I got out of the hearse and stood on the porch. Looked out into the black land. Anything could be out there, I thought. I imagined my mother walking toward me from the darkness. I might hear her before I saw her, a cracking branch. Then she would be before me bathed in the glow of the moon. She would look angelic, not real. I would ask her if she had found God where she’d been. If she could take me with her. But then I heard Vern in my mind: The only way to God is through me. He had said it time and time again. But something about it didn’t feel right anymore. I knew he’d told my mother those same words. Presumably they had meant something different for her. How even before assignments had come about, she’d already had one. To please Vern in an unholy way. Either doing it and feeling shame, or fighting it and becoming exhausted. It was spiritual warfare, what he had done to her, holding her afterlife over her head like a bribe. I felt for her, if what the Cowboy had said on the phone was true.
Chapter 16
The next morning, a knock at the door. Cherry yelled from her bedroom for me to get it. I raced toward it like a loyal dog hoping for its owner to come home. But it wasn’t my mother, it was Derndra and Trinity Prism. “Cherry,” I called. “Come here.” Cherry groaned and shuffled out of her room but sprang to life when she saw the pastor’s wife and daughter, ushered them inside with bravado as if we could not be prouder of all that was contained in the house. The flies buzzed in a pack around Cherry’s head and refused to go out the open door. They were happy here.
I could tell Derndra had paid special attention to her bangs that morning. They sat high on her forehead in a hard layered stack. Trinity’s were the same. I sat on a kitchen chair in a top and underwear, started eating lima beans from a rusted can. The mice were scattered about the living room in action poses from the night before. Derndra held out a large gold envelope. “This is for Lacey May. We think it’s best she come, even though she’s claimed a husband.”
“Of course,” Cherry said. She tried to smooth her long hair back, and one of her boobs popped out from her loose robe. Trinity Prism’s face went red. Our eyes met. I wanted her to smile, to let on she was a girl too, a girl like me, prone to laugh at the presence of an unexpected tit. But she didn’t.
Cherry took the invitation and she kissed it. “All married and a woman but still a member of her church.” She started to hum. She looked around the room waiting for us all to join. “This is the day that Vern has made!” she sang out.
We will rejoice and be glad in it, I thought, but I let the silence hang. Eventually Derndra said, “All right.” And they turned to leave.
“Blessed are the meek, ain’t that the saying?” Cherry said when they were gone, tearing open the envelope. She seemed giddy over the sparkly invitation like I’d been asked on some fine date, like I was in the best of fortunes. I kept thinking of the hearse, what it would feel like to leave this place.
I got up to read over her shoulder: GOTS meeting concerning YOU and the other selected soldiers of God’s army: you’re invited to an informational gathering regarding your special assignments. Please come alone and in faith. 5 p.m., TONIGHT.
“No sense in me going,” I said, but Cherry shook her head.
“At least find out what he has to say. This Stringy, I’m starting to think you got a dud here. Sits around all the day like a born loser. I need me my alone time.”
“Tell him to go paint lawns,” I said. “Give him work to do.”
“Maybe you’ll come around, Lacey. Maybe you’ll hear the good pastor and decide another way. You never know.”
AT THE PAC, I searched for pregnancy magazines. Instead the tiny green Bibles we gave out to infidels filled the space where the magazines used to be. There were hundreds lined up and the sight of them together in this way sent a terror through me, the same books that used to incite such calm.