19.

FALL 1946

The baby didn’t think of itself as a baby. The baby didn’t think. The baby felt. The baby was all that was. The baby was the sky and the sea and the milk. The baby was the inside and the outside. It was a seamless whole, a smooth gleaming perfect world. The baby was the whole fucking thing. Then came a falling-out. The baby’s need was the Fall. Its need caused it to split in two, its need made it not whole anymore, incomplete. I am not whole until I have that thing. Put it in my mouth, put it in me. Its need made it cry. And now this. This new hurt. This new hurt was worse than need. This was need of a different order. A need to have something there that you wanted—that was bad enough, but this was a need to be free of something that was there that you did not want. This was a desire for Absence, for Darkness, for Nothingness. This was too complicated and new. I have only my voice and my anger, felt the baby, this righteous sense of injustice, this anger at God. The baby’s awareness of God was another Fall. Before that, the baby was God, but now there is another God. He is here. He is at my side. He walks with me and He talks with me. There He is. He looks scared. What kind of god is scared? He is speaking. Naming me. Making excuses, making wagers. Betting with the devil in my chest. Punishing me. For what? The baby didn’t know what it had done wrong. But I haven’t done wrong, felt the baby. Then I must be wrong, the baby reasoned. I myself am the Wrongness. That’s what God is saying to my face here. I am what’s wrong. All right. So that’s how it shall be. I accept my fate. But I will love Him anyway, love Him more for knowing I am bad. He alone knows me and pushes me away and fights the devil for me and holds me in the cold night. Thank you, Father.