Сигрид Нуньес - Salvation City

Warm bed, warm milk, the doctor’s deep warm voice. No, Cole wasn’t losing his mind again. Overexcitement. Nerves. Stress caused by traumatic memories. All that—a lot!—but nothing a day’s rest wouldn’t cure. And, of course, prayer. “Still the best medicine.”

(Instantly Cole’s thoughts flew to pretty, cat-faced Dr. Ming, his pediatrician in Chicago, who finished every exam by tickling his ribs and reminding him that laughter was the best medicine.)

Left alone, Cole lay in bed feeling very tired but not at all sleepy. It was the middle of the afternoon, and though the blinds were closed, bright sunlight leaked around them. He felt stifled under his covers, but as soon as he threw them off he was freezing. He turned round and round, like a rotisserie chicken, unable to get comfortable. His mind was racing. He thought back to a day when Pastor Wyatt had come to see him at the orphanage. Not the first time—not the rainy gray Saturday on which they had first met—but a later visit. They were sitting and talking in one of the common areas when PW dropped the word adoption —and even though Cole was already fond of PW and felt perfectly safe with him, a rush of fear had made him jump up and run away. It was the same kind of fear he had experienced years earlier, when he was around five or six and obsessed with the idea that if his mother let go of his hand when they were out in public, someone might try to snatch him.

Afterward he had been embarrassed, and he had felt bad for PW, whose feelings Cole was sure he’d hurt and whom he guessed he’d never see again. But in fact PW came again the very next day, and the first thing he said to Cole was, “We’ve got to get one thing straight. There can’t ever be any adoption without your consent.”

“What a place,” said PW, shaking his head.

It was three weeks later, and this time PW had come to Here Be Hope to take Cole away with him.

“Looks like they can’t find your stuff.”

He was referring to Cole’s few clothes and other belongings, which had been packed into a large cardboard box by one of the staff. That morning at Here Be Hope had been particularly chaotic; several children besides Cole were leaving for new homes the same day. PW thought maybe Cole’s box had been taken by someone else by mistake.

“In which case, they should return it. Anyway, we’re not going to sit around all day while they try to find it.”

There were some papers in the box, including Cole’s birth certificate and his medical records, but Cole barely gave those a thought. He was far too upset about his drawings, and about another item, one he never mentioned to PW or to anyone else and which he tried to forget once it appeared that the box was probably missing for good. Something he’d managed to bring with him from the house in Little Leap and hold on to throughout his long illness. It had gone with him, washed and folded and tucked into a pocket, when it was time for him to leave the hospital and move to Here Be Hope. He had promised himself he would never lose it, but now it was gone: his mother’s blue bandanna.

COLE WAS EMBARRASSED by all the get-well calls and messages. He was embarrassed by all the prayers. He became flustered when Mason dropped by the house and greeted him with a high five. “You did good, bruh.”

Mason shrugged off Cole’s fear of having ruined the program. “What? We heard a little commotion, then silence for a bit, then ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow.’ No biggie! Nothing for you to feel bad about. Besides, dude, it was yesterday.”

An echo of what both Boots and PW had already assured Cole, who nevertheless remained doubtful. You make a public spectacle of yourself, life can’t just go on like before, can it? True, no one laughed openly at him. But he didn’t think he was imagining it when, the next time he was at church, a few people avoided looking him in the eye.

Fortunately, there was something new for everyone to focus on: Starlyn’s birthday party. Actually, there were going to be two parties. One was the Saturday afternoon surprise party her aunt would be throwing in Salvation City. The other would take place in Louisville the Friday evening of the week before, a much bigger and more grown-up affair in the banquet room of a hotel: a dance party. Cole wished he could be at that party, too, mostly because he wanted to see Starlyn in the fancy new dress he’d heard her tell Tracy all about—specifically, to see how any dress that was both strapless and backless could stay on. And he was curious to see her date, her boyfriend, about whom there’d been talk as well.

It took his mind off his fresh humiliation to be working on Starlyn’s gift: a charcoal portrait based on one of Tracy’s many photographs of her niece. Tracy had also helped him pick out a frame for the drawing, one with real pressed flowers under the Plexiglas, which made Cole happy every time he looked at it.

Cole was fairly satisfied with how his drawing finally came out, but when he imagined Starlyn unwrapping it in front of everyone else he felt almost sick, and so he was more relieved than disappointed that there were so many presents for her to open, she couldn’t spend time fussing over any one of them. He could tell she liked the drawing from the way her eyes lit up when she peeled the paper away. In the photo she was smiling, but Cole had drawn her with her lips closed and slightly pursed. Tracy said it made her look like she was praying, but that wasn’t what Cole had been thinking about.

Starlyn scanned the crowded living room to find him, half hiding in a corner, and blew him a kiss. It was enough.

No, it was not enough. Not if he was honest. Maybe it was all those hours he’d spent poring over her photos, making sketches, working so hard to get her features right (and the nose, he’d despaired, would never ever be right). Now, from the safety of his corner, he could not take his eyes off her. Once, he happened to catch PW watching him watch her, and there was something in his look—not disapproval, exactly, but something that made Cole feel chastened nevertheless.

Maybe it was the lacy white slip she was wearing. Not that he hadn’t seen her and plenty of other girls dressed like that before. It was one more thing Boots could get worked up about: Gals coming to church half naked . But Starlyn, who was thin, and whose breasts were smaller than most girls’ her age, didn’t look as exposed as some other girls—or as Tracy—did. Cole had been surprised to learn that girls and women in the Church of Salvation City didn’t have to cover up, and that they were allowed to wear makeup. He was surprised, too, that smoking wasn’t forbidden and that although heavy drinking was considered a major sin, alcohol wasn’t strictly forbidden, either.

“We ain’t the Taliban,” PW had told him, grinning. “We love music and laughter and a pretty dress, and we know that sometimes a man needs a drink and sometimes he’s just got to cuss.”

Starlyn had long arms and legs but tiny bones. She was perfectly healthy, had survived the pandemic without becoming infected, but she looked delicate.

“I always feel like a big oafess next to her,” said Tracy, who, except for her breasts, which were about the size of roast chickens, was quite small herself.

But Cole didn’t see how Starlyn could be warm enough dressed like that. The urge to cover her kept rising in him—and not with, say, the flannel shirt he was wearing over his T-shirt today, but with his whole body. And with this urge each time he grew too warm himself and dreamed of cooling his face in the marble curve of her neck.

Her cooling him, him warming her—Cole had to wonder sometimes where ideas like that came from. This one would not leave him alone. All day he would veer between guilt and excitement.