Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen (4 page)

Daddy didn't say much to me the rest of the day. After lunch he asked Miss Raines if she would take Martha Ann and me on home ahead of him. I was actually relieved to be making the drive without him. I wasn't ready to come face-to-face with my earthly maker in the confines of a 1968 Oldsmobile.

Miss Raines offered to come in and wait with us. I guess she figured even the condemned might need a little comfort. But I told her it wasn't necessary. She was only being nice and all, but I didn't want her in my house trying to mother me, not today.

I turned on the bathwater for Martha Ann and helped her wash the lake out of her hair, careful not to get any soap or water in her eyes. Then I took an extra-long bath myself, trying to wash the memory of the day down the drain. We were already in our pajamas and ready for bed when Daddy got home a little before dinnertime. We were working a jigsaw puzzle that Gloria Jean had brought us from Ruby Falls. I had probably worked that puzzle a hundred times. I knew where all the pieces went, but going through the motions seemed to quiet my nerves.

Without even taking the time to hang up his robe in the hall closet, he told Martha Ann to go on to her room. He said that he needed to talk to me in private. All afternoon I had felt like I was going to throw up. Now I was certain of it, and I started scanning the room, looking for the trash can.

“Catherine Grace, you are a lucky girl that I have had some time to think and reflect on your behavior today. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. I know Emma Sue gets under your skin. But you, Catherine Grace Cline, must love your enemies, all of your enemies, especially the ones that test you the most—even the ones wearing big bows in their hair.”

“But she called Martha—”

“Catherine Grace, I don't care what she called your sister.”

“But Martha Ann was scared—”

“Catherine Grace, that doesn't change what you did. I expect you to be better than that. I expect you to set an example for the others to follow. You are the preacher's daughter and with that comes a certain amount of responsibility, like it or not. Now I'm sorry, but you have to be punished.” He hesitated a moment before delivering my sentence, as if he didn't want to hear it himself. “I've given this a lot of thought, Catherine Grace, and you cannot go to the Dairy Queen for the rest of the summer. It is off-limits till the first of September.”

My daddy had never done anything like this before. The worst he'd ever done was smack me on the bottom once when I grabbed Martha Ann's Raggedy Ann doll while we were standing in the checkout line at the Dollar General Store. She had been cranky all afternoon, and Daddy's nerves were already frayed. But I started crying so hard, more from the embarrassment than from the sting his hand left on my backside, that we had to leave our basket on the counter and go home without the toilet paper and toothpaste we had come to buy. He apologized later that night for spanking me. He said he knew the good book advised pulling out the rod once in a while, but it just didn't feel right striking one of his little girls. He said he'd never do that again.

But Daddy knew that taking the Dairy Queen away from me was worse than any spanking. I couldn't remember a time when going to the Dairy Queen wasn't part of my weekly routine. Mama had taken me every Saturday, after all her chores were done. We would sit there on that picnic table and eat our ice cream. We always left Martha Ann at home with Daddy or Gloria Jean because that was our special time. Then when I was old enough to walk there on my own, I started taking Martha Ann myself. Daddy knew it was where I went to reflect on the week gone by and get ready for the week to come. He had no right to take that away from me.

“Daddy, that's not fair,” I screamed. “I hate being the preacher's daughter. I hate being your daughter. I don't care what anybody in this stinking, rotten town thinks. I don't want to be an example. Everybody in this town is stupid anyway. They're all stupid for staying here.” And then I screamed even louder, “I hate Emma Sue Huckstep. I wish she had drowned in that damn lake.”

I couldn't believe I had said all of that out loud, not even stopping to take a breath.

“Catherine Grace, you better get to your room before I get my belt.”

Daddy had never used his belt for anything but holding up his pants. And even though I really didn't think he would do it, I knew I had pushed him too far. I ran into my room and slammed the door, my last desperate act of defiance. I threw myself across my bed and cried and cried until a big wet spot had formed on my pillow. I hated my daddy for being so unfair. I hated Emma Sue and her stupid-looking bow. I hated Martha Ann for being afraid of the water. I hated my mama for drowning and making Martha Ann such a scaredy cat. And I hated John the Baptist for starting this whole baptism thing in the first place. Only eight hours earlier I was freed and forgiven from a lifetime of sin, and now I hated everybody, even the people I loved the most.

I woke up the next morning to find Martha Ann nestled against my back. She couldn't stand it when I was upset, and she probably figured sneaking in when I was asleep was the safest time to make amends.

“I'm not mad at you, I never really was,” I said, without even rolling over to look her in the face.

“I'm sorry Daddy got so mad at you. It's all my fault. If I wasn't such a . . . well, maybe he'll change his mind in a day or two,” Martha Ann said with a strange mix of regret and hope in her voice. “But I promise I won't go to the Dairy Queen without you. It just wouldn't be right.”

“I hate this place, Martha Ann,” I said softly, feeling the tears welling up in my eyes again. “It's never gonna feel right, and finding the Lord in some lake hasn't changed that one little bit.”

Maybe my exodus needed to be now, not when I'm eighteen, I thought to myself, knowing good and well Martha Ann would start crying too if she heard me talking like this. I could go to Willacoochee and find my mama's family. None of them had ever been to Ringgold, not even when Mama died. But I had gotten a card from Mama's sister on my birthday for as long as I can remember; so had Martha Ann. I could live with her. I bet she'd be happy to have me. But Martha Ann would want to come along and traveling with a child might slow me down.

I spent the next two days holed up in my room figuring out what to do with the rest of my life, or at least the rest of the summer. I was still mad at my daddy, and I had decided that part of my plan was not talking to him. No good-night kisses, no warm morning exchanges, nope, nothing.

On the third day, I decided I was doing a better job of punishing myself than my daddy and decided to come out of my room long enough to visit Gloria Jean. I hadn't had a chance to tell her about the baptism yet. Gloria Jean had never cared too much for Roberta Huckstep, especially after she told Ida Belle that Gloria Jean was nothing more than a modern-day Jezebel. I figured she'd enjoy hearing that precious, darling Emma Sue had had an ill-timed swim in the lake.

Besides, Gloria Jean would agree with me that life was treating Catherine Grace Cline just plain rotten. She'd understand. She always did. She never called my dreaming foolishness, not once. She believed me when I said I was leaving town, and she always said she would help me figure out how to do it when the time came. She said she understood what it felt like to land in a place where you didn't belong. I always figured she was talking about Ring-gold and yet she had lived here since before I was born, since she married her fifth husband, Darrell Hixson. Sometimes I wondered if Daddy really knew how supportive Gloria Jean had been if he'd have let me spend so much time with her.

Gloria Jean listened patiently to my sad story. She tried not to laugh thinking of Emma Sue's bow floating on the surface of Nottely Lake, and then she turned to me and looked me straight in the eyes. “Honey, if you want to get out of here as bad as you say you do, then you're going to need some money, a little
do re me,
if you know what I mean,” Gloria Jean said very matter-of-factly. “So why don't you put your energy into making some change instead of sitting around moping all summer long. Dreams don't just happen, baby, you got to go after ’em.”

Then Gloria Jean started talking about my granddaddy's vegetables. I wasn't really sure where she was going with this, but I knew it would be someplace good. She explained that she had been over to Floyd Marshall's garden just the other day to help Ida Belle pick some corn. Even all these years after my granddaddy had passed on, Ida Belle still insisted on planting the corn and green beans for Wednesday-night suppers on the church grounds. She said it pleased the Lord that she fed His flock with vegetables grown on such blessed land.

“Anyway, I hadn't been back there in a year or more, and I was surprised to see that the strawberry plants have taken over half the plot. I thought about picking those berries myself and making me some homemade strawberry jam, but you girls could do that. You know your mama used to make some of the best blackberry jam I've ever tasted, and I bet you two could do something just as special with those strawberries.”

I was practically jumping off her sofa with excitement. I was going to make my dream come true and all the while working in the kitchen just like my mama used to do. Gloria Jean called it divine intervention. She said maybe my granddaddy left those strawberries there for me so I could turn them into something more valuable than I could have ever imagined. She figured I could sell the jars for a dollar a piece and that Mr. Tucker, the manager at the Dollar General Store, might even let me display them on one of his shelves, if we asked him real sweet.

“Gloria Jean,” I said, suddenly sounding deflated. Mama died before she taught me how to do much of anything in the kitchen. “I don't know how to make jam or jelly or anything like that. I helped Ida Belle pickle some cucumbers once, but I just did what she told me to do.”

“Lord child, I know you don't know how and that's why I'm going to show you. Who do you think taught your mama? That's right,” she said, acknowledging my surprise. “But you need to pick those strawberries first and there are hundreds of ’em. You know how to do that, don't you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“All righty then, you start picking, and in a couple of days, I'll take you to town to buy the jars and pectin and sugar and everything else you're going to need to go into business. I'll even loan you some money, as a good-faith gesture, and you can pay me back when you sell all your jam.”

I ran home and grabbed my blue jeans and old sneakers, explaining the whole plan to Martha Ann as I changed my clothes. I told her I'd give her fifteen cents from every jar I sold if she'd help me pick the strawberries.

Martha Ann didn't like to get dirt on her hands any more than she liked water in her nose. She always put up a fuss when it was her turn to water the tomatoes because Daddy also made her pull any weeds that had popped up around the vines. But the idea of making money was too tempting even for Martha Ann, so she agreed to help as long as she got to wear Mama's old gardening gloves that Daddy kept in the garage hanging next to the watering can.

We ran the whole way to the church, carrying baskets in both hands and kicking up the dirt behind us. As I put one foot in front of the other, I kept thinking that maybe, finally, the Lord was listening to me.

When I got to the garden's edge, something inside told me to stop. Something said I was about to step on holy ground and I ought to say a little prayer or something respectful before taking my next step.

I knew my granddaddy was watching over me. And I suspected he had left me this garden as a present that had taken me some time to appreciate, kind of like the porcelain dish Gloria Jean had given me for my tenth birthday. It had a picture of a little fairy painted on it, and she said the fairy's sweet smile reminded her of me. When I opened the box and she saw my disappointment that it wasn't that pink leather wallet I'd been admiring in the window at Mrs. Huckstep's gift shop, she promised me that someday, when I was a little older, I was going to love that dish more than any old worn-out wallet. It was a keepsake, she said, and you grow to love them more as each year passes.

I knelt down on my knees and squished my fingers in the warm, dark brown dirt as if to introduce myself to the same piece of earth my granddaddy had tended so lovingly for so many years. I reached for a red, plump berry, and as I pulled it off the runner, I said a few words of thanksgiving. Then I dropped it into my basket. Every strawberry I picked that day felt like another little keepsake he'd left behind for me to find. Martha Ann and I picked strawberries until the sun started to fall behind the roof of the church, casting a shadow over our heads. Our baskets were overflowing and the tips of our fingers ached, but neither one of us wanted to stop.

We sat by the garden before heading home and sucked on the berries we'd picked but couldn't fit into our baskets. We looked at each other and started to laugh. Our lips had turned as red as Gloria Jean's favorite shade of Revlon lipstick. We blew each other kisses like we were famous movie stars stopping to greet our fans.

We walked home that night without saying a word. My body was tired but peaceful. I wasn't mad at my daddy anymore. I wasn't mad at anybody anymore.

For the next two days, Martha Ann and I worked on our knees, picking and eating dozens of strawberries. We brought peanut butter sandwiches with us and cut up some berries and placed them between the two slices of bread. When we got tired, we would sit on the grass by the garden and eat our peanut butter and strawberry sandwiches and drink a cold bottle of Coca-Cola we had carried from home in a small plastic cooler. When we had finally filled all the baskets, Gloria Jean said we had what we needed to start making jam.

The next morning, I was standing on Gloria Jean's front porch a few minutes before seven. “Lord, child, I haven't had my coffee or even begun to put on my face. Come on in and you can eat some breakfast with me.”

Gloria Jean couldn't have moved any slower that morning if she had tried, and it took almost as much energy to hide my frustration as it had to pick all those strawberries. Couldn't she just once in her life throw on some clothes like Martha Ann and me and forget about putting colors on her face? I wanted to be at the Dollar General Store the very minute Mr. Tucker unlocked the doors. I even cleaned the breakfast dishes, hoping to hurry things along.