There was some kind of big showdown with the kids and their parents and Diane-Young’s mother. Right after that, she drank a lot of Coca-Cola with rum in it and made her leap.
The first time I ever met her, really, was last winter. I came home from school and they were in Bobby John’s room, off our kitchen. The phonograph was going, Gary S. Paxton singing “Jesus Keeps Takin’ Me Higher and Higher.”
I made a lot of noise getting myself some Flavor-Aid, and by the time I had the ice in it, they both came out to say hi.
She was on her crutch, and Bobby John had his arm around her neck. He was so much taller than she was, he couldn’t get it around her waist without kneeling down next to her.
Bobby John’s hair was all messed up from doing something. Her hair always looked messed up, looked like things might be making their home in it.
Bobby John was carrying this picture of Jesus Daddy got for him. It was a neat picture because no matter where you went in a room, His eyes followed you.
“This thing makes D. Y. nervous,” Bobby John told me, “so it’s now all yours, Opal.”
“It’s the pits to have the eyes of Jesus watching every move we make,” Diane-Young said out of the side of her mouth, “but it’s so tacky I almost want to keep it myself.”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘tacky,’” said Bobby John.
“You”—she gave him a little punch in the stomach—“wouldn’t know the difference.”
They were always giving each other these little punches. She’d aim one up at his chin and go “Pow!” He’d pretend to pound her head and go “Pow! Pow! Pow!”
It was Diane-Young who told Bobby John he let Daddy walk all over him, told him he ought to fight back. But she never criticized him in a mean way like Daddy did. She’d aim her crutch at him from across the room like it was a rifle she was going to shoot him with for saying “ain’t,” or “she don’t,” and he’d correct himself (got to correcting me, too, when I’d slip) and say, “Sorry, D. Y., honeybunch.” He got her to stop saying “shit” every other word (“Excuse my French, B. J.,” was what she’d say), and both of them found a lot of things real funny I never saw the humor in. They’d laugh and laugh and tickle each other all over.
They spent a lot of time in his room, when Mum wasn’t home, her radio/cassette playing top ten full blast once she got tired of Gary S. Paxton, which was about all Bobby John had for records. When Mum was home, they’d hang out in Bobby John’s car in our backyard.
It was her bought him the CB radio Daddy never let him forget he got from a woman.
“One thing I never did was take anything from a woman,” Daddy’d go around boasting, “particularly one who don’t look like a woman, and for another thing ain’t been saved.”
Bobby John would say he was working on getting her saved, then slouch out to his car and fiddle with the CB: “Put your ears on, good buddy, and put the hammer in the toolbox. Make a 10-25 with the Lord Jesus Christ. If you don’t, you’re headed for a 10-70.”
One afternoon last April I came home to find them sitting in the kitchen with this radio/cassette of hers on the table.
“Quiet, please, Opal,” Bobby John said, “because we’re trying to hear this tape D. Y. is playing.”
“Praise the Lord,” I said, dropping my books on the kitchen counter and hurrying to sit down and listen, because I thought now we were going to hear everyone’s secrets, too.
What came out instead was Diane-Young’s mother.
Di-Y, now that you feel so rejected by the Seaville High crowd, aren’t you going too far in the other direction? If it was Reverend Cloward’s son, Dickie, who you were seeing, we would welcome your interest in him, and your new religious enthusiasm. What we are not comfortable with is this Pentecostal religion, and we are not comfortable with this B. J. His background is too unlike your own. His particular faith is not for educated, sensitive people. It is a shouting, emotional mishmash based on superstition and mistaken, literal interpretation of the Bible. Di-Y, dear, religion is a quiet, inward questioning. Commotion isn’t emotion. Fever isn’t fervor. Deep, true, honest feelings never shout, dear. Now that I’ve shared my thoughts with you, tape yours to share with me. Remember, there is a u in us.
Diane-Young turned off the tape. “Well, you guys, that was my morning message yesterday, which is why I say life is such a shitty pity, pardon my French.”
She said her mother often got up early, taped her a morning message, and left it on her napkin at the breakfast table before she went to her office.
Bobby John said, ‘“O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.’… It says that right in Psalms. Says ‘all the sons of God shouted for joy.’ Says leap for joy in Luke.”
“Chester Best Cheek and Dr. Antoinette Young think emotionalism is crappy, Bobby John,” Diane-Young said, “and kissing anyplace but at the airport, on the cheek, is the pits.”
“‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,’” Bobby John said. “Song of Solomon.”
“Song of Solomon, but definitely not song of Chester Best and Dr. Antoinette,” said Diane-Young.
“When The Rapture comes, everybody’ll be
