lips thinned, she closed her eyes. She stayed still to receive God’s premonition, lifted a hand to catch it from the air.
“Stand in front of me, now,” she said, holding her hand up like an antenna, moving it from side to side, trying for further clarity. “In some trouble?” she asked.
I was quiet.
“Spell it out.”
“I’m full with blessing,” I said.
“So it wasn’t the cleaning making you sick,” she said. There was a long pause. “Soon as this illness passes you can get back to it.”
I’d expected a beating with the bull penis cane. For her to call me a whore, condemn me and send me to the floor to clean. Threaten to call up Vern.
“It’s the lawn painter’s,” I said.
She sank back in her chair, twirled the tail of a stilled squirrel between her fingers. Its eyes glinted in the low light of the television. “Been word that some other church girlies are full up too. Suppose it’s just a coincidence of timing?”
“I don’t want to give this baby to the church.”
“Who done it to you, really?” she said.
“Vern won’t want the baby if it’s half infidel.”
She looked up at me. I couldn’t place her emotion. She was usually angry but she seemed calm. “A grandbaby,” she said. “I did always want me one of those.” I almost reminded her that I was her grandbaby, but I let her feel her feelings.
She stared out the window and I saw her face begin the slow puff toward tears. It was dark, but even if it wasn’t, she’d still be gazing over stick brittle fields, barren. A pair of headlights shone in the distance and faded. I didn’t know what to do so I knelt before her and put my head in her lap. “He’s gonna marry me,” I said.
She groaned. “This won’t end well. Just remember your old Cherry told you that.” But I felt her hand stroke my hair. I knew there was a part of her that understood. It was the woman part.
CHERRY TOOK MY marriage plan and ran with a gusto I hadn’t expected. Made me message Stringy right away. He was at the door within the hour, eyes bugged and tired, hands vibrating and clumsy. I had texted him something about a repeat of the Pac parking lot night. I knew he’d be right there. My mother used to say, before she was saved, and then lost again, that men were easy. I could see now that she was right. But looking at him standing there, a familiarity also came over me. The way I felt now was similar to the way I’d felt toward my mother’s men, who had always seemed so below her. How she clamored to please them, how everything seemed to hinge on their approval of her. I never understood it. They seemed like bad men to me, the way they talked and spat, their dirty smells, the way they cussed with tense jaws, teeth concealing the shells of sunflower seeds at all hours. How they loved their sunflower seeds. They looked at me too long and too strange like they were piecing together the mystery of what made up a girl. How it was my job to get the Doritos from the kitchen, to bring them another beer, to wear those sapphire earrings and smile while my mother flitted around nervous and unhappy, trying to keep them there, but why? Now I saw Stringy and he was one of those men. He wasn’t so different at all and here I was, desperate for him to save me.
“Thought you could make sex with God’s precious property and not marry her?” Cherry said.
He looked at the door behind him and Cherry hit her cane against it. “Don’t even think about it.” Her bathrobe was loose and I could almost see her breasts in their totality. “’Cause from what I can see, Fresno’ll bring the law on a full-grown man lying down with a girl child.”
“Now, now,” he started. He looked at me wary, like I could reach out and sting. He held his hands up, unarmed. “Don’t get any ideas. Heard of Three Strikes and You’re Out? I already got two.”
“The proof,” Cherry said, pointing at my stomach, “is right here. So tell me again, would you like to marry my granddaughter and make this right in the eyes of God and the law?”
I stepped close to him. I held his hands and pressed them to my stomach. “We can be a family.”