POPPY
Poppy says Jesus is the Son of God, and when I pray (which I don’t), I have to pray to the Son of God because that’s how prayers get to God. Poppy is my real dad. Dad is my adopted father.
I go to church when I visit Poppy, and I don’t understand the sermons. Poppy’s minister talks about Jesus the Son of God and his disciples in a serious way, and he talks about parables and says that it teaches us something. But the words don’t relate to anything I think about. Shouldn’t they? I think about God a lot. People say something had to create the universe, so there’s God. I wonder why nobody thinks to ask who created God, then. Doesn’t make sense. I ask Dad about it, and he says he believes in the Great Turtle but he’s teasing me. Mom says God is Nature — not a person — which makes a lot of sense.
Poppy is solemn quiet on Sundays, even when he makes biscuits and eggs for me and Margaret. I sit in the hard pew with them. He wears a suit. She wears a pretty dress. They go up to the front to drink communion wine. In Virginia, it is always sunny in the church, but I feel solemn, like I’ve done something wrong. Poppy sits in his suit in the hot vinyl seat in the van. He always has to clear a space for me in the van when I visit. I wonder if I’ve done something wrong when he clears the seat because he moves quickly. Maybe he’s mad at me because I don’t have his last name and Dad adopted me. I don’t know how to act around Poppy. He’s a carpenter, just like Jesus was. After church we pick up fried chicken and coleslaw.
How can there be a God, and is this the difference between me and Poppy? There’s something different inside him, who believes, and me and Mom, who can’t believe. It’s like a knife and I can’t see his thoughts and he won’t tell them to me. But if I have Poppy’s blood, shouldn’t I just know? Maybe Mom’s blood is different from Poppy’s blood, and that’s why she divorced him. I’m lonely with him. Maybe that’s why she divorced him, because she was lonely too. Maybe I can’t talk to Poppy because he’s too sad about Mom divorcing him. Maybe I can’t believe in God because I’m bad, and I think God is like Poppy, and I’m sad around Poppy. Poppy tells me things but he doesn’t talk with me, not like Mom and Dad do. Before I visit him I’m excited like it’s Christmas, but when he picks me up it’s like the day after Christmas and I feel deflated. I wonder what it was I expected.
“Becky, I want to talk to you,” Poppy says.
“What?”
“Hey, don’t be such a smart alec with me.”
“But I just said what? What’s the matter with that?”
“You’re still doing it. You just said ‘just.’ That’s talking back to me.You need to be respectful to me. Your whole attitude is bad.”
“OK, I’ll try.” I try to speak with respect and friendliness, but my stomach hurts and my eyes burn. The words don’t seem right. I don’t know what words are correct to say.
“Well, when I come home, I want you to run to me and hug me. I want some sort of acknowledgment.” It sounds like he’s going to cry, too.
That’s strange, I think. He doesn’t usually spend time with me. Aren’t dads supposed to be the ones who take care of the kids? I wait and wait for something special to happen that makes me happy and warm inside, like when I’m with my grandparents or Mom or Dad. Nothing happens. Maybe he doesn’t know how to act around kids because he’s not used to me.
“And you need to talk nice to Margaret. She said you’ve been talking back to her too.”
This is hugely bewildering. I had no idea Poppy and Margaret didn’t like the way I talked. Maybe that’s why he’s short with me all the time. I hurt his feelings and I didn’t even know it. I wasn’t a good daughter.
How could she think I was bad? Margaret was so nice. I even called her Mom. I even told everyone how happy I was to have four parents, and I was sincere about it. What have I done wrong? They don’t really know me, I think. I’ll show them how smart and good I am. I’ll clean every day before they get home and I’ll study Margaret’s medical books the rest of the time. I won’t be a little piggy, eating all the chips and candy from the cupboard. I’ll show them how adult I am.
I go down to the basement to my bedroom. I tear a poster I made off the wall and shred it. The drawing was stupid, a character from a book. I sniffle and cry to myself as I fall asleep. I can’t wait until I go home.
The next morning I wake up to the noise of Poppy and Margaret going off to work. I feel empty.
They like me, don’t they? They made this bedroom for me. But why was the bedroom in the basement? They could have cleared the office upstairs for me. Maybe they really don’t like me, but they felt it was proper for me to visit. I can’t think straight, but I just know it’s unfair, and I can’t say anything to make it better even though I have the best intentions.
I can’t cry anymore. I feel resigned to my new sober realizations. I wait for the sound of both cars to leave the driveway before I get up.
My stomach has no interest in breakfast, nor can I read anything. My books seem childish, and anyways, I can’t concentrate. I go out to the back lawn. It’s scorching hot. A plane of vision clarifies and I see hundreds of brown things jumping in the dead grass. I catch one. It’s a grasshopper or cricket.
I tear one of the legs off the cricket, and put it on the patio. The cricket struggles about in a circle. I don’t feel sorry for it, just curious. I find another cricket, and pull the opposite back leg. It struggles too.
I go back inside and find a medical book, Grey’s Anatomy. With the goal of memorization, I take some of Poppy’s computer paper and practice drawing the muscles and bones. I have all the main bones memorized before Poppy gets home.
Poppy pulls in the drive in the afternoon. I have butterflies in my stomach. I go up to the door as he comes in and I say, “Hi, Dad,” and hug him. Poppy acts like everything is normal and I always greet him at the door. It’s a little weird, but I’m relieved.
“Guess what I know, Dad?”
“Hm?”
“I know the bones of the body. This is my femur in my thigh, and down here are the tibia and fibula, and the cookie on my knee is the patella.”
“Your thigh bone connected from your knee bone, your knee bone connected from your leg bone,” Poppy sings. He walks into the kitchen with his groceries and puts them away, still singing the funny song.
I come to the door to hang out and watch him. He sings at me, he sings to the chicken he’s making, and he makes his voice alternately low and then fake high like a woman’s. “Them bones, them bones gonna walk around, them bones, them bones gonna walk around, them bones them bones gonna walk around, I hear the word of the Lord.”
He grabs a bag of chips off the fridge makes a quick pre-dinner sandwich, chips and white bread and bananas and peanut butter. He chews it with relish and bugs his eyes at me, and I laugh, and he offers me a bite.
Poppy makes cracker chicken and chicken gravy and rice, with (ugh) peas and carrots for dinner. I don’t like frozen vegetables but I find that if I mix the peas and carrots in with the rice and cover it with gravy, it tastes pretty good.