by Annie Marhefka
My mother never told me whether to believe in God, or not. She told me she wanted me to figure it out for myself. I wasn’t sure if that was a trick, like on Easter morning when she left a note on the kitchen table that said: if you don’t believe in the Easter bunny, look on the porch, but if you do believe in the Easter bunny, look in the dining room. Of course, you looked in the dining room, because you knew that’s where she wanted you to look, and where you’d find the basket with the fake grass, and the chocolate eggs, and the stuffed bunny.
My father never spoke of God until after my brother died, and then he only said I have to believe in God or that means I’ll never see my son again, so it didn’t feel like a choice, as my mother had suggested, but an ultimatum.
Whenever something died–a hamster, a rose bush–my mother would tell me about heaven, but I don’t know if she really meant it or if it was like when she told me that a Band-aid would make my scraped knee feel better, or that the boys would one day outgrow the urge to touch me after I told them to stop.
One year, she made it her mission to expose me to different religions; every Sunday, the two of us went to a new church. I guess I was supposed to be listening to the pastors and priests and rabbis but instead, I watched the churchgoers to see if they behaved differently. Sometimes they seemed kinder; other times, they seemed unwelcoming, like we didn’t belong. It seemed just like the outside-church world, so I wasn’t sure if it was any better. But my mother took fondly to a woman at the Baptist church and decided to be baptized herself. I went along and sat in the front pew as she was dipped under the water, blonde hair splayed out around her face like a halo, curling slightly at the ends.
When my mother was dying in the hospital, the nurse asked me if she wanted pastoral services. I didn’t know the answer. I had known the answer to whether she wanted to be resuscitated: no. But she hadn’t mentioned pastoral services. Yes, she had been baptized, but also, when my brother died, she had said: there can’t be a God; no God would do this to me.
Sometimes, I tried to pray, but not to God. I prayed to my brother, because if he could hear me, I knew he would try to help me. He was the only thing I couldn’t see or hear or touch that I knew was true, because I had held his hand once, had watched his teeth grow in unevenly, had tangled limbs together in the hammock with him. I guess it wasn’t praying so much as it was begging. I pleaded with him when my father had a heart attack, and when I lost the baby. Both times I didn’t kneel; instead, I laid on the ground and pressed my cheek into the cold tile as I whispered to him, because that felt better than staring up at chipping plaster on the ceiling. I could see up-close the way the tile was a bit rounded at the edges; I could trace the grout with my fingertip. It was nothing like heaven; it was concrete, immoveable, as my brother had been.
After my mother died, I had a daughter of my own. Learning how to be her mother reminded me of all those Sundays in strange church buildings, but without my own mother to guide me: the floor tiles were foreign to me, the terrain was strange and unsteady, and when I looked for signs of God or my mother, my cries only just echoed off the high ceilings like silence.
My daughter is almost four now, and I have vowed not to pretend to know things I don’t really know. We can say Santa is real, yes, and the Elf on the Shelf that she named Pretzel, and unicorns. But the other day, my mother-in-law was chatting with her about how we’re all related, explaining that she was her daddy’s mommy, and my daughter turned to me and asked where was my mommy. I wasn’t expecting it, hadn’t planned my answer out the way I usually did, like when I prepared her for getting blood drawn: It will hurt, a sharp pinch, but just for a second, and then it will feel better. Instead, I was caught off guard, gasping for words and breath as she tilted her head, hazel eyes widened and waiting.
She’s not here anymore, I said, reaching out to tuck a blonde curl behind her ear. She was quiet as she processed my response. But why? she asked. I pressed my lips together, as if the action would contain the grief boiling up under my tongue. I was intent on giving her a response that wasn’t a lie, but also wasn’t too scary. She got sick, sweetie, and she didn’t get better, and so she isn’t here anymore, I replied.
Do you miss her? she asked. Yes, I do, I said, every day. Despite my best efforts, the grief spilled out of me, presenting its depths to her. I saw the fear in her eyes. I, like most mothers, saved my tears for the night.
She reflected back what she must have witnessed as my motherly response to so many of her own tears, extending her arms and sweeping them around my shoulders, and pressing her nose, sticky with peanut butter, up against mine. It’s okay mommy, she said, you will see her again soon. I let the hug and the lie absorb me, felt the pressure penetrate my bones with a heaviness as thick as the desperate longing to believe her.
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Annie Marhefka is a writer in Baltimore, Maryland whose writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her recent publications include prose and poetry in Pithead Chapel, Variant Literature, Reckon Review, Literary Mama, and others. Annie is the Executive Director at Yellow Arrow Publishing, a Baltimore-based nonprofit supporting and empowering women-identifying writers. She has a degree in creative writing from Washington College and an MBA. Follow Annie on Instagram @anniemarhefka, Twitter @charmcityannie, and at anniemarhefka.com.
Image: “Fröhliche Ostern (Happy Easter)” by A.M. Mailick. Undated but postmarked 19 March 1903. In the Public Domain.
ID: a postcard of girls chasing Easter eggs and an Easter rabbit. One girl has fallen on her face.
Psaltery & Lyre 
I’m so moved by this piece. It will stay with me.