Godshot Page 3

  Denay and Taffy were my best friends and had already had their bloods for months, walking the church with prim proud smiles, full of use. Now I was in the club. I put my hand between my legs and held myself, looking for the calm it usually brought. My mother’s sleeping back rose and fell next to me. The smell of beer hung around us like a net. I remembered how before she’d been saved, when we were poor, very poor, she’d drink anything—Listerine, lemon extract, cough syrup she’d steal from Cherry’s cabinets, the Pac. The beer at least was a drink meant for drinking.

  “Tell me where beer is in the Bible, Lacey May,” she’d said a few months ago after she started drinking again, when I had held the phone and threatened to call Grandma Cherry and report her sin.

  “You don’t want to make that call, little girl,” she’d said. “You want your mama around, and you know it.”

  She was right, and now the secret had roped around us, including me in its grip, sickening me from sun up to down. I was trapped. I felt a little crazed by it.

  MY FIRST BLOOD dried up within days. I missed the alarm of color waiting for me on the toilet paper when I wiped. On the way to church, I saw someone had plastered signs all down Old Canal Road—SAVE PEACHES! BRING WATER HERE NOW!

  Over another sign—PRAY FOR PEACHES!—someone had written, It’s Global Warming Fools!

  “What’s global warming?” I asked my mother as she peeled into a parking spot, creating a cloud of dirt around the Rabbit.

  “I’ve heard of that a few times too,” she replied. “Maybe we should be a little more curious.”

  But I knew I wouldn’t mention it again, and my mother would never bring it up. Curiosity was the first rung on the ladder down to hell.

  WE FILED INTO the pew next to Grandma Cherry, who liked to sit smack in the middle of the church to feel the highest holy vibration. It had been nearly a week since I’d told Pastor Vern the news of my blood, and I’d relaxed a bit, stopped looking for signs that my mother could sense the betrayal. She was distracted anyhow, concerned with outfits. Today she wore new clear plastic high heels with stars floating in them. A white dress that buttoned all the way down the front and pressed her cleavage up. It was tight and gave the impression that at any moment the buttons could give way, that private places of rose-smelling skin, shimmery and lotioned, could spring forth and be free. The dress and the shoes were not secondhand. Lately she had been ordering things from catalogues that featured women on the front with huge boobs and tiny tank tops held together barely by strings, wearing shorts so short it appeared their butts were eating them. She had been making out checks and signing them fancy, a star dotting the i in Louise. I had asked her where the extra money had come from and she said, “Doing God’s work all day doesn’t mean you have to be poor. Don’t you see what I’m wearing?” She had held out her arms so I could admire her new green halter top. “Green attracts abundance,” she explained.

  Today her legs were slick with tanner and sweat. Lips red and her blond hair thrown to one side. Her wrists were a jangle of beaded bracelets, and Cherry eyed them. Cherry herself was the opposite of my mother, wearing a boring and faded black shift that was tight over her barrel of a middle, her chicken-skinny arms and legs sticking out of it, no grace. Her long white hair was in a single braid down her back. She reached over and snapped one of the bracelets. “Awful flashy, aren’t we?”

  “God loves a sparkler,” my mother said. I’d noticed she’d taken to talking down into her chest to mask her breath. I rested my hand on the bracelets, lightly touching them. She could make anything look special and stylish. Something about the angles of her body and the way they held things up.

  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.

  “I sell what people want,” he said. “And everyone wants that.”

  I left Bob to tend his cigarettes and waited for what felt like hours outside the Wine Baron. I spat on the ground between my feet. I wondered if I’d have to walk home. If the motorcycle man would be with her when they finally showed up and, if so, if he’d never leave. What would he need from me? I was older now and the thought scared me.

  But then she came: my mother, like a mirage, back from the ride, her voice high-pitched, carefree, a performance for the man. She looked revived, cheeks red, clutching him like they’d known each other for years. “You have to do it, Lacey! It’s amazing.”

  “Better make room on that motorcycle for God,” I said.

  The man said, “Come on, little country girl, when you gonna get to ride a hog like this again?” There was a laugh in his eyes but I knew the quick underside of it would be a violent hand.

  “Feel this motor!” my mother squealed like the dumbest person alive.

  I looked at her. “Tell me where you go,” I said. “Or I’ll tell everyone you’ve been sinning.”

  She smiled. “You don’t know what I’ve been dealing with, little girl.”

  “Take me with you, then.”

  The man grunted, bored. He needed my mother’s attention. “She’s got baggage,” I said to him.

  “Come on, Lacey, be nice,” she said sweetly, but the man guided her roughly off the bike by her arm and pulled out of the parking lot. I knew we’d never see him again.

  On the drive home I wanted her to say it was all a joke, that she wasn’t pulling us into that same hole we’d lived in before our conversion. But she didn’t, and I felt us falling and falling and fear filled me, for I knew the hole we were going down would be darker than ever now that we’d been living in the light.

  Chapter 3

  The next Sunday my mother was drunksick. She lay in bed and writhed around like the possessed. I pressed a cross to her forehead for healing. I said, God, please God.

  She swatted the cross away. “That doesn’t work.”

  I pulled back, stunned, for we’d seen it work countless times. Seen Vern pull sickness from the mouths of children, seen old Wendall Meeker, a Vietnam vet with no cartilage in his knee and a bad heart, hobble in and lie before Vern, and Vern had restored the knee, and Wendall walked out of there with the strength of a boy, his memory wiped clean of the war that ailed him each night like the cruelest hammering. His sure steps were proof alone to me, but my mother acted like she’d never seen such enchantment.

  I guided her to the bathtub where she vomited yellow into the water. I took a cup and poured some of the filth over her head. “Be baptized!” My voice echoed in the tiny room. She covered her ears. I pulled her up by the underarms and I dried her and dressed her. “We never miss church,” I said.

  “I made you into a fool,” she slurred.

  I grabbed the keys and guided her out the door.

  She vomited into a dead stick bush outside that used to bloom poisonous white flowers in the spring and each spring my mother would tell me as if for the first time of the boy who cooked a hot dog on a branch from a plant just like that one and how he had dropped dead after eating it.

  In the parking lot, she considered the Rabbit, her body tilting to find balance. Finally she walked around to the passenger side and got in. “You drive,” she said, challenging me, thinking probably that I’d back down.

  But no. In the name of Vern I jerked us down Old Canal Road, braking and jolting, my mother giggling, sunglasses over her makeupless eyes, unknown bruises up her bare legs, offering me no direction on how to operate a vehicle. Part of me wanted to laugh, too, just pull over and die of laughter, let this whole sadness kill me.

  I led her into the pew and we sat next to Grandma Cherry. She looked at my mother and then at me and shook her head.

  “Summer flu?” she asked. She poked my mother’s leg. “Smells like a tavern after a fight.”

  My heart pounded. I knew in this moment that it was a mistake to have come at all, but if we didn’t show up Vern or an elder would surely have come looking. I had imagined them finding her sick in bed, casing our apartment, deciding we were unfit believers. They might throw us out of the church and then what would be the point of living at all?

  The Body pressed into pews, avoiding the nails that poked up from the old wooden seats. I looked at the pulpit and hoped my cousin Lyle, two years my senior and recently well blessed with spirit speak, would come in soon to distract Cherry from my mother, who was sinking down in her seat, spineless, head to one side.

  I was never to have ill feelings toward the church and I never had. But a small voice within me kept nudging. My mother had only begun this downhill slide since she’d taken her assignment. I had almost thought to follow her some days to see what she was doing, but the Rabbit seemed to speed away from me so fast. I didn’t want to imagine her assignment was somehow pulling
her away from the church, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Vern had given her something she clearly couldn’t handle.

  “Happy Easter, ladies,” an older man named Gentry Roo said as he found his seat.

  Happy Easter. I looked around and realized every girl except me wore white frills and that every woman except my mother wore a white floor-length canvas dress, and the men wore their sequined capes of many colors. Vern had said the capes were delivered by angels, so everyone who laid eyes upon the men of the church would be pulled into belief, the capes so hypnotic. Like many traditions of the church, I couldn’t remember when exactly the capes arrived for the men, only that they did. Cherry wore black for she was widowed, and my mother and I were in jean dresses smudged with dirt. On my mother’s feet was an unmatched pair of flip-flops.

  Lyle walked in and came straight for Cherry and kissed her on the cheek, but his eyes were on my mother and me. I tried to nudge her so she’d sit up, look alive, but her legs splayed apart instead. He sat between Aunt Pearl, my mother’s older sister, and Uncle Perd, her husband. Pearl shook her head at my mother and faced forward. “Lordy be,” she said.

  Vern stood at the front wearing a special gold robe of sequins over loose-slung jean overalls with holes worn in the knees from frequent prayer. He raised his arms, his curls gleaming under the new bright spotlight they’d just installed. His feet were bare, the tops of them sun-browned. I knew if I were to kneel and kiss them I would see he had penned a little black cross on each toenail. Music filtered in from the line of ten stereos all set to play the same CD at the same time, a ghostly refrain of screaming bagpipes.

  “He is Risen,” Vern said now, jumping a little bit off the ground. The Body bellowed back, “He is Risen indeed!”

  I hoisted my mother up for the singing but she shook me off and leaned against the back of the pew in front of her, her butt on full display to the Stam family, who sat behind us. Wiley, the father, stared openly, his tongue hanging out like a dog’s in the desert, while his wife shoved the hymnal before him. Their daughter, Sharon, was my age, a fellow Bible study girl, and she looked at my mother side-eyed and amused. She had never expressly seemed to want to be my friend—her eyes struck me as judgmental and joking, the way whenever I said anything, Bible verse or prayer request, she sort of covered her mouth in a private laugh, but what she was laughing at exactly, I never knew. Her pig-faced brother, Laramie, stood still, mouth unmoving, his fat fists clenched at all times ready for a fight. I met Sharon’s eyes and she crossed them and her mother nudged her. I was so embarrassed by my mother I could have happily never looked at her again.