Infected-3
2015 Words
Just like it always did.
“Tell me about your sub today.” The praise and worship song was still stuck in Kennedy’s head even though the CD was off.
Healed by the grace of my precious Savior.
“Oh, she was weird. Made us all line up at the sink and wash our hands to the happy birthday song. Twice. And she had a funny mast.”
“A mast? What’s that?”
“You know. Like what the man in black wears in Princess Bride.” He cupped his hand over his mouth and nose. “Except he wore it so people would think he was one of the bad guys, but at school she did it so she wouldn’t sneeze on folks.”
“I think you mean a mask.”
“That’s what I said. It was a funny mast too. Made her look like an alligator.”
Kennedy tried to guess what Woong was talking about. “An alligator? What do you mean?” The only green masks she could think of were all the way back from the World War II era. Surely a substitute wouldn’t wear a gas mask in a class full of third-graders. Anyone that paranoid about catching a virus would just stay home.
Woong rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically. He clapped his hands together like Kennedy had as a little kid in Sandy’s Sunday school class doing the hand motions to Deep and Wide. “You know. Alligator. Big teeth. Chomp chomp. I think they’re in Egypt.”
“That’s a crocodile.”
“No, crocodiles are the ones you make those funny sandal things out of. I’m talking about the big ones that eat you up in swamps.”
“And your teacher’s mask looked like one of those?”
“She wasn’t my teacher. She was the sub.”
“Right. Sorry. That’s the kind of mask she had?” Kennedy wracked her brain, trying to figure out what on earth Woong was talking about.
“No, it was just colored to look like an alligator.”
“Colored? Like it was green or something?”
Alligator-green sanitation masks. Maybe the Nipah outbreak would start a whole new fashion trend. She should let her roommate Willow know.
“No, it was drawled on.”
“The right word is drawed. I mean, actually it’s drawn. It had something colored on it? Like with crayons or something?”
Woong’s sigh was forceful enough to fill the entire front seats with the aroma of goldfish cracker crumbs. “No. She used a marker.”
“I get it now.” A substitute teacher who drew an animal face on a sanitation mask made a lot more sense than one who showed up in hazmat gear.
“She said she was wearing it because people are getting sick. They aren’t being careful enough when they sneeze. Are you careful when you sneeze?”
Kennedy tried to maintain a serious expression. “Usually.”
“Good. Because people are dying, you know.”
She shot him a quick glance. “Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”
“Chuckie Mansfield told me at recess. His dad’s a doctor, and Chuckie said they’re working extra hard at his hospital getting rooms ready for all the sick people who are coming.”
“Hospitals take care of sick people all the time. That’s what they do.” Kennedy tried to fight the nervous fluttering in her gut. Blame it on a conversation with her dad to make her anxious for the rest of the day.
“Yeah, but this sickness is really bad. Chuckie’s dad says so.”
Kennedy cleared her throat. “Well, then, let’s pray we all stay healthy and safe.”
“Ok. That’s a good idea. ’Cause you’re good at that kind of stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“You know, the praying sort of stuff. Hey, speaking of prayer, my leg’s been hurting. My mom says it’s growing pains, but what I’m wondering is if I ask God that he could make me grow taller without the hurting part. And maybe if I believe him hard enough I won’t have no pains no more.”
“Prayer doesn’t work like that exactly.”
“Well, my dad says we should pray for folks who are sick because sometimes God will make them well again. I was sick for a while back in Korea, you know. But then I got better. Think it’s ’cause someone was praying for me then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Kennedy wasn’t used to Medford driving, or driving at all for that matter. That bank across the street didn’t look familiar. Had she missed her turn?
“Yeah, I think maybe, too,” Woong went on. “’Cause it was this homeless man, we called him Crazy Wu, who come and took care of me at first, and you know what? He believed in God even though he was insane.”
“Oh, really?” Where was Sycamore Street? The Lindgrens lived five minutes away from Woong’s school. How could she have gotten lost?
“Yeah, and he prayed for me when he found me with the sickness, and I’m guessing that’s how come I got better. But that makes me think, what happens to them kids who don’t have folks to pray for them, I wonder? Are they the ones who end up dying?”
“I’m sure God protects them no matter what,” she mumbled. There was Sycamore. She turned abruptly, thankful there were no cops behind her to ticket her for forgetting to use her blinker. She flicked it on for a few seconds post-turn to assuage her guilt.
“Oh, I guess that make sense. I wondered about that. You know what my dad says? He says God answers all our prayers, it’s just sometimes he won’t do it ’til heaven. But that makes me think, what happens if two people’re both praying different things, I wonder? Like what if I prayed for my mom to give me more Wii time, but she’s sure it’s gonna rot my brain or stuff and nonsense like that, so she gets to praying that she don’t? And then even if I get to heaven where my dad says we all get our prayers answered (and he’s a pastor so he knows all that sorta stuff), it makes me think, what happens to my Wii in heaven? Like, will God let me play it except he won’t let my mom know I’m doing it? Because that sounds sorta sneaky-like, know what I mean?”
Kennedy’s brain cells were spinning as fast as the F5 cyclone in Twister. “That’s a good question.” She wondered what Dominic would say. He was always the one with the theological answers. She almost wished he weren’t so strict about seeing her without anyone else around, as if they were two junior highers who needed a constant chaperone. It might be nice to put Woong to bed, throw on a movie, cuddle together on the couch. It would be two long days without anybody besides Woong to talk with. Maybe she’d try calling Willow tonight once he was asleep.
Willow had accepted Christ earlier in the semester, had prayed and asked God to forgive her sins. Kennedy wasn’t so sure how much of a spiritual impact her conversion had made, though. Throughout February, the two girls had studied the Bible together. Sandy had found them a beginner’s course for brand-new believers that Willow was excited to start. But then life got busy, her theater friends wanted to know why they weren’t seeing her around so much, and Willow started missing their Bible study dates. After a few weeks, Kennedy got sick of asking.
And now Willow was off to New York City to binge on Broadway shows with her friends. Sandy told Kennedy to be patient with her roommate, reminded her that people grow in their faith in different ways and at different speeds. Dominic was a little more concerned that Willow’s conversion hadn’t resulted in the sort of fruit he said even a baby believer should exhibit. Yet another reason Kennedy felt like she had let him down.
Well, Kennedy was doing what she could. She still asked Willow every so often to come to the church meetings at Dominic’s cousin’s, still offered to pick up that Bible study they’d started. The irony was that the two girls were more distant from each other after Willow’s prayer of salvation than they’d been when she was a die-hard atheist with a hint of agnostic leanings.
“Hey, I’ve got a question for you.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” Kennedy wasn’t sure how many more questions she could take in a single car ride. She sighed with relief when the Lindgrens’ cul de sac came into view.
“I’ve been wondering, how come God makes some people with them really springy curls in their hair? Like, there’s this one girl in my class named Becky Linklater, and she’s got the springiest curls you ever saw on a girl. Or a boy too, for that matter, but I’m guessing you coulda figured that out already. ’Cause I’d never seen hair like that before I come here, but my mom said that’s just because God doesn’t give girls in Korea hair like that. But what I want to know is, how come he doesn’t? And you’re not Korean, but your hair doesn’t do that springy thing. At least I don’t think it does, but I don’t know for sure ’cause you’ve always got it tied up like that in your horse’s tail. But do you think if you prayed God would give you curls?”
“I don’t know.” Kennedy let out her breath as she pulled the Honda into the Lindgrens’ driveway. “Let’s go in and get a snack.”
Woong sprang out of the car a second before Kennedy shifted into park. “Dibs on the blue Gogurts!” he shouted.
Kennedy waited for a minute, trying to catch her mental second wind, before she yelled out after him as loudly as she could, “Hey! Wash your hands before you touch the food!”
CHAPTER 4“How come we’ve got so many skin colors do you think?” Woong asked as Kennedy prepared him a third helping of ants on a log.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like my dad, he’s got that brownish skin color, but my mom, she’s nearly as pale as you are except not quite so much because she’s always complaining about how hot it is and how her face is always red because she’s sweaty all the time.”
Kennedy tried to hide her smile behind the oversized jar of peanut butter. She glanced at the label and guessed Woong had downed at least seven hundred calories in a single sitting. She knew there were chores and homework assignments to take care of, but she had a feeling Woong was preparing to move right from snack time to dinner.
God bless Sandy and her made-ahead casseroles.
Woong was still going on about different people he knew and all their skin tones. Kennedy figured for someone from a homogenous region like the Korean peninsula, seeing people of all difference races would be noteworthy.
“And that Becky Linklater, the one with all them curls I was telling you about, she’s got peachy skin but brown freckles.” He rolled up his sleeve and stared at his forearm. “I don’t know what color you’d call me. Chuckie Mansfield says my skin’s yellow, but that’s not right.” He picked up a banana from the fruit basket and held it against his arm. “See?”
“No. That’s not yellow.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“Some people say it’s olive.”
He frowned. “No, olives are black. I know ’cause my mom used to buy me olives, but I went through too many at once, even when she told me just two cans a day, but she caught me sneaking them. So she says I can’t have olives again until summer, but I remember they were black. And I don’t mean black like my dad, ’cause he’s more like brown even though folks always say that’s black when it’s on your skin, but I mean black like my hair.” He tugged on a handful to show her.
Kennedy was distracted looking for another box of raisins and only replied with a simple, “Oh.”
“So what I’m wanting to know is why they’d say I’m olive colored, I wonder.”
“There are other kinds of olives too. Fancy kinds that are more like ...” She tilted her head to the side to study Woong. “Actually, those are usually green.”
He pouted so far he could have fit at least half a dozen raisins on his lower lip. “I’m not green. But I seen folks who were green before. Back before I came here, you know how I was a flower swallow and taking care of myself on the streets? Well, some of them other flower swallows got so sick they turned green. I don’t mean green like broccoli, more green like that pea soup my mom makes. Have you ever had pea soup? I think it’s funny because peas are green like broccoli-green, but when you turn them into soup it’s a different kind of green, like green and brown all mixed together, and what I’m wanting to know is why that is, I wonder.”
“I have no idea.” Kennedy set another plate in front of him with ten new celery sticks smothered in peanut butter and raisins.
“I wonder why they call these ants. ’Cause I’ve ate ants before, did you know that? Back during the hunger I did. And they weren’t too bad, neither. But I’m glad I don’t have to eat them now on account of folks here thinking it’s gross. But you’re a scientist, right? So you’re used to things like that, so I’m guessing you don’t think it’s too gross, do you?”
- Writer
