sent from heaven to tell me to change my life. So I got out of that SUV and I followed a light I saw off in the distance. I crossed Highway 37 and went through a patch of trees, even lost a shoe walkin’ across a muddy field. But I kept goin’ until I found this here tent. Now I’m here and ready to give up my sinful ways like that angel’s voice told me to. If that ain’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.”
The crowd erupted in praise of the stripper’s miracle. People shouted, “Amen!” and the choir started to sing out twice as loud as they had before.
Encouraged by the response of her audience, the stripper went on with her testimony. “The second I walked into this tent, somethin’ changed inside my heart. All of a sudden, I started to think about all the fine things God had done for me. I started to think maybe He seen me safely through all the dangerous, sinful things I did for a reason.
“And believe me, there’s a lot of scary stuff out there. Hell, you go out for one night’s work and you could end up with the herpes, the AIDS, the syphilis, the Chinese chicken flu, or the Ebola virus.” She poked long, crimson nails into the air as she used her fingers to count off the diseases.
Reverend Peterson made another attempt to snatch the microphone away from the young woman, but again she was quicker. Like the performer she was, she gave her audience more of what they wanted. She said, “And I tell you, the way some of these men are, they don’t care about protectin’ themselves, you, or their wives and families. They only care about their own pleasure. They wanna act like it’s thirty years ago, before shit got so serious. I’m tellin’ you, you gotta be a safety-first kinda gal if you wanna live long. You know what I do when some asshole tries to talk me into doin’ something stupid? I look him dead in the eye and say, ‘Honey, you think we’re gonna fuck ourselves right back to 1978? This is some magical pussy all right, but it ain’t no damn time machine.’ ”
On that note, several people moved in to restrain her, allowing Reverend Peterson, at last, to retrieve his microphone. The stripper was promptly helped off the stage by one of the church nurses and two representatives of the New Members Committee. As she was led past Clarice, Richmond, and their friends, the woman stopped for a second, turned toward Richmond, and said, “Hey, Richmond, you getting’ saved, too, baby?” before stumbling away with her keepers.
Everyone near the front of the tent, except for Richmond, who had buried his face in his hands, turned to stare at Clarice to see how she would react to the newly saved stripper greeting her husband like an old friend. But Clarice had something else on her mind. She was thinking about the miraculous voice that had summoned the stripper from the back of the Chevy behind the Pink Slipper Gentlemen’s Club with the all-too-familiar words, “You are a child of God. Stop what you’re doing.” Clarice wondered how long her mother and her bullhorn had been back in town.
Chapter 29
The morning after Richmond’s stripper friend signed up to have her soul saved, Clarice heard a knock at her door. It was just before nine o’clock in the morning, so she assumed that it was her first student of the day arriving early for her lesson. From the piano bench where she was having her tea, Clarice called out, “Come in.” Beatrice Jordan and Richmond marched into the living room.
Beatrice pointed at her daughter’s chopped-off hair and grimaced. For several seconds, she stood in the center of the room regarding Clarice as if she’d just discovered her dancing naked in a crack house. Richmond wore a smug expression on his face as his mother-in-law said, “Clarice, would you care to explain yourself?”
In the past, this was the point at which Clarice would revert to behaving like an obedient little girl. She would make nice and apologize to her mother for whatever she had done, just to get Beatrice off her back. But living alone in her own house, even for such a short amount of time, had changed her. Clarice found that she couldn’t react like her old self. She said, “I’ve already explained things to Richmond. And I believe that’s all the