stared on in utter reverence.
The Body began to mutter, prayers laced in the tongues of the gifted. Most in the church were gifted in the way of spirit speak, and though she was silent that day, usually my mother’s tongues were like a high and soft whisper, while Cherry’s were raspier and hurried, a mean staccato. I bowed my head and waited to be overtaken with a language beyond my understanding. I hummed aloud with my eyes open and nothing came. I wanted it to be over, for the time to come when someone would take the stage and read the Bible aloud while Vern rested, curled up to the side of the pulpit on what I knew to be a sleeping pad for a large dog, but in this church it was his spiritual resting dock.
The prayers died down and I opened my Bible and waited for the reading, for Vern’s final blessing, for the praise pop to come on the boom boxes so he could run up and down the aisles, cape trailing him, high-fiving us all with firm, almost painful slaps. But then came the voice of a man with a slow drawl I didn’t recognize.
“Where’s she?” the voice said. “Where’s my beauty queen?” The church snapped silent and craned necks to see who would interrupt the commencement of Vern’s sermon.
“Louise, you here?” the man shouted. My mother’s name. I looked at her but she had folded in half, her head between her knees. “Oh God,” she groaned.
For a moment in my fearful heart I wondered if this was my father back for us at last. I stretched to see him again but the man’s turquoise cowboy hat shaded him, made him faceless, and he wore a dark suede button-up shirt tucked into white flared dungarees. I thought of the man on the motorcycle, was this him? But it wasn’t. This man before me appeared almost unhuman somehow, his limbs too long and bending strangely like they’d been loosely screwed onto his broad body by someone with all thumbs.
Vern didn’t flinch. He swept back to where the man stood and asked if he’d like to be baptized.
The Turquoise Cowboy stepped within spitting range of our pastor. “Here I am a nice man, an entrepreneur to be sure, and my Lou says, I can’t love you in real life, honey, until my pastor approves.”
“If you’re here to be saved,” Vern said flatly, “we don’t have water in our tub, but God knows our intention.”
The Turquoise Cowboy cocked his head to one side. “What are you, jealous or something?” he said, and took a lazy, openhanded swing at Vern’s face that sent him flat on his back. The Body rushed to our good pastor, helping him back to his feet. My mother bolted up and ran toward the men. Stopped before them, frozen. I knew she didn’t know what to do.
The Turquoise Cowboy kept his thumbs hitched in his belt loops and a collection of long rabbit teeth emerged from behind his lips. He was happy to see my mother like a man viewing his prize sow before slaughter.
She looked from him to Vern. She seemed to have sobered quite a bit and now was plain scared. She could see the storm she’d brought on, the familiar calamity from the beforelife, when my mother said all number of things to men and meant or remembered only half of them.
“Baby,” the Turquoise Cowboy said. “I’m here to make you a star.”
Everyone looked around at one another, at Vern. Some whispered. A woman behind me said, “Well, some folks just out looking for the devil.”
Vern smoothed his curls. He walked my mother by the arm to the front stage. My mind raced to configure how my mother had even come in contact with the Turquoise Cowboy at all. He certainly wasn’t of Peaches.
“You know that man?” Cherry hissed into my ear.
It occurred to me then that over the past few months I had done something very bad. I had looked away from all my mother had been showing me when I’d needed to look.
The men of the Body assembled around the cowboy like a mob. Vern gripped the back of my mother’s neck and raised his hand to heaven. He was inviting the Father down and a puff of gold God glitter drifted from above and settled on our sweatslick skin.
“Church,” Vern said. “It seems that one of our own has strayed.”
My mother looked at her feet. I thought rapid silent prayers, a series of helps.
“First she tried to keep her own daughter’s first blood from me, holding up our plan for rain,” he said. “Now this, coming to church mowed down by the devil’s elixir, a man of sin clamoring behind.”
“I’ve only been doing my assignment duty,” my mother started. “Employed by the Diviners: A Lady on the Line.”
The Body gasped. My praying mind stopped dead. This was much worse than I could have imagined. I thought of that leaning red house, the force field of evil surrounding it. And my mother had actually gone in. This fact struck me down, how I’d slept next to her in the same bed and never once imagined that’s where she’d spent her day. But it all made sense. Those sinful women must have cast something wrong deep inside her, led her away from God and back to the drink, to this cowboy. Fury burned in me toward women I’d never met in my life.
“I spoke sensual wordings, but my heart was with our Papa God,” my mother said. “I was bringing men to holiness one phone call at a time and bearing witness to the working ladies.” She looked at the cowboy, her eyes open and watery, like he could be of some help.
“I should have known you were never really purified enough to stand against evil without becoming it,” Vern said.
“Whore!” screamed Shirl, an old woman who often rolled around in the front, honking and croaking in her spirit speak during worship. She spat into the aisle.
“I did everything you asked,” my mother said to Vern. She squared to him and I saw another sort of communication occur, something wrapped and hidden from the rest of us, the end of it just beginning to unfurl.
Vern smiled. “But you didn’t,” he said.
It seemed my mother had something else to say but it was stuck inside her. Vern led her off the stage but she turned, shook him off. “Wait,” she said. Her eyes locked with mine. “Try to understand. I was testifying. I let God lead me to the right scripture. They trusted me and told me their sorrows. It soothed them. I’ve converted at least nine souls, most of them local infidels. You may not want me in this church no more, but I’m not bad. I tried, and on the way I fell in love.”
Vern was stung and it was a spectacle to see him this way, thrown off, befuddled by anyone, least of all a woman. “Love,” he repeated, the word gagging him.
My mother pulled her arm from his grasp. “Lacey,” she said. “Ask Lacey. She’ll tell you I’ve been sober. I haven’t touched a drop since conversion. Tell them, my girl.” Her eyes begged.
I didn’t understand how it had come down to this. What could my voice matter in her sea of obvious transgression? Anyone in a five-foot radius could smell the booze on her breath. If I lied now I could be banished too. If I lied now I might not be useful anymore. That thought was terrifying to me then.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Lacey,” Vern said. “Tell your church family just how your mother has sinned.”
“Let’s go,” my mother said to me. “Let’s get out of here. Come on. This is over. This is all over.”
I
