by Bev Marshall
But when morning came, I awoke with a new pimple and a cowlick that defied lacquering, and when Mama and I walked into the school gymnasium, the first person I saw was Lyn Parks with her arms wrapped around Jehu’s shoulders. She was wearing real pearls.
Chapter 3
I THOUGHT PERHAPS GOD WAS PUNISHING ME FOR FAKING SALVATION. If crime doesn’t pay, sin can make you go bankrupt. I had not only lost Jehu to Lyn, I had to pretend I was happy for June when she was chosen over me for cheerleader. Mama tried to convince me that the contest was rigged, but I knew better. June laid a sympathetic arm around my shoulder and told me I had gotten only five votes when I demanded a recount. I appreciated how hard she tried to disguise her happiness over her 137 yes votes, but she didn’t look over at the table where I sat waiting for her in the lunchroom when she walked over to sit with the cheerleaders.
I think Grandma was secretly happy I didn’t make the cheerleader squad. She didn’t approve of girls spreading their legs showing the dark blue bloomer panties they wore beneath the blue-and-white-striped skirts that flared out when they jumped up and yelled “Go Cougars.” She told me that the navy pants suit with the gold braid the band members wore was much more impressive to view from the stadium bleachers, but I knew that the beautiful silver flute I held to my lips as I marched across the football field couldn’t compare with a megaphone held by a pretty cheerleader. Papaw said, “Bullshit, Layla Jay.What do you care about that lousy football team? I’d be ashamed to cheer for those losers.”
Had I known what else God had in store for me, I would have marched across the field with pride and been more grateful for the five people who voted for me. (Well, four. I voted for myself.) But God doesn’t give hints, or foreshadow the coming events in your life, and so you go on grousing over petty disappointments, wallowing in self-pity, never suspecting that your life is going to take a detour to hell.
Like so many events in my life, my descent into hell began with good news. I was about to begin my fifth week of school when Grandma announced that the revival preacher who was coming to Pisgah would be staying with us. At first I was excited that a semicelebrity would be sleeping in my bedroom as Wallace Ebert’s name was well known and revered in our community. He was a missionary to Uganda who had sent the Pisgah congregation newsletters through the past year entitled “Epistles of Light from the Darkness,” and I had tithed part of my allowance for support of his mission.That our family had been chosen to house him seemed like a special blessing from God himself, but what appeared to be good fortune reversed into disaster quicker than our band could execute an about-face.
When she heard the news, Mama was livid; she argued with Grandma during every meal, which was the only time she would sit in the same room with her. At breakfast she waved a biscuit in the air.“Do not expect me to stop smoking just because some Bible thumper thinks my body is a temple.”At supper, she wadded her paper napkin and threw it across the table when Grandma dispensed new house rules that included no cussing, no inappropriate clothes, and no alcohol (she looked over at Papaw on this one), and she forbade Mama to bring her dates inside while Brother Ebert was in our home. I tried to ward off a full-blown war between them by speaking up just then. “When I meet the preacher, I’m going to say, Mi casa es su casa. That means my house is your house.” I was taking Spanish I and my teacher, Miss Schultz, said I had a real flair for language.
“But it isn’t your house, Layla Jay, or mine. Mother is making that perfectly clear.Why don’t we just move out? Will that make you happy?” Mama’s face was turning the color of her dark red lipstick, a new Liz shade called Poppy.
Papaw stood up and ran his fingers over his silver hair. “Enough enough. Frieda, it’s only five days; you can handle that, make your mama happy.” He turned to Grandma. “And Zadie, quit your fussing. He ain’t the president or a motion picture star. He’s just a man who’s good at getting folks all worked up over the heathens.” He leaned down and kissed my cheek.“I’m going to bed, honey. I suggest you do the same, save your ears further blistering by these two hot tongues.”
I didn’t heed his advice, surmising that Mama and Grandma might need a referee or a bandage if things took a turn for the worse. Mama wouldn’t give in on the smoking, clothes, or cussing, but she said she wouldn’t bring home any men. She offered to move us out two more times, and I wondered where she thought we would go as the reason the preacher was staying with us was that there wasn’t a decent motel in Zebulon. Just the Slumbercrest, and everyone knew that the beds there weren’t for sleeping.
Grandma started crying when Mama said she never dreamed that things would turn out like this on the night she moved her baby in after she couldn’t pay the mortgage on her own home. When Grandma said that she couldn’t understand the Lord’s decision to take away a good man like Kenneth because none of this would be said if he hadn’t been killed, Mama started bawling, too. Both of them agreed that they couldn’t get along and probably never would. “I’ll never understand you” was said in unison several times. I sat between them not knowing who to pat. Whose misery was the deepest? I thought that I should have taken Papaw’s suggestion and gone to bed, but now my rear end was glued to my chair. “Mama,” I began. “Grandma.” I wanted to avoid crying at all costs, but I felt the lump rising in my throat. I clamped my top teeth down on my bottom lip and looked up at the ceiling where an orange stain circled over Mama’s head like a little halo that God might drop down on her to change our lives. But I knew He wasn’t going to concern Himself with this mess, and I would have to think of a solution without divine assistance. “Mama, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you ask Cybil if you could stay with her while the preacher is here?” Even though Grandma didn’t like Cybil, I was banking that her desire to provide a holy place for the earthly messiah surpassed her disapproval of Mama’s friend.When no one spoke, I scraped my plate onto Papaw’s and reached for Mama’s. “I could move into your room, the preacher can have mine, and Grandma, you won’t have to worry about a thing.”They stared down at their plates, neither wanting to haul out the white flag first. Before they could think up an argument, I stood up and said, “Okay, then let’s do that. Call Cybil, Mama. See what she says.”
Mama wouldn’t look at Grandma, but she left the room, and as we listened to her dial the telephone, Grandma blew me a kiss.
I don’t know what I had expected Wallace Ebert to look like exactly, but my mental picture of him included lots of white wavy hair on a big head, kind blue eyes, an imposing figure of at least six feet.When he got out of Grandma’s car, I was at my post beside Mama’s bedroom window and on first glimpse thought she had grabbed the wrong man at the train depot. The man who lugged a tan suitcase onto our porch was short, dark-haired, stocky, no more than thirty-five years old, and really handsome.While I had pictured him with fleshy jowls, looking somewhat like Katharine Hepburn’s brother in The African Queen, he had a craggy face much more like Humphrey Bogart’s after he cleaned up for his Rosie. When he held out his hand for me to shake after Grandma introduced me as her little angel granddaughter, the hard calluses on his hand bit into mine. He looked down, straight into my eyes, and I knew right away that this man would never tweak a thirteen-year-old girl’s nose.
I was happy Cybil had agreed to allow Mama to stay with her, as I was now the only unmarried woman in the house and the recipient of all of Wallace’s admiration. He loved everything about me.That first afternoon as we sat in the living room sipping iced tea from Grandma’s good crystal glasses as though we routinely used them, he instructed me to call him Wallace, instead of Reverend Ebert as he wasn’t an ordained minister and my calling him Mr. Ebert made him think his father had risen from the grave. He told us that his daddy had been a sinner, addicted to whiskey and something called cocaine, and that his poor mother had been the one to call the law after he had stabbed a neighbor and robbed him of twelve dollars. Wallace’s father died in prison when the homemade knife o
f an inmate turned on him. Reaching for a tea cake, he said,“My mother, God rest her soul, died from grief and shame, and I became an angry young man who took out my rage on others. For several years, I followed my father down sin’s highway, drinking, cursing, and blaspheming the Lord. I was headed for a wreck that would destroy my soul.”
He took a bite of the tea cake. “Delicious,” he said to Grandma and me, sitting side by side on the couch, our eyes wide, our mouths hanging open at this startling confession. He seemed unperturbed by our countenances. “So you might wonder what saved me from destroying myself, why I’m not in prison or worse.” I nodded assent, wondering what Grandma was thinking about having an over-the-top sinner sitting on her best armchair in our spotless living room. I knew the punch line to the story although I didn’t know just how God had turned up to save him.
“It was the year I turned thirty, my birthday in fact. There was no cake, no ice cream, no happy birthday song. I was wandering the streets of Memphis looking for an easy mark. And I found one. A young girl wearing diamond earrings with an expensive leather purse hanging on her arm. All I had to do was knock her down, grab the purse, and I would have money to buy whiskey.” He sat up straighter as though swelled with pride that he had been a good criminal. “I followed her down Beale Street onto a deserted side street, and just when my arm stretched out to grab her, she turned around.”
Grandma and I were both spellbound.This was better than The Fugitive, my favorite TV show. “What happened?” I said, clutching my glass. I had never known a real criminal.
He smiled, and that smile was truly holy; it was like the Lord Himself was sending out love into the room. I was sure Wallace could save every sinner in Zebulon if they felt the warmth of that smile. “The girl spoke to me. She said, ‘Brother, I know you’re in pain. Let me help you.’ And she opened her purse and gave me three hundred and five dollars, all she had.”
“Three hundred!” Grandma was probably wondering what a young girl was thinking carrying around that much money.
“Yes, but there’s more. She took off those diamond earrings and dropped them in my hand, saying, ‘I have no need of riches.You’re welcome to them.’ She was happy. Can you imagine that?”
“No,” I said. I had thought that maybe the girl was giving him all of this because she was afraid he would hurt her or that maybe she was cracked in the head, loony as they come. I had seen a plot similar to this on Dragnet once.
“She was happy though. Her face was glowing with joy. Radiant! She said I looked like I needed a good meal and would I like to go to her house with her as she had a whole roast cooked with good nourishing vegetables in a nice brown gravy.” He had finished his cookie and took another one as though all this talk about food was making him hungry. I looked over at Grandma. She had cooked chicken pie for an early supper before the revival meeting, and I knew she was worried that he was ruining his appetite.
He leaned forward in his chair, hands clasped between his legs and in a softer voice, he said. “Her name was Mary; appropriate, isn’t it? Mary laid out her best china and crystal on a white damask tablecloth. She had prepared the best meal I had eaten in years, and as I ate, she told me the story of the Good Samaritan. I had no knowledge of the Bible or of Jesus’ love. My mother was a good woman, but she was ignorant of the ways of the Lord, and I was raised in a godless home. Mary talked to me about God’s love and told me the wonderful stories of Jesus’ life, how He died for me. ‘Not for someone like me,’ I said to her. She took my hand and said, ‘Yes, you. Life everlasting is for everyone who accepts Him as their Savior.’ When the sun came up that morning, we were still sitting at that beautiful table, but I was not the man who had come there planning to steal the very silver from which I had been served. From that moment on, I was transformed by the Holy Spirit, and before I left that gentle home, I knew that God had called me to do His glorious work.”
I looked down at the rose-patterned rug beneath the coffee table. What would Wallace think if he knew I had faked salvation that Sunday? A man with such a dramatic calling might see right through me, recognize me for the sinner I was. I squirmed on the couch and tried to calm myself.
Grandma frowned at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a stronger testimony in all my years.”
Wallace folded his hands like he was about to pray, but he grinned and said, “Did you say you made chicken pie for dinner? It’s my favorite.”
After we ate and changed into church clothes, Papaw announced that he was going to drive up to Jackson and spend the night with his cousin Douglas.They were going to attend the big livestock auction and it opened the next morning at seven sharp. Papaw wanted to purchase a few more hogs and said that, although he could buy some in Zebulon, he might get a better deal at the auction. Grandma and I both knew he was lying, but I figured that Grandma was glad he had made up a good excuse for not attending the revival. If Wallace thought Papaw was cheap, that was preferable to him finding out that he was an atheist.
If an atheist was sitting in Pisgah Methodist that night, he would have turned into a Christian by eight o’clock. Wallace could not only preach as good as Billy Graham, he could sing, too.When he sang “In the Garden,” I thought he sounded just like Frankie Avalon. Before the collection plate was passed around, he testified about his past and told the story of his conversion. He changed it up a little from what he had told Grandma and me. In this version, the girl gave him a diamond necklace instead of earrings and he ate seafood instead of roast. They were small details, but it bothered me some. My doubts fled though when he began reciting his adventures in Uganda.The hardships he had faced! Sleeping on the ground with wild animals nearby, eating roots and berries when he got lost in the jungle, and he had nearly been killed by natives wearing nothing but strips of cloth between their legs. The women were bare-breasted, didn’t know to cover their nakedness, he said. But before he left the country, Wallace had those women in dresses sitting on a bench in the grass-roofed church he built with our donations. He saved fourteen sinners the first night, a record for Pisgah Methodist.
Papaw stayed up in Jackson the entire week, calling every night with another reason he couldn’t come home. His truck blew a gasket, he had upset stomach, and his cousin needed his help on a roof leak.
Mama didn’t stay away though. She came home on Wednesday because Ned Pottle’s wife went to visit her sister in Tennessee and he showed up at Cybil’s with a suitcase filled with gin and lacy underwear he had bought for mutual enjoyment that night. “I wasn’t about to be a spoke in that wheel,” Mama said, throwing her own suitcase filled with uninteresting underwear on the bed. “We’ll have to bunk in together,” she said.
Grandma was furious, but with Wallace in the house, she kept her voice low. “You best behave, Frieda. I won’t have you ruining Brother Ebert’s visit.”
She needn’t have worried. Wallace took one look at Mama and fell in love. He didn’t care that she cussed, smoked, imbibed spirits, and showed a lot of cleavage. I think he secretly wished he was back in Uganda, where Mama would be running around bare-breasted with her cigarette and a glass of whiskey.
All of the attention Wallace had lavished on me, asking me to play the flute for him, listening to my Spanish recitations, complimenting my good grades, and so on, vanished the moment Mama told him she could play the piano and knew how to cha-cha. I didn’t know she could do the cha-cha, but she put a record on the hi-fi and swiveled her hips like she was born in Latin America. By Thursday Wallace was doing the cha-cha nearly as good as Mama.
The biggest surprise occurred that night.When I went into Mama’s room to change into Sunday clothes for the revival meeting, Mama was pulling a ruffled high-neck blouse from her closet. “Where are you going?” I asked as she snaked her hips into a dull black skirt.
“Revival,” she said. “Can I borrow your circle pin?”
“You’re going to church with us?”
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nbsp; “Wallace invited me personally. He said it would mean a lot to him if I would come hear him preach.”
I handed over the pin with a glad heart. Now I understood. All this attention he had been showing Mama was just a ruse to save her sinful soul. I, on the other hand, was already saved (at least that’s what he thought), and that was the reason Wallace had chosen to spend so much time with her rather than me.
Mama swept into Pisgah Methodist and strutted down the aisle like she was a model on a runway in New York City. After she took her seat beside me, she looked up at Wallace with a big grin on her face that she held the entire two hours Wallace sang and preached. He was inspired that night. As he talked, he became increasingly passionate, throwing off his suit coat, flailing his arms every which way with sweat streaming down his face. He bounced full circle around the pulpit, jumped down to the altar, and boogied back and forth down the aisle.When he neared our pew and Mama caught his eye, he stopped dead still and fell silent. Mama fingered her circle pin and crossed her legs.Then she blew him a kiss and fell back on the pew laughing loud enough to be heard three pews over. All eyes in Pisgah church were swiveled around to us and Grandma’s face turned as white as the altar cloth. I think my face was the color of blood.
“Mortified” was what Grandma said as we walked to the car.“Frieda is a shameless hussy. I thought she was sincere about coming tonight and had so hoped she would find salvation, but just look how she acted. I’m never going to be able to hold my head up in church again.”