Some Wildflower In My Heart (31 page)

Sometime earlier—it could have been four or twenty-four topics removed—we had discussed briefly a book that, as it turned out, four of the six of us had read. It was a book Birdie had brought to school only the day before, on November 17, and given to me. “I told you yesterday I had a book to give you, and I just finished it last night,” she had told me upon handing it to me that morning. “I know you like to read, but this might not be the kind of book you'd normally pick. I think you'll like it, though. Mickey and I think he's a real good writer.”

It was a hardback book bound in dark blue cloth. Though it was upside down as she extended it to me, I had read its title—
Stage Right
—and subtitle, written in smaller letters—
The Drama of a Fundamentalist Christian Church
. “I think it's real interesting, of course,” she had said, smiling. “But, then, it's about our church, so I guess I could be just the least bit prejudiced.” She had gone on to explain that the Church of the Open Door had been the subject of a sociological research, an “ethnography,” conducted over the course of a year by a respected writer in the field, a man named Perry Warren, who had moved to Derby for a year and had attended the church. I remembered reading an article in the Filbert
Nutshell
some months before about the research of this man and his book-in-the-making, but I was surprised now to find that the project had already been completed.

I cannot say why I accepted such a gift, given my extreme aversion toward religion as a whole, nor why I opened it to the first chapter later at home, but I had received it from Birdie's hands with a short nod, taken it home with me when my work was finished, and read it that same day, beginning shortly after two-thirty and stopping only for supper, which time came sooner than I had expected.

When Thomas had come home, I had risen from my chair quickly and set about frying two lean ground beef patties, after which I hastily prepared some frozen vegetables and sweet muffins. It was not a well-planned meal, but I do not believe Thomas took note. I delayed my bedtime by half an hour that night, and by ten-thirty I had finished the book. Birdie had written an inscription in the flyleaf—
To Margaret from Birdie, You're a new friend, but I feel like I've always known you and want to know you even better
—which I did not notice until I picked it up to resume my reading after the supper dishes were put away.

At the Field Pea, Virgil had mentioned the book as we ate, for he had read it also. “It interested me,” he said, “to see an outsider's perspective of Christianity all neatly laid out and reduced to its component parts. I thought the writer did a remarkable job of maintaining an objective tone all the way through.”

“But did you know he got saved?” Mickey asked. “I mean Perry Warren, the man who wrote the book. He went home a different man than when he came. That's what made it all so exciting for us.”

“
And
he got back together with his wife,” Birdie said. “They'd been ready to get a divorce. She and his little boy came down once to meet everybody before Perry moved back home to Illinois.” She nodded and paused as if reveling in a private memory. “He still writes to some of the people at church,” she added. Then motioning to me, she said, “I gave my copy of the book to Margaret, but I know she probably hasn't had a chance to look at it yet.”

“I read it yesterday,” I said.

“You did?” cried Birdie. “My, that was fast!”

“What did you think of it?” Virgil asked me.

“Mr. Warren is a skilled writer,” I said, “with an enviable talent for turning the tedious details of a dull subject into a compelling story.”

The others looked at me with expressions registering varying degrees of confusion. It was evident that Birdie did not know whether to interpret my comment as praise or censure.

Virgil replied first, easily and calmly. “That's an interesting way to put it,” he said. “I believe I heard that the man is both a fiction writer and a social researcher, so what you say makes sense.” Then addressing all of us, he continued. “I can see how skeptical a guy like Perry Warren would be stepping into a church like that for the first time. For one thing, here's a group of people who claim to believe in the free will of man yet at the same time believe that God ordains and controls everything that happens. One minute they're saying, ‘I have decided to follow Jesus,' and the next minute ‘I couldn't resist God's call.' So what kind of free will is that? We decide to give in, yet we're too weak to put up a fight? And what kind of God is that? He drags us to him bound and gagged?”

The waiter had come at that moment, I believe, and Joan had quickly asked for more rolls and butter. I had asked for a refill of
unsweetened
tea, advising the waiter to inform those in the kitchen that the taste of tea in the sweetened tea was overpowered by that of sugar. “Tell them,” I said, “that a good rule of thumb is a cup of sugar per gallon of tea.”

“We like ours just a little sweeter than that,” Mickey interjected. “I think Birdie uses a cup and a fourth per gallon, don't you, sweetcake?” During the evening I counted seven different pet appellations that Mickey Freeman used to address Birdie: treasure, dumpling, pumpkin, precious, sugar, sweetcake, and honeybun.

By the time the waiter had taken his leave, Virgil's remarks concerning the free will of man had been buried beneath the rubble of a dozen verbal romps concerning sugar. Birdie had even joined in, playfully slapping Mickey's hand when he puckered his lips and asked if she'd like some sugar. “Yes, but I want the
refined
kind!” she said.

From there the conversation had somehow veered into the subject of prison reform, I believe—or perhaps it was an upcoming concert in Greenville by an eleven-year-old Korean violinist or the new billboard advertisement on the interstate, promoting an internationally acclaimed circus and containing a glaring spelling error:
See Amazing Acrobatic Feets
. “Yeah, they should've taken off the
s
,” Mickey had said. “Everybody knows more than one foot is
feet
,” to which Thomas had responded, “Or a yard if it's three feet,” to which Virgil had added his own droll remark. “I never saw a three-footed acrobat.” Even Joan had laughed.

The waiter returned with the rolls and tea, and at some point Joan told about a woman with whom she worked whose first name was Laureth. “She said her mother took all the names of her children off the back of a shampoo bottle,” Joan said. “She's got two brothers named Keratin and Amino and two sisters named Glycerin and Xylene.” Virgil commented that Laureth had come out the best in that deal, and Mickey had begun a rapid monologue of other names the mother could have selected: Purified Water, Sulfate, Hydrolyzed Protein, Citric Acid, and Yellow Dye Number Seven. Once more, Thomas had laughed with gusto at the little man's quick though adolescent wit. Birdie had laid her hands on either side of her face and exclaimed, “Why, Mickey, you're a nut! So that's why you take so long in the shower—you're reading the back of the shampoo bottle!”

Somehow dessert had been ordered and our dinner plates removed, and in the lull, during which the waiter placed our slices of pie before us, Virgil spoke with thoughtful deliberation, once again turning to serious matters. “And just what kind of God do we have anyway? If a person believes in God—in a God of love, that is—how can he reconcile all the suffering that goes on in the world? Or in his own life, for that matter?”

He went on to explain that he had been debating this very issue with a fellow teacher. Early in the evening, most likely during the introductions around the table, it was revealed that Virgil Dunlop was a teacher at Berea Middle School, instructing seventh graders in world history and eighth graders in American history. “That's Bruce's big hang-up,” Virgil said. “He says he could never get into religion because any God who would let somebody go through what his father suffered before he died of cancer wasn't anybody he cared to get mixed up with.” I saw the waiter studying Virgil with a look of repugnance, as though he had stumbled upon a nest of vipers. He set the last dish of pie upon our table and interrupted tersely with a promise to return with coffee for those who wanted it.

“So what did you tell Bruce?” Birdie asked, her brown eyes glowing with interest.

“Oh, what haven't I told him?” Virgil said. “We go around and around, but he doesn't even half listen to what I say before he's off on his same old line: If God is so good, he says, then why doesn't he do something about all the hunger and pain and all the
ugliness
. That's his favorite word when he's talking about life's bad side—
ugliness
. If there is a God, he says, then it's pretty clear that he doesn't care the least about people. And if he doesn't care about people, he says, then I don't want to have anything to do with him. And then he always adds, ‘But I'm sure there's
not
a God.'”

Virgil let his head fall backward as he released a sigh of frustration. “There's no easy answer,” he said. “It's not something you can figure out like a math problem. Do I believe that God
directs
our suffering? Bruce asked me that the other day. Does he have a big chart he marks it down on? Or is it like a lottery where your number suddenly comes up at random and it's your turn? How does God go about divvying it all up so everybody gets a share?”

For a long moment we all fell silent. I am quite certain that three of us—Joan, Thomas, and I—sincerely wished that the conversation could in some way be relieved of its heavy weight. Did it not occur to Virgil Dunlop, I wondered, that there might be those of us who preferred not to sit in a public restaurant among people we barely knew and discuss the attributes of God and the mysteries of human suffering?

It may surprise the reader to learn that the unleashing of vituperative condemnations upon God, such as those of Virgil's colleague, bestir within me a sensation akin to fear. While I truly felt that God had deserted me those many years ago in my grandfather's house, I had seen it as an oversight—an inexcusable oversight of awful consequence, to be sure, but an oversight nevertheless rather than an intentional and treacherous act against me. God had simply turned his back upon me for some reason that I could not fathom, and in so doing he had demonstrated his fallibility. I could have no part in a system of belief presided over by an irresponsible and careless deity, one who showed obvious favoritism or lapses of attention. To vilify God publicly, however, was not something I could ever find within my power to do.

At the Field Pea Restaurant over seven months ago, on the evening of November 18, a sudden curiosity welled up within me, and I believe I am correct in stating that I surprised everyone at the table, perhaps myself most of all, by turning abruptly to Birdie and addressing her boldly and directly.

“And were the opportunity to come to
you
,” I said, “what would you say in response to Bruce's views? Why does God allow humans to suffer?”

The fact that the seed of Birdie's faith had grown hardy roots in a rich deepness of earth had been abundantly yet quietly manifest in her daily conduct in the lunchroom of Emma Weldy, of course, but at no time was the genuineness of her heart more powerfully demonstrated to me than by her simple answer to my question that night at the restaurant.

I believe that had she answered in any other way—had she attempted, for example, to foist upon me some pat piety, some fraudulent platitude, had she recited a list of reasons for suffering (oh, yes, as a teenager I had heard such sermons, with their trite illustrations about the tangled yarns on the undersides of tapestries), had she tried, in Milton's words, “to justify the ways of God to man,”—I would have rejected her soundly, once and for all.

She grimaced, however, and shook her head sadly. “Oh, Margaret, honey, I don't know exactly how to answer that,” she said. “I don't know why he lets us suffer—I just know he does. It's just part of life, and we all have our share sooner or later. And we can spend our whole life saying it's not fair that we have to pay for something Adam did, but it doesn't change a thing. I wish I had a mind that could figure it all out, but I don't. I just know two things for sure, and they don't seem to go together—God is good and we all have to suffer.”

That she was honest and simple pleased me. Had she begun quoting lengthy passages from the Bible, I would have recoiled from her in a lasting way. Had she tossed off some literary quip, such as Shakespeare's “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” I should have scorned her openly. Of a certainty I would not be writing a book about her.

When I think of Birdie Freeman today, my mind is often filled with analogies from the world of science. I envision a microscopic organism surrounding and engulfing another. I imagine the slow seepage of colorless gases into what was once a vacuum. I think of the laws of thermodynamics concerning actions and reactions, of the effect of heat upon ingots of metal, of the principle of water displacement. I am reminded of the productive work of sunlight within green plants, of the irrepressible power of seeds, of the springing forth of flowers in the most hostile of soils—in the forest gloom, in the desert, upon a rocky mountainside. I see purple and yellow crocuses bursting through the crust of snow.

And without fail, when I think of Birdie, my thoughts turn to the wildflower. I have in my possession a book titled
Wild Flowers in South Carolina
by a botanist named Wade Batson. Within its pages, the edges of which begin to give evidence of many turnings, are pictures and descriptions of over two hundred wildflowers native to our state, including those with euphonious names such as Star of Bethlehem, Honey-cup, and Fairy Lily, as well as those of harsher designation: Wild-Man-of-the-Earth, Devil's Darning Needle, and Beggar's Lice. I bought the book at the Derby Public Library Used Book Sale after the incident that I shall now set down in writing.