Home: Part 26

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

April 1958 

I don't know if Cindy changed much the night after I saved her life, but a couple of Sundays afterward she insisted that my parents take her to church. "You don't have to stay with me," she said. "Drop me off and I'll call you when it's over."

"Why?" my father said, and then he seemed to think about something. "Which church?"

Cindy answered quickly. "It doesn't matter. I just want to go to church." She looked at me as though she knew I wanted to add something to the conversation, but she bent her head in a way that I thought better of it.

"Church," my father said as though the word were foreign to him.

So for several months Cindy attended church each Sunday morning, never asking any of us to join her. She went to bible study on Wednesday evenings, and hosted sleepovers during which she and her new friends discussed all things religious. Before going to sleep they would take turns praying aloud, raising their hands toward the ceiling and asking for god's blessings on themselves and their families. 

"There's bible study for boys, too," Cindy said to me one Wednesday afternoon before one of her friend's parents picked her up. "You could go with me, and I'll introduce you to everyone."

"He's a little young," my mother said as she brushed Cindy's hair.

Cindy  pulled her head away from the brush. "How can anyone be too young for god, Mom?"

"God's a big concept," our mother said. "Give him a few years."

"We might not have a few years," Cindy said. "If the Russian's bomb us, we want to be ready."

"Who has been feeding you that? Let me finish your hair."

"We talked about it last week, Mom. First god created the Russians, then he gave them atomic bombs."

My mother set the brush down and put her hands on her hips. "I don't remember learning that in Sunday school."

"God's always changing, Mom."