this is a secret you’d better keep.” Sister Morrisohn rolled over and hid her face in my chest. She laughed out loud and then she cried, soaking my chest with her tears.
I ran my fingers through her beautiful hair.
After that, we scrambled to end it, to get back to our lives. What pieces of our clothes we could find, we put back on, and then we knelt at the foot of the bed to pray for the forgiveness of our sins. But she was too close to me, and Satan won the battle again. My hand went under her dress and touched her.
“Oh God,” I said. “Lord,” she said.
And then we sinned again—me and the woman who smelled like spring blossoms, whose slender waist fit so pleasingly into my palm, the woman who did not weigh much when she fell. Me and the wife of my deceased benefactor and friend.
Afterward, she said, her cheek against my neck, “How are we going to do this, Elwyn? People may begin to wonder.”
“I could be giving you piano lessons twice a week,” I suggested. “Good,” she said. Then: “Only twice a week?”
I called home once more. “I’m still at the mall,” I told my mother. “Witnessing.”
“Don’t forget that dinner is waiting for you,” she said. “Or are you fasting again?”
“I’ll be home in a little while. I’m hungry. My fast is over.” I looked at Sister Morrisohn. She turned her head away.
My mother said, “Well, I’ll keep your plate warm. Bye, Elwyn.”
“Bye, Mom.” I hung my head in shame.
Father, forgive me.
Peachie should have been happy.
She was married now, Praise the Lord, so the baby would have a name. In time the Faithful would forgive her too.
She had a husband, Praise the Lord, so they did not have to sneak around to do it anymore. They could do it anytime they wanted, and they certainly did. This was the honeymoon period, the best part of being married everyone had always told her.
Praise the Lord.
So why was happiness eluding her?
Barry snored beside her contentedly. Peachie touched his shoulder, but he did not awaken.
It was still early, barely past midnight, but Barry would not awaken until morning. In the old days when they were sneaking around, she and Barry would talk on the phone until 3 or 4 in the morning. But now he was an early sleeper, she had come to learn, especially after sex.
During this first week of marriage, she had come to learn many things about Barry, many of which she did not like. For instance, he was a bit on the sloppy side. He only showered every other day. And he had a way of being very condescending when he became angry, and he seemed to get angry for such stupid little things and so often. And he expected her to cook for him, even though his mother was perfectly willing to do it and Peachie was perfectly uncomfortable cooking in a strange kitchen.
“Well, I have a wife now, or don’t I? I sure do remember marrying her,” he said one evening, and Peachie did not like the tone he used at all, or the fact that he had addressed the comment to his mother when she, Peachie, was standing right there beside him in the kitchen.
But she still loved him, of this she was sure. It should not matter so much that he was at times insensitive. There was a lot of pressure on him as a young preacher in a situation like this. But he should not make her feel as though she had ruined his life. They were in this together. They were a team. A husband should protect his wife from bad feelings, and if he didn’t, then what did that mean?
Tomorrow they would be moving to Lakeland to begin their new life together. She would not have her parents around anymore to protect her. Could she trust Barry to be there for her? She needed to talk to someone. She shook him again and said his name, but her husband continued to snore. She said to the darkness, “Barry, I love you. Do you love me? Barry? Barry? Barry!”
The snoring was replaced by a low, grumbling sigh. “What is it now, Peachie, honey, sweetie, dear wife of mine?”
There was that tone again, which she ignored. “Do you love me, Barry?”
“I married you, didn’t I?” he quipped. “And I am sleepy. We have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow.”
“It’s only 12.” She shifted her abdomen carefully so as not to hurt the baby and stretched her arms across his bare chest. She put her face against his neck. “I think,” she said, “that we could love each other more. I think there are things we could do so that our love would be the perfect love that King Solomon wrote about in the Song of Solomon. Our love could be a shining example to the Faithful.”
“Example,” he snorted. “We sure started out on the wrong foot.”
“Is it wrong to fall in love?”
“It’s wrong to fornicate.”
“Is that all it was to you?”
He snorted again, dismissing her. “A woman should remain a virgin for her husband. It’s in the Bible. Read it. Now I’m sleepy, Peachie, honey, sweetie, dear wife of mine.”
“Then go to sleep, knucklehead.” She pushed away from him and got up from the bed.
“Where are you going? Come back to bed. Peachie!” he called, but he did not even bother to get up to attempt to follow her as she left the room. He put the pillow over his head and rolled over, grumbling, “A wife. This is some wife. I need this, right? Heavenly Father, what did I get myself into?”
She did not slam the door because Brother Philip, Barry’s college roommate, was sleeping on the couch in the living room. He was there to help with the move in the morning. She walked quietly through the living room past the packed boxes stacked in twos, the large, polishedmarble coffee table, the upright piano she had been trained on, and knocked lightly on her mother-in-law’s door.
“Sister McGowan,” Peachie whispered. The tears were already falling. She felt so alone in the darkness. She had to talk to somebody. She just had to. “Sister McGowan!”
Sister McGowan opened the door in a housecoat she held closed with one hand.
“I’m not going to Lakeland. I can’t.”
Sister McGowan took the girl’s hand and drew her into the room.
Peachie continued to blubber: “I’m sorry I messed everything up for everybody. I’m sorry I ruined Barry’s life. I can’t go up there to Lakeland. I have to stay right here in Miami.”
Sister McGowan let her talk it out. Only once did she let go of the girl’s hand and that was to get tissue from the nightstand to wipe her eyes. Sister McGowan felt like crying too, for the girl, for Barry, for herself.
She had known Peachie Gregory since she was only one of many little girls with ponytails
