Read Online Limbo by A. Manette Ansay - Free Book Online

grandmother’s house. “Dinner” means a meal that is eaten at noon. Grandma Ansay keeps the thermostat set at eighty-five Her enema bottle hangs behind the bathroom door, and the house smells of Ben-Gay and a terrible, unnamed sadness. She pokes at my flat chest to see if I’m developing. She tries to look up my dress, then laughs when I slap it down.
    At the dinner table, she and my grandfather bicker until Grandpa says, “That’s enough out of you!” Then they fight in earnest, speaking their own venomous mix of Luxemburg, English, and German, while my mother and father and brother and I keep eating, as if nothing whatsoever is wrong. Please pass the peas. Please pass the bread. Nothing has changed since the brief time we lived with them.
    â€œI’ll tell them everything, if that’s what you want,” Grandpa finally says. “I’ll tell them all about you!”
    Tell us what ? Personally, I am dying to know. I figure it must have to do with either sex or money, the Twin Taboos, the two things nice people never talk about. But Grandma’stongue is tired and cannot shape the words. She gives up, stops arguing. Instead, she stares at her hands, chained together by the rosary in her lap. After the meal, she lies face down on the daybed, weeping quietly, furiously. I watch her from the doorway. In catechism, our teacher—the mother of one of my friends—explains that if we only have faith the size of a mustard seed, God will work miracles in our lives and grant us any request. She even passes around a tiny yellowish husk, so we can see for ourselves that this isn’t so much to ask. Then she tells us, in graphic detail, about her miscarriages, how everybody told her she’d never carry a child to term, but look—here’s her daughter, Mary Elizabeth, who sits among us smiling like the Gift from God she is. We can reach out and touch Mary Elizabeth, the way Doubting Thomas touched Jesus. We can see for ourselves the power of faith.
    I love my religion classes, which are held in our teacher’s home. Mrs. T. always pulls the shades and lights tall, white candles. It’s better than ghost stories at camp. We hold hands and chant Hail Marys. Once, as we’re talking about Saint Benedict, we all see Satan circling us in the form of a small blue light. But because we’re each wearing a Saint Benedict medal, blessed by the Pope himself, Satan can’t do a thing to us and eventually the light winks out. That night, Mrs. T. holds a special ceremony in which we each vow to wear our medals until our deaths. I keep minepinned to my underwear; when I shower, I hold it in my mouth. I will wear it until I’m in college. I’ll have nightmares when I finally take it off.
    Grandma Ansay prays all the time, but clearly, she’s doing something wrong. Why else wouldn’t God make her better? And why would God give her a stroke in the first place, if it wasn’t something she deserved? At Mass on Sundays, we pray for the intentions of particular people who are sick, and some of them get better, and some of them don’t. Either way, there must be a reason, and that reason is implied by every Bible story we read, every sermon that we hear. The good are rewarded. The bad are punished. When someone gets better and returns to church, everybody congratulates them, shakes their hands. When somebody doesn’t get better, well, it’s always a little bit awkward. The priest speaks of mystery , and we say the Our Father: thy kingdom come, thy will be done . God wants some people to suffer, like it or lump it, and He isn’t saying why. But it isn’t just luck. There is a Master Plan.
    Certainly, no one who gets better ever thinks it’s just dumb luck.
    â€œYour grandmother used to sing, and play the organ. She loved to dance,” my mother says. “Imagine how frustrating it would be if you couldn’t do the things you