“Of course. She left at Easter, remember?”
“I didn’t know you then,” he muttered, face down in the pillow.
“You knew about it, and don’t tell me different. Vera, Roseanne, and that uppity Jane Lee Veach? All pure as driven snow on the outside and rotten to the core underneath. They never let me forget for one minute what my mother had done, and don’t tell me you didn’t listen to the gossip. Everyone did. Nothing will happen? Listen, I had to go to that place after Mother left. No one would sit with me at the Sunday School table, and during the main service, Pastor Burgess thundered about Whores of Babylon or Jezebels. Then, when we read The Scarlet Letter in tenth grade, the whole thing started up again. Those kinds of scars don’t go away. I’d rather the kids joined a street gang than that stupid Determined Disciples group. Are you listening? “
Of course, he wasn’t. Royce, having turned on his side, let out a rip of a snore. I thought about waking him, and let it go. My moaning and bitching about Pentecostals have become his bedtime story—the same words in different order, but all told before.
My mother used to play the piano at Glorious Life Pentecostal. She’d sit at the bench, back straight, her wavy hair pinned up. In the spring, she wore corsages. Everyone liked her, and I once repeated a compliment that I’d heard after a service, which made her shake with laughter: Carmen’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I’ve given a lot of thought to her memory. At one point in my life, especially when Jenna and Carlee were small, I guess you could say she was all I thought about. I tried to imagine how she could leave us, especially when I was bathing my children. The sight of my girls lifting their arms to be helped out of the water made me think of my mother, and the thought twisted like a knife.
Sometimes, I’d see things her way. Especially during those long summer months when Royce worked overtime. My husband works at Berry Construction; he’s their head dry wall man. When the girls were little, Cliff Berry was building a subdivision out Yate’s Crossing called Love-the-Maples. Royce worked day and night finishing the dry wall so the painters could come in. He’d leave for work at five and sometimes not get home until past midnight. Then I could feel the pressure. Jenna was teething and Carlee always seemed to have colic, and I’d walk the floor for hours, with a kid hanging on one leg and another squalling in my arms. Then, it no longer seemed fantastic that a mother of three, saved when she was twelve, a virgin when she was married, could walk out on her family – just that she lasted as long as she did. She must have been like a motor idling.
My mother was a good woman, I’ll give her that. Her mother, Grandma Lizzie, was always at our house, teaching her how to cook and clean, and when we were sick, she didn’t waste time getting us to the doctor. Speaking of Grandma Lizzie, there was none finer. Without Grandma Lizzie, Lord knows how I would have turned out. When Mother left, she took us in until she had a stroke, then West Virginia Child Placement Services interfered. But Grandma made sure I was remembered. She sent cards, addressed by an aide who went to Glorious Life Pentecostal, and I received dozens, each covered with flowers and a dollar or two tucked inside – even after I was fostered by the two schoolteachers and didn’t need one red cent. And the Thompsons in Davis County who took the twins, Rush and Jarrell? Before she would even consider such an arrangement, she made sure Mr. Thompson didn’t drink. But that was after Mother was already gone, and I’m jumping ahead.
