Warm Mississippi afternoons are what six-year-olds live for. I sat on the front porch swing, staring off into space, and an ant crawled across my bare toe. “Momma says you have to pick up your stuff,” my sister spoke up and I bit back a growl. I just ignored her, and set the swing to movement, the dirty bottoms of my feet slipping against the wooden boards of the porch with a soft swish like an old straw broom. “What’re you looking at?” I shot her a dirty look. She didn’t take hints very well.
“That radio tower.” I nodded my head in the direction of it, across the way, in the middle of a corn field.
“That’s stupid,” she scoffed, tossing her thick blonde hair behind her and eyeing me with distaste. “Why are you looking at a dumb ole radio tower?”
I took a deep breath and swirled my tongue around the inside of my mouth, tasting the slight taste of peppermint from the stick of gum my daddy had given me that morning. “Because it’s God.” She didn’t say anything, and I just kept my eyes on the tower, swinging back and forth, one hand wrapped around the metal chain that held the swing off of the ground.
“The tower is God?” she asked, her voice full of incredulity that made me want to slap her silly. She sat down beside me, halting the movements of the swing, and I caught a glint in her eye. She lived for ruining things for me.
“Yes,” I answered simply, glancing down and picking at a thread that had come loose from the hem on my shorts.
“Why do you say that?” She looked at the tower and back at me and I grinned, though I think it was a mean grin.
“Because it’s the truth.”
“You’re such a dumb kid.” She set the swing to movement again and I ground my heels into the floor to keep it from moving. “The tower is not God.”
“Yes it is. Billy told me yesterday that Father Thomas told him that, and Father Thomas wouldn’t lie.”
I could see Elizabeth digesting this, considering whether or not she believed me. I didn’t care whether she did or not. I just stood up and stalked away, trotting down the steps and lying down in the front yard, my eyes still on the tower. I could feel God’s gaze on me, and it made my skin tingle.
************************************************************************
That night, I swung my bare feet back and forth and my heels hit the chair with a thump with every backward swing. It coupled with the splish-splash sizzle of rain on the tin roof, as my mother wiped off the counter after finishing the dishes. The windows were coated with a thick purplish hue and not the ordinary reds and oranges of the setting sun. The air felt thick, and I took a deep breath, chewing on it. I perched in the kitchen chair as my mother brought me a pot of freshly boiled eggs, and held my breath as she placed one gingerly on my teaspoon, my wrist wobbling slightly from trying to hold it still. As I lowered it into the fuscia dye, I caught my lip between my teeth and concentrated, and my sister spoke up behind me. “You put them in the wrong order.” But what she really meant to say was, “You never do anything right.”
“Now Elizabeth, it doesn’t really matter,” I heard my mother say, but I was barely aware, more interested in the pink that swirled over the top of the egg like some enchanting spell I had cast. Elizabeth reached over my shoulder and grabbed the cup in the middle, full of red dye, and picked it out of the line. She didn’t grab it by the handle, and the surface must have been slippery, for the next thing I knew, it fell with a distinct clatter to the table and rolled off and onto the floor, smashing into a gazillion pieces. For what seemed like forever, I just sat there. I heard the thunder in the distance, a low rumble like our dog Borimir when he gets mad, and I felt the dye trickle down my stomach to pool at the elastic waistband of my shorts. After a split second, I stood up abruptly, the chair clattering behind me in a violent manner. Elizabeth sprang back and I followed. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” I pummeled her with my fists, pounding over and over again into her stomach. I was much smaller, and she could have easily taken me, but she didn’t fight back. I was crying, so loudly that I couldn’t breathe, and I hit her again and again, violent sobs wracking my body. Red dye splattered all over her, covering her pretty white tank top, and I clenched my teeth in my fury, against my crying. My mother grabbed me about the waist and pulled me off of her and I struggled, flailing arms and legs, my tears trailing down my cheeks and mixing with the dye so it looked pink. She handed me to my father and he blocked the door to the den, taking me inside, away from them, as he held me tightly. I fought in my frenzy, sinking my teeth into the blue chambray of his shoulder. “I hate her,” I cried weakly as he sat me down, holding my shoulders firmly. Spots of red dye had settled onto his shirt, forming little scarlet pock marks. I wondered if that was what blood looked like. I looked away from him, out the window, and I saw the radio tower in the field. In a flash of brilliant light, lighting struck it, and it sparked and flared. One, two, three seconds, I counted. Four, five, six. It didn’t come back on. “Nooo!” I cried, jerking away from my father and running as fast as I could to the front door and out. I slipped on the wet wood of the front porch and tripped down the steps, falling to my knees in the gravel of the driveway. I felt the rocks cut into my bare knees, and I sobbed. As I struggled to my feet, I couldn’t tell what was dye and what was blood, what was rain and what were tears. My father had followed and he grabbed me, holding me tight, and I think he was crying too. “It’ll be alright,” he whispered into my hair. But there was nothing he could say to make it better. God was dead.
