A Bitter Blessing

I was twelve that spring; I remember it clearly. I was twelve and in Mrs. Tompkins 7th grade homeroom and I was stick skinny and “slow to develop” according to my grandmother and even though I ought to grateful for that, I felt like some kind of freak. Every other girl in 7th grade, and a bunch even in 5th and 6th , had some kind of bumps on their chests and had to wear bra’s. Not me. I was flat as a board and that wasn’t lost on the boys in my grade who were pretty much jerks anyways and teased and called me ugly names that I couldn’t ignore even if that’s what Mam told me to do. A few of the girls had even started getting their monthly’s --Jenny Watts and Sammie Jo Saxon for sure that I knew of and probably a lot more. I wasn’t even quite sure what a “monthly” was and when I asked Mam she near turned purple and looked like she was choking on something and that kind of scared me so I just took myself on out the screen door in the kitchen and didn’t wait around for no answer. Two weeks later, one day when I got home from school, someone had set a little booklet on my bed called “What Your Teenager Needs To Know”. So I read it over and learned about menstruation and ovaries and sanitary napkins, but it still left a lot of questions unanswered because it didn’t get into how babies actually got made and grew inside the woman’s stomach or anything at all about the man’s part in the whole deal. I’d learned my lesson though, and I wasn’t about to ask Mam, so I decided I’d ask Brandy Forster who had three older brothers that weren’t no good besides being heathen Methodist.

It was Easter Sunday when they passed out these handbills about the revival, bright pink handbills that had all the details wrote down and a picture of Lonnie Ray Strickland, Evangelist. In the picture, Lonnie Ray was up at the pulpit looking out and pointing towards the congregation in a dress shirt that was open at the neck with his tie loosened up. He looked like Dick Clark on American Bandstand which I wasn’t allowed to watch because of Satan’s rock and roll music and obscene dancing and gyrating in ways offensive to the Lord. I seen it over at Cathy Sturchki’s when I spent the night and her parents didn’t care if we watched it probably ’cause they are Catholics and live loose and smoke and gamble right at their church like the Pharisees and worship the Virgin Mary which is idolatry and what kind of church allows such behavior but worries about whether you eat fish every Friday? It didn’t make no sense according to my Mam, no sense a ‘tall.

That Easter Mam bought me a new dress that come with a matching purse with a gold chain handle. It was real pink and stiff and too babyish for a girl my age and Doug Goodwin said it looked just like the cotton candy his sister puked up after she rode on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the fair last summer. I didn’t like it much but I was raised better than to complain about my many blessings. It was the shoes that was the worst. They were also cotton candy pink and made of shiny patent leather with a little bit of a heel which ordinarily I would have liked. And it’s not that I have anything against hand-me-downs ‘cause pride is a deadly sin, but these shoes were way too small for my feet. They pinched my feet something awful and forced my big toe up against the top and sideways and when I tried to walk I could only take tense little shuffling steps like one of them Japanese ladies with the white faces. I tried to explain to Mam that it must be that my feet was growing faster than the Cummins twins even if they were a year older but she must not of believed me ‘cause she just told me “to make the best of it” and “to count my many blessings” which I was already doing. When we got to Sunday School, I walked in about as slow as a snail and that was as fast as I could go.

Church on Easter ran extra long what with all the people who only come on Christmas and Easter not being used to church and with having to go through the whole resurrection story and special performances of Easter hymns by the different Sunday School groups and the choir. It was turning out to be a hot day too and when the ladies couldn’t move around enough air with their cardboard fans with Jesus wearing a crown of thorns on the back, and most of the kids pleated the pink revival paper from Sunday School into a fan and got carried away with their fanning, the men started opening up the stained glass windows that run down both sides of the church. Once them windows got opened up, it got a lot harder for every kid there to keep their eyes front and center and I seen Bobby Harris’ mother flick him in his earlobe for looking out the window. We kids had already done a whole hour of Sunday School so it was kind of not fair.

But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was the fact that in Dunsbury the First Baptist church and the Bethel Methodist church sit side by side. Somebody must have thought that it was a good joke, to put them heathen Methodists right next door Mam said, and today those heathen Methodists were holding an Easter egg hunt. Now every Baptist knows that that is abominable to the Lord and the same as idol worship to be celebrating colored eggs and rabbits that tote candy to kids at night. I knew better than to say anything but I didn’t see much difference than Santa Claus which Baptists do go along with in the spirit of the season.

Now what I know was this; those heathen Methodists were not worrying a fig about eternal damnation and being burned all eternity in the ever-lasting lake of fire in Hell. They was too busy having a high old time. Those Methodist kids was running around looking in every nook and cranny for colored eggs and they were laughing and hollering and calling out to each other and their parents was right there with them hollering too like none of them had a lick of sense. Like they had no care a ’tall for their immortal souls.

Reverend Dicker heard the commotion too and this set him on fire with the Spirit and he took to preaching to beat the band and you could see him building up a head of steam as he went along. First off he got red in the face and his voice got louder and louder until he was straight shouting and he took to pacing back and forth up on the stage in front of the choir. If any Baptist had been having any doubts on what happened to the wicked, he got ’em straightened out. I could almost feel the flames of Hell and so could a lot of other folks ’cause their faces got red and shiny and the men started peeling out of their suit coats and you could see their dress shirts were sweated through and sticking to them like wet bed sheets. The ladies just kept on fanning for dear life with those Jesus with the crown of thorn fans.

I personally felt real sorry for Bobby Harris because his family always sits right up front and there was no way for him to get a good look at the heathen Methodists without turning his head, so his ear was beet red now from all the flicks his mother kept delivering to him. Luckily, my family sits halfway back and over to the side by the windows so I had a real good view of the goings-on next door and now and then caught a bit of a breeze to boot and I never had to turn my head an inch only just slide my eyes sideways. One thing for certain, if Mam caught me staring out at the heathen Methodists I’d be wishing I got off with a red flicked ear.

Our preacher already had a reputation for getting long-winded and today he was out doing even himself. Next door, the heathen Methodists had finished up the egg hunt and were putting picnic tables together under a stand of sugar maples. They spread out blue-checked tablecloths and people started carrying up covered dishes and lawn chairs and someone lit a charcoal grill and you could smell the lighter fluid plain as day. Some of the kids set down cross-legged in the grass and started pawing through their Easter baskets and trading jelly beans and marshmallow peeps and chocolate rabbits and sneaking bites of one thing or the other even though they got warned not to spoil their suppers. It was right hard to watch even knowing how their souls were damned and all. Plus my feet hurt worse than any pain I ever had, even when I broke my collar bone falling out of bed when I was only four. They looked to me like they was puffing up right out of the top like muffins do after you bake them. I am not telling any lie.

Finally though, just when I’d about given up any hope, the reverend’s wife just popped up out of her pew in the front and started in singing “Love Lifted Me” without a single note of music from anywhere else. She barely got the first line sung out ’til the choir popped up too and joined in with her. Mr. Whetstone started up with the organ then too and the entire congregation got to their feet and sang along too. I thought the reverend looked like he was mad for getting interrupted but he calmed his face down and started singing too. I guess he got the message from his wife because he said the shortest prayer I’d ever heard out of him right after the hymn and he cut us loose right after that. Still, it was way past lunchtime and folks were pretty hungry what with smelling the barbeque going right next door at the heathen Methodists and some of the men took to grumbling under their breath and tried to hurry their wives along instead of standing around in front of the church passing the time of day like what was normal after church let out on Sundays.

Ever since we stood up to sing, my feet were hurting about a hundred times worse. All in the world I wanted to do was to get my poor feet out of these crampy pink torture devices. Then I wanted to get out of this pink puke dress that was sweaty and itching now. But Mam made me stand in line to get out the front door and say goodbye and so forth to the preacher for good manners. All I could think about was the terrible pain in my feet so when we finally made it up to the door, I forgot my manners and didn’t know what to say. I would swear, if Baptists were allowed to swear and it wasn’t a mortal sin, on a stack of Bibles, that the shoes were crippling me. I seen Mam’s face and knew I hadn’t heard the last of it.

Now we have six steps out front of our church and I stuck my foot out to start down the first one in a real careful, pinchy kind of way so as to endure as small amount of pain as possible, and the next thing I knew was I was tumbling tits over tea kettle down all six steps with my puffy pink skirt up around my face and my kitty-cat underpants in full view of the Baptist congregation and most of the heathen Methodists next door too. I was never so embarrassed in all my whole life.

When I started my fall, Mam had flew to the bottom of the steps so that she actually made it down before I did. (She can move like lightning if need be.) Mam grabbed a hold of me under both arms and quick as a wink snatched me right to my aching feet. She had me so fast that I could just about forget about falling at all, that’s how fast she was, and she shot me this look that meant she is not fooling around and I better keep mind of my p’s and q’s. Folks started coming up to me all worried and asking if I was all right and goodness gracious what a turn I’d give them and praise be that I was all right. But I didn’t get to stick around long to get much sympathy ‘cause Mam still had hold of me at both shoulders and she steered me straight for the parking lot with no foolishness.

Mam opened the back door and I quick got in and then she set her Bible and Sunday School lesson papers on the front passenger seat before getting herself in behind the wheel. In less than two shakes we was headed for home.

Now that things had calmed down a bit I could begin to take inventory of my injuries. Both my knees were skinned raw and my right hand and elbow too. Boy did those scrapes sting, although my feet still hurt worse. I whimpered real, real quiet and tears started rolling down my cheeks. The salt from those tears got on my lip and I found out that it was busted up pretty good too. The tears came harder and even though I was just as quiet as I could be, Mam heard my nose stuffing up and she shot me a look in the rear view mirror and we rode like this for the twenty minutes it took to get home.

After we got there, Mam helped me out of the dress and it was ripped in a couple places where it could be mended easy. Then she switched me good on my kitty-cat underpants ‘til she guessed I’d remember how I ought to behave in the house of the Lord. And she made me keep those shoes on night and day for the next two days. I learned a lesson alright; I’d never forget the swelling and bruising and blisters that stayed raw until school started again. I prayed to Jesus for help because I thought he of all people would understand about having to bear pain when you didn’t even do something wrong, but I guess he was on my Mam’s side of things. I felt pretty sad about that. I felt pretty sad about the whole thing.