Grandma and God

The apartment smells of boiled chicken, carrots, celery.

The memory is colored amber.

The radio is playing something far away,

Something I’ve heard all my life, but never listened to.

If there is a God, where is he? They sent up a sputnik, the Russians. They didn’t find him, did they? There’s nothing there, empty space.

The elevated train, the number 2 or 5 or 6; I’m too young to know or care, strains around the curve in the track. I can see it out the window. My grandma taps the saucer with her brown finger, the finger with the big scar where the sewing machine ripped into her.

God! Where is he? Where was he was in Europe when they killed all the Jews? Sleeping? Where was he when they lynched that Negro in Mississippi last week? Was he having dinner at the Waldorf Astoria? This God of ours has been no friend to the Jews. And this Jesus of theirs has been no help to the colored. Empty space, that’s what the Russians found up there.

1/23/11