“What has your mother done about your religious upbringing?” she asked over her glasses. “We never see you in church.”
I didn’t answer immediately. The closest Jewel had ever come to religious instruction was when, on a real nice day and the weather was fine, she’d throw her arms wide and say, “On a day like this, can’t you just feel God with both hands?” Jewel was no churchgoer, partly, I think, due to her conviction that Reverend Hamilton would have had her stoned at the altar. With me and the girls, however, she neither told us to go to church, nor to stay away.
“We’re not Protestant,” I finally blurted out in our defense.
“Then what are you?”
“I don’t exactly know the name of it. It—it’s Jewel’s religion!”
“You mean to tell me that your mother has her own religion?”
“Kind of.”
“And where is her church?” Miss Blount asked disapprovingly.
“The inn, I guess.”
Miss Blount pursed her lips. “I can tell from our talk today, Darcy, that your mother hasn’t done right by you or your sisters.”
“Miss Blount, you’re wrong. Jewel’s always done right by us. No mother ever did better.”
“All children think that, Darcy,” she said, almost kindly. “Nevertheless, I feel that it is my duty to report the neglect of your religious training and suggest that Reverend Hamilton find good Christian homes where you girls can receive proper instruction. Of course, we’ll try to keep you three girls together, but—”
I was so mad by then that I didn’t hear the rest. That afternoon, I experienced my first cold rage. Before, I’d only had hot rages, the kind where your cheeks turn red and you feel like you’ve suddenly got a fever. That time, in Miss Blount’s classroom, was different. I moved not a muscle in my face; it was as if someone had covered me with a snow cold blanket, and with the cold came the calm, the calm that could be so frightening to those who later saw it in me.
“Miss Blount.”
“What is it, Darcy?”
I leveled my eyes to meet hers and saw her shift in her chair. “I want you to know that I could never let anybody separate my family. It may not seem like much of a family to you, but it’s mine, and I will always keep it together…no matter what I have to do, or who I have to hurt.”
She looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. “You’re too young to know what’s best for yourself and your sisters.”
I kept my eyes locked on her own. “We belong together, Miss Blount, and there’s nothing I won’t do to keep us together. And if anyone ever tried to divide us, I’d do anything to stop them, even things so terrible that a good Christian lady like yourself couldn’t even begin to imagine them.”
She stared at me, mouth dropped open in surprise, and I thought I saw her shiver. She shuffled some papers before saying, “My, my, my, it’s getting on to five o’clock, and you did say you had to be home by then.”
I was almost amused, watching my teacher’s desire to save me wrestle with her greater desire to save herself. And, of course, with someone like Miss Blount, the latter always won out, and I never heard talk about taking us away from Jewel again. Which was as it should be. Sometimes the family you find yourself in, though not the one you might have chosen, is the family you belong in for reasons that are beyond knowing but become important later in life. I know that’s convoluted, but it’s the best I can explain it.
Reverend Hamilton was another story. He’d had Jewel arrested four times for fortunetelling. Jewel kept changing her title, hoping to get him off her back. Sometimes she used the picture cards to tell the future, sometimes a crystal ball, or tea leaves, or plain old playing cards. She called herself by turns, advisor, reader, sister, mystic, seer, and spiritualist. But it was all “evil divination” to the reverend and the police, and she got locked up just the same. But never for very long, so that it was more a nuisance than anything else.
I know now what made the reverend so dangerous. He could do things that were wicked and hateful and convince himself that he was doing right, so that the more wicked he got, the more righteous he got, too, and the more elevated he supposed himself to be.
Sometimes, you remember things more clearly than you experience them and understand more about an event the farther away you get from it. Looking back, I think that Hamilton loved Jewel almost as much as he hated her, but he didn’t love her or hate her for herself, but for the parts of his own self he saw in her. Or maybe, he hated himself for loving a woman like Jewel, when his own Good Wife Gale left him unmoved.
I’ll say one thing: If Gale Hamilton had believed herself any more good and chaste and pure than she already did, she’d have built a shrine to her own likeness and worshipped at the altar. One year, around Christmas time, the church put on a play about the night Jesus Christ was born. Naturally, Gale, being the minister’s wife, got to run the whole thing, including picking out the six-to ten-year-olds in her Sunday school who would play the parts. Predictably, Joseph, the innkeeper, and the Three Wise Men were chosen from the biggest church-supporting families in Galen. But didn’t everybody get a surprise when none other than Herself came riding in as Mary on a cardboard donkey. I guess when it came right down to it, Gale couldn’t bear for anyone else to play the role that was clearly written for her. She looked positively murderous when little Jamie Baumeister couldn’t remember his line and answered yes, when asked if there was any room at the inn. Perhaps Gale would have preferred to play the role
