by Han Nolan
"Grace and Boo come see us," Velita whispered to her chicken delish.
Yeah, well, they would, I thought to myself, but since Velita just whispered about Grace and Boo, I decided to pretend I didn't hear.
Sharalee shoved at Cal Dooley, who was trying to poke his finger in her plate of Jell-O salad, and then said to the twins, "May I ask what subjects you have been studying since leaving our fine class last November?"
I swanee, Sharalee can be a real noodle sometimes. She was the one who started calling them the Encyclopedia Sisters and of course after she did, everyone did.
"We're doing a lot of reading mostly, Sharalee," Vonnie said. "Have you read Wuthering Heights?"
Sharalee and I both shook our heads.
"You'd love it, I'm sure of that." Vonnie smiled but looked sideways at Velita, who was mumbling something about studying calculus and physiology and Mary Baker Eddy.
"If you like poetry," Vonnie continued, "you might try Emily Dickinson. She's quite easy to understand. You know, she lived all her adult life in her house and never got out to see anyone."
Sharalee and I nodded and probably looked to her like two dumb sacks of feed sitting across from her.
I caught Velita saying something to her iced tea about Dickinson living in a mansion and them in a shack and how it wasn't the same as them at all.
Actually they lived in a shotgun house: two rooms, one behind the other, so you could stand in the front doorway and fire a bullet straight through the house and out the back door without it running into anything on its way out. Mad Joe had posted a sign out front that said their house was just like the house Elvis Presley was born in and people were free to take a tour if they wanted. 'Course it just being two rooms and kind of rundown to boot, it wasn't much to see, but I always had a nice feeling whenever I passed that sign, like if Elvis could make it all the way from his shotgun house to Graceland, then maybe I could make it out of Casper, someday.
I heard someone calling my name and looked up to see Adrienne standing at her table, waving to me and calling me over. When I got there, all red in the face, I'm sure, Adrienne put her arm around me and announced how me and Mad Joe were the ones who helped her prepare for her experiment and how she owed the success of it to us.
"I was telling everyone how my month in isolation went and I thought you'd want to hear, too," she said to me.
"Sure I do." I grinned at the group gathered around and then she began her story, trying to talk to everyone over my head until I caught Daddy's eyeball motions and sat down in Adrienne's chair.
"I tell you, those first several days I just about went crazy," she began. "I mean, what can a person do who can't hardly see or hear or feel or smell? I'll tell you what I did. I soaked myself in a lot of cold, cold baths—the heat was something."
Folks laughed at that and Adrienne rested her hands on my shoulders and went on.
"I also talked a lot. I was talking constantly. 'Well, now, Adrienne,' I'd say, 'how about a little meditation? How about going upstairs now? How about washing your hair?' It wasn't until about what I'd guess was the second week that I stopped talking to myself and just listened to the silence. It's amazing what a person can hear in the silence."
People were nodding their heads like they sat listening to the silence every minute of their lives.
"After a while it was all I really had, that silence. I wasn't talking or seeing, and wasn't even eating. I stopped keeping track of whether it was day or night, and believe it or not, I didn't seem to be sleeping or dreaming much, either. I spent more and more time meditating. I had this special spot in my house where I went each time, drawn there by habit, I suppose, but it was the only place where I could really calm myself. During those times when I'd start going crazy just being by myself, I'd find myself wandering over to that spot, sitting down, resting my hands in my lap, and then, ssssssss—all the craziness would run right out of me."
I noticed that all the kids had gathered on the grass behind the adults and were listening to Adrienne like she was telling them a bedtime story. The adults from the other table had turned their chairs around to listen better as well, and I felt all squiggly and excited inside as if it were me who had done all this, as if I were the one telling the story.
Adrienne took her hands off my shoulders and I turned around. Her eyes were sparkling and her face was red and sweaty and happy, and I knew, I just knew, she was about to tell us something special, something no one else had ever said before.
She took this deep smiley breath and sucked all this air between her teeth before she continued. Then she closed her eyes and said, "One time I had been sitting in my spot who knows how long, and I noticed this glow in front of me." She opened her eyes and tilted her head. "I stared at it for a long time and I could see it was my chair, my little wooden chair with the rush seat, and it was all lit up. I looked at the space around the chair and there was nothing there, just gray space, everywhere this gray space. My eyes were drawn back to the chair and it was getting brighter, and the brighter it got, the better I felt, you know? Warm and safe and loved and calm and happy all at the same time. Then the light changed. It started circling around the chair, moving and growing until the light took form. I can't believe what I saw." Adrienne opened her eyes wider, looked around at all of us with her mouth open and her shoulders shrugged up around her ears.
"He was in my chair," she said. "He was sitting in my chair! Jesus Christ was sitting in my chair!"
5
Daddy was the first to react to Adrienne's revelation. He jumped up. His chair fell backwards to the ground and he shouted at the quiet faces staring up at him, "Stay calm, everybody, just stay calm!"
Mattie-Lynn Pettit was the only one who moved. She leaned over and picked up Daddy's chair. "It's okay, Able," she said.
Daddy looked to his left and right real fast and then lowered himself down into his chair. He nodded to Adrienne. "Go on," he said.
Adrienne opened her mouth to speak but Miss Becky spoke up first.
"What did He look like?" she asked. "Did He look like that handsome Jesus in the stained window at the church?"
"Now, Becky, you know that's just some artist's painting. What would a man born in Bethlehem be doing with blue eyes and red hair?" Miss Anna gave her sister a squeeze that was loving but also meant Shut up.
"But that's just the sun making it so red, isn't it, Able? I'm sure that's just what He looked like. Didn't He, Adrienne?"
"Well, actually—" Adrienne started to speak again but this time everyone started talking at once, giving their neighbors an earful of what they thought Jesus looked like.
Things were starting to get out of hand, with folks standing up and shouting and grabbing up plates of dessert and stuffing food down their throats and spitting it back out as they shouted some more.
Daddy looked as if he were about to stand up on his chair and shout for everyone to calm down again. I was worried that as soon as he got up there everyone would have somehow shut up and taken their seats, and he'd be standing up there like he thought he looked just like the real Jesus and that everyone should see.
He climbed up there with Mattie-Lynn holding on to the chair, and finally he got everyone settled down except Miss Becky, who was asking in a loud whisper if Miss Anna thought Jesus looked like the Jesus in the stained window.
"Miss Becky," Daddy said, still standing on the chair, "let's hear what Miss Adrienne has to say about her Jesus now."
We all turned back to Adrienne.
"Well, actually I couldn't tell you what He looked like. It's a funny thing..." Adrienne paused and squinted up into the sun. Then she looked back down at all of us. "He was there. I knew it was Jesus, I could feel Him, I could see Him—in a sense—but—but I haven't the words, there aren't the words to explain. I'm sorry, I wish I could tell you He wore white robes and had long red hair and blue eyes"—she glanced over at Miss Becky—"but all I can say is that He—He just was."
Adrienne's hands
were shaking and her eyes were looking all over the place. I got the feeling that she wished she hadn't ever mentioned the Jesus thing at all.
"I—Maybe I shouldn't have told you all this," she said. Which just goes to show that one of us was reading the other's thoughts. "It's just that I think Jesus was here for a reason. I—I mean, I'm not a Jesus person, and yet I saw things. Jesus showed me. I know these things and—and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about them—really." She looked around at all of us like she was waiting for us to tell her what to do.
I turned around to find Daddy, figuring he would have something to say. He was still standing up on the chair, with an expression on his face that looked like someone had just stomped on his bunion or something. I turned back around, hoping no one else would look for him.
Then Adrienne spoke again. "The first time it happened—the first time Jesus came to the chair—I felt so—so new, so good, exhilarated. Then when it was all over and I was left to myself again and time went by, I began to wonder, did it really happen?" She gave us a questioning look like one of us was going to tell her.
"Then I wondered, why me? Why did Jesus come to me? What was He trying to say to me? He came two more times, each time more fantastic than the next, and now, today, I wonder, how am I supposed to have changed? I'm so full of all these new feelings. I know things, I know these things, but it's still the same me. I'm no different." She gave a quick laugh and shrugged her shoulders.
Jim Ennis stood up. "I want to see this chair of yours," he said.
Then everyone was getting up again and shouting about the Jesus chair and marching toward the house like they were going to roust out some lawbreaker and hang him.
I saw this dark flash of somebody speed past me, past all of us, and by the time we got to the front door, there was Mad Joe leaning against the door, facing us and panting, his nostrils going in and out real fast, and his eyes all wild looking. It shut us all up right fast.
When he saw that we were all silent he spoke to us in this scratchy voice. "Y'all can't just go trampling in this house without an invite." He glared at Jim Ennis and the Dooley brothers, who looked like they were ready to bust right through poor Mad Joe and start gnawing on the Jesus chair with their bloodthirsty teeth. "Y'all back up and see reason," he said to them.
"A fine thing, you telling us to see reason, madman," Hank Dooley yelled.
Mad Joe stayed calm. "What if Jesus was looking down on us right now, what if? What would He say, I wonder? Would He say, 'Now, there's a group of decent folks lovin' their neighbor'? No sir, He'd say, 'Folks never learn, they sure don't. They haven't learned a dad-burned thing.' That's what He'd say."
We kind of backed away a bit after Mad Joe said that, and Jim and the Dooleys tried to slip back into the crowd like they could hide from Jesus.
"Maybe," Mad Joe went on, "maybe if we was to ask nice. Miss Adrienne would let us each take a look at her chair. At a later time—'cause I'm sure we ain't gonna see Jesus setting there waiting for us now—no sir, no sir. Miss Adrienne was setting in silence when she heard that 'still, small voice,' and if y'all plan on seeing or hearing the good Lord, I s'pect y'all better muster up some silence, too, and go on in to see that chair with reverence."
"Look who's telling us what," I heard someone say.
"Yeah," a few others said, taking a couple of steps back toward Mad Joe.
Then Daddy stepped forward and stood in front of Mad Joe, facing us. "All right, everybody. Let's not get carried away with this thing."
"We're just wanting a look, Able," Mr. Marshall said.
Everyone was standing there nodding and saying, "Yeah, we just want to see," and such like that, but Daddy held up his hands.
"There's nothing to see. There's nothing to see. Y'all hear a story like this and right away you're wanting to bust through the door without thinking things through. I can promise you, Jesus is not waiting for you in any chair."
Was Daddy thinking Adrienne was a liar? I turned to look for Adrienne. I saw her at the back of the group. She was turned the other way, with her head bent forward. Was she crying? I pushed through the crowd real hard and almost knocked Sharalee over doing it.
"Hey, Charity, what—"
"Y'all leave!" I shouted through Sharalee's remark. "Just leave. You're ruining it. Miss Adrienne shares something wonderful and splendid, and you just kill it. Leave!" I shouted at them. I was crying when I turned to my daddy. "Daddy, make them leave. Just make them leave." Then I burst through the crowd again and ran. I didn't hear what anyone was saying behind me, I just knew they were talking. I kept on running, past the picnic tables and all the cars, across the street, and into the cornfields.
6
The next day was Sunday, and on Sundays it was my job to see that Grace didn't wander off before church. This meant that I always had to get up before sunrise, 'cause Grace always did, and if I didn't, she'd be out the door and rolling around in the wire-grass swamp and I'd be the one Daddy would blame. Problem was, the picnic left me so frizzy-frazzied I could hardly cope with my usual Sunday morning routine with the curling iron, hair gel, makeup, dress, stockings, and high heels. And this Sunday was supposed to be special. This Sunday I had planned to unveil my new look. Now, with what happened yesterday and Daddy likely to be furious with me and the world, I wasn't so sure it was such a good idea.
I studied the skirt and shawl lying on my bed and thought about how just two nights ago I was so excited about the outfit I couldn't stand still. Sharalee, the best seamstress on this planet, had been trying to pin the hem up while I was grabbing the shawl she had already finished. I'd wrapped it around my shoulders like I was a model and struck a pose, sucking in my cheeks and pointing my right foot.
"Charity, if you don't quit I'm going to stick you," Sharalee said.
"Ow!"
"Well, see there? Now stay still. I swanee, the things I let you talk me into!"
"You said your mama wasn't using these bedspreads anymore. You did ask her if you could have them, didn't you?" I was starting to panic, thinking of Mrs. Marshall seeing me in her bedspreads at church and whirling them off me with one quick yank. I could just picture myself spinning out into the aisle and then coming to a standstill in front of the right handsome Billy Gumm in nothing but my underwear.
"What would my mama want with these old things? India-print stuff went out of style years ago." Sharalee stuck another pin in the skirt and popped a rolled-up wad of bread in her mouth.
I examined the fringe Sharalee had sewn along the edge of the shawl. "I think it's cool. It's the new me."
"It's the old Adrienne Dabney's what it is, Charity," she mumbled around the bread. "And you know it and so will your papa."
"Well, maybe so, but it's the new me."
"Your daddy would say, if you want to change, you have to start from the inside and then the outside just takes care of itself."
"First of all. Daddy puts it a lot better than that, and second of all, he's talking about the changes that happen when you let Jesus into your life, and third of all, since when do you listen to any of Daddy's sermons?"
"You're not the only one who's changing in this town, miss artsy-smartsy. There now, I'm done." She gulped down the last of her iced tea and I saw the glop of undissolved sugar slip along the glass and into her mouth.
"Law, Sharalee, that's disgusting!"
"Since when? Now, turn around and let me make sure the hem's even before I sew it in."
Right before I left her house, the precious outfit tucked under my arm in a grocery bag, Sharalee dared me to wear it to church on Sunday.
Now here it was Sunday and I was planning to do my first ever back-down on a Sharalee Marshall dare.
I picked up the shawl and wrapped it around me. I pushed aside the large wicker birdcage setting on my bureau and studied myself in the mirror. I noticed how the blue in the print made my eyes look more blue and less "seaworthy gray," as Mama called them.
"Adrienne wouldn't worry a
bout what everyone would say," I told my reflection. I flipped my head forward, then back, to make my hair fluff out more, and then raised my eyebrows to make them look arched like Adrienne's. "What's that, Father dear? You say I look like a tramp?" I gave my reflection an Adrienne laugh. "Nonsense. I'm just young. Father dear. I'm free. I'm an artist." I nodded to myself. "Yes, I'm an artist. I'm an artist. I'm not a preacher lady. I'm a preacher's daughter and I'm an artist." I tossed one long end of the shawl over my shoulder, told myself I wasn't going to back down from this no matter what Daddy said, and turned back to the skirt.
I kept my nerve all the way through putting on the skirt and tank top, with no bra, and all the way through not curling my hair but just sort of teasing it to get it to look a bit wilder, and even all the way through not putting on the stockings, which really everyone should have thanked me for 'cause I hadn't washed them all year, but I lost it right quick when I started for the stairs and heard Daddy arguing with Mama on the phone. I sat up on the top stairs and listened.
"It's obvious you've never heard of resting on the Sabbath," Daddy was saying.
"What do you mean, you're not just a preacher's wife? Of course you are, and I'd like to know what gets into you at those conventions." Daddy listened a minute and then in a raised voice he said, "I know you're not still at the convention. How very well I know it!" He paused, listening again, and then said, "Now, what kind of wild talk is that?" And then, getting angrier and wilder himself, he said, "I think y'all had better come on home. Yes, now. This instant! No, I'm not ordering you, I'm just saying..." Daddy listened again for a long while, and I thought about their last fight.
It happened about a week before Mama left for the Birdcage Collectors' Convention. That morning Mama had gone off to the Dooleys' store for some coffee and toilet tissue, and didn't come back till dinnertime. Turned out she had gone shopping with Aunt Nooney. She claimed she'd run into her at Dooleys' and they just took off on a whim. Daddy said she had been having too many whims lately and it was time she took hold of herself before it got out of hand. Daddy was right, too, 'cause she had been coming home with all kinds of useless stuff. One time she brought home eight bags filled with yellow plastic tulips. She said she was going to fill some of her larger birdcages with them but she never did. Another time she bought several boxes of preemie diapers and Daddy wanted to know if now she was planning to diaper the cages. Mama just fell over hysterical with laughter, which got us all upset, 'cause Mama never thought Daddy was funny before, and she was acting different, not her quiet self atall.
