children. I yoked my life to yours, walked beside you in righteousness, sacrificed myself to your calling.”
“Clara, don’t,” Ralph said. It was worse than he’d imagined when he let himself imagine.
“Haven’t I done what I promised the day you asked me to marry you?” she raged in quiet fury. “Haven’t I been an upright and faithful helpmeet? Taught our children to walk in the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ and respect your position?”
Battered by her anger, knowing he was responsible for her scalding humiliation, he mumured, “You have.”
“What more could a man of God require of a wife?”
He shook his head, suddenly deeply tired. “Sometimes, even a man of God just wants to be treated like a man, Clara.”
She drew herself up icily at this allusion to sex. “I’ve done my duty to you in this bed.”
“Your duty,” he repeated, feeling numb.
“So now it’s my fault? Because I won’t be your whore in bed, you’ve gone to a whore’s bed?”
“I never meant to hurt you,” he said quietly.
“Hurt
“Clara—”
“Did you think you could keep her a secret? When all the eyes of the church are on its shepherd? I’m your true wife, Ralph, and I call you back to the paths of righteousness. Like Sarah to Abraham. In the name of God, I tell you to cast out your concubine like Abraham cast out Hagar.”
“Oh, Clara—”
The sound of her name upon his lips fed her scornful rage like kerosene on an open flame. Suddenly, she whipped her dress over her head and flung it to the floor. Her slip followed, then her bra and panties. For the first time in years, she stood naked before him.
Naked with all the lamps on.
“Is this what you want from me, Ralph?” She cocked her hip at him and did an awkward parody of a bump and grind. “Is this what it takes to redeem your soul?”
A sheen of perspiration covered her face and light gleamed on her full breasts and smooth belly. She was thirty-six years old and had borne two children, yet her body seemed as slim and firm as on their wedding night, the night he realized he had made a huge error that could never be rectified, when he understood that he’d mistaken her passion for God as a passion for him.
She had given him her virginity as a burnt sacrifice to God, not as a celebration of God’s greatest gift between man and woman.
Now she slowly turned around, displaying herself openly, front and back. “Am I not comely in your sight?”
As she came back full circle, she saw the pity in his eyes and abruptly tried to cover herself with her arms and hands.
“Oh, God!” she moaned and dropped to her knees at the foot of their bed, clasped her hands and began to pray, wordlessly, silently, with tears streaming from her closed eyes.
Ralph opened their closet, took her white cotton robe from the door hook, and gently draped it around her shoulders. Without opening her eyes, she pulled the fabric across her naked breasts and continued to pray.
As Ralph stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him, he saw that Stan’s door was slightly ajar and he pushed it open.
The boy looked at him. “Is something wrong, Dad?”
He had never lied to his children. “Yes, but it’s between your mother and me and we’ll work it out. Try not to let it trouble you any more than you can help, okay?”
Wanting to be convinced, his son nodded.
“Don’t stay up too late,” said Ralph.
“I won’t. ’Night, Dad.”
“’Night, Daddy,” echoed Lashanda’s little voice from next door.
His daughter was already in bed with the lights out, but enough spilled in from the hall when Ralph opened her door to see that she was still wide awake. He adjusted the fan in her window and asked if she was cool enough.
“Is Mama still mad?” the little girl whispered.
“She’ll be fine in the morning,” Ralph said, knowing that Clara would be in firm control of her emotions by breakfast time. Even if she were still angry with him, she would try not to let the children see it.
He kissed Lashanda goodnight and went down the hall to the living room. The telephone sat on the desk that had betrayed him and for a moment he was tempted to call.
But what he had to say to Cyl couldn’t be said on a telephone, he decided. He pulled his keys from his pocket and walked out into the night.
* * *
The Bullocks lived in a small rental house at the edge of Cotton Grove.
