I scanned the pews as they filled. Everyone generally sat with family before breaking off into smaller groups. Vern liked to be sure we were all in the same place at the same time once a week. It built community, he said. I could see the women drooling at my mother’s new clothes as they walked by, jealous and hoping what she wore would find its way to the Goodwill bins sooner than later, where most everyone got everything. Nearly all the women wore worn simple dresses that came down past their knees but we were free to wear what we wanted within reason. I wasn’t sure my mother’s new clothes were within reason, but I was proud of her. She was working hard in her assignment and God was rewarding her. Having a beautiful mother was both a jewel in my crown and a curse. Beauty attracted the wrong sorts of things and people all the time. Her beauty was safe and enjoyable only as long as it was confined to the church.
Vern took to the pulpit, his eyes pulled down in woe. Sometimes he would weep openly under the weight of God’s unending love and it would cause us to weep along with him, blissed out from the cleansing sting of tears on cheek. After the weeping we would sing while Vern twirled around the church like a dervish, his glimmering robes a flame behind him.
Sometimes he read from the scroll of Fears and Reasons, things we should and shouldn’t do that week, advice brought on by his Saturday night visions. Don’t patron the Ag One, there’s a demon in the basement. Venture to Tent City and pray over the infidels in groups of five. The burger at the Grape Tray is ripe with listeria, AVOID.
But he didn’t pull out the scroll today. “I have an announcement to make,” he said. Looked at me. “Lacey May Herd, please stand.”
I felt myself rise slowly, as if lifted by an invisible string. I kept my eyes on him. Everyone turned and stared, and my legs went soft. I chewed my thumbnail like a baby, not wanting to look at my mother. I knew she was staring at me, mouth open, betrayed. I smelled her beer. It was like another person in the room.
“Lacey May was anointed with her woman’s blood,” he said. He began to clap. Everyone joined in. “She’s the last of my expected, a true blessing. This will rocket our intentions to the next level. God fulfills!”
The boys’ club, scattered around the church, stood and cheered louder than the rest. They were fourteen years and over, unmarried, the future godly men and leaders of the church. One boy let out a whoop and lassoed his arm in the air. To have a room cheer for you and only you is a strange treasure. It felt like everyone liked me more than I had ever known and I was unwrapping their affection for the first time like a gift.
A burst of gold God glitter drifted down slowly upon us from the heavens, coating our sweaty shoulders in the finest gleam. We dropped our kneelers to pray but my mother stayed still. I thought once she saw how wonderful everything was, she would join in. She would see it was good I had gone ahead and told him. But no. The second Vern said Amen she pulled me out of the church in a rush to the car, buckled my seat belt for me like she never had when I was a child. She steered the Rabbit with her knees.
“Heat makes people crazy.” She pressed the accelerator. The Rabbit choked and tried its best to be fast. “I guess that must be why you went ahead and told him. Went and did the one thing I said not to do.”
She blew a stop sign and then another.
“Didn’t you see how happy everyone was?” I said, small and low.
“I was suffocating in that church.”
“Forgive her, God in Vern.”
“They were hot in there, too,” she said.
“Don’t be mad at me.”
“I used to think I was going to be a movie star,” she said. “It’s like I’ve forgotten that part of me for years and lately it’s coming over me, banging my head like a bag of bricks. All the things I never did. But you know what? I can still do those things. I ain’t dead.”
It was like she wanted to wreck the car. We careened into the parking lot of the Wine Baron, tires squealing. “It’s hard sometimes when God doesn’t answer your prayers.”
“You mean the rain?”
She put the Rabbit in park, squinted like she was just remembering where we were. I could tell her mind was switching to a different track.
“You think it’s possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met?” she asked. She looked me in the eyes. She really wanted to know. I had wanted to talk about me for a second, my blood and what it might mean. I even liked that she was mad at me, that I had her attention. But now her voice was dreamy again, back in her otherworld.
“No,” I said sharply.
Her shoulders drooped and she let out a big tired sigh. “Hmm,” she said. “You’re probably right.” She seemed disappointed by me, by my lack of creativity, of fun.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe.” I thought of God then. I had fallen in love with Him, hadn’t I? We had certainly never met in the traditional sense. “Maybe you can.”
I knew nothing of love.
She perked up and smiled at this admission, but then her eyes attached to a man who was idling on his motorcycle next to the Rabbit. He was tall and covered in leather, a ruddy bush that curled over his top lip. He wore dark glasses. My mother got out of the Rabbit and slammed the door, cocked her hip into the mean sun. The man’s jacket said Valley Fine on it. He was just her type.
“Want some fairy dust?” he said, and she stepped up close to him like they were familiar, threw her leg over his seat, wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Just the ride.”
He revved the engine. She looked at me blankly, not a worry in the world as they rolled away.
I ran inside the Wine Baron. From the back came Bob, an Indian man with a thickness of white hair and a tunic that buttoned to his neck. He was a nice man. He must have considered us regulars by now, I realized.
“My mom’s on a motorcycle,” I said.
“Television,” he said, offering the word like a consolation prize, gesturing to the small screen mounted above the Slurpee machine that no longer housed Slurpee.
I took a palm-sized green Bible, small enough to fit in a pocket, so convenient, from my purse and set it on the counter. “You open to Vern’s work in your life, sir?” I said.
He looked at the Bible but didn’t touch it. “Mom likes beer” was all he said.
“I wish you would pretend to be out of stock when she comes.”
He slid a pack of watermelon gum across the counter. “I can give you candy and that’s all I can do. Don’t ask me for cigarettes.”
What would it be like if Bob were my father? I could spend my days working at the Wine Baron, saving all the patrons who came in for their fix. We could fill the bottles of whiskey with food coloring water and my mother could be in love and we could bring Bob to Vern and Vern would convince Bob to make her not drink anymore. I wanted to ask if he was married, but then I saw myself through his eyes and knew he would not want a daughter like me, grease-haired and begging for help in a quickie mart, a wife driving drunk through town, getting on trashy men’s motorcycles for no reason.
“You should get rid of those dirties you got back there,” I said. I pointed to the adult entertainment aisle where I’d accidentally lifted the yellow plastic cover off one of the magazines the week before and not understood, not entirely, what I’d seen. All the flesh pressed together sent a shock through me, the slick shaved skin, the faces of the women painted and hard.