White Oleander

I held up my hair so he could fasten it. 'I've got to believe in something,' I said, low.

His hand rested on my neck, warm, heavy. His good plain face, sad hazel eyes. And I realized he wanted to kiss me. I felt it inside me. And when he saw that I felt it, he reddened and looked away.

Dear Astrid,

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?? You may not 1) be baptized, 2) call yourself a Christian., and 3) write to me on that ridiculous stationery. You will not sign your letters 'born again in Christ'! God is dead, haven't you heard, he died a hundred years ago, gave out from sheer lack of interest, decided to play golf instead. I raised you to have some self-respect, and now you 're telling me you've given it all away to a 3-D postcard Jesus? I would laugh if it weren't so desperately sad.

Don't you dare ask me to accept Jesus as my savior, wash my soul in the Blood of the Lamb. Don't even think of trying to redeem me. I regret NOTHING. No woman with any self-respect would have done less.

The question of good and the nature of evil will always be one of philosophy's most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself. I'm not quarreling with your choice of issues, only with your intellectually diminished approach. If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one's own universe, to live on one's own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth cliches lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind's destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race. Three cheers for Eve.

Mother.

I prayed for her redemption. She took a life because someone humiliated her, hurt her image of herself as the Valkyrie, the stainless warrior. Exposed her weakness, which was only love. So she avenged herself. So easy to justify, I wrote to her. It's because you felt like a victim you did it. If you were really strong, you could have tolerated the humiliation. Only Jesus can make us strong enough to fight the temptations of sin.

She wrote back, a quotation from Milton, Satan's part in Paradise Lost:

What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield.

UNCLE RAY was teaching me to play chess from a book, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. He had taught himself in Vietnam. 'I had a lot of time to kill there,' he said, running his fingers over the peaked hat of the white pawn. He'd carved the set there, Vietnamese kings and Buddhas for bishops, horses with sculpted cheeks and combed manes. I couldn't imagine the months it must have taken him, patiently carving with a Swiss Army knife while all the bombs blasted around him.

I liked the order of chess, the coolness of reason, the joy of its patient steps. We played most nights when Starr was at AA or CA meetings or at Bible study, while the boys watched TV. Uncle Ray kept a little pipe of dope next to him on the arm of the chair to smoke while he waited for me to make my move.

That night the boys were watching a nature show. The littlest one, Owen, sucked his thumb, holding his stuffed giraffe, while Peter twined a bit of his hair around his finger, over and over again. Davey narrated the show for them, pointing to the screen.

'That's Smokey, he's the alpha male.' The light from the screen reflected in his glasses.

Uncle Ray waited for my move, looking at me in a way that made my heart open like a moonflower — his eyes on my face, my throat, my hair over my shoulders, changing color in the TV lights. On TV I saw the white of snow, the wolves hunting in pairs, their strange yellow eyes. I felt like an undeveloped photograph that he was printing, my image rising to the surface under

his gaze.

'Oh, don't,' Owen said, clutching his giraffe with the broken neck as the wolves leapt on their deer, pulling it down by the throat.

'It's the law of nature,' Davey said.

'There, look at that.' Ray pointed with the black bishop he was moving. 'It's like, if God saved that deer, he'd starve the wolf. Why would he favor one person over another?' He had never quite resigned himself to my becoming a Christian. 'The good don't get any better a break than anybody else. You could be a fucking saint, and still, you got the plague or stepped on a Bouncing Betty.'

'At least you have something larger to fall back on,' I said, touching the cross around my neck, zipping it back and forth along the chain. 'You have a compass and a map.' 'And if there's no God?' 'You act as if there is, and it's the same thing.' He sucked at his pipe, filling the room with its skunky smell, while I examined the board. 'What does your mother have to say about that?' he asked.

'She says, 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.'' 'My kind of woman.'

I didn't say that she called him Uncle Ernie. Through the screen door, the summer crickets sang. I flicked my hair behind my shoulders, moved my bishop to queen's knight 3, threatening his knight. I sensed how he looked at my bare arm, the shoulder, my lips. To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful. I had never been beautiful before. I didn't think it went against Christ. Everybody needed to feel love.

We heard the crunch of Starr's Torino turning into the yard, car tires in the gravel, earlier than she normally came home. I was disappointed. Ray paid attention to me when she was gone, but when she came home I went back to being just one of the kids. What was she doing home so early anyway? She usually stayed out until eleven, drinking coffee with the addicts, or discussing Matthew 20 verse 13 with the old ladies at the church.

'Shit.' Uncle Ray quickly pocketed his stash and small pipe just as the screen door swung open and the bug zapper zapped a big one at the same time.

Starr stopped for a second at the door, seeing us, and the boys sitting on the couch, mesmerized by the TV. Then it was like she was confused to find herself home so soon. She dropped her keys and picked them up. Uncle Ray watched her, her breasts practically coming out of the scooped neck of her dress.

Then her smile came on, and she kicked off her shoes and sat on the arm of his chair, kissed him. I could see her sticking her tongue in his ear.

'Was it canceled?' he asked.