35

As soon as Joe walked into the bedroom, he knew something was wrong. “How long have you been sitting on the bed like that?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

He moved into the closet and hung up his suit jacket. “Are you okay?”

“Not really. I’m stressed. Really stressed.”

He had been about to hang up his tie, but came and sat next to me instead. “Is it the house stuff?”

I shook my head no, trying to blink away the stinging feeling in my eyes.

“Is it the decision about the law firm?”

I let out a quick and weak, “No!”

“Oh, the pregnancy? Medical bills and stuff?”

Another negative.

“Then what is it?”

“I think God just answered a whole bunch of my prayers!” I said.

Joe furrowed his brow, confused. “And you’re upset about this?”

This time I nodded in the affirmative.

“Well. Okay. That is definitely a problem that only you would have.” I was pretty sure Joe was stifling a laugh, but he hid it well. “Is there anything I can do?”

I sniffed and dried my eyes. “No. I’m fine. I don’t really want to talk about it. I just need to get some air.”

Desperate for privacy, I grabbed my Bible, slipped on my shoes, and headed outside. I noticed that the picture of my grandparents and little Tommy had been righted, and I placed it facedown again.

For the first time in weeks, I felt heat on my skin when I walked in the sun. It was a warm February day, the beginning of Texas spring, and the afternoon was noticeably brighter than it had been in recent weeks. Behind the bank of mailboxes at the center of my mom’s street was a small nature preserve, about the size of two house lots, strewn with boulder-sized rocks. I took a seat on one of these jagged nature-chairs, its height making me sit in an awkward half-standing position. I opened my Bible to the page I’d been reading over and over ever since the call from my dad, placing my hand over it so it wouldn’t be blown by the breeze.

I read of how the women sent word to Jesus, saying, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” By the time he arrived in Bethany, his friend Lazarus was dead; he’d been in the tomb for four days. Everyone was mourning and crying, and Jesus himself was moved to tears.

Jesus went to the tomb and told the dead man’s friends and sisters to remove the stone that blocked it. They protested that it was going to smell, but they did it anyway. And Jesus called, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man awoke, still wrapped in burial linens.

I closed the book and wondered how I was supposed to believe that any of this ever happened—that any answered prayer was an act of God and not just beneficent coincidence—when it was so infuriatingly inconsistent. If God was the one behind the thirty-dollar co-pay and the house and the refrigerator and the furnishings, that was great for me, but what about the woman in Guatemala who didn’t have access to the medicine she needed at any price? What about the mother in the Congo who did not have food, let alone a refrigerator?

I thought of the moment Lazarus awoke from the dead, and imagined the ecstasy that must have overtaken him when he saw the sunlight begin to filter in as the rock slid away from his tomb. What a beautiful moment it must have been for him to step from the dank cave and realize that he was alive again. I clenched my teeth to control my emotions when I thought: And wouldn’t that have been nice for Tommy, too.

If Jesus could run up and reverse a friend’s death, if he could send me lawn mowers and coffee tables, where was he while my grandmother’s first baby, my uncle, was trapped in a burning car?

I jumped off the rock. If there weren’t a lady checking her mail just a few yards away, I would have kicked the boulder with frustration. Instead I stood rigid, clutching my Bible in front of my chest, holding it so tightly that my knuckles turned white (which was, hopefully, less weird).

I felt ungrateful for not thanking God for what he’d given me. But the moment I permitted even a whiff of gratitude, I felt like an egomaniacal, spoiled yuppie for assuming that God had nothing better to do than give middle-class families nice things to make their lives a little more cozy. The old atheist in me sneered at the whole thing, saying that God didn’t even exist and I’d finally sunk to the level of religious people who attributed coincidences to fairy figures. And my practical side screamed that this was all moot and the real question was what we were going to do about the law firm.

With the decision about whether to shut down the firm growing closer by the minute, it was time for me to figure out what I wanted out of life. I knew that it was intellectually dishonest to say that I believed in God but wanted to spend all my time and energy chasing money and houses. But money and houses were safe. Parties were at least fun, even if they didn’t add deep meaning to your life. God was a different story.

I had become convinced that God exists and that he became man as Jesus. I had even started to think of myself as a Christian, and knew that it was more than likely that Joe and I would both become Catholic when we were done with RCIA. And now that thought terrified me, because I realized that I believed in a God who answered some people’s prayers but not the prayers of others.

My mom’s figure emerged from the house, looked around, and disappeared back inside. Then Joe. They must have been looking for me because it was time to take Irma home. I shoved the Bible into my back pocket and stalked back to the house.

* * *

Irma finished a story about one of the Guadalupanas at Saint William that sounded like something out of a sitcom. She was still laughing and wiping her eyes, when she noticed I wasn’t laughing. I flattened my lips in imitation of a smile, but it came off like I was doing an impression of a happy robot.

Even though I was watching the road, I could sense her gaze. “Que pasa, Jenny?” She and her sisters always pronounced my name like JAY-nee, and I’d come to associate the sound of my name said that way with tenderness and love.

I glanced over to flash another robot-smile and happened to notice her hands, folded in her lap, which bore the calluses of a life of toil. I remembered the stories I’d heard about her childhood in Mexico. Her father was murdered, which plunged her mother and the seven children into a level of poverty not known in the United States. The children did not have beds; they slept on a dirt floor. Their main source of food was the rotting fruit that the vendors couldn’t sell. Every now and then their mother could get a piece of cheese that could fit into the palm of her hand, and she and all the children would split it as a special treat. They owned no toys, other than those they dug out of the local landfill.

“Irma?” I asked, my voice shaking, hoping I could cover this in Spanish. “Was your mother angry at God?”

She seemed shocked and maybe even unsure she’d heard the question correctly. “Oh, no, no. No, my mother loved God,” she said, the tone of her voice exuding an unseen light that filled the darkened car. “Every week we went down to the church to clean it, and she loved it so much, being there, making it look nice.”

I thought about her story for a moment. Then I asked, “Did she ever think that God didn’t answer her prayers?”

“No, because he did answer her prayers!” she said.

“Your mother thought God answered her prayers?” I rewound what she’d just said in case I’d misunderstood the Spanish.

Irma nodded empathically. She recounted a story, through the stops and starts of my interrupting to clarify terms, of a time when none of the children had blankets. They all slept on the floor—no beds, no pillows, nothing to cover themselves. Then one day a local bar owner was re-covering his pool tables, and he gave Irma’s mother the scraps of old felt for her children to use as blankets.

“The felt?” Now I was the one who thought we had a misunderstanding. “The felt was the answered prayer?”

“Sí, Jenny, sí,” she said. “God always provides.”

I watched the glowing lane lines shoot under the car as I processed what she had just said. Cobbling together words from my limited vocabulary, I started talking, trying to convey what was troubling me. “God has made life easier for me right now. It’s good. But why isn’t life easy for everyone?”

She wasn’t flustered by the question. “Life is hard. Sometimes things will be good. But often they won’t.” She chuckled at the last sentence, with a certain amusement at life that carried the protection of cynicism, but had all the vulnerability of hope. “Things are easy now, maybe they won’t be tomorrow. We don’t know. But it’s all okay if you have God.”

She hadn’t understood my question. Or I didn’t understand her answer. Or something. I tried again. “If the children were cold, wouldn’t thicker blankets be a better answered prayer?”

I turned to her just as a gentle smile warmed her entire face. “It wasn’t only for the cold. The answered prayer was that they knew God was there.”