The Church Ladies

by Lisa Samson

  “I’m hoping if we keep trying one day we’ll get it.” He flipped the fragile pages. “Where do you want to read?”

  “The book of Acts.”

  “Okay.”

  I reached out and touched his gray hair, just above the nape of his neck “What if we don’t ever get it?”

  He took off his glasses and leaned in close to me. “Poppy, to be honest, sometimes I wonder if we ever will. But we can’t stop trying.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  If we stopped trying on everything, we could just kiss Paisley good-bye.

  Twenty-one

  Miss Mildred and I spent the morning over at the square setting up for the Crazy Days of May. It wasn’t the happy-go-lucky experience it used to be. Tension ran between the participants like airborne rivers of black molasses, sticky and bitter. Smiles remained few. However, the ladies of Mount Zion made sure they came over to Highland Kirk’s booth. We all hugged and, according to chapter 8 of The Handbook, “Reconciliation,” subheading “Reconciliation with a Sister in Christ,” did lots of nodding and hand waving, as if the vibrations that dented the air from such activity helped to nudge away all the hard feelings.

  And actually it did.

  Christianity really worked if one followed it like it was meant to be followed. And that had nothing to do with The Ladies’ Handbook.

  We decided to put our booths side by side because, as one Mount Zion lady put it, “We know how to sell a cream pie or two.”

  Miss Poole didn’t show up. An odd occurrence because normally she stood out there directing Ira, Duncan, and the elders like an Egyptian overseer. Tow that line. Crack that whip. Hear and obey. So let it be written, so let it be done.

  The Impala was in for an oil change, so I had picked up Miss Mildred who had agreed to help Hallelujah! Baptist set up their fried chicken operation. “I also need to make sure those workmen drape the bandstand just right,” she said. Poor fellows. They won’t know what hit them.

  An attitude of disdain pulsated over from the business owners’ camp. The proprietors had truly had enough. I figured it would be years before we could completely repair the damage. The pastors looked sheepish, and the business owners looked miffed, for even though the rift between Mount Zion and Highland seemed to be filling up with goodwill, plenty of PCA Presbyterians walked by Methodists with their noses in the air.

  Charmaine ran around in a pair of walking shorts and saddle shoes like some frantic angel of goodwill. Hey, hey, hey. Y’all this, y’all that. And won’t everybody just try to be nice? India arranged duckies in a square pond at the Episcopal’s booth, a headset on her ears and her hands doing music director type dips and swirls. Especially endearing with a duckie in hand.

  Joanna, the traitor, acted like Miss Businesswoman instead of Mrs. Minister’s Wife, and gave me a tight little smile. Maybe I really wasn’t saved the way I judged her for being just like I was back in Baltimore. But I felt in my heart that my faith was real. Would I be so worried about it if it wasn’t?

  I couldn’t figure out why I felt so threatened by Joanna anyway. Why did she even bother coming to the prayer meetings if all she wanted to do was prick at us? It felt like having a well-dressed Paisley there, doing her best to make things uncomfortable for everybody. What was her gig? And poor Charmaine!

  Sunny had to work, so I watched her husband, Marc Tipton, set up a table across the street. Oak Grove Baptist Bible, fundamental, Bible-believing, King James Version only, went about their business quietly. “And it’s for the best,” Sunny had told me on the phone the day before. “After all, they sell beer there. And Madame Poliarza sets up a palm reading booth, so, that being witchcraft and all, well, thus and so.”

  But they set up their table with fresh flowers and gave away ice cold Coca-Colas and salvation tracts to all the workers from the festival. It was hard to fault for long anyone who gave away ice cold Coca-Colas. Although I have to agree with Duncan. How respectful is it to print up “Things Go Better with Christ”? There’s that verse in the Bible that says at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. Diminishing the name above all names to a soda pop slogan doesn’t sit well with my soul.

  I had just finished lettering the pricing signs when Mildred ran up, her high heels sinking into the sod. “Can you give me a ride over to church, Penelope.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Oh yeah. It’s the pastor’s wife. She’s in the church basement, and she can’t stop crying.”

  “Hold on. Let me get my purse. Where’s her husband?”

  “He’s there. He’s the one who called the booth. He doesn’t know what to do which is probably the root of the problem.”

  We hurried to the car, past face painting, helium balloons, silversmiths, weavers, pipe makers, and funnel cakes.

  I yanked open my door. “I always thought working in a Fotomat wouldn’t be a bad gig. No pressure.”

  She looked at me over the roof of the car. “As if you’d ever be satisfied with that, Penelope Huebner.”

  “Oh, I would. Or at least I’d like to give it a try sometime. But we’d still have church,” I said, getting in.

  Mildred nodded as I turned the key and threw the car into reverse. “You got that right.”

  “What’s your pastor’s wife’s name, Miss Mildred?”

  “Saundra Phelps.”

  It’s so easy to think of pastors’ wives as just the pastor’s wife. No real identity of her own. In my few short years as one, I couldn’t begin to figure how many times I’ve heard, “Oh, you must be the pastor’s wife!”

  “She can’t handle the position,” Mildred said. “Poor baby. Hiding behind those big hats and fancy Sunday dresses.”

  “You seemed pretty harsh on her before.”

  We drove in silence. Guess I’d said too much. But when we pulled into the lot, Mildred said, “Let’s pray, Penelope.”

  “Lord Jesus, forgive me. Forgive me for doing to Saundra what I thought I’d never do. I forgot how hard it is. Help me to help her. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  “Amen,” I whispered as I pulled into the parking lot surrounding the small, green, framed church building.

  “Miss Mildred?” I got out of the car.

  “Yes, Penelope?” She did the same.

  “It’s hard to play the role when you can’t begin to picture yourself in the role.”

  She nodded. “I’ve got to remember that. Jesse David was my life, Penelope. Serving the Lord with him, well, I always felt I’d been created to do just that.” She smiled sadly. “We’d better get in there.”

  She walked me across the brown-carpeted lobby to the staircase leading to the basement. “Is Herman still digging up your lawn?”

  “He is. I’m about ready to kill him.”

  “Why don’t you put a stop to it?”

  “Keeps him out of my hair. He’s bugging me to marry him now.” Mildred laid a hand on the railing. “As if I’m going to give up my freedom to a man who digs holes in my lawn looking for gold.”

  “A true gold digger!”

  “He plays the lottery, too. But what I want to know is why anybody would hand over his hard-earned money to the government when he knows he’s not going to win big?”

  We walked through the recreation hall back to one of the two Sunday school classrooms, where the sobs of Saundra Phelps awaited. My heart broke.

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Twenty-two.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “I know. Poor baby.”

  We entered the small, particleboard-paneled room, and Pastor Phelps stood to his feet. “Thank the Lord you’re here.” Heavyset and dressed in a neatly pressed suit, the man wore a mixed expression of sadness and panic. Beside his wife sat two hard-sided suitcases. He cast a suspicious eye on me.

  “This is Mrs. Fraser.” Mildred introduced me. “Her husband is the pastor over at the little Presbyterian church down Tweed Road.”

  His eyes cleare
d immediately, and Saundra looked up from where she sat at a small, yellow, toddler table. She swallowed her tears.

  Mildred sat down next to her. “Now what’s this all about, baby?”

  “I can’t take the pressure any more, Mother LaRue.” And she began to whimper now. My heart broke for her.

  “What happened?” Mildred asked the pastor.

  He shook his head and shrugged. “We were sitting at lunch going over this week’s schedule, and all of a sudden she burst into tears and ran into the bedroom, pulling out suitcases and throwing her clothes inside.”

  “I can’t do this anymore!” Saundra cried out. “I’m not perfect. I’m scared at the way they watch everything I do. I want to go back home to Pennsylvania!”

  Mildred stood to her feet. “Pastor Phelps, I’d like Saundra to come to the farm with me for a few days. Just for some refreshment.”

  “What will the church people say?” Saundra sniffed.

  “It doesn’t matter, punkin,” Pastor Phelps said. “You go on home with Mother LaRue. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Now that was definitely a step in the right direction. I carried Saundra’s suitcases to my trunk and got her situated comfortably in the backseat. “You’re a beautiful woman,” I told her with a smile. “They’re lucky to have you here.”

  I didn’t really know if that was the truth or not, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. People tend to rise to loving expectations that are placed on them, or they freak-out. Hopefully, Saundra wouldn’t continue to freak-out. Her perfect toffee complexion shone through the cried-off makeup, and though her eyes crackled with bloodshot lines, I could see their loveliness.

  “Miss Mildred will take good care of you, Saundra,” I reassured her. “She takes good care of me. So you said you were from Pennsylvania? Where in Pennsylvania?”

  “Oxford.”

  “That’s a wonderful little town! A friend of mine from college lives there.”

  And then I started asking all sorts of questions, surprised at how interested I was in Saundra Phelps’s life. She had given up a lot to marry her husband. Miss Mildred would make sure she didn’t throw it all away.

  I clicked off the light in the church kitchen at 3 A.M. Five hundred miniature Boston cream pies nestled in appropriately sized, baby blue boxes tied with white satin ribbon. I had to admit it, Miss Poole knew what she was doing. These little treasures would be snatched up quickly, and we kept the price the same as the Mount Zioners had charged the year before though they’d used clear plastic, salad bar style containers.

  I told Miss Mildred that when the Mount Zion ladies had realized for the first time in twenty-five years that the May festival didn’t have to mean an all-nighter the night before the festival, they actually thanked us. I’d figured they were all at home sleeping like kittens. They’d be chipper in the morning while we Highland Kirk women dragged ourselves over in the blue smocks with white trim that Miss Poole had ordered for us.

  “We’ll use them year after year!” she proclaimed as she handed them out around midnight. And then Ira came in with a silver urn of hot chocolate.

  See, there you go. It was things like this that made Magda Poole impossible to understand.

  Well, the booth had been readied as much as possible, and the festival didn’t begin until 10 A.M., so I could sleep until eight.

  Bercie Barnhouse threw on her sweater and gave me a little kiss on the cheek. “I thank God for you every night, Poppy. You’ve been so good for this church.”

  While I stood there in shock, Bercie sped her little BMW out of the parking lot.

  I made sure the basement door was locked tight, then walked home.

  Preacher’s wife.

  Always the last to leave.

  When the Mount Zion Ladies saw us unloading the classy little boxes of cake, they just threw The Proper Christian Ladies’ Handbook right out the window! I watched the skin of their faces creep from white to pink.

  Betty cast a tight smile in my direction and continued threading pounded, marinated flank steak on a stick. The charcoal grills clouded the air, and the smell almost made me forget I’d eaten three Pop Tarts for breakfast.

  Well, Highland had never marinated our flank steak so thoroughly, I wanted to yell over, to make them feel better. But as tired as I felt, I could only think about the merits of bringing a cot to the booth. Maybe next year.

  If I even stayed around Mount Oak next year. After all, this was Robbie’s last summer home, and half the stash belonged to me if I wanted to force the issue. I’d decided against going out West. With Robbie seriously considering St. Andrews in Scotland, it would be best to stay on the East Coast. New York City still placed number one in the running. And with Paisley in Boston …

  I didn’t even want to think about what Christmas would be like if I left.

  My mind felt the battle raging more and more these days. Things were going so well with Duncan, growing my shame larger and deeper. I tried to remind myself it hadn’t been this Duncan I had cheated on. It was another Duncan. And I had been another Poppy. Right?

  At eleven-thirty the Star Spangled Jammers began a slow sizzle. I waved to Miss Mildred who’d just begun a slow, sultry version of “Orange-Colored Sky,” singing about “walking along” and “minding my business.” Ha! Miss Mildred drove everywhere and knew nothing about minding her own business, thank God, and I literally meant that.

  Earlier that day when she arrived via a newly tuned Iguanamobile, I asked, “How’s Saundra today?”

  “Got a good night’s sleep last night, but to be honest, Penelope, I think she’s depressed. Honest to goodness depressed. Do you know her father is a judge? Can you imagine leaving that for Mount Oak?”

  The mere thought of it depressed me, too.

  “She’s a sweetie pie, though. We ate a nice breakfast together this morning, and she insisted on doing the dishes while I got ready to sing. I think there’s hope for her.”

  “Good.”

  And the crowds began to descend, pouring through the makeshift byways like corpuscles through a vein. One guy tried to haggle me down on the price of our pies. “I’ll buy in bulk,” he said.

  I smiled. “Five dollars is a bargain no matter how many you buy.”

  The Mount Zioners had a line ten yards long. Maybe that would succor their anguish over our boxes. I hoped so. But tension seemed to string from booth to booth, and when the Star Spangled Jammers began tuning, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief. I hoped they would play loud, loud, loud.

  At 12:30 a thick storm front cartwheeled across the sky. Ebony clouds bubbled and churned, covering the sun. Everyone took cover from the deluge. Hailstones shredded signs, while an almost horizontal rain soaked the booths and what wares couldn’t be taken under cover soon enough. We ran to our cars, to stores in the town square, to any place with a roof. Many of the visitors just got into their cars and drove off.

  At 4:30 the town square lay still and deserted.

  At 5:45 the sun came back out and so did the booth workers, tending to the needs of the few die-hard customers that remained. Mostly other festival workers.

  By 8:00 disassembled booths lay in stacks, and people gathered in clumps drinking cold cans of Coke from Sunny’s church.

  Duncan came up behind me, then put an arm around me. “Look at the groups. Dollars and Collars.”

  “And ne’er the twain shall meet. Why is it that way, Duncan?”

  He shook his head sadly and kissed me atop my head. “I guess it’s always been like this.”

  But I had to wonder why. It wasn’t like the days of early Christianity where you either were a Christian or you sat in the coliseum and laughed and pointed while lions devoured those of the new faith.

  What had gone wrong? Whatever happened to doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your God?

  I kissed Duncan back, and he walked me to my car.

  I drove toward the church, the back of my car filled with blue boxes tied up with p
retty white satin ribbon. There had been time to sell only a hundred of them. Too bad I hadn’t taken “bulk man” up on his offer.

  The next day, Sunday, all churches reported their lowest attendance in the past ten years. The slick advertising banners came down on Monday, damaged from the storm and all.

  Monday afternoon I wept deeply in my studio. I didn’t know why. It was shameful, the way we’d carried on, I guessed. But I felt as though I could never again converse with Ellen and Margaret the way I’d done before.

  All in the name of Jesus.

  I ran into Charmaine at Java Jane’s on Monday. It seems we both needed a caffeine bolster for our afternoon errands.

  “I hate Mondays,” she said. “There’s so much running around to do after the weekend.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I ordered a triple Red-Eye right along with her. “You got time to sit for a couple of minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  “Angus!” I called, and he looked up from one of the comfy chairs where he sat reading Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. “You want a drink? One of those blender things?”

  “Okay.”

  I ordered one and turned to Charmaine. “So what do you think about Crazy Days?”

  “I’d say God sure had something to say with the way He closed it down.”

  “What?”

  Charmaine’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, Poppy. You didn’t see that?”

  “Well, I just thought it was a storm coming through.”

  “And I thought you were a Presbyterian.”

  “Well, I am, but I don’t see what that has to do with it.” Actually, I did. But I really didn’t want to admit that just then. I’m not a real doctrinal powerhouse.

  She smiled. “I thought it was His way of saying He’s sick of all this, too.”

  “Wow. You really think so?”

  “How could I not?”

  I shrugged, and we took our drinks from Ellen who didn’t say anything but a quick, “Thanks.” We sat in the conversational grouping Angus had chosen.

  “I’ll have to ask Duncan what he thinks. Does Harlan think that, too?”