Free Angel in the Parlor by Nancy Willard Page A

top of her glasses.
    â€œI’m telling you what’s in the Bible.”
    She opened her purse and pulled out a small book bound in white paper. “It’s the new translation, and it only costs twenty-three cents. You could own three of ’em if you wanted to. And it’s got pictures. See——”
    â€œWho’s that wild man?” demanded Galen.
    â€œWhere? Where?” cried Helen.
    â€œThere.”
    He pointed to the picture of a hairy man dressed in skins waving a big stick.
    â€œThat’s John the Baptist,” explained Etta. “But I believe this one is my favorite. It’s from Revelations.”
    Over a crested wave, the red sun and the black moon bobbed like apples, and fish floated belly up among the spars of sunken ships.
    â€œAnd every living soul in the sea shall die,” said Etta.
    â€œFish don’t have souls,” said Helen.
    Etta frowned.
    â€œBut that was the title of our lesson last week! What could it mean, then?”
    â€œDon’t fish have souls?” I asked, surprised.
    â€œOf course not,” answered Helen. “Only people go to heaven.”
    â€œWhat happens to the animals?” I hardly dared ask her.
    â€œThey turn back into earth.”
    â€œAll of them?”
    â€œAll of them.”
    And my lovely spotted cat who loved nothing better than to nap by the stove in winter, would she too lie down in darkness? But I knew there was no point in asking about special cases if the rule applied to all. No doubt God didn’t want puppies chewing up His golden slippers and peeing on His marble floors. I felt like crying, I could not imagine a world without animals. Even if I had none around me by day, I would need them at night. For whenever I could not sleep my mother would say, count sheep. I counted, one, two, three, four, and waited for the sheep to appear. But it was always buffalo that came to be counted, shaggy yet delicate, as if sketched on the walls of a cave. They floated out of the wall by my bed, crossed the dark without looking back at me, and passed silently into the mirror over my dressing table.
    Suddenly I thought: if God does not mind wearing an ass’s head, then why doesn’t He let the whole animal into heaven?
    â€œNot a one will get there, because they have no souls,” said Helen.
    â€œDo you think Nuisance will come back?” asked Galen.
    Helen sighed.
    â€œDogs always come back.”
    â€œTell some more signs,” I said.
    â€œIn the last days,” continued Etta, “God will send His star, just like He did when Christ was born. It will look like a big hand coming closer and closer. And then God will appear, not just to a few people in Sweden or Japan, but to everybody at once, like lightning.”
    Somebody tapped on the window over the sink, and a man’s face lurched past, like a cracked moon.
    â€œIt’s Caleb!” screeched Helen. “Don’t let him in!”
    We all rushed to close the kitchen door, but Helen rubbed the latch on the screen the wrong way, and in walked Caleb with his hands up, empty whiskey bottles on all his fingers.
    â€œI’ve come to pick up Penny.”
    â€œPenny is at church,” said Helen, her voice shaking.
    â€œChurch? Well, I’ll wait for her.”
    â€œSuit yourself,” sniffed Helen. “When my father comes home, you’ll get it.”
    â€œMe and your old man are going hunting together next Sunday. Doves are thick this year.”
    â€œYou shoot doves!” cried Etta. “Dreadful!”
    Caleb shook the bottles off his fingers, one by one, and lined them up against the stove. Then he pulled off his sheepskin coat and threw it on the floor. Then he kicked off his boots. I could see skin peeking through his black socks like stars.
    â€œTell your dad to keep his bottles at home,” said Caleb. “Tell him I saw ten empties running up Mulberry Street like a pack of