is coming. Her mouth goes in the shape of a capital O, her eyes wide. “Harry Hopewell? In Kerrville? Oh Evelyn, he’s amazing, truly amazing,” she says, her hand over her mouth. “He’s the one who’s been curing all those boys who thought they were homosexuals.” When she says “homosexuals,” she leans forward and whispers, as if really, she doesn’t want me to hear. “He put the spirit of God in them, and they don’t think that way anymore. Some of them are already married.” She’s holding Samuel while my mother is in the bathroom. He is awake, but you can tell this only because his eyes are open. For him, that’s the only difference.
Eileen sways him gently back and forth. “If anyone can help this baby, it’s that man.”
“She won’t come, Eileen,” I say. “She hates church.” Really, I don’t want her to come. She’ll ruin it, contaminate it just by being there. Pastor Dave and Sharon like to remind me that my mother is always welcome at the Second Ark, and that I should keep inviting her. When they say this, I shake my head sadly, and say I don’t think she’ll ever come. They hug me then, and they tell me how amazing it is that I have turned out the way I have.
But now my mother is coming with us to church, and she’s bringing Samuel. Eileen got her to come. She said all she wanted for her birthday this year was for all four of us to go to church together. She said it would be nice if we could all do something together, and when she said this, she nodded in my direction.
“Fine,” my mother said. “Just this once.”
And already it is just as bad as I knew it would be, her coming with us. When she sees the church is also a roller-skating rink, she starts laughing. She says the Second Ark might be more successful if they let everyone bring their skates. The pastor could stand in the middle and preach how everyone was going to hell while the congregation glided around him, bending down to do the cold duck, grabbing hands and spinning in pairs.
I glare at her. Eileen shakes her head.
“Sorry,” she says. She looks down at Samuel. “You thought it was funny, right?” His blue eyes gaze up past her head. He