The irony was not lost on me that we were halfway up a hill when we began fighting.  Or when we finished the fight.

It’s the first real time I ever thought– We aren’t going to make it.  We really aren’t.  

But then, it started a few nights ago.

It started when we listened to that story about the different sort of people, all born with two heads and four legs and four arms.  Until Zeus ripped them apart for his usual jealousy.

There were Children of the Moon: half man, half woman.  (I smiled at you at this part, but it was dark and you didn’t see).

Children of the Sun, born both halves as male.

And Children of the Earth, both halves female.

And after the split, these children spent endless time searching for their beloved other half. (Here, I smiled at you again, but you still couldn’t see).  But this story went on to include the Children of the Dirt– those who never had any other half and never would.  (Here, I was grateful to be of the Moon with you, until) You said:

“Maybe we are all just Children of the Dirt.”

You went on to explain how maybe we choose to be Children of anything else, choose to be with anyone else.

Had this been the first we heard it, I may have agreed.  But it was years ago, before we even believed we were in love, and I stood at my stove with the phone pressed to my ear to tell you this amazing theory– was it Plato?– of the two halves searching.

(And it seemed so obvious then– we agreed) We must be each other’s other half.

Or maybe you were right this time around.

Maybe love has no mystery at all.

Maybe it has no other half.

Maybe we lose nothing by believing in the Dirt.

Because, in the end, did I not choose to keep walking up the hill to meet you?  And by the end of our hike, did we not both kick the moon dust from our shoes and be left smelling only of dirt?

I know that Jesus is on to me.  He has to be.  It’s practically his job to see me when I’m sleeping and know when I’m awake and know that I am bad not good and scheming under his nose, for godssake.  And I’m starting to feel a little guilty with the other people I’ve pulled into it, putting in a good word for me while I sit back and wring my hands and make no direct eye contact with the Lord and Savior.  And I have recently started to worry that their pleas on my behalf will not only not get me into Heaven with them, but could ultimately be the deterrent that pushes them into Hell or the Nothing.

It has been going like this–

Ryan says, “I’m heading to church to learn more things.”

I say, “Can you ask God if I’m going to Hell while you’re there?”

Ryan says, “I’ll see what I can find out.”

A few hours later, I get a text.  He found something out.

Ryan says, “God says you’re good, but you need to stop worrying.”

I say, “How do you know?”

Ryan says, “Because he said so.”

I say, “I think I need more proof.”

It’s not just Ryan.  I’ve been using my pastor-friend-Bryan’s position for years to tell God nice things about me.  And sometimes it’s difficult to be dating Someone so Saintly, who has pre-ordered us a time share in the New Earth.  And I have suspected Kelsey and Jessica are endlessly putting me at the forefront of their prayers– in a good sort of way.

And so this is how I envisioned it going on Judgment Day:

God says, “You can’t come in here.”

I say, “Okay, I understand.”

My Someone says, “But I already bought us matching robes!”

Bryan says, “Come on, do a servant-of-your-will a solid, God.”

Ryan says, “That’s not the deal we talked about.  Are you going back on that promise?”

Kelsey says, “We can figure this out.”

Jessica says, “Please.”

God, “Okay, fine.  But she is responsible for cleaning the throne room floor for the first 2000 years.  And she is your responsibility.”

Jubilee.  We did it.

Then the worry settled in.  What if at the end of that interaction, God says, “If you want her in here so bad, you take her place.”

There’s this part of me that believes they would.  So I am trying to retract their intercessions and come clean.

A few Sundays ago, we went to church.  It was a gig, really, but a gig that took place during a church service in St. Paul.  I was shaking by the time we took to the stage, then realized too late that I would be singing to a Stained-Glass Jesus in the back of the sanctuary.  I looked down.  I looked at the ceiling.  I looked anywhere else, afraid that direct eye contact would shatter the glass or permanently turn his pristine face to a haunting grimace.  When we finished, I took my usual place in the church– in the front row, hunched down, and ashamed to be there.  A tired display of what not to be.  The pastor took the pulpit and began to speak.

Prayer.

Goddammit.

And I waited for the part where I don’t pray enough or right or at all.  But instead, she said this–

“Don’t tell children to pray for starving children in Africa if what they want is chocolate pudding.  In doing so, we teach our children to be hypocrites.”  She went on to tell us to pray for what we want, that if we pray for more pandas and extra dessert, God isn’t going to give us a snake and a vial of poison.  Maybe it’s okay to say what we want, so that maybe those things we want to take over our lives, anymore, even if we don’t get what we want.

I’ve been practicing.  I’m not broaching the subject of salvation or anything big.  I’ve started with my right foot.

Back in May, my bum foot took me out again, and we have been for weeks in beautiful places and not able to hike.  We’ve done everything to fix it, my Someone and I, and nothing has worked.  Then, somewhere between stretches I found on the internet and ice, I threw in prayer.

“Dear God, please help my foot.”

That’s it.  Twice a day, morning and night.  I don’t want anything else.  I don’t want my foot to be healed so as to do His Service.  Because that’s a lie.  I want my foot to be better so I can take a hike in South Dakota in the Black Hills with my dog and my Someone.  Maybe that is God’s will, but I don’t know anything about it.  I just know this: please help my foot.  So I can continue to do my job.  So I can make dinner.  So I can keep being selfish.

Sometime after the praying, Ryan helped me remember Angie.  Angie knows all about important things in the body, being a massage therapist, and Angie found a person who can help me.  Tomorrow morning.  And we have just enough money to cover it this week.

I am not healed, yet.  But I am a little hopeful.

I told Ryan.

Ryan says, “So, do you believe in God, now?”

I say, “I believe in Angie, now.”

Ryan says, “I think that’s the best answer.”

This makes me believe in Ryan, too.  This makes me have a second prayer.

I say, “Please don’t make Ryan go to Hell because of me.”

God says nothing.  Maybe I will tackle issues of faith later.  Two prayers is enough for now.

It was this time three years ago, now.  1:14AM-1:16AM in the upper bedroom of my friend’s home.  And I was tired and running from a marriage that was running from me.

So while my little 97 pound dog stared at me, I pulled out a pencil and stared at her.  It was a bad sketch, like most of my sketches.  But it was kind of her, and it was important to tell her that she mattered in the moment, because every other moment didn’t seem to matter, anymore.

And then she was too tired to pose and even my promises of WALKS? and tomorrows could not hold her head up.

Maybe it wasn’t enough for me, either, to keep watch so long.

It’s not that we run out of time, so much, as time runs out of us.

The problem with imperfect tomatoes is that they lead you to lone cabbages.

“My daughter thought of it, really,” the farmer was telling us.  We found ourselves at the tail end of the St. Paul Farmer’s Market.  “And people seem to take to it, you know.  She’s twelve and she knows that imperfect things are still good, I mean, look at me…”

I gave him a look that said he didn’t have to sell me, anymore.  We pulled out $4 instead of shelling out an extra buck for a carton of perfect tomatoes.  We bought the last carton of imperfect tomatoes on the table.  We had a full bag of fresh vegetables and began our retreat, avoiding the gaze of the remaining perfect tomatoes teetering on the edges of tables, taunting us for our poor taste in bruised and wonkus vegetable-fruits.  I felt defensive.  So, I turned to my Someone and tried to be proud in a loud sort of way.

“It’s just that, I love our Imperfect Tomatoes!”

“I know,” he said.

“It’s just that, anyone can pick the Perfect Tomatoes!”

“That’s right,” he said.

“And we will be sure to use our Imperfect Tomatoes right away, because they are special!”

“Uh huh,” he said.  I felt like I saw him eyeing the organic golden grape tomatoes by the hummus lady.  I was getting desperate.  I needed a clincher, and fast.

“I am an Imperfect Tomato!” I said.  People were looking, or they weren’t.   So my Someone stopped and turned to me–

“Yes, you are.  I am also an Imperfect Tomato,” he said.

“We are all Imperfect Tomatoes,” I corrected.

“We are all Imperfect Tomatoes,” he agreed.

“I love them,” I said.

And in this way, we nearly left the Farmer’s Market.  Until we saw the last cabbage in the basket.

“It’s a lone cabbage,” I said.

“Okay,” said my Someone.

“It’s the very last cabbage, alone in the basket.  No one else picked this cabbage–”

“Do you want this cabbage?” he asked.

“Well we can’t leave a Lone Cabbage,” I said, “especially when we’ve already chosen Imperfect Tomatoes.”

I was working out how it is that he could always default to do the honest thing, and I would always default to stirring the pot.  Original Sin was clearly the answer.  And so in this way, we batted the idea around the camper.

“Maybe not everyone is born with it,” I told my Someone.  “Maybe, Original Sin does exist, but only a few people are born with it.”

My Someone is opposed to Original Sin.  At least he was.  Until the question of who had it and who didn’t became irresistible.  I had him in the pot, and I was about the put in the stirring spoon.  A regular serpent coaxing him to the tree.

“Okay, then,” he proceeded cautiously, “then what am I?”

“You are born Good,” I said definitively.  He seemed to be okay with this.

“Then what are you?” he asked.

“Oh man, I am Bad.  I am really, really Bad,” I said.

He laughed.  He resisted.  He argued.  But then, he gave in.  The game was on.

“What about Ryan?” he said.

“Good.”

“Matt?”

“Bad.”

“Jessica?”

“Good.  Obviously,” I said.

And in this way, we split the world in half.  But then, it was time to get down to logistics.

“So does that mean everyone Bad is going to Hell?” he asked.

“I’m not sure that Hell has anything to do with it,” I said.  And it didn’t.  And it doesn’t.  Because the idea was becoming more clearly foggy.

“Wait a second,” said my Someone seriously, “What about Mike?”

“That throws a wrench in it,” I said.

What if it goes like this: that we are all full of Good and Bad, with some born Good and some born Bad, and upon meeting the opposite of yourself, you ingest a bit of their natural selves to your natural self.  What if it is that being born Bad means you spend your time fighting to be Good.  What if being born Good means you spend your time fighting to stay Good.

Superman, Good.

Batman, Bad.

They are both fighting for the same Good.  And any nerd will tell you there’s a perk to being either.

“Maybe I just have too much Western religion left in me to tolerate the word ‘Bad,'” Bryan told me as I walked around a Minnesota campground trying to get better service.  It had been almost of week of Good and Bad running through my brain, and I was needing an expert.

“But what about the thing that happens when we walk down steps,” I pressed him, “How my Someone just walks down the steps, but I want to push the person in front of me down the steps?”

Bryan conceded this as an excellent point.  This is the part where I let Bryan off the hook.  This is the part where he told me about the two Creation stories in Genesis and vague details about a long ago paper that he maybe didn’t believe, anymore.  This is also the part where Bryan and I could sort of agree that maybe Bad isn’t the opposite of Good, but maybe Bad is just the Other of Good.  But then Bryan set me free with a little more information and an internet browser on the ready.  Because, truthfully, my Someone did seem to be Good and I did seem to be Bad.  But my Someone was not Better than me.  Just Other.

It goes like this: that once God breathed into man and woman.  Then, another time or maybe at the same time, he made man from dirt and woman from a rib and didn’t breathe into them at all.

My Someone tells me I smell like dirt.  In the good sort of way.  I always thought that was because I was the daughter of a ditch digger.  But now, it makes me wonder if I was the half that wasn’t breathed into by God.  The Bad half.  The half that has a need for the Jewish mythology of Lilith as First Lady instead of Eve.  The half that never hears God as a still small voice like everyone else seems to, but keep my hands moving in hopes that I am still working for Good.  Like Mother Theresa.  Like Jesus Christ.  All these prayers and no answer but the wind moving through the trees in the Garden.

“What good does it do?” my Someone was yelling, “to know that you are Bad and I am Good?  What if you are Good?”

“But I’m not Good,” I said quietly.  We had been fighting for days.  “I’m Bad.  I am always, always Bad.”

“Then what good is it to be Good?” he said.

A few days later, Bryan asked me if maybe being born Good came with its share of guilt for having been born Good.  I wish I had thought of this before I refused to answer my Someone at all.

What if it’s like this: What if the Bad and the Good are just a way of dealing with the world.  The Bad are already aware of all the Bad, because they are Bad, so they can see the Bad coming.  And they are always being persuaded and surprised and delighted by the Good.  And so the World is always becoming a better place.  The Good, though, only knew about the Good, and are always being caught off guard by the Bad.

What if it’s that the Bad need the Good to not lose hope, and the Good need the Bad to not lose footing.

Wise as serpents, gentle as doves.  That business.

“But I don’t think I’m Good,” my Someone insists, as he reads over my shoulder.  He becomes more exasperated the more we talk about it.  “In fact,” he persists, “I was once told I am the Son of Cain.”  Now, he tips his hat to me and gets me another glass of water without even needing to ask if I want one.  I do.

“Okay,” I say.  The Good are always denying their Good-ness.  It’s what makes them so Good.

Me, though– I am always looking for someone to tell me I am Good.  I am never full enough of Good.  Maybe it’s the curse of being Bad: always wanting more Good.  The hunger is endless.  My Someone wouldn’t know what that’s like.  All he knows is Good.

“I think I found out what God wants,” he told me a couple days later.

“What is it?” I said, stopping my reading.

“I think he wants everyone to be saved.”

“Really?  Is he going to do it?”

My Someone stopped and read a little further.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“Jesus again?” I asked.

“Yeah, Jesus again.”

We waited.

“Will you tell me if you find out?” I asked him.

“Yeah.  You’ll be the first to know.”

“What are you reading?” I asked him.

“About love and what happens if God gets what he wants,” he explained.

“What does God want?”

“Oh, you know.”

“No.  I don’t.”

“Yeah.  I guess I don’t, either.”

“I just think of stupid things lately,” he’d said to me. “Like, where am I going to do my laundry, or what happens when your tires get low– you’re always driving with your tires low and it’s dangerous!  And your shoes.  You leave them everywhere.  You’re going to trip on them all the time because no one else will be there to pick them up.”

“I will pick up my own shoes, now.” I said.

“But what about that look you give,” he said, “It’s not mine, anymore, and I don’t know where it’s going next.”

“I will pick up my own shoes, now.” I said.

He called me from the other room.

“Nope!” I said.

My Someone– before we knew he was my Someone– had been playing this game with me nearly since we met.

“No?” he said, “Okay, then.  What is it?”

“I want to be Oatmeal Pickens,” I said.

This got a laugh out of him.  It always got a laugh out of him.

“Okay,” he said, “today you can be Oatmeal Pickens.  Now, Oatmeal Pickens, what do you think about finishing this song?”

We should have been more careful.  The more names that are made, the more you are likely to fall in love.  Everybody knows that.

One of my favorite pop culture icons wrote in her new book that the nicknames we attribute to the ones we love are signifiers of our deep affection– with our pets being the most loved.  I roll around this idea with my 88 pound pooch, Butter.  My Muttly Crew.  Peanut Butter.  Butterdog.  Buttrocious.  Butterloni.  Butthead.  Butteropolis.  Butt-Butt.  Sleepy Dog America.  Buttey.  Crazy Dog Marie.  Buttey-Pajamas.  Cutie Banana Star.  Buttons.  Snifflesnort.  Monster.  Old Face.  Icky Ticky Ticky Tacky Ickle Doggy.

This doesn’t even tap into the twenties of little ditties and songs written just to taunt and love her.

I’m pretty sure my icon was right.

When my Someone was becoming my Someone and we were fighting the way that two people fight when they are finding out that they are each other’s Someone and are afraid and excited and nervous and happy, he became too flustered and slipped–

“How do I know what you even want?  You don’t even know what you want!  You don’t even know who you are– all you have is your name, and you can’t even decide on that!”

We were quiet.  We both felt the sting of a hundred moments being picked up and examined and thrown in a basket of What-Isn’t-Fun-Anymore.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Baby–” he started.

“That’s not my name,” I said.  “My name is Mallory.  I know that now.”

My Someone and I often try to find the moment we fell in love, but there are too many.  This moment, though, may have been the one where we realized we had already fallen too far.  If we hadn’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much to take back all my names.

Toehead.  Begonia.  Matilda-Marie.  Motormouth.  Malillery.  These are the names I would respond to when my dad called them.  I liked them all.  Because when you are collecting names, you are collecting love.  And I was being loved.  And now, I am greedy for love.  So I keep on asking for names.

He called me from the other room.

“Nope,” I said.

He poked his head around the corner.

“Okay,” he said, “Oatmeal Pickens?”

“Nope.”

“Macaroni?” he tried.

“Nope.”

“Stink-Donkey Koogle?”

“No.  Rolodex Diggadoo!” I said.

This got a laugh.  This always gets him to laugh.  We’ve recovered each name we lost, and are making more.

“Okay, Rolodex Diggadoo,” he said, “do you want to take this little Mush-Button for a walk?”

“Yeah, yeah!” I tell him, “Sure thing, Scott-Scott-Tater-Tot.”