Throw it to Jesus

It started with the pumpkin.

Well, it started on Saturday, with an artificial pumpkin. The Gang wanted to play baseball for a change. Adrienne is now surrounded by a gang of teens or pre-teens who like to visit in the afternoons and eat massive quantities of whatever I bake. This Saturday it happened to be blueberry muffins. They each had several, and then the ran off to play in the vacant lot. The gang usually play football and sometimes soccer, but today they wanted to play baseball. None of them had a ball, though; they only had footballs. The next thing I knew, they were bringing me back one of my ornamental velvet pumpkins, which Adrienne had borrowed for the game. I’ll never be able to get that tear in the fabric fixed.

Sunday, they were all at church or being polite with their families. We still don’t have a car and I still have severe religious PTSD, so we didn’t go to church. I tried to peek at the Office of Readings so I could somehow feel like I was trying, but everything religious makes me panic just at this moment. It’s always worst after a new revelation comes out of Franciscan University, and we had another this summer. We baked more muffins. The Baker Street Irregulars got a dozen, since they’d been so fond of the pumpkin muffins the other week. As I baked, I prayed to God to please, please forgive me for being such a spectacular failure of a Catholic that I would have a massive panic attack and flash back to the worst day of my life if I crossed the threshold of a church. I gave it even odds that he’d let me off the hook or toss me into the pit of hell. I just didn’t know.

Monday, labor day, the Gang came again, and ate the last of my baking.  Then they went off again to play in the vacant lot. You could hear the yelling all up and down the block. I went to the garden to check that everything was in order.

That was when I saw that another pumpkin was missing.

I lost one earlier this summer, and found it smashed in front of the garage of The Man Who Brought Water. I thought it was odd because the pumpkin in question was right in front of my live trap with all the yummy bait in it, but the varmint hadn’t crawled into the trap. The skinny little boy who uses my side yard as a thoroughfare told me he saw a raccoon swipe it one morning– oddly, since raccoons are usually nocturnal. I’d been sprinkling a thick coating of red pepper on them ever since, and we’d had no further thefts. Now, the pumpkin that was almost ripe had disappeared completely.

I went to the vacant lot. The Gang was there, shouting about everything. They might’ve been yelling “Throw it to Jesus! Throw it to Jesus!” but I didn’t think to question that just then.

“You’re not playing baseball with a real pumpkin, are you?”

No, they were not. This time, they’d played baseball with a lemonade packet to see if it would explode, but they’d moved on to football now.

I explained the missing pumpkin just as Jimmy’s Boy drove up in a noisy plastic four-wheeled vehicle he was foot-pedaling like The Flintstones. The skinny boy was there again with him. Neither one of them were wearing shirts, even though it was a cool evening. I told my story a third time.

“I know where he took the pumpkin from!” said the skinny boy instantly.

We all ran around the back, with Jimmy’s boy making up an elaborate story about grabbing a raccoon to protect my garden and watching the stolen pumpkin roll right out of his jaws into the street.

The skinny trespasser showed me the exact spot where the pumpkin had been– he was very quick to recognize it.

I glanced at the second ripest pumpkin, now my best chance at a Jack-o-Lantern. There was a little smear in the pepper, as if someone had wiped some off to see if it was orange yet and then moved on to the orangest one. I thought of the skinny boy sneaking through my yard the other day, looking so startled when I saw him.

I put two and two together, but said nothing.

Before I could stop him, Jimmy’s boy ran his finger across the second ripest pumpkin and licked it to taste the pepper. He gagged, but then smiled. “It tastes pretty good but I need a glass of water.”

All the children started playing in my yard just then– Jimmy’s boy and the skinny child in the sand box, messily, the gang throwing the football around. The Baker Street Irregulars’ middle child texted me two voice messages– not actually from her,  but from her younger sisters.

“Thank you for the blueberry muffins!” said the neurotypical one.’

“Fank you for the boo berry muffins!” said the autistic one.

“They were so good!” said the neurotypical one.

“Fank you for the boo berry muffins!” echoed the autistic one again.

“You’re welcome! Next week it will be banana bread!”

I always wanted to have a large brood of children.  The occasional sandbox mess and a pumpkin sacrifice were well worth it.

About then, one member of The Gang handed me a battered prayer card.

“It was in the field,” explained another of them. “It’s Jesus.”

It was, in fact, a picture of Saint Teresa of Avila holding her arms out to a plump child Jesus, with her love song written on the back. “I will never leave your presence, give me death, give me life.” Words written to Jesus, but I pretended they were a note to me.

“It’s been out there for days. He threw a football at it. That’s why we were yelling ‘throw it to Jesus! Throw it to Jesus!”

I thought of that other Carmelite with the same name, only French: Therese, who I got pressured to take as my confirmation saint even though I thought she was too prissy. Therese used to ask the statue of the infant Jesus holding the orb to come and play ball with her. I thought about throwing Jesus a pumpkin. Throwing the pumpkin guts with all those seeds on the compost last year when Halloween was over. The vines I didn’t plant growing all over the yard as a free gift. The children who came to admire the garden.

“Well,” I said, pocketing the card, “I’m glad you didn’t use it for home plate!”

“I like the garden!” said the boy who threw a football at Jesus. “I want to plant one. Do you have any seeds?”

“It’s too late in the season, but in spring I’ll give you sunflower seeds. I have lots.”

After they left, I picked the remaining ripening pumpkin, to finish getting orange on the porch under my security camera.

I think I’m going to like my new life.