my pastor, Lacey. I’ve been in here all night thinking I should call him up and tell him the real truth.”
“Which is?”
“I raised your mother. I know a thing or two. After she was grown I told myself I’d never stay up all the night waiting on no person again. And now here you are, stepping out.”
“I was with Quince. Converting her.”
Cherry lit another Sweet Dream. Ran her tongue over her teeth.
“One lie leads to the next, leads to the next.”
“Vern isn’t going to banish me,” I said. “I’ve got something he wants.”
“Let’s hope it’s something of worth. Something that will work this time.” Unlike my mother’s assignment, I knew she must have been thinking.
I thought of what the Fresno girls might say. I rolled my eyes like them. “Relax,” I said to her, tossing my hair.
Cherry got up and stood close to me. “I don’t know what all you’ve got going on in there,” she said, swatting the back of my head. “But you smell like hell rolled in going nowhere fast.”
After she left, I lay on the baby mattress unable to sleep. I imagined Vern at the window looking in. I could talk a big game, but I was terrified of him. It seemed my faith rolled in and out now like a tide. Some moments I was void of it completely and then some, like now, I was ashamed, fearful of the truths I had been told for so long. I wanted a lush green world where I could please Vern, go to heaven, have my mother, and keep my child. I wanted a different world. One that did not exist.
Chapter 14
December. The sky grainy, begging for rain. The smoke from the fires had drifted out to the ocean by now but I swore I could still smell it. The local news reported that temperatures in Peaches had reached record highs while in neighboring towns, mere miles away, there were cool downs, tule fog covers, low visibility on the highways. Kerman soil was said to be moist and Fresno itself was chilly enough for a light jacket if you were going to walk down Christmas Tree Lane in the evening, but Peaches remained a desert wasteland. This was further proof that we were being tested, punished even, for something grave. But how could it be, everyone wondered, when the town was made up of such fine believers, when we honored God certainly more than the people of the city? It was by this I knew something beyond human understanding was at work. I couldn’t feel God’s love for me now, and I couldn’t feel His destiny, but something supernatural was boxing us in this eternal summer and it was why I couldn’t let go of my faith completely, even if I wanted to, even if it would have been easier. All I had to do was feel the heat bear down, burning an endless dryness into my body. No man could accomplish something like that.
I sat on the floor in front of the television while Cherry sewed exercise clothes for the chinchillas. The news segment showed a fat Santa handing out candy canes to a mass of people. “You ever walked down Christmas Tree Lane?” I asked her.
Cherry grunted. “There’s a house there that hands out hot cocoa for free,” she said. “All those rich people with the most beautiful lights. That lane is the best thing about Fresno. Only neighborhood worth seeing, you ask me.”
“I wish I could see it.”
“Santa and elves parading around like they’re the reason for the season,” she said. “All these infidels decorating their houses like chumps over a holiday they don’t even believe in. It’s Christ’s birthday party, for God’s sake. Set out a damn cake and light some birthday candles if you need to celebrate so bad.”
“Sounds kind of fun,” I said, sucking my stomach in. It was pushing out more now, harder to hide. Earlier I’d tried on one of Cherry’s old sweaters from the back of the craft room closet and my skin rashed and itched and my sweat poured under it. I had taken it off within minutes. I dreaded when my body would betray me, when there would be no hiding what had happened in that rainless stretch of summer. I’d fixed it, though, with Stringy, and now I needed Cherry on board.
“I’ve got to tell you something,” I said to her.
She turned down the TV. “That’s the tone of a bad girly done wrong.” Her