Homecoming

You hear it - it's the sound of a young girl weeping, retching into the stained toilet bowl in the restroom of the gas station. It's not a feminine sound. The hood of her anorak hides her face. Its faux fur trim hangs in wet spikes, bringing the rain inside with her, as if the steady pelting at the frosted window weren't enough to remind the girl of how dismal things are. What can I tell you about this girl that wouldn't be old news? She's pregnant, abandoned. Her car is on its last legs. And there are demons. She's going home to face her mother.

Wait. Demons?

There are three of them. They come to Molly because she is a good girl. They slide into her because they are voiceless and Molly can speak. They have some things to say. There, in the restroom, they make her forget the baby. Demons are good for something after all.

Molly wipes her forehead with a coarse paper towel and looks at her sallow reflection in the mirror. Gosh, that first semester of college was hard on me.

She pulls her anorak back over her head and the water trickles down the back of her neck in damp, slimy rivulets. She runs back to the car that is on its last legs. It has enough go to get her to her mother's house, where Molly will be able to see her mother's face and explain to her that she hasn't changed that much, hasn't been corrupted. She's still a good girl. A holy, hopeful girl.

Molly pictures the house. Gray and shuttered. Drawn, like a beaten old woman. Inside, the smell of things preserved. She imagines her brother Will, not having moved from the sofa, barely lifting his left buttock from the plastic couch cover to make farting sounds as a tribute to her leave-taking. What will he see in her now? His little sister, grown-up and sophisticated? She sneezes into her hand.

She gets the car to start and it heaves its body across the country roads as if it's a wounded animal. She suddenly remembers that it's Sunday and gasps at how this crucial fact has slipped from her brain in her desire to get home, to rest in her familiar bed. Molly makes a detour to the church. Her mother without fail goes to the ten o'clock service. Molly parks the car in the mud-sluiced parking lot.

Molly stands at vestibule of the church, listening for a moment to the trailing edges of the last hymn. The Church of Our Lady's Mysteries doesn't have a choir and the congregation tries to compensate with decibels. Not everyone finishes the hymn at the same time.

Molly sees her mother in the pew she always sits in - on the left side of the church, third row from the front. Her back is rigid, her shoulders squared. Will's next to her, fidgeting in his too-small Sunday suit. Will is not a believer, but he's not the kind of son to resist his mother either.

There's a coiling of nervousness inside Molly, but she steps forward. She thinks that she'll slide into the pew by her Mama and surprise her. They'll join hands, she imagines. They'll beam at each other, filled with their love of the Lord and good works.

The demons are excited.

This is the moment they've been waiting for. They've wanted to speak for so long, to explain. But as Molly walks forward, they can't coordinate their efforts. Ethereal stooges, they elbow and poke each other and the only words that spring to Molly's lips are not "Mama" or "Lord, forgive us," but "unnh, unnh, unnh," each "unnh" louder than the last. Molly's arms strike out, then bend back rigidly, as if she's a Barbie being manipulated by a thoughtless giant child. There's a collective gasp in the church and the last thing Molly sees before she hits her head on the linoleum is her mother's measuring glance.

When Molly awakens, she's in her own bed, under her comforter with the dancing butterflies. Her poster of Jesus is still on the wall, with his blue eyes that seem to follow her and wavy brown hair cascading down his shoulders. (The demons collectively swoon.) Will says it's a picture of a Hollywood Jesus.

Molly sees Will peering in the doorway. "Jeez, Molly, way to make a dramatic entrance."

Mama slaps Will on the back of his neck. "Don't take the Lord's name in vain," she says. She pushes him out of her way and walks to Molly's bedside.

"Mama," Molly stammers, "I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened." She sits up and notices that she's undressed. That she's wearing one of her Mama's flannel nightgowns. Her bulky anorak is piled on a chair.

Mama reaches forward as if to pat Molly's hand but instead she pats the comforter. Molly waits for her mother to say something, but Will cuts in. "Half of those folks thought you had the Rapture and the other half thought you were having a fit like Uncle George."

At this, Molly crosses herself. Uncle George is her mother's half-wit brother, currently locked up in the state mental facility.

"There, now, girl," Mama says. She's frowning like she's sucked on a lemon. "Well, I knew it wasn't the Rapture."

"I'm fine now," Molly says, disregarding the backhanded slur. "Did I manage to come back in time for one of your great Sunday dinners?"

Mama lowers her eyes and smiles. Mother's cooking is one of her vanities. She reaches to pat Molly again and this time makes contact with her daughter's flesh.
Will looks at his mother incredulously. "Aren't we going to call the doctor?"

Mama throws him a look. "We're not city folk. We don't call the doctor for every damned thing, boy."

Will shakes his head and leaves the room. Mama follows. Molly gets up out of bed. She looks around her, at her ribbons from high school still tacked to the wall - for the math bee, for catechism, from the 4-H club where she got honorable mention for a pecan nut loaf. She walks to her dresser. Her hand brushes against her music box that contains a little statue of the Virgin Mary. If only each twist of her wrist could turn back time, she thinks, as she winds the music box. To erase misdeeds, the bad thoughts of millennia and the hopeless wanting. The Virgin Mary revolves and the music box plays Ave Maria. The box is old. Molly hears the gears inside the box whirring.

Molly leaves her room and walks across the hall to Will's room. It's a typical boy's room, with football posters on the wall (Mama won't let him put up pictures of starlets) and clothing strewn on the floor.

Molly sees the cage where Lola, Will's new garter snake, lives. She lifts the lid of the cage, and reaches into it to stroke Lola's smooth skin. At the unexpectedness of Molly's touch, the snake streaks across the cedar chips to its hidey-hole - a bit of hollowed-out log. Disappointed, Molly shuts the lid. Will should be gone from here, Molly thinks, as she looks around the room. He's older than she is. He has a job. He's a boy - it should be easier for him to make his way in the world. She shakes her head and goes downstairs.

Downstairs at the dinner table. Will chews like an animal and makes soft grunting noises of satisfaction.

Downstairs. Molly's mother eats, barely moving the muscles of her jaw. She watches Molly. Speculating. Her eyes are like cool grey pebbles.

Downstairs. Molly puts her face in the stew and howls like an injured dog. Her knees rise up and bang against the table. She starts throwing knives and forks at Will who ducks with surprising grace.

"Just what has gotten into you, Molly Malone?" Mama yells. But something in her daughter's eyes makes Mama leave the table to call at last for Dr. Webb.
Will finishes chewing the last bit of his stew meat, wipes his hands on a paper towel and carries his sister upstairs.

"Prince Charming," Molly says, her eyes rolling backwards in her head.

"Shut up," Will says.

Dr. Webb arrives together with Father Carson, each, the other's liver-spotted doppelgänger. Dr. Webb touches Molly, palpates her where she doesn't want to be palpated and, as he reaches towards her abdomen, she spews a stream of green phlegm on his liver-spotted pate while the music box begins to play, not Ave Maria, but Für Elise.

"Neat," says Will from the doorway.

Mama pushes him out of the way. "What's wrong with her?" she demands either of the old men to tell her.

"Some sort of virus, I'm guessing," says Dr. Webb, preempting the priest with a warning glance. The doctor walks into Molly's bathroom for a towel and also to check the medicine cabinet. The priest looks uncertainly at the Virgin Mary revolving in the music box. He can't place the song.

The priest is not a stupid man. He walks to Molly's bedside. "There's lot of excitement, isn't there," Father Carson says to Molly, "coming home on break from your first semester at college?"

"Have you made some friends?" Father Carson continues. "It must feel pretty different out there from....." He gestures at the room but Molly knows he means the barren property, tufted here and there with scrub grass. And the town clinging, just barely, to old life.

"Yeah, Molly, meet any boy friends?" Will leers salaciously.

"Girl, you better not have had any boyfriends between your legs," Mamma snaps, glaring at Will, then at Molly.

Molly shivers. "No, Mamma. No."

The demons elbow each other. They decide to let it slide. They understand lies after all, the need to save one's self.

"Can you check?" Mama growls at the doctor.

"Eh?" he says, lifting his hoary head. He seems to get older by the minute in this house. "No, Mrs. Malone. That I will not. You're daughter is a grown woman. That is not appropriate."

"She's a child," Mama nearly spits. "She was an innocent when she left here. All sorts of bad influences might a got hold of her. Made her sick."

"Mrs. Malone," the doctor says in a patronizing way that makes Molly despise him and the demons contemplate projectile vomiting, "My diagnosis is that it's a virus, a common cold. Bed rest and comfort are what this girl needs." He studies Molly. "Feel free to come to my office, Molly," he calls to her as he heads downstairs.

The priest nods in agreement at Molly. "If you find you need to talk, come by the church." He puts a woolen ski cap on his head that makes him look like a teenager with a wizened face and accompanies his colleague downstairs. Mama grinds her jaws in frustration, but doesn't say anything. She turns and trails after the priest. Will shrugs and follows.

Molly looks at the emptied room with dismay. She gets up unsteadily and puts a damp palm on Hollywood Jesus' face. The ones inside her find the words for sorrow, for devastation, for loss of hope. These are all the words in their vocabulary. Molly clenches her hand into a fist and pounds the poster. She pounds and pounds and pounds until her hand is a mass of bruises and Will comes running back upstairs. "Ma's outside, sending the priest off." Will clutches his knees, gasping for breath. "Do you want me to get her?"

Something in his sister's brown/yellow eyes stops him. "What is it, Molly? It isn't the flu is it?"

"She'd welcome demons inside me, before she'd welcome anything else," Molly says in a low voice.

Will shrugs. "It's her way. When Dad left, remember how she said he was swept away in a maelstrom of fire? It was easier for her to accept Satan's hand in it than Mrs. Loomis'."

Molly raises her hand to touch Hollywood Jesus' face. Molly withdraws her palm from the poster and the image is scorched beneath it, smoke curling from the edges.

Will's mouth hangs open.

"Get the priest," she says as she sinks to the floor on her knees. Will stands still for a moment, but he moves finally when Molly starts banging her head on the floor, clutching her stomach. "Get out. Get out. Get out," she pleads, uncertain who she's talking to. Then she slips into unconsciousness.

The priest comes back upstairs. He's impatient now, but he takes a look at Hollywood Jesus and Molly's yellow-tinged skin and mutters something about making a telephone call to the diocese and getting a certain book.

Molly's eyes flutter open and she sees her Mama approaching her, looking down at her prone body. Her mother's eyes sparkle with interest and she's clenching and unclenching her red-knuckled hands. "We have guests," Mama says, "Mrs. Cole and Mrs. Crumn are downstairs. From the church. I have to put on coffee. Get some cake out." Molly thinks she has never seen her mother look this engaged, this lively.

"Pray with me, Mama," Molly pleads. She reaches out her thin pale hands to bring her mother closer, but her mother doesn't budge.

"We have guests," her mother repeats, looking past Will, who's hovering in the doorway, as if she's timing how fast she can make it downstairs. Molly closes her eyes and pictures the two women in the living room, sitting like wrinkled children come for a tea party, their voices rising like halleluiahs to the ceiling as they discuss what might have gotten into Molly and the inevitable evils of a city education. When Molly opens her eyes her mother is gone. Molly's on the bed again. Will must have put her there. But Will is gone.

The priest comes back again. He's holding a Bible.

"Forget your tools, priest?" one of the demons asks.

Father Carson shakes his head. "Molly," he says, "are you in some kind of trouble?"

"You think it's that simple, priest?" Molly says. The voice comes from her or from inside a well. It's low and mean.

"No," the priest sighs, taking a flask of holy water from some pocket of his vestment. He pushes Molly's anorak from the chair and sits, resting the flask and bible in his lap. "What do you think you're doing here 'demon'?" he says, making air quotes with his fingers.

The demons spit, but the priest is faster than the doctor. "We!" the demons hiss.

"Alright, the question's the same though."

"Maybe we want forgiveness."

"Forgive yourself then, because God's forgiven you. Or do you want someone else to forgive you? Is she downstairs?"

"Fool!" the demons hiss.

"Look, Molly," Father Carson says, placing the bible on her nightstand. "This is a small town and I can understand your being afraid."

"You dismiss us so easily, Father."

"You make us sound so ordinary."

"No, Molly," Father Carson says, tiredly. You're not ordinary. But you're not a child anymore. And it's a sad thing, but you may have to leave your mother behind. She may not want anything to do with you anymore. Now that you've seen things, been some places she can't imagine..."

Molly breaks through then. "I have so many thoughts in my head. They can't be mine. They don't feel like me. It's like I've been invaded." Molly clutches the comforter. "Can't you say the words? Use the holy water to get the demons out?"

"Sure, Molly. I can say the words."

The priest has his back resolutely to Hollywood Jesus and Molly understands suddenly that he lacks faith. That he'd rather assume things about her than ponder whether she's reaching for divinity.

Father Carson reaches for the flask and anoints her with the water, making a perfunctory sign of the cross on her forehead. Her flesh doesn't boil, doesn't break into pustules where the drop of water lands. It's unsanctified, Molly thinks. He probably got it from the tap before he came upstairs.

"You alright now, Molly?" he asks.

She nods weakly and closes her eyes on his concerned face, on the smoking palm-shaped wound on Hollywood Jesus' face.

She nods again. When the priest leaves the room, Molly gets dressed, puts on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, grabs the anorak. It's still damp. She walks into Will's room. He guiltily hides a Game Boy. "Jesus, Molly, you scared the crap out of me! I thought you were Ma." Molly cuffs the back of his head with affection.

"Do you need anything?" Will asks her.

"Yeah," Molly says, "Lots of things. But right now I need to go."

They're both silent for a moment, listening to the sound of the women downstairs, Mama, Mrs. Cole and Mrs. Crumm. The soft murmuring of Hail Marys. The women's voices are rapt.

Molly walks to Lola's cage while Will roots around for some money to give her. Lola's belly undulates. The snake's holding her young. She's waiting for the right time to release them into the world. The dead of an Iowa winter, this makeshift terrarium - it's not the right time, not the right place.

Will pats Molly on the shoulder and slides some money into her back pocket.

"You know where I live, Molly," he says.

Molly nods. She gathers the angels of her nature to her and heads downstairs, past the women who don't look up from their murmured prayers to see her go.

###