Read Online Lay It on My Heart by Angela Pneuman - Free Book Online

Ghana.
    Sunday-night dinner for us is always a can of tuna mixed in with a can of cream-of-mushroom soup, heated up and spooned over saltine crackers, a meal Phoebe calls “tuna wiggle” because of how it turns gelatinous as it cools on your plate. The trick is to eat it fast. About the time we are sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, in the half dark because the electric lights just seem too hot when it’s this muggy, the itching begins to get the better of my father. Under a bright half-moon he drags Daze’s old tin washtub from the shed, the big one that I used to splash around in. There’s a gallon of bleach in the shed, too, and he empties it into the washtub and adds water from the hose until it’s half-full. And then, because it doesn’t look like the neighbors are home, he drops his filthy brown robe in the grass, steps into the tub, and squats, wedging himself in until the bleach water rises to his waist. He sits there a good long time, praying without ceasing and killing the poison ivy, the itch that Satan has brought upon him to test his devotion to the Lord’s vision.
    I’m sitting on the floor of my room with the contents of an old box I keep under my bed spread out beside me on the braided rug. It’s a wooden Swinburne’s gelatine box Daze picked up somewhere, built to last, with a hinged top and mitered corners. Titus has jumped in and filled the box with his whole body, corner to corner, squeezed in tight as my father in the washtub. You can tell by the way Titus purrs that he thinks it’s a good, solid feeling. Some of what I keep in the box is special, like Daze’s bone pen from Niagara Falls, which she bought on her honeymoon. A tiny lens at the top of the pen is a viewfinder that shows you the different parts of Niagara Falls, like Goat Island, Horseshoe Falls, and Whirlpool Rapids—all places I would like to see someday. But most of what’s in the box is junk. There’s a matchbox I saved because it reminds me of a drawer. There’s an empty Tic Tac container that still smells good. There’s a queen-of-clubs playing card I found on the street in Lexington and pocketed. You can’t even have a deck of playing cards within East Winder city limits because they’re the tools of gambling. I also keep a small notebook in the box, with a list of things I might like to become, including actress, veterinarian, and prophet. And even though I am not in danger of forgetting the words to my prayer, I jot them down now on the notebook’s back page. I know that every time I come across them I will remember to start praying again, if I have stopped. I whisper the words now. “Inhabit me, O Lord God.” I bend down close to Titus’s head and whisper them again into one of his velvety black ears, which flattens in annoyance. I tip up the box and he spills out onto the rug. Then I reload it with all my things, arranging them to make space for the Holy Land relics. I also slip in the postcard of Lot’s unfortunate wife.
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    I don’t know at what point the bleach starts to burn my father worse than the itching. When he manages to throw the washtub on its side and crawl out on all fours, he has red rings from the pressure of the tub halfway up his back. He must understand that his robe has poison ivy oil all over it, but he wants to cover his nakedness, suddenly. To warm the chill that’s coming over him. To soak up some of what’s oozing from his skin below the waist and down his legs. He clutches the robe to his private parts, then wraps himself in it and sets out for the gas station a mile and a half away. But the pain, the pain forces him to stop at a trailer lit from within like a tin lantern on the side of the road.
    When Ruthie Pope opens the door, my burned, blistered father can hardly speak. The robe has stuck to his legs and his privates, which are unspeakably raw. When she peels it away, the