all. He certainly wasn’t of Peaches.
“You know that man?” Cherry hissed into my ear.
It occurred to me then that over the past few months I had done something very bad. I had looked away from all my mother had been showing me when I’d needed to look.
The men of the Body assembled around the cowboy like a mob. Vern gripped the back of my mother’s neck and raised his hand to heaven. He was inviting the Father down and a puff of gold God glitter drifted from above and settled on our sweatslick skin.
“Church,” Vern said. “It seems that one of our own has strayed.”
My mother looked at her feet. I thought rapid silent prayers, a series of helps.
“First she tried to keep her own daughter’s first blood from me, holding up our plan for rain,” he said. “Now this, coming to church mowed down by the devil’s elixir, a man of sin clamoring behind.”
“I’ve only been doing my assignment duty,” my mother started. “Employed by the Diviners: A Lady on the Line.”
The Body gasped. My praying mind stopped dead. This was much worse than I could have imagined. I thought of that leaning red house, the force field of evil surrounding it. And my mother had actually gone in. This fact struck me down, how I’d slept next to her in the same bed and never once imagined that’s where she’d spent her day. But it all made sense. Those sinful women must have cast something wrong deep inside her, led her away from God and back to the drink, to this cowboy. Fury burned in me toward women I’d never met in my life.
“I spoke sensual wordings, but my heart was with our Papa God,” my mother said. “I was bringing men to holiness one phone call at a time and bearing witness to the working ladies.” She looked at the cowboy, her eyes open and watery, like he could be of some help.
“I should have known you were never really purified enough to stand against evil without becoming it,” Vern said.
“Whore!” screamed Shirl, an old woman who often rolled around in the front, honking and croaking in her spirit speak during worship. She spat into the aisle.
“I did everything you asked,” my mother said to Vern. She squared to him and I saw another sort of communication occur, something wrapped and hidden from the rest of us, the end of it just beginning to unfurl.
Vern smiled. “But you didn’t,” he said.
It seemed my mother had something else to say but it was stuck inside her. Vern led her off the stage but she turned, shook him off. “Wait,” she said. Her eyes locked with mine. “Try to understand. I was testifying. I let God lead me to the right scripture. They trusted me and told me their sorrows. It soothed them. I’ve converted at least nine souls, most of them local infidels. You may not want me in this church no more, but I’m not bad. I tried, and on the way I fell in love.”
Vern was stung and it was a spectacle to see him this way, thrown off, befuddled by anyone, least of all a woman. “Love,” he repeated, the word gagging him.
My mother pulled her arm from his grasp. “Lacey,” she said. “Ask Lacey. She’ll tell you I’ve been sober. I haven’t touched a drop since conversion. Tell them, my girl.” Her eyes begged.
I didn’t understand how it had come down to this. What could my voice matter in her sea of obvious transgression? Anyone in a five-foot radius could smell the booze on her breath. If I lied now I could be banished too. If I lied now I might not be useful anymore. That thought was terrifying to me then.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Lacey,” Vern said. “Tell your church family just how your mother has sinned.”
“Let’s go,” my mother said to me. “Let’s get out of here. Come on. This is over. This is all over.”
I stepped toward her but then my body stopped. I saw a flash of what I knew our life would be. I saw the Turquoise Cowboy just like all the others. I saw her skinny body passed out at odd angles across the bed, the shrunken world of her hangovers that could last all day when nothing else could go on around her, each sound too assaulting, even my quiet voice too mean. The way she would refuse me simple things, drives to school, bread from the