Amity & Sorrow

by Peggy Riley

  He smokes and they drink and they speak of nothing together, not families, not histories. Just stars and seeds. No promises, only wishes, until the dark sky pinks behind the mesa and his cigarettes are gone, and the sun rises over them to heat the land where dinosaurs turned and walked away once.

  33

  The Sunday Preachermen

  Sunday, and Amity spins the dial. Sorrow won’t walk into any man’s house, so she stands, glowering, at the doorway, coaxed from her altar with the promise of glory. Her folded arms say this had better be good and Amity wiggles the rabbit ears for all she’s worth.

  The old man strains to watch Sorrow over the back of the sofa. ‘You ever seen a real preacherman, girl?’ he asks her. ‘Not that scrabbling ’round you folk do. I mean, the real Holy Ghost deal?’ Sorrow will not speak to any man, but Amity can see she is listening. ‘Stick your hands on ’em, like a healer would,’ he shouts at Amity. ‘Give it some gusto.’

  Sorrow huffs a breath out, which tells Amity she’d better make the TV snow turn into a temple and fast. When she grips the antennae, fit to strangle them, a man’s great finger flies out from the TV, pointing at all of them. ‘Are you Rapture-ready?’ he calls.

  Sorrow leans her torso into the house to watch.

  ‘Have you made your peace with God, your Father?’

  Sorrow’s arms stretch against the door frame and the old man crows, ‘Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say?’

  ‘Hush,’ says Sorrow, and Amity looks at her. She does not even notice her rule breaking. She slides a clog into the room.

  ‘The Lord is coming to take you away, and it is up to you whether you follow Him up or follow Satan down. Either way, God is coming for you. He is watching you. He sees every step you make, bringing you closer to Him, or taking you further away. It is no one’s doing but your own.’

  ‘Is the preacherman behind that box there?’ Sorrow whispers.

  Amity chortles at that. ‘No. He’s coming through the air in pieces and the rabbit ears make him come into the box.’ She points at the old man. ‘He said so.’

  ‘Where is that preacherman?’ Sorrow asks the old man, straight out.

  ‘He could be anywhere. He could be clear across the country or right down the street. There are preachermen everywhere, girl. It ain’t only your pa.’

  Sorrow’s eyebrows arch up to her cap. ‘Everywhere?’

  ‘Watch this,’ the old man says, and giggles. ‘He’s gearin’ up to start speakin’ in tongues. Holy crap, I love this part.’

  The preacher holds his hands out to them, as if he can reach right from the TV and grab them. ‘God the Father can see you,’ he says, his voice all syrup now, and then he’s speaking in tongues, right there on TV, for believers and nonbelievers, as if every house is a temple. And as he speaks the words that only God and Sorrow know, she is drawn toward him, drawn in close to the back of the sofa, then around it and toward the box until her very face is up against the screen.

  ‘You’ll go blind,’ the old man calls.

  Sorrow watches the preacher’s every move, mimicking him with a twitch of fingers and shoulders, the way he raises his hands to the sky and to his heart. She smiles when he smiles, big and wide as she can. ‘How does he know?’ she wonders.

  ‘Girl, everybody knows it. Your father didn’t write the Bible.’

  She looks at him. ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘Girl, he didn’t write any of it. Not one snip. That Bible was written thousands of years ago and I ain’t a bettin’ man but even I’m bettin’ he ain’t that old.’

  ‘He didn’t say that he wrote it, Sorrow,’ Amity says.

  ‘No,’ Sorrow says. ‘He said we would write a new Bible. He and I, from what I saw.’

  ‘A new Bible?’ The old man laughs. ‘You can’t just up and write a whole new Bible. That’s like makin’ a new God up.’

  ‘That’s not what Father told me.’ Sorrow crosses her arms and Amity looks at her. Wasn’t it exactly what they were trying to do, make new Gods, all of them?

  Sorrow relents. ‘Whose God is this preacherman’s God?’

  ‘He’s everybody’s God, girl. Your God and mine. There ain’t but the one God, whether you got a hat on your head or three heads. God is big enough for everybody.’

  ‘Show me these other preachermen,’ Sorrow says.

  Amity spins the dial and there’s a slick-haired man at a podium, reading calmly from a Bible. She spins and finds a pack of people in robes, clapping their hands and singing while a man kicks his legs and dances before them, like he’s having a holy fit. Sorrow’s eyes never leave the screen. She only asks, of each one, ‘Do you like those preachermen? Do you like that one?’

  Amity watches Sorrow settle herself onto the sofa beside the old man. And then it is Amity who has to stand behind it to watch.

  ‘It’s theater, girl,’ the old man says. ‘It’s all for show. It’s how they make their money.’

  ‘Money?’ Sorrow blinks at him.

  ‘Preachers need money. Churches need money. Why you think they’re on TV?’

  ‘God doesn’t need money. Money is man’s.’

  ‘You had a church, didn’t you? All them mouths needed plenty of money. Didn’t you shake bags and boxes under the noses of the faithful?’

  ‘No,’ Amity says. ‘They brought whole carloads of things. Tea sets and cans of food.’

  Sorrow glares. ‘Can anybody be a preacherman and go on TV?’

  ‘No. You gotta have money to get on TV so you can ask for money. You can’t just start there, you gotta do the rounds first, earn it. Make a name for yourself. All them preachers started out on the tent circuit, like they always done.’

  ‘Where is this tent circuit? Will you take me there?’ Amity watches Sorrow lean toward the old man, locking his eyes with hers so that they are the only two in the room, in the world. She’s seen it before.

  ‘Here’s how it works. You start out on the road, drumming up crowds in fields and parking lots. Then maybe you can get yourself a tent and some musicians. From there, you might rent a town hall or a little theater. You can’t just jump from a dirt farm in Oklahoma straight to TV, that’s for sure! I tell you, I seen ’em all.’ The old man hardly stops for breath. ‘I seen the devil scared straight out of a crazy man. I watched the devil hop out, little red imp he was, run ’round the inside of the tent, and fly out through the flap. He left a burn mark, right there on the grass. I saw a whole family stick their hand in a box of massasauga snakes to prove their faith.’

  ‘What else have you seen?’ Sorrow purrs.

  The old man doesn’t give Amity so much as a glance now. ‘Things that’d make your hair curl, if you had any under that shower cap, but none of that matters. Thing is, you need your own gimmick. Everybody’s got sumpin’ special. Back in the hungry times, we was lookin’ for miracles. We was lookin’ for rain. We was waitin’ for somebody to tell us that God had not left these lands, wrung ’em out like a dishcloth, and headed to California Hisself. There was many a pretty rainmaker makin’ money here. There was cloud seeding and soothsayin’ and rain dances, white people all up and out dancin’ ’round poles like prairie chickens. We started to think that maybe God sold us out, and the devil had a hold of our Panhandle, so’s he could hold it over his fire. You gotta find what people want to hear and when you give ’em that, then they’ll give you money.’

  ‘I don’t want money,’ Sorrow says.

  ‘Well, you will. Money ain’t an end, it’s a means. Means it gets you where you want to go and I’m bettin’ you wanna go somewheres.’

  Sorrow considers this, leaning her cap against the sofa cushion. ‘But this is the end of time. This is the time of false prophets. No one will listen to me.’

  ‘Preachers been talkin’ about the end for years and we’re all still here. We’re all still stumpin’ up cash for ’em, too. Lookit.’

  ‘Even with how they live here?’ Sorrow points to the TV, where a woman slides her oiled breasts acro
ss a car, waiting for the preacherman to come back and shame her.

  ‘Well, don’t look at that,’ the old man says, coughing. ‘It ain’t all wicked like that.’

  ‘I see what I see.’

  The old man looks at her until her smile fades. ‘You don’t, girl; you see what you want to see. Your folks kept you stupid and that’s their fault, but it’s your fault if you wanna stay stupid and I don’t think anybody ever told you that before. Nobody told either one a you. That you could choose who and what you wanna be.’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ Sorrow tells him. Amity says nothing; she isn’t sure herself.

  ‘Right, then. Tell me what you got.’

  ‘What I’ve got?’

  ‘Tell people sumpin’ new about the end of time. Stop wallowin’ in what they already know and tell ’em what they can do about it. We need a rainmaker. Give us some hope. That’s what sells.’

  Amity thinks of home and shakes her head. She can’t remember anything of hope but the mother who left with Adam and Justice, and none of them had anything like hope then.

  Sorrow studies the ceiling, deciding. ‘There is no hope. The end is near.’

  He points at the TV now, where a woman has joined the man, sitting beside him and crying as symbols flash below them both. ‘They’re not selling good news. You wanna cry like that at folks?’

  The TV woman begins to howl then, pointing at the numbers, her padded shoulders jerking up and down. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Why isn’t he crying?’

  ‘Give him time. Look at ’em, Sorrow. You see them numbers getting bigger? People fork out cash for misery. People love to watch sufferin’. You can sell that, if you want to.’

  She shakes her head. ‘We don’t believe in suffering. We worship and we love. We don’t want to cry like that for people.’ Sorrow sits up straighter now. ‘I don’t want to have to dress like that and I don’t want that black stuff running down my face.’

  ‘What are you selling, then?’

  ‘Father tells us that there is a family of God and all can belong to it and be loved, forever. That’s what makes women come.’

  ‘With their tea sets.’ He shoots Amity a wink.

  ‘I wouldn’t cry if I was a preacherman,’ Sorrow says. ‘Father never cries.’

  ‘You could be a preacherlady,’ the old man says. ‘But you’d have to study. You’d have to learn to read and write. You gotta know your Bible and what people want to hear of it.’

  ‘Father says we must have the Bible inside us. We don’t have to read to find God.’

  ‘Well, I’m tellin’ you that your father is wrong. And he’s on the run now, ain’t he, so what does he know?’

  Sorrow starts to snap back at the old man, then her shoulders droop. ‘I thought he’d come by now.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d dare,’ the old man says. ‘God wasn’t never scared of police. Think of Jesus. Did He run from the cross? He did not.’ He lets Sorrow think on that, then he tells her, ‘Anyways, you’re forgettin’ the biggest part of preachin’.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, you need sumpin’ flashy to wear.’

  At that, Amity backs to the screen and the porch. She’s tired of God and she’s tired of her sister. The old man was hers and Sorrow took him. Even the TV was hers first, but Sorrow gets everything. Sorrow always takes what she wants. She slips away, while no one is watching, to the gas station to open the door to Sorrow’s altar. There, in the darkness, she takes her clothes off. She looks at her dark shape in the room’s wavy mirror, but she sees nothing but ghostly skin. And onto this skin, she slides the inky fabric of the blue dress, slippery on her body, loose and flowing where she has only known ties and straps. And then she puts all of her clothes back on over it, to wear her dress like a secret.

  She finds Dust in his barn, kneeling before his motorcycle, worshipping it with oil. She watches kittens roll in straw and swishes her hips to feel the blue slip slink beneath her skirts until Dust looks up. ‘You need the bathroom, go,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t need the bathroom,’ she says, cross now.

  He cannot see her secret. She will have to show him.

  He swings his leg astride his motorcycle and pulls the choke out, turns the key. The engine fires and stalls, filling the barn with an oily blue smoke.

  ‘Is it supposed to do that!’ she yells as he restarts the engine.

  ‘I’m still fixing it!’ he yells back. ‘Piston ring!’ He switches the engine off and she pushes open the barn door, kittens scattering, to let out the blue smoke and breathe. ‘Piston ring’s sticking.’ He slaps the seat, as if disciplining a child.

  ‘When will your bike be ready?’

  ‘Soon. Real soon.’

  ‘And then will you go?’

  ‘Once the harvest’s done,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t leave him my work.’

  Amity kisses him, square on the cheek.

  ‘Hey,’ he says and he wipes the spot, embarrassed.

  ‘Will you show me your scar?’ she asks him.

  ‘You’ve seen it.’

  ‘I healed it. I want to see it healed.’

  He gives the scar a rub beneath his shirt. ‘You are so weird,’ he says.

  ‘Am I? How am I weird?’

  He lets his shirt down off his back. His scar is red and upraised, just as before.

  ‘Your scar has come back,’ she tells him.

  ‘Where do you think it went?’ He tries to pull his shirt back on, but her hands are already inside it, rubbing at the knots of his scar. ‘Stop touching it.’

  ‘But I healed you.’

  ‘You can’t heal people. Nobody can. Let go.’ He buttons his shirt up and she undoes her pinafore. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Don’t look,’ she says. When he turns away, she tugs the round collars from her neck and wriggles out of the too-short sleeves. She drops her dress off her arms and removes the underblouse to expose the deep V of the blue slip, its billowing cups and the bones of her chest. She thinks of the girls she saw in town, with their legs out and their hair down, and she pulls the kerchief off. ‘You can look now,’ she says, and she lets him turn. She lets him look. And because he has nothing to say and his mouth is open, she moves toward him, fastens her mouth upon his.

  She looks at him, blurry, close-up, and he pulls his mouth away and wipes it with the back of his hand. She reaches for his belt buckle.

  ‘Amity!’ He scoots back from her. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she says.

  ‘It isn’t. You don’t do this.’

  ‘I do,’ she says. ‘I’m bleeding.’

  ‘Jeez,’ he says. ‘Oh, jeez.’

  ‘I watch things. I know what to do.’

  ‘Well, I don’t. You’re just a kid. Put your dress on.’

  ‘I’m old enough to make Jesus now. Look at me.’

  Dust slaps her hands away and does his shirt up, buttoning it all the way to the top, as if to keep her out of it. ‘There’s something wrong with you, isn’t there? There’s something wrong with all of you. Why isn’t anybody doing anything?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Amity tells him. This is all she knows and all she wants, and her hands are outstretched, empty. They reach for something to heal.

  But Dust is running away from her. He sprints from the barn and she follows him, cutting across fields for the house and the gas station. She trails behind him, blue slip fluttering, sticking to her skin in the heat, and she wonders if it’s a kind of game, some prelude to Jesus-making, a step in the process she’s never seen, despite her watching. Maybe they do things differently here.

  She watches him reach for Sorrow’s door, bang on it and shout like a man possessed. No one can resist Sorrow, not even Dust. When Sorrow opens it to him, he reaches for her, puts his hands right on her and shakes her, and Sorrow doesn’t yell. She doesn’t pull away or shove him back, as she should. She lets Dust touch her and she lets him speak. She listens to him – she actually l
istens – and when she sees that Amity is watching, she pulls him into the bathroom, into her secret place with her secret altar, where she takes no one but Amity. Amity wonders what he’ll find in there, what he’ll make of the things spread across her altar.

  She wants to fling the door open and pull Dust out. He knows that Sorrow is dangerous in darkness – he saw how Sorrow cut her – but he doesn’t know everything Sorrow can do in a dark room. And if he didn’t want to do it with Amity, would he with Sorrow? Would Sorrow let him? And if he didn’t want that, what on earth was it that he wanted from Sorrow? What would anybody want?

  Amity pulls the blue slip off over her head and buttons her dress up. She stuffs the slip into a pile of trash. The door stays closed and she knows then that Sorrow has taken her Dust, taken him like the TV and the old man. Taken him, like Father. Taken him, like God.

  34

  Buds

  Amaranth listens to Sorrow laughing. A noise that lifts her heart and tells her all things are possible now. There is nothing more she need wish for. On the other side of the house she stands, easy in conversation, speaking out loud, as any ordinary girl might. It is a far cry from last Sunday, when the television boomed preachers all day, robed men in glass churches, hellfire preachers on polyester settees, all hand claps and hallelujahs, while her children stared in silence.

  Sorrow is changing; she can change.

  The kitchen garden is a lush green from watering, a ragtag oasis of leaves and stems and fisted buds in every color: orange, fuchsia, violet. The storm moved the seeds from their ordered rows and floated them into untidy masses and clumps. Still, it will be a sight when the plants unfold and show their faces.

  Another high-pitched giggle bursts from Sorrow and she cannot keep from grinning herself. When there is time, she decides, they will talk about Sorrow starting school, making friends her own age, girls who will teach her what normal girls are like. She will come to see how bright she is, how capable, once the fog of her father has cleared, once she has forgotten.