Faith

He never really understood what the minister meant by the word; he only knew that you were supposed to have it in Jesus. Was it the same as believe? Once the minister said that the Pope was a man of faith too, even though we didn’t believe in the Pope. (But did we have faith in him?) The minister had a Scottish accent and a beard. Mom said she never really trusted men with beards because she always thought they had something to hide. But she trusted the minister because he had been nice after Mom thought Jake was going to have a little brother but then he didn’t after all. The minister kept saying you had to believe in things but actually with him you didn’t need to believe like that he would be at church on Sundays, he was always at church on Sundays and at the end he would always be there helping hand out the cookies in the church hall.

Another time Jake remembered hearing the word faith was once when they were watching the CBC news and Mr Mulroney was there and he said faith was important to him too. But if faith was about just believing in something, wasn’t that bad because Mr Mulroney was the Premier Minister of the whole country and he should really know what to do? The more Jake thought about it the more scared it made him feel. It was as if the adults didn’t know what to do any more than the kids and so they just believed things but they might not be true and then the whole country might end. But he must have misunderstood something, like that word faith. He kept on getting his Mom to try to make a line in his hair like Mr Mulroney every Sunday before they went to church. 

Also there was that time a few weeks ago after school at his old school in Ottawa when Mr Wolf would have some extra basketball after school which was always super fun, and he had the ball behind the three-point line and said, “What do you think, guys, nothing but net or nothing but air?” They all went “Nothing but air!” and then Mr Wolf said, “Oh yee of little faith.” Jake guessed yee was another word for kids, but anyway when Mr Wolf took the shot he missed by like a thousand miles. So he wasn’t sure why he would have said they should believe he could get it in, since they were about to see whether he did. And anyway he didn’t so they did believe something, just something that everybody just saw was true.

“The Faith-full” was something his Dad called his Mom and her friends when they came around for their Tupperware parties or crochet or sometimes when they would come from the tea at church to his house and then have more tea at the kitchen table even though they’d just had tea at church. His Dad would come in in his tie with the sleeves rolled up because it wasn’t work. Or sometimes he was just in his track pants and a T-shirt and there were grease marks on his shirt because he’d been working on the Porsche he’d bought second-hand from that German man but couldn’t get to run even though Jake always wanted to ride in it. His Dad would come in while the church ladies were talking really loud and he’d stand in the doorway and it would get a lot quieter and he wouldn’t say much. But sometimes he would go, “Ah, the Faith-full,” or he would go, “Hello ladies,” and sometimes maybe “Everyone having a merry old time?” His Dad didn’t have many jokes but Jake thought those were some of them. Anyway he would say one of those jokes and then go away again.

But not like he had gone away now. Or how Jake and his Mom had gone away from him. They had to go to Montreal because Grandma B lived there and they could stay with Grandma B. Grandma B said faith was important too, like Mr Mulroney, even though she was eighty-eight and Jake found it kind of weird that there would be things that you still hadn’t learned at that age but just had to believe in instead. Grandma B was a Baptist, and Dad said to Jake once that she wouldn’t drink wine at church but only grape juice. Jake thought that it must have been one of Dad’s jokes because he laughed when he said it and shook his head, but Jake didn’t see why that could be a joke.

Mom said that they moved in with Grandma B because they just needed space, but Grandma’s house actually had less space because it was a bungalow and bungalows are houses with only one floor. Jake thought it was really because of that night that he came downstairs because he couldn’t sleep and Dad was finally home from work at night again and Mom was shouting at him in the kitchen. Jake walked over the carpet in the living room with Teddy, but he stopped short of the wedge of light that spilled out from the kitchen like the D by the net on the hockey rink. He didn’t want to go into the adult world. He could see them there, acting the way the adults do when they think you’re not there. He never liked it. He used to believe it wasn’t like that and that Mom and Dad were always like they were when you were around. But he’d stopped believing that. Sometimes you wanted to believe something was true but you couldn’t even though you were trying your hardest. So it was different to being really good at hockey because Dad had said that if you just kept on trying at that eventually you could be in the NHL.

That night Mom was shouting at Dad a lot. It looked like Dad was trying to tell his jokes again and saying “My dear” and laughing, but the way he was holding his hands up made Jake think he was afraid or something, or that he thought he should be afraid. And then his Mom said it, the same word, three times, shouting at the top of her lungs: “Un-faith-full! Un-faith-full! Un-faith-full!” And each time she hit Dad on the shoulder with the rolling pin. Dad didn’t look hurt (Dad was really strong and once he won the shot put competition of the whole of New Brunswick when he was at high school), but he did look really serious and obviously had decided his jokes weren’t working.

After the last time hitting him Mom threw the rolling pin on the floor the way Mr Wolf said you weren’t meant to do with the baseball bat after you got a hit. The rolling pin crashed really loudly on the kitchen floor. Then Mom sat down on one of the chairs around the kitchen table and started crying. And then you could tell everyone could tell Jake was there with Teddy. Mom said, “What have you done. Jake is here, Bill, your son is here with his teddy bear,” and cried some more, as if Teddy being there made it all sadder or something. Dad looked over at him and then he got his jacket from the back of another one of the chairs at the kitchen table, which Jake thought was funny because it was too late to go back to work now. He also thought that was funny Mom got so mad at him for “Un-faith-full” because Dad had already said he didn’t believe in Jesus and Mom had never gotten that mad before.

So now they had to live in Montreal, and there was a new minister, and he was a Protestant like us but he was French (Mom said you weren’t supposed to say Pepper), and when he said faith it sounded like fate or like in fate accompli. We didn’t know if he was going to be as nice as the Scottish minister with the beard, though Grandma B said he had been a God-send after Grandpa B died, and that he was someone that could be relied on. In French “believe” was croix which was the same word for cross but when he told the Minister he laughed as if Jake had told a really funny joke. 

Jake had to go to a new school in Montreal. Mom said just to try it out, but none of Jake’s friends were there and they didn’t have Mr Wolf for sports. Instead you had to speak French every other day and they had Mme Tremblay and she was really old and wouldn’t let you speak English past the door and you had to speak French all day. Even if you wanted to go to the bathroom you had to say “Pee-je aller aller toilet” otherwise she wouldn’t let you. And when she asked Jake how to spell meussieur which means “Mister”, Jake wrote MEUSSIER on the blackboard and all the kids laughed and Mme Tremblay said that it was really spelled MONSIEUR because it really meant my Lord, which Jake didn’t believe for one second.

One day Mom drove him to school even though he hadn’t missed the bus this time and he wasn’t in trouble but Mom was really serious anyway. As they drove past the new hockey rink she said like completely out of the blue that he was a good kid and she loved him a whole bunch, and that he hoped he knew his father did too, then she cried even though Jake didn’t think that sounded very sad. She said they were going to live in Montreal now and that Grandma B would help take care of him and that Ste Julie was a really good school and it was going to be his school now and she hoped he would be good and make friends.

They’d stopped by the curb where the school was, but Jake didn’t pick up his Senators bag from in front of his seat or open the door. He wanted to tell her how he missed Mr Wolf, and how Mme Tremblay made them say “Pee-je aller aller toilet” and told him to spell meussieur like monster, but he just looked down at his bag instead.

His Mom leaned over, brushed his bangs across his forehead, and kissed him. “Come on, kiddo,” she said, “I have faith in you.” She smiled at him, but kind of like more of a politician’s smile, an adult’s smile, than the ones she did when nobody was looking.

He opened the car door and slid his feet round to get out. He wheeled around and put both hands on the door from the outside, and before he gave it a big push to shut it it crossed his mind to say, “I have faith in you too, Mom.” But then he remembered he didn’t really know what that meant.

 James Ackhurst was born in Calgary, Alberta, and now lives in Wellington, New Zealand, where he teaches Ancient Greek. Some of his poetry has appeared in Quadrant