Adelaide Piper

by Beth Webb Hart

  The Mexican man with the mullet from the Kmart line was there, and he was sitting next to a woman who was likely his wife, holding her hand. Am I paranoid or what? I thought as I recalled grabbing Willa out of my cart and running away after he tried to speak to us.

  Ashamed, I vowed to take Willa back to the store the next day to ride the scuffed-up rocking horse.

  What struck me as I passed the biscuits and butter around my table and explained who I was and who had brought me were the vigor and exuberance that each person seemed to share, from the college student to the migrant worker. They all had some remarkable source of power that they seemed to be mutually tapped into, and I caught glimpses of it in the gleams of their eyes. I had never known people like this, who had fire in their gazes and I hoped that the explanation of it would be given in the talk we were about to hear. Keep an open mind, sister.

  When Darla Pelzer got up to give her testimony, I was mesmerized. Though she had poor grammar, an accent as thick as syrup, and an unsightly outfit with sequined butterflies that made her look like a beauty pageant contestant who was past her prime, her story gripped my heart. She had grown up in an alcoholic home. At the age of eight, a teacher had told her that she was unsightly and dense, and those words broke her heart and destroyed her sense of self-worth. Her stepfather had raped her at the age of thirteen, and when she told her mother what had happened, she was promptly thrown out of the house. She left town and married at seventeen, and that ended in divorce less than two years later. She contracted herpes from her first husband, which invaded her body monthly and destroyed whatever shred of self-respect she had left.

  Then she “met Christ” in a women’s shelter outside Atlanta when an evangelist couple named Boochie and Laura Beth Day came through with a message about forgiveness, mercy, and being washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. After her baptism, she enrolled in secretarial school and took a job as a receptionist for a construction company, and that was where she met Dale. He was working on the site to put himself through Bible school, and he married her knowing that her disease could infect him and the children who might come from their union. He prayed over her body on their wedding night, and she had not had any herpes symptoms since that prayer seven years ago, but they had never been able to conceive a child.

  She said that we all have a God-sized void in our hearts and that we try to fill it with all kinds of things—money, alcohol, infidelities, you name it—but that only one thing can fit there: God.

  This hit a nerve.

  “The itch of the soul,” I wrote down on the paper napkin in front of me. Could Darla be suggesting that God was the remedy for this longing? Surely the cure for the emptiness I felt could not actually be found in a cinder-block church on Route 39 in the trashiest part of Williams-town, South Carolina. I had made my pilgrimage to NBU to fill the void, and I would be furious if it had been under my nose all along.

  Still, I kept listening.

  Next Darla said that God had a life purpose for each person in the room. That He had created them and bestowed upon them gifts they were to use for His glory and that worshipping Him and putting those gifts to use for Him were our chief reasons for existing.

  Then she warned that we couldn’t act upon our purposes without understanding the price that Christ paid on the cross for our lives and accepting this as the payment for the debt of our sins. Once we realized this, we were set free from the pasts that bound us and transformed into children of the Light, who would have abundant life in the here and now and eternal life with Christ in heaven. That is, we would rise from the dead the way He did.

  She said that God had been speaking to people in the room in all kinds of ways all of their lives. She described a double rainbow she saw in the Blue Ridge Mountains when she didn’t have two pennies to rub together and had nowhere to lay her head. She mentioned a kind word at just the right time from a social worker who encouraged her to go hear what Boochie and Laura Beth Day had to say. And just last year she had seen a beautiful baby girl in a vivid dream, and she believed God was giving her hope that she would one day be a mother.

  I thought about the wonder that I had been in pursuit of. That I had written about in my poetry and dissected in the works of Marianne Moore and William Blake. Could the One on the shoulder of St. Christopher scratch the itch of my soul? Could He have been talking to me in all those moments of splendor that I could recall: the Pawleys Island sunsets, the adopted kitten, and the well water that took the swelling out of my throat?

  These thoughts were quickly overshadowed by a concern related to my rape that I had buried during the last few months. Darla had forced me to remember again.

  “What a story,” I said as we closed the car door and pulled onto the dark road.

  “What’d you think?” Shannon asked eagerly.

  “I was blown away,” I said. “She seemed sincere, and her life has been so hard.”

  Shannon seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “I hoped it wouldn’t shock you. I mean, she has had a pretty tough road.”

  Shannon swerved ever so slightly to miss a possum and asked, “Did her message speak to you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m a little curious about it all, I have to admit. I even wrote some questions down the other night that I’d like to talk over with you. But something else is on my mind now.”

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  “Darla’s talk opened up the one fear that I’d managed to keep at bay since what happened to me a few months ago.”

  “What’s that?” Shannon asked in a gentle tone.

  “Sexually transmitted disease. I mean, with what happened to me at NBU, don’t you think I should get checked out?” My voice cracked on the last two words. I could be carrying who-knew-what awful disease in my body, and I was beginning to brace myself for another painful blow.

  Shannon thought for a moment; then the light flashed across her eyes.

  “Let’s go see my aunt Bernise in north Charleston. She works in women’s health at Trident, and she can run all of the tests to make sure you’re okay.”

  “That would be great,” I said, exhaling deeper than I had in months. As frightening as it was, it felt right to finally address, head-on, another source of anxiety that had been secretly weighing on me.

  Shannon’s friendship truly touched me, and I wanted to give her something in return.

  “Maybe after we get through this, we can sit down with some people at Harvest Time and just go through some of my questions about this whole Christianity thing.”

  “I’d love that,” Shannon said. “I can set it all up just as soon as you’re ready.”

  When we reached the driveway, she asked, “Can I pray for you now?”

  “Why not?”

  Shannon gripped the steering wheel and asked God for peace and a total healing for my mind, body, and hurting heart. When she reached out to touch my shoulder at the end of the prayer, I was surprised at the emotions that churned inside me at just the momentary thought of being made well again, and I wept for many minutes while Shannon fished for Kleenex and continued to pat my back.

  Entering my quiet home, I was not surprised to find Dizzy and Lou asleep in front of the Father of the Bride movie in the den. I tapped little Lou on the shoulder and walked her to her bedroom.

  When I returned to do the same for Dizzy, I paused to smile down at my younger sister, who was curled up on one end of the sofa, still in her grave clothes and makeup from her night on the town. She had two round crystals around her neck—both with a tarnished silver claw that held them in place—and her fingernails were painted black.

  The fading white powder on her face revealed the rose tint of her freckled cheeks. Dizzy looked as though she were a grade-school girl dressed up for Halloween. It was only a few years earlier that she had worn the pink-and-purple floral pajamas that Lou now sported.

  What had happened to Dizzy? And why did she want to dress like death?

  As I bent down to nudge her, I could sm
ell the marijuana and alcohol, and I wondered where in the world she had been earlier in the evening. I tapped her leg until she arose from her grogginess and shuffled to the kitchen for a glass of water.

  “How was the Holy Roller night?” she asked, her gray eyes squinting in the fluorescent kitchen light.

  “It was something,” I said.

  “I’m too beat to hear about it,” she said, yawning. “You can catch me up tomorrow.”

  “You know, you smell like trouble, Diz. You’d better take a shower before Mama and Daddy catch a whiff of you.”

  Dizzy rolled her eyes and turned away from me as she shuffled toward the stairs.

  “Like they have anything other than Bizway on their minds.”

  “If you keep going on like this, you’re going to get yourself in a fix,” I warned. I was never a partier like Dizzy, but I knew that trouble could sneak up on you before you could plan an escape, and I didn’t want my sister to mess up big-time by making one bad decision or finding herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “You’re preaching already, Adelaide?” Dizzy said midway up the stairs, and before I could think of a good response, I heard the slam and lock of her door.

  When I walked back into the kitchen, I noticed for the first time a bouquet of wildflowers and an envelope with my name on it.

  Adelaide,

  This has been the best summer I can remember. Thank you for spending it with me.

  Love,

  Randy

  10

  New Moon

  The following week, Shannon drove me to Charleston to see her aunt Bernise at Trident Hospital. Before we even chose a magazine article in the waiting room of the women’s health center, Bernise called us to her office, where she took my blood and sent me to the bathroom with a little plastic cup that would hold the answer to my future in forty-eight hours.

  After Bernise quizzed me on symptoms of which I had none, she said, “Some don’t show up for a long while, but let’s be optimistic, girls.”

  Looking to Shannon, I guessed that Bernise was addressing the greatest of the unspoken diseases: HIV. A college graduate had come to a dorm meeting at NBU once to share the story of how she had contracted it, and it had frightened me, not so much for my own mortality (I had planned to be a virgin until Mr. Right came along), but for Ruthie and Jif, who I suspected were in physical relationships with their beaus.

  “You want to tell me about what happened?” Bernise asked me as she labeled little plastic tubes A. Piper.

  I had met Bernise several times before at Shannon’s annual family reunions on Lake Summit. She was the one who brought a seven-layer chocolate cake that we looked forward to devouring in our wet bathing suits as we sat on the dock and stuck our toes into the cold black water. Bernise was religious, but single and fun, and she had always been willing to cart us over to the movie theater in Saluda on rainy days when we just had to get out of the house.

  “It’s too hard to talk about,” I said, and my eyes pricked before I decided that I could not recount the story.

  Shannon squeezed my shoulder, and Bernise looked me straight in the face. “There is mending for you, Adelaide. I don’t know what happened to you exactly, but I do know that God can mend your heart.”

  “You guys are ganging up on me,” I said to both of them. Then, to Bernise, “You’re a Jesus freak too?”

  “Oh, sure I am,” Bernise said. “Do you think I could work in this place without faith?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, putting my hands up as if to say, “Enough.”

  “One thing at a time,” Shannon whispered to Bernise, slowing her down.

  “Yeah,” I said. “First let’s see if I’ve got some fatal disease; then we’ll go from there.”

  Bernise was sweet and hopeful. “Sorry if I push too hard. It runs in our family.” She gave Shannon a wink that made us all chuckle, albeit nervously.

  Then she gave Shannon a twenty-dollar bill and told us to get a warm lunch on our way back to Williamstown and not to worry too much.

  “Call me after noon on Thursday,” she said; then she patted the top of my hand. “All of the results will be in by then.”

  “Let’s put it in God’s hands,” Shannon said as we scarfed down fried okra and creamed corn at the Lizard’s Thicket just off Highway 17.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  I wondered how God would feel if I started to pray to Him about this after keeping my distance for so long.

  “So did Bernise play a role in bringing you to your faith?”

  “I suppose she planted some seeds, but it was really that Young Life retreat that made it clear.”

  “Right. Where you ‘met Jesus,’” I said and immediately realized it came out more sarcastically than I meant for it to. “That phrase cracks me up, because I see this man in a white robe and sandals charging toward you with his arm outstretched for a firm handshake. You have to admit it sounds hokey.”

  Shannon chuckled. “Yeah, I need to work on my lingo. Christian-speak can turn people away. That’s one of the things Dale and Darla have been teaching us.”

  “What made you decide to do it?”

  “A few things, I guess,” Shannon said as she buttered her corn bread. “My father’s death, for one.”

  I had forgotten about that. Frank, Shannon’s stepfather, had been with them since they moved to Williamstown, and Shannon even referred to him as Dad. But Shannon told me once in the deep of night that her real father had been killed in a car accident when she was in kindergarten.

  “Frank is great, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted to know where my dad was. Then the knee injury sort of pushed me over the edge. I mean, it sounds stupid, but I had put all of my time and effort into that soccer scholarship to Clemson, and so it was a real blow when it didn’t happen for me.” She pondered a misshapen piece of fried okra on her fork and added, “But I guess the main thing was the way those guys loved me.”

  “The God Squad?” I said, chuckling at my picture of the college cheerleaders with the fuzzy letters “Go, God!” across their polyester chests.

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “And they had a kind of life in them that seemed better than anyone else’s around. Then when I was at that camp, it just became clear. A man named Danny Powell was talking to us, and it just seemed right. Something, like, nudged me, you know? I still have a ways to go, but it’s been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I have peace. I know where my dad is. I don’t have to take my identity from a sport. Or from being a part of the Camellia Debutante Club. Or anything else.”

  Now, I had to admit that some of the vines of fear had loosened their grip since my trip to Harvest Time. I sensed a kind of hope that just wouldn’t go away. It was like I was being courted by Shannon, Charlie Farley, and perhaps God Himself. But why?

  It was nice to be pursued. But it was all so out of the blue. And so Williamstown.

  With only a half hour before Randy was picking me up for a deb shag party, I raced up to my bedroom, locked the door, and got down on my knees.

  “Please let me be okay. I don’t deserve to even talk to You, much less ask You for Your help, but here I am anyway, doing just that. If You’re as merciful as people say You are, then You can understand my position. I’ll go meet with Dale and Darla and hear this thing out, but please let those test results be good.”

  “Are you getting ready?” Mama called up the stairs to me as I became aware of the many minutes I had been kneeling. My thighs ached, and the carpet left large indentions on my knees as I stood up to say, “Yes, ma’am.”

  The deb party was at Mrs. Hartness’s house, which was at the tip of the Williamstown Peninsula, facing the harbor, and it was in honor of Harriet. Marguerite hired the Catalinas, a famous beach-music band, and ordered two trucks full of sand from Pawleys Island to be dumped in her backyard so it would feel like we were dancing on the beach.

  Harriet was nervous about the whole thing. Her grandmother had sent her to a
two-day crash course to learn the dance steps, but she was as clumsy as an ox and utterly frustrated by the whole endeavor.

  She didn’t know a soul to bring to the coed events, so she’d made friends with the assistant manager at the Blockbuster video store next to the Kmart. He sported a diamond stud earring and a goatee and seemed to get a kick out of having all the socialites stare at him.

  Jif and I had been bonding with Harriet over the last few weeks. She was so different. Like a shot of Texas Pete in your hominy. And yet she was earnestly trying to be a part of our world. We’d gone tubing down the Santee and gone to the county fair, and plans were well on the way to take a day trip to Myrtle Beach.

  “Why aren’t you at some fancy dude ranch this summer?” I had asked her one evening as we sat on her porch eating vegan molasses cookies.

  Harriet let out a guffaw and said, “They eat a lot of red meat on those ranches.” And then, “But seriously, this place is charming, and, hey I like to have parties thrown in my honor.”

  “Mmm,” Jif said as she stamped on a palmetto bug that was scurrying toward them. “I hadn’t looked at it that way.”

  “Don’t they have debs in Connecticut?” I probed.

  “At home, I am a palmetto bug,” Harriet said as Jif kicked the creature into Mrs. Marguerite Hartness’s sculpted shrubs. “My mother is, like, brain-dead from her alcohol consumption, and my stepfamily chooses not to acknowledge me—the butt-ugly, freak-show vegan who takes up space in their nearly perfect home. Sometimes I think they actually want me to hide when they bring their friends home.”

  I furrowed my brow and looked down at the floorboards.

  “Whatever.” She shrugged. “At least I have Marguerite. I mean, she’s a small-town snoot, and her house reeks of mothballs, but she thinks I’m the bee’s knees. Who can say why, but she always has.”