Behold

On my eighth birthday, Mom bought me the metal detector I asked for. Its spindly structure bore a sharp resemblance to my own delicate framework at the time, flimsy and fragile with flashlight eyes and a hair trigger handle that made alien whirring sounds when squeezed. I don’t know why I wanted it so badly. I think I saw one on an old episode of Pink Panther. It must have seemed magical, the way it could recover valuable items that people had stopped searching for long ago.

I remember taking it out the first time. I strapped the pole to my arm and aimed it like a spear as I poked open the front door. It felt like I was in control of some extraordinary device that gave me powers nobody else possessed. The whole world was wide open to me and then it narrowed.

“Genie,” Mom called after me. I was half out the door.

“Yes, Mom,” I said, straddling the threshold.

“Can I come, too?” she asked.

Saying no was out of the question. Not only was she my mom and the one who had given me the gift in the first place, she was a woman who had recently lost her sister in a car crash and then her mind in a roaring sea of sorrow.

“Sure,” I said. “Of course.”

We walked across our sprawling backyard, then past the tulip garden, which had gone to ruin since the accident, overrun with dandelions and debris. Bedford sunsets were beautiful this time of year, but brisk. It was almost October, and it frightened me to look down and see Mom had left the house with bare feet. She wore nothing but pajamas and hair curlers, her mane a wild nest of graying snarls.

“What do you think we’ll find, honey?” Mom asked.

We were approaching the edge of the pasture where I intended to start my scanning. The truth was I had no idea what I was looking for. That was part of the fun. Whatever I was able to unearth would be special and perfect. I don’t know why I said what I did. Probably because I thought it would make her happy. She’d spent so much time the last few months driving me to church and talking about heaven that I guess it seemed like the right thing to do.

“I don’t know,” I said. “How about God?”

It worked. A smile crept across her lips. She stopped cold, grabbed my elbow and clamped it tight. There was a look of marvel in her eyes, as though she’d just been steeled by a kiss from some imaginary spirit.

“Amazing idea, sweetie,” she said. “But God’s not in the ground. He’s up above the clouds.”

“God is everywhere,” I reminded her. “Remember?”

Her eyes traveled back to that stiff, suspended kiss, and her head began to nod. She slowly released my arm as I ventured into the pasture. The switchgrass was tall and pervasive, chest-high and fifty feet deep into the woods beyond. It wasn’t long before the radar started beeping. I swept the grass aside, clearing a fan of space at my feet. The beeping grew louder as I dug. Mom peered over me as I clawed the soil, tearing up clods of stone and seeds. An unidentified rodent darted past my hand and scurried through the brush. In a few minutes I had dredged up a long chrome rod, then a small hoop, a flat disk, then…

Mom stepped back in awe as I exhumed the object. Her feet were crusty and brown on top, frosted pink around the toes. Whatever it was refused to be taken without a fight. It clung to the dirt the way a drowning man might clutch to driftwood in the middle of the ocean. Mom was behind me, hugging my shoulders, so I couldn’t see her expression. I was glad about that. She was observing the same sight I was but through different lenses. What emerged was a near replica of the metal detector she’d purchased for my birthday.

I held them side by side, resting each against my muddy thighs. Apart from one being black and the other silver, they could have been siblings. I couldn’t stop studying their features. Where one had a flip switch, the other had a round button. At the bottom of one was a circle and the other a square. Wires entangled both staffs, two snakes coiled around sleek branches. Several patches of rust on one gave clues to the future existence of the next. There were so many details to absorb and catalog.

“My Lord,” Mom said.

I wasn’t old enough to formulate any grand conclusions, but the essence of what my childish brain was trying to devise was something like this. The universe was filled with people exploring, pursuing some idea or possession that might make life less painful or confusing. Maybe they had theories going in, concepts they sought to confirm, or maybe their minds were blank like mine. This duplication was proof that humans existed and strived alongside plants, and animals, and suggestions of meaning but nothing else. I had discovered the one piece of evidence that established only that others were also trying to discover pieces of evidence on their own. I was in a forest of mirrors. We all were…

But that was not what Mom was thinking. I understood enough of her pious perspective to be absolutely certain. My epiphany was not what she wanted to hear, even if I could have explained it, and as I turned around, knowing the response she desired, I braced myself for whatever interpretation I was about to give. When our gazes met, I saw what I needed to do, and for just a moment, her entire face was aglow with anticipation.