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Chapter 1
THE YEAR I TURNED THIRTEEN I GOT RELIGION. OH, I’D BEEN going to church, praying like a sinner on her deathbed, but when the Holy Spirit flew over Mississippi, it never landed on me. All through the spring and summer of 1963, I sat beside Grandma on the sixth pew of Pisgah Methodist Church waiting for salvation, but the Lord never spoke one word to me. Grandma’s shoulders drooped in disappointment when, Sunday after Sunday, I didn’t join the other sinners who accepted Brother Thompson’s invitation to “come on down and get wrapped in the bosom of the Lord.” She was counting on me to lead a pious life because both her husband and her daughter were bent on sinning themselves straight into hell. Every Sunday, during the hour or so we sat on our hard wooden pew, breathing in the suffocating air of wilted gladiolas, Old Spice aftershave, and Mrs. Duncan’s Midnight in Paris perfume, Papaw would be out riding across the pasture on Jim, a dappled gray that he claimed was the fastest in Lexie County. Mama slept late on Sundays.
So as Grandma’s only grandchild and last hope for conversion, I felt a huge responsibility to get saved, but I hadn’t been able to get my feet moving down the crimson carpeted aisle of Pisgah Methodist up until this Sunday. Brother Thompson hadn’t enticed a sinner to come up and get saved for several weeks, and at the end of every service, he would wearily lift his hand for the benediction. Then, with his voice filled with disappointment, he would pray for us sinners to get washed in Jesus’ blood and become whiter than snow.
So on this hot August morning, I pretended the Holy Spirit had finally lit on me because I wanted to please the preacher and Grandma, who had had a big fight with Mama the night before and seemed more down than usual, and because Jehu Albright, the cutest boy in the ninth grade, was sitting across the aisle on the fourth pew down from us. We always sat on the right-hand pews because the morning sun bore down on the other side of the church, making it hotter than Hades, and over there you could see forty or more cardboard fans flapping faster than a wasp could fly. I had thought that Jehu was a Baptist, but his mother told Grandma that they had been attending Centenary Methodist in town and didn’t like their new pastor, who had posted on the bulletin board in the vestibule a list of the members who hadn’t signed their pledge cards.
Today Brother Thompson’s sermon was about Jesus feeding the multitudes with a few hunks of bread and a couple of little fish, and although I believed in miracles, I was having a hard time picturing the baskets filling up with loaves and fishes over and over like that. But then it occurred to me that, if what you couldn’t imagine could be true, maybe Grandma wouldn’t know that I was about to fake salvation. So when Miss Wilda banged out the first chords of “Just as I Am” on the old black upright piano, with heart racing like a galloping horse, I squeezed past Grandma’s knees and stepped out into the aisle. My taffeta dress, the color of a grape Popsicle, rustled applause as I slowly made my way up to the altar.When I passed Jehu’s pew, I paused, tucked a curl behind my ear, and glanced over at him with what I hoped was a beatific smile. After I reached the altar rail, Brother Thompson, trembling with joy, leaned over and placed his hand on the top of my head.“Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” he whispered.
His voice was filled with such happiness I thought he might burst out laughing, and quickly I answered, “Uh huh.Yessir.”
I had been rehearsing this scene all summer on Saturdays, which was the day Grandma and I cleaned the church. Grandma had taken the job, refusing payment for her labors, avowing that menial tasks would keep us humble. She assured me that the reward of serving the Lord was compensation enough. I didn’t want the Lord’s rewards. I wanted cash to purchase a madras blouse and a wraparound skirt, but Grandma had refused even the paltry sum that Brother Thompson offered her from the collection of coins and bills that piled up in the silver pie plate we passed around every time the church doors opened.
After I finished my Saturday chores of dusting pews and straightening the song books, I enacted all the roles in the play I had written, entitled “Layla Jay Gets Saved and Wins a Young Boy’s Heart.” I pounded out hymns on the piano, switching my singing voice from soprano to alto, harmonizing with myself as perfectly as an entire choir inside my head. In the role of preacher, I gripped the lectern until sweat stung my eyes as I shouted out for the sinners to come down and be saved. I had also rehearsed the heroine’s part I was playing now—that of repentant sinner tearfully asking for forgiveness. I was ready to testify, to admit to any and all sins, for what would it matter, the past? But before I could blurt out a single sin, Brother Thompson raised his hands and gave the benediction. My moment was over in less time than it took to close a hymnal. I stood beside the preacher, filled with disappointment as I accepted the first congratulatory hand, which belonged to old Mr. Stokes. “Bless you, child,” he said, spraying small droplets of saliva on my new taffeta bodice, which I had stuffed with a pair of socks for Jehu Albright’s perusal.Then came the others: Mr. Felder, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Utley, Doris Faye Wiggins, Joan Gail Martin, Mary Lynn Sutter, and Johnny Moore Jr. They shuffled past me with blessings and smiles, and suddenly there he was standing right in front of me. Blond crew cut pomaded with grease, rabbit-sized front teeth, a good strong jaw, my Ideal.
“Congratulations, Layla Jay,” Jehu mumbled.“You staying for dinner on the ground?”
“Thank you.Yes, I am,” I whispered in the reverent tone I had practiced. And then he was gone, and Mrs. Gabe Tucker was swinging her oversized purse into my stomach as she stretched out her fat fingers to pinch my arm. “Welcome, child.You’re safe in the Lord’s hands now.”
After pumping the remaining hands of the Lord’s disciples, I escaped outside and meandered around the church grounds, where I spotted Jehu lobbing pinecones at my cousin James Louis, who was firing back with cones of his own. I have hated James Louis for as long as I can remember. He is meaner than a starving bulldog, but around grown-ups, he acts like a poodle puppy, all fuzzy and soft and eager to please. Like all older women, my grandma loves him. This is how I came to know that women can be easily fooled by men, and, since learning this fact, have resolved to never never be taken in by anyone of the opposite sex. I do not fear this happening with Jehu Albright. I will never believe that he is capable of the kind of duplicity my cousin James Louis demonstrates.
When Brother Thompson called for quiet so he could get another prayer going, I walked over to the folding tables set up between two oak trees that served as boundaries for the little kids.Waiting for us to assemble and quiet down, he stood at the head of the table, holding up both hands like he was signaling a touchdown for the Zebulon Cougars. Jehu was standing to my left with his head bowed and his hands crossed over a pinecone behind his back.
Although delirious with happiness over my conversion, Grandma frowned when I fished around in one of the fried chicken platters for the piece that held the pulley bone. I ignored her. I needed to make a wish and I figured a pulley bone that had been blessed by a preacher would be extra good luck if I broke it right. Jehu was already going back for seconds when I took my plate over to the brick steps that led to the back of the church. My best friend, June McCormick, had saved me a spot, and when I sat down beside her, she leaned over and bumped my arm with her plate. “How come you decided to get saved today?”
I bit off a piece of crunchy chicken. “Got filled up with the Spirit.”
“You did not.”
“Did so.”
June patted her teased wheat-colored bubble hairdo that Mama said made her face look fat. “Well, I don’t believe you.You just wanted to parade up to the altar to show off your new dress I’ll bet.”
Better to let her think vanity rather than seduction. “Well, okay. But I was planning on getting saved sometime soon anyway,” I said, holding up my pinkie. “Secret pledge?”
June licked the fried chicken grease from her fingers and wrapped her little finger around mine. “Sure. I won’t tell anyone. I’m your friend. You wouldn’t tell on me.”
Thinking that a subtle hint of blackmail was good insurance, I said, “No. I didn’t tell anyone that you took a quarter out of the collection plate to buy nail polish that time.” This prompted June to recite from memory all the new colors of polish sitting on her dresser, and after I offered my opinion that blue-based red polish, rather than orange-red, went with green outfits, I broached the subject I was most anxious to talk about. “Grandma said Jehu Albright’s family is joining Pisgah.They switched over from Centenary.”
“Yeah, I knew they were going to. My mother and his mother are in Beta Sigma Phi together. I think he’s cool, looks a little like Steve McQueen, doesn’t he?” I held my breath, hoping June didn’t have a crush on him, too. She was far more popular than I and could get boyfriends as easily as you could catch chicken pox. She glanced over to where Jehu sat with his back against an oak tree. “But he’s got big teeth and everybody knows crew cuts are passé.” Breathing with a lighter heart, I tore the white meat away from the pulley bone and held it out to her. As we closed our eyes and pulled, I made my wish for Jehu Albright to love me and got the short bone.
After everyone had eaten all their stomachs could hold, they began to gather their empty bowls and say their good-byes. As I walked to Grandma’s old green Plymouth, I saw Jehu and his family driving away in their big white Chrysler Imperial and vowed that someday I’d be cuddled up beside him on the backseat of that car.
