By Gale Acuff

Perfect Attendance

I can’t go to Sunday School today. I’m
sick and throwing up and there’s not even
any food in my stomach, it’s all air
so it must’ve been something I didn’t
eat that’s made me ill. I’ll miss Miss Hooker,
my teacher, her red hair and green eyes and
freckles and sometimes she paints her toenails
which Mother doesn’t like but Father says
that she should have an open mind but she
just scowls. Her fingernails, too, Miss Hooker’s
I mean. She paints them, too, I mean. Last week
they were blue. Mother says that Miss Hooker
can’t take them to Heaven with her and what’s
more maybe she won’t get in at all. I
told her to take that back and Father said
to go to my room–Don’t you raise your voice
to your mother. So I did, went to my
room like I was told, but they forgot to
tell me when I could come forth again so
I locked the door so they couldn’t come in
and was ready to tell them, if they came,
that they’d have to break it down but no such
luck, they never showed so after three hours
I let myself out and went downstairs and
they were at the kitchen table, smoking
and looking through the Sears catalog and
when they looked up they asked me where I’d been
and I almost said, but didn’t, Just where
the Hell do you think I’ve been, but that would
be not honoring thy Father and thy
Mother and according to Miss Hooker
that’s sin and sin enough and God’s happy
to toss you in Hell when you’re dead–well, not
happy happy but satisfied because
that’s just the way He does business. Father’s
in paint, selling it I mean, for houses,
not fingernails and toenails. Miss Hooker
goes to vo-tech three nights a week. She’ll be
a cosmetologist one day. I think
that’s something like an astronomer, which
makes sense because she’s interested in
Heaven. Right now I’m too damn sick to care
but I wonder if she misses me since
I have perfect attendance in her class
like I have at regular school even
though I’m failing history and English
but I figure if I at least show up
then how can they forsake me with an F
and hold me back another year? The same
for God–I may be hopeless but at least
I show up. And I’m going back to school
tomorrow if I have to do so dead.
If that’s not dedication then what is?
But this morning I ruined my attendance
record–now Vicky Dooley’s the new champ.
Sometimes she makes me want to throw up but
I guess I should be glad I’m off the hook
but you can’t say the same about God, He
has to hang in there no matter what. He
can never die and does that mean He can
never go to Heaven? I’ll remember
to ask Miss Hooker that next Sunday, if
I’m not dead, that is. If I am, I’ll wait.