The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (31 page)

“Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and savior?” Brother Merrill asked.

The congregation began to hum. They did this every Sunday just after souls had been saved. Sala was always amazed that they knew exactly when to begin and which tune to hum. Now they hummed for her. She felt a tingling at the top of her head. She let her body relax into the preacher’s arms.

“Do you accept Jesus as your savior?” Brother Merrill asked again.

“I do,” said Sala.

She closed her eyes and waited for the spirit. It would surround her, gather her in its embrace. She felt a hand on her shoulder, hot and urgent and tightening. She opened her eyes. Her grandmother stood next to her.

“No,” Hattie said.

“Sister Shepherd?” said the preacher. “What’s the matter, sister?”

“No,” Hattie said again and pulled Sala away from him.

The organ thrum stopped, the congregation’s hum as well. The sanctuary was silent. Hattie pulled her granddaughter down the center aisle. She couldn’t allow it. She had lost Six to the altar. She sent him off to Alabama with nothing but a Bible, and he had become a womanizer and an imposter. By the time she understood the depth of his unhappiness, it had been too late save him. Her twins were dead. She had given Ella back to Georgia. It was too late for Cassie, whom Hattie had also sent away. And it was too late for Hattie, who was a fraud in Christ and had shown Sala the ways of fraudulence. She couldn’t bear that the child was already so broken she was driven to the mercy seat. There was time for Sala. Hattie didn’t know how to save her granddaughter. She felt as overwhelmed and unprepared as she had when she was a young mother at seventeen. Here we are sixty years out of Georgia, she thought, a new generation has been born, and there’s still the same wounding and the same pain. I can’t allow it. She shook her head. I can’t allow it.

They arrived at the pew, where August was waiting. “I don’t know why you done that, Hattie,” he whispered. Of course he didn’t. August’s faith was simple and absolute. He had aged into a sickly old man who prayed and loved the Lord. And if he understood more than he let on, if he was wiser than he acted, he kept it to himself. It’s easier to play the fool, Hattie thought, and August always did what was easy. She felt a spark of her old anger. But they were past all of that—it hadn’t served her when she was young and wouldn’t serve her now.

Hattie looked around at the disapproving faces of the congregation. Their indignation would pass—everything passed sooner or later—and if it didn’t, she would give up the church too, this dear comfort of her old age. She was not too old to weather another sacrifice. Hattie put her arm around Sala and pulled her close; she patted her granddaughter’s back roughly, unaccustomed as she was, to tenderness.

Acknowledgments TK