Monument 14

^{CHAPTER ELEVEN} CEREMONY

One week before the ceremony, I’d say I would have been about as likely to read an original poem in front of my classmates as I would have been to stand under Astrid’s window and serenade her with a mariachi band.

But a week can change everything and now I was going to read a poem.

The poem had come to me in the middle of the night. I groped for my journal. I wrote furiously, trying to get the poem down on paper. My pen scratching on the paper was the only sound in the dark, quiet store besides the distant hum of the refrigerators.

I fell back asleep, convinced I had written the most beautiful poem in the world. In my sleepy state, I was sure it would heal the world—this poem of mine.

Then I woke up in the morning to hear Batiste repeating everything Chloe said.

When I opened my journal to bask in my brilliance, it was, of course, total scribble scrabble. I could only make out a couple words. The pen drifted all over the page and the funny thing is that I had underlined, very emphatically, in several places, but there were no words above the underlines. Just lines with exclamation points after them.

So I pretty much had to start from scratch.

Hey, guess who cooked breakfast? Me and Alex. You would think everyone would have been tired of my half burnt–half raw delicacies, but they ate my cold yet crispy frozen waffles and blackened hash browns right up. At breakfast Josie told us the ceremony would be in the Bed and Bath area in one hour. She asked us not to go near there so she could finish setting it up.

“Do we get to dress up?” Caroline asked.

Max groaned and rolled his eyes.

“What? It’s a ceremony, right? Like church?” she asked.

“That’s a good idea, Caroline. Everyone get dressed up,” Josie said.

“Can I just wear this?” Brayden asked. He had on jeans and a sweatshirt.

Josie looked pointedly to Jake. She waited.

Jake cleared his throat.

“I think we should all dress up,” Jake said to Brayden. “You know, show respect.”

I gave myself a good once-over with baby wipes and put on fresh clothes. I retrieved my journal from where I’d left it in my sleeping bag. I was looking over my poem, fretting about some word or comma or something, when I heard wind chimes.

“What’s that sound?” came little Henry’s voice.

He climbed out of the toy-box playhouse that he and his sister had made. Caroline came right behind him.

“Um, wind chimes,” I said. “I think Josie is making that sound to tell us it’s time to go to the ceremony.”

“Our mom loves those things,” Henry told me, taking my hand. “She has like five of them and they hang in the garden out back. They get all tangled up in the winter but she always goes and straightens them out. She just loves the sound of ’em.”

“I know,” I said. “We can hear them from our yard.”

My mom called their mom a hippie because of all her wind chimes, but I wasn’t about to say that.

“Our mommy says they sound like fairy music,” Caroline added.

“Hey!” Henry said. “Do you think we could get some for her? Take them with us when it’s time to go?”

“That’s a good present,” Caroline added, nodding.

“Sure,” I said. “You can take her two wind chimes, if you want. One from each of you.”

The twins grinned at each other.

They had chosen matching dress-up clothes for themselves. Henry in black pants, a plaid shirt, and a sweater vest. Caroline in a little plaid dress that matched Henry’s shirt and tights and shiny black shoes.

They had washed their freckled faces and combed their hair.

I thought, Who are these kids?

And what do they think is going on here?

He certainly didn’t ask to be picked up, but I hoisted up that little Henry anyway. He put his arms around my neck and it felt good. Caroline clung to my hand.

“I’m glad you’re here, Dean,” she said to me. “Because you’re our neighbor and we knew you from before.”

“Me, too,” I told her.

Josie had cleared a big space by pushing an aisle out of the way. This would have involved unbolting it from the ground, so I suspect Niko had a hand in the preparations.

She had tacked up some gold and orange ladies scarves over the fluorescent lights on the ceiling and that made a big difference. The light was soft and peachy and calming. There were a bunch of area rugs overlapping, covering the floor. A wide circle of pillows for us to sit on went around the edge of the space. In front of each pillow there was an unlit pillar candle. In the center there was this sort of decorated place with a big wall mirror lying flat, and some Christmas tree lights spread out and some kind of decorative crystal balls scattered among the lights.

It looked nice. Pretty.

“Please be seated,” Josie told me, Henry, and Caroline. We each sat on a pillow.

Chloe was sitting next to Josie and behind them the wind chimes were hung on the edge of the aisle divider. Every so often Josie would nod to Chloe and Chloe would stroke the wind chimes with a little mallet.

Jake and Brayden ambled over. They both bore some signs of the fistfight they’d had with Niko the day before. A little bruising here, some scrape marks there. Jake looked a little queasy and I noticed they both shielded their eyes from the Christmas tree lights.

You know you have a hangover when Christmas tree lights hurt your eyes.

Brayden looked at the setup and made a sarcastic grimace. To his credit, he didn’t snort or say anything derisive. I’m sure it was a challenge not to be a dick.

Niko entered the circle. I hadn’t heard him coming. You never heard him coming. Must have been a Boy Scout thing. He looked slightly better than he did the night before. But maybe it was just the candlelight making him glowy.

Niko sat down across the circle from Jake and Brayden. I saw them meet one another’s eyes and look away. An uneasy look, an appraising look.

Sahalia came carrying a guitar, of all things. She was wearing white jeans and several white shirts, all flowing over each other. She looked beautiful and very pure. No makeup. Respectful.

I tell you, just when you think you know someone, she shows up looking pretty and carrying a guitar.

She sat cross-legged and put the guitar behind her, darting her eyes over to Jake and Brayden, to see if they were going to make fun of her for the guitar. Jake didn’t look at her. Brayden smirked at her, half mocking, half (I don’t know) flirting?

Chloe kept jangling the wind chimes until everyone had arrived and there was only one empty space: Astrid’s.

“Where’s Astrid?” Max asked. “Isn’t she coming?”

And the kids started joining in, asking for her.

“Let’s call her,” Josie suggested. “Maybe she’ll come.”

And the kids started yelling. “Astrid! Astrid!”

Chloe turned and started whacking the wind chimes real loud.

Astrid didn’t come.

I was really hoping she would. She had been gone for about twenty-four hours, at that point.

I knew Astrid was safe. There was nowhere she could go. But I also knew she must be beating herself up about what had happened in the bathroom with Batiste.

And she was going to have to get over it. She’d just have to.

Batiste sat there, still and pale. The bruises around his neck were blue and brown. It looked like he was dirty at the neck, which he probably was, anyway.

Batiste didn’t call for Astrid. He hadn’t gotten over what had happened either. But he could. I assumed he could, anyway. After all, Alex had forgiven me. For the most part, anyway.

“I think she must be napping,” Josie said finally. “Let’s start and maybe she will join in.”

Chloe turned and struck the wind chimes again.

“Chloe, enough with the wind chimes,” Josie said.

“Sor-ry,” Chloe said under her breath.

Josie closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. She opened her eyes and began.

“We are here to honor those who have died. We don’t know how many have gone. We don’t really even know what is going on outside. But we can pray for those who have passed and hold them in our hearts and help them go on up to Heaven.

“They don’t talk about Heaven very much at my church. It’s a UU church—that’s Unitarian Universalist—and the UU’s sort of believe in the ideas from a lot of religions, but don’t talk about Heaven and Hell and sins and all that.

“But I believe in Heaven. And that is where I see all the beautiful souls going. People from other religions believe other things. And that’s good. Whatever they believe about what happens after death, that’s what’s happening to them.

“We each make our own Heaven, that’s what I think.”

The little kids were starting to shift around and fidget.

Josie nodded to Sahalia.

Sahalia took out the guitar and strummed a few chords.

“This is one of my favorite songs,” Sahalia said. “It’s by Insect of Zero. I don’t know if you know it, but anyway, here it is.”

I didn’t know the song. I didn’t even know the band.

Sahalia started to sing and her voice was very gravelly and raspy. A satisfying voice. Like you had an itch in your ear and her voice could scratch it.

Here’s what she sang:

Looking at the words, they seem pretty antisocial. But the melody was beautiful and mournful. Like a funeral song.

I don’t know. It was pretty perfect.

When the song was finished, Josie nodded to me.

“Now Dean has something to read.”

Alex looked at me in surprise. I shrugged and opened my journal.

I will tell you that not only did I not feel intimidated by Brayden and Jake, or nervous to expose my feelings, I wanted to do it.

And I hoped that Astrid was lurking near. I was pretty sure she was. I wanted her to hear me and know my thoughts. And I hoped that my dumb poem might help her feel better.

Here was my poem:

I know. A poem. Gay. What can I say?

Josie got up. We hadn’t planned a thing, but darn if she didn’t strike a match and hold it up. She took her candle and lit it. It was as if we had choreographed it—my poem would be about light and then we’d light candles. But we hadn’t.

Josie turned to Ulysses, who was sitting to her left, and held out her candle toward him. He knew what to do; he grabbed his pillar and lit it from Josie’s. Then he turned to Max, sitting next to him, and lit Max’s candle. When it got to Astrid’s empty space, Jake just reached over and lit it.

I was glad he had done that. I wished I had done it.

When the flame went all the way around the circle, Josie reached forward and put her candle on the mirrors she had set in the center of the circle. She nodded for us all to do the same.

Fourteen lights stood there flickering together. The crystals and the mirror reflected the light, making it sparkle out all over the place.

The little kids were mesmerized.

Josie got up. She had a basket and in it were slips of paper and cardboard. They were photographs of people. Not famous people, just regular people. She had cut them out of magazines, off product packaging, out of book covers.

“These are just some pictures of people we don’t know,” Josie said. We each took a slip out of the basket.

“I want you to take one photograph and look at that person and just send them love. See them in a circle of light and wish them peace.”

Ulysses waved his hand at Josie. He whispered something in Spanish, as he held out his photo. This was maybe the third time I’d ever heard him speak. It was serious, whatever it was he was saying, and he started to cry.

He pushed his picture back into Josie’s hands.

“What’s he saying?” I asked Max. But Josie got it. She quickly looked through the photographs and gave Ulysses one of a fat Chinese man eating an apple.

“This one okay?” she asked.

Ulysses nodded.

I saw Josie look at the photo Ulysses had had. It was a photo of a smiling Latina grandmother making cookies. It probably looked too much like Ulysses’s own grandmother.

Ulysses wiped his nose on his sleeve. This sweet, Spanish-speaking kid, alone with a bunch of Anglos. His spirit not crushed. Just doing the best he could. I really loved that kid.

I looked at the scrap of cardboard in my hand.

It was a baby crawling around in nothing but a diaper.

It made my heart hurt to think of the baby. Most likely dead now. A baby.

I started to think this was not a good idea. The whole ceremony. What were we trying to do, anyway?

I started to really protest, in my mind. This was a waste of time. The little kids were just going to get upset, or confused. This was a stupid idea and who did Josie think she was, anyway? It wasn’t her place to lead us into some terrible ordeal where we thought about the dead babies and got all torn to pieces.

Who did she think she was, anyway?

Josie held her stupid photo to her chest and started to sing.

It was a very simple song, and after she had sung it a couple of times, the other kids joined in as best they could.

Sahalia played the chords on her guitar.

I didn’t want to sing the stupid song.

I looked at the baby on my scrap of cardboard.

I felt so bad for that baby.

“Everyone sing,” Josie commanded.

I glared at her.

“Sing, Dean,” she insisted.

I couldn’t do it.

“Sing.”

Alex was on my left and he put his hand on my shoulder.

I felt so glad to have him. So lucky to be with my brother and guilty that I had family, when so many people didn’t.

Everything was too much for me.

So I looked at my piece of cardboard and just focused narrower and narrower until that baby was the only thing I could see.

And I opened my mouth and whisper-sang, “Go now in peace,” to the baby.

I didn’t think about all the babies. All the people. All the everyone who was lost now. I just sang about the one curly-haired baby, singing him to peace and to rest.

I could sing the baby up to Heaven. The one baby.

I could sing for him and him alone.

Eventually Josie said, “Amen.”

And I realized I had tears running down my face. They’d soaked the collar of my button-down shirt and were somehow also in my ears, which had never happened to me before.

“That’s it,” Josie said. “Our ceremony is over.”

“Wait,” said Batiste. “Can I say a prayer?”

“Of course,” Josie said.

Batiste stood up and recited.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, Halloween Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive the breast passers, and forgive the breast passes against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

“Amen,” we echoed.

I was quite sure that Halloween was not the name of God, and I didn’t know what on earth a “breast passer” was, though I enjoyed imagining it to a degree, but it was nice Batiste wanted to make a contribution. And he had a beaming look on his face. Pride and happiness. He had given us something. For all his sanctimoniousness, he was growing on me.

Alex leaned against me and I put my arm around him and gave him a half hug.

Caroline and Henry were huddled peacefully together. Ulysses was up on Josie’s lap while Max cuddled into her side. She was smoothing Max’s cowlick. The most persistent cowlick in the world. It just sprung up anew after her every stroke.

Chloe had scooted over to Niko and was sidled up against him.

Niko didn’t seem to mind. Too much.

Brayden was looking at the floor with a studied concentration that made me think he’d been upset, too, and didn’t want us to see. Jake pulled up the bottom of his T-shirt, revealing (of course) his perfect six-pack abs. Then he blew his nose on the bottom of his shirt and laughed with a self-deprecating snort.

I took a long breath and let it out.

“Jeez Louise,” said Chloe. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

We laughed.

It was the first easy laugh I had had in the last three days.

^{CHAPTER TWELVE} ELECTIONS

Lunch: Pizza.

Cook: me.

Excited about it: no.

“Oh man,” Chloe moaned as she pushed her tray down the counter. “I never thought I’d get tired of eating pizza but you know what? I am.”

“We’re all tired of it,” I snapped. “But I’m doing the best I can and I’m not getting much help.”

“We can help!” Caroline said. “Me and Henry are real good helpers.”

“Yeah,” Henry added. “We help our mommy all the time. We can do the shopping, the chopping, AND the mopping!”

He and Caroline giggled at that, what had to be old family joke.

“I’m a great cook, too,” added Chloe. “You should let me help. I can make pasta with butter so good.”

“Okay,” I said. “I tell you what. Every day I’ll pick a helper and that helper will pick out what we’re going to eat, and somehow, we’ll figure out how to cook it together.”

“Yay! Yay!” the little kids cheered, jumping up and down.

Then it was a chorus of “Pick me! Pick me!”

“Okay,” I said, thinking it over. “Today’s helper will be Chloe. And tomorrow will be Ulysses.”

I figured I’d get the most annoying kid over with first. After all I had already cooked two out of the three meals for the day.

We ate our pizza and we waited for Jake and Brayden to show up.

It was election time.

Niko was there, looking over his notes. He looked nervous, but eager.

Jake and Brayden had skipped lunch and were nowhere to be seen.

Josie paced up near the counter.

“All right, hmmm, Jake and Brayden must have forgotten what we’re doing,” she said, stalling. “I know, let’s sing some songs. Who knows ‘She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain’?”

“She” had driven her six white horses and “She” had eaten chicken and dumplings and “She” was having to sleep with Grandma when, at last, Jake and Brayden showed up.

Apparently they’d been planning a splashy opening for his election speech.

We heard Jake’s voice booming from a distance.

“Thirty-four, twenty-seven, hut, hut, HIKE!”

And then Brayden came running toward us, leaping and jumping over the fallen merchandise in his way.

He was wearing a football helmet and an oversize sweatshirt stuffed with towels or something to look like pads. On the front he had written a giant “2” with a magic marker.

Brayden came running toward us and then turned, and BAM, a football flew into his hands.

“Touchdown!” he shouted, spiking the ball.

The kids looked half thrilled, half terrified.

Then Jake came jogging into the Pizza Shack. He gave Brayden a high five and Brayden handed him the football.

Jake, too, wore a football helmet and a sweatshirt made to look like a uniform. He took off his helmet and tossed it onto the table. His jersey read QB on the front and #1 on the back.

“Guys, I am the QB,” he said. “That means quarterback! The quarterback is the guy on the team who calls the shots and makes sure everyone plays their best. And I’m gonna be a great QB for this team. Us. That’s why you should elect me the leader!”

The kids started clapping and cheering like crazy.

Niko looked at Josie and then back at his notes.

Jake’s stunt was charming and silly and totally cool, too.

It didn’t look good for Niko.

Josie tried to get a word in, but Jake continued.

“I say there is no reason in the world why we can’t have some fun here! We’ve got, like, every game in the world. We’ve got all the food we can eat. I think this could be like summer training camp—”

He was talking too fast. He seemed wired. High, almost.

And then I wondered, was he actually high?

He was acting really weird.

“I gotta say,” Brayden said, “that Jake is a great leader. You guys are gonna love having him as the boss. I guarantee it.”

Somehow looking at Brayden standing there with a big #2 on his chest made me very, very nervous.

“We all appreciate your enthusiasm, Brayden,” Josie said, finally getting in there. “But really, this is just for the two candidates.”

“Totally! Sorry. My apologies, everyone.”

“Dude,” Jake said. “She’s right, sit down, bro. This is mano a mano. Me and Niko only.”

Brayden went and sat down in a booth to the side.

“Now, just to be clear,” Jake rambled on. “I don’t see this as just a football training camp—though I think we got the makings of a great team here—but every kind of sport. I even think we can make the things like cleaning up and cooking and all that crap, that stuff can be fun, too! We can have teams and have contests and prizes. Stuff like that!”

He grinned at us all. Then gave a thumbs-up.

“Okay,” Josie said. “Is there anything else you’d like to say?”

Jake thought about it for a moment.

“Vote for me and we’ll par-tee!” he said.

I hope he was improvising because as a slogan, it pretty much sucked.

Jake just stood there with his thumb still up. The kids gave a deflated cheer for him. They were following his cues, but they didn’t seem to buy it a hundred percent. I certainly didn’t.

“All right,” Josie said. “Then let’s hear from Niko.”

“Great!” Jake said.

Niko stood and walked over to stand next to Josie, but Jake didn’t sit down. He was just kind of standing there, fidgeting, throwing the ball in the air.

“Jake, why don’t you sit down while Niko talks,” Josie said, showing Jake where to sit.

The little kids giggled.

Jake was acting really stoned.

I wondered if this would help him or hurt him at “the polls.”

“Hey, guys,” Niko began. “It was a really cool idea to come in costume. I wish I thought of it. Though I don’t know how cool you would think it was if I came in my Scout uniform…”

He looked up at us.

Niko was trying to crack a joke, I realized too late.

Someone needed to work with him on his delivery.

“But, you know, maybe Boy Scouts isn’t cool to some people, but the training I got as a Scout has really helped me here. And all of us. You know, I know first aid and I helped us to get out of the bus and stuff.”

Brayden whispered, “Yo!” to Jake and held his hands out. Jake passed him the ball.

“If you pick me, it’s not going to be all games and playing,” Niko continued. “I think we need order and structure. Everyone’s gonna have to work if we’re going to make it. That’s just what I think.”

The kids were looking down at their laps. A couple were starting to fidget.

Niko’s eyes glanced over to Josie and I saw her make a little motion with her hands, like, Give us more.

Niko took a deep breath. Then he seemed to pull himself together. He stood up straight. He looked out at all of us.

“I am not good at making speeches. I’m not the most popular kid at school.”

Brayden snickered off to the right.

“But I know what needs to be done here,” Niko continued. “I know how to organize and delegate. I know how to ration food, so we’ll be able to stay well fed for as long as possible. I know how to keep my head in a crisis. I think you all know that about me already.

“I know how to survive and I’ll teach you all how to survive. That’s what we need to learn now. I think we are all a lot luckier than pretty much everyone in this part of the country.”

He looked out and his gaze traveled over each of us. His posture, his straightness, seemed to magnetize us somehow and we all sat up taller in our seats.

“We are going to honor those who have died by surviving. All of us. That’s my promise to you. If you elect me, we’re all getting out of here safe and sound.”

Niko strode to the back of the tables and sat down, alone.

Josie passed out pens from a new box of ballpoints and little scraps of paper. Each one was numbered.

“All right,” she told us. “Write the name of the boy who you want to be our group leader until Mrs. Wooly comes.”

There was a moment of circular scribbling as everyone got the ballpoints to flow.

Then there was a pause, while people thought, and eventually they started writing.

I watched the kids writing. These stupid little kids. How could they know enough to make a good choice here?

If they chose Jake, we were in serious trouble.

Niko was the only rational choice, but he hadn’t played to the kids. He hadn’t promised them a good time.

What would the little kids pick? Good times or survival skills?

I wrote Niko, and I underlined it several times.

Then I rose and put my vote into the empty personal-size pizza box Alex had created as a ballot box.

Alex retired to the corner booth, where he counted and recounted dutifully.

He rose and walked to the front of the room.

I tried to catch his eye, but he kept his gaze on the floor.

Alex whispered the results to Josie.

She took a moment and then spoke.

“This was a really close race, and that speaks to the fact that both our candidates are such good guys. Let’s not let there be any hard feelings, guys…”

She looked out at Jake and Niko.

“The winner is Niko.”

There were some cheers and a couple of boos. Brayden pronounced the election bull— (such a vocabulary!), but Jake rose to shake Niko’s hand.

“Congratulations,” Jake said. “Let me know what I can do to help, all right, man?”

Jake was sort of dancing on the tips of his toes. He had that much energy.

“Yes. Thank you,” said Niko.

Niko’s straight hair fell into his eyes and he pushed it back. Everything about Niko was straight. His hair, his posture, his whole way of being. The kid was utterly straight and totally trustworthy.

“Come on, man,” I heard Jake say to Brayden as they walked away, “let’s go get drunk.”