One night at Rehoboth, New Mexico, I listened to a son of long-ago missionaries tell me of his anger at his parents for what they'd done to him (again, a long story). We were staying up late because we were on guard duty--it was a youth retreat and both of us were youth group leaders from Phoenix, Arizona, who'd come with our church kids to the reservation.
It was an unforgettable night for me because he told me things I really wouldn't have understood without him. He said it took him many years to come to terms and make peace with his parents. His sister--I asked him about her--she still hadn't, he told me.
So the historical background of the story includes missionaries on the Native reservations. In my short story, both parents have passed away, but their daughter--like my friend's sister--was holding out. Bea is that rebel, the one far away from the fold. She's refinishing an old oak table, the one her parents kept in their dining room for just about all of their married lives. Her daughter wanted to keep it--well, discover for yourselves in "Prayer for the Dead."
The story will run 'till Christmas.
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She opened the side door so the fumes from the stripper would escape the garage to the cold darkness. Just above the fence between the lots, reflections from Christmas lights at most every home down the block glanced off the shiny tops of two cars parked next door.
She tugged the exercise bike off to the side, in front of the washer and dryer, and laid newspapers down over the floor where she'd planned to do the work. She'd spent an hour before supper redoing a seam on Myron's Santa suit, where somehow last year, his elbows up, he'd jerked out the stitches again, creating a wide gap that yawned open to his T-shirt the minute he crossed his arms. "You can't wear it this way," she'd told him. "You're silly enough doing this every year, but I won't have you leaving here all torn up--even if that's the way you come back."
"As if anyone cares," he'd told her. "They're not checking my seams, Tootie. This is Christmas Eve."
"Just the same," she'd said, "take it off and let me fix it. I don't want my husband looking like something from St. Vincent De Paul."
Eight stops he'd make this year. At each of his employees' houses he'd drop in, not unexpectedly, with a bonus turkey and a little stray cash, a Christmas cowboy in a thick white beard. The life of the party. Always. And every place he'd go, he'd have a drink. Or two.
"And don’t come home sloppy,” she’d tell him. “You’re the only Santa Claus I know that's likely to fall into a fireplace without going down a chimney."
"Where's your holiday spirit?" he'd said.
"You're my holiday spirit," she told him, taking his last kiss on the lips before he left.
Her son Frank lived in Denver--her son by Shorty Toledo, the Hopi she'd never married. Frank showed up once or twice a year if he needed money, or phoned when he got in trouble. Otherwise, she never saw him. The first time he'd stood before a juvenile judge, a man whose mustache swirled down almost to a goatee, he'd been given a slap on the wrist for breaking into vacant houses. She'd wondered whether his getting off easily was really best for a kid who had only ever been a problem. She couldn't help thinking there was a kind of parental justice going on with Frank.
Every Christmas her father used to say that when Jesus would come to earth again he'd feel at home on the reservation because the desert would remind him of the Holy Land. Then Dad would close the Bible, having read Luke 2 once more. "Bethlehem probably looks just like Split Rock," he'd say, the town where Beatrice Van Kley spent sixteen years, every school year of her life, and a place she never considered holy at all.
She opened the side door so the fumes from the stripper would escape the garage to the cold darkness. Just above the fence between the lots, reflections from Christmas lights at most every home down the block glanced off the shiny tops of two cars parked next door.
She tugged the exercise bike off to the side, in front of the washer and dryer, and laid newspapers down over the floor where she'd planned to do the work. She'd spent an hour before supper redoing a seam on Myron's Santa suit, where somehow last year, his elbows up, he'd jerked out the stitches again, creating a wide gap that yawned open to his T-shirt the minute he crossed his arms. "You can't wear it this way," she'd told him. "You're silly enough doing this every year, but I won't have you leaving here all torn up--even if that's the way you come back."
"As if anyone cares," he'd told her. "They're not checking my seams, Tootie. This is Christmas Eve."
"Just the same," she'd said, "take it off and let me fix it. I don't want my husband looking like something from St. Vincent De Paul."
Eight stops he'd make this year. At each of his employees' houses he'd drop in, not unexpectedly, with a bonus turkey and a little stray cash, a Christmas cowboy in a thick white beard. The life of the party. Always. And every place he'd go, he'd have a drink. Or two.
"And don’t come home sloppy,” she’d tell him. “You’re the only Santa Claus I know that's likely to fall into a fireplace without going down a chimney."
"Where's your holiday spirit?" he'd said.
"You're my holiday spirit," she told him, taking his last kiss on the lips before he left.
Her son Frank lived in Denver--her son by Shorty Toledo, the Hopi she'd never married. Frank showed up once or twice a year if he needed money, or phoned when he got in trouble. Otherwise, she never saw him. The first time he'd stood before a juvenile judge, a man whose mustache swirled down almost to a goatee, he'd been given a slap on the wrist for breaking into vacant houses. She'd wondered whether his getting off easily was really best for a kid who had only ever been a problem. She couldn't help thinking there was a kind of parental justice going on with Frank.
She'd married Myron Burnett, part Apache but not much Indian, five years later, in 1951, at a JP just across the Nevada border, and not at all on a whim.
She rolled the table over to the newspapers from the spot where daughter Char had left it. "We'll pay you, Mom--that's not it. We're not looking for a gift," Charlotte had said. "It's just that you do such a nice job."
She wasn't so foolish as to miss the irony: Beatrice Van Kley lifting linoleum off her parents' table, stripping it down, then anointing it with a new stain sharp enough to bring life back to grain no one had ever seen. Char had picked it up from her uncle Peter when he came back from the reservation pulling a trailer full of things he said were worth more to him than what he could get at auction. Her brother had buried their father in the cemetery Dad, Reverend Van, always considered half-pagan, decorated as it was with food offerings honoring the dead, sandwiches left open in Saran Wrap, paper cups half full of Coke, toys, soccer balls.
Char said she wanted the table. She had begun to care about things like that, about missionary grandparents she'd never really known and a story Bea thought much better left to unwritten history.
Years ago, her mother had covered her kitchen table with a heavy layer of linoleum that protected the new surface from wear. Both parents were dead and gone; they'd never appreciate the beauty they'd hidden away. Typical, she thought. Her mother was likely saving the finish for the second coming.
She pulled the edge of the linoleum high enough to slide a putty-knife underneath. Getting the linoleum off would be the worst job. It would tear off in shards and what she couldn't rip she'd have to inch off slowly. When the phone rang, she waded through gutter spouts Myron left around the garage and took the receiver from the wall.
She rolled the table over to the newspapers from the spot where daughter Char had left it. "We'll pay you, Mom--that's not it. We're not looking for a gift," Charlotte had said. "It's just that you do such a nice job."
She wasn't so foolish as to miss the irony: Beatrice Van Kley lifting linoleum off her parents' table, stripping it down, then anointing it with a new stain sharp enough to bring life back to grain no one had ever seen. Char had picked it up from her uncle Peter when he came back from the reservation pulling a trailer full of things he said were worth more to him than what he could get at auction. Her brother had buried their father in the cemetery Dad, Reverend Van, always considered half-pagan, decorated as it was with food offerings honoring the dead, sandwiches left open in Saran Wrap, paper cups half full of Coke, toys, soccer balls.
Char said she wanted the table. She had begun to care about things like that, about missionary grandparents she'd never really known and a story Bea thought much better left to unwritten history.
Years ago, her mother had covered her kitchen table with a heavy layer of linoleum that protected the new surface from wear. Both parents were dead and gone; they'd never appreciate the beauty they'd hidden away. Typical, she thought. Her mother was likely saving the finish for the second coming.
She pulled the edge of the linoleum high enough to slide a putty-knife underneath. Getting the linoleum off would be the worst job. It would tear off in shards and what she couldn't rip she'd have to inch off slowly. When the phone rang, she waded through gutter spouts Myron left around the garage and took the receiver from the wall.
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Tomorrow: A phone call from her daughter leads into a further exploration of Bea's fractured parental relationships and her life these days.
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