I left them their natural way, toes turned in.
When he kissed me on the forehead I held very still.
It was nothing, I decided later in the craft room, sleep nowhere to be found. But for a reason I wasn’t sure of, this nothing seemed like something to keep to myself, so I did.
Sunday morning rushed me like a pack of wild-eating dogs, and Grandma Cherry tried to do me a kindness. She brought out one of my mother’s pageant dresses, laid it across the bed, and patted it like a prize.
It was an off-the-shoulder tangerine organza gown with sheer sleeves, points that looped onto the middle fingers, tight through the bodice and poufed at the hips. It was the dress my mother had worn when she’d won the Miss Peaches Supreme pageant when she was just a few years older than me. She had qualified to Miss California but by then was craving cinnamon rolls and pork rinds, performing, against her hopes and dreams, the ordinary burden of pregnancy.
“It’s perfect for your first day back,” Cherry said. “A real showstopper.”
I didn’t want to stand out today. I wanted to blend into the walls, to reappear so slowly no one would remember I had ever gone. But I saw she was sincere and I felt seriously if I didn’t wear the dress I would pay for all eternity. More fly duty. More coddling her and feeding her bologna sandwiches while she crooned melancholy. The dress hit midcalf, a strange length for such a gown, like my mother had caught a wild hare and chopped off the bottom to run through the crops. Maybe she did, I thought. But she had never told me such fabulous stories.
IN THE CHURCH parking lot Cherry looked into the sun. “Land burning right up on account of your mother.”
But I stopped hearing her, because there it was: my mother’s car, sitting where she’d left it.
The tires had been slashed and the body of the Rabbit laid down dead in the dirt. Red and black crosses had been painted on the hood, the windows were smashed in, and I wanted to reach through the shards to grab at her hairbrush on the seat. I remembered the way she used to drive through town in the months before she left, a plastic cup full of iced beer that she liked to pretend was soda between her knees, how she’d bring the coldness to her forehead and say she would die of the heat and at that time I didn’t think a person could die from heat but now I was beginning to think different.
The Bible study girls rushed over, putting their fingertips lightly upon my arms like I could be anything, a girl, a mirage. I saw Denay glancing behind us to see everyone watching. Her smile shone brighter with an audience. “You’re back from the shadow of your whore mother’s sin!”
Taffy tilted her head up weakly at me, like we’d never met before. I wanted to reach out and shake her, but they guided me from the car and toward Vern. When he saw me he hugged himself.
“Welcome back, dear one,” he said. “We’ve been preparing for your return.”
My heart filled my throat. Daughter to father, my body pulled itself close to him and I pressed my head to his chest. I felt there must be endless truth and wisdom with which he could cover me. He would say something about my mother that would bring it all into clearness. Part of me wondered if my mother would be brought back into the light by me simply standing in our kingdom, returning to me with the same dark magic that had made her disappear. But my mind flashed then to the sin I had steeped myself in since she’d been gone, and shame vibrated within me. Of course I’d need to convince Vern of my worth again, all the tawdry books I’d been reading, all my spooling doubt. “Bless me,” I said.
He put a hand on my head and breathed in. “Faith wavering, full of sinful wondering.”
I felt his body shift away from me. His head craned to the side and his gaze fell to the next member. I stood still. “Can you bless her return?” I asked.
“She was banished,” he said through a locked smile, waving to the Body. The crowd pushed me and our connection was broken.
“Sorry for your loss,” said one of the choir women. She wore a large wooden cross around her neck, her eyes bugged out and her smile was sloped from a stroke she’d had a few years before. She came in close to my ear. “My own mother died when I was a girl. I was never the same.”
“My mother’s not dead.”
“My mother never found Vern,” she went on. “I can feel her soul burning in here.” She placed a hand on her chest. “It’s not heartburn, either. It’s my mother’s soul.”
“Mother’s soul my foot,” Cherry said, rolling her eyes as she led me on and into our same pew where we always sat, now without my mother.
Vern walked past us toward the stage. He seemed smaller somehow and his hands were nervous, pulling at his blue cape. His curls were stale, frizz flying from them as if he’d just woken up. I closed my eyes and opened them again, wondering if I was seeing things.
“Church,” Vern said. A smile broke over his face. His hands went up to summon the Lord and a burst of gold God glitter rained down upon us. “I had a vision last night. God told me it was finally time to tell you the next unfolding of our plan to save Peaches from destitution. See, I knew I couldn’t do it alone. I knew I would need each of you to remain steadfast in your assignments. And I knew, like any great leader, that I would need a solid group of young men to be a power force among us. A new brethren to pull us through this trying time.”
Lyle emerged from the back of the church and down the center aisle holding a foot-long bejeweled wooden cross out in front of him. The rest of the boy’s club followed in their robes of shiny red. Under the robes I knew most wore dungarees or coveralls, white holey shirts with high-hitched jeans, but the robes covered all that and made them into other men. They moved in unison like a marching band, forming a tight line on the stage, matching pinned lips. Their presence all together like that was unnerving.
Vern put his hands on Lyle’s shoulders and more glitter floated down from the ceiling. Cherry stuck her tongue out to catch some. I looked into the rafters and thought for a moment I caught a glimpse of Trinity Prism, Vern’s teenage daughter, with her hand thrust out. But it couldn’t be.
“These young men are humble servants,” Vern said. “Obedient and watchful, keeping their sisters and fellow men on God’s track. They will bring GOTS into a new age with new rules and new ways. Are you all ready?”
New sounded wonderful. New sounded different. And different was what any of us wanted. We wanted to be the Raisin Capital of the World like we were before, but now we wanted even more. I remembered the Sun-Maid men inspecting Grampa Jackie’s vines, shaking his hand and signing money promises to paper. I’m sure he was rich, but farmer rich is different. He and Cherry still reused paper towels, spread their jam finely. Now we wanted life to be as gold as God glitter.
It seemed there would be no mention of my mother during the sermon, or me, and I relaxed a bit. I let my eyes blur over the cherub in the stained glass, wondered where my mother was at this moment. She was in new places with people I had never met. I liked to imagine she had begged the Turquoise Cowboy to wait for me, but they were too reckless. My mother could be that way but usually she would remember I existed at some point. Maybe as they’d driven away she imagined she was taking a vacation.
I started to think of all the exotic places she might be, the things she was wearing, but
