Cures for Hunger by Deni Béchard Page A

brother told her, repeating the words that my mother had drilled into us.
    The woman’s big eyes rolled from one side of the mall to the other. Instantly, I knew she’d do something repulsively sexual. Both during school assemblies and by my mother, I’d been warned about perverts.
    She slipped three pamphlets from her purse and gave one to each of us.
    My brother blanched. “We can’t,” he told her.
    â€œIt’s all right. Your mother won’t mind,” she said and hurried off, not having exposed her naked body from beneath the jacket after all.
    He stood, hunched, as if he’d returned home with a bad grade. The pamphlet showed two abandoned-looking children in saggy diapers waiting in a doorway as Jesus approached along the sidewalk. He’d probably change their diapers. No, whatever he’d do had to be bad if my mother hated Christians so much. Maybe he’d feed them processed foods. She’d never explained why, if proselytizers came to our house, she slammed the door in their faces.
    She snatched the pamphlets from us.
    â€œWho gave these to you?” She made a constricted huff like a growl and went to a trash can and tossed them. As she led us out, she searched faces, asking if we recognized the woman. My brother said he didn’t, and I could no longer recall what she’d looked like.
    â€œWhy were you so angry?” I asked her that night as she was tucking me in. I wanted to hate the woman who’d given us the pamphlets, but I didn’t understand why I should.
    â€œI don’t want you to grow up with that garbage in your head. When I was a kid, I had to go to church. I imagined God was some big, mean guy staring down, and I was afraid to do anything, afraid to be myself or have fun.”
    She told me about her father, how strict he was, as if this were also God’s fault. She said she’d wanted her freedom. The way she told me
this—the look in her eyes—made me feel that she was still struggling to be free. She seemed as if she were going to tell me something else, and an expression like pain came onto her face, but she said nothing.
    â€œWho is God?” I finally asked, just to make her speak. She sighed and explained how some people believed in an all-powerful, judgmental geezer who saw everything we did. Her description was so convincing that I forgot what we’d been talking about before and became a little jealous of this old man’s mental powers. Above all, I was angry at the thought of being spied on, and I told her that I never wanted to take a bath again.
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    My sister was lying on her belly with a book, the blinds drawn, her room so dark I didn’t know how she could read.
    â€œWant to hear a story?” I asked and flopped down next to her.
    â€œOkay,” she said and turned onto her side. I wasn’t sure why I was bothering her. Vacation had ended and winter dragged on, my parents fighting, all of us busy with our own things, books or music or video games.
    I began to describe a future in which everyone could levitate, but she said, “Tell me about how Bonnie and André met.”
    â€œWell, she’s from Pittsburgh,” I said and thought of all she’d shared over the years. “Grandma’s mom is German, and Grandpa’s from somewhere else. He made steel. Bonnie didn’t like them because they believed in God, so she ran away to live in nature. Since André grew up really poor, he could do everything—farm and catch fish and even . . . deliver babies.” This expression always sounded funny to me, as if he were a mailman, but now the story I’d been struggling to find became clear. It was about my birth, and I repeated the version he’d often told me. “I was born on the living room couch. André delivered me. The cord was around my neck.”
    â€œWhat cord?”
    â€œBabies are born with a rope. Sometimes it feeds them, but