I understand your hesitance. And that’s good, actually, because you won’t be telling anyone about this for a while. For now this is a secret between you and God and your pastor. Think of it as a precious flower pressed in the middle of your Bible, drying. You wouldn’t want to take it out too soon.”
A secret. He’d had a secret with my mother, too.
I caught his eye for a moment and detected something in his gaze that wasn’t quite there when I had first brought him my blood. I saw then we had all changed into something else and it felt like stepping off a ledge into open air, the moment frozen before the fall. I thought what I saw in him was passion, dedication. I wanted to see those things, of course. I wanted not to look at him then, and think he was crazed, but that word, crazed, came to me, swam up by instinct, and I pushed it down. Wait for something else, I thought. Wait for proof, as if my own body wasn’t proof enough.
The girls nodded their heads yes. I tried to meet Sharon’s eye but she stared at her hands clasped white in front of her.
“In the coming months your bodies will bloom forward and there will be a time of celebration. Be filled with gratitude, ladies. You’ve been Godshot.”
AS WE FILED out of his office, Vern tapped my shoulder to stay behind. His eyes were red. Allergies again? I wondered. Or was he exhausted, staying up all night? He seemed thinner, his veins protruding down his neck, the tops of his hands.
“Why so modest, Lacey May?” he said. He gathered papers in a stack on his desk and then spread them out again absentmindedly.
“Just being obedient.”
“I thought you wanted to be recognized for your faith.”
I didn’t recall ever saying this to him aloud. It was something he must have seen in me. Perhaps something that was obvious to everyone and I’d never realized. I kept my eyes on my feet. I didn’t want him to read me, to know I’d visited the red house. I worried I wore it like a scent. I worried if he asked me anything directly, I would not be able to lie.
“Why this way?” I said. “Why does God want us all pregnant?”
He winced when I said pregnant, like the word was lewd. He probably would have preferred blessed. He flattened his lips. “I asked myself the same thing when He first showed me,” he said. “I thought, this is too complicated. This might even be impossible. But then I kept seeing it so clearly. You follow something like that, Lacey May. Something He shows you that clear. It’s not a suggestion. It’s an order.”
“My mother wouldn’t want this for me,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Your mother.” Vern laughed. “Of course she wouldn’t. Oh, she had all kinds of ideas before her demise. All her own ideas.”
I was pulled away from him then, though we were still in that cramped office, though I could still smell the sweat of him, the coffee breath. I was with my mother, trying to imagine what her ideas had even been. Why they hadn’t included me at all.
“I don’t think they were her ideas. I think they were yours, and then they were the beers’ and then they were that man’s from the phone. I think she learned to ignore her own ideas a long time ago.”
“That can be good for a woman,” he mused. “As long as you keep your eyes right here.” He pointed to himself.
“Thank you,” I said, and the words nearly stuck in my throat. “May I go?”
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, Lyle kicked a soccer ball back and forth with Laramie. I intercepted the ball and drop-kicked it far into the field. Go fetch, I thought as Lyle motioned for Laramie to get it.
“You could have spared me,” I said when Laramie was out of earshot. Lyle jogged closer to me.
“It’s not yours, Lacey. Relax.”
“What do you mean, not mine? It’s in my body,” I said.
He leaned in so I could feel his breath on my ear. “Listen. It might not rain,” he said. “We’re all hoping it does, but a church like ours has to be prepared. Vern thinks if we ever need to leave it will be hard to keep the Body together. He wants us all united for if that day comes.”
He spoke so serenely, with so much confidence, as if he’d