Ordinary Light A Memoir (N) Read Online Free PDF

had been cut and laid out so that the whole thing looked like a huge wriggling serpent with two big black olives for eyes and a mouth propped open as if about to strike. Everyone in my kindergarten class was thrilled, except for one girl who exploded into loud sobs that didn’t subside even after my mother knelt down and explained to her how the sandwich was made. There were cookies in the shape of pumpkins and a punchbowl of 7Up in which floated a whole half gallon of orange sherbet. I was so proud that my mother had thought of everything—she’d even rigged the punchbowl with dryice, so it seemed to fume like a witch’s cauldron. Yet I was confused, too. It all seemed so scary, so real, yet she’d made it clear that none of this Halloween stuff met with her actual approval. Was it for me? Was it a way of telling me she understood that I understood and that we could do this for fun, without believing any of it and without fear that it bothered God? Or was she sad inside from all of it, sad in the way God would have been sad about the smoke and the snakes and all the ghoulish to-do? With my eyes, I kept trying to ask her what was going on, why she had given in so wholeheartedly to the spooky affair, but she was too busy making sure everyone had gotten enough to eat and drink.
    After lunch, we lined up at the apple-bobbing basin. I stood behind Jimmy Higgins, who, when it was his turn to go under, splashed around like a cat someone had tossed into a well. Even after he came up for air, he was still slobbering, and a thick trail of yellow mucous slithered out from one of his nostrils (it took a moment before he noticed and sucked it back up into his head). Watching Jimmy had made me want to forfeit my turn, but backing out would have given credence to my mother’s other admonitions, both uttered and implied. So I put on the plastic smock and stood peering into the cloudy water. I closed my eyes before descending into the murk. It was unpleasant and cold, and the apples shied away like darting fish. I’d been blowing bubbles out through my nose so as not to choke down there, but there came a time when I ran out of air. I opened my mouth, though I knew in my heart of hearts that it wouldn’t land me an apple. It didn’t. Instead, water rushed down my throat. When I came up, I tried not to look as punished as I felt, but I couldn’t help sputtering. Someone came at me with an already-wet towel, untying the plastic apron and handing it to the next child in line. A long, dark hairthat was not my own stuck to my tongue. Finally, after so much searching and waiting, my mother’s eyes at last met mine, only now I was in no mind to reassert my question or risk reading I told you so in her gaze. I went and stood beside her, not looking up, only leaning my head into her side, watching as the number of children with dry hair and clothes dwindled down to none.
    “The party was so nice,” I beamed on the ride home. A popcorn ball and a caramel apple had long since taken my mind off the indignities of the bobbing pool. “I didn’t know you knew how to do all that, Mommy.” And watching her watch the road for the few blocks it took to get back to our house—watching her hands calm yet firm upon the wheel and the way she looked down at me from time to time, letting me smile up into her face and returning the smile with real warmth, with love I could see and feel—I could tell that no matter what she believed in, right at that very moment she and I were alone together, Kathy and Tracy, just our two souls in the car moving surely toward home, full and intact with something bigger and more real than any of the questions or beliefs we might struggle to fit into words. I knew, just at that very moment, that she was glad in the way every mother who makes her child happy is glad.
    Before dinner, my mother sat down to finish stitching up my costume. It wasn’t merely a sheet into which eyeholes had been cut but a two-piece affair with