Concrete and pebbles, tall as a toddler, stone Jesus lays face down in the front yard. This means that our mother is gone. How it means that we don’t know. It just does. My little tow-headed sister and I sit in the living room and watch cartoons. She peeks out the front window to spy on stone Jesus.
“He’s still sleeping,” she says and lets the sheers drift back into place. “Why is it so quiet in here?”
I turn the television up. My little sister nods her head and sits back down beside me. When the commercial about the mommy pouring the cereal on the first day of school comes on, my sister and I go outside. We heave stone Jesus to his feet, brush the dirt from his face and wait to see if our mother will come back home. Stone Jesus is patient. But we give her until the sun rises over the side of the house and then we figure she’s not coming back. We make a picnic, spread out an old orange blanket, fix ourselves and stone Jesus a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We hold it up to his mouth and make eating noises for him. He likes blackberry jelly the best. At the picnic we tell stone Jesus what we did. Forgive us Father for we have sinned.
“I didn’t finish my pork chops and I made my mother cry.” I say. “Now you say what you did,” I tell my little sister.
“I don’t know,” she says and shrugs her shoulders.
“You put the hairbrush in the toilet.”
“Oh yeah,” she says to stone Jesus. “I’m sorry.”
He forgives us.
We drag stone Jesus to the edge of the drive. Face him down the road. He can watch for her from here, let us know when she’s coming back. Next door, we hear Mrs. Eldon talking to her dog. Her husband is riding around their tiny yard on his riding mower. The man across the street has a push mower that Mrs. Eldon says only works if he doesn’t wear his shirt. Our mother would wave at the man across the street when he mowed without his shirt on. The man across the street would smile and wave back. My mother didn’t cry on the days the man across the street mowed without his shirt on.
“Maybe he knows where she went,” my sister says and points at the house across the street.
“Why would he know?” I say kind of mean and run back across the yard to the swing set.
Inside the house, my mother’s closet is empty and her new hairbrush is gone from the bathroom sink. Once, at the grocery, when my mother sent me back a few aisles for saltines, I heard Mrs. Eldon say she had never seen a woman so in need of something as my mother.
When the sun slips between the oak and swing set, we decide to dress stone Jesus up like a snow man. We put a cap on him, it’s purple with a butterfly on it. We wrap a pink scarf around his neck. He looks pretty good. By dusk, stone Jesus is tired of wearing the cap and scarf so we take them off him. We chase fireflies around the yard. One lights on stone Jesus’s head like a little green halo. All day our mother’s car is in the garage. All day the red pick-up truck across the street is gone.
“I bet she will bring us back a present,” my tiny sister says, “like when daddy went to Mexico and sent us each a doll.”
I take my little sister by the shoulders and hold her still in front of me.
“Mommy bought those dolls at the dime store.” Made in Mexico is stamped on their little plastic butts.
“But daddy,” she starts , then understands there is no reason to continue.
“Daddy didn’t go to Mexico. He just went away.”
“Oh,” my sister says and nods her head. “Ok.”
When the stars come out we drag stone Jesus back into the yard, lay our heads at his feet and look up into the sky. We trace out pictures like connect the dots. When we get sleepy, we push stone Jesus over on his back, snuggle down on either side of him and pray, Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray stone Jesus my soul to keep. If I should die be fore I wake, I pray stone Jesus my soul to take. We laugh, but it’s not really funny.It gets cold and my little sister starts to cry. Please, stone Jesus, I whisper in his ear, please bring our mother back before the air gets still and the night gets loud, before she forgets she left us here.
I reach over stone Jesus, put my hand on my sister’s arm and sing to her.
Jesus loves you this I know, for the bible tells me so, little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong. She stops crying. My little sister turns on her side and puts her arm across stone Jesus’s chest. She reaches back out for my hand. A dog whines in the distance and we hold our breath.
“Do you think he’s cold,” she says of stone Jesus.
“Maybe,” I say.
I get the picnic blanket and cover the three of us over. My little tow headed sister falls asleep and I listen for a pick-up truck on the black top. I hear cicadas and see a bat fly over, I hear that dog in the distance and the other dog he’s calling to. I think I drift off to sleep because I see my mother making breakfast and crying and the man with the push mower knocking on the door and the very first smile my mother wore in years and I see my little sister and me growing invisible—calling out to someone who is forgetting the sound of our voices.
Later I feel the sun rising, hear birds and bugs and everything in the out-there that is still here with us. When my sister is awake, we raise stone Jesus to his feet. We brush the dirt from the back of his head, sit beside him and tell him all the things he already knows.
Stone Jesus in the Front Yard
The MacGuffin
