Wings of An Angel

6… 9… 2… 6… 4… 3… 5…

   6-9-2, 6-4-3-5.

   692-6435.

   “6, 9, 2…” The buttons blink up with a soft green glow. “6, 4, 3, 5.”

   The dial tone of an empty line fills his ears. In response, a muted buzz pattern echoes in the kitchen junk drawer. 19 seconds later the same dull female voice. “The person you are trying to reach has a voicemail box that has not been—” End-call. The boy huddled within his fortress of blankets and pillows lets his arms go limp.

   “It spells out ‘my angel’, Tem. See? Your angel, because I’m only ever one prayer away. You try.” He felt her voice on his neck as she leaned over his shoulder; he filled his nose with her peppermint toothpaste breath and looked at the numbers. “Find the M.”

   6…

   M.

   6-9—

   M-Y…

   2-6-4-3-5.

   2 years ago. A smaller, skinnier boy, trembling against the sink in just a shirt. Face burning red. White light bulbs. Naked legs. Groping eyes. Shame. Motor oil stains on Matt’s dad’s pants. Pain. He remembers steadying his voice. Asking to borrow a phone. “It’s nothing, just… my mom forgot my medicine. It’s important.” Then…

   6-9-2… n-g-e-l…

   “Please come.” A salty drop on the screen made iridescent colors. “Mom, please hurry.”

   Sitting in the backseat of the car, blushing, eyes wandering. His savior hovering at Matt Sterns’ front door in gym shorts and crocs. “I hate to meet again under these circumstances. No, Candace, no need to apologize. He’s just not feeling well. I want to keep an eye on him in case he fevers.” Shook Mrs. Stern’s hand firmly. Spat in Mr. Stern’s. Roared away with her son in a huff of burnt gasoline.

   6…

   A teenage girl’s laughter bounces off the walls from the end of the hall, startling Temple out of memory. A door slams. Thundering footsteps of an angry brother sends the house shuddering. “You IMBECILE, Paul! I’mma whoop your ass.” Like a corpse Temple deafens himself to it and pushes a sweaty thumb over the 6…

   “Boys, SHUT UPPP!”

   9…

   Temple cocks his head sideways, hearing the ghosts of similar yells filled with the same trembling attempt of self-preservation… “I HATE him!” A not-so-quiet wail. “I don’t understand, I just don’t understanddd.”

   For forty-four minutes, 14-year-old Rodie had loudly bled the tears of a dying first love’s bullet wound. Her mother never made a sound. For a long time, silence. Then the patter of feet down the hall. Screeching back door. Violent thrusting and hoisting of a shovel. Desperate cries. Peachy sunburn. A three-foot hole in the backyard. Mom’s firm voice. “Kill your love for him, Rodie. Drop it in its grave, and leave it to history. And then kill your hate of him. If you hold onto the hate, you hold onto the love too. Bury them both, and don’t bring him back.”

   2…

   “You promised us,” rang out Rodie’s quivering voice on the microphone, causing some guests to cringe. “You said ‘always’, not ‘never’. You said even if there was a moment we couldn’t look you in the eyes, we w-would feel your love. So why would you—“ She gasped in a sob, staring hard at the casket. “You promised you’d always come, but then you died. You promised I’d feel you in my heart… You… You left me twice. How could you? H-how could—?” She tripped off the platform and ran out between the pews.

   “Hey, HEY!” Paul screams, and there’s a thud on the other side of the wall. “Back off! I didn’t do nothin’.”

   “Damn lie to my face one more time,” Scottie shouts, and there’s another scuffle.

   6…

   Thump!— 4 years ago. Beginning of winter. Early Christmas money from Grandpapa meant a series of visits from K.J., the bearded elf who made off with Santa’s sleigh, and only daughter, and then spent two dozen years in the North Pole’s finest penitentiary.

   The basement stank of K.J.’s “leaves”. Dad had been down there since 9 p.m. when the floor rumbled and glass was shattering down below.

   Someone body-slammed the other. Cracked drywall. A bloody nose. “Mom! Mom, help! Mom! Mom!” Her nodding head snapping up from over a stack of bills. Pounded downstairs. Threw herself between the men. “Braden, K.J.— you bastards!” Chests heaving. A dribble down the Elf Felon’s seedy mane. “HEY! I’m not scared of things getting ugly, and I’m sure as hell not scared to make them uglier. K.J., get your sorry butt out of my house right now.” Her glare was hard under her black eye and wild hair.

   The dull-eyed Elf left without a word. Dad was shut up downstairs for as long as it took.

   4…

   “Get off me, Scott Newman!” Another thud as Paul fights back. “RODIE!”

   “Forget it,” his sister calls over. “Ana, get up. Go find Temple. Nadine’ll be back from work soon.”

   3…

   Small footsteps make their way across the house like a pest slinking about in walls it cannot call home. A soft, untuned voice accompanies the footsteps. Words to a song all five kids can quote by heart. “‘Does your halo grow heavy, hanging over your head? Boy you’ve held my heart steady, since the first day we met.’” A girl pops her head into the pillow fort. 4 years old. Dark circles under light eyes. “What you are doing?”

   5… “Nothing,” he breathes.

   She hesitates a moment, then crawls inside. Slumps against him. Skips to a different part of the song.

   “‘When the nights are growing colder, we can just stay right here. You take the weight off my shoulders, you make the world disappear.’” She sighs, “‘Under the wings of an angel… where my weary heart can sleep…’”

   6—9— Temple closes his eyes against the fire, wind, and fever pumping in his blood.

   When the nights are growing colder...— 1 year ago. February. Last snowy night of the year. School play night. There were lights and seat numbers. Everyone came— Grandpapa, Grandma, Mom. Baby Ana was swaddled in a hundred layers. One hour, two minutes, seven atrocious songs later. Second to last scene. The lights guy had fallen asleep on the control board. Stiff chairs. Sore tailbones. Tired parents. Outside, a storm was moving in. Out of nowhere Ana was on the floor. Spasms in her shoulders. Twitching neck.

   911 couldn’t get an ambulance past the corner. Rodie was crying. No one else noticed but Temple saw the quiver in Mom’s throat before she smashed a prop from the stage, snatched the flashlight, wrapped the baby up, and hauled her toward the exit.

   “‘Under the wings of an angel, where my weary heart can sleep. I can close my eyes without thinking twice, ‘cause my soul’s been set free.’…”

   Temple clears his throat. “Stop, Ana— just… stop, alright?”

   His sister quiets her song to a hum. Then, against his arm, “Temple, Dad saids Mom’s in heaven.”

   A spike of adrenaline tightens his muscles and neck.

   “Dad saids just good peoples and babies go to heaven.”

   “Was Braden smoking again?” Temple bites down hard on his upper molars.

   “Is four still a baby, Temple?”

   “Four years old?”

   “Yeah.”

   “You’re not a baby, Ana.”

   “Well— well—” The child sits up in earnest with big, full-moon eyes. “Mama saids I am a-always be her baby.”

   “Well, that doesn’t count.”

   Ana positions herself to snuggle into her brother again. Her heart is in her eyes as she stares down at the cordless phone. “I thinks I am still a baby. Then maybe I can go to heaven too.” He feels her frown against his shoulder. “I thinks… thinks a baby can get to heaven if they’s hold their breath for a long time.”

   To banish the tears, Temple pinches his leg. “Mom’s not in heaven,” he blurts. “She’s still with us.”

   “Dad saids—“

   “Braden was smoking weed, Ana. Remember? He probably wasn’t thinking right.”

   The little girl pauses. “I tried to holds my breath and count to ten. Like 1, 2, 3, 4…”

   6-9-2…

   “But that’s all I can count.”

   “I swear to GOD, Paul!” A door slams. Ana peeks out from under a quilt.

   “NOT A MOMENT OF PEACE IN THIS HELLHOLE,” Rodie roars. “Scottie, you son of a bitch, shut the hell up for the last damn time!” She pitches a high-heel out from behind the cracked door.

   “Run back to your phone call with Geoff Pence, Rodie,” Scottie hollers in response.

   “HEY. That’s about enough!” Nadine. She’s back from the clinic. “For God’s sake, you two, STOP. Paul?”

   “What?”

   Ana and Temple watch their cousin’s pink Sketchers glide across the floor. “Where’s your dad?”

   “I don’t know. Tell Scottie to get the hell back on his side of the room!”

   “SCOTT NEWMAN— Guys, get your backpacks; it’s late already. Your teachers won’t be happy.”

   The boys’ sneakers emerge from the hall. “We could just pull the old ’our mom just died’ thing again,” Scottie suggests gruffly. Paul’s silence is murderous. Nadine’s is suicidal.

   The Sketchers stop in front of the fort. “Temple? Is Ana with you?”

   Ana passes her brother a look much older than her four years and turns to crawl out. “Let’s go, Temple,” Nadine says. “I still have to pick up the baby and run errands, and the shift last night killed me. I need at least a couple hours’ sleep today.”

   6-4-3-5…

   The buzz from the junk drawer. Dead air. “The person you are trying to—“

   Nadine’s minivan is impeccable. Sleek gray color. Flawless interior. Nothing like the pickup truck the kids grew up in, and in which half were probably conceived.

   Temple drags his fingerprint in a trail of cloudy perspiration across the back window. Remembers a car ride from just six months ago. A grocery bag of little, handpicked flowers. Jittery knees. Fidgeting hands. The inside of his cheek chewed raw. Her discerning smile. Her warmth like a sock before walking on tile. She reached for his hair, combed her fingers through it, grasped it solidly. “There’s only one kind of girl in the world, Tem. She might be shy or wild or a slut. But every one of ‘em wants to be the only thing that matters to someone. Look for the one who lets you see her mascara run and doesn’t clean herself up. You might be a peasant, but if you give her a crown she’ll build you a kingdom.”

   She smiled with her lips yet there was pain in the bend of her eyebrows. “If she loves you, she will move heaven and earth for you. And if you break her heart, she will spend the rest of her days in hell. Make virtue worth her while and she will show you the most sacred of sins. Be her guardian angel and she will be that to your children. Okay, Temple?”

   “Okay,” he could only whisper back.

   6—

   “I heard it was suicide. I heard she up and quit taking her heart medication. Was she alright in the mind?”

   9—

   “A husband and five children; poor girl was ready to meet Jesus.”

   2—

   Paul took the last comment he could take and hurled an entire wine glass onto the floor. He left the doctor’s with three stitches in his foot, a prescription, and recommended therapist.

   6—

   “Sorry, Geoff; I thought my cousin was pulling up but it’s just a cat on the trash can… Yeah. A-hundred-eighty-five dollars, that’s all. Only two weeks until I’m seventeen… Yes, I’m sure, babe. My mom— my mom was young too. She told me it was love and everything. We’ll be happy… I’m excited too… ‘kay, I’ve got homework anyway. ‘kay, talk tomorrow. Love you.” Rodie’s light flipped off. Temple slid to his bottom against the bathroom wall and clung to the edge of the tub. He fell asleep tapping out the sequence of numbers he was dying to believe in.

   4—

   “I was eighteen at the time, and untouched. My friends took me clubbing. My best friend introduced me to a guy named Braden Newman. He shook my hand and told me I was cute. He wanted to buy me a drink, so I sipped it until he went to find his buddies, and then I threw it on a sucker who’d been trying to get handsy with my ass all night. He was hopping mad. Tried to grab me by the hair but I ducked and kicked his feet out from under him. Braden caught me outside trying to steal a bike and go home. He asked if I didn’t like anyone in there. I said no, not in there.”

   3—

   “Trust no one, Tem. Not flesh and blood, not best friends, not true love. Always give. Always fight for the right thing. Always defend what you know. But what’s in your hands, keep it and don’t let go.”

   5—

   “‘As the years have grown longer…’” M— “‘The shelves are full of dust...’” Y— “‘And our love is now stronger…’” A— “‘Than the two of us…’” N— “‘And the memories on the wall…’” G— “‘The colors faded away…’” E— “‘I could relive them all...’” L— “‘Till my dying day…’”

   692-6435…

   The ringtone stretches, reaches, searches. The junk drawer doesn’t buzz. “Hello?…” A woman. One heartbeat— two heartbeats— “Hello?… Who is this?”

   The heartbeat is higher. In his throat. In his mouth. “Is this Nilly? Nilly Newman?”

   “No, who is this?”

   “I need to leave a message.”

   “Listen, kid, I don’t know wh—“

   “Tell her I’m sorry but I did trust! I trusted too much!”

   “Hey! Kid, I just got this number. Whoever you’re looking for—“

   “I’m sorry, Mom, I’m sorry. But Rodie’s going to run away with Geoff. Dad left. Scottie’s going to kill Paul. Ana wants to die. Please, Mom. You have to come back.” A whisper. “We can’t do it without you. We can’t—“

   And just like that… beep beep beep.

   Gone.