Keeping Faith: A Novel (9 page)

“That’s the guy who wrote it. Please?”

I look at the carrots, splayed like pickup sticks on the butcher block. At the chicken,

naked and blushing with paprika, waiting on top of the oven. The library in town is only a ten-minute ride. “Okay. Go get your library card.”

Faith is so excited that I feel a pang of guilt, since I am planning to use this as proof that her mind is playing tricks. When there is no I. I. Swerbeh, maybe she’ll believe there is no guard.

Sure enough, there is no record of this author on either the library’s computerized card catalog or the dusty old shelved one. “I don’t know,

Faith. This doesn’t look promising.”

“At school, the librarian says that because our town’s little, we sometimes have to borrow books from other libraries at other schools. And we can if we fill out a piece of paper. So maybe we just have to ask the librarian here.”

Humor her, I think. Holding Faith’s hand, I approach the children’s librarian.

“We’re looking for a book by an I. I.

Swerbeh.”

“A children’s book?”

Faith nods. “It’s about me.”

The librarian smiles. “Well, I guess you’ve checked the catalogs. It’s not an author I’m familiar with …” She stops, tapping her chin. “How old are you?”

“I’m going to be eight in ten and a half months.”

The librarian squats down to Faith’s level. “How did you find out about this book?”

Faith’s eyes dart toward me. “Someone showed me the name. Wrote it down.”

“Ah.” The librarian takes a piece of paper from her desk. “I used to teach first grade.

It’s developmentally normal at that age for children to reverse letters.” She writes the author’s name backward. “There you go. Makes a little more sense.”

Faith squints at the word, sounds it out.

“What’s a HEBREWS?”

“I think the book you’re looking for is right over here,” the librarian says, plucking a Bible off the reference shelf. She opens up to the Book of Hebrews, Chapter 11, and winks.

“It is!” Faith crows, spotting the letters of her name. “It is about me!”

I stare at the page. Forty verses, all about what has already been accomplished by faith.

Faith begins to read, limping over the words.

“”Now faith is the sub … sub …”"

“Substance.”

“”The substance of things hoped for,”“ she repeats. “”The evidence of things not seen.””

As she continues, I close my eyes and try to come up with a valid explanation. Faith might have seen this before, might have noticed her name sandwiched between other unfamiliar words. But we don’t even own a Bible.

I have always envied people who believe strongly in religion, people who could face a tragedy by praying and know that it would be all right. As unscientific as it seems, well, it would be nice to lay the responsibilities and pain on someone else’s larger shoulders.

If you had asked me a month ago whether or not I believed in God, I would have said yes.

If you had asked me whether I’d like my child to grow up with that same belief, I would have said yes. I just wasn’t willing to teach it to her.

I hadn’t taught it to her.

“Tell your God,” I whisper. “Tell her that I believe.”

As far as I know, before this all happened Faith had asked me only once about God. She was five, and had just learned the Pledge of Allegiance in school. “”Under God,”" she recited to me, and then in the next breath, “What’s God?” I floundered for a moment, trying to find a way to explain without dragging religious differences, or for that matter,

Jesus into it.

“Well,” I said, thinking of words that she’d know, “God is kind of like the biggest angel of all. He’s way up in the sky, living in a place called heaven. And His job is to watch over us, and make sure we’re all doing okay.”

Faith mulled this over for a moment. “He’s like a big baby-sitter.”

I relaxed. “Exactly.”

“But you said He,” Faith pointed out. “All of my baby-sitters are girls.”

As hard as it is to hear Dr. Keller saying Faith is having psychotic hallucinations of God, it is harder to consider the alternative.

Things like this do not happen to little girls, I tell myself during a sleepless night, until I realize I have no right to make that judgment.

Maybe this is a seven-year-old stage, like looking for monsters under the bed or falling for Hanson. The next morning I leave Faith with my mother and drive to Dartmouth College’s Baker Library. There I ask a librarian some questions about children’s perceptions of God and then walk through the dark maze of bookshelves until I find the book she’s recommended. I’m expecting Dr. Spock, some treatise on child-rearing, but instead she’s directed me to Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

Just for the heck of it, I crack the old book open, figuring I can have a good laugh before I go about finding Dr. Spock. But before I know it I’ve spent the entire day reading about young Bernadette Soubirous from Lourdes, France,

who in 1858 spoke to the Virgin Mary several times. About little Juliana Falconieri,

fourteenth century, who saw Christ and let him give her flower garlands. About other child visionaries at Fatima. About all these children, some as young as Faith, some as nonreligious, who were nonetheless singled out.

I begin to scribble notes on the pad I keep in my pocketbook. Of all the visionaries from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and even nineteenth centuries, the ones who saw a lady described a blue-mantled Virgin Mary. The ones who saw a vision in a white gown, with sandals and long dark hair–the ones who called it God–all were referring to a man.

All but Faith.

“So?” I whisper, when I get back to my mother’s. “How was she?”

“Fine,” my mother booms. “She’s not asleep.”

“What I meant is whether she’s been … you know. Seeing things.”

“Oh, right. God.”

I push past her and walk into the kitchen, where I pull a banana from its brothers and begin to peel the skin. “Yes. T.”

My mother shrugs. “It’s a stage. You’ll see.”

I take a bite of the fruit, which lodges in my throat. “What if it’s not, Ma?” I ask, swallowing hard. “What if this doesn’t go away?”

My mother smiles gently. “Dr. Keller will find some other medicine that works.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean … what if it’s real?”

My mother stops wiping down the counter.

“Mariah, what are you saying?”

“It’s happened before. There were other kids who saw … things. And Catholic priests and the pope or someone authenticated it.”

“Faith isn’t Catholic.”

“Well, I know that. I know we’ve never been religious. But I’m wondering if that’s something you’re given a choice about.” I take a deep breath. “I’m just not sure if you and me and a psychiatrist are the people who ought to be judging this.”

“Who should be?” my mother asks, then rolls her eyes. “Oh, Mariah. You aren’t going to take her to a priest.”

“Why not? They’re the ones who have experience with apparitions.”

“They’ll want proof. A statue crying tears, or some paraplegic getting up and walking.”

“That’s not true. Sometimes they just go on the strength of the child’s word.”

My mother smirks. “And when did you become such an expert on goyim?”

“This isn’t about religion.”

“No? Then what is it about?”

“My daughter,” I say thickly, as tears come to my eyes. “There’s something different about her,

Ma. Something that people are going to start whispering about and pointing at. It’s not like she has a birthmark I can hide under a turtleneck and pretend it’s not there.”

“What good is it going to do to talk to a priest?”

I don’t know. I have no idea what I’ve been hoping for–some sort of exorcism? Some vindication? Suddenly I can clearly remember standing on the corner of the street at a red light years ago, certain that everyone could see the scars hidden beneath my sleeves. That everyone knew I was subtly, irrevocably different from them. I don’t want this for my daughter. “I just want Faith to be normal again,” I say.

My mother looks at me squarely. “All right. You do what you have to. But maybe you shouldn’t start at a church.” Rummaging through her ancient,

crammed Rolodex, she extracts a business card. It’s yellowed and dog-eared–either much used or too long forgotten. “This is the name of the rabbi in town. Whether or not you want to admit it, your daughter’s Jewish.”

Rabbi Marvin Weissman. “I didn’t know you went to temple.”

“I don’t.” She shrugs. “It just sort of got passed along to me.”

I pocket the card. “Fine, I’ll call him first. Not that he’s going to believe me. In all the books I read today, I didn’t find a single Jewish person who had a religious vision.”

My mother rubs her thumbnail on the edge of the counter. “And what does that tell you?”

Although I’ve passed the temple in New Canaan many times, I have never gone inside. It is dark, musty. Long, thin collages of stained glass flank the walls at measured intervals,

and a Hebrew-school bulletin board is gaily decorated with the names of students. Faith shudders closer to me. “I don’t like it here. It’s creepy.”

Privately, I agree, but I squeeze her hand. “It’s not creepy. Look at the pretty windows.”

Faith considers the panels and looks at me again. “It’s still creepy.”

Down a hallway, there are approaching footsteps. A man and a woman stride into the entryway, still arguing. “Is there anything nice you can say?” the woman shouts. “Or do you just go out of your way to make me look like an idiot?”

“Do I look like I’m trying to get you upset?” the man thunders. “Do I?” Oblivious to Faith and me, they yank their jackets from hangers in the coatroom. Faith cannot take her eyes off the couple. “Don’t,” I whisper.

“It’s not polite to stare.”

But still she watches them, her eyes wide and sad and oddly trancelike. I wonder if she is remembering Colin and me, if the fights we tried to muffle behind a closed bedroom door still managed to carry. The couple walks out the door,

their anger palpably linking them, as if they are holding tight to the hands of their only child.

Suddenly Rabbi Weissman appears, wearing an ombr`e plaid shirt and jeans. He is no older than I am. “Mrs. White. Faith.

I’m sorry about being late. I had a previous appointment.” The angry couple. were they here for some kind of counseling? Was that what other people did when their marriages were falling apart?

When I continue to say nothing, he smiles quizzically. “Is there something wrong?”

“No.” I shake my head, well and truly caught. “It’s just that I always expect rabbis to have long, gray beards.”

He pats his smooth-shaven cheeks. “Ah,

you’ve been watching Fiddler on the Roof too much. What you see is what you get.” He slips a hard candy into Faith’s hand and winks.

“Why don’t we all come into the sanctuary?”

Sanctuary. Yes, please.

The main room of the temple has high beams and a fluted ceiling, pews neatly set like teeth and a bema covered with a rectangle of blue velvet. The rabbi pulls a small pack of crayons from the pocket of his shirt and gives them to Faith, along with a few sheets of paper.

“I’m going to show your mom something. Would that be okay?”

Faith nods, already pulling out the colors. The rabbi leads me to the back of the room, where we have a clear view of Faith, and also privacy. “So your daughter is talking to God.”

Put so bluntly, it makes me blush. “I think so, yes.”

“And the reason you wanted to see me?”

Shouldn’t that be evident? “Well, I used to be Jewish. I mean, I was raised that way.”

“You’ve converted, then.”

“No. I just sort of lapsed out of it, and then married an Episcopalian.”

“You’re still Jewish,” the rabbi says. “You can be an agnostic Jew, a nonpracticing Jew,

but you’re still a Jew. It’s like being part of a family. You have to screw up pretty badly to get kicked out.”

“My mother says that Faith’s Jewish, too.

Technically. That’s why I’m here.”

“And Faith’s talking to God.” It’s just the slightest movement, but I incline my head.

“Mrs. White,” the rabbi says. “Big deal.”

“Big deal?”

“Lots of Jews talk to God. Judaism assumes a direct relationship with Him. The issue isn’t whether Faith is talking to God … but rather if God is talking to her.”