Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen (3 page)

Ruthie Morgan lived next door and was about as girly a girl as you could ever hope to find. She always wore a pink dress and had a pink barrette clipped in her hair. I bet it took her mama at least three tries to get that barrette hanging so straight. From time to time, Ruthie Morgan and I would jump rope together or play badminton, not because we particularly liked each other but because there was nothing else to do. Of course, it should be no big surprise that Ruthie Morgan and Emma Sue were good friends, even though Ruthie Morgan was a full two years older. I always called Ruthie Morgan by her first and last names, placing just enough emphasis on the first syllable of her last name to convey my abiding irritation with her.

During football season, Ruthie Morgan would not step foot in our house, not that I really cared. Too bad for her, I always said, ’cause on game days we drank red Kool-Aid, ate red Jell-O, and dressed our Barbies in little red dresses all in honor of the fightin’ Dawgs. We screamed and yelled at that television set while Ruthie Morgan was probably stuck inside ironing her mother's linen napkins for Sunday lunch.

Even though I would have never admitted this to her, or my daddy, I would have loved to iron some napkins for Mama. She would have set the temperature gauge on low so I wouldn't get burned, and I'd press on that iron till I smoothed every single crease and wrinkle out of that linen. I envied all the ironing Ruthie Morgan got to do, all the pretty white napkins and her daddy's big, square handkerchiefs.

My daddy didn't much believe in ironing. He said if you couldn't wash and wear it, it wasn't worth buying. Even at the Sunday dinner table we wiped our hands on paper napkins Daddy bought by the hundreds at the Shop Rite.

Once I tried ironing one of Martha Ann's dresses, the one she was planning on wearing to Emma Sue's tenth birthday party. Mrs. Roberta Huckstep always felt obligated to invite at least one of the preacher's daughters, and thankfully for me, Martha Ann was her favorite. She told Emma Sue that Martha Ann was a lovely young girl, but she had to wonder if my mama's tragic accident, as she always called it, had left me scarred. She said that it was fortunate for Martha Ann that she was barely four at the time and would have been too young to have been damaged by the tragic-ness of it.

Scarred or not, if Martha Ann was going to a Huckstep party, I was determined she was going to look just as pretty as the birthday girl and all her prissy little friends. Unfortunately, by the time I was done ironing, the dress had a big brown burn mark on the back. I told her nobody would notice, even though I knew I was lying. I tried tying the sash so it covered most of the burn, but it's hard to shape a bow as big as that one needed to be. Martha Ann wore that dress anyway, never letting on that she was upset with me.

At least the Lord left us one female in our lives who was willing to teach us some of the more womanly things we needed to know. Gloria Jean Graves was the most feminine woman I knew, and she lived right next door. When Daddy worked late, Gloria Jean took care of us, but, more important, she was the one we went to when we needed help making cookies for a Valentine's party or our hair fixed smooth and neat for our annual school picture.

She was the one who taught us how to shave our legs without drawing blood and to put on a pair of nylons without causing a run. And she was the one who told me what to do when my period started, the mechanics of which I would never have been able to discuss with my daddy.

Gloria Jean insisted we call her by her first name. She said Mrs. Graves made her sound too old, like one of those blue-haired grandmamas with one foot in the grave. Gloria Jean was definitely not our grandmama. She was real handsome but in a different way than any of the other women I knew. She looked more like she belonged in the television set with all the other beautiful people. Nothing about Gloria Jean was simple or plain.

God Almighty only knows the true color of Gloria Jean's hair. She went to the beauty parlor every other week, without fail, and had it colored a bright, beautiful shade of auburn. Your hair, she said, was your crowning glory, and it should be given the proper attention. Every day she'd tease and pile her hair on the top of her head and then spray it in place. Not even the wind blowing before a thunderstorm could knock a hair on her head loose. She kept a small bottle of Aqua Net in her purse because a girl, she said, had to be prepared for any emergency. She would even spray it on her skirt if it started clinging to her nylons.

One Fourth of July, she stuck real-live lightning bugs inside her hair and then covered it all with netting. Her head glowed like some kind of fancy firecracker till all the lightning bugs choked on her hairspray and died. She paid Martha Ann and me fifty cents apiece to pick all those poor little bugs from her hair. Nope, nothing about Gloria Jean was ever simple or plain.

Her face was made up with all sorts of pretty colors, all the time. Martha Ann and I spent the night with her once and when she tucked us into bed her eyelids were blue, and when she called us to breakfast the next morning, her eyelids were green. Looking at her face was kind of like looking at a rainbow.

She painted everything, including her fingernails and toenails. And they were always the most beautiful shade of pink or red, depending on what color outfit she was wearing that day. She had a collection of nail polish that even Ruthie Morgan found enviable. There must have been thirty or forty bottles of polish, from Chrysanthemum Pink to Paris Evening Red, neatly stacked on the bottom shelf of her bathroom closet. And when it was raining and we couldn't go outside and play, Gloria Jean would give me and Martha Ann a manicure, just like in a real beauty parlor.

Sitting out on her television set was a photograph of herself. She was standing in front of the fountain at city hall with her legs positioned just like a model in one of those
Vogue
magazines she kept laying around the house. She looked so fancy in her full, pleated skirt and her high, pointed heels. Her hair was swept up on her head and her lips were painted a deep ruby red. Gloria Jean had been a sure-enough beauty in her day. Even Martha Ann and I could figure that out.

Apparently a lot of men had figured that out, too. She had been married five times, something I considered an amazing accomplishment but something you could tell didn't impress my daddy much. Gloria Jean said herself that she hadn't given up on love, just the official marital ritual. In fact, she had a steady boyfriend who lived down in Calhoun. His name was Meeler Dickson, and he worked in a carpet mill, and that was all I knew about him. She visited him the third weekend of every month without fail, but she never once let him come to her house.

She said she wouldn't feel right about a man in her house with the preacher living next door. But I think she was more concerned about Ida Belle Fletcher, who lived two doors down, spooning out the details of her private life just as freely as she did the creamed corn at church suppers.

Martha Ann and I loved it when Gloria Jean talked about her husbands and her weddings. She'd begin with some simple piece of advice like, “Oh girls, don't you ever marry a man that comes to the church late for his own wedding.” Then we knew it was time to pay close attention because Gloria Jean was about to share a story even juicier than those soap operas she loved to watch on the television.

“My first husband, remember girls, Cel Beauchamp, from Louisiana. He was late to the church, and I just knew that was a sign from God that I should hightail it out the back door. If a man can't show up for his own wedding on time, girls, then he'll never be able to keep a woman happy,” Gloria Jean said with the conviction that comes only from experience. “But the church was already filled with people, the candles were lit, my veil was on, and my mother said, ‘Unless that leg of yours is in a cast, you are walking down that aisle.’

“Girls, hear me out, there is always time to turn back. You know why he was late? ’Cause he was getting drunk at some bar up in Soddy Daisy. I left him after three months of wedded bliss. He come home one too many nights smelling of Jack Daniel's and homemade cigars. But I did all right. I walked away with one fine diamond ring, a brand-new double-wide, and a set of Corning Ware that's still sitting in my kitchen cupboard, never even taken it out of the box.”

“Oh Daddy, Gloria Jean is just so neat,” I told him when he got home from visiting the sick late one night. “You know she wore white at all five weddings. She says that is a bride's prerogative. She even said that when I get married, I can wear one of her dresses.”

“Catherine Grace,” Daddy replied in an unusually firm tone, “there's a reason a bride wears white on her wedding day, and we will discuss that when you're a little older. But remember this, husbands and wedding dresses are not meant to be collected. You only need one of each.”

Daddy never seemed particularly fond of Gloria Jean. I guess he considered divorce to be one of those get-down-on- your-knees-and-beg-for-forgiveness kind of sins. And the colorful way she lived her life probably didn't seem like that of a repentant woman. I wasn't troubled by the number of times she'd been married. It could have been twenty for all I cared. She was one of the most loving and exciting people I knew.

But I think, more than anything, I liked being around her because she would talk about my mama. She was the only person in town who ever talked about my mama. Any old thing might remind her of her friend Lena Mae, like when the clouds in the sky come together to look like a bunny rabbit. Then Gloria Jean would say something like, “Oh honey, your mama loved to sprawl out in the grass and look for animals floating across the sky. She was nothing more than a little girl herself when she married your daddy.”

Gloria Jean said she and my mama had been friends ever since Lena Mae came to town. Turned out our mama's aunt in Willacoochee was Gloria Jean's fifth husband's first cousin. “It's a small world, girls,” she'd laugh, “especially when you've married half of it.”

You could tell Gloria Jean really loved Lena Mae Cline. She was just extra special, she'd say. And you could tell she saw something in my mama that nobody else saw. “Catherine Grace, I knew it from the minute I laid eyes on her. She was such a pretty thing. She didn't need all these creams and powders I wear to be pretty. She just was. And she was so eager to be a good wife and mother. Yep, she was a real beauty, hon, inside and out,” she'd say, making me feel so proud to be her daughter.

“And, boy howdy, could she sing like a bird. She had the best voice in the Cedar Grove church choir. I told her that voice of hers surely made the Lord smile. I even begged her to take what the Lord had given her and head on over to Nashville and give it a go. There ain't no sin in singing for money. The Lord loves Loretta, Dolly, and Tammy just as much as He does Lena Mae Cline.”

Gloria Jean really believed my mama could have been a country music star. Sometimes I tried to imagine what life would have been like if she had been, me and Martha Ann and Mama and Daddy driving around in Mama's big fancy tour bus, stopping in a place like Ringgold only to buy some gas and sign a few autographs. But that dream, just like all the others crowding my head, always ended with me waking up the preacher's daughter in my bed in Ringgold, Georgia.

“Yes, sirree, girls, your mama had what it took to be on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. But the minute she'd start dreaming, well, she was real quick to remind me that her place was here with you girls and your daddy. I guess that don't really matter now. Either one of you know what time it is?” she'd say, always looking for a way to change the subject whenever my daddy's name drifted into the conversation.

Gloria Jean never said a mean thing about my daddy; that wasn't her way. But I knew that since Mama died, she quit going to church. She said it was just too painful to look up in the choir and not see her friend standing there singing her praises to Jesus. But sometimes I wondered if Gloria Jean thought my daddy hadn't treated my mama quite right, that maybe he hadn't appreciated all of Lena Mae's God-given gifts and talents. I don't know, but somehow I knew that was her business, not mine.

“Come on, girls. Let's get out the marshmallow whip and Ritz crackers and make us a little snack before the
Guiding Light
comes on,” Gloria Jean would say, and then we'd sit and watch the heartache and drama in somebody else's life for an hour.

CHAPTER THREE

Wandering Through the Desert with a Jar of Strawberry Jam

W
hen the lightning bugs came out to decorate the night sky, my daddy started working overtime, redeeming Ringgold's unsaved souls from an eternity of hellfire and damnation. He figured he had only three, maybe four, months at best when the water at Nottely Lake was warm enough to baptize those willing to dedicate their lives to their Savior Jesus Christ. Even Daddy knew that God's beloved children wouldn't go looking for salvation in freezing cold water.

So by the middle of June, Daddy's sermons were running a good fifteen minutes longer than normal, and the choir's singing of the final hymn seemed never ending. Daddy wouldn't give the poor choir a rest until he was convinced he had collected as many recruits for the Almighty as possible, which can be a tedious task in a town where 99 percent of the population has already committed itself to the Lord at least twice. He would stand in front of the pulpit, rocking back and forth as the choir sang softly behind him, and remind his flock that the time had come for them to reexamine their lives because tomorrow could be too late.

These were particularly trying times for Brother Fulmer and his aching stomach. He knew the meatiest pork chops and the freshest fried tomatoes at Morrison's Cafeteria over in LaFayette were going to be gone by the time he got there. I always considered him to be one of the most faithful men in town because not once did he sneak out the back during the closing hymn just so he could get to the cafeteria ahead of the Presbyterians, something the Bostleman brothers did with great regularity, claiming they needed to get their aunt some food before her blood sugar level dropped again.

Sometime after my ninth birthday, Daddy started asking me if I was ready to accept Jesus into my life as my Lord and Savior. I think I would have preferred he'd taken me shopping for my first bra than talked about something as personal as my salvation. “Not yet, Daddy,” I'd say, avoiding his eyes for fear that I was disappointing him.

“Are you sure, Catherine Grace?” he'd say. “I mean, you'll know when it's time. You'll feel it in your heart. Are you sure you haven't felt anything in your heart? A stirring of any kind?”

I think being the preacher and all, he was eager for me to make my walk with the Lord a public one. Truth be told, I wasn't sure I was ever going to be ready for that journey. Everybody else who walked down the red-carpeted aisle at Cedar Grove Baptist Church and into my daddy's open arms was crying and shaking, acting like they were possessed or something. I didn't feel anything like that, and I wasn't so sure I wanted to. I mean, I hadn't really known Jesus to go out of his way to do anything special for Catherine Grace Cline.

But for a preacher's daughter, I guess this transformation was as inevitable as all the other changes a young girl must endure, except this one happened without any advance warning—no pimples, no tender breast buds, nothing. Martha Ann and I were minding our own business, sitting on the back pew of the church so Daddy couldn't see Martha Ann reading the hymnal and me drawing on the backs of the offering envelopes. My friend Lolly Dempsey slipped in next to us halfway through the sermon, and we started playing a three-way game of hangman.

Lolly's mama and daddy were the only two people I knew who never came to church, not even on Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday. Lolly's daddy would drop her off right in front of the church, barely stopping his Chevy truck long enough for Lolly to jump out the door. I imagine he thought if he hesitated for more than a second, Daddy might try to save his soul, too. He was probably right.

None of us were paying much attention to what Daddy was saying except when he pounded on the top of the pulpit for added emphasis. Then we'd look up as if to say, “Amen to that.”

Mrs. Roberta Huckstep was perched on the piano bench, preening like a beauty contestant as she waited for Daddy's cue to start playing. Betty Gilbert, the regular church pianist, had gone to Macon for three weeks to visit her sister, and Mrs. Huckstep was reveling in her new, albeit temporary, position. She missed as many notes as she hit but since she's completely deaf in her left ear, she kept smiling, thinking she sounded like some kind of famous concert pianist.

When Brother Fulmer started holding his stomach, Daddy knew it was time to bring the service to a close. He looked over at Mrs. Huckstep, and speaking in a kind of hymn-talk, said something like, “Remember, we all need to cling to that old rugged cross, so then one day, one glorious day, we, too, can exchange it for our heavenly crown.” This was her cue to start playing softly in the background as Daddy made one final pitch for salvation.

Any other darn day, I would have kept on playing hangman. But for some reason, which I'll never understand, I put down my pencil and listened to the words of that hymn I had sung so many times before:

In the old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see;
For 'twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died
To pardon and sanctify me.

Pardon
me
? Sanctify
me
? Catherine Grace Cline? I mean, I hadn't really been all that nice to Jesus since my mama died. And I certainly hadn't given much thought as to how Jesus was feeling about me. But I guessed if He could love Catherine Grace even after all the mean, hateful things I'd been thinking, well, maybe He was more omnipotent than I had given Him credit for.

All of a sudden, tears started welling up in my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. I didn't feel particularly sad, yet I couldn't stop crying. It was more like an urging, an urging in my heart, just like Daddy said it would be. Next thing I knew I was walking down the aisle toward my daddy, dragging Martha Ann along with me.

Lolly followed right behind us both, I guess not wanting to be left in the pew by herself. She said she wasn't sure if her mama and daddy were going to approve of her committing herself to the Lord, especially if that was going to mean taking time away from her household chores.

“You precious girls are the beloved children of the Lord,” Daddy said as he pulled us, even Lolly, into his arms.

Daddy announced to the congregation that we would be baptized in two weeks, the first baptisms of the salvation season. An “Amen” chorus swept through the room, and then he encouraged all the remaining sinners to come and join us in our walk with the Lord. I felt like he was holding us up in front of everybody like some kind of fish bait, luring the others into the net. Then he said this was truly one of the happiest days in his life. Poor Martha Ann and Lolly, I thought to myself, they have gone and given themselves to the Lord without even knowing it.

Baptism Sundays were all-day events that were as social as they were ceremonial. Immediately following the church service, everybody piled into cars laden with blankets and casseroles and drove the thirty-something miles over to Nottely Lake. The blue-haired ladies all rode together, safely following at least one mile behind the rest of the caravan, our very own Caravan for Christ, as Daddy liked to call it. Brother Fulmer always volunteered to leave church a little early so he could claim a green, grassy spot by the water and most likely a hot corn dog and French fries at the Dairy Queen along the way. It was kind of amazing that for as many corn dogs as Brother Fulmer must have sneaked behind his wife's back, his stomach was always flat as a board.

After Brother Fulmer, Ida Belle was always the next to arrive, and she would jump out of the front seat of her station wagon already dressed in her dingy, old apron that she must have tied onto her body on the ride over, one hand working the apron strings while the other was holding onto the steering wheel. She would start barking orders at the men, telling them to set up the folding tables and portable grills. “We got to get those burgers and hot dogs going for the chil'ren,” she'd say, all the time directing the women to cover the picnic tables with red-checked cloths and citronella candles.

She even brought a box of empty mason jars and told the kids to pick some wildflowers so she could place an arrangement on each table. Mrs. Gulbenk had taught her years ago that picnicking was no excuse not to set a nice table. When everything looked just right, Ida Belle would reach into the back of her old, red Rambler and start unpacking mounds of country ham, coleslaw, potato salad, sliced tomatoes, deviled eggs, green bean casseroles, freshly cut watermelon, and, her crowning glory, hundreds of homemade brownies, covered with her very own milk chocolate icing. And when all was said and done, there on the bank of Nottely Lake, it looked like the Fourth of July had run right into Thanksgiving Day.

No one was allowed to eat one bite until all the baptisms had been performed and Daddy had blessed the food to the nourishment of our bodies. Martha Ann could be heard repeating Daddy's words, “That's right, to the nourishment of our bodies.”

Brother Fulmer said the sight of that country ham waiting to be carved was enough to make even a saved man feel weak in the knees. And I believe he must have been right, because just when you thought your stomach couldn't wait any longer, Daddy, dressed in a long, white robe, would appear from inside a small green nylon tent. The crowd would fall silent, and everyone would part in front of him as if they were seeing Jesus for the very first time.

Mama made that robe for Daddy right after they got married. She even sewed weights into the hem so it wouldn't float above his waist when he walked into the water. And on the left cuff, she had embroidered in gold thread the words, “Oh Lamb of God, I come!” taken from Daddy's favorite hymn, “Just As I Am.” Being that it was the same hymn that had serenaded his own granddaddy's salvation, Daddy insisted that it be sung before every baptism at Cedar Grove Baptist Church. Miss Raines brought a battery-operated cassette player from our classroom, and as soon as Daddy walked out of the tent, she pushed a button and the music started filtering through the hot summer air.

Daddy walked to the lake's edge and stepped into the water and smiled reassuringly as though he had just put his foot into a warm, soapy bath. He waded farther and farther into the lake until the water was around his waist, and then he turned, with his arms outstretched toward his congregation. All the candidates for baptism were lined up on the water's edge dressed in their bathing suits and wrapped in towels. I still wasn't sure what I was doing there, and I still didn't understand why I had started crying in church in the first place. Maybe I was just missing Mama. I used to get to feeling that way at the beginning of summer when I had more time on my hands to think about things other than long division and dangling prepositions. But no matter what the reason, I was minutes away from getting right with the Lord and there was no turning back now.

Martha Ann and I were first in line with Emma Sue standing right behind us and Lolly standing right behind Emma Sue. Mrs. Huckstep was not about to see us redeemed before her precious granddaughter, so Emma Sue had found herself on the banks of Nottely Lake, looking as confused as we did. Martha Ann didn't like the water. She never had. I think she was afraid she'd be swept away like Mama. And she particularly didn't care for water getting in her nose or her ears, so she stood there with little pink plastic plugs stuffed in every hole above her chin except her mouth, which she kept locked tight.

Daddy looked toward Martha Ann and with his eyes motioned for her to join him in the water, but she didn't budge. He paused for a moment, and then waved his left arm, signaling again for her to step into the water. Before we left the house that morning, Daddy had spent a long time talking to Martha Ann about the baptism and how she'd be safe in his arms. But all that talking didn't seem to matter much now. She just stood there, frozen, like she didn't even see him standing right there in front of her. Miss Raines stepped toward her and put her arm around Martha Ann's shoulder, trying to coax her into the lake. But as the cassette player crackled in the background, everybody began to whisper. I could hear words like
scared
and
naughty
swirling about the water's edge.

Then Emma Sue poked me in the back with her scrawny little finger and whispered, “Looks like your sister's a heathen after all, Catherine Grace.”

I heard Lolly warning Emma Sue that she better shut her trap real quick, but it was too late. Stealing the golden egg had been bad enough, but calling my sister a heathen was not something I could leave to the Lord to punish. My body started moving before my head could catch up with it, and before I knew what I was doing, I had taken that curly-headed, prissy brat by the shoulders and shoved her right into the lake. All I could see was a big white bow floating on the surface of the water.

Miss Raines pulled me back from the bank. Mrs. Huck-step took turns screaming at me and then at my daddy.

“Look what your little de—, Yes, that's right, devil has done to my Emma Sue. Emma Sue, stand up on your feet. Quit splashing. Reverend Cline, do something!”

Daddy took two steps toward Emma Sue, scooped her into his arms, and then in a warm but commanding tone said, “Emma Sue, looks like you've gone and gotten yourself saved without me.”

Everybody laughed, except Mrs. Huckstep, me, and Martha Ann, who still seemed lost in some sort of hypnotic trance. Daddy gave me a look that was very unfamiliar and something told me that my pending salvation was not going to be enough to save me from my daddy's wrath.

Still holding Emma Sue, Daddy told her that the Lord loved her and forgave her, that she had been born a sinner, but she would be raised a child of God, then he dunked her one more time for good measure. If I'd been him, I'd have dunked her three or four more times just to be certain I had washed all the meanness out of her.

Then Daddy motioned for me to join him in the water. I took my sister by the hand and pulled her along with me, thinking Daddy might not be quite so mad if I could get Martha Ann baptized without any further commotion. Daddy said the exact same thing to us as he had to Emma Sue, and then dunked us both at the same time, one in each arm. Martha Ann came up spitting water but other than that she was okay. I took her hand and walked her to the shore, and there I sat on the bank of Nottely Lake feeling like the most doomed child of God there ever was.