I shrugged my shoulders instead, and she said, “Go back in there with more brussels sprouts, dear.”
“You go to school with my son, Albert, don’t you, Opal?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ripper Blades, pick on you after you were run over by a bus, he was so mean.
I took the bowl of brussels sprouts and pushed through the swinging doors.
The Shadow, making a comeback.
Mr. Cheek was talking. He was this thin little man in a bow tie, with glasses so thick you couldn’t see his eyes. “At first we weren’t too comfortable with Di-Y’s interest in religion.”
“It wasn’t religion per se,” said Mrs. Cheek.
“It was this Pentecost—” and he glanced up at me, stopped himself in midsentence.
“You see,” said Mrs. Cheek, “we don’t express emotion very openly in this family.”
“I know what you’re saying,” Dr. Pegler said.
Mrs. Pegler said, “The sound and the fury.”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Cheek. “I like to say that commotion isn’t emotion.”
“Fever”—Mr. Cheek leaned forward—“isn’t fervor.”
“True feelings”—Mrs. Cheek leaned forward—“never shout.”
“Exactly!”
“Exactly!”
“Opal?” Mrs. Cheek whispered up at me. “It’s too soon to pass the vegetable again, thank you.”
Even the cook there had her rules, told me one thing she made a rule was never to help with the cleanup. I was finishing drying the silver she said never went in the dishwasher, not real sterling. I was asking myself, if Jesus was to say you could eat off real china plates with real sterling silver utensils or be part of The Rapture, what would you choose?
“So you help Mrs. Blades, dear. I put the rest of the tuna-fish casserole in a Baggie for you to take home.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” I was watching the moon come through the fog in the sky out the window, wondering if heaven had a night. Never heard it had one. Heard it was paved with gold and shining without the need of the sun. Never heard hell had a day, only the light of the fires down there.
Mrs. Blades said, “Now you’re leaving this little girl to help someone with a frozen shoulder.”
“Someone with a frozen shoulder shouldn’t hire out to do kitchen work,” said the cook.
“This little girl’s left to lift that big garbage bag and put it out in the can,” said Mrs. Blades, but the cook, in her coat, was on her way out the door.
“You ought to come to one of our healings,” I said, “and have them lay hands on that shoulder.”
“I’m a Catholic, honey,” she said. “I’m going to the chiropractor.”
The last thing I did was haul the bag across the floor, though the back door. The air smelled fresh, like after a rain. A big, round moon had broken through the passing clouds, and I looked up at it, setting the bag down to catch my breath. I looked for shapes in clouds that could be omens, like Elijah’s servant seeing the cloud rise from the sea like a man’s hand, before the heavens turned black and the rain came.
“Psssst! Opal!” a voice said. “Over here!”
It was Diane-Young, standing in the shadows smoking a More.
“I’ve been waiting for Mrs. Blades to leave so I could talk to you,” she said.
She put out the cigarette and helped me drag the Tidy-Tall to the can and lift it inside. “How’s B. J. doing?” she asked me.
“He’s dragging his tail some.”
“Is that all he knows how to do? Ask him if that’s all he knows how to do!”
“Did you and him have a fight?”
“Chester Best and Dr. Antoinette think I’m too much under his influence,” she said. “They say I’ve got to raise my sights. They made me get this crappy haircut, too. Seal von Hennig gave them the idea.”
“What’s she care about your hair?”
“She’s talking about ACE sending me out on a Winning Rally, to tell about my healing. She said I should get contact lenses and removable braces. I want you to tell B. J. something for me.”
“He’s coming to pick me up, in half an hour.”
“They’re watching me like a hawk,” she said, “that’s the shitty pity. But you tell B. J. I said 10-3.”
“10-3?”
“10-3,” she said and we heard the back door slam shut.
We heard, “Di-Y? Di-Y, are you out here, dearest?”
“I’m just helping Opal with the garbage, Mother.”
“Why, how very thoughtful of you, Di-Y,” said Mrs. Cheek, coming down the path toward us in her long green dress. “Opal, did cook pay you? Did she offer you a ride home?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m paid, thank you. Someone’s coming to get me if his car makes it.”
“Di-Y,” said Mrs. Cheek, “your friends are all gathered in the solarium. Why don’t you take Opal in there, and when her ride comes Grayson will tell her.”
“They’re not my friends,” said Diane-Young.
“They are your guests though, dearest,” said Mrs. Cheek.
Mrs. Cheek followed us inside and down a long hall to the solarium, so we couldn’t talk about Bobby John anymore.
She said “the adults” were going to watch a film of Rudolph Nureyev in Swan Lake.
What the Cheeks called the solarium was a long, glassed-in porch at the back of the big house, with these shiny black tiles and clean white rugs, black-and-white cushions covering all the furniture, and green, spidery plants hanging down from the ceiling.
“Everybody here knows Opal Ringer, don’t they?” Diane-Young said when we walked in.
“Opal!” V. Chicken gushed at me, just as though I’d never passed her the brussels sprouts earlier. She was sitting on the couch with redheaded, freckle-faced Dickie Cloward, who stood up and said he’d met me at the First Methodist Church Strawberry Festival last year. I remembered that thing real well, because Daddy’d sat there on a folding chair going 300 x $3.25 comes to $975, and Mum said it was more like 200 there. Well, we was late, Daddy’d said, must have been a hundred here before we drove up. I’d complained we didn’t even get to enjoy anything anymore, because
