I Can Barely Take Care of Myself, Jen Kirkman [the false prince txt] 📗

the world’s most boring New Year’s Eve, as I sat there counting down the last hour before little Eli’s bedtime. One night Eli couldn’t sleep. He was talking as if he’d been reading a Nietzsche pop-up book. Right before I was about to turn out the light he asked, “Jen? Is there a God?”

Me: “Well, what does your mom say about God?”

Eli: “I never asked her. I just thought of it.”

Me: “Why don’t you wait and ask your mom about God in the morning? She has all the answers.”

Eli: “I thought all grown-ups knew. You’re a grown-up!”

If only he knew that even though I was in charge, I was just a kid myself. I hadn’t even had my first real kiss yet. I was wearing an A-cup bra. Really it was a training bra. There were no cups. It was almost like wearing an Ace bandage around my upper torso. I was so not a grown-up.

Eli persisted. “If God can see me, why can’t I see him?” (A Jewish kid wanted a Catholic girl to explain to him why we can’t see God. Oy boy!) Then he started to get hysterical: “I don’t want God watching me sleep!”

I had no idea how to answer Eli. I didn’t know the first thing about the Jewish God. I knew that Jesus was Jewish and that Moses . . . did some . . . stuff. I’m not even sure of the timeline. I couldn’t remember whether those guys knew each other or whether they just sort of respected each other’s “miracle corners.”

When I was a little older than Eli was then, my mom tucked me in every night and we said that prayer: “If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” That prayer is comforting—if you’re ninety and on a respirator. It doesn’t make much sense for a healthy eight-year-old. Then, after we prayed about this Lord guy coming to take me away in my sleep, my mom would shut the light off and close the door, leaving me to stew in my newly developed neurosis. I couldn’t do the same thing to Eli.

Standing in Eli’s doorway, looking at his innocent little face, I didn’t have the heart to just turn the light out and ignore him. I wouldn’t have to wait until I had my own kids. This was my moment to make an impact on the youth of America by doing the exact opposite thing that my parents did. I would not tell him that there is a God waiting to take him in his sleep.

While I racked my brain for the best way to answer his question without really answering his question, Eli, in the manner of children everywhere with too much time on their hands, came up with more questions. Such as, “When am I gonna die?”

I knew I had to protect him and let him remain a kid. Kids need myths, like the tooth fairy, and when they’re older they can handle the truth: that your parents flush your teeth down the toilet like they’re getting rid of forensic evidence and leave you only twenty-five cents, not accounting for the inflation that’s occurred since they were kids. You’ll have to borrow a dollar from them later anyway in order to afford a Charleston Chew candy bar and they’ll guilt you and say, “That will pull your teeth out.” By the time Eli knew the truth about anything I’d be in college and wouldn’t have to worry about helping him process it. For tonight, in order to protect him and get myself out of his room and on to the bag of Oreos waiting for me in the Reinhardts’ kitchen, I would lie my ass off.

“Oh, Eli,” I said. “You will live to be two hundred years old before you die and that is a very, very long time from now.”

I was proud of myself until Eli said, “So, I am going to die?”

I said, “No. No. I mean, if you die, you will die at two hundred, but . . . not everybody dies.”

Eli said, “So, some people die and some don’t?”

Um. Yes.

Eli said, “Why did God make my grandpa die?”

Um . . .

Eli asked, “Can I die before I turn two hundred if I’m murdered in my bed?”

I’m glad that I didn’t think to raid the Reinhardts’ medicine cabinet to see whether the missus had any “mother’s little helper,” because I seriously would have considered crushing some into the orange juice on Eli’s nightstand to help him take his mind off bed-murder.

Fuuuck. How did this kid know about murder? He’s right. Murder is scary. And it’s real, even in seemingly safe havens like Needham, Massachusetts. Some guy in our town had chopped his wife into tiny pieces in their bathtub just streets away from where little Eli Reinhardt lived. I was terrified of murder myself and to be honest I didn’t like the idea of the Reinhardts’ glass sliding doors in their living room. Sure, they had locks, but I could just picture the murderer tossing his ax through the thin glass, shattering it, and then walking purposefully toward me with a bloodthirsty gleam in his eye. “But I don’t even really live here!” I’d scream. As if that would be a good reason why he shouldn’t introduce me to the pointy end of his ax.

I still had a chance to be a good substitute parent. I told Eli that there was no such thing as murder. I told him it was just a thing he saw on TV but not actually something that was physically possible. People couldn’t kill other people, so he had nothing to worry about.

As a special treat, I decided to lie on the floor next to Eli’s bed. I told him that I’d lie there until he fell asleep so that if he had any more scary thoughts, I’d be right there. Once Eli was asleep and dreaming of a vengeful God, I snuck out, whipped the blinds shut in the living room, and stuffed my face