Nothing: Something to Believe In by Nica Lalli

From the Publisher

We sat in a little circle, Mom on the brown leather chair, Dad on the matching ottoman; I was on the carpet.
" So," I said. "What are we?
Both of my parents had looks of utter confusion on their faces. I had really stumped them. After a pause, my dad asked for clarification . . . .
" . . . it's like this-all my friends are something. Vanessa is a Unitarian, Michelle is Catholic, Lucy is Presbyterian . . . so I just want to know-what am I?
I smiled at them to make them feel better. But I was getting pretty nervous, too.
"We're nothing." My father was looking right at me; he had a pleasant, friendly kind of an expression. "Nothing," he said again.
"That's right," said my mother. She seemed relieved that Dad had just said it. "Nothing at all. . . . We like being nothing."

What is it like to grow up in a house with no religion? What kind of experiences does someone have when one is not a believer and yet comes into constant contact with religion? How can a person find out what they are when they focus primarily on what they are not?
These are the questions raised in the memoir Nothing. With humor, wit, and poignant insight, Nica Lalli recounts her mishaps and misadventures with religion from early childhood into her adult years. As a questioning child, unsure of her idea of God, then a teenager feeling like an outsider, and finally an adult mother confronted by her husband's born-again Christian family and questions from her own children, Nica vividly describes her struggle to find out what kind of "something" she really is. In the end, the author finds that "nothing" is a philosophy to be embraced rather than feared.
Nothing is an appealing,sensitively written story that offers hope, humor, and reason to millions of similar Americans who feel alienated in an ever more religiously polarized nation.

Pat BangsCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - School Library Journal

Adult/High School
In this appealing memoir, an art educator in New York City chronicles her journey of acceptance as she came of age in a family that refused to embrace organized religious belief. When the author was seven, she decided she would like to join a Catholic friend in making her first communion. "I wanted the white dress," Lalli admits. When she asked her parents, "What are we?" she was surprised at the answer. Her once-Catholic father responded, "We are nothing." Her mother said, "My family is Jewish, but we don't practice Judaism." Thus began the girl's quest to define her secular beliefs in a society where religion often separates rather than unites people. She tried to come to terms with the friendliness of door-to-door proselytizers. She resisted efforts to convert to Christianity at a ski weekend sponsored by a church. As a teen, she tried to come to terms with the meaning of death. Her hardest task was to gain acceptance from the sister of the boyfriend she later married. When she gained the strength to believe in the correctness of her secular views, the judgments of believers no longer bothered her. The memoir ends as the author, now the mother of two, must answer the same questions she posed to her parents as a child. Whatever readers' beliefs, they will find this search for acceptance enlightening.

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

nothing

Prometheus Books

Chapter One

it's a sunny day in first grade. The sunshine falls through the enormous windows onto the desks and the floor, casting a grid across the room. My desk is near the wall opposite the window. There is a chalkboard next to me. I lean my head against it and feel the coolness of the slate. I think, "Cathy went home sick yesterday. She raised her hand and told Mrs. Clark she had a stomachache and she was sent home. Just like that. Her mom came and got her and she was home. It was so easy."

My classroom is a nice, cozy place. There is a reading area and a play area and we have desks in little rows and there are letter flash cards all around the top of the chalkboards. Each card shows the sound a letter makes or a picture of a thing that makes the sound the letter makes. "C" is a nutcracker cracking a walnut: ck, ck. "W" is a child blowing a dandelion puff: whoosh, whoosh. "S" is a flat tire: ssss, ssss. I love my teacher Mrs. Clark. She is pretty and nice and never yells. She tells us stories and brings us treats or special things to look at. But what I really want, on this particular day, is to see if I can get home as easily as Cathy did yesterday.

Maybe I am tired. Maybe there is aspelling test. Maybe I am going to have to read aloud because it is my turn and I don't want to stumble over the words in front of the whole class. I think about getting caught lying to Mrs. Clark. Would I get in trouble? Would she not like me anymore? But if I say it is a tummy ache, I know there's no way she could tell what is going on in my stomach, so she will never know I am lying. I decide to raise my hand and open my mouth to say, "I feel sick."

Before I know it, I am being escorted by Mary Beth to the office. Mary Beth is another student in first grade. I can't look at her because I fear she will know I am lying. So I look at the floor and hold my tummy. The principal calls my mother, and she comes to get me. "This is too easy," I think to myself as I slide in the backseat of the old green car. My little sister, Gina, is at daycare for the afternoon, so it will just be me and Mom for a few hours. I must be dreaming; this is too good to be true.

We get home and I get sympathy. I get to sit in the rocking chair in the kitchen with pillows all around me and blankets on top of me. Mom makes me tea with lots of sugar, which I drink one teaspoon at a time. Dad hates it when we drink with a spoon, but we love it. Even milk tastes better if you use a teaspoon to drink it, and it is best if you slurp the liquid off the spoon, and then sigh after you lick the spoon and put it back in the cup. So there I am, pampered, happy, and alone with my mom and the new dog.

We got a dog over the summer. He is a Standard Poodle and he is apricot-colored. He is really a kind of sandy color, but we call it apricot. He is still a puppy and he chews things and we have to keep him in the kitchen. His name is Laffy. His real name is Lafcadio, and I don't know where my parents got that crazy name, but I do love that puppy. Dad built a door to keep him in the kitchen. It is actually a half door, a Dutch door. He said it is the kind of door they have in Holland, and I know Holland is where they have wooden shoes and windmills. I have a book about a little girl from Holland named Katrina. I love that girl and those wooden shoes. So I love the Dutch door.

The dog is at my feet and the tea is warm on my lap. Mom is busy elsewhere in the house and I am happy. The fact that I lied my way into this bliss is only a little nagging tug at one side of me. I shake my head to scatter the tug away. Anyway, I have to go to the bathroom. So I throw the blankets off and put my tea down. I have to be careful with the door so the dog does not get out. He chewed one of Mom's best shoes the other day and is still in exile. When I try to come back into the kitchen, Laffy is right there on the other side of the door. So I slam it as I reenter, to make sure he doesn't get out. I slam it hard and I yelp with pain. My finger is caught in the door. I pull my hand away and tears leap into my eyes.

"Are you okay?!" Mom yells from downstairs. "What was that noise? Stay in the chair."

I manage to answer, "I'm fine. I had to pee."

I sit back in the rocking chair, holding my finger, shaking from the pain. I cover myself back up with one hand, unable to use the hand with the smashed finger. I settle back into the chair and catch my breath. It really hurts. I look at the finger. Right under the nail is a big purple mark. It is about the size and shape of the fingernail, but it is dark-colored and puffy.

I am frozen with fear. This is my punishment for lying. I stare at the finger and start to panic. If anyone sees this, it will be a sure sign that I have lied. Everyone will know that I am bad, that I lied and God punished me.

At that moment, the fact that it was God punishing me rushed into my head without much logic. My parents never said, "God will get you for that" or "God is watching" or anything at all about God. They may have said, "Santa is watching, Santa wants you to be good," but never God. Maybe some of my friends had informed me that there was an omnipresent power ruling the earth. Maybe my friends had warned me to be good ... or else. And there I was sitting in the kitchen with real proof that I had not been good, with a real wound as retribution.

I get up again from the chair and go to the drawer with the knives. If I can pop this blister, I can get rid of the evidence and no one would know anything had happened. I stand at the counter with a big knife in my hand. I put my hurt hand on the counter, fingers spread out so I can pop the blood blister. As I raise the knife to strike at the finger, I hear my mother on the stairs. I put the knife in the drawer and jump back in the rocking chair. As soon as she enters the room, she knows something is up. It is the incredible sixth sense of a mother to always know that there is a problem in the room.

I try to hide my hand; I do not want to reveal the mark of God to my mother. But eventually she wears me down and I tell all. I show her the blister and I tearfully tell her about Cathy going home sick and how easy it had been to get sent home and how I was sorry and how I would never lie again. She must have been angry, and yet I don't recall getting punished or yelled at. Maybe she sensed that my fear of God was enough. Even though she did not encourage my belief of the great deity, she might not have totally dispelled the notion either.

We folded the blankets and put the pillows away; there was no more rocking chair for me that day. We went to pick up my sister and nothing more was said of the day's events. The blood blister did go away ... slowly. And after that I was terrified of being sent home sick. The next year I had a high fever and could barely keep my head off my desk. But I would not be sent home. I waited until lunchtime, and when I walked in the door, I was put to bed and stayed there for a week, feverish and delirious. No blood blisters that time, but the fear of the possibility of God was firmly planted.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from nothing by nica lalli Copyright © 2007 by Nica Lalli. Excerpted by permission.
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