The Devil’s Child Meets Dumbo
To church, unbelievably.
Last night, over drinks, a churchgoing friend mentioned that he was scheduled to deliver the children’s sermon at a church a few blocks from our home and that his theme would be “loving your enemy.” In a boozy haze, I agreed that the message was sufficiently important that I should get out of bed early so my children could hear it.
This morning, I realize that was a mistake -- though I also notice that the kind of mistakes I make when I’ve had too much to drink are less interesting every year.
We dress up in our Sunday best, go out to breakfast and then, for the first time ever as a family, to church. The whole time, Tabitha shoots me odd looks. At the door, we are told to leave our children downstairs in Sunday school until it’s time for my pal’s sermon. To our children’s great mystification we do, and then plop ourselves into the back pew, behind a tense-looking fellow with short red hair and three hoop earrings.
Instantly my skin begins to crawl. Why is it that even when it is warm and dry, a church feels cold and wet? It doesn’t help that I don’t believe in God. But it’s more than that. Church feels like the place where I will be finally exposed. The congregation, sensing evil, will turn and charge at me with silver daggers in their hands and cause my eyes to glow bright red and my head to swivel 360 degrees. I am not merely the atheist, I am the antithesis.
A sermon, a prayer and several hymns -- all of which sound creepy. Tabitha was raised Catholic and so is overqualified for an Episcopalian service; she can see any hymn they throw at her and raise them two. But I know not a single word, prayer or sentiment. At length, the congregation rises to sing to the entering Christian children -- at least two of them frauds.
The doors to the narthex are thrown open. One hundred pious adults stare blankly for what seems a very long time. But there is not a sound, or stirring, from the Sunday school below. The children, it would seem, have vanished. Then, after what seems like five minutes but is more like one, my tiny Dixie stumbles through the giant doors.
She’s all alone, in her Frosty the Snowman dress, looking as if she has wandered in off the street. She must have escaped Sunday school all by her 2-year-old self. Her upper lip trembles, her eyes widen, but she is doing what little she can to disguise her terror as the rest of the children finally appear. Then she sees me and races into my arms and stays there until we are outside and safe again. She’s the devil’s child, or, at any rate, her father’s.
I come home early and overhear Tabitha confiding to a friend on the phone.
“Something’s going on with Michael. He took us to church yesterday. He’s already done his taxes for the year. Last night he cooked meatloaf. By himself!”
Tabitha’s father suffers a small stroke while having his hip replaced, so she flies back East to be with him. Tallulah revels in her mother’s absence -- the only thing wrong with Mama leaving, from her point of view, is that Daddy didn’t leave with her. She is the world’s only 5-year-old who fantasizes about being an orphan.
Dixie, on the other hand, needs consoling. Seeing this, Tallulah suggests that Dixie might be happier watching a video. “I’ll pick it out and put it on,” Tallulah says brightly.
I leave her to it and walk upstairs to wash dishes. Twenty minutes later, I’m startled by a terrifying wail. I rush downstairs and find Tallulah, alone on the sofa, watching the video. Of the 6,000 videos to chose from, she has selected “Dumbo.” They’ve just got to the point, after the world’s saddest song, where they cart Dumbo’s mother away in a prison truck.
On screen, Dumbo weeps; in our living room, Dixie lies face down on the floor, gnashing her teeth and pulling her hair. Seeing me she howls, “I miss my new mama!”
This throws me until I recall that yesterday she ran up to me beaming with pride and said, “I pooh-poohed on the potty by my new self.” Tallulah looks up and says, in a voice devoid of human feeling, “she means she misses her own mama.”