GLYNN WASHINGTON, HOST:
Welcome back to SNAP JUDGMENT, the "Rites of Passage" episode. Today we're going through what we've got to go through in order to get to a higher level, and our next story comes from SNAP JUDGMENT's Julia DeWitt. It's about that time she figured out what all smart little kids soon discover.
JULIA DEWITT, BYLINE: It's all at once on a sunny Sunday afternoon that I realize that we all are going to die. My mom finds me on her bed crying and when I look up at her, she can see the fear in my eyes. We're going to die, Mom, I say. She reaches down to wipe the tears from my cheek with the back of her hand. Yeah, sweetie, we are.
I am 10 years old in fifth grade. So I'm not a fool. But for the first time in my life, I feel the full weight of the fact - the fact that we will all die. One hundred percent of us - my mom, my sister, my best friend Shira, my second-best friend Francis, my hamster, my neighbor. And one day, even I will die, too.
My mom takes me for a walk around the neighborhood. As we circle the block of duplexes, she explains that she imagines death like sitting in a room when a curtain gets pulled back to reveal only glaring white light. But then what's behind it, I ask? I don't know, she says, that's about as far as I've gotten in thinking about this, sweetie.
Appearing satisfied with this answer, we go inside the house. She picks up her keys and she heads out to Stop and Shop to pick up some dish soap. I go to bed that night, but I can't sleep. And I lie awake staring up at the galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. I feel time being sucked away from me, being plucked from my grasp moment by moment. I want to reach out and grab them, but there's nothing to hold onto. I imagine my funeral, I imagine my headstone with visitors gathered around. Then when those people have died, I imagine my headstone standing alone in the stark white light of midday, crumbling and weather-beaten. And then I can't imagine anything.
It's February in Boston and outside the trees are bare. The one street light I can see from my window casts a dim orange light over the dead ground. My house is old, Victorian and the windows let the icy air in through the cracks. I pull my comforter up a little further, but somehow I'm still cold.
The next day I find my dad at the kitchen table. He doesn't look up when I come in and my mom pours me some cereal. I watch her flit from toaster oven to refrigerator and back again. Then she looks at me. She wants to know who's going to walk the dog. I look back up at her, eyes sunken, surprised by even the thought of daily chores. And when I say nothing, she turns away and I can tell she's a little annoyed. Then my dad gets up, cinches his tie a little tighter and before he heads for the door, he tells my mom he'll buy the plane tickets today. Everything I do feels so empty and meaningless that even the massive crush I have on Nick Kelly - a boy in my class, a person I usually think about constantly - even he is suddenly far from my mind. So I can hardly believe that my parents can plan a trip at a time like this, but they are trying to take us to Italy for school vacation.
When we arrive in Florence, I walk into a foreign world where the traffic is fast and the street signs are strange. Then one day we go to a museum. It's drafty. Everything's made of stone. It's quiet except for the tap of heels and some far-off voices. My mom and I stop at a painting and she looks at it for a few seconds and then moves on. But I can't turn my eyes away. In this painting, everyone is naked. At the top, a man hangs from the ceiling by his ankles. A black, sinewy demon force-feeds a man something red and chunky while nearby another guy is being devoured by a dog-like creature. Above him, another grinning demon stands on the ankles of a person. That person is clawing at the ground trying to crawl away and free himself from the trident the demon drove into his rib cage. People are wrapped in snakes, cooking in pots, everything is on fire. This here in front of me is hell, which means all of these people, they are doomed to this excruciating agony for all of eternity. I feel a tingling creeping up my throat, but it is the tingle of extreme relief. I don't just disappear, I go to heaven. Or I guess I could end up in hell, but I figure that's unlikely. But just to double check, I take stock of my sins. There was that one time I hit my sister. Oh, and the blue glittery box I stole from Allison, the charm bracelet I stole from my grandmother and the ring watch I stole from Peyla. So I guess my record isn't so clean as I thought. But the solution seems simple enough - absolve myself of some sins, and heaven, here I come. And by the time our plane touches down back in the United States, it seems only natural that I will be Catholic.
My friend teaches me the Lord's Prayer so I can pray at night, but this doesn't feel like quite enough, so I go to the kitchen cabinet where I find a tiny crystal bowl intended for pinch salt. I take the bowl, along with two green toothpicks, up to my room and carefully tape the toothpicks into a cross. Once I am satisfied, I use some more tape to affix my tiny cross to the little bowl and I fill it with water. Here I have it - holy water. That night when I crawl into bed, I dip my finger into my holy water and cross myself, close my eyes and I pray. Outside it's dark, but my bedside lamp casts a warm light on me praying over my little bowl. When the wind blows, pushing its way in through the cracks around my window, I pull my comforter up a little higher and this time I am warm.
Then Monday comes, our first day back at school after vacation. We stream into the coat area and when there's space, I step up on the runner and reach into my cubby. Before I can slide my Trapper Keeper inside, I notice something. It's a note on lined paper. I pull it out, unfold it. And there on the page are the words, I like you. And with a bunch of question marks after it, guess who?
All I can think is this must be him, this must be Nick Kelly.
Nick sits at the front of the class. He always gets 100 percents on tests. Last month he got these neon orange sneakers that everyone made fun of, but I thought they were kind of cute. Sure, he's kind of awkward, but he's sweet. I report on the incident in my journal that night. Then I tear a piece of paper out of my journal and I write in my best cursive, I like you too. I lie awake staring up at the stars on my ceiling and imagine what the next note might say. And that night, I forget to pray.
My love affair with Nick flares and then fizzles, and a new one takes its place. I stop refilling my holy water and the adhesive on the tape that attaches the little green cross to the bowl wears off. In high school I discover nihilism and existentialism. And then later, how to file insurance claims, set up automatic bill pay and what happens when you forget to move your car on street-cleaning day. I must admit though, that even now all these years later at 28, I still sometimes miss having something to pray to. Like, a few weeks ago when I was on the phone with my boyfriend, Elliott, and his nephew Ian came into the living room. Ian's 8 and he was crying. He wanted to know when his mom was coming home. His mom was just out for the night with a girlfriend, but that wasn't the only reason Ian was upset. His mom had cancer for the second time, so when she was home, he wouldn't let her out of his sight. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night, go to his mom's room and look in to make sure she was still there.
So while Ian cried for his mom, my boyfriend Elliott and I both knew that he wasn't just crying because he wanted to know when his mom would be home for the night. He was crying because he wanted to know that she wasn't gone forever and that she wasn't going to just suddenly disappear. And then when he left the room, I started crying and then Elliott started crying because the fact was, she might.
And then it's Saturday and I'm at work. The sun is setting earlier and earlier every day. As I'm watching it go down, I wonder what I'll do tonight. Probably just go home, have a beer, maybe finally finish "The Wire." I don't believe in hell anymore, probably not heaven either. Maybe another dimension. Ghosts are possible, I guess. I guess I don't know. I haven't really gotten that far.
Then I feel a cold, familiar feeling run through me. A knot in my stomach that gets tighter and tighter by the minute. Damn, I think - I really have to register my car.
WASHINGTON: Thank you Julia DeWitt. And in case you didn't know, you're listening to the SNAP JUDGMENT "Rites of Passage" episode. And when we return, what happens when the world tells you to feel good and the world doesn't know what it's talking about? Don't go anywhere. SNAP JUDGMENT. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.