That evening, he’d helped Dad set up the simple sound system, then he’d taken rubber gloves and a bucket of soapy water out to the two portable toilets that stood modestly on opposite sides of a large holly tree at the back of the lot and wiped down the seats and floors so everything would be neat and fresh.
When he came back to the tent, Sister Helen Garrett and her daughter Crystal were there, arranging a large bouquet of deep blue hydrangeas in front of the pulpit, the only piece of church furniture to survive the fire. At least Crystal was at work on the flowers, trying to keep the heavy flower heads from tipping over. Her mother was at the pulpit in deep talk with his father.
“Hey, Stan,” Crystal said shyly. They were in the same class, but different homerooms at school, and he’d only started to know her a little when Sister Garrett joined their church last month. “Could I borrow your bucket to get some water for these?”
“I’ll get that for you,” he said, glad for a chance to be alone with her a few minutes before his friends arrived and started clowning around, teasing them. He’d always had friends who were girls, but never a real girlfriend. Not that Crystal
Only thing wrong was her mother, who embarrassed both of them the way she put herself forward at calls for rededication, clinging to Dad as she sobbed out her sins in his ear. Now that his own body was so aware of girls— and not just Crystal—it had only recently dawned on him precisely why Sister Garrett and one or two other of the church women took any opportunity to convert Dad’s “right hand of fellowship” into a warm hug. He hated the way those women pulled at him and touched him and brushed up against him like they wanted more from him than what a pastor was supposed to give.
Crystal wasn’t responsible for her mother any more than he was for Dad, who couldn’t help reaching out and touching whoever he was speaking to at the moment. Like now, when one of the deacons approached and he drew Brother Lorton into the conversation with a handclasp and an arm around the older man’s shoulder.
Predictably, once the conversation quit being one-on-one, Sister Garrett turned her attention back to the flowers and, to his dismay, to him. “You’re looking more like your daddy every day, Stanley. No wonder my little Crystal’s so sweet on you.”
Crystal looked as if she wanted to go crawl under the pulpit and Stan escaped by suddenly remembering that he was supposed to distribute hymn books and fans along the chairs. More church folks arrived and he answered politely as they greeted him. He hadn’t noticed Mama and Lashanda’s arrival until his little sister edged up to him while he was plugging in the lights and whispered, “Mama’s real mad.”
Guilt had instantly seized him. A dozen possible transgressions immediately tumbled through his mind.
“What’s she mad about?” he asked cautiously.
The seven-year-old shook her head, her brown eyes wide with unhappiness. “I don’t know. I think she found something in Daddy’s desk.”
Four things were off-limits without permission: the refrigerator except for milk or carrots, the cookie jar, their parents’ bedroom unless Mama or Dad was there, and Dad’s desk in the living room.
Doors and drawers were left unlocked. It was enough for Mama to say “Thou shalt not” to ensure that neither he nor Lashanda would open any of them unbidden. They knew that Dad kept his pastoral records in the desk and often sat there to counsel troubled church members.
Maybe that’s what Mama’s found, he thought. Maybe there were some notes about a member of the congregation who’d done something so steeped in sin that the church needed to cast them out.
There was that time in Warrenton when she’d urged Dad to take such a step, but Dad had brought the sinner back to Christ. “And if Jesus can forgive him, Clara, who are we to cast stones and cast him out?”
But he couldn’t say all this to his sister. She was still too little to understand.
“Don’t worry. Dad’ll take care of it,” he reassured her, and she’d skipped away to join her friends.
Crystal had saved a place for him among their friends near the back but he kept a wary eye on his mother’s profile. She sat in her accustomed seat, the very last chair on the front row.
As the pastor’s wife, Mama knew all eyes were always upon her and her children and she preached to them constantly.
“It’s up to us to set good examples,” she said. “Think before you act. Weigh your words before you speak. The Bible tells us that the ungodly are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. The Devil is a mighty wind, children, and he’ll blow your bad words and bad deeds to where they’ll do the most hurt to your father if you’re not mindful of who you are.”
So Mama had sat in her usual seat and kept her face turned to Dad’s with her usual expression of solemn attention. But when preaching was over and everything was stowed in the back of the van, Mama gave her keys to Miss Rosa, who was still without her own transportation to work, and she and Lashanda rode home with them. That’s when he realized that Dad was the focus of her anger.
As his parents approached the van, he heard Dad say, “What were you doing in my desk, Clara?”
“I was looking for a rubber band for my prayer cards.” Her words lashed out like a switch off a peach tree. “Instead, I found—”
She hushed when she realized that the van windows were open and that Stan and Lashanda were sitting wide-eyed.
There was utter silence as they drove home and he and Lashanda had immediately gone to their rooms without being told. It was like seeing bolts of lightning flash across a dark sky and scurrying for cover before the storm broke.
He couldn’t imagine what Mama had found to set her off like that.
* * *
