Timothy

The sun burns and the grass surrenders, browning in the heat. In the ever-adoring gaze of the grass, against the cloudless sky, the flowers droop faintly against each other. 1

If it were not so hot the grass would be lushly green, brimming with melancholic envy of the beautiful flowers that rise from amidst the scraggly carpet. Today however, two things fade the poison-green envy of the grass – in the heat, all are too tired to really care, and anyway, in the heat, even the normally amazing flowers don’t look quite as pretty.2

Timothy is five years old as he squats on the pavement beside the weedy patch. His mother is still inside the store, but he came outside himself when he grew tired of it. The grass crinkles in his grasping fingers, the yellow soil crumbles under the heel of his palm. Only five, and Timothy is a troubled boy. 3

He suspects something is up with his mommy, the way she giggles to herself sometimes but also cries into her handkerchief more often nowadays. Just that morning they made a supermarket stop at the mall just out of town and a strange man came at Mommy from behind.4

“My son – ” Mommy had hissed, glancing fearfully at Timothy who stood with his back towards them, hand hovering over possible choices of yoghurt in the dairy aisle.5

“ – is five,” the man chuckled dismissively, and in the metal bars on the side of the shelf Timothy watched the arms tighten around his mother’s waist. The five-year-old boy touched his fingers to a sealed cup of yoghurt, twisted it around briefly, moved on to the next one. The adults behind him carried on, assured of his oblivious distraction, unaware of the way his eyes followed not his own hands but their reflections in the metal surface, and turned cold.6

Timothy misses his father, who is away in China on business and will not be back for five days, which is as long as a month to a young boy. He misses his father and wonders where his mother goes off to after she has spent an age painting her face before the mirror.7

Dear God, prays Timothy as he squats under the sun this noon, I am five and I wish that I understood this world. Maybe you could help me. As he thinks this, the little boy shreds a blade of grass and sighs.8

No one can tell this child that he need not bother. God could help were he listening, but the fact of the matter is that at the beginning of everything, God had created a very full world. When one day God peered into the dark affairs of man and felt lightheaded and sick, all he had had to do was to switch off that part of his far-reaching awareness, and look instead to the other things that filled his universe, all buzzing with yearning to be paid loving attention to by their god, all less of a headache than human lives.9

God especially liked the grass, the sad pure grass, and enjoyed observing the lifetimes of the hapless weed. Photosynthesis, for example, was something he had created for plants in efforts to soften the quiet bitter longing of the grass to be like the flowers.10

Timothy, five, digs his nails into the dirt and uproots a clump of grass. His mother emerges and pulls him off the ground, brings him home, leaves him to his own devices as she goes to talk on the telephone for two hours to a man not in China. 11

A year later, Timothy’s parents launch a venomous and painful campaign against each other, and their son stands afraid on the fault line. Three years later, after an excruciating divorce, Timothy’s mother marries a man who does not like her son. At ten, Timothy first runs away from home, but he never really succeeds because all he knows is failure.12

As all of this happens and happens, Timothy refuses to give up on God. He prays and hopes and wishes and walks around town with his head down. Out of the corner of his eye he always notices the grass, and sometimes feels inexplicably inferior.