Crystal wasn’t responsible for her mother any more than he was for Dad, who couldn’t help reaching out and touching whoever he was speaking to at the moment. Like now, when one of the deacons approached and he drew Brother Lorton into the conversation with a handclasp and an arm around the older man’s shoulder.
Predictably, once the conversation quit being one-on-one, Sister Garrett turned her attention back to the flowers and, to his dismay, to him. “You’re looking more like your daddy every day, Stanley. No wonder my little Crystal’s so sweet on you.”
Crystal looked as if she wanted to go crawl under the pulpit and Stan escaped by suddenly remembering that he was supposed to distribute hymn books and fans along the chairs. More church folks arrived and he answered politely as they greeted him. He hadn’t noticed Mama and Lashanda’s arrival until his little sister edged up to him while he was plugging in the lights and whispered, “Mama’s real mad.”
Guilt had instantly seized him. A dozen possible transgressions immediately tumbled through his mind.
“What’s she mad about?” he asked cautiously.
The seven-year-old shook her head, her brown eyes wide with unhappiness. “I don’t know. I think she found something in Daddy’s desk.”
Four things were off-limits without permission: the refrigerator except for milk or carrots, the cookie jar, their parents’ bedroom unless Mama or Dad was there, and Dad’s desk in the living room.
Doors and drawers were left unlocked. It was enough for Mama to say “Thou shalt not” to ensure that neither he nor Lashanda would open any of them unbidden. They knew that Dad kept his pastoral records in the desk and often sat there to counsel troubled church members.
Maybe that’s what Mama’s found, he thought. Maybe there were some notes about a member of the congregation who’d done something so steeped in sin that the church needed to cast them out.
There was that time in Warrenton when she’d urged Dad to take such a step, but Dad had brought the sinner back to Christ. “And if Jesus can forgive him, Clara, who are we to cast stones and cast him out?”
But he couldn’t say all this to his sister. She was still too little to understand.
“Don’t worry. Dad’ll take care of it,” he reassured her, and she’d skipped away to join her friends.
Crystal had saved a place for him among their friends near the back but he kept a wary eye on his mother’s profile. She sat in her accustomed seat, the very last chair on the front row.
As the pastor’s wife, Mama knew all eyes were always upon her and her children and she preached to them constantly.
“It’s up to us to set good examples,” she said. “Think before you act. Weigh your words before you speak. The Bible tells us that the ungodly are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. The Devil is a mighty wind, children, and he’ll blow your bad words and bad deeds to where they’ll do the most hurt to your father if you’re not mindful of who you are.”
So Mama had sat in her usual seat and kept her face turned to Dad’s with her usual expression of solemn attention. But when preaching was over and everything was stowed in the back of the van, Mama gave her keys to Miss Rosa, who was still without her own transportation to work, and she and Lashanda rode home with them. That’s when he realized that Dad was the focus of her anger.
As his parents approached the van, he heard Dad say, “What were you doing in my desk, Clara?”
“I was looking for a rubber band for my prayer cards.” Her words lashed out like a switch off a peach tree. “Instead, I found—”
She hushed when she realized that the van windows were open and that Stan and Lashanda were sitting wide-eyed.
There was utter silence as they drove home and he and Lashanda had immediately gone to their rooms without being told. It was like seeing bolts of lightning flash across a dark sky and scurrying for cover before the storm broke.
He couldn’t imagine what Mama had found to set her off like that.
* * *
“Rubbers!” Clara Freeman’s face contorted with distaste as she voiced a word that raised images of filth and abomination in her mind. “An open pack. I had my tubes tied after Lashanda, so why do you have rubbers in your desk, Ralph? What whore you lying down on? I’m your true wife, the mother of your children. I yoked my life to yours, walked beside you in righteousness, sacrificed myself to your calling.”
“Clara, don’t,” Ralph said. It was worse than he’d imagined when he let himself imagine.
“Haven’t I done what I promised the day you asked me to marry you?” she raged in quiet fury. “Haven’t I been an upright and faithful helpmeet? Taught our children to walk in the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ and respect your position?”
Battered by her anger, knowing he was responsible for her scalding humiliation, he mumured, “You have.”
“What more could a man of God require of a wife?”
He shook his head, suddenly deeply tired. “Sometimes, even a man of God just wants to be treated like a man, Clara.”
She drew herself up icily at this allusion to sex. “I’ve done my duty to you in this bed.”
“Your duty,” he repeated, feeling numb.
“So now it’s my fault? Because I won’t be your whore in bed, you’ve gone to a whore’s bed?”
“I never meant to hurt you,” he said quietly.
“Hurt me? It’s not just me that’s hurt, it’s you, it’s the children, but most of all, it’s God. When people see a preacher turn to adultery and fornication, they laugh with the Devil and it’s God who’s hurt.”
“Clara—”
“Did you think you could keep her a secret? When all the eyes of the church are on its shepherd? I’m your true wife, Ralph, and I call you back to the paths of righteousness. Like Sarah to Abraham. In the name of God, I tell you to cast out your concubine like Abraham cast out Hagar.”
“Oh, Clara—”
The sound of her name upon his lips fed her scornful rage like kerosene on an open flame. Suddenly, she whipped her dress over her head and flung it to the floor. Her slip followed, then her bra and panties. For the first time in years, she stood naked before him.
Naked with all the lamps on.
“Is this what you want from me, Ralph?” She cocked her hip at him and did an awkward parody of a bump and grind. “Is this what it takes to redeem your soul?”
A sheen of perspiration covered her face and light gleamed on her full breasts and smooth belly. She was thirty-six years old and had borne two children, yet her body seemed as slim and firm as on their wedding night, the night he realized he had made a huge error that could never be rectified, when he understood that he’d mistaken her passion for God as a passion for him.
She had given him her virginity as a burnt sacrifice to God, not as a celebration of God’s greatest gift between man and woman.
Now she slowly turned around, displaying herself openly, front and back. “Am I not comely in your sight?”
As she came back full circle, she saw the pity in his eyes and abruptly tried to cover herself with her arms and hands.
“Oh, God!” she moaned and dropped to her knees at the foot of their bed, clasped her hands and began to pray, wordlessly, silently, with tears streaming from her closed eyes.
Ralph opened their closet, took her white cotton robe from the door hook, and gently draped it around her shoulders. Without opening her eyes, she pulled the fabric across her naked breasts and continued to pray.
As Ralph stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him, he saw that Stan’s door was slightly ajar and he pushed it open.