I nod at the boys, each with a board book on his bare lap. “Any luck?”
She’s been trying to potty train them for weeks now, but they refuse to be tamed. Essie and Libby were bribed with sticker charts and new toys, which was good for my parents’ diaper budget. I just hope it doesn’t mean they’ll grow up to be slutty girls who give it away to any cute boys who buy them dinner.
“Ethan went a little peepee,” Eli reports.
I look to my mom for confirmation, but she shakes her head. “That’s what he says. I didn’t hear a drop, and the water is as clear as a country creek.”
“I did!” Ethan insists. He squeezes his eyes shut in concentration and sure enough, I hear the very faint trickle of something from beneath him.
My mom hops out of the tub pretty nimbly for an almost forty-year-old. “Ethan! I heard it that time! Nice work!” She lifts Ethan off the seat, taking away Eli’s support and nearly making him fall back into the bowl. I grab his arm just in time.
Eli glances up at the excitement but then returns to his book. This one might still be wearing diapers when he’s my age.
One boy’s urination is enough to satisfy my mom at this point. I get the feeling that she’s been in the bathroom for a good part of the day. She lifts Eli off the toilet, too, tugs up his Pull-Up and tells them both to wash their hands.
“Why so late today?” she asks me. “Don’t you have student council on Friday mornings?” Keeping track of my schedule and four preschoolers is just too much for her most days. I’m impressed she has any clue when I have student council.
“Tutoring,” I answer, rolling up Eli’s sleeves so they don’t get soaked under the faucet.
“Oh, right!” She gives a towel to Ethan, who has started drying his hands on his shirt. “It’s barely October. Is a month enough time for kids to get that far behind?”
“Some kids,” I answer, with a bit of unintended condescension in my voice, and I immediately feel guilty. They may suck at math, but they have other strengths. Like, most of them have more than one close friend. Most of them can touch a jacket without nearly passing out.
I herd the kids out of the bathroom and head to the kitchen to help my mom make dinner. She’s not much of a cook, but she manages to throw together a decent meat loaf. My dad comes home while I’m mashing potatoes. He kisses my mom and gives my shoulder a squeeze. I lean in to his touch, greedily accepting his affection. I’ll take whatever touch I can get; I just can’t give much of my own. Well, except to the kids, who are still sweet and innocent enough that their fractals are bright squiggles of pastel. I can touch the kids, but I hug my parents tentatively, my hands balled into fists away from their bodies. I know if I touch my mom it will only take a moment to feel all those years of loneliness, all that sadness, all the frustration that she so carefully camouflages with good Christian optimism. I don’t doubt that she is a pretty happy person now, but my visions dip deep into the well of past feelings. The kinds of feelings that neva eva really go away.
Chapter 4
The blue cup wobbles precariously. Ethan reaches to steady it but in his panic he tips the whole thing over, sending milk across the table for the second time in five minutes. I grab the damp rag that is always my dining companion. We only fill up each cup about an inch, which means more frequent filling but lower-volume spillage. But even an inch of milk in the cup becomes a puddle on the table. My mom is determined to get the kids drinking out of regular cups. The sheer number of sippy cups we use multiplied by their difficulty to clean has led her to this frustrating mission, which results in at least two spills per meal, three meals a day. That’s 186 spills a month, or 2,190 spills per year, at a minimum. I joke that we should make a tablecloth out of ShamWows that would just absorb spills, or maybe a table with a drain in the middle, so we could go on eating without interruption. Maybe we could even recycle the spilled drinks, saving money along with our patience. But until we invent one of these alternatives, I mop up the milk and suppress my sighs.
“Sorry,” Ethan apologizes, his apology even cuter and more pitiful because his r’s come out like w’s.
“S’okay,” I say. “Just … pay attention to your octopus arms, okay, bud?”
He giggles and tucks his elbows in obediently. For now.
My dad refills Ethan’s cup while my mom corrals the peas that have rolled off Libby’s plate. Dinner at the Walker house. Good times.
My dad is telling us about a Bible study he led this morning focused on the story of Martha and Mary. I know the story. I know all the stories. I mean, I am the daughter of a pastor after all. But this is one (of many) that vexes me a little. Jesus goes to visit sisters Mary and Martha, and while Martha is running around cooking and cleaning and trying to impress Jesus with her Martha (coincidence?) Stewart entertaining prowess, Mary sits at Jesus’s feet, fawning all over him. Finally, Martha loses it and is like, “Jesus! Will you tell Mary to get her ass in the kitchen and help me for a minute?!” But Jesus goes, “Chill out, Martha. You are stressing about everything, but only one thing is needed and Mary’s got that figured out.”
So of course it’s a sort of carpe diem/be-in-the-moment/ don’t-miss-the-forest-for-the-trees message. And I get it. Sorta. But I think about poor Martha running around and trying to be responsible while her lazy sister sits on her butt, flirting with a boy. It’s one of those stories that doesn’t sit right with me. Like the story of the prodigal son: The responsible son stays home and works for his dad, while the other goes off and wastes his inheritance on hookers and booze. But when the slacker son slinks home, ashamed, does the dad give him a talking-to? Tell him he messed up? Um, no. The dad throws him a party. Kills the fatted calf for him. The responsible son is pissed off and is like, “Um, hello? Do you even give me a sickly little goat when I want to party with my friends? But you kill the fatted calf for my loser brother?” And the dad says, “You’re a good kid. You’ve always been a good kid. Everything I have is yours. But your brother, who I thought I lost, is back. We’ve got to party!” I mean, I get it. It’s a message of forgiveness, of joy in finding someone who was gone to you, of grace. But I don’t necessarily like what it says to lazy, greedy, irresponsible people. Do what you want and somehow it’s all good in the end? Yeah, that’s not how the world works. Or that’s not how it should work.
I guess I have issues with a lot of biblical messages. I keep these issues mostly to myself. I keep a lot of things mostly to myself.