Everybody Loves Somebody (15 page)

She didn’t feel right disappointing Miss Smile, though, especially since she needed her to help find Mama. So she accepted
the cup of black coffee sweetened with a tablespoon of sugar and listened to the ladies trade praise for the man who made
room for even the tiniest lamb.

And then the stories began. The woman at the stove—Miss Cheerfulness Good—spoke of an angel named Holy Light, who’d had twelve
children and no food to feed them until she met the Father. He put her up in a fabricated house down in Miami for three months,
then he brought her to New York, where she gave her children to God. The girl wondered what this meant: “gave her chillun
to God.” She wondered if her own mama intended to give her to God. She didn’t ask any questions, though, just sipped the sweet
coffee and listened to another story about an angel named Miss Beautiful, who got sick working in the nightclubs. Luckily
for her, it was the Father who found her lying in the gutter one day, and he scooped her up and brought her to his kingdom.
Next came the tales of Miss Charmed Life, Miss Sweet Soul, Mr. Disciple, and Mr. Righteous Government, all of them damned
to sickness and poverty and all of them saved by the Father. It began to seem to the girl that the kingdom might be a haven,
after all. Food was abundant, the rooms had working radiators, the toilets were clean, and the Father provided for anyone
who arrived on the doorstep. Even if he wasn’t God, he might be one of those spiritual-contacting folks she’d heard about,
and maybe he’d make Granny well. The girl resolved to get her granny and present her in person to the great wizard. Then she
and Granny and Mama could live together again under one roof.

Miss Smile and Miss Cheerfulness served her a breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon, and they didn’t hesitate
to load her up with more food as soon as she’d cleaned her plate. Here at the kingdom a girl didn’t have to live on sweet
potatoes. A girl could eat as much as she pleased. A girl could drink black coffee as though she were all grown up. When the
two women began singing, the girl stood and did a little dance for them, spinning across the room, feeling as carefree as
she did in the old days when Mama came home laughing. The girl was intoxicated by food and kindness, and she spun around and
around and around, landing right in the strong arms of the man entering the kitchen, who said, “Now if she ain’t absotively
posilutely the prettiest dancing soul I ever seen, I’ll eat my hat,” and lifted her up until she could touch the ceiling.

Miss Dancing Soul she became, thanks to the man called Mr. Loving Jeremiah. She spent the whole day at the kingdom helping
with the meals and listening to the angels tell their happily-ever-after stories. She hadn’t forgotten Granny—she planned
to go to her before the day was over, but when darkness fell, the distance between the kingdom and the apartment building
seemed so vast, the cold so bitter, that she decided to fetch her great-grandmother the following morning.

She didn’t see her mama at all that day and couldn’t bring herself to ask about her. She’d find her
in good time,
Miss Smile had promised, and the girl believed what she’d been told. Gratitude filled her with a warmth that saturated her
flesh, making her face and fingertips tingle with joy. She felt so excited when she went to bed that night, surrounded by
gentle angels, that she couldn’t sleep, so she lay awake and imagined her future as Miss Dancing Soul, loved by all who lived
at the kingdom, and loving them.

Another day passed before the girl bothered to return home. She intended to stay just long enough to pack up her possessions
and convince Granny to come with her. As she let herself into the apartment, she braced herself against the wild scolding
sure to greet her.

“Granny?” she called out. There was no answer. “You here?” She checked the bathroom. Only when she returned to the main room
did she notice that the bedding had been stripped from her granny’s mattress. The smell of sickness hung in the air, and,
inexplicably, crumbs of mud were scattered across the floor, as though booted soldiers had stomped through. Granny must have
gone out with her cart, the girl figured, not quite believing it herself, for by then the knowledge of something else, something
too terrible to name, began to come to her. She resisted the thought, and after stuffing her dresses and seashells in the
net bag Granny used for groceries, she set out for Lenox in search of the old woman.

It was midday Tuesday. As she stepped from the building the door to the basement flat opened, and a woman, Mrs. Jenny, leaned
out to shake dust from a throw rug. “Why there you is, Sheebie,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead,
painting her face with pity, “you poor orphan girl.”

It was true, then: the terrible thing had happened while Miss Dancing Soul had been gormandizing at the kingdom. The simple
permanence of the situation turned everything familiar—the street, the building she’d called home for nearly a year, the woman
in the doorway—into her accusers. Had she stayed with her great-grandmother she would have proven that she was not scared.
Now everyone in the world knew that she was scared, so she had no reason to pretend otherwise and could run away without worrying
about what others thought, for they already thought the worst of her.

Queen Sheebie ran from the poor orphan girl she was supposed to be. She ran so fast that the city seemed to fold beneath her,
and it took just a few giant steps to reach the threshold of the kingdom, her home now. She flung open the door and collapsed
in a heap. Soon people were murmuring above her, and a man lifted her gently into the cradle of his arms. She didn’t open
her eyes when someone said, “Miss Dancing Soul,” for she knew that she’d be cared for here—all she had to do was live a holy,
clean life and earn her keep as a seamstress and help wash up after meals.

The man carried her into a small parlor and laid her on a divan. Someone draped a warm washcloth across her forehead. She
heard a group of women whispering, thought she heard her mother among them, but still she didn’t open her eyes. She craved
blindness, tried to will herself sightless as she lay there, for more than anything she wanted to be coddled, helpless, dependent
upon these people who were so good to her. She wanted to feel the caress of their fingertips upon her skin, which had an appetite
of its own that would be satisfied only by the loving touch of angels.

But they left her alone. The washcloth grew cold on her forehead so she laid it, folded, on the floor. Eventually, that more
pressing appetite belonging to her stomach roused her, and she made her way to the dining room, where the congregation had
already gathered. For the first time since she’d come to the kingdom, one of the men held his collection hat out for her,
but she didn’t have a penny and just shrugged at him. His scowl felt like a fist on her teeth. She picked up her knife and
fork and idly danced them together, fidgeting to hide her shame. It occurred to her that she’d lost the bag full of her possessions
somewhere between the apartment and the kingdom. Now she had nothing except the flesh-and-blood part of her that filled this
little bit of space at the table, along with the flower-print dress she’d been wearing for three days.

It was this sense of herself as almost but not quite nothing that made the skin-hunger unbearable. So later that evening,
when the angel named Mr. Loving Jeremiah met her on the landing of the back stairs and gave his precious Miss Dancing Soul
a hug, she nearly fainted with gratitude. The next day, when he found her alone in the kitchen drying the last dishes from
lunch, he surprised her with an embrace from behind, curling his strong arms beneath her own and lifting her right off the
floor.

In the next weeks, the girl spent mornings and afternoons sewing buttons on organdy dresses and mealtimes listening to the
Father trumpet the rewards of faith. Miss Smile All the While taught her hymns, which they sang together with Miss Cheerfulness
Good in the kitchen. She learned from Miss Smile that the angel named Miss Love Dove had gone to the Father’s kingdom up north,
and Miss Dancing Soul would see her “in good time.” The girl stopped thinking of her mama as an object to be retrieved—instead,
Miss Love Dove was another member of the huge family to which the girl herself belonged, along with Miss Smile and Miss Cheerfulness
and all the others, including Mr. Loving Jeremiah, who was like an older brother to her, protective and conspiratorial. Though
he never admitted it, she could see that his fondness for her fell just short of romance, which wasn’t allowed in the kingdom,
fortunately, so she could feel safely tempted, as long as she kept her daydreams to herself. Here in Paradise, the girl knew
she had nothing to fear from her Prince Charming, no matter that his face was as inviting as a sun-drenched lake and that
he took to sneaking upstairs to her dormitory and leaving candy on her pillow. He wouldn’t try to take advantage of her, she
felt certain.

But his affections weren’t restrained enough, as it turned out. Somehow the Father himself got word of the chocolate heart
Mr. Loving Jeremiah gave to Miss Dancing Soul on Valentine’s Day, and he ordered meetings with each of them separately. Mr.
Loving Jeremiah went first, and when he came out half a minute later he didn’t even glance at the girl, just skulked on past
looking every bit like a thief caught red-handed. But just then the angel named Miss Pleasing Joy stepped up and took the
girl’s hand, clenching hard, as though trying to squeeze fortitude into her and prepare her for her first face-to-face meeting
with the Father.

Everyone, including the girl, knew that the Father considered children nothing but annoyances. She had been lucky to have
the protection of Miss Smile All the While, one of the kingdom’s most important angels, and she’d been treated as a grown-up,
given coffee to drink and work to occupy her during the day. Now, as Miss Pleasing Joy released her hand and nudged open the
door, she was reminded that she was just eleven and hadn’t even completed the fifth grade.

The office was long but hardly wider than the sofa at the far end, where the Father sat prying open a pistachio shell with
his thumbnails. The girl gave only a passing glance to the angel working as the great man’s secretary who was sitting in a
chair beside him, her face turned down while she scribbled in a notepad. The room was furnished simply, though with lush accents:
red velvet drapes covered the window behind the sofa; red flowers, like the paw prints of small dogs, filled the wallpaper;
the single painting in the room was of the Father sporting a halo. In person, he glowed as though he were made of parquet
like the floor and had spent the morning rubbing oil into his skin and buffing himself with a soft cloth.

He dusted his fingertips together, cleared his throat, and in a quiet voice that managed to sound shrill, he said, “You have
consorted with a member of the Angelic race.” He stared at her as he had that day she’d first heard him speak, withering her
with his fierce divinity, and then reached for another pistachio.

It was during this pause, while he raked his fingers through the bowl of nuts, that the girl looked to the seated angel for
help. The angel named Miss Love Dove lifted her eyes and smiled back, her soul so chock-full of happiness that it was clear
the serene expression on her face would never change, not even if someone poked her with a pin, not even if someone whipped
her with a belt, beating her mercilessly, turning that soft, sweet-smelling skin to pulp.

“Mama!” cried the girl, feeling as though she’d suddenly been turned inside out and given a violent shake. But her mama just
looked down at the notepad in her lap and smiled that smile that said
I got everything I’ll ever need locked for safekeeping in this old heart of mine.

“You are limited in your conception of the universal,” the great man continued, but the girl interrupted, begging, “Mama,
say something!” Mama went on scribbling shorthand, and His Holiness carefully selected another pistachio. “Therefore you cannot
see me as I am.”

“It’s me, Mama! Your own Sheebie!” the girl pleaded, forgetting that her mama had never known her as Queen Sheebie.

“And you have pursued what is forbidden”

“Mama!”

“Defying me”

“Acting stone-cold”

“God Almighty”

“like you don’t care about nothing”

“at the same time that you partake of our bounty”

“lessin you crazy”

“seeking refuge amongst us”

“course you ain’t crazy!”

“and will remain welcome”

“You just forgetful!”

“as long as you believe”

“...All mixed up...”

“in my omnipotence.”

The Father bent his right forefinger in a gesture to signal that the meeting was over. Miss Love Dove marked it with an emphatic
period and smiled at her daughter. Miss Pleasing Joy took the girl’s hand. The girl felt herself being tugged backward, and
though she didn’t resist, she remained facing the front of the room, trying one last time to compel recognition.

“Mama, you know Granny’s gone.” Not a flinch. “Dead, Mama!”

And that was it. Before the girl could say another word, she’d been pulled back into the waiting room and the door to the
office had snapped shut, apparently of its own accord. The meeting had lasted for less than one minute. Efficiency, like abstinence,
kept the empire functioning smoothly.

And how efficient the girl proved to be, startling herself with her decisiveness as she left the waiting room, walked down
the hall, and went out the front door into the street, not stopping until she’d reached Rexall’s and then only briefly to
orient herself, for during her three months at the kingdom she hadn’t ventured outside, there had been no reason to, what
with all the activity going on inside and winter souring the streets.

It was snowing, but she hardly noticed. The snow fell in a fine, wet mist, veiling her hair with silver beads and melting
on the sidewalk, making the concrete shimmer. At first the echo of her voice drove her on—
your own Sheebie, your own Sheebie
—but after a few minutes she stopped listening, and her mind filled up with the knowledge of her body’s discomfort. It was
snowing, and the snow felt fiery hot against her face. It was snowing, soaking her thin white blouse, turning the cotton to
ice. It had always been snowing. It would never stop snowing. Queen Sheebie was afraid of snow and would do anything to escape
it. Just about anything, except go back to the kingdom. Anything else.