HE SHALL COVER THEE WITH HIS FEATHERS

                  

by Marianne Carlson

When I was in the second grade I started sleeping at my grandmother's most nights. My parents never even knew or cared where I was but her kitchen always smelled like bread baking in the oven, and it was warm there. Our house was always cold. I slept in a spare bedroom under one of her handmade quilts. I remember the sun used to shine first thing in the morning on a framed Bible quote hanging on the wall. The room was white, and there was an old oak bureau under the window.  I  put my treasures in the top drawer: my Hello Kitty knapsack, lip gloss, toys from MacDonald's happy meals.  As I grew older,  my treasures changed to bags of weed, pipes, needles.  

I'm not sure why I am telling you this, maybe because I have sat through too many group therapy sessions where anything goes as long as you keep talking.  A lot of what is said in those groups is just plain bullshit. I can spot a bullshitter a mile away.  I never said much in those groups. Confessing all was never a catharsis for me, and the older I get, the less I talk. There are too many talkers as it is, and I don't think I could ever hear anything ever again that would surprise me. 

My grandmother practically raised me. She was a tiny, fragile looking lady, but cantankerous.   I remember once some cretin tried to swindle her at a convenience store, and she knocked him over the head with her cane. Damn near killed him. It is hard for me to talk about my grandmother now because I broke her heart, not once, but over and over again. We lived down the street from her, my mother and father and six kids. I was the youngest, a most unwelcome surprise. I figured that out as soon as I learned about the birds and bees. Our house was a real pig pen all the time, but my grandmother's cottage was a safe haven, and my grandmother didn’t drink. My father was drunk all the time, a mean drunk.

On the wall in the room where I slept next to the Bible quote was this framed picture of an owl sheltering all these little owls under his wings. My grandmother told me that the owl was supposed to be the Lord, He will always protect me if I believe in Him.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High 

shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, 

and under his wings shalt thou trust:

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, 

to keep thee in all thy ways.

Yeah right. What I saw in that picture was that there were five little owls under those wings, but the sixth one was left out in the cold to fend for herself, and that sixth one was me. There wasn’t gonna be any angels watching over me, that’s for sure.

It was in middle school when my life began to go down hill. The only time I ever went home was to see if I could swipe some money from one of my siblings so that I could buy weed. I smoked pot every day. My grandmother could sniff out a bad actor in a New York minute, and she hated my friends.  

“You’re known by the company you keep,” she would say to me when she caught one of the shifty high school boys hanging around. 

“Keep them away from this house.  Boys shouldn’t be wearing earrings.”

“Birds of a feather flock together.” More birds, more feathers, this was the worst thing she could have said to me.

One of the “walking wounded,” I dressed like a freak, wore black, dyed my hair a different color every week, pierced every possible area of my anatomy.  I dropped out of school in the 10th grade, got a job washing dishes for a local restaurant, had an abortion and fell in love with heroin. The trajectory of my life seemed to be set, and in that path the owl was nowhere to be seen. In retrospect, I am amazed I survived at all, but I am beginning to entertain the notion that perhaps that owl was operating behind the scenes. I was spiteful. I pummeled  my grandmother with cruel behavior,  taunting her, the last person in the world to deserve it.

“Where were those angels when that piece of shit killed the people in that movie theatre in Colorado? I guess those angels weren’t into Batman.” 

“Why didn’t those angels show up at Columbine?”

“Are the angels on vacation when a plane crashes or some poor bozo crossing the street gets hit by a drunk driver?”

She always had the same unsatisfactory answer. “You have to learn to love the mystery of it all.”

“Fat chance,” I would answer. 

After too many years of chasing some elusive dream, I overdosed on a combination of pills and heroin, the medics told me that I was more dead than alive when I was wheeled into the ER. From the hospital I spent a month in rehab and another six months in a halfway house, I learned that angels come in all shapes and sizes and that I better listen to them if I wanted to stay around awhile longer.

My grandmother died when I was in rehab. No one in my family told me, I guess they were afraid it would set me off. She left me her house so I am back in the same bed I slept in when I was in the second grade. The owl is still on the wall, the little owls still under his wing. I don’t sleep well, most recovering addicts don’t, insomnia is something you  learn to live with.  The funny thing is I could swear I can hear that owl hooting at me sometimes, and when I do, I think it’s my grandmother’s way of telling me that she was right all along.

It's All Temporary