Summer Ends, In a World Without Mercy

Summer ends, first with a bang, and then a whimper.

I had been moping at home for several weeks, worrying about the Artful Dodgers and the end of the world, entertaining Jimmy’s Boy, going to the lake when it wasn’t too hot. But then I helped out with the end-of-summer camp at the church outreach,  reading storybooks out loud until I was hoarse. It felt relaxing to not have any time to think. I didn’t worry about anything for five days straight.

When the week was over, I realized that some of the hoarseness was actually a head cold, and then I had car trouble which the dealer’s mechanic will fix as fast as he can. I’ve been moping around the house for a week straight– too much time to think. Too much time to worry.

 When I saw signs taped to the Artful Dodgers’ door, I went to investigate.

I was afraid the sign said that there was lead or asbestos or something worse in the house, which meant I’d breathed it in. I’d been inside twice: once, the children asked me in to help the Sylph look for a lost kitten. I only saw the living room and was shocked at the dilapidated condition.  And once, when a neighbor who had a key because he helped them clean up from time to time asked me to come with him to check on them, because the lights were on but no one had seen the family for days. I was so shocked at the flies and the smell that I ran from room to room, expecting to find a dead animal or worse. But there was nothing in there but spoiled food and abandoned toys. A week later, we found out they’d packed a bag and fled one afternoon. The may have been camping for a bit, but they were in a new slum in a different neighborhood now.

I made my way up to the porch, avoiding the poison ivy and cringing as the rotten steps groaned.

The sign was an attempt to contact the former occupants. It said to call such-and-such a number if they were still occupying the building. Otherwise, an asset management company would take possession on such-and-such a date. That date was a week previous.

This week, the dumpster came. Somebody mowed the grass which was nearly up to my shoulder, plowing down those cornstalks that I think grew out of spilled birdseed. Somebody else threw all the debris and the children’s things in the great big metal coffin, and left it there– just as they did when the Lost Girl and her children fled their house. Just as they’ve done countless times to countless people who fled the houses and left.

I wonder if they threw away that plaque that was on the wall, with the picture of the head of Christ and the inscription “Jesus grant victory to my life!”

I wonder if they’ll demolish the building now. I don’t see how you could possibly salvage it. I would have considered it uninhabitable before the Dodgers came to live there, and they finished the job.

This is what it means to be a poor child with a sick mother in America.

Sometimes you’re homeless. Sometimes you’re in a home so unsafe that breathing the air inside makes you ill. Sometimes you disappear to another unsafe home, and they throw your belongings in a dumpster. In and out of shelters. In and out of foster care. One day you get pregnant, and then YOU are the sick mother, and the cycle starts again.

The last time the child I’ve called The Mandrake came to play at my house, she was digging in the sandbox by the giant sunflowers while I tended the garden. She cried “Look, Miss Mary! Look!”

I went over, to see a swarm of bright red lanternfly nymphs crawling all over a sunflower stalk. Lanternflies are a devastating invasive species. They’ll kill your sapling trees in one season. I was about to squash them, when the girl grinned at me.

“They’re my friends!” she said. “That one named Jumpy, and that one is named Spotty.”

I smiled back at her, and gave the lanternflies a reprieve until she’d gone. Half of them had already hopped off the sunflower to wreak havoc somewhere else, by the time I got around to crushing them.

I don’t know any rule but mercy.

I’m living in a world that has absolutely no mercy, for anyone. I want to be different, but I am helpless in so many ways.

The lanternflies that escaped are full grown pests now, fluttering around the garden to lay their eggs. The sunflower bloomed, lost her petals, and drooped over.

Summer is ending, and before long it will be cold again.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.