by M. E. Kerr
I opened my eyes in time to see V. Chicken headed past my row to sit ahead of me two rows.
That was my first glimpse of him.
Once, in the cafeteria at Central High, six or seven of you come to where I was eating my peanut-butter sandwich and plunked yourselves down at the table.
There’s not a one of you knows the way something sinks inside you when you’re about to be picked on. The blood in your veins starts pulsing and you think they could see your heart jumping under your clothes like something small and alive caught under your sweater.
“Opal,” one of you started in, “I hear down at your church you do something called talking in tongues.”
I never said nothing back.
“Can you talk in tongues, Opal?”
“Let’s hear it, Opal.”
“Is it like this, Opal? Cook a look a book a dook a duck.”
“No, it’s more like blocket tockety tookety truck.”
All getting into the act, laughing, speaking gibberish—do you remember that day?
Daddy told me that night, “They was just curious, Opal. Next time tell them calmly how we believe when certain people receive the Holy Spirit they find a mysterious language, described in I Corinthians XII tell ’em, the heavenly language of angels.”
“That’d go over real big,” said Bobby John. “Just keep your mouth shut, Opal. That’s all you can do.”
“Shush. Hush”—Mum. “They don’t know anything down to that high school. Just tell them once your own mum thought the whole idea of tongues was funny as a chicken with its head off until the day she seen the light.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Daddy, who’d rather hear Mum do tongues than anyone at The Hand.
Even I got chills sometimes hearing her, after all this time.
“What neither of you understand,” said Bobby John, “is that them high-school kids aren’t interested in tongues, they’re out to get you!”
“Then get them back!” Daddy shouted. “Don’t come bellyaching to this supper table with your mum’s best meat loaf spread before you, and all the blessings of the Lord your birthright! Don’t come complaining of the tares when the Lord Jesus said wheat and tares will grow together, the good and the bad both at the same time! Get your eyes on wheat, not tares!”
“Okay, amen,” said Bobby John. “I’m sorry, Mum.”
“Daddy’s had a hard day, too,” she said.
I muttered, “I’d like to know how to get them back.”
“Speak up, Opal!”—Daddy.
“She said she’d like to know how to get them back,” said Bobby John.
“A girl with a wasting disease, in a leg brace, came to me today for no other reason than a simple blessing,” said Daddy. “And you think you got troubles.”
He could always top me.
Now about what I thought when I first laid eyes on him.
At first I thought it was him. Bud.
I thought it was Bud back, looked so much like him.
I wanted to die of shame seeing him see me there in The Hand with all the sick.
I wanted to kill V. Chicken.
I remembered the sentence again, this time the words sinking like lead in the center of my insides: “Opal, you’ve got real pretty eyes, and someday—”
Then when I knew it wasn’t Bud, what’d I think next?
Not much.
On television sometimes they put someone under hypnosis in the police stories, say now think back very carefully: What happened, what exactly happened?
The way I saw him was the way I’d see him today, his tiny hands so small for a boy, his lips always wet-looking, his eyes glancing up at mine with that soft, sweet look, his way of saying my name different from how anyone else ever said it. He called me Oh-pull, stretching it out, making it more.
I go back to then. He had on a blue shirt. I swear his blue eyes were that bright that I could see their color clearly, in the sunlight filtering through the stained-glass windows Daddy still owed for.
We saw each other for the first time in a burst of asthmatic coughing thundering out of Mrs. Turban, who came up from The Hollow for the healing.
He looked around at her. She always sounded as though she was gagging out her last breath. I saw his hairline and the way his hair curled above his collar, or I make that up.
I make it all up.
I don’t remember anything about the first time I laid eyes on him.
I want it as a part of the mystery, but it isn’t mine to have.
All that is mine about that moment is the sight of V. Chicken, and the sickness back inside me, wanting no part of The Hand, wanting to be anyone but Opal Ringer, embarrassed for myself, the speck of my dream that doesn’t know about the glow coming.
And yes, the worst happened.
Sometimes you feel it building.
You don’t—not in your churches. I’ve been to your churches. If anyone was to call out in the spirit in your churches, the usher’d hightail it down the aisle to find out what was wrong.
We called out.
I never did, but I’ve been listening to others call out since before my head came higher than the back of the pew in front of me.
“Oh Lord, thank you!”
“Yes, Jesus!”
“Yes my Lord Jesus!”
Call out, hold your palms up like you’re feeling for rain. The Power comes in through the palms.
K. C. Keck was receiving those for healing up by the altar railing. People were filing up the aisle. The choir was singing softly: “Some of these days I’m going home where no sorrow ever comes. …”
When they came to the part that goes “And I’m gonna … sit down beside my Jesus … Lord, I’m gonna …” a man in the aisle began to stamp his feet and shout, “Hallelujah!”
Others shouted it, too. “HALLELUJAH!”
People were moving to the music. People were moving.
Beside me, Mrs. Bunch said, “It’s starting, Jesus!”
Normally I was more pleased than anyone when it started; I was at least as pleased as anyone. Because it didn’t always get off the ground. When it did, we got happy, and the offering was always bigger, and Daddy’s face relaxed. … I’m coming to Mum.
A woman in the aisle purely screamed, “Yes! In that house on the other side!”
Folks joined in. “I’m gonna shake hands with the elders, Lord!”
Began shaking hands, everyone, with the ones in front, in back, beside.
At the altar they were all laying hands on a woman kneeling, and K. C. Keck had come forward, was standing there before us with his eyes shut, his arms in front of him, palms up, like he was ready to catch something. He began shouting, “Someone is with us today who feels The Spirit healing him or her. Someone is with us today who knows the Lord Jesus right this minute is working a miracle! Someone feels it! Someone wants to shout with joy!”
“Praise the Lord!” shouted from everywhere. Palms up. Faces cut with smiles and lit up with the light.
I shut my eyes not to see V. Chicken and him, after I saw them give each other these looks.
I opened my eyes to hear the shout: “The pain is gone!”
“Praise the Lord”—everyone, turning to look behind them, and coming forward, carrying her crutch, was none other than Diane-Young Cheek from Central High. My brother had been trying to get her saved for months.
“I don’t need it!” and she was shaking her crutch, walking down the aisle with tears coming from the center of a hurricane of hair.
“Praise the Lord!”—everyone.
Diane-Young Cheek kneeled down at the railing while K. C. Keck kneeled with her, his arm drawing Diane-Young to him, their eyes closed. Keck, praying.
Then Mum came away from the choir, and crossed to the stairs, and I knew what would happen next, knew what V. Chicken and him would have to take back to tell all of you.
I watched Mum go down the stairs, that certain look on her face, blank eyed, smiling, carrying her head hi
gh.
Mum kneeled down with Keck, and Diane-Young Cheek, who was prone, slain in the spirit, spread out facedown on the altar rug like she’d been shot from behind.
The choir stopped singing.
The stillness moved in like heavy fog.
I felt my face get hot with shame, my heart going, waiting for her, hating them for being there and making me see Mum through their cold eyes, hating them for how my heart turned against my own around them.
Mum began.
“Theo lam day, theo ta turn, theo, theo ta turn, theo theo—” and Mum was straightening up while she did tongues, with the sun like an omen knifing through the stained-glass windows and pointing in her sweet face. Very slowly her big body began to sway.
People began calling out, “Oh yes! Yes!”
“Theo ta ta, theo ta ta—”
“Yes, Jesus! Yes!”
“Theo, theo,” and Mum’s feet began this slow-motion march, faster into a jerky little jig, until her steps grew wider, sweeping her around, almost like she was waltzing by herself.
She was dancing in the spirit, dancing away, struck by a music from deep inside of her, so powerful it didn’t matter to her no more she was fat.
Four
JESSE PEGLER
ONE DAY OPAL WOULD ask me what I really thought of her the very first time I ever saw her.
Opal never asked you what you thought, she asked you what you really thought, as though she knew when you said what you thought, you always held something back.
I told her I thought she looked embarrassed because we’d come to the healing. (“Embarrassed?” she said. “Is that your name for it?”)
I didn’t tell her what I really thought when I first saw that little face peering back at me.
That face reminded me of the face my grandmother made on pies before she’d bake them. She’d carve the eyes and nose and mouth into the dough, and there’d be this frightened-looking little white pie face.
She wouldn’t make them smile and she wouldn’t make them frown, because she said after all we had to eat them, didn’t we?
Maybe Grandma didn’t intend those pie faces to look so terrified, but they always looked to me like they knew we intended to devour them.
Something else, too, about the very first time I saw Opal.
When her mother went into tongues, I saw myself when I was four, sitting under the tent beside my folks, while my grandfather, Reverend Jesse Cannon, fell to his knees onstage, and cawed like a crow.
He’d finished leading us all in prayer before it happened, and once he got to his knees and made those noises, everyone around us was calling out, “Jee-sus! Praise the Lord!”
“What’s happened to Grandpa?” I asked.
These sounds were sputtering out of him like blood from a fresh wound, and the eyes in his face were stark and watery like the breathless, pastel eyes of a fish at the end of a hook.
“He has tongues,” my father said. “Shhhh.”
And once I knew he intended what he was doing up there, my bones felt as though they were melting away in the intense heat of my own humiliation.
“He’s raptured.” My mother smiled down at me, and tried to take my hand, which I yanked away, wanting no part of her flesh and blood and weirdness.
I was flung back in time when I first saw Opal Ringer, suffering with her without her ever knowing it.
“Embarrassed?” she would say much later. “Is that your name for it?”
At the end of the service Seal grabbed my hand—hers was warm and wet—and she said excitedly, “Oh wow, Jesse!” whispering, “I never saw anything like that, did you?”
“Yes.”
“Not like that,” she said as though there could be no way I could have, and she began leading me down the aisle, hurrying, threading our way through the crowd.
I should have known I could count on Seal not to get scared or silly like some outsiders did their first time. Years ago when we were doing services under the tent, kids from nearby towns would come out on their bicycles to “see the show.”
There was one song my grandmother sang that always cracked them up. It was called “I Come to the Garden Alone.” The line that got to them was “… and the voice I hear, fatting on my ear …” They’d guffaw and nudge each other, pretend they were about to keel over, and hold their ears.
Other kids just beat it out of there, like their clothes were suddenly on fire, particularly when tongues started.
I remember bawling once when I was little, because I thought they were all watching us the way they’d watch a freak show. Bud said not to get into feeling sorry for myself; a lot of the stuff that went on under the tent did, look bizarre to outsiders. Face it, we’re bizarre, Bud said, but we’ve got good intentions and that’s all that counts.
“I just wish we could have good intentions without being bizarre,” I said.
“I just wish I was King of England,” Bud said. “I just wish I was God Almighty. Don’t waste your wishes. Take advantage of your advantages.”
“You sound like Dad.”
“Thanks. That’s who I intend to sound like.”
That was good old Bud, in the good old days.
“Seal,” I said, as she pulled me along, “they’re going to need a second healing if we keep knocking people around to get to the door.”
Over her shoulder she said, “I want to get to her before she’s surrounded,” and yanked me more steps forward.
“Get to who?”
“Diane-Young Cheek.” She stopped to whisper in my ear. “Better known as ‘Why Die?’ or ‘Die Young.’ She’s the one who just got healed.”
“What did she have wrong with her?” We were in motion again.
“She jumped out the gym window.”
We were stopped by an old man leaving a pew, waiting for his wife to follow.
Seal said, “Just around the time Bud left, she took a dive right onto the pavement by the parking lot. She’s lucky to be alive.”
Down near the door, Diane-Young Cheek was sandwiched between Reverend Ringer and the healer.
I strained for a closer look at her, but a large woman at the end of the aisle kept getting in my way. All I could see of Diane-Young was this great mop of curly, brown hair, attached to this long pole of a body. She was carrying her crutch, a smile flickering and fading in the center of the mop, like a little neon light blinking in a sign. I tried to imagine those tiny eyes behind the pink lenses looking out a window down at the pavement, panicked, like the faces I always imagined went with the voices we often heard over our Challenge hot line. “I’m into dope and I don’t want to live anymore.” (Jesus wants you to win. So do we.) “I’m going to take pills.” (Before you do another thing, will you pray with me?)
Just then the face of Opal Ringer came between her face and mine for a few fleeting seconds. It was the second time I saw her. She didn’t see me. I saw her tense profile. She was waiting to get out the door, and I could see the anxious frown on her face. I could sense how badly she wanted to get away from there, and in that quick moment before she disappeared from sight, I felt like running after her, telling her I knew how it was.
I was taking all that in, the way you can in the midst of a lot of other things feel some strange impulse you don’t act on, while other things are in motion.
Then I realized the large woman at the end of the aisle was Opal Ringer’s mother, the one who’d just done tongues. People passing by her were thanking her for dancing in the spirit, and she was nodding, saying, “Oh, praise the Lord,” but she was looking straight at me.
I looked behind me and then back at her, and she kept nodding, as if to say yes, it was me she was waiting for. All smiles.
We came closer and she reached out for me. She cried, “Bud! You’ve come home! Oh, thank Jesus!”
On the way home, Seal made me promise that I’d take Opal Ringer to something—a movie, a picnic at the beach, something special, Seal said, “So I can still look Arnelle in the eye a
fter we get Diane-Young on It’s Up to You.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” I said.
I remember Bud used to call her Seal Slavedriver sometimes, because she never gave up on an idea she got.
The afternoon we drove down to Central High to pick up Diane-Young and take her to meet my father, Seal slammed her elbow into my side.
“We’ve come to the bridge,” she said. “There’s Opal.”
“I don’t even know her,” I complained.
“That’s why I want you to introduce yourself,” Seal said. “Now.”
Five
OPAL RINGER
I GUESS WHEN YOU’VE got money, you can do anything. I’ve known that to be true. How else would Diane-Young Cheek get herself transferred over to Central High, after she jumped out the gym window of Seaville High?
I remember her when she first showed up at Central, right in the middle of March, like doesn’t everybody start new in a school in dead winter? Changing schools didn’t stop the talk. But she was there one morning, limping down our halls on her crutch, just like anyone whose daddy owned CheckCheek Security, Inc., would go to Central.
She was this short, little, tough-talking tomboy, with wild brown hair that looked like big crows had made a nest on top of her head. Sitting on all that hair was a green cap, with CAT on it in gold, she wore with the peak in back. She had these bright-pink prescription glasses in silver frames, and silver braces all up and down her top and bottom teeth. She always wore corduroy Levi’s and hooded sweat shirts, and big lace-up boots she called “shit kickers.” She always had her radio/cassette over the opposite shoulder from the one with the crutch under it; top ten would blare from it and she’d chew gum in time with the music. You could always find her in the john, between classes, chain-smoking her More cigarettes, telling everyone to just call her D. Y. She said it to their backs because no one at Central knew what to make of her, much less what to say to her. She didn’t fit anyone’s picture of a rich kid, so some decided she was just a crazy, sent down to Central instead of off to Loony Tunes Hospital.