Main Entry: fa-cil-i-tate
Pronunciation: f&-’si-l&-”tAt
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -tat·ed; -tat·ing
: to make easier : help bring about
“Murray,” the woman in the kitchen called out.
“It’s Ray, mom,” the ten-year-old mumbled, and then yelled, “Yeah?”
“Whatcha doin’?” she asked over the sounds of kitchen utensils banging around. Did she kill the little demons before she cooked them?
“I’m watchin’ some show on PBS about stars an’ stuff,” Ray answered.
“Is it interesting?” she asked.
He sat up in what had once been his father’s recliner. “Yeah, it’s totally cool!” he yelled. “Did you know the sun is like 90 million miles away?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said, smashing a kitchen demon. “That’s a long way away.”
“Yeah,” he said, tuning back in to the television.
Ray had always been interested in outer space. He even picked astronaut over fireman on a future occupation poll at his elementary school. The show he was watching captured his attention, but he was more or less just mesmerized by the power of the television. He was disappointed that the show only lasted an hour. The time slipped away, caught in one of those black holes they had talked about.
Once the credits started to roll, Ray got the urge to go outside and look at the stars. The narrator talked about one that might be visible and how to find it. Rye Gel or something.
Ray pulled up on the handle to the blue recliner and returned it to its normal, sturdy shape. He walked through his middle class home, around all the middle class furniture, past the middle class decorations, and to his middle class room. It was his domain, his dungeon. He opened the door and noticed it was completely dark and extremely cold, like a dungeon should be. He hesitated before turning on the light. He couldn’t see inside. What if he didn’t want to see? What might be hiding in the dark, ready to pounce on him? As he flipped the switch, he felt immediate relief that his mess was just as he left it, undisturbed by unknown forces.
Then he realized why it was so cold in his room. He had left his window open before he started watching television. The chill of winter filled his room. He went to the window, stepping over dirty laundry and magazines, most of them covered with Nintendo characters and their masked expressions of helplessness. The room was cluttered but clean. Everything was in its place, though he could never convince his mother of it. She just didn’t seem to understand that it was easier than having to dig through closets and drawers to find what he needed.
“Man, it’s cold out there,” Ray said, pulling down on the window. The wood thumped together and immediately he felt warmer, though the glass oozed cold. He waded back through his bedroom, grabbing the thick blue coat off the edge of his rarely-used chair. He’d found the old coat in the garage once, and didn’t seem to care that it was made for someone at least three times his size. Wearing pajamas, slippers and that big coat, he headed outside.
As he passed the kitchen, his mother saw him walk by and asked, “Where are you going?”
“I’m gonna go outside for a sec,” he answered.
“Okay, hun,” she said, banging more kitchenware together, “It snowed a bunch while you were watching your show, so enjoy the silence.”
“What?” Ray said, mostly to himself, and walked out his front door to the porch.
The first thing he noticed when he got outside was the silence his mother had mentioned. His house faced a street that got a lot of traffic, but obviously no one had been driving that night. The street, like everything else, was covered in several inches of snow. It gave everything a soft, rounded shape, and muffled the sounds that usually came from the city.
He walked out into his covered porch, lined with planks of wood that had been installed decades before his mother was born. He leaned on the white railing that created a barrier to the porch, knocking off some of the snow, and looked skyward.
He was immediately disappointed. Thick clouds, orange from the city lights, hung low over the town. When he realized that they covered the entire sky, his shoulders drooped slightly and he just stared at the bottom of the cloud ceiling.
Then Ray realized it was the first time he ever remembered wishing he could see the stars. He actually felt disappointment because he couldn’t see them. They were there, like they had always been, but the one time he wanted to see them, he couldn’t. It made him wonder what else there was that existed just beyond his reach, or otherwise obscured by clouds. How does snow form? How did nebulas form? How did stars form? How did he form?
Suddenly, he noticed he was starting to shiver. He thought about being deathly cold, and though he tried to drive the thought from his mind, he then thought of death. Dying scared young Ray, naturally, and he unconsciously slipped into thoughts about his mother, who he knew was inside the warm, comfortable house. The thoughts, the fears, and the cold were too much for him, and his adolescent, scatterbrained mind saved him from any more worry.
He went back inside, shivering heavily and very aware of the cold. As he tried to warm up inside the house, he noticed that he was smiling. Though he didn’t have a name for it, he felt something he had never felt before. He wanted to say he was more mature, but that wasn’t quite it. Well, he felt more mature, at least. It was hard for him to tell, really. It was all very confusing. Whatever.
The indoor air was pleasantly thick with the heat from the metal monster that always filled their house with its hot wind. It was always there, like the slave dragon that made sure he never got cold.
“Murray,” his mother called.
“Yeah, ma?” he said, closing the cold out with the thick wooden door.
“I made you some hot chocolate.”
“Awesome!” he yelled, taking off his coat and flinging it at the coat rack.
He walked into the kitchen and plopped down on one of the two short bar stools which faced the kitchen counter. The counter was where he and his mother usually ate. The real table was just for when people came over, if they ever did. He rotated back and forth on the stool, feeling the squeak of the bearings under his weight. His mother seemed to be working magic on the other side of the kitchen, her arms working busily on what was certainly his hot chocolate. He thought it was funny she always wore an apron. She once asked him why he thought it was funny. Ray answered that it was old-fashioned. “But,” he admitted, “at least you don’t wear a dress.” For some reason then obscure to him, she kissed his forehead.
Spinning slowly on the stool, he stopped daydreaming once his mother turned and walked toward him, a cup of steaming hot chocolate in her hand. She carried it carefully to him, grasping the handle tightly with one hand and keeping the other hand near–but not too near–the hot mug.
“Now, be careful with this,” she said, concentrating on it as she walked to him. She set it down in front of him. “I just made it, so it’s super hot.”
“Cool,” he said, grabbing the handle, which was surprisingly warm. “Thanks, Mom.”
He lifted the heavy ceramic cup close to his mouth and blew lightly over the top of the steaming dark milk. He knew not to drink it, but it was nice to help it through it’s cooling down period. The sweet cocoa smell wafted up to his nose as he breathed in. He could even smell the marshmallows, slowly dissolving and gassing their sugary scent.
“You look happy,” his mother suddenly said.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Thanks for the hot chocolate.”
“I just mean you look comfortable,” she said, smiling at him. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” he answered automatically. Then he realized how true it was. “Yeah,” he repeated, “I am happy.” He just smiled at his mother and she smiled back. Then she turned and went back to the poor demon that was sizzling on the stove.
He realized that he was smiling as the comfort of his surroundings slowly caressed him. He looked out the kitchen window, dark and cold. His home was warm and sturdy, and it felt good to be inside that night. The idea of being caught outside made him think of death again. Just thinking about it made him afraid. But this time he felt different. He knew death wouldn’t be the end of him because he would go to Heaven. He knew there were certain rules you were supposed to follow to get there, and he promised he would never break them.
He tested the hot chocolate and jerked when it touched his lips. He almost spilled it, and–making sure his mother didn’t see him–set the cup back onto the counter.
Ray’s two closest friends at that time were Abe and Skinner. Ray was the newcomer in their group, but that didn’t seem to matter. Though Skinner had been friends with Abe longer, it was only because they had lived next door since birth. Secretly, Ray considered Abe his best friend. He was always so fun to be around. Abe’s father was probably the nicest person Ray knew. He was the minister of one of the churches in town, and partially because of this, the first place Ray was allowed to spend the night was at Abe’s house. Skinner was much like Abe in many ways, which is probably why the three of them got along so well. Ray liked Skinner because he seemed to have an answer for everything, though it was hard to tell when he was serious.
The three of them had been spending almost every Friday or Saturday night at one of their houses, usually Abe’s. Which reminded him…
“Hey, mom,” he said, trying the hot chocolate once again, “is it okay if Abe and Skinner spend the night this weekend?”
“Sure, honey,” she said, stirring what was probably demon guts. “What about Rachel’s boy, Carl?” she asked.
“The turtleneck kid?” Ray asked with just enough ridicule.
His mother stopped torturing the little monsters and looked at him. Her face was very clear to him. A scolding was just around the corner if he didn’t figure out what he did wrong, and soon.
“What?” Ray asked.
“Turtleneck kid?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“I never knew what a turtleneck was until I met him. That’s how I remember him.”
She seemed to accept that. “Okay,” she said, “but you should at least give him a chance.”
“I will,” Ray said, “I promise.”
And then he thought about Carl, the kid with the turtlenecks. Ray wasn’t even sure what the big deal was. He didn’t even notice it until Skinner started joking about it.
Then he remembered something else about that moment that had confused him. Skinner was going on, cracking jokes about anyone who was just out of earshot. He wasn’t really being mean, since no one could hear him, so Ray and Abe just sat there giggling. At one point Skinner called one kid a name he’d heard before but never really thought about. At the time, Ray thought the word was Joo. He even wrote it down so he wouldn’t forget. Well, it worked.
He stopped sipping his just-cool-enough-to-drink chocolate. “Hey, Mom,” he said, “what is a Joo?”
“A Jew?” she asked, looking at him.
“I heard Skinner call some kid a Joo.”
“Well,” she said, “the Jews are followers of Judaism, which is a religion close to Christianity.”
“I thought they liked a lady named Mary,” Ray said.
His mother smiled faintly, and then got serious again. “You’re thinking of the Virgin Mary, which is usually a Catholic thing. She is the mother of Jesus. The Jews follow Judaism which is the religion that gave birth to Christianity. It is a very old religion.”
“Wow,” he said. “That’s pretty cool. So, are they the same religion?”
“Oh, no,” she answered. “Definitely not. But, they have more in common with one another than they do with any other religion.”
“Wow,” Ray breathed. After he let the idea sink in, he thought about how cool it was to be a part of something like that. “So, I believe in the same thing that billions and billions of people do?”
“Well,” she said, smiling, “maybe not that many, but yes, you believe the same as lots of other people.”
“Cool,” he said. “So, what’s so bad about being a Jew?”
“Bad?” she asked.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t someone want to be called a Jew?”
“Where did you get that idea?” she asked, getting that look again.
“Well, Skinner was making fun of people and he called some kid a Jew. He said it like it was a bad thing. What’s the big deal, anyway?”
“There is no big deal, Murray,” she said, in her pay-close-attention-to-me voice. “Skinner is just a misguided, meanspirited boy, and he will say things like that because it’s easier for kids to belittle someone rather than find any good in them. There’s nothing wrong with being a Jew, and anyone who says otherwise is acting just like a racist. Understand?”
“Yes, Mom,” Ray said, picking his hot chocolate back up, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay, baby,” she said, going back to the guts. “Just don’t take people like Skinner too seriously.”
“Yes, Mom,” Ray repeated. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “I mean it,” he ensured her.
“Good,” she said.
And he did mean it. He thought about how often his mother scolded him. Considering what he had heard about his friend’s parents, his mother rarely got onto him. Besides, he thought, she always seemed to know what she was talking about. He couldn’t…wouldn’t imagine what life would be like if his mother wasn’t right about things. She was stronger, braver, smarter, and wiser than he was, and she had given him no reason why he shouldn’t trust every word that came out of her mouth. And he had no doubt she loved him.
Ray got up and went into the living room. He went to the recliner and carefully sat down, making sure not to spill any hot chocolate as he flipped up the recliner’s foot support. He got comfortable and sipped his drink. It was cool enough not to burn your lips too severely. Just like he liked it. He felt it warm its way down his throat, the sensation disappearing as it reached his stomach.
It was good to know that his conscience was right about Skinner’s comments. The way he went on about the other kids was funny at first, but Ray knew it was wrong. Skinner broke one of God’s biggest rules, though Ray couldn’t tell you which one. It had to do with hurting people, whichever one that was. God wouldn’t allow that, so he made rules for us. Skinner broke them, and Ray admitted to God he knew it all along.
As he sat in the recliner, slowly sipping his warm chocolate, he wondered if he was thinking like a grownup. It sure felt like it. But, just how grown up can a ten-year-old be? He looked out the living room windows to the snow. He wanted to be outside, but he was more comfortable where he was. Though it was a little too bright and a little too noisy, it was right around perfect.