16

Thirty-one years before, in order to stop the press from hounding us, one of my father’s defense attorneys rented an apartment under a fake name. It was a two-bedroom unit buried in the basement of a brick building. The rooms remained in shadow all day, but Mama still shut the curtains. “Let’s keep all those evil thoughts outside,” she said.

“It’s a little late for that,” Polly said.

I was eight years old but still knew that Pop had done something terrible. We couldn’t speak with him and Mama wouldn’t even tell us where he was. At night, we were allowed to walk outside. Mama and Polly were so short and thin that the streetlights made our silhouettes look like triplets. We’d trudge past a Sun-Times or a Chicago Tribune in a coin machine and Pop’s picture would stare out from the front page. He looked huge, bigger and broader than the policemen who stood beside him. He seemed to be laughing at something I couldn’t see. Mama wouldn’t let me get close enough to make out more than the photo and the headlines. Once, THIRTEEN covered the top of the front page. Thirteen—my sister’s age, the number of hearts in a deck of cards, twelve disciples plus Judas, the unlucky number thirteen. “Thirteen what?” I asked. That just made Mama’s lips tremble and Polly’s hands fist up. “Thirteen” was too dangerous to say out loud.

Every afternoon I slid a chair along the apartment’s tiled floor, stood on it, and peeked through a crack in the curtains over the window. I counted the kids my age as they passed the gnarled oaks outside. They rode their bikes or scraped along the walk on skateboards. A basketball bounced forty-six times from one end of the block to the other. I couldn’t say a word to them. If I played with those children, I might let my name slip. Someone might recognize me. Then the dreaded reporters would swoop onto our doorstep and aim their cameras at us. The reporters were the worst at spreading false beliefs, Mama said. If they found us, we’d have to move again. “It’s like Anne Frank and her family,” Polly said.

During our two weeks in that apartment, Polly and I didn’t attend school. Someone had given Mama a story-problem book and, for an hour each day, I resolved a part of the world into numbers. Then I’d think about my dog Lucky and where she might be. I’d wonder if she missed me. In the afternoons, Polly and I lay on the floor in front of a dilapidated TV on a rickety stand. We watched cartoons and game shows and even episodes of Family Ties and Highway to Heaven. Mama made sure the Chicago news never reached us, even as she cooked macaroni or Oscar Mayer hotdogs in the little kitchen. We could be in the middle of a show, and if a bulletin mentioned Pop, she’d turn off the set.

One afternoon Mama made us sit down at the little kitchen table and lock hands. We recited the Lord’s Prayer and then Mary Baker Eddy’s Scientific Statement of Being.

“Don’t tell me how Pop is the image and likeness of God,” Polly said.

I expected to see Mama’s explaining smile, the smile that said she was more patient than we were and we might as well stop arguing. But she just blinked and wiped her eyes with her hand.

“What did he do?” I asked.

“He’s a monster,” Polly said. “Our father is a monster.”

“He mistook his animal instincts for Truth,” Mama said.

As usual, her explanation didn’t explain anything. “What did he do?” I shouted.

Even Polly wouldn’t tell me. Mama just repeated what she’d been saying every day. “The real part of Pop reflects God. That’s the part that loves you, Willy. The other part, the false part, is where his sick thoughts live.”

“That’s mortal mind,” I said.

Mama smiled, but her lips quivered. “If you don’t believe in it, mortal mind will disappear,” she said.

“Is ‘thirteen’ part of mortal mind?” I asked.

Mama’s whole body seemed to teeter on the chair. I thought her crooked teeth would bite right through her lip. Polly must have seen it too because she stopped arguing. We both knew that any negative thought could push Mama over and make her sick. We had to hold our doubts and questions inside ourselves. Secrets to keep each other safe.

Each afternoon, while Polly and I watched TV, Mama set down a bottle of Diet Coke on the kitchen table. Good Christian Scientists didn’t drink coffee or alcohol, but Mama didn’t know of any commandment against Diet Coke. She drank it all day long, especially while she pored over the Bible and the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Sometimes she crooked the black telephone receiver on her shoulder and talked with Betty Treeble, the practitioner, in her low, holy voice. But even a professional Christian Science healer like Betty couldn’t heal our family. During one of those phone calls, Polly closed the bathroom door and snipped off her hair.

When Mama saw Polly, her shoulders slumped and her eyes squinted up. “You had nothing to do with this, Polly. You didn’t know.”

“Tell that to those dead women,” my sister said.

I couldn’t ask about Pop; such talk might open us up to the power of illness. But at night, corrupting thoughts rampaged through me. Maybe Pop had killed my third-grade teacher, Miss Seckel. Or the nice cashier at Jewel Foods. Pop, who’d hoisted me on his shoulders and called me Tex, who got down on his hands and knees to wrestle or play with toy soldiers. Once he pretended to fight my dog Lucky. He wrenched her leg until her whines made me want to cry. “I didn’t mean to,” he said. “Honest, Tex, I didn’t.” I believed him.

Years later Polly told me her own secret. She also couldn’t sleep during the lonely two weeks inside that apartment. Late each night she tiptoed out of the little room we shared. She padded over the tiled floors and knelt in front of the TV. Turning it away from Mama’s bedroom, she lowered the sound. I imagine how she leaned forward to rest her ear against the little speaker. That way no voices could escape to Mama’s room. She must have seen the news announcers. Their expressions would fill with revulsion as they described what our father had done to those thirteen women. Then Pop’s photo would brighten the screen as his acts seeped into her.

Each morning Mama saw her pale, bleary face and said, “Polly, you reject those thoughts. Look what those thoughts are doing to you.”

“That’s because I’m human,” Polly said. “At least one of us is.”

“Don’t listen to mortal mind,” I said. “It’ll make your asthma come back.”

Polly ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Mama sat down at the kitchen table and closed her eyes. I knew that she was reciting a silent prayer. When Polly opened the bathroom door, her wrist dripped blood. She clutched a pair of bloody scissors in her other hand.

Mama jumped up and rushed across the kitchen. She pulled the scissors out of Polly’s fingers. “What have you done?” she said. Drops of blood splattered against the floor. Mama grabbed a kitchen towel and pressed it against Polly’s wrist. She stroked her hair until the bleeding stopped. “God’s children don’t need to cut themselves,” she said.

Later that day Mama sat us down with a plate of sliced apple. While we chewed the sweet wedges, she leaned into Polly and told her how much she loved her.

“How could we love him?” Polly said.

Mama hugged her. Kissed the top of her head. “That’s the Godly part,” Mama said. “That’s the real part of him that you loved.”

“The other part was the real part,” Polly said.

Mama’s whole body stiffened. She pulled away from Polly. “Listen to me, young lady. You always have the choice about what’s true. Don’t you forget that.”

Polly’s eyes widened. She raised her bandaged wrist to her face. “Did you know?”

Mama slowly stood, her arms rigid, her face full of Truth. “Polly Kogan, you reject that thought. That thought is not part of you, do you hear me?”

I still hear Mama’s high, fluty voice telling Polly to push away her false thoughts—when Polly dyed her hair so it looked like purple yarn; when she used a doll’s leg as a barrette; when she shaved half her head and dyed a red lipstick kiss on the other side; or when she wore two different-colored shoes to school and made a bra from electrical cords. By then, she was cutting red spidery designs across her ankles and forearms. She hid those wounds from Mama with long shirts and pants. I kept her secret.

Beginning from that day, Mama refused to talk about Pop or even say his name. I knew that he’d killed thirteen women, but I had to find out more. One night, Polly and I snuck out while Mama slept. I pulled a newspaper from a garbage can and uncrumpled the pages to read the headline. HE CUT UP THEIR BODIES FOR PHOTOGRAPHS.

Polly held me. “Breathe,” she said.

A car passed by. The streetlight hummed through the night’s heat. The crickets chattered.

“But he’s Pop,” I said.

She rubbed my hair with her fingers, then the nape of my neck. “He’s not our father anymore,” she said.

I tried not to love him. But I couldn’t stop myself. When we left that apartment and returned to our trailer, I thought I heard his heavy footsteps just outside the door. “Pop!” I yelled and put my hand over my mouth. His big indentation was still in the cushion of the chair with burst springs, his woody smell just behind the door to Mama’s bedroom. When I was sure that no one could see me, I closed my eyes and breathed him in.