Lay It on My Heart (3 page)

Phoebe keeps talking. “You want to know something? I lived on faith alone because it's what the Lord told you to do. And I prayed and I took charity from people with their own jobs, people who probably felt sorry for Charmaine.”

“I don't know about charity,” Daze says. “Charity is for the poor.”

“We would all be so much happier if we came to him like children,” my father says, laying a hand on my shoulder.

“And I did it, I took
charity
, because the Bible makes it clear that you are the head of this house.” Phoebe is pointing at him, jabbing the air with her finger. “But I have to say, I have to say right now, that I have been a nervous wreck every single day.”

My father nods as though he is considering her words. He looks at Phoebe's finger, then at my grandmother, then at me. He's blinking a lot. “I walked the streets of Jerusalem,” he says. “I offered prayers at the Temple Mount. The Lord's plan is vast and spans the ages, and as I understood that, I was filled with the spirit of Paul's special mission to the Gentiles.” After he stops talking, his eyes keep moving over the three of us like he's tracing a shape with them in the air. “Even my body has been changed.”

“Son,” Daze says. “Do you need to sit down?” But he doesn't sit down or even seem to hear her.

“Are you smiling?” Phoebe says. Her pointing finger sinks to her waist. And he is smiling, right through his beard, and it would be better if he weren't, but when he gets like this, preoccupied with a vision, it's pretty much all he can see.

“If you could for once grasp how worry is just unnecessary,” my father says.

I have been a nervous wreck, too, about living on faith alone, but I don't say this out loud. I want to show my father that unlike Phoebe, whose flesh sometimes gets the better of her, I have enough faith not to worry.

“Am I hearing that you do not plan to go back to work?” Phoebe says. “Is that what I'm hearing?”

“It's interesting the way everyone uses the word
work
to indicate what one does for money,” my father says. “I have never stopped my true work. Not once. I am imperfect, and I have not always worked in pure accord with the spirit, but I have never stopped trying.”

“David is a handpicked servant of the Lord,” Daze says. “But, son, remember that you can do the Lord's work anywhere. Even at a job with a paycheck.”

I am staring at the floor, now, feeling full-on sick to my stomach, either from the cramps or from the fact that we've all been waiting for my father to come home, and he's only been back an hour, and he and Phoebe are already going at it. Beside the doorway where he stands is a heating vent, and it looks like the hem of his robe is dancing with forced heat the way my nightgown does when I stand there in winter to get warm. But there isn't any forced heat, because it's not winter. And as I lift my head to where my father's fingers peek out from his sleeves, I see that they are all spreading out, then coming back together, very quickly, a motion like scissors that travels up his arms and causes his robe to sway.

I say, “Dad,” and when he looks at me now he's blinking even faster, way too fast, like the fingers and eyes are all being run by the same engine that's overheating inside him. “Dad,” I say, “are you okay?” And I don't know where this comes from since I've never asked him or any other adult if they're okay before. And he keeps blinking at me like he thinks he might know me but can't place how, can't remember my name. The clutching in my stomach moves up toward my heart.

“Charmaine, go upstairs,” Phoebe says.

“I have a burden,” my father says, talking right to me, as if I'm the only one who can understand. Sometimes I think I might be. “It has to do with the salvation of the people of Rowland County. Not this town, with all its churches, its pharisees, but the dark, lost outskirts. I pray that I am up to the task,” he says, “but I worry that I am not.”

“But you're willing, right?” I say.

“Daze,” says Phoebe, “Charmaine has some exciting news she might like to tell you upstairs.”

“I am willing,” my father says. “Yes, Charmaine. Charmaine, thank you for that.” He closes his eyes briefly, seems to steady himself, then opens them. “What exciting news?”

“Nothing,” I say, mortified at the thought of my period.

“It's not that I'm not concerned for the people of Rowland County,” says Phoebe. “I'm just growing more concerned every day for the people of this family.”

Daze stands up too fast and lurches to the right, which is the side that lags, still, from a stroke she had last year. “I'm fine, I'm fine,” she says, though neither Phoebe nor my father has noticed. “I want to hear this news,” she says to me. “And I want to see the clever new school clothes your mother's made.”

“I'm a Christian, too,” Phoebe is saying. “I'm willing, too. I lived on faith alone for the whole year, too. We all did, if you happened to notice.”

“We were taken care of,” my father says.

“And you said that the Lord said a year. One year. Which is over.”

“I've had some further revelation,” my father says.

“We're just heading upstairs now,” says Daze. As she edges around my father in the doorway, she kisses him on his gaunt cheek, right above the beard, and says, “Son,” but he keeps right on talking.

“The Lord was preparing us, Phoebe.”

I'm standing up now, but I can't take my eyes off the opening of my father's sleeve, his scissoring fingers. “I saw lepers, Phoebe. In this day and age. Covered in sores. People who couldn't feel their own skin burning if they were on fire. And do you know there are children in this very county born with tails?”

“Charmaine,” Phoebe says, pointing to the door.

I follow Daze into the foyer, and the kitchen door shuts behind me. Daze heads up the stairs, limping a little, and I'm careful to go slowly behind her so she doesn't feel rushed.

In my room she pulls me into a hug.

“I don't feel good,” I say into her chest, which is bony above her low, flattened bosom.

“It's an unusual thing, the way God reveals himself to your father,” Daze says. “But there's nothing for you to worry about.”

“Have you seen any of those children with tails?”

“Not tails,” says Daze. “Not really. Well, tails, but not like you're thinking. More like little growths along the spine. The county health system leaves something to be desired.”

I reach around behind my back and finger the ridges of my backbone. My womanhood cramps up again. There seems no end to the treachery of the body. But when I share the news with Daze, who as a rule avoids discussion of bodily matters, she congratulates me and gives me Tylenol from a bottle in her handbag. She also fishes out the extra plastic egg of pantyhose she always has on hand for runs and places it on my bedside table. “Now that you're a woman,” she says. Then I lie down and she sits beside me.

Out my window, the rain is gone and the sky has turned clear. It's getting dark slowly, and the crickets sound like they're saying, “OKAY, okay, OKAY, okay,” in a kind of resignation loud enough to drown out the voices of my parents downstairs. The cross on top of the water tower flickers on in the distance, as it does every evening at dusk. Some nights it's bright enough to wake me up, the white light playing off town rooftops in one direction and, in the other, spilling over the rolling county fields.

When my grandfather died, Daze came to live with us for a while. She used to tell me stories before I went to sleep, the same stories over and over, and even though I am thirteen, and less of a child than I have ever been, I ask her for one now, one that I know by heart. She tells me about the day I was born, how she and my grandfather got the call and sped to Saint Joseph Hospital in Lexington to meet my parents. It was January, bitterly cold, the road from East Winder treacherous with black ice. My grandfather prayed the whole way. At the hospital he took me out of Phoebe's arms and dedicated me then and there, with his booming evangelist's voice, to the service of the Lord. Two nurses stuck their heads in to see what the commotion was about and ended up laying hands on me right along with the rest of the family.

Daze tells me how sick Phoebe was afterward and how much help she needed and that she was sorry Phoebe didn't have her own mother at a time like this but glad she had a chance to step in. Taking care of me as a baby was the great blessing of her “second act,” which is what she calls her middle age. Not that her second act is over yet, she says. Her second act is really just getting started, come to think of it. When she stops talking, things downstairs are quiet. “You hungry?” she asks. I shake my head. “You feeling any better?” she asks.

“A little,” I say, and I am, but I make a face like I'm not, because I know Daze will sit there with me until I feel better or fall asleep, whichever comes first.

I
N THE MORNING, THERE'S
a small, flat box at the foot of my bed near where Titus is curled up sleeping. Inside are four separate baggies. Two of them hold about a spoonful each of dirt and rocks, and the third holds a large splinter. The fourth looks empty. They're all fastened at the top with rubber bands, and underneath them is an index card that says what they are in uneven typewriter type:
Holy Soil from Bethlehem Hill; Stone from the top of the Mount of Olives; Sliver from the Cross of Jesus; Water from the River Jordan
.

I shake the sliver of wood out onto my palm. Jesus' cross was so large and heavy that he could hardly carry it up the hill on his back to Golgotha—even if they hadn't been beating him the whole time. Eventually, he gave out and someone else had to carry it the rest of the way. But no matter how big the cross was, it's hard to believe that two thousand years of slicing it into souvenir splinters wouldn't have already used up the wood. The rest, I don't know. Probably it depends on how high the hill of Bethlehem is, or the Mount of Olives. I picture long lines of nonstop pilgrims carrying away handfuls of pebbles from a mountain for years and years, the mountain shrinking just a tiny bit all the time, until it disappears.

My father knocks, then swings open the door. He's still wearing the brown robe, and he still smells like he hasn't bathed, and I'm wondering if Phoebe let him sleep in the bed with her. Or if, inhabited by the spirit of the Apostle Paul, he even wanted to.

“Are these real?” I ask him.

“Everything's real.”

“I mean, are they what it says they are?”

“The River Jordan is a possibility,” he says. “Also the Mount of Olives. Their value may be more symbolic, however.”

I hold up the empty bag where the water should be.

“Arid conditions,” he says.

I pretend to examine the Mount of Olives bag, with its rough gray and black gravel. My father seems calmer this morning, but he's still blinking a lot.

“I bought these from a beggar,” he says. “He was crouched against the city wall with a stack of these boxes and a sign that said
HOLY RELICS
. I gave him my shoes.” While he's talking, my father's gaze shifts from the white sheer curtain at my window to my bookcase. The walls of my room are pale yellow with white woodwork, and the furniture, which was Phoebe's furniture when she was little, is also white. All the bright white things in the room show up in warped miniature on my father's dark, glassy eyes. His cheekbones have become so sharp you could fit an egg in the hollow underneath each of them.

“I missed you,” I say, before I can stop myself.

My father gives me a stern look. “‘Reject all falsity.' Ephesians four:twenty-five.”

Then I have to think about what I really meant, because he hears something in my voice that indicates that what I said doesn't exactly match what I feel. That's the prophet in him. What I really feel is that I miss him right now, more than I did when he was gone, even though he's right here in front of me and we're joined together in the Lord, which is the most important way to be joined. More important than being family, even, because Jesus says in the book of Matthew, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?”

My father picks up my children's Bible and opens it, careful not to let any of my bookmarks fall out. It's the full New King James Version text, just like in adult Bibles, only it's illustrated with pictures: Moses parting the Red Sea, Abraham raising the sword ready to sacrifice Isaac, Jesus as a shepherd surrounded by lambs.

“I started the Christian Education class at church,” I tell him as he turns the thin pages. “At the end you get a new Bible. And you join the church. And if you haven't been baptized, then you get baptized too.”

“Baptism is not something you do because you finish a class,” my father says. “You will be ready for baptism when the Holy Ghost comes upon you, and not a moment sooner. Only you will know when the time is right.”

“Okay,” I say, wondering if you can still get the Bible, which comes in pink or brown leatherette, if you opt out of the baptism.

“Do you know what's so special about the word
apart
?” he says, closing the Bible on one finger to keep his place.

I want so badly to be able to guess this that my brain turns dusty. At my feet, Titus stretches and resettles himself with his head on the box of relics.

“Think, Charmaine. What does it mean?
Apart
.”

“To be separate from something.”

“Now break it up and tell me what it means.
A part
.”

“To not be separate,” I say.

My father flips the Bible open again and runs his finger down the page, and suddenly I'm staring at his fingernails, which I've only ever seen clean and clipped short. Now they are too long, and some of them look split, and there's a thin line of grime showing right where each nail meets the skin underneath. “You could say that
apart
is a perfect word, one that suggests opposite things at the same time.
Apart
,” he says again, leaving the Bible open on his lap and raising his hands to either side of his head. “Now,
a part
,” he says, clasping his hands together. “A part of something larger. We are a part of the church because we share faith. ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them,' Matthew eighteen:twenty. But we must also hold ourselves
apart
from other believers at the same time because humans are fallen, therefore any human organization, like the church, is also fallen.”