Every once in a while, I glanced over at him and saw
how intently he went at everything and with such
confidence. After doing the windows, he found my
uncle Tyler's tools in the toolshed, and he took the
stove apart and cleaned it carefully. He replaced the
dead bulbs, checked out all the electricity and opened
and cleaned a drain in the sink. He had to readjust the
inside of the toilet, because when the water valve was
turned to on, it wouldn't stop running. He corrected a
leak in the sink faucet as well.
"You're a plumber, an electrician and a
carpenter built into one person," I said. "Have you
done this kind of work for someone?"
"I told you. I take care of our property. I had to
learn how to do all these things because my father left
us. Some of it I did learn from plumbers and
electricians who came around before I could handle
things myself, and some of it I learned from manuals.
Our property is one of the older ones in this area, so a
lot breaks down."
"I was told it was once a chicken farm?" "Not chickens, eggs," he said. "The coops are
still standing, but we don't use them for anything. It's
a big property on Dunn Road as soon as you make the
turn off Stark. We just keep up the house."
"Well, that shouldn't be so much work." He smiled. "Sometimes I think my mother
breaks things deliberately so have to stay around to fix
them:'
"Really? Why is she like that?"
"Maybe she's just lonely," he said.
"She has no friends of her own?"
"Just people involved with the church, but they
aren't friends the way you and I would think of
friends."
"She never met anyone else? Any other man?" I
asked. I recalled what Aunt Zipporah had suggested
about his mother and the pastor.
He shook his head. If it was true, he didn't want
to admit to it, I thought.
"Maybe she will," I suggested.
"I doubt it. She should have been a nun. She
lives like one anyway."
I wanted to say I was sorry, but I didn't know if that was right to say. When he talked about her, he didn't sound angry, just resigned. This was his mother; this was his life. There was nothing more to do about
it.
I looked at the time and saw we had been
working for hours and hours.
"I have to make something for dinner or my
aunt will be angry. Can you stay for dinner?" He looked at me with an expression of
confusion, as if such a possibility not only never
occurred to him but also didn't exist in the real world.
He revealed why.
"I never ate in anyone else's home but my
own."
"Never?"
"Well, no one else's except our pastor's, but
when and if we're there, Mother does most of the
cooking anyway. She doesn't like going to the homes
of the other church people," he said. "My mother isn't
comfortable eating at someone else's table, and she
always complains about the way some of the other
women cook and bake for the church."
"Well, do you want to have dinner with me?" "Yes," he said. "Yes," he repeated more firmly,
as if he had been arguing about it with himself. I had
to laugh. "What?" he asked.
"You didn't even ask what we'll have to eat."
"Oh. What will we have to eat?"
"I don't know. Let's go look in the kitchen," I
said, and we headed out and to the house.
We entered through the rear and I took him
down the hallway, past my bedroom. The door was
opened, so I paused.
"That's where I sleep," I said, nodding at the
doorway.
He approached it and looked in, but he didn't go
in. He leaned over to peer into it.
"It's a nice-size room."
"We added some things since I came and will
be spending the next school year here. My aunt wants
me to think about doing something with the walls,
paint, wallpaper, making it brighter, happier." He nodded. "Be easy to paint it."
"Would you help me do that?"
His eyes widened. "Paint your bedroom?" "You just said it would be easy to do it, didn't
you?"
"Yeah, but . . . it's your bedroom."
"So? I can't have anyone else work on it? That's
stupid."
He looked in again, still keeping himself out of
the room, even leaning more awkwardly to look to the
right or left.
"You can go in if you want to and look around."
"Now, I've seen enough," he said. He looked a little
frightened.
"You think going into a girl's bedroom will
somehow corrupt you?"
He spun on me as if I had slapped him. "You
making fun of me?"
"No, but you're acting so--"
"Weird?" he said. "Right, I'm weird. I forgot."
He started back toward the rear door.
"Duncan, stop it. I didn't say you were weird." "It's all right. It doesn't matter. I just realized I
can't stay for dinner anyway. My mother made a roast.
See you," he said, and before I could say another
word, he was out the door.
Nevertheless, I charged out after him. He
practically ran to his scooter parked in front. "Duncan," I called as he turned it around to
head down and out the driveway. He kept going.
"Thanks for helping me in the studio," I shouted. He just lifted his hand to acknowledge and sped
up.
"Damn you!" I screamed after him. "You took
me to the river. You kissed me. If I thought you were
that weird, why would I let you do that? Why are you
running away now?"
Of course, he couldn't hear me. He was too far
away, but I needed to shout it after him. I stood there
long after he was gone, my head spinning because of
his radical mood swings. After another moment, I
went back into the house and paused at my bedroom
door.
What could possibly have frightened him about
this room so much? I
wondered and then saw a pair of
my panties on the back of a chair and a bra dangling
beside it. I had forgotten to put them into the laundry
hamper. Aside from the dainty curtains, there was
nothing else that really stamped this room a girl's
room. I couldn't imagine why the sight of a pair of
panties and a bra would put the shudders into a boy as
old as Duncan anyway.
Suddenly, I realized how tired and grimy I felt
from hours and hours of cleaning the studio. I needed
a good shower, perhaps not so much because of all the
work as because of the frustration I was feeling. There
was something about warm water pounding down
over my head and shoulders that was reviving.
Afterward, I wrapped a towel around myself, then scrubbed my hair dry with another towel. I know I was muttering to myself aloud the whole time. Anyone who heard me would surely think I had gone mad. When I stepped out of the bathroom and walked
back to my bedroom, I nearly jumped out of my skin There he was, sitting at my small desk, leaning
over and staring down at the floor.
"Damn!" I screamed. "You frightened me, Duncan.
"I'm sorry," he said and slowly raised his head.
The sight of me wrapped only in a big bath towel
seized his full attention, but I didn't think about it. 1
was more angry now than anything.
"Why did you run out of here like a lunatic?" I
said. He didn't respond. "It wasn't very nice to act like
that. You're like a firecracker sometimes. I'm afraid to
walk too fast around you, much less say anything.
Well? Why did you run off?"
"I was afraid to stay any longer," he said,
looking out the window.
"Why?"
"I was just afraid."
"You're not making any sense, Duncan. What
were you afraid of? Me?"
"Not you so much as myself."
I stared at him a moment. What was he telling
me? Was he capable of harming someone? Had he? I
didn't recall anything in his poetry that suggested it. "Can you explain that, please?"
"I told her I kissed you," he said, still looking
out the window and not at me.
"What? You told who you kissed me? Your
mother?"
He nodded, and I grimaced as if I had just swallowed sour milk.
"Why would you tell her that?"
"I've always told her what I do. Ever since . . ."
He turned back to me, his face different, harder, more
like the granite in the studio. "Sin doesn't just happen,
you know. It has to fester inside you, grow, take hold.
You've got to stop it when it's just starting, when it's a
seedling inside your heart. The way to do that is to
reveal it, confess it, expose it," he recited. "Once you
do that, it loses its power, its hold over you." He sounded like some hell and brimstone
preacher.
"What are you saying? You think it was a sin to
kiss me?"
"It could lead to a sin," he said.
"That's ridiculous. Looking at someone, hen
could lead to a sin."
"It can," he said, nodding.
"Duncan, get real. All we did is kiss, and if two
people feel something for each other, it's not a sin or
even the start of one."
He stared at me. I tightened the towel around
Me. "I wanted to do more than just kiss you," he said.
"I still do. That's why I ran off."
"So? Big deal. If you didn't, I'd think you
weren't interested in me, and if I didn't want you to,
I'd let you know anyway. And fast," I added. His eyes widened.
"Where are you getting these wacky ideas?"
"They're not wacky," he shot back.
"If you ask me," I continued, "your mother is
driving you crazy. You already told me she
deliberately finds ways to keep you at home. Wait a
minute," I said, realizing something, "is that why I
hadn't seen you for days? Because you told her you
kissed me?"
He looked away quickly.
"That's sick, Duncan. You're old enough to
know what you should and shouldn't do, and so am I.
We're not children anymore. She shouldn't treat you
like one."
"She doesn't treat me like a child."
"Really?"
"She doesn't mean to be mean to me. She's
afraid."
"Why? I just don't understand it. Why is she so
afraid for you? Have you done something terrible?" I
asked.
"No. Not yet."
"Not yet?" I nearly laughed aloud. "Why do
you say that? Do you think you definitely will?" "What, Duncan? What are you?"
"I'm a child of sin," he said.
He looked down quickly. I stood there a
moment, and then I walked to my bed and sat. "A child of sin?"
"Yes. It's why you were drawn to me and why I
was drawn to you and still am," he continued, as if he
had made an incredible discovery. "We're the same.
Don't you see?"
"I'm not getting it, Duncan," I said. "How are
you a child of sin, and how are we the same?" He looked up at me.
"Just like your parents, my father and mother
weren't married when they made me. They didn't get
married until later. No one knows."
"And so that makes us children of sin?" He nodded.
"Who told you this? Did your mother tell you
this? Well?"
"She's just trying to help me," he said
defensively. "She's devoted her whole life to me. She
works for God so God will have mercy on me." "And you believe this? You believe because to
some people having a child out of wedlock makes
them sinners, the children are full of sin, too?" "It's in Scripture. 'Those of you who are left
will waste away in the lands of their enemies because
of their sins; also, because of their father's sins they
will waste away.' Leviticus 26:39."
"Is that something your mother made you
memorize?"
"We read the Bible every night," he said.
"Besides, you believe it yourself."
"I do not!"
"Yes, you do. That's when I knew you and I
were so alike. When you told me how the people in
your hometown saw you as evil, I knew you saw
yourself the same way. You inherited it just like I did.
You so much as told me that, didn't you? You
shouldn't sit there with such a look of surprise on your
face at why I think we're the same.
"And don't tell me you haven't thought about it.
A lot," he added. "Don't tell me you look in the mirror
and don't see what I see when I look in the mirror.
Remember, you told me you had similar feelings and
thoughts, similar to what you saw in my poems, and
you said you expressed them through your art. "You didn't say it, but you as much as told me
that the tragedy you went through, the death of that
boy, was in your mind as somehow your fault, that
you will and would bring only trouble and pain to
anyone who cares about you or gets involved with
you. Well?" he asked sharply. "Well?" he nearly
shouted.
I shuddered. He hadn't forgotten a word, not a
syllable, and I couldn't deny it.
"Yes," I cried. "I have those thoughts." He nodded, smiling.
"But the difference between us is I don't need to
be reminded of them, especially by my family. Or by
a parent!" I said.
"Like having a father who pretends he's not
your father?" he asked smugly.
The tears that were coming from my eyes felt
so hot that I thought they would scald my cheeks as
they jerked down toward my chin.
"That's mean, Duncan."
He nodded. "I'm sorry. It is mean to say it, but
it underscores how alike you and I really are." I flicked the tears off my cheeks and sucked in
my breath. "So why did you just come back if that's
what you think? Why did you even come here today?
Why be around another sinner or someone who could
cause you to be a sinner?"
He took a while to respond. First he looked out
the window again. Then he looked at his hands and
the floor before he looked at me.
"Because like you, even though I say it, 1 don't
want to believe all that and besides ... I can't help
wanting to be with you. Most of the time, as you
know from my poem, I feel like I'm in a cage, but
when I'm with you, I feel free, even if it's a reckless
feeling, a reckless freedom, it's still it feels good." "Then it can't be bad, Duncan, and you can't let
your mother or anyone else make you think it is. And.
don't whip yourself with Scripture either.
-
"I know," he said softly. "1 know." He looked
up at me again, and this time, I thought there were
tears in his eyes, too. "Will you help me overcome
this idea?"
"Yes," I said. "We'll help each other." He smiled softly. I held out my hand, and he
slowly reached for it. For a moment that was all we
did, hold onto each other's hand. Then his grip grew
stronger, and he rose to come to me. He knelt before
me and lowered his head to my lap. I stroked his hair,
and we were like that for a while, neither of us
speaking.
He's right about us,
I thought.
We are similar:
According to what he was telling me, he was afraid he
would turn out to be his father, and I was running