Music From Another World - Robin Talley Page 0,126
“Young lady, don’t you dare speak His holy name,” Aunt Mandy hissed. “You’re talking about things you don’t understand—”
I cut her off.
“Your gay niece understands love a lot better than you ever have.” I raised my voice for the whole group to hear as the reporter scribbled on his pad. The camera clicked, then clicked again. “You’re nothing but a bully. You want to talk about sacrifice? How about all the people here who’ve been cast out by their families because of who they are? You think you’re the one who’s given something up?”
Aunt Mandy stared at me. For once, she seemed to be at a loss for words.
In the stunned silence, Alex tapped Tammy on the shoulder. She was carefully balancing a very large object in her arms. “Hey, I brought—Do you want…?”
Alex was holding a collage. An enormous one, at least three feet across. The background was a massive black-and-white photo, a shadowy image of neat cursive handwriting on thin black lines.
It was the check register, blown up twenty times its actual size. In the foreground, set against the photo, was a drawing of a woman with perfectly coiffed hair and immaculately straight red lipstick. Her head was tipped back with laughter, and she held a pitchfork in her hand. The drawing was outlined in thin, precise lines, leaving her image transparent, so the handwriting behind her came through.
The drawing was of Mrs. Amanda Dale. That would’ve been obvious even if she weren’t standing right next to it, but now the whole crowd was looking back and forth between the collage and Aunt Mandy, making the connection.
The line at the top of the blown-up check register read New Way Protect Our Children Fund, and below it were handwritten entries showing payment after payment. Posh Hair Lounge and Ocean Valley Golf Club were right at the top. Half a dozen lines down were five payments to K-ROY Los Angeles.
Cut-out words were pasted across the image, too, the same way Tammy had used them in the collage on my bedroom wall. Another poem, sort of. I picked out SINNER and LIAR and GREED, but the one that appeared most was HYPOCRITE. It popped up in at least three different places. Running sideways up a pitchfork tine was another set of pasted-on words: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
“Thanks, Alex.” Tammy took the collage from her and smiled at me. “And thank you, too.”
Then she turned around and lifted the collage, waving to the pro-Prop 6 protesters hovering on their end of the school lawn.
“Hey!” Tammy shouted. “If you ever donated to the New Way Protect Our Children Fund, come see what your pastor and his wife have been doing with your money!”
For a second, I thought Aunt Mandy was going to snatch the collage out of Tammy’s hand, but she didn’t move. Maybe she already knew she’d lost.
Carolyn’s mom was the first to approach us. At first I thought she was coming to yell at Tammy, but instead she peered forward, studying the collage.
“Your daughter’s a very lost child…” Aunt Mandy said, but now Mr. and Mrs. Murdoch from their church were stepping forward, too.
“Could you tell me what this is all about, miss?” the reporter asked, coming up to me.
“Tammy’s the one you need to talk to,” I told him. “Here, I’ll hold this.”
Peter stepped up, too, and he and I each held one end of the collage so the church members could read it for themselves while Tammy told the reporter all about the check register, promising to send him the original copies she’d kept back in San Francisco. While they talked, Mr. Murdoch went up to Aunt Mandy and said something I couldn’t understand. It was clear he was furious.
I couldn’t believe it. Tammy might have actually won.
The reporter went over to Aunt Mandy and Mr. Murdoch, which was sure to be an interesting conversation. Tammy’s mother and her sisters went over to join them, too. The other members of their church were studying the collage as Tammy came up beside me.