World And Town Part 12

She can't help but laugh.

"Let it drip dry, so as to make these little puddles on the floor," he elaborates. "Had to put in some nails to do it."

"Guess you were mad," she says. "Guess I was."

"Guess you didn't stonewall."

"Stonewall?"

"Guess you got yourself across loud and clear."

"Guess I did."

Hattie smiles. "Your clothes still up?"

"Yes, ma'am, they are. They're still up. She would've taken 'em all down except that her hip was bothering her. Couldn't get herself up on a chair, now, see. And I hung 'em a little high. Just a little high." He gestures.

"Guess you were aiming to tantalize."

"Guess I was, Hattie. Guess I was." He looks embarra.s.sed but proud. " 'Cause you can't just chuck a person out the way she wants, now. It ain't right." He shakes his head. "It ain't right."

"No," she says. "It's not."

"To be frank, Christians don't even act the way she's acting. So she's no kind of Christian anyway."

"No," agrees Hattie. "She doesn't sound it."

"Know what kind of Christian she is? The kind who sees the d.a.m.ned and the saved but can't see what's right in front of their nose. That's what kind. The kind that sees the sheep and the goats. Who's going to heaven, and who's going to roast. But suffering, now. They don't see suffering. People." His voice is quiet, his bearing light.

"It's a blinding kind of vision," agrees Hattie.

He looks at her blankly.

"It's what my mother used to say. They have a blinding way of seeing."

"Your ma said that?"

Hattie nods. "She was a missionary."

"You don't say."

"She was a missionary but didn't stay one."

Everett nods, then suddenly pushes up his visor and trains his pale eyes on her. "I want you to tell Ginny."

"Tell her-?"

"You see Ginny in that group, right?"

"I do."

"I want you to tell her she's no kind of Christian. I want you to tell her she's got a blinding kind of vision-a blinding kind of vision, just like you said. A blinding way of seeing."

We must see what we don't see, Hattie's mother used to say. Starting with, that we don't see. We must see that we don't see. How humble her mother was, in her definite way, and how scientifically correct, as it turns out. And yet Hattie hesitates.

"You know, I'm in a walking group with Ginny, you're right," she begins. "But-"

Everett's jaw tightens ominously; his eyes flash. "Hedging," he says immediately. "You're hedging."

And before she can finish, Everett's disappeared around the corner, disgusted. The aisle seems to widen; the fluorescent lights buzz. Hattie looks for him, but can't find him.

Dear Aunt Hattie, Andrea is not the big one, she is our baby. Do you remember how early she began to read? Such a little girl with such big books, we were always so proud of her. She count very well too. But now we are sick with worry. I don't know if you have ever heard of this sick called anorexia. A kind of mental trouble. What happens is that a girl stops eating food. If she eats something, she makes herself throw it up. She takes a pill too, that pill is to help get rid of her food. So she becomes very very thin, but in her mind she thinks she is fat and wants to lose more weight.

The poor girl!

We don't know what to do.

The poor parents.

We tell her we can feed her some nutritious soup. George offer her $10,000 U.S. for every pound she gain....

Hattie sighs. What is it about the Chinese and money, indeed.

But she says no. We beg her please, come back to Singapore. Please come home.

Suffering. Who don't see suffering.

Breakfast for the dogs, and then for herself. Coffee. Muesli for the fiber-roughage, they used to call it. She adds a little sugar, why not. Then there're the dishes to do, and the clean clothes to sort. Why does she fold her underwear? Never mind. Today, when the moment comes, she throws her panties in the drawer unfolded. Freedom! She puts off getting dressed, too-stays right in her nightgown and bathrobe. And who knows? Maybe she'll just stay in them all day.

The unlived life isn't worth living.

Is that a mouse?

She is busy adding leaves to her bamboo stalks-the leaves blowing pell-mell, flecked and pelted with rain-when Sophy bangs at the slider. "Hattie! Hattie! My dad is hurt!"

"Sophy?"

Hattie hurries over. The dogs are already there; Sophy's nose and chin are pushed up to the screen door.

"You have to come!" She runs off, her ponytail flying.

"I'm coming!" Hattie laces up her walking shoes and tells the dogs to stay. And who knows what it is about her voice or the situation-maybe it's just the sight of Hattie in a bathrobe and walking shoes-but even Annie sits like Cato and Reveille, and, though her feet dance madly, stays.

"Good girl," says Hattie.

She hurries.

The trailer door is open wide. "Sophy?" No answer. The milk crate has a wooden crate set next to it now-a second step. Still, it's at least two normal steps up from the higher crate into the trailer. Hattie is about to grab the doorjamb and lever herself in when Sophy appears. She puts out one hand, then bends her knees and digs in her heels, bracing with her other. Such a nothing of a chicken-boned wrist she has, but she's strong. Her feet slide forward in her flowered sneakers, a gap opening at her heel-those sneakers are a size too big at least, thinks Hattie, even as she feels a pull in her shoulder. Then smells wash over her-cigarette smoke, mildew, incense. And there-her first clear view of the entertainment center. An enormous, blaring TV, set on a low table, and showing some sort of s.p.a.ce movie. Flas.h.i.+ng panels, an emergency, floating astronauts racing time; and below them, a.s.sorted picture frames, plastic figures, Buddhas, vases, baskets, a paG.o.da-shaped lantern, a bowl bristling with incense sticks, white paper doilies. A sagging rust-colored couch faces all this-way too close for comfortable viewing, but there's no room to push the thing back. Calendar pictures of Angkor Wat on the walls, movie stars; ruffled curtains on the window. The kitchen counter features more kinds of chips than Hattie knew existed-the bags puffed-up and weightless, like the astronauts on TV and quite unlike Chhung, who lies in the larger of the bedrooms, on a mattress on the floor. He's gripping a pillow as if to strangle it; his eyes are frantic, his brow rucked and slick. His neck tendons stand out like the veins of a leaf. Mum, squatting near his head, looks up.

"He was digging," supplies Sophy.

"Where does it hurt?" asks Hattie.

Chhung gestures at his left b.u.t.tock, and down the back of his leg.

"You have any ice? I'll call a doctor."

The phone's out. No one quite knows why, though, out in the living room, Sarun guesses that Chhung hasn't been paying the bill.

"Maybe he's over his credit card limit." He leans forward, his elbows on the kitchen counter, and gives Hattie a once-over: She's still in her bathrobe.

She blushes but carries on. "Does he have a credit card?"

"Excuse me, ma'am. That was a joke."

"He did have one once," says Sophy. "But the company cancelled it because he didn't ever pay."

"Do you have a doctor?" asks Hattie.

Sarun guffaws; Gift puts his hand in a floor vent and gets it stuck.

Back at her house, Hattie calls her internist and reaches the nurse pract.i.tioner. A herniated disk with resultant sciatica, Leah guesses, but he should really be seen. Does he have insurance? Medicaid? Sophy, standing next to Hattie, doesn't know. Hattie says she'll call back, and sends Sophy to the trailer with some ice and ibuprofen in the meantime. Then she calls the church agency that settled the Chhungs. Maybe somebody over there knows something? Or maybe they provide insurance, who knows. But, no. The church agency provides nothing and knows nothing. In fact, though the Chhungs are living on church property, the church does not consider them part of its ministry.

"I'm sorry to say these people are not our highest priority," says the lady on the phone.

"I see," says Hattie.

"In fact, they exemplify a carelessness characteristic of our former pastor and raised a ruckus of which they are perhaps not even aware. You might even call them something of a situation." The lady lowers her voice. "These people, you understand, aren't even Christian."

Hattie hangs up.

What about the church with the blue car? When Sophy returns, Hattie asks her about that church-the Heritage Bible Church, it turns out. Ginny's church. Hattie takes that in even as she calls and explains. There's no one but a girl with a head cold in the office, though; she sounds as if she's talking through a kazoo. Can someone call back? Hattie says of course, but is honestly surprised when, a few minutes later, a chirpy woman does call, and with good news: They happen to have a church member who can see Chhung for free. He's not a doctor, but he is an EMT, which could be better, says the woman.

Better than a doctor? Well, never mind.

"Isn't that lucky," says Hattie.

"It's the Lord's plan," the woman goes on. "We're sending him right down."

"In the blue car?"

"The car is blue, yes." If the woman is surprised, she doesn't let on.

"Well, thanks a bunch. You people do support each other."

"It's just neighbors helping neighbors," says the woman. "Spreading the Good News."

Anyway: no more digging, that much is clear.

Chhung and his rescue are center table at the Come 'n' Eat the next day. His rescuers, too, as the Power and the Glory, it seems, knows both the kazoo girl who answered the phone and the chirpy woman who called back, as well as the EMT who came down in the blue car and gave Chhung a used back brace to wear. The brace is a little big, Ginny says, but if he wears it over a s.h.i.+rt it fits great.

"Did you know he used to be an engineer?" she asks brightly.

Chhung? An engineer? Hattie says something about the pit, and Chhung's house plans.

"Oh," says Ginny. "You know, I asked someone about that nasty hole the other day. That's a drainage ditch."

A drainage ditch.

"He knows how to improve that lot," she goes on. "He's smart. He's just not accustomed to doing the work himself."

"I bet not," says Greta, her gray eyes gone dark. "The poor man!"

"The boy hates helping," Ginny goes on. "But at least they know where he is when he has a shovel in his hands."

"Do they worry about him?" Grace looks to have slept on her eyebrows funny; the hairs of one are headed up, of the other, down.

"Wouldn't you?" Ginny is poised and quick.

"A cute thing like that," agrees Beth.

"Though that hair," says Candy. "Don't you have to wonder if the Good Lord intended kids to have that color hair?"

Her own white roots are showing today, but never mind.

"Maybe he can go to school now," says Hattie.

"Wouldn't that be a happy outcome," says Greta.

In any case, Ginny digs into her meat loaf, smiling enigmatically as planning begins. Beth is thinking ca.s.serole; Ginny, chicken; Hattie, fish; Candy, quesadillas. Greta is going to bake them a raisin bread in her woodstove, and Grace is going to do a salad from the greenhouse. They know food doesn't solve anything, but they want the Chhungs to know people are thinking of them. And hasn't the group always reached out when there's reaching out to do? Aren't they the Pride of Riverlake, just as their Fourth of July banner proclaims?

"Though don't you wonder if there isn't something the matter with their karma?" says Candy. "I mean, if they are just not in a state of grace?"

Greta considers. "First Pol Pot and now this, you mean."

"It's their fate," says Beth, flatly.

But Hattie just as flatly disagrees. "It's their luck. It's their plain bad luck, that's all."

An unsupported a.s.sertion she would certainly have had to defend back in the lab. Here at the Come 'n' Eat, though, adamance is enough. Everyone eats peacefully. Then Beth looks back up.

"This may not be the moment to ask," she says, "but are we ready for a change of subject?"

"We are," says Ginny.

Beth looks shyly at Hattie. "If things are just not happening with you and Carter ..." She plays with her toothpick, turning red.