The Basement

I don’t like the basement. I try not to go down there, but sometimes I have to. It’s where you have to go when you’ve been bad, even if nobody knows. I prop the door open when I go down there, and I put a brick in tbe doorjamb, too. I’m not getting trapped in a spooky basement with that big bleeding Jesus heart. Uh-uh, not me.

Mom said Jesus’s blood was different from Eve’s, said we were supposed to drink it to get saved. That sounds like vampires to me, but when they made us drink it at church, it was just funny-tasting grape juice. It didn’t taste anything like blood, so maybe it is better. It didn’t taste dirty, but neither did Polly’s.

I had to go to the basement because of Polly. If she hadn’t scraped that knee, none of it ever would have happened. I got Mom’s rosary, the one with the dark blue beads. She said blue was Mary’s color, but Polly’s ribbon was blue. That’s okay. There’s way more people than colors

I had to pray with Mom’s rosary in front of tbe bloody Jesus heart on Mom’s altar. It’s what we do when it’s too secret to tell even a priest, and I know I already confessed some of it to my priest, but I knew I had to be forgiven really good because of the gas station lady’s eyes knowing about Polly and what I had to do. It wasn’t fair for that lady’s eyes to know stuff.

I said my Our Fathers and Hail Marys. The beads were good for keeping count, as long as I remembered if I said the prayer before or after I went to the next bead, so I guess sometimes I probably said the whole rosary twice because of getting mixed up. If I wasn’t sure, I always said it again, even if I remembered halfway through because it’s rude to just cut a prayer in half like it’s a fight you get tired of and don’t want to finish. People don’t mind you quitting a fight if you’re winning, but if you’re losing, they don’t let you quit. You have to finish if you’re losing.

That bloody heart always freaks me out, but you have to look at it, or none of it counts, not one single Hail Mary or Our Father, because you can’t talk to God or Mary unless you look at their son and how he suffered. The funny thing is he’s already dead, so how does he know if I’m looking at him? But he’s in heaven, so maybe he can see me from there. But Mary and Gid have to just know because no way Jesus is a tattletale like Tommy Sizemore.

Tommy Sizemore let me quit fighting him after he got me and Jimmy in trouble with his tattletale mouth, and he doesn’t tattle anymore. I had to go to the basement after that fight. That broken jaw was what stopped that Tommy Sizemore tattletale mouth. He saw us behind the tennis courts and then his mom just came for a walk in the woods for the first time ever? Ha! I don’t think so.

When I finished my rosary, I checked the clock. I had time to take a shower before tip off, and I was going to watch the Hornets play the Bulls. No, not in person, but in a real bar with lots of TVs and pool tables and dartboards. Me and Tom are gonna watch the game and eat chicken wings and drink beer. It’s gonna be awesome.