“Oh, they’re full of stories, ideas for sermons,” he said. “I clip newspapers. I clip magazines.” He grinned. “I’m a Yankee clipper.”
I spotted a file marked “Old Age.” Another huge one was marked “God.”
You have a file on God? I asked.
“Yes. Move that one down closer, if you don’t mind.”
I stood on my toes and reached for it, careful not to jostle the others. I placed it on a lower shelf.
“Nearer, my God, to thee,” he sang.
Finally, we sat down. I flipped open a pad. Years in journalism had ingrained the semaphore of interviewing, and he nodded and blinked, as if understanding that something more formal had begun. His chair was a low- backed model with casters that allowed him to roll to his desk or a cabinet. Mine was a thick green leather armchair. Too cushy. I kept sinking into it like a child.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
Yes, I lied.
“Want to eat something?”
No, thanks.
“Drink?”
I’m good.
“Good.”
Okay.
I hadn’t written down a first question. What would be the right first question? How do you begin to sum up a life? I glanced again at the file marked “God,” which, for some reason, intrigued me (what would be
Do you believe in God?
“Yes, I do.”
I scribbled that on my pad.
Do you ever speak to God?
“On a regular basis.”
What do you say?
“These days?” He sighed, then half-sang his answer. “These days I say, ‘God, I know I’m going to see you soon. And we’ll have some nice conversations. But meanwhile, God, if you’re gonna taaake me, take me already. And if you’re gonna leee-ave me here’”-he opened his hands and looked to the ceiling-“‘maybe give me the strength to do what should be done.’”
He dropped his hands. He shrugged. It was the first time I heard him speak of his mortality. And it suddenly hit me that this wasn’t just some speaking request I had agreed to; that every question I would ask this old man would add up to the one I didn’t have the courage to ask.
What should I say about you when you die?
“Ahh,” he sighed, glancing up again.
What? Did God answer you?
He smiled.
“Still waiting,” he said.
IT IS 1966…
…and my grandmother is visiting. We have finished dinner. Plates are being put away.
“It’s yahrzeit,” she tells my mother.
“In the cabinet,” my mother answers.
My grandmother is a short, stout woman. She goes to the cabinet, but at her height, the upper shelf is out of reach.
“Jump up there,” she tells me.
I jump.
“See that candle?”
On the top shelf is a little glass, filled with wax. A wick sticks up from the middle.
“This?”
“Careful.”
What’s it for?
“Your grandfather.”
I jump down. I never met my grandfather. He died of a heart attack, after fixing a sink at a summer cottage. He was forty-two.
Was that his? I ask.
My mother puts a hand on my shoulder.
“We light it to remember him. Go play.”
I leave the room, but I sneak a look back, and I see my mother and grandmother standing by the candle, mumbling a prayer.
Later-after they have gone upstairs-I return. All the lights are out, but the flame illuminates the countertop, the sink, the side of the refrigerator. I do not yet know that this is religious ritual. I think of it as magic. I wonder if my grandfather is in there, a tiny fire, alone in the kitchen, stuck in a glass.
I never want to die.
Life of Henry
The first time Henry Covington accepted Jesus as his personal savior, he was only ten, at a small Bible camp in Beaverkill, New York. For Henry, camp meant two weeks away from the traffic and chaos of Brooklyn. Here kids played outside, chased frogs, and collected peppermint leaves in jars of water and left them in the sun. At night the counselors added sugar and made tea.
One evening, a pretty, light-skinned counselor asked Henry if he’d like to pray with her. She was seventeen, slim and gentle-mannered; she wore a brown skirt, a white frilly blouse, her hair was in a ponytail, and to Henry she was so beautiful he lost his breath.
Yes, he said. He would pray with her.
They went outside the bunk.
“Your name is Henry and you are a child of God.”
“My name is Henry,” he repeated, “and I am a child of God.”
“Do you want to accept Jesus Christ as your savior?” she said.
“Yes, I do,” he answered.
She took his hand.
“Are you confessing your sins?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you want Jesus to forgive your sins?”
“Yes.”
She leaned her forehead into his. Her voice lowered.
“Are you asking Jesus to come into your life?”
“I am asking him.”
“Do you want me to pray with you?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
It was warm outside. The summer sky was reddening to dusk. Henry felt the girl’s soft forehead, her hand squeezing his, her whispered prayers so close to his ears. This surely was salvation. He accepted it with all his heart.
The next day, a friend of his got a BB gun, and they shot it at the frogs and tried to kill them.
APRIL
