Your Body is Changing (14 page)

Henry picked up the pads and little pencils and everything and put them all in the box where they belonged and waited for his mother to come get him but that night she forgot.

Come February Uncle Lipton had to go to Texas to be hydrated by professionals. A certain amount of whispering occurred as Henry was being dropped off at Duffy’s for an extended visit, and Henry couldn’t help but notice that Duffy’s whole family was there and acting loving. Henry felt stared at, especially after his mother drove away.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Duffy said to Henry. “Tonight we’re going to a ‘ritzy joint.’ People tell me it’s the ‘cat’s meow.’”

Aunt Dora and Vince laughed in a friendly and supportive manner and Henry felt nervous without knowing why.

“What’s that?” said Henry, pointing at something on the menu.

“That’s a baby cow raised in its own excrement,” said Aunt Dora.

“Tonight Henry can order anything he wants,” said Duffy.

“Well, I don’t want that,” said Henry.

“Get something with fennel in it,” said Aunt Dora. “It’s crunchy when prepared properly.”

“That sounds good,” said Henry.

“Listen to him, already developing a palate,” said Duffy. “Isn’t life amazing. I’d like to propose a toast to our amazing friend Henry. Henry’s mother isn’t able to keep him with her for the foreseeable future, but…”

“What?” said Henry.

“Let me finish my toast,” said Duffy. “Henry’s mother, for various personal and financial reasons which we cannot begin to pass judgment upon…”

“Let’s move on,” said Aunt Dora.

Duffy smiled and cleared his throat. He put down his glass of white wine then raised it again as if beginning afresh.

“Simply put, Henry’s with us now,” he said with a flourish.

“Hear, hear,” said Aunt Dora.

Vince, Duffy, and Aunt Dora clinked their glasses together. Henry looked down and blew bubbles through his straw into his Coca-Cola. His stomach felt like a bottomless elevator shaft.

“I want you to understand something, Henry,” said Duffy. “Your mother loves you very much. She just has to be in Texas for awhile now, possibly a long while. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you this. She has to find a job and a place to live and she just feels…Well, I guess she feels betrayed by the White House. Remember what I’ve told you about the state of healthcare in this country?”

“It’s the band of working people like my mother,” said Henry.

“Bane, not band. Bane. They mean two completely different... Weren’t you…I don’t even…It doesn’t matter. I’m so proud of you. You almost got it right. You know, Dora and I have never been able to…Well, what I’m trying to say is…This situation is just absolutely great for us. It’s just what this family needed. You know, Henry, a family isn’t just a mommy, a daddy, and baby makes three anymore. There can even be two mommies or two daddies. And the joy on Dora’s face when she introduced you to the concept of fennel…I simply don’t think there’s any greater joy for a woman of her age to have. Or a person of her age, I should say. And Henry, who knows how long you might have gone through your young life without knowing what fennel is? Think about that. We get an amazing opportunity to impart something real…to shape a…and anyway, you’re a part of that, Henry, so good for you. I just want to take this opportunity to say…” He almost started crying. Then he caught himself and raised his glass again. “To me.”

The waiter interrupted.

“We’re going to need a minute,” said Duffy.

After dinner they dropped off Vince at the mall so he could do whatever he wanted without adult supervision.

Henry lay in the back seat and watched the streetlights float by and it reminded him of his father, a man he didn’t even remember. He mysteriously recalled the exciting double bump and ka-chunk of driving over railroad tracks. Even the music made him think of something he couldn’t remember, the radio was playing soft, a country song about killing somebody on a cold, dark night under the town hall light.

“I have to admit I’m enjoying this in somewhat of a non-ironic way,” said Duffy to Aunt Dora, apparently referring to the music.

“Did you buy me from my mother?” said Henry.

Duffy turned down the radio all the way.

“What?”

“Did you buy me from my mother?”

“What a question. Yes, money exchanged hands but does that necessarily…It’s semantics!”

“No, it’s okay,” said Henry. “‘And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams…Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.’”

Duffy and Aunt Dora gave one another a look.

“I think you will find that people will tolerate your religion better if you don’t continually ram it down their throats,” Duffy said. “That’s one thing we’re going to work on.”

“I’m sorry,” said Henry. He sat up. “All I meant was, Joseph got sold into bondage for a purpose and I think I got sold unto you for a purpose.”

“You didn’t get…”

Henry leaned forward and put his hand on Duffy’s shoulder. He felt shameful and sinful for what he was about to say. It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but a sin of omission, which is when you let someone believe what he wants to believe.

“I’m looking forward to our trip to New York, Dad.”

Duffy swerved.

“It’s like you’re the Ishmeelites,” said Henry. “And New York is Egypt.”

“New York?” said Aunt Dora.

“I swear I have no idea where he…”

“On the fifteenth, when we’re going to see Brother Lampey. And he’s going to ride his one hundred and eighty mighty rams to New York City and you’re going to write a famous article about it for Esquire and I’m going to be your eyes and ears the whole way on top of the Ten Commandments.”

“Oh my! That. No, that was just a…I don’t know. A notion. Well, you see, Henry, now that our family is healing again, Dora and I are going to spend a couple of weeks in Belize. It’s going to be just me and Dora, you understand? For the healing. Maybe we can visit New York City one day, I’m not ruling it out, you understand. I’d like to take you to see some Jasper Johns paintings in person, wouldn’t that be ‘neat-o’? But it won’t be any time soon, I’m afraid.”

“But Brother Lampey is leaving on the fifteenth.”

“Henry, I’ve never been a big disciplinarian, but we can’t have everything precisely when we want it.”

“You bought me from my mother,” Henry said.

He sat back, slid down some, and cried.

When Vince returned home, smelling sweaty and weird, Henry was lying awake in the sleeping bag on the floor of the bedroom they were going to share.

Vince turned on the light and Henry threw his arm over his red, wrinkled eyes.

“What’s your major problem?” said Vince. He started rummaging through a drawer.

“Remember when your uncle said he was going to follow the Ten Commandments all the way to New York City and I could go with him?”

“No, but I believe it. He says crazy shit all the time. Like when I first moved in he said that me and him were going to build our own musical instruments from ‘found materials’ and be in some kind of punk band together. Then he said he was going to go down and get a cable access show for us, and he was going to build lifelike marionettes to star in it. One time he said that before he died he was going to see every animal in the dictionary in its natural habitat, in alphabetical order, even if it meant that he had to switch continents between every single animal, and then he was going to publish a sketchbook of his adventures. He just says shit. Oh yeah, we were going to build a robot that could do underground graffiti art. He was going to buy me a helicopter. I was like, ‘Helicopter lessons?’ and he was like, ‘No, a helicopter. You deserve one.’ That’s the last I heard of it. I think he should be diagnosed with something.”

“It’s not fair,” said Henry.

Vince found what he was looking for: a translucent orange cigarette lighter. He lit himself a cigarette, clicked off the bedroom light and landed forcefully on his bed.

“Nothing’s fair,” he said. “Look. He doesn’t even give a crap about me anymore. Ever since I found you in that sleeping bag…”

“We’re like Jacob and Esau,” said Henry.

“If you say so, bro.”

“I always felt bad for Esau, even though I know he was the bad guy. He sold his birthrights for a mess of pottage.”

“That sucks. What do you want me to do about it?”

“If you were going to run away from home, how would that work?” said Henry.

Duffy and Aunt Dora had flown off to Belize for healing, leaving Henry and Vince in the care of a damp, braided woman who smelled like a cross between the candle shop at the mall and a hamper.

Vince took care of the lying and stealing.

He told the Hippie that Henry went to a progressive school where they didn’t believe in grading, and that on Valentine’s Day, which was secretly an Earth Goddess rite dating back to the Druids, Henry’s whole class was leaving for a special kind of camp in Vermont, where at the end of two weeks, after careful preparation, they were going to sit around in a Circle of Love and levitate a silo to protest the War in Iraq. This elaborate lie somewhat baffled Henry but it sounded like a great idea for a field trip to the Hippie, who had to be dissuaded, in fact, from tagging along.

Vince also used his father’s credit card to purchase a bus ticket to Pineknot for Henry. The card had been given to him in case of emergency before his own forgotten parents had left for Venezuela or somewhere to monitor human rights violations.

This was how it came to pass that Henry found himself alone on the evening of February fourteenth, sleeping in the middle of the football field on Scarecrow Farm, with nothing but the tweed coat of Duffy’s mentor for a blanket, and this is how he came to be wakened on the fateful dawn by a man who could only have been Brother Lampey.

Henry remembered going to the circus and smelling the elephants. That was what Brother Lampey smelled like. An elephant was the behemoth referred to in the book of Job, as Henry had learned in science class. “Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron…” That was Brother Lampey.

“Rise up, rise up,” he said, the words like chimes, and Henry woke with his face pressed into the stiff crinkles of a black robe. Brother Lampey’s thin bones were bars of iron as he lifted Henry from the turf.

Brother Lampey was as tall as a basketball player, long as a bone in his long gown, with a sunken marble face and eyes like yellow lanterns way behind his beak, his hair turned black from the holy ointments anointing and plastering it against his long skull, his beard tied off in two equal braids, as spidery and pervasive as fungus on a tree, reaching all the way below his waist, almost to his knees, a beard that shone with a gray that was almost the swollen purple of a thunderhead. His lips were cracked and pink and his teeth were as sharp and yellow as the toenails on his skeletal bare feet. His pointed cheeks looked like they had been scrubbed with something harsh. He looked down at Henry. White morning mist crawled around their ankles.

“Who are you, child?” said Brother Lampey.

“My name is Henry Gill. God sent me to accompany you on your journey.” Brother Lampey did not seem surprised.

“Have you ever given a vitamin E pill to a ram?” he said.

“Sir?”

“It is supposed to keep their coats glossy and healthy. Do you think you could open the mouth of a mighty ram and convince him to swallow a pill?”

Brother Lampey did not wait for an answer. He started walking.

He marched toward the big opening marked HOME, to what Duffy had called the catacombs, to the darkness that Duffy had shuddered to mention as he chuckled out fumes of alcohol, to the place where nobody knew what went on. Henry was scared but he followed.

As they entered the tunnel, hot slimy balls of air, redolent of eggs and chlorine, rolled over them.

They walked under tiles a gray shade of green, lit with watery light. Presently they came to a stairwell, and Henry followed Brother Lampey down three flights of wide, flat concrete stairs. The air got cooler as they went lower and it smelled better, too, like a deluxe car wash. They came out in a vacant white hall with a dark maroon carpet. Brother Lampey led Henry to a door. He took out something that looked like a credit card and put it in a slot. A green light came on over the silver handle and Brother Lampey opened the door.

First I was in the normal world, Henry thought, and then I went into another world inside it, and then I went into a world inside that. There’s a world inside the world inside the world and I wonder if there’s a world inside that, and then a world inside that, and then forever and ever. I hope not.

“Take a seat.”

Brother Lampey sat at his desk and Henry took the chair across from him. It was like being in the guidance counselor’s office, except for the piles of old clothing and red-gold pine straw and the stacks of burlap bags and cords of wood and bundles of twigs and what appeared to be a flaccid parachute. In some ways it was even nicer than the guidance counselor’s office—Brother Lampey had a microwave oven and a TV. The sound was muted, but Brother Lampey laughed at something on the screen.

“Oh yes, it is the one where Wally believes he has a pug nose.”

The TV was behind Henry, so he had to twist around to see what Brother Lampey was talking about. It was an old black-and-white show.

“Wally buys a gadget that he believes will fix his pug nose. Ward attempts to assuage Wally’s feelings of inadequacy by telling him of a time when Ward, as a boy, felt compelled to tape down his large ears to keep them from sticking out. Beaver innocently inquires, ‘Gee, Dad, why didn’t it work?,’ thus implying that Ward’s ears have remained noticeably irregular.”