Accidental Happiness (27 page)

“Take off that necklace,” he told her as they drove into the crowded parking lot outside the church.

“Why?” Her boyfriend had given it to her several months before. She never took it off.

“You need to shed all adornments before you go into the Lord’s presence.”

That sounded strange, even for her eccentric father. He spent his days high above others doing roof work, repairing gutters. Sometimes she thought he honestly believed he was higher than everybody else. Above all sin and temptation.

“And take that silver thing out of your hair,” he said, again with no particular agitation. But it was far more than a request.

“It’s just a clip. My hair will fall in my eyes if I don’t pull it back.”

He reached over, with methodical purpose, and pulled out the clip, along with a large section of hair. Her scalp stung and she felt too stunned to protest. He was odd, dismissive much of the time, but he’d never acted so strangely toward her before. The worst she’d seen of him consisted of hard, determined lectures about once a week or so.

Before she could sort out what had happened, he was out of the car, so she got out and followed him. Once inside, he took off for the front of the church, and she kept him in her peripheral vision as she scanned the crowds—something she always did at large gatherings—for her mother’s face. Church was an unlikely place for her mom to show up, but she figured it never hurt to keep her eyes open. Although most of the seats had been taken, her father led them toward rows of folding chairs that had been added in the space between the pews and the pulpit to create extra seating. To Reese’s surprise, her daddy led her to seats in the front row, the only empty seats in the entire front half of the sanctuary, best she could tell.

“Are you sure these don’t belong to somebody already?” She didn’t want to be so close. Besides the discomfort of such proximity to the evangelist himself, she was terrified that a camera, spanning close for an audience shot, would catch her, expose her to any friends or parents of friends who might be flipping channels.

“Just have a seat,” he said. When she did, he left her there, went off toward a door that led into the back section of the church. She sat, aware of being alone and younger than anyone else around her. There were small children sitting on a parent’s lap here and there, but no teenagers that she saw. A middle-age woman with a brown paper sack in her hand asked if she could have the empty seat.

“My daddy’s coming back,” Reese managed. The woman left, looking irritated.

By the time her father came back, the lights were being lowered and a bunch of white singers trying to do justice to black gospel had revved up in the choir loft behind the pulpit. The preacher came out and the energy pitched higher, to a near frenzy, in the large sanctuary. No wonder, Reese thought. The man carried half the wattage in the room by himself. She’d barely paid attention to him on TV, but sitting literally at his feet, she could see how people would be drawn in. How they would want to approach the source of such winning power.

She zoned out the content of what the evangelist said, focused instead on the singsong of his voice, the cadence that reminded her of a livestock auctioneer she’d heard once at the state fair. She felt odd, watching him. Compelled to take in his every movement. It wasn’t so bad, couldn’t go on for more than a couple of hours.

She stood for the hymns and sat for the prayers, figured they’d be leaving soon when the preacher asked for anyone seeking healing or cleansing of any sort to come forward. Lines formed in the aisles even before the organ music got into full swing. While she scanned the faces in the lines, out of habit still, she heard her father say, “Go on up there, child.”

“What?” She hoped she’d misunderstood, that he was telling her they needed to leave. It was a long drive home.

“This is what we come for,” he said. “Go on up.”

“No, Daddy. I’m not going up there.”

The music seemed everywhere. She heard one woman’s voice, a shade off from the others, running parallel with those on key.

“Stand up, Reese,” her daddy said, this time with a stern edge.

The preacher was suddenly there, right in front of her. She hadn’t seen him come down to the sanctuary floor, but there he was. His presence startled her at the closer range. He was even younger than she had thought. Much younger than her father. But he had an ancient—no, not ancient—a timeless quality about him that seemed to make age and context irrelevant in his presence.

He reached out and took her hand, and because she didn’t know what else to do, she let him. She let him lead her up, past other people who were standing in line, all the way up to the platform. And he positioned her, still standing, in a semicircle of worshipers who were swaying and calling out with no apparent concern for who might see them acting such a fool. “Let your soul cry out! Amen. Cry out for healing power! Amen.” The minister shouted, and the random chorus of voices, some chanting, some singing, moved in a collective, urgent call. The sounds they made weren’t even words, but she thought she understood them anyway.

And then she felt the preacher there again, in front of her. He was saying something, his words rhythmic and songlike, but not a song, and she wanted to sound out too, but she didn’t seem to have a voice. She felt jostled from either side as the people around her moved and swayed. And then the preacher took hold of her wrist, raised her arm, placed the heel of his other hand on her forehead. The sweat of his palm mixed with the dampness of her brow. She smelled his robes, the harsh, laundered aroma tainted by new sweat and sweet tobacco. She’d smoked cigarettes once or twice with her boyfriend, usually in conjunction with fooling around, and the same smell on this man of God led her to greater confusion.

His hand offered light pressure on her forehead. The awareness of his touch took her focus. Only a soft, steady pressure. But then there was something else, something large, impossible to move through.

The next moment she could feel the carpet of the platform close against her arm, her cheek. She had fallen, but she didn’t recall losing her balance, hitting the ground. Her blue dress had gathered high around her thighs and the preacher stood above her, watching. She wanted to pull at her dress, to right herself, but she found she couldn’t move. Embarrassed, she lay helpless, with no options that came to mind. Lights from the cameras told her she’d become the main attraction as he stood above her, smiling, reciting scripture she didn’t recognize.

Then to her horror, he bent down and picked her up. His robes pressed against the back of her neck and knees and his warm breath fell on the exposed length of her neck. She felt nausea rise in her chest and fought it. The thought of vomiting seemed too much to consider. He carried her into a room. It must have been the dressing room for baptism candidates because all sizes of white, baptismal robes hung on a wooden rod at the back of the room.

“You’ve been chosen, child,” he said, putting her down on a scratchy hand-me-down couch in the center of the room. “I had my notions. But I waited to see you tonight. God touched you tonight.”

She sat up—suddenly, miraculously, able to move—and put her feet on the floor. “Chosen?”

“I’ve spoken to your father,” he said. “Actually,
both
your fathers.” He smiled, all white teeth and tanned skin. “Your earthly and your heavenly fathers. I’ve had a vision for some time, that a child bride would come to me, would fulfill this ministry.”

“Bride?” She felt panic rise inside her chest. The thin cotton of her dress seemed slight protection from his eyes as he openly stared at her body.

“I’m alone,” he said. “My wife passed over two years ago. I thought my ministry to be a solitary one after that. Until the visions told me otherwise. You have been my vision.”

He reached and, without hurry, unbuttoned the front of her dress. One, two, three buttons. A certain terror seized her. “Stop,” she barely managed to say with the small bit of voice she could muster. But he opened her dress to her waist. Laid his full hand on her bra, the first she’d ever bought, the only one she owned. All she could think was she’d have to buy more. At least one more. She’d never wear this one again. Never look at it . . .

“Stop,” she said again, louder this time. “Please, stop.” Her voice broke. But he hadn’t stopped. In a way, it had never stopped. The nightmarish memory was almost worse than the reality, if that was possible. At least she’d assumed the reality would end. The memory returned over and over . . .

When he finally pulled away, he looked at her with sickly kindness.

“It’s all right, child. When two were betrothed in God’s scripture, they were as man and wife from the moment of promise. I realize there are laws of our time, so we won’t speak of this. But our joining is clean in God’s eyes. Your father understands and has agreed. In due time, you will legally come into my household, my ministry . . .”

She started to cry. She felt her own tears as they fell onto her exposed belly where the dress still gaped, like an open wound.

“It’s a lot for you all at once. I understand. The responsibility must seem tremendous,” he said, standing, adjusting his robe. He smiled with practiced benevolence. “I’ll get your father, and the two of you can wait for me here. I need to join my assistants who continue to lay hands of healing. But I will return soon. In the meantime, your father can explain the arrangements.”

He left, and the relief of knowing he was gone went through her, an involuntary tremble that traveled the length of her being. One door allowed for exit, and without bothering to gather her panties or button her dress, she slipped out before anyone could stop her. She went down a hall that she knew led away from the preacher. Away from the noise and song. Away from her father who, she realized, had most certainly decided to offer more to this man’s ministry than money.

The telling of the story left Reese exhausted. A couple of cars had arrived in the parking lot and the mosquitoes were out, both signifying the Bible study would soon begin.

“I’m so sorry,” Andrew said. He kept his eyes direct, refused any embarrassment that would have put the blame on her.

“You have to go,” she said, looking toward the cars in the parking lot.

“Not just yet,” Preacher Andrew said. “Those are the study leaders. No one else is here. You have time to finish. What did you do after you left all of them?”

She took a breath. The rest should be easy to tell, but it seemed such an effort nonetheless.

“For one thing, I never went back to my father’s house again,” she said, trying to put a casual note into her saga.

“I mean it,” he said. “What did you do?”

“My uncle, one of my mother’s twin brothers, he and his wife lived on an army base. He was career military. They were both nice, my uncles. I hadn’t seen either one of them in a couple of years, but they used to come take me crabbing and fishing sometimes after my mom left. Anyway, I found my way to a gas station, got his number, and . . . He came and got me, let me come stay with them.”

“So you just abandoned one life and started another. Just like that?”

“Sort of.” Reese didn’t want to talk anymore. Her head hurt from the memories, from the sound of her own voice. “My aunt drove me back to my old school every morning for a couple of weeks. Trying to keep things as normal as possible. But it was too much of a hassle, so I switched to the school at the base.”

She didn’t, couldn’t, tell the rest of it. How some kids had seen the program and everyone knew about it. How, if they didn’t make comments about it in front of her, which most did, she heard the laughter as soon as she passed by. Everyone, all her friends, deserted her—including her boyfriend, who couldn’t even look her in the eye.

“It was okay,” she said. “Switching schools.”

“What did your father do about all of it?”

“I don’t know. I never talked to the bastard again. My uncle Austin got some kind of court order that said he couldn’t call me, couldn’t come within a mile of me, something like that. It all worked out okay.”

“Have you ever told anybody about this? Did you get any counseling?” Preacher Andrew seemed concerned, as if she was still that teenager.

“Not until now.” She attempted to smile. “Aren’t you the lucky one? Listen, it was a long time ago. And I wouldn’t even be thinking about it but . . . so many things seem to be getting worse. Makes me wonder if I upset the natural order somehow by refusing, by running away. But that’s really stupid. I know that much without hearing any advice from you. I don’t know why I brought it up.” She stood.

“Sit down, Reese,” he said. “Please, just for a minute.”

She sat back in the swing, oddly comfortable with this man who suddenly knew more about her than anyone else, with the exception of her uncles, who she hadn’t seen in a good fifteen years.

“This is too much for you to have carried around by yourself.”

“I’ve told you now,” she said. “I just needed to tell somebody. Honestly. It’s like, over the years, I’d let out a little bit here and there to people. Usually making jokes about TV preachers or whatever. Doing that seemed to ease some kind of pressure. But it has helped less and less as time goes on. You were right. I just needed to let it out, with somebody who wouldn’t go talking about it all over the place. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you want everybody to hear. But now I feel better. Thanks, Preacher.”

“There’s more to it than just airing it out, Reese.”

“What do you mean?”

“This whole notion of punishment. You do understand that you were a kid still, Reese. The asshole of a preacher, excuse my language—he was the one who needs forgiveness. And your dad doesn’t win any prizes here either. You don’t still think any of it is your fault, do you? What happened or anything that’s happened since?”

She sat, let herself rock back and forth. It felt a little like being on the boat, she thought, being on a swing. The feeling could grow on you, feel more normal than solid earth if you let it.

“Years later,” she told him. She stopped. It was time to stop all of this business of baring souls. But she’d gone so far with him already. And it felt all right. “I got sick. Something called multiple sclerosis. It’s when—”