Up there in front of the whole ragtag congregation filled mostly with poor whites, mixed-bloods—nearly half of whom were Uncle Thorpe’s kids—and a few full-bloods like her granny, Uncle Thorpe spoke to her: “The pleasures of this world may seem great. They are supposed to, for if we are not tested, like Jesus in the wilderness,” he shouted, raising his voice until it cracked, “how can we find our salvation?” Tears fell down his face. “Justine, God’s talking to my heart. You could die on that roller coaster.”
Not just a roller coaster, she thought. Big Bend.
The Saints began to whisper to God to intercede in her sinful plans. Uncle Thorpe took a long time wiping his eyes. He blew his nose and opened his arms wide, palms to the sky, and said, “Saints, we’re going to start up altar call.” From a raised platform behind the pulpit, the four-piece band lurched into “Consider the Lilies.”
“If you hear the Lord talking to you today,” Uncle Thorpe shouted over the music, “even if the voice is small, Saints”—his own voice grew quiet—“maybe it’s doubt nagging from the back of your mind. Maybe it’s sorrow or quiet longing tucked away in your heart. Maybe it’s fear for your children. Maybe it’s been too long since you’ve prayed through. Or maybe you never have.” He held his eyes on John Joseph, who never stopped digging dirt from his fingernails with his pocketknife. Then Uncle Thorpe turned his eyes back to Justine. “Come, children. Jesus is waiting. The only way to him is to bow your head and ask him into your heart. It doesn’t matter how you got here or what you’ve done. You will know a new day, children. I love you, but only God can turn this car around.”
Lula moved toward the altar first, and then other Saints streamed to the front. Some knelt before the altar in prayer, waving wadded-up handkerchiefs to the sky. Some stood, placing their hands on the shoulders or backs of the others. Their murmuring and crying pushed at Justine, but she stayed firmly planted in her seat, rubbing the scar between her left thumb and pointer finger.
After a time, three deacons started down the aisle toward her. She’d been weepy since she sat down, but she quickly wiped her eyes. Uncle Thorpe pushed himself up off the altar and started down the aisle. The band kicked into high gear, banging out the rhythm of Justine’s dormant salvation. Justine swore she could feel the little wooden church shake as Uncle Thorpe strode toward her.
“Playing you their war song,” John Joseph nearly yelled into Justine’s ear. His three brothers made up three-quarters of the band, the piano player the only woman of the bunch. The most gifted musician in the family, John Joseph refused to play in church. Instead, he sat in the back with Justine, who didn’t find his joke funny.
The Saints banged their callused hands on leatherskinned tambourines, working themselves into a hallelujah frenzy that only stopped when Uncle Thorpe set his jaw and said a prayer over a bottle of olive oil. He poured some into each deacon’s upturned hand.
In the hush, Uncle Thorpe hitched his polyester pants high enough to show the green stripe of his tube socks and knelt before Justine. She could have stared a hole through Lula, who now stood dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief in a small group of women behind the deacons.
Justine wasn’t going to bow her head. Couldn’t. Not if she wanted Six Flags. She knew that the minute she started to pray, she would lose her nerve. Who knew what she might say if she let herself go. Brother Eldon, the deacon with the bushy eyebrows angled into a permanent scowl, was already beginning to speak in tongues and squeeze her shoulder too hard.
“I pray you’ll save this young woman, Lord, who is old enough now to know you, Great God, and therefore to deny you,” Uncle Thorpe began in his down-low prayer cadence that always went straight to Justine’s insides. She hoped he’d finished, but then he shouted, “Show her your glory, Lord!” The band took off again, vamped into “I Come to the Garden Alone,” her granny’s favorite song.
Playing that song right now was a dirty trick, and they knew it. Her granny sat up front in the perpendicular pews reserved for deacons and elders. Justine could see her face, could see her arthritic brown hands curled on her knees. Granny sometimes kept her hearing aids turned down during services, and Justine wondered if they were on now. She wondered if Lula had told her about Six Flags.
“Keep Justine from this world and the sins within, Lord,” Uncle Thorpe shouted. The band picked up the pace until her granny’s slow, mournful hymn sounded more like the Stones. People were beginning to convulse and shout, as the Holy Spirit took charge of their mouths and bodies. “Help her to make choices with her body and mind, Lord, that lead her closer to you.”
Justine kept her eyes on Lula, but tears began to roll down her cheeks. She wiped her face, angry that they would think they were getting to her, ashamed of the night that had led her to this moment, maybe even more ashamed that Granny would think Justine chose an amusement park—or worse, her father—over her own mother. Her mother—who’d had to quit art school when he left, who had to stand in line for the government commodities she’d always wanted to feel above, whose artist’s fingers ballooned with blisters from the first job she’d found at a shoestring potato factory.
She thought about trying to pray. Maybe God would be there and would show her a way. The thought had hardly formed when Brother Eldon pressed her head downward, as if by putting her head in the right position he could force words into her heart and out of her mouth. Furious, she cut her eyes at John Joseph, who chomped his gum, unmoved by his father and the deacons.
Justine felt her lip quivering, but then John Joseph blew a big pink bubble and smirked—for her, she knew. He was her cousin, but she could have kissed him.
4.
When Justine heard two honks from the big horn, she looked around the empty house and felt a sorrow she couldn’t explain. She brushed off the hungry cat and climbed into a running Lincoln with whitewall tires, her father a stranger in a car full of strangers. She couldn’t think of a time she’d felt more affection for her mother.
There was a minute—the boy was asleep, and she’d thought that his mom was—when Justine caught a flash of what it had been like before her father left. She remembered how special it had been for one of the girls to be chosen to run an errand with him, to stand in middle of the seat next to him and have him put the flat of his hand against her chest as he came to a stop. In the steady hum of the wheels and road, she quit worrying about how Lula would feel when she got home from work and saw that Justine had gone through with the trip. From her place in the passenger-side back seat, she watched her dad adjusting his fingers on the steering wheel, tensing his jaw. She saw the razor burn on the back of his neck and remembered rubbing her fingers along the stubble when he held her in the rocking chair. She’d spent years pretending that dream of him away, and now here he was driving her down the interstate in a new car, a blonde wife sleeping at his side. Before she could catch the words falling from her mouth, she said, “You didn’t even call.” He didn’t understand what she’d said, so he looked back over his shoulder with raised eyebrows. Now she’d have to repeat herself. “Why didn’t you at least help us?” she said, a little louder.