I imagined the country folk muttering, though even in my imaginings no one dared to speak their dismay too loud, lest God hear their grievances and decide to make a bad thing worse. But by now everyone had noticed that for all of Vern’s efforts, for all of our assignment work, things were not improving. There were rumors of entire families up and leaving in the night and never coming back, driving into the city to stock up on water bottles, to swim in public pools. It seemed only the most dedicated were following now, mostly staying inside homes praying, but some were struck crazy by the heat, on diets of nothing but canned trash and warm soda. Some could be seen wailing in their front yards, heads shaved and nearly naked, digging at dirt for hidden water. Pacing the one strip of shops, peering in their windows, remembering maybe the ice-cold water that came complimentary with your meal at the Grape Tray. Remembering, maybe, my mother’s delicate and straining wrist as she refilled their glasses, how they smiled up at her, how we were happy and together in our raisin-made town. For that was when religion was a ribbon atop a fine existence. When religion made the hard things easier to swallow, when it soothed like a meditation. When it colored death from dark to glory, when every good thing, even a good parking spot, was from Him. I remembered my mother swinging into the lot at the Pac, getting a front-row space, how she’d hold her hand up to cup the grace. Thanks, God! she’d say, like God was a good-natured and clever buddy, focused on reserving parking spaces for the faithful.
Yes, religion felt different now, ravaging even, and not only to me. There was something true at stake. A lot of us seemed to know that now.
BY FEBRUARY THE girls of blood had reached another level of stewardship to the cause, bellies pushing proud out on the street. They claimed in public cry to have been touched by the spirit in the night in a blast of white light. The stories shape-shifted until they became the same story. I kept my mouth shut. I watched them from a distance, always wondering if life would be easier if I just joined in.
Taffy didn’t seem to change, but her belly did. Sometimes it was lumpy and low, sometimes it stuck straight out. She waddled like a duck with her arms resting on the bump, proud as pie. Denay led the pack, little women soldiers with the same haircuts, the same matching maternity tent dresses. They put their bellies together and laughed like it was great fun. I watched them with a touch of envy.
For I didn’t feel blessed in any way. In fact, I’d never felt worse in my life. The mamas in the magazines seemed to revel in the expanse of their bodies, but no one could articulate for me the particular nausea I carried everywhere I went, the fall-down exhaustion that overtook me upon waking each morning and lasted until I could collapse into bed at night, and why was I out of breath all the time as if I’d just run a mile when all I had done was stand up? My tits hurt my back hurt my feet hurt. I hated all of it. My old self had begun to feel like an oasis, the flat empty stomach, the ease of movement. Would I ever return? And besides all that, I smelled like a barnyard no matter how I tried to wash myself with Daisy’s bottled water.
Had I made a mistake? I asked myself every other thought. Now when someone from the Body saw a girl of blood coming down the sidewalk, her belly leading the way, praise was thrown at her. Glory be! Glory be to the good church girls!
Not for me, though. For my devotion was up for debate. I received stares now, shakes of the head. Whispers. Was I a chosen girl, or was I just a girl?
It was of no merit to be just a girl.
I BRACED AGAINST it all. I walked in silence, head down. I’d taken to wearing a long blond wig of Daisy’s everywhere but at church, a black tunic she’d thrown at me one day because she couldn’t stand to look at my belly bursting from the one-piece that Aunt Pearl bought me. I shaded my eyes in her silver cat-eye sunglasses. Aunt Pearl seemed always in