Still, that didn’t put extra money in the bank or pay the hospital and doctor bills for Stephen Lee’s birth. Tabitha stared down into the baby’s brown eyes. She had decisions to make. She wasn’t a child anymore. She had a child. Somebody who depended on her for his life. She didn’t want to fail him.
Leigh had told her about a part-time job at the courthouse. Mostly filing with a little typing, but Tabitha had taken business courses in high school. She could do the job, but what would she do with Stephen Lee? Aunt Love would be happy to keep him, but what if she sat down and took a nap and forgot about him? Tabitha didn’t think she would. Aunt Love doted on Stephen Lee, but she did forget things all the time. Tabitha made regular trips through the kitchen to be sure Aunt Love hadn’t started cooking something on the stove before going off and leaving the burner turned on high. And she sometimes told the same stories three or four times a day.
Tabitha looked at Aunt Love sitting patiently in one of the pews reading her Bible and ignoring the commotion at the front of the church as Miss Sally and some of the mothers tried to get the kids to sit still and pay attention. Tabitha couldn’t hurt Aunt Love’s feelings by taking Stephen Lee to some other babysitter. Besides, Tabitha wanted to be the one to take care of him. But there was the money problem.
Tabitha could barely remember any time when she didn’t have to worry about the money problem. She and her mother had never had enough money after they left Hollyhill. Plenty of times they had packed up in the middle of the night and left town when they didn’t have money to catch up on the rent. DeeDee said it was good to make a fresh start every so often, that a place got stale after a while.
They’d never really stayed long anywhere until they got to California. Then DeeDee had settled, had been happy, had fallen in love with Eddie even though Eddie mostly hung with them because he needed somebody to pay his rent while he got his band going.
Tabitha wondered about DeeDee now and again. She’d written to her a few times since Stephen Lee had been born, but she hadn’t heard the first word back. DeeDee hadn’t wanted to be a grandmother. DeeDee hadn’t wanted to be a mother. Whether or not she wanted to be, though, she was. If Mrs. McDermott gave her those pictures, Tabitha would send one of them to her mother in a Christmas card.
Up in the front of the church, Tabitha heard Jocie say Stephen Lee’s name. “He could be the baby Jesus,” she was saying.
There was a moment of absolute silence as if even the rowdy kids in the front pews knew Jocie had said something weird. Lela Martin opened her mouth, then looked at Miss Sally and shut it again. Behind her, Myra Hearndon smiled and Leigh looked worried as her cheeks turned red. Miss Sally held her head to the side a moment as if considering what Jocie had suggested before she said, “We always use a baby doll for Jesus. I think that might work best.”
Aunt Love saved the day as she looked up from her Bible to say, “Of course it will. All churches use a baby doll for Jesus. Nobody can step in and play the part of the Lord. Not even an innocent little baby. Besides, Stephen Lee is too big. Don’t be trying to cause problems, Jocelyn.”
“I’m not.” Jocie turned to stare back at Aunt Love. “I just can’t see why we have to do everything the way it’s always been done. There could be a better way.”
“There’s no better way than the Bible,” Aunt Love said. “In a Christmas play, you need shepherds and angels and wise men. You have to tell the Christmas story the way it’s written.” She looked back down at her Bible as if the discussion was over.
Jocie sighed. “We could tell the story the way it’s written in the Bible and somehow do it different. Like letting the adults take a turn at being shepherds and wise men.”
“That might be a fun idea. If we could get enough adults to agree to do it. We might try that next year.” Miss Sally reached out and patted Jocie’s arm. “And we do want you to finish your poem about Christmas so you can read it to us that night.”
“Sure, all right. I’ll go work on it.” Jocie picked up her notebook and walked back to scoot into the pew beside Tabitha.
“It’s okay, Jocie. Stephen Lee might not be ready to be a star yet anyhow. He’d probably spoil the scene by screaming bloody murder if you put him down in a manger stuffed with hay,” Tabitha whispered to her. “And Aunt Love’s right. He is too big to be a newborn.”
“Whoever they pick for Mary could have held him, and Dad says the wise men didn’t show up until two years later anyway.”
“Well, I know Stephen Lee would have never laid still in the manger that long.” Tabitha laughed a little and squeezed Jocie’s hand. “You just can’t mess with tradition, kid. Baby Jesus is a doll, has always been a doll, and will be a doll again this year. I mean, the poor people will have enough to get used to with Cassidy being an angel.”
“You don’t think heaven has black angels?”
“I don’t know. Does the Bible say it does?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Dad. All I remember it saying is they had glowing faces or sometimes in the Old Testament they looked just like everybody else at least until the Lord decided to let the Bible people know they were talking to angels. Do you think you’ve ever talked to an angel?”
“I hope not.”
“Why? Shouldn’t we want to talk to angels?” Jocie looked over at her.
“Not me. It would scare the socks off me, and angels don’t generally show up for an everyday how-are-you talk. They always show up making some kind of big pronouncement like you’re going to have a baby. I have a baby.” Tabitha ran her finger across Stephen Lee’s cheek. He smiled up at her. “I’m not planning on having any more anytime soon.”
“But they might come with some other kind of message. Something not so big and dramatic, like maybe it’s okay to do something different in church every once in a while.” Jocie slumped against the back of the pew and stared toward the front of the church where three little girls were lining up to be measured for their angel halos.
Tabitha laughed. “That angel shows up here and now and tells them that, you might have a chance. Otherwise, forget it. Tradition is going to rule. They’ve done it this way a hundred years and they’re going to do it this way a hundred more, give or take a year here and there.”
Z
ella scraped a hunk of mud off the bottom of her good shoes with an old table knife she’d dug out of the back of her utensil drawer. If she didn’t hurry, she was going to be late for choir practice. She was never late. Brother Charles, who directed the choir, would think she was sick or something and send somebody to check on her.
After all, she did live alone and she wasn’t as young as she used to be, although she wasn’t nearly as old as some of those young people at church thought she was. People had no relativity. No, that wasn’t the word she needed. Relationshipness. Reactivity. She shook her head and frowned at the shoe she was holding as she tried to pull up the right word, but it slipped out of reach.
She wiped the mud off her knife with a piece of newspaper as her irritation grew. She hadn’t only muddied her shoes, she must have muddied her thinking, not even being able to come up with the right word. She never had problems coming up with the right words. It had been years since she’d had to peek at more than two or three of the answers to work the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper.
At any rate, whatever the word was, it just meant people didn’t think straight when they thought about how old somebody was. Just because a person was on the far side of sixty didn’t mean she was going to sit down and die in her chair or something. Not if that person was hale and healthy and went to work Monday through Friday and showed up at church twice on Sunday the same as she had every livelong week for years.
At least David didn’t treat her as though she had one foot in the grave and a head emptied out by age. He listened to her when she said something about what they should do at the
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, and well he should. After all, she had years more experience there than he did. Than any of them did. Even Wesley, though he was older than Zella.
She didn’t know what in the world had possessed her to go to the river that morning. She hadn’t intended to. There was absolutely no reason for Wesley to be baptized out there in that dirty old Redbone River instead of at First Baptist. It would serve him right if he did catch his death of something.
She dampened an old rag and began scrubbing mud off the top of her shoe. She looked at the clock. Maybe she should find some other shoes to wear. But these were the ones she always wore to church in the winter. They were warm and sturdy and comfortable. She wasn’t the type to be a slave to fashion with pointed toes or spiky heels. And she’d never seen the need of having two pair of good shoes when one would do. But then before today, she’d never seen the need to walk down a muddy riverbank to see somebody get baptized.
Of course, it wasn’t something that was apt to happen often. In fact, with Wesley, it was honestly something she’d never thought would happen ever. She still wasn’t sure he wasn’t a fugitive from the law, even if she didn’t have any proof except that the man had obviously been hiding out in Hollyhill for years now.
Hollyhill would be a good place for somebody to hide out. Randy Simmons, the chief of police, didn’t have a suspicious bone in his body. Hollyhill could be full of fugitives, and as long as they kept nickels in the parking meters and didn’t disturb the man’s morning coffee at the Hollyhill Grill, he could care less.
Zella plopped one shoe down on a sheet of newspaper to dry and picked up the other one. She wondered if every Mt. Pleasant Church member was having to do the same shoe cleaning job before church. She sniffed a little and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. The people out there were country. They probably didn’t think twice about scraping mud off their good shoes or finding clumps of mud on the church floor.
But it had been nice how the people at Mt. Pleasant had welcomed Wesley into their church. Zella wasn’t sure he’d have found that kind of welcome at First Baptist. Of course she’d have welcomed him into the church. She believed everybody should go to church no matter how odd they might happen to be. The Bible was plain about that. Nobody was supposed to be left out. Love your neighbor didn’t just mean the person who happened to live next door. Else you could just move to some other, nicer neighborhood when one of your neighbors started getting on your nerves.
She supposed that was why she’d gone out to the river. To prove that to herself and to Wesley. After all, they were all members of the same family of God even if they didn’t sit in the same pews under the same roof.
It didn’t have the first thing to do with the letter that had come in the mail on Friday. She’d recognized the writing on the envelope right away, even though it had been months since she’d gotten the first letter. So long in fact that she’d about decided the Greens in Pelphrey, Ohio, had forgotten about it all, and she wouldn’t have to worry about how she was going to tell Wesley she’d poked around in his apartment to find out where he was really from, while he was laid up with his broken leg.
Certainly not from the planet Jupiter the way he was always telling Jocelyn. That silly girl had believed Wesley’s outlandish stories for years. Some of these days she was going to have to get her head out of the clouds and grow up. Zella had told David that very thing just the other day, and he’d looked as if she’d smacked him with a rolled-up newspaper or something.
“Oh, I hope not for a few more years at least,” he’d said. “I like Jocie just the way she is.”
“A bit more respectful and responsible couldn’t hurt,” Zella said. David had just gotten a call from one of Jocelyn’s teachers about her speaking out of turn and contradicting what the teacher said.
“Well, tact might not be her strong suit, but how much more responsible could a fourteen-year-old be? She’s here helping us every day or home helping Aunt Love. Sometimes I wish she were less responsible. I’m afraid I’ve stolen her little girl times by having her work so much with us here at the
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,” David said. “Besides, she was right and Mr. Hammond was wrong. ‘God helps those who help themselves’ isn’t in the Bible. It was Benjamin Franklin who wrote something like that. A teacher should be open to the truth, don’t you think?”
The truth. That was something David had never wanted to examine too closely when it came to Jocelyn. Some truths were just too hard to face. Or to tell to others.
Zella put down her other shoe and took another look at the clock on the stove. She had time to let them dry a couple of minutes before she put them on to walk to church. She supposed she could drive, but she wanted to walk. She needed to think about what to do about the letter.
She went across the room and picked up the half-unfolded sheet of notebook paper off the table.
Dear Mrs. Curtsinger.
Still calling her Mrs., as if every woman over the age of consent had to be married to somebody. Of course, she hadn’t answered his first letter so there was no way for him to know he’d addressed her wrong in that one. She was going to write back to him. Eventually. When the time was right, but that time hadn’t gotten here yet.
Evidently the boy on the other end of the letter didn’t care whether the time was right or not. She held his letter up and read it again for the fiftieth time. The words were emblazoned on her mind, but she read them anyway.
Dear Mrs. Curtsinger,
It has been some time since I first responded to your inquiry concerning my grandfather, Wesley Green, who has been missing for over twenty years. In your letter to us, you stated that you thought you might be acquainted with a man who could be my grandfather. I have eagerly awaited a reply from you that might shed more light on the whereabouts of my grandfather, but have yet to receive any kind of response from you or from the Wesley Green you know.
You wrote in your first letter that he had been gravely injured. I pray he has recovered and hasn’t passed on. It would be a sad blow to think I might be this close to actually meeting my grandfather only to find out that he had died.