What I Really Think of You

by M. E. Kerr

  In between that happening and our finding out about it, my whole life changed. During that in-between time, long after the seed time, was the harvest, and I’ll tell you this about those harvests from my own experience. You don’t see them coming. That’s what amazes me.

  Brother Dudley’d been on for hours without one leg growing, and no visible healing. It was the lights of the cameras making people reluctant, Daddy said when we stopped for sandwiches, and the strangers among us, so many faces unfamiliar to us, newspeople and people sneaking in, claiming they were always at them things. It was the restlessness in the crowd, everyone watching the door, waiting for Bobby John and Dr. Pegler. The air was too charged up, Daddy said, the only thing to do was go in the same direction.

  Daddy went on at the stroke of ten, wearing his silver-lined coat, jumping suddenly like an exclamation point turning into a comma while he shouted at them: “SINNNNN—NERS!”

  Crouched down, his fist in his palm where he’d punched it.

  A silence that sent a chill up your spine.

  Whispered next, soft but like the hissing sound of a rattle on a big snake’s tail: “Sinners. … What are you here for?” a little louder, “Why did you come here?” and louder, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

  You could feel people’s hearts beating, feel everything stopped but the heartbeats, and the red eye of the TV camera.

  “WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR?”

  “To get saved,” someone.

  “WHAT?”

  “To get saved,” more.

  “WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?”

  “To get SAVED!”

  “GOD!” Daddy shouted. “My high tower, and my refuge, and my Savior!”

  “My high tower!” Mrs. Bunch called out.

  “My HIGH tower!”—Daddy.

  Then when I looked up, raising my hands and my eyes with everyone, while we shouted it out, I saw him.

  Saw him on his long legs coming in the pew, tie hanging down, blue eyes seeing mine, squeezing past people until he was at my side.

  Said, “Opal,” leaning down, warm breath near my ear, then, “Hi.”

  “Bud,” all I could manage.

  “My HIGH tower!” Daddy shouted.

  “My HIGH tower!”—everyone. Me. Bud.

  “My REFUGE! My SAVIOR!”

  “My REFUGE!”—everyone. Me. Bud. “My SAVIOR!”

  Bud Pegler put his hands out, palms up to receive the spirit, shouted out, shouted, “Yes, Jesus!”

  “YES, JESUS!”—others.

  “JE-SUS!”—everyone.

  “YES, JE-SUS!” everyone shouted.

  Then I did. “Yes, Je-sus!”

  We all were, and I knew something soon as we all were, with the organ starting, choir beginning softly:

  “When love shines in,

  How the heart is tuned to singing,

  knew I belonged there and they were my own.

  Knew he belonged there.

  Even in the bright lights, in the camera’s eye beaming out at us, when I saw Mum come down from the choir, that look in her eye, I felt my heart leap under my dress, but not the old wild fearful way now. My eyes couldn’t get enough of her, loving her thick legs moving side to side that way, beginning, loving her fat arms reaching up, listening to her, watching her big, sweet body swaying, Bud’s body swaying beside my own, everyone moving back and forth, music lifting us up, swaying back and forth. I was going up so high. I was on a climb. I was reaching so high that suddenly Bud’s hand reached high to grab mine, holding mine but not able to keep me down until I fell.

  I fell.

  I don’t know how long I was down, Mum said not that long, but I came up singing.

  I came up and I was singing, the way I’d always thought I could, just as loud and not in any language that I ever heard before, just as loud and in my own voice, soaking wet all over me, cameras going, I could see their red eyes on me, tiny red living specks, and I had tongues. I felt my body giving room to my soul while it burst into full bloom.

  Bud Pegler drove me home, while Daddy and Mum went down to bail out Bobby John. The Soaking was still going on.

  “It was worth coming home to hear you, Opal,” Bud said.

  We were coming up from The Hollow in the starry night.

  “Well, it just happened.”

  “Yes, God. It happened.”

  “But I never thought my own brother would do a thing like that.”

  “If I’d known it was Bobby John, I don’t think I’d have come all the way from Connecticut ninety miles an hour.” He looked at me, smiling, the whitest teeth. “I’m glad I did now.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was working at a nursery, landscaping, gardening. I was having all these arguments in my head with my father.”

  “Daddy and Bobby John are always arguing, too.”

  “Ever since my father got on TV, we haven’t gotten along well. I have trouble with the TV part of his ministry, I guess.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “After a while you don’t even notice you’re on camera.”

  Bud laughed real hard at that.

  “Well, you don’t I said.

  He reached down and snapped on the radio. He put his long arm on the back of the seat behind my head. I had my hands folded and could see the moons up on the nails of my right fingers. I let my head drop back, turned my cheek to the sleeve of his coat.

  Some song came on, I don’t know—one of them. We rode along without talking, tired and full in the spirit. I thought of me thinking of everyone going two by two past my window, thought of myself with nothing on but my panties, those hot nights back in my room, like the speck not knowing about the glow.

  I finally knew all the truth about the glow, driving up from The Hollow in the summer night. No glow could ever be one if it didn’t start off a speck.

  That’s what amazed me.

  Fourteen

  JESSE PEGLER

  NEAR MIDNIGHT MY BROTHER called to say that he was in Seaville, that he’d gone directly to The Helping Hand Tabernacle, and that he’d be home as soon as he dropped off Opal Ringer.

  My father was already asleep in bed, exhausted from the ordeal with Bobby John. I’d just come back from making the ACE presentation at The Last Dance.

  Mother and Donald decided to let my father sleep; he’d had too much excitement for one day. He had to be up early for I’s Up to You.

  I went up to my room changed into my pajamas, and listened to the radio in the dark. When I heard my mother’s whoop of joy downstairs, I knew Bud had come through the front door.

  I got up and put on my robe.

  I stalled around a little, waiting for the fireworks to end.

  When I finally went down the staircase, he was still standing in the hall, his suitcase at his feet, somehow taller. He had on a suit and a shirt and a tie.

  “Hey! Jesse!” he shouted up at me, and the next thing I knew I was trying to keep from bawling myself (tears were running down my mother’s face; even Donald was teary eyed), and I was taking the steps by twos, running toward him.

  “Jesse! Jesse!” And he hugged me hard.

  We let go of each other and I gave him a punch on the arm, laughing up at him, our eyes meeting for the first time. He had this look on his face, familiar and not, and for a minute I just stared at him to try and figure out what there was about the look, until he said, “Thank you, Jesus.” He shut his eyes. “Oh, thank you, Jesus,” serious, a whisper, and I saw my father, the same way my father must have always seen himself, younger, yes, but it was unmistakably him.

  After Donald left, I went back up to bed, to give my mother a chance to talk with Bud alone.

  When he finally came into our bedroom, he talked to me as he undressed, small talk, checking to be sure our father really was okay, saying he was a little worried about Mother, she seemed down.

  He was getting into his pajama bottoms when he finally said, “I was about ready to come home, anyway.�
��

  “To stay?”

  “For a while.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I might go to Western Bible Institute.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m bushed,” he said.

  I said so was I.

  He didn’t ask about Seal. He said it felt good to be back, he’d missed everyone, he’d watched It’s Up to You every week.

  “You were so close,” I said. “Why didn’t you just come home for a weekend if you missed everyone so much?”

  He was sitting there bare chested, in his pajama bottoms, finishing a Marlboro, smoking the way he always had, no hands, the cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth, smoking curling up past his face.

  “I wanted to do a lot of thinking,” he said.

  Then he put out his cigarette and said, “Hey, let’s get some sleep. Do you want to pray with me first?” and he was actually getting down on his knees.

  I pretended to sleep late the next morning so my father and Bud could enjoy their reunion.

  My father made the most of it. He got Bud to go on camera with him, and Bud stood in the receiving line with him after the service was over.

  My mother and father and Bud had breakfast together after It’s Up to You, and I straggled in after they were finished. My mother was in the kitchen, and Bud and my father were sitting over coffee.

  “… and you don’t think Jesus would have taken advantage of television to get His message across?” my father was saying as I strolled into the dining room.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “I’m just saying I wouldn’t want a television ministry,” Bud said. “I’d be happy in a little church somewhere in the sticks.”

  “Good morning, son,” said my father. “… Are you too good for television?”

  “No, I’m not too good for it! Hi, Jesse.”

  “Pull up a chair, Jesse, son. … I asked you if you don’t think Jesus would have taken advantage of television to get His message across?”

  “I’m not talking about Jesus now,” Bud said. “I’m talking about me.”

  “Me me me,” my father said.

  So nothing’d changed in that department.

  I sat there and let them go at it.

  After breakfast, Bud said he’d like to drive around Seaville.

  “Does that sound good to you, Jesse?” he asked me.

  I thought he probably wanted to get out of the house, get away from Dad. I gave him a wink and a smile and we took off.

  On our way into town, I said, “I hate the tube, too. If you ask me, it’s Dad’s ego trip.”

  Bud said, “Well, he was right about Jesus. Jesus spoke to crowds whenever he could. There were thousands at the Sermon on the Mount.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  When we got to Seaville, we drove down Main Street, past St. Luke’s, where workers were taking down the tent and the lights from The Last Dance.

  I told him one of the reasons Mom might have seemed “down” was she couldn’t go to many things with Dad anymore. Dad always got mobbed. I told him how they’d decided not to go to the dance, and how disappointed Mom was.

  “She doesn’t have enough contact with people,” Bud said.

  “She runs ACORN,” I said. “Seal helps her with it.”

  “ACORN is all done by correspondence,” Bud said. “Mom likes the dinner on the ground, gather round kind of thing.”

  “Seal’s helping her with ACORN,” I said.

  “I heard you the first time,” Bud said. “I talked with Seal this morning. She’s going with Dickie Cloward now.”

  I felt as if I was falling a long way down.

  We drove from Main Street to Seaville High, and around the back to the stadium, where we parked for a while, and Bud smoked.

  “I might skip Western Bible and stick around for a while.”

  “For Mom’s sake,” I said.

  “Dad needs me, too.”

  “You’d work for ACE?”

  “All ACE really is, is him,” said Bud.

  “And Donald.”

  “Yep.”

  “Don’t forget Divine Donald,” I snickered, and I looked across at Bud, but he wasn’t picking up on the old cue.

  He finally said, “I’ve missed Dad.”

  He didn’t say me.

  He didn’t even say Mom.

  He said he missed Dad.

  Then he changed the subject. “Something really extraordinary happened at The Helping Hand Tabernacle last night,” he began, and that was when I first heard about Opal.

  It’s been about six months now, and as Donald would say, she’s the hottest ticket in town.

  They come from far and wide to see Opal, and hear her sing in tongues. Since her one and only TV appearance the night of the Soaking, she’s become the newest Seaville celebrity.

  I haven’t gone to see her. I don’t think I will. It’s not because I’m not curious. I am.

  But for a while anyway, I’m not going to any church.

  “Oh, now you’re going through that stage,” my mother says. “First Bud, now you.”

  My father doesn’t say much, not to me, anyway. He’s busy battling with Bud, the color back in his cheeks, and the sparkle in his eyes again. Sunday mornings they star together on the white balcony, in matching blue robes with gold tassels. You’ve probably seen them, and just before they come into view, you’ve probably seen

  Next month the two of them are taking a Winning Rally to England and Australia.

  “One day,” my mother says, “your name will be up there with theirs.”

  I never tell her that’s what I’m most afraid of.

  Fifteen

  OPAL RINGER

  YOU ALL KNOW THE rest.

  Bud often comes to hear me, says someday he hopes I’ll be on one of their shows. He’s not the only one who’s asked me to go on the TV. I’ve been asked by famous TV shows besides It’s Up to You, and I’ve been asked by people who’ve got nothing to do with the Lord, and offered money.

  But I belong to The Helping Hand Tabernacle. You have to come down to The Hollow to hear me.

  One time way far back, I made a wish on a cookie wrapper going up in flames, that you all’d really like me.

  Now you come to hear me sing tongues, so many of you Daddy says it’s like flies on the sweet cake. He has D. Y. and Bobby John down at the door, seeing we got room before we let you in.

  We’ve got the CheckCheek installed now and Daddy does the offering with a computer.

  You all come but him. Jesse doesn’t come.

  Bud says, “He’s lost, we have to pray for Jesse, Opal,” and it’s something we can do together without getting into trouble. Me and him has seen the Devil’s face, sweet nights when we slip, for there’s the sin in us same as there’s the spirit.

  If I was to say that finally Opal Ringer was going to tell you what she really thinks of you, would you laugh?

  I love you, yes I love you. When The Rapture comes, I want you all along, somehow, someway, every last one of you, ascending with me.

  When The Rapture comes, I hope you’re there.

  I know all your faces so well.

  THE END

  A Personal History by M. E. Kerr

  My real name is Marijane Meaker.

  When I first came to New York City from the University of Missouri, I wanted to be a writer. To be a writer back then, one needed to have an agent. I sent stories out to a long list of agents, but no one wanted to represent me. So, I decided to buy some expensive stationery and become my own agent. All of my clients were me with made-up names and backgrounds. “Vin Packer” was a male writer of mystery and suspense. “Edgar and Mamie Stone” were an elderly couple from Maine who wrote confession stories. (They lived far away, so editors would not invite them for lunch.) “Laura Winston” wrote short stories for magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal. “Mary James” wrote only for Scholastic. Her bestseller is Shoebag, a book about a cock
roach who turns into a little boy.

  My most successful writer was Vin Packer. I wrote twenty-one paperback suspense novels as Packer. When I wanted to take credit for these books, my editor told me I could not, because Vin Packer was the bestselling author—not Marijane Meaker.

  I was friends with Louise Fitzhugh—author of Harriet the Spy—who lived near me in New York City. We often took time away from our writing to have lunch, and we would gripe about writing being such hard work. Louise would claim that writing suspense novels was easier than writing for children because you could rob and murder and include other “fun things.” I’d answer that children’s writing seemed much easier; describing adults from a kid’s eye, writing about school and siblings—there was endless material.

  I asked Louise what children’s book she would recommend, and she said I’d probably like Paul Zindel’s The Pigman, a book for children slightly older than her audience. I did like it, a lot, and I decided my next book would be a teenage one (at the time, we didn’t use the term “YA” to describe that genre). I knew I would need yet another pseudonym for this venture, so I invented one, a take-off on my last name, Meaker: M. E. Kerr. (Louise, on the other hand, never tried to write for adults. She was a very good artist, and her internal quarrel was whether to be a writer or a painter.)

  Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! was my first Kerr novel. The story of an overweight and sassy fifteen-year-old girl from Brooklyn, New York, Dinky was an immediate success. Between 1972 and 2009, thirty-six editions were published in five languages.

  Gentlehands, a novel as successful as Dinky but without the humor, is a romance between a small-town boy and a rich, sophisticated Hamptons summer girl. The nickname of the boy’s grandfather is Gentlehands, but he is anything but gentle. An escaped Holocaust concentration camp guard, he once took pleasure in torturing the female prisoners. His American family does not know about his past until the authorities track him down. Harrowing as the story is, the New York Times called it “important and useful as an introduction to the grotesque character of the Nazi period.”

  One of the hardest books for me to write was Little Little, my book about dwarfs. I kept worrying that I wouldn’t get my little heroine’s voice right. How would someone like that feel, a child so unlike others? After a while, I finally realized we had a lot in common. As a gay youngster, with no one I knew who was gay, I had no peers, no one like me to befriend—just like my teenage dwarf. She finally goes to a meeting of little people and finds friends, just as years later I finally met others like me in New York City.