CALVARY
Sara sits in the same pew she did a few years ago, when she begged God to not carry the life now sitting beside her. Her prayers weren’t answered then and she doubts they’ll be answered now. The little boy with her squirms. He doesn’t want to be held, and she doesn’t want to hold him, but he makes too much noise when he roams free. Making noise that strips away the last of her patience. All the little boy is good for is getting on her few good nerves and noise. Then he looks at her and smiles, and for the briefest moment, she smiles back. Then she remembers how he came to be and she stops smiling. Happiness isn’t normal for her. Pain is normal, heartache is normal. A black hole of regret and loss is normal.
Not happy.
Sara found it once, found happy, in the last place she thought it’d be—Tennessee. Sara hated Memphis at first and then she met Jonas and he was good and kind, but good and kind people always die before their time.
It was true for her Mom. It was true for Jonas.
She ached for him. Jonas made her see love was possible, to be free was a choice and to love her son was so much easier than she believed. Sara found the things she suffered in Chicago floated away. She cooked at Ms. Lennie Mae’s boardinghouse, and people loved her pineapple upside-down cake! She found her laugh was high-pitched and she would snort if Jonas did a silly little dance. Her boy would mimic Jonas and try to dance too, and she’d double over in laughter, so happy. Jonas said her laugh was contagious.
And in the deep black of the Tennessee night where the moon hung in the sky big and wide with alabaster glow, and the stars shimmered, she and Jonas would sit on the porch. He’d speak on all the injustices he saw blacks suffer not just in the South, but all over, and how he would help with the latest voting drive, how education would be the key equal to treatment in the world. Sara would listen, but she knew suffering, and being on a quiet porch with someone she loved was the furthest thing from suffering she knew.
But happy doesn’t last, and good and kind people die before their time. First her mother. Then Jonas.
Not Sara.
She wasn’t good or kind. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a bottle of cheap whiskey and takes two strong sips, and she holds the boy tight, but he’s stopped squirming. He’s asleep.
Sara knows she isn’t worth loving. People who love her die. She won’t let that happen to the boy. She’ll make sure he doesn’t love her. Her love is poison. She’ll make him hate her. That’s the only way she knows how to love him, to prepare him for the life he’ll lead which will be hard and bad and if they’re both lucky, brief.