“God never closes His eyes,” Freda said.
“God has no eyes.”
“God is all eyes.”
Myron looked behind him. “Monster!” he yelled.
“He sees you now, Myron. He sees us all. He wants you to come inside.”
“No, there are flames at the door. He won’t let me in.”
Freda waved her arms. “There are no flames,” she said.
But I think she was wrong. Myron tucked himself back in and zipped up his pants. Just before he turned to go, I was sure I saw the reflection of a fire in his eyes. I knew the boy who had taken his money was Zack Holler, and I knew what he’d done to earn Myron’s five dollars.
I ran all the way home, talking to God in my private language so I wouldn’t have to think about Myron and Zack. But I kept seeing Myron on his knees. I hoped he wouldn’t pop out of any bushes tonight. He wanted to piss on us all. I didn’t understand, exactly, but I couldn’t say I thought he was wrong. I saw Zack Holler grinning, taking the money, zipping up his pants. I wondered what pleasure there was in any of this.
I kept praying, hoping for answers but not knowing enough to ask the right questions. My house was dark. That was a relief. I hoped my parents were asleep. I slipped inside, muttering a final amen as I tiptoed toward the stairs.
“Lizzie,” Mom said, “what’s that gibberish?”
I had to grab my chest to keep my heart from jumping. It beat so hard I felt I could almost touch it.
“Lizzie? What’re you saying?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“I heard you talking crazy.”
“You scared me.”
“Tell me what you were saying.” She kept walking toward me. I edged backward, inch by inch, until I hit the wall.
“It was only a prayer,” I said.
“Where’ve you been?”
“I told you before I left.”
“Tell me again.”
“I went to a movie with Rita.”
“Don’t lie to me.” She grabbed my shirt. “Don’t you dare lie to me.” She was too weak to hold me, but she kept me cornered. I had a choice: shove her down or listen. “Never mind,” she said. “I know where you were.”
She’d tricked me. I was no longer a liar — I’d been trapped. I said, “Did you follow me?”
“I didn’t have to.”
“Then how?”
“Arlen told me.”
“I might have known.”
“I didn’t believe her. I said, ‘Lizzie wouldn’t lie to me.’ But you showed me to be the fool, didn’t you?”
“Mom, that’s not why—”
“I wish I could slap some sense into you.”
“Why don’t you?”
“You’re too old.” She waved her fingers in my face. “I’m too damn old if you want to know the truth.” She let her hands drop to her sides. “There,” she said, “I hope you’re satisfied.”
She left me that way, jammed up in the corner, too ashamed to move. I wondered where Daddy was. He’d thrash me and be done with it; he’d forbid me to pray with Freda Graves, tie me to a chair if he had to, lock me in my room on Tuesday nights.
Mother sat alone in the dark living room. I stood at the doorway, the light of the hallway at my back, my face in shadow. I said, “I’m trying to be good.”
“Well, that’s just it,” Mom said. “I hardly know you these days. It makes me wonder what you’re learning from that woman.” She was only a voice in the unlit room.
“Look at yourself,” she whispered. I imagined my silhouette, my scrawny neck, my long arms. “You’re almost a woman. How can I keep you from doing whatever it is you want to do? You’re my daughter, but you’re not mine. I know the difference. But I have to speak what’s on my mind. I blame myself for what happened to Nina. I blame myself for holding my tongue when I should have been talking. I saw her future, saw her belly swell to bursting in my dreams — this before she was even pregnant, before she even met Billy. Your sister had rocks for brains when it came to boys, like one half of her body shut the other half off. She itched. You could see it plain as a rash rising up on her back. I should have strapped her to her bed, bolted her door, barred her windows till that fever passed. Well, you’d do it for a cat to save its skin. You’d shut a cat in the cellar to keep those Toms away, but my own daughter, I did nothing for her.”
“I’m not like Nina,” I said. I was still hoping that was true.
“You can go as far one direction as the other. What’s that woman teaching you?”
I had to think. We spent our nights discussing sin and temptation. I knew the words the devil whispered; I’d heard the story of a child born with her heart unfinished, her ears unformed, but the mysteries of human kindness had not been revealed to me.
“She’s teaching us what’s in the Bible,” I finally said.
“God didn’t write the Bible, Lizzie. God has no hands. Men wrote it. Then more men translated it and even more read it. There’s a lot of room for mistakes. You have to trust your own head.”
Whoever would have thought the devil would stoop so low as to use my own mother to put doubt in me? Whoever would have thought someone as crazy as the devil would resort to logic to get his way? He was a sly one, but he couldn’t fool me. I wasn’t tempted. I didn’t want any part of Mother’s distant God, who couldn’t write in stone, her God with no hands, her God with two clean stumps where his wrists should be. He looked like Lanfear Deets, his face smooth and stupid, blank as worn wood. Instead of one hand, he had none. My God had huge hands, to strike down the wicked and raise up the blessed.
If I followed every one of His laws and didn’t falter, I surely would be saved. When I woke from death, the keys to the kingdom would already be in my hand. A girl like me needed to be told how to be good. Deciding for myself was too risky. I could blow it anytime. I could piss it all away like Myron Evans, I could start thinking God had no eyes and no hands — then who would stop me? My mother was the most decent person I knew, but I could see what happened when you didn’t pay attention to the rules. The devil had crawled right into her ear and was using her to get to me.
“Why do you think your daddy was so hard on Nina?” she said. She didn’t wait for an answer. “Because he believed in certain laws. Because he knew a lot about right and wrong, what the Bible and all those good Lutherans had to say about girls who got themselves in trouble. He forgot to think, Lizzie. He forgot to love, and he forgot to forgive — his own child, and he forgot that.”
I was afraid. I didn’t know enough to argue. Mother’s words made terrifying sense. I wanted to save her. I didn’t want to be alone in Heaven with Freda Graves and Joanna Foot. I didn’t want to spend eternity listening to the Lockwood twins talking in rhyme.
This was my first trial. The real measure of my faith began a week later.
20
THE DAYS of August loomed before me, hot and dead. People seemed to wade down the sidewalks, their bodies waffling at the dizzy height of afternoon. A white sun scorched the grass. In Willis, we gave up on sprinklers, saving our water for the farmers and letting our own lawns go stiff and yellow. The grasshoppers got so mean you couldn’t walk through a field barelegged. Their crushed bodies littered the parched streets and stuck in the grille of Daddy’s truck. But the dark of evening still pulled a chill down from the mountains, a gust straight off the glaciers.
We sat on the porch one Sunday evening, my mother and father and I, in our after-dinner silence. I hugged myself, thinking I’d have to go inside soon and find a sweatshirt. And when I rose, Mother or Father would say, “Are you cold?” The words would cut between us, and I would have to answer. There would be other words when I returned, polite and ordinary.