her. It gave me wild thoughts. Leaving, starting over. Being a person in the world again not needed so deeply. I suspect most mothers have those moments, those thoughts. But they go away. You catch your breath.”
“My mother’s didn’t go away.”
“No, I suppose not.”
I wanted to ask her then. Take me to her now. Take me in your car, let’s blow off this life and head down the highway. I imagined picking my mother up in Florin’s fast car, all of us together, women untethered on the road. Men? What men? We didn’t need them. We’d forget them all. We’d never see another man as long as we lived and it would be good.
But I didn’t ask her. I had begun to feel self-conscious around her when it came to my mother, for I saw how greatly she wanted me to not want her, for me to charge forward into my own strength, somehow above it all.
And a new desire had grown in me: I wanted Daisy to love me the same way she loved Florin. Maybe more.
ON CHRISTMAS SUNDAY there was no tree in the church, no lights. No paper bag and candle luminaries lighting the walkway for fear of fire through the grasslands. We were instructed to wear black, a time of mourning for our town, a time of faithfulness.
Stringy eyed my belly in a strange way and spent more time on his phone. “You know,” he said from the couch, “in jail you watch a lot of TV.”
“Cool,” I said, opening a can of beans. I drank the cloudy juice then pressed the soft pintos against the roof of my mouth, the flavor of nothing.
“I remember one story of this guy baptizing people and all kinds of shit. This little church in middle-of-nowhere New Mexico. Whole thing blew up when someone in the church accused him of having like twenty wives, not taking any of them to the hospital when they were sick. All kinds of weird mind tricks and brainwashing. All them women wore dresses of blue sequins and held hands everywhere they went. Total freaks.”
I put the can down. “And?”
“You really think this guy’s gonna pull rain from that sky out there?” He pointed to the window and the cloudless and blue-brown sky, the crows swarming against the thick smog backdrop, the sun a strange orange orb.
“He did it once,” I said. Because he did. I still could not deny the divinity of that timing, and neither could the rest of the Body. I still could not get that muscat juice out of my mouth.
“He’s a fraud. I’m no educated man but it’s plain to see you’ve all been struck blind.”
“That doesn’t sound anything like our Vern,” Cherry said, emerging from the shadowy hallway. “Lacey here can tell you about her and her mama’s life before that man brought us into savings.”
I hadn’t said much to Stringy about the beforelife. The nights spent alone, when I’d wake up in a terror and my mother wasn’t next to me. I wouldn’t be able to sleep on the couch, longing for our bed. I’d eat jelly beans and watch horse races on the television. How I’d so wanted to be one of those little men on the horses. I want to be a jockey someday, I told Sapphire Earrings once, my mother passed out in the room. You’re too big, he said, mouthful of seeds and chew, spitting into a red plastic cup, little bits of shell in his horrible mustache. But sometimes if I was truly alone, I would jump up and down and scream loud as I could. I wanted the world to know she wasn’t there and for someone to change it. In true desperation I’d call Cherry and beg for her to come get me. I’d picture my mother dead somewhere, or just dead in the mind, forgetting me completely. It was true Vern had saved me from all that. It was too hard to explain to Stringy. I had no bruises on my body to show my motherloss, and so to anyone else, did it exist?
“Yeah,” Stringy said. “Seems like your mom’s doing real good these days. All thanks to that pastor, huh? I’d ask for my money back if I were you.”
STRINGY REFUSED TO come to church that day, claiming he was busy with lawn painting. Day to day I didn’t notice very many neon lawns, though, and I wondered vaguely what he did with his time if not that. I