“The mixing bowl!” She threw her hands up. “Not right if you ask me. If I’m going to be punished I like it served hot.”
“You think Vern’s like your daddy?” I asked.
“I didn’t before, but lately. I don’t know. I can’t say who anyone is.”
“You don’t like his plan for the babies, do you? Not really. You know it’s wrong.”
She twitched, looked up at God, who was always watching. “Go call for Goldie, will you? I forgot today.”
“I don’t know why you still call for that cat. You know she’s dead, don’t you?”
“Mouth of trash! Go call for that pussycat.” Cherry waved the bull penis cane over her head, threatening me, then withdrawing it as if I wasn’t worth the cane treatment. She looked at it with love. “Made from real bull organs. If Grampa had been alive to see it he would have been impressed.”
“If Grampa was alive you wouldn’t need a cane,” I said. “Wouldn’t need to call for Goldie either. Grampa was alive you would have never joined up with the church in the first place.”
“Devil speaking through you, girl.”
I leaned out the door and called, “Goldie, Goldie, Goldie.” I waited a few seconds. “Here she comes, Cherry!”
Cherry bolted up from her seat, dropping the cane. She ran just fine across the room, crowded the door frame, and stared into the blankness of the front yard. Wiley Stam’s lifted truck passed by slowly like a patrol. “I don’t see nothing,” she said. She shielded her eyes from the sun. “Goldie? Goldie?”
She turned to me. “You’re right and sure?” she said, but I was smiling in my anger.
“Oh, tricking an old woman like this. For shame, Lacey May. Get an old Cherry her cane.”
“You only joined the church because you were scared,” I said. “Now look what you’ve done to my mother. To me. If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
I threw the bull penis cane at her feet.
“Next time you’re feeling low,” she said, “I’ll make sure to tell you I see your mama coming up the drive. I’ll remind you how you laid there and let that Lyle do just what he did to you, how you never said no. I ain’t stupid. I have eyes. You believed then, Lacey May. What happened?”
How could I explain to her that I thought I was following Vern’s vision. I didn’t know about the babies. Now everything was different.
Cherry twisted her lips in a sly half smile. Smug. Knowing. It was the face she got when she was freshly baptized. When someone in the congregation cited the wrong verse, and she could pipe up with the right answer, waving her hand, a proud schoolgirl. “He’ll pull you back or cast you out, Lacey May. If you think you can ride the line between believing and not, you’ve got it wrong. One side’s gonna getcha whether you like it or not.”
I wanted to slap her for many reasons, but mainly because I knew she was right.
Chapter 19
“It’s a hot-steam Friday night, babe,” Stringy said to me, drenching himself in an awful cologne in the bathroom. “You coming out with me or what? And no drinking this time, you little lush.”
“I drank one time,” I said. My stomach rolled, remembering the rum from Tent City. Shame coiled in me. I’m sorry, baby.
“And look how you ended up.” He pointed to my belly. He thought that was the night I got pregnant. Poor boy, math wasn’t his strong suit.
I got dressed up to go, mother’s linen, almost too tight on me now. We got in his truck, some punk band playing way turned up. “They’re doing a news segment on me soon,” he said. “They want to see how the magic of my lawns happens. I’m about to get famous. You’ll have to stay out of the spotlight, of course.” He grabbed my chin. He was full of something. “You listening to me?”
I pushed his hand off. “No one cares about your lawns.”
As we neared the turnoff, he pulled over. He pointed to the front of his pants. “What’s a wife for anyhow?”
“I don’t see the point in doing that,” I said to him.
“You haven’t ever done it, have you?”
“Only ever been with you.”
“Here, I’ll do you first,” he said. He unbuckled my seat belt and pulled my legs toward him with a rough strength, an energy drink can full of spit and chew jabbing my lower back