A Month of Sundays

by Ruth White

  Mr. Shepherd has more immersions to do than all the other preachers put together. The sun throws sparkles on the moving water as he leads his first sinner in. She is a pretty woman with dark glossy curly hair. As she wades, the water makes her white robe rise and bob around her, and she has to push it down. Mr. Shepherd lifts his hands to the blue sky and shouts into the clear afternoon air, “I baptize you, Maria Beth Bartley, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  Then, with help from another man, he ducks Maria Beth Bartley all the way under the water and brings her up again. And she is saved. I am not sure from what. Hell, I reckon. But I don’t know about that hell stuff. Would a real honest-to-god God allow such a thing? The woman sputters, then smiles through tears. She is helped up the riverbank by friends and family. The people shout Amen and Hallelujah, and Glory be to God.

  After the baptisms, the foot-washing begins, and I’ve never seen anything like it. This is where you show your humbleness by taking a bucket of water and bathing somebody else’s feet. It’s what a woman did for Jesus in the Bible.

  The grownups don’t invite the kids to join in, probably because they know we would make a big joke of it. That’s what Silver and I are doing anyway. We are trying not to laugh—well, not right in people’s faces anyhow—but we have the silly giggles and can’t help ourselves.

  When we see Silver’s dad starting to wash this old fat man’s feet, we whisper things about stinky toe jam and dirty toenails and stuff like that until we are in stitches. But suddenly Mr. Shepherd catches Silver’s eye and gives him a look that would melt a lump of coal. I watch Silver’s face go red and serious, and we don’t laugh anymore.

  The next event of the day is outdoor preaching. You can hear it going on everywhere—by the riverbank, in the woods, in the churchyard. People get into little bunches around their favorite preacher, and encourage him with their Amen’s and Hallelujah’s. Silver’s dad’s flock is behind the church, flanked by blackberry bushes in full bloom. Aunt June is with that group, and we go and sit in the grass beside her.

  Mr. Shepherd’s voice is like music as he talks to his followers about Jesus. I watch the river moving through the valley between the green mountains. What a glorious day! I could never have imagined that this summer among strangers would turn out so fine for me. I begin to daydream about me and Silver. Maybe we could go to school together this fall. Maybe I’ll ask Mom to let me stay here while she works and saves her money—but no. I look over at Aunt June and float sadly back to earth. What will we do without you?

  Mr. Shepherd’s voice is a hum, blending in with all the other hums and buzzes of summer. I have no idea what he’s talking about until all of a sudden his words pierce through the other sounds.

  “Someone is in pain. I feel it,” Mr. Shepherd is saying. His eyes are closed, and he is clutching his Bible so hard his knuckles are white. “Someone has a disease and needs the healing power of Jesus.”

  Aunt June rises to her feet and says something I can’t make out. Everybody looks at her.

  Mr. Shepherd opens his eyes and holds out one hand to her. She moves toward him like she’s underwater. I feel my scalp prickling, and the little blond hairs on my arms come to attention like tiny electrical wires.

  “And he healed all who were sick.” Mr. Shepherd is quoting scripture as he takes Aunt June’s hand. “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.’”

  “I believe,” Aunt June says. “I believe.”

  “What is your name, my dear lady?”

  “June Bill.”

  “And what is your sickness, June Bill?”

  “I have a cancer growing in me.” Aunt June’s voice is thin and trembly. “It is eating away my life, and I don’t want to leave my family yet.”

  “Do you believe that God can heal you of this cancer?”

  “Yes!” she cries, and clasps her hands to her heart. “Yes, I believe.”

  Then Mr. Shepherd asks his congregation if they believe, and everybody says Yes, or Hallelujah, or Glory be to God. I find myself nodding my head slightly. Yes? I believe?

  “Pray!” Mr. Shepherd tells us. “Everybody pray!”

  He lays one hand on Aunt June’s head, closes his eyes, and calls out in a loud voice, “I command all disease to leave this body of June Bill. In the name of Jesus, I command it now! Heal!”

  Aunt June immediately crumbles to the ground like all her bones have turned to Jell-O. The people are rising to their feet, some shouting, some applauding, some breaking into song. All of them gather around Aunt June, touching her, hugging her.

  Aunt June weeps. “I am healed!” she says. “I can feel it. My body is whole.”

  I don’t know how to feel or how to act. Part of me wants to cry and hug Aunt June and tell her I’m happy for her. Another part of me wants to slink away and pretend I don’t know her or any of these people.

  “It’s a miracle,” the people say.

  “God has performed a miracle.”

  Mr. Shepherd says to Aunt June, “Go! Be it done to you as you have believed.”

  I look at Silver and wonder what he thinks about this. His expression does not tell me. Without a word, the two of us turn and drift away from the others and walk down the woods path.

  “I didn’t know she was sick,” he says after a while.

  “I just found out recently,” I tell him. “Does your dad do a lot of healings?”

  “He has never done one before—that I know of.”

  We continue our walk in silence, thinking about what we saw and heard back there. I am confused. I think Silver is too.

  The day begins to dwindle into evening, and everybody gathers around a bonfire at the river’s edge. Some women bring out hot dogs and marshmallows, and we toast them while we sing spiritual songs.

  Aunt June is the topic of conversation and the center of attention, and she is so happy. I finally go to her and hug her.

  She hugs me back and says, “Garnet, you have witnessed a miracle this day.”

  I don’t know how to reply, so I lie. “I didn’t know you were sick.”

  “I didn’t want you to know,” she says, “but now it doesn’t matter. I am healed.”

  Finally we call it a night and go to our cars.

  “I’ll call you,” Silver whispers close to my ear, and we have to go our separate ways.

  “What a day!” Aunt June exclaims as we pull away from the church.

  “I guess you’re exhausted?” I ask her.

  “No, I never felt better in my life!”

  I wait for her to talk about what has happened to her, but she is uncommonly silent all the way home, and I am glad. Because I don’t think I can handle any more God stuff today. My head is spinning.

  When we get home we can hear the television. We go in there where Uncle Otis, Poppy, Emory, and Avery are watching What’s My Line?

  “Guess what, Garnet!” Avery says. “Your mom called from Florida!”

  “Mom called?”

  “Yeah,” Uncle Otis says. “We had a nice chat together. She’s going to start a new job in two weeks. It’s in a hotel, and they are giving her a room for the two of you. She also has the money for your bus trip to Daytona Beach. She’s sending it to you.”

  “When?”

  “A few days.”

  I am stunned.

  “She wants you to call her and work out the details. Here’s her number.”

  I stare at the piece of paper he hands to me with a phone number written on it. Leave here now? Leave this house? Leave Silver?

  “She said to call as soon as you get in.”

  “Tonight?” I say.

  “Yeah, tonight.”

  “Do you know how to make a long-distance call?” Emory asks me.

  I look at him and see that he’s not being a smart aleck. He’s merely asking.

  “You dial the operator,” Aunt June says, “then tell her what city you are
calling, and give her that number.”

  “I’ll do it later,” I say as I leave the room.

  “She’s waiting by her phone,” Uncle Otis hollers after me.

  Well, she can wait till the cows come home. And then some!

  17

  The chimes of time ring out the news,

  another day is through.

  Someone slipped and fell.

  Was that someone you?

  It is Denise’s angelic voice in my head when I wake up from a troubled sleep. All my windows are open and the shades rolled, to let in the cool night air. It’s almost like daylight in here, because that partial moon I saw on Wednesday night is now full.

  I sit up and look out the window. The grocery store is shut tight. Next door Mitzi’s window is dark. In fact, I see no lights anywhere. The mountains are silhouetted against the night sky. I am in a cradle. I belong here. I am safe and happy. And for the first time in my life I am like everybody else.

  Then I see movement in the garden, and it’s like a TV show begins to unfold before me. Someone is walking in the moonlight, and an awful wave of sadness washes over me. I know who is here to haunt me. It’s a little girl in a tattered dress. And she is crying.

  Everybody in her class saw the holes in her socks during exercise period. They laughed at her and teased her.

  “Darn it, Garnet! Darn it, Garnet!” they yelled.

  “That was a hard day,” I whisper to the little girl.

  Then someone else is moving through the dew behind the child. She is the mother. She has fried potatoes for supper. It’s the only thing in the house to eat. Worse yet, the mother has a bad cold. She can’t swallow without pain, and her head is stopped up. But still she has to get up in the morning and go to work.

  “You have always done your best,” I whisper to the mother.

  And I know in my heart it’s true. Everything she does is for her child.

  “Give your mother a hug,” I whisper to the girl. “She loves you so much.”

  But the little girl floats into an apple tree and disappears. The mother stands alone in the garden and turns her head toward the sunporch. She stretches out one hand to me, and I see the sadness in her eyes.

  From my nightstand, I clutch the paper with the telephone number on it, and stumble from bed. I open my door and peep into the hallway. All is quiet except for Uncle Otis’s snoring. Barefooted, I tiptoe down the stairsteps and enter the October room. I can almost read the number in the moonlight, but not quite. My fingers are shaking as I turn on the lamp beside the telephone and dial the O.

  “Operator.”

  “Daytona Beach, Florida,” I tell her, then give her the number. After about nine rings a gruff male voice answers.

  “Yeah?”

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “Who is this?” the man comes back.

  “I need to speak to Betty Rose,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “Betty Rose. She called me from this number earlier tonight.”

  “This is a pay phone, kid, on a street corner, and I was just walking by.”

  “A pay phone?”

  “Yeah, a pay phone. You know—a phone you put nickels in.”

  “I know what a pay phone is, but …”

  “You know what time it is?” the man says.

  “No.”

  “It’s two-thirty in the morning.”

  A nameless, faceless voice in the night, telling me that it’s late—too late.

  “But you’re still up,” I say stupidly.

  We are both quiet for a moment, then the man says, “Anything else, kid?”

  “No, thanks.”

  I hang up and stand there staring at the phone. Then I turn to the mantel and look at my daddy.

  “Why did we think she had her own phone?” I say to him. “She’s never had one in her life. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if for once she could have a nice convenient thing like that? It’s not much to ask for, is it?”

  My father’s smile seems to mock me.

  “What are you grinning at?” I say to him. “You deserted her first!”

  The night is quiet as a tomb.

  “Now she has nobody.”

  I go back to the yellow room and turn on the lamp beside my bed. I open my nightstand drawer, take out the package of stationery Mom packed for me, then find a pen, and write a letter to my mother.

  Dear Mom,

  I am so sorry I did not call you. I’ve been mad at you, and I guess you know why. But I’m not mad anymore. I’m having a good time here at Aunt June’s, but I want you to send the money to me for the bus, because I do want to be with you more than anything. I have so much to tell you. I love you and miss you.

  Your loving daughter, April Garnet Rose

  XXXOOOXXXOOO FOREVER!

  I address the envelope to the last address Mom gave me. Surely, if she moves, she will check back there for mail. Then I place a stamp in the upper righthand corner. I will ask Uncle Otis to mail it for me tomorrow.

  I turn off my light and slip between the sheets.

  “I will make it up to you, Mom,” I whisper to the night.

  Yes, I know what I will be leaving behind. I will miss Silver most of all. But I’ll miss Aunt June too, and Poppy, and sweet little Avery. I’ll also miss Mitzi, and Uncle Otis and Emory, even this puke green house. It’s like a live character in my drama. I always knew, didn’t I? Yeah, I knew it was not forever. It was temporary. But once I began to like it here, I acted like this was my real home, and it’s not. Wherever Mom is, that’s home, and that’s where I belong.

  18

  It’s Wednesday morning, and I’m just lying here in the bed, looking at the sky. I think it’s going to rain, and it will be the first time since Decoration Day when I got here. I have not told Silver yet that I’m leaving soon, but I’ll probably tell him today. I haven’t heard from Mom again.

  I can hear movement somewhere in the house, and I wonder if Aunt June is up. She has a doctor’s appointment today. She is convinced that she’s healed, but Uncle Otis and Poppy told her they don’t much believe in faith healing, and I saw them looking at each other with troubled eyes behind her back. Aunt June said she will believe whatever the doctor says. Then she smiled this mysterious smile. Could she really be healed?

  I told Poppy about the late-night phone call to Mom, and he fussed at me for not calling when I was supposed to. He said it was a thoughtless thing to do, and he’s right. He left to go to his house on Monday evening. He said he had some business to attend to in Bluefield, but promised to be back here this evening.

  “Don’t you go to Daytona Beach while I’m gone,” he said to me.

  I promised I wouldn’t.

  Last night Aunt June sat Avery down and had a long talk with him about her sickness and her healing.

  He listened with big eyes, then said, “I wish we would have knowed Silver’s daddy when old Roosevelt got sick. He might have made him better.”

  “Maybe so,” Aunt June said with a smile, and hugged him.

  She has been so full of energy and resolve these past two days, she’s about to work me to death. She has gone into a cleaning frenzy, which I have felt obliged to help with. Then she recruited Emory and Avery—against their will—to pitch in. We have cleaned every nook and cranny in this old house, and the porches and the yard on top of that. I’m almost afraid to get up now and see what she has for us to do today.

  At one point during our dirt purge I overheard Emory referring to the sunporch as “Garnet’s room.” No room has ever before been called Garnet’s room. I wonder what the hotel will be like where I will be living with Mom.

  Finally I roll out of bed. I go to the bathroom and take a bath and dress in a pair of my new shorts and a matching top. I pull my hair back in a ponytail and go barefooted down the stairs. I think I will have some cornflakes for breakfast. Silver says he eats cornflakes every day.

  But as I am about to go in the kitchen I stop short and let
out a little gasp, because I see a strange man peering inside Aunt June’s Frigidaire. My first thought is that this man just walked in off the highway, and now he’s going to steal our food. I mean, nobody ever locks an outside door around here.

  “What do you want?” I say in the meanest tone I can manage.

  At the sound of my voice, he pulls his head out of the Frigidaire and turns to face me. He has the wildest, blondest beard I ever saw, and it grows ever whichaway.

  “Well,” he says to me. “Who might you be?”

  I put my hands on my hips and try to look stern. “Never mind who I am. Who are you and what do you want?”

  That’s when he gives me this grin, like he does not take me seriously at all.

  “Feisty one, aren’t you?” he teases me.

  He closes the Frigidaire, sits down at the table, and crosses his arms, like he’s settling in for a while.

  “Who are you?” I repeat.

  “I asked first,” he says, still grinning.

  I am beginning to lose my nerve. “I’m warning you, my uncle has a gun. So you had best be on your way.”

  The smile fades as a flicker of confusion crosses his face. “Your uncle?”

  “That’s right. My name is April Garnet Rose, and my aunt and uncle own this house.”

  “Ap-ril … ?”

  Now it looks like he’s lost his nerve too.

  “April Garnet?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. April Garnet Rose.”

  Something is going on now with his expression, but with all that bushy hair on his face, it’s hard to say what.

  “Where did you get that name?”

  “Where do you think? My mother gave it to me.”

  “Who … ?” It seems he can’t get his words out, and now I can see what’s happened with his face. It has gone ghostly pale. “Who is your mother?” he croaks.