Kate Fox & The Three Kings (6 page)

I scooted the ring around my palm with my pointer finger, mesmerized by the deep green twinkle when the stone caught the light. I handed the ring back to Grams. “What if I don’t want to change. What if I just want to stay the way I am, forever?”

Grams scanned my face for a long while and smiled in a way that only people who love you do, “That will change, dear,” she whispered.

Grams was wrong. I desired the past and dreaded the future. I loathed change, and in that moment, I hated Grams, too. I couldn’t find anything beautiful in stained sheets and cramps, because in Brushy Fork, there were no sparkly rings or pleasantries—only sticky, warm blood leaking from a part of my body I wasn’t suppose to speak of.

I heard footsteps shuffling across the floorboards, followed closely by the groan of an opening door.

“Great,” hissed a familiar feminine voice. I turned to see the generous form of the woman I’d come to recognize as Joy. Joy’s expression remained unmoved as she surveyed the blood-stained sheets and then averted her gaze to the stream of scarlet running down my thigh.

“You’ve bled,” Joy remarked, chuckling to herself. “Twelve is a bit early, dontcha think? But I’m guessin’ it’s just God’s punishment,” she tucked a loose strand of hair away from my face. “I suppose as your new momma an’ all, I should tell ya what ya needa know ‘bout bein’ a woman.” Joy lowered herself into the wooden chair in front of my desk. The chair creaked in protest. “Although, I don’t guess there’s really any point. You’re bound to turn out just like your momma: a slut that can’t keep her legs closed.”

I opened my mouth for a rebuttal, but Joy shut me up before I had a chance to utter a word. “Ya know, I read your file before you come here. That daddy of yours is burning in hell for his sins,” Joy mused.

“Your parents,” Joy stood up and stalked across the room to face me. “They weren’t capable of no ‘love.’ That’s why they never got married. Just pre-marital sex, then BAM—little miss Katie. God punished them for their lust, and you were left to your grandparents, who turned a blind eye to their daughter’s sinful nature. They shoulda refused to take ya, their grandbaby outta wedlock. And now, your grandparents are payin’ for their ignorance.”

I winced at Joy’s words. I’d never been spoken to with such unbridled cruelty. The tears I’d been suppressing since my grandparent’s death flowed down my cheeks. I tried to wipe them away as they appeared.

“Clean this disgustin’ mess up,” Joy motioned to the bed. “No meals for you today. Your sheets are comin’ out of the food budget,” she added, slamming the door behind her.

Stepping out of my early morning, cold shower, I shook myself of the unpleasant memory and seethed in the realization that it was the weekend, and in Brushy Fork, weekends weren’t for leisure. Idle hands were the devil’s playpen, after all. For W.H.O.R.E., weekends served as the perfect time to fit in the extracurricular, namely picketing. W.H.O.R.E. loved to picket anything with a pulse.

Every Monday, the congregation joined forces, piling in local newspapers and booting up an army of laptops, to discuss the plan of action for weekend festivities. The top headlines dictated W.H.O.R.E.’s next move, and after a brief vote, they selected their target: an event to picket, usually an AID’s fundraiser, gay pride parade, or if it was a slow week, a local liquor store opening. Why spend Saturday morning in pajamas, catching up on cartoons, when you could be damning fellow humans to Hell? Weekends meant shoving twenty bodies into a twelve-passenger van, and a load of handmade signs reading “GOD HATES YOU!” awkwardly staring at your face for the entire miserable trip.

Of course, onlookers never received the picket kindly, and as a result, our protests were often protested. Last month, a bearded guy in a black truck yelled, “Fuck you!” as he screeched past my “SOLDIERS BURN IN HELL!” sign.  Black truck guy shook his middle finger in my general direction. I focused my attention elsewhere, mostly at the ground, until a white Styrofoam cup smacked me in the face. Brown, sticky liquid dribbled down my cheek. Dip spit.

“F’ed Indeed,” I muttered mostly to myself, wiping away the foul substance that clung to my chin, staring into the bathroom mirror while I slipped on my spare, oversized skirt and tugged on a dull, long sleeve button-up. W.H.O.R.E. awarded me a five-minute bathroom break after being struck with the cup; a little of the dip seeped into my mouth when I shrieked upon impact. I needed longer than five minutes to submerge myself in bleach; an eternity would not suffice. But alas, I settled for a brief birdbath in the Subway restaurant sink.

Refusing to peer in the mirror after my morning shower, I fastened the top button my blouse, dreading the day ahead. In Kentucky, temperatures reached a blistering eighty degrees during the month of May, but the Smiths had no empathy. I knew if I tottered off in shorts and a t-shirt, like Essie wore, I’d be reprimanded immediately, especially since W.H.O.R.E. was hosting pre-picket festivities in the dining hall. They planned a celebration to acknowledge that we graduated with tepid hot dogs and box cake.

Joy and Bob were no where to be found as I cautiously exited my room. I shuffled into the kitchen as silently as possible, despite being the only person home. I was pouring a glass of milk to accompany my frosting-less Poptart when a bang on the door made me spill most of my drink on the counter.

“Oh my stars, we’re going to be late!” Essie shouted her worry from behind the screen door, craning her neck to witness my clumsy fine motor skills.

“Tragic,” I teased, wiping up the milk and hastily slipping on my leather flip-flops.

“Ready for a fun-filled day of picketin’ and spreadin’ the Lord’s hate?” Essie put a hand on her hip and asked, words heavy with sarcasm. She reminded me of an Abercrombie model with her cutoffs and white lace peasant top. Essie’s waif-like frame allowed her to dress minimally whilst still appearing conservative; she was without the burden of covering generous cleavage or hips.

“Let’s do this,” I replied, slamming the door behind me. The scent of livestock and humidity lingered in the air. The combination of sizzling heat and too many clothing layers caused my collar stick to the back of my neck halfway through our trek to the church.

“Hot as the devil’s dangly bits out here,” Essie eloquently remarked, wiping sweat from her brow.

“No kidding!” I laughed.

“Make sure an’ wait a few moments before followin’ me, so it don’t look like we came here together,” Essie shot back at me, opening the church trailer doors. I nodded and tapped my foot for an extended span of time.  

The graduation luncheon resided within the fellowship hall, so I trudged across the barren foyer and through the moldy green carpet-lined hallway, enclosed by wooden paneled walls and overfilled cork boards. Mostly, the boards sported a number of photos from youth picket events, small notes of invasive prayer requests, and newspaper clippings reporting the end of times. Rolling my eyes at a doomsday headlines, I followed Essie’s lead into the fellowship hall and scanned the tables for Gideon. Thankfully, he was nowhere in my immediate peripheral. It was a goal of mine to ration out the level of crazy before lunch, for the afternoon was chock-full of unsavory activity.

I pursed my lips when I spotted Joy’s large rump in front of the cafeteria table, which lined the back of the room, and I ushered myself to the table farthest from Joy. David, a painfully shy recent graduate, greeted me with a nod; he smiled with slight hesitation when I sat down across from him. I felt a tinge of guilt surface when I realized I had never attempted to hold a conversation with the brown-eyed, freckle-faced boy in front of me, but then again, I’m not much for small talk. Apparently, neither was David.

Essie sat next to David; she’d never met a stranger. “Judgin’ by your enthusiasm, I’m guessin’ you’re not to keen on the afternoon’s festivities,” Essie broke the silence, offering a teasing smile to David.

“Not especially,” he murmured, preoccupied with shredding a napkin into tiny pieces.

“Alrighty then…” Essie stole a sideways glance in my direction, abandoning the effort to make conversation.

Once all the graduates and families were seated, the lunch spread was laid out along the back table; today’s lunch theme was brought to us courtesy of potluck surprise. Joy cleared her throat and led the room in a long-winded prayer, which struck me with a lingering sense of paranoia and fear of having a repeat prayer request ceremony in which I get called a hussy…again. I kept one eye open while everyone’s heads were bowed and glanced around the room for Gideon’s form.

At all W.H.O.R.E. luncheons, I exercised a conscious effort to avoid any homemade mystery dishes, as I’m convinced the people of Brushy Fork bake with some kind of judgment-altering MSG’s. I filled my plate with a store-bought turkey and Swiss cheese sub on curiously firm whole wheat bread and a handful of BBQ chips. Lunch involved conversation attempts with David, trying to wring him of information regarding his college selection. Although the dialogue was quite brief, I was able to decipher that David got accepted to Kentucky State and wanted to major in Creative Writing. I didn’t know that David was a writer.  I didn’t know anything about him, really, just that his parents were highly active in the church. Consequently, David never attended any school-related social events. Before class parties, even Christmas and Easter, his parents insisted David be escorted outside of the classroom, in the hallway, while other students stuffed their faces with cupcakes and whacked piñatas. The lack of social participation only ostracized David further, even more so than the rest of us W.H.O.R.E. offspring (or inhabitant, in my case).

Munching on a mouthful of turkey sub, I studied David’s face. His features were soft and complimented his dirty blonde comb over; his thin fingers shuffled chips around his plate, giving the appearance of having eaten more than he actually did. When he met my eyes, I noticed they radiated an emptiness I had often seen staring back at me in the mirror. I never sought out conversation or pursued a friendship with David, and I was ashamed of my own self-involvement.

Joy’s glare pierced my consciousness, and chicken skin appeared on my forearm. I shoved a chip in my mouth, and as I avoided her laser beam gaze, Joy’s expression evolved into a full-on scowl.  Keeping the theme of the past couple of weeks, Joy probably believed my conversation attempts with David were purely seductive in nature.

Thankfully, the shrill echo of “CAKE” cut my awkward need to disappear under the table. Unfortunately, the source of the declaration was Joy, wielding a small butcher’s knife and fanning herself with her other hand. I frowned at my barely eaten sandwich and mound of chips. Yeah, cake sounded like a good idea. I approached the food table, where a line was chaotically formed around a rather large, white sheet cake. Deflated red, yellow and blue icing balloons freckled the vanilla frosting, looking like a melancholy clown confectionary. At the front of the line, Joy cut everyone a slice, with an unusual grin plastered across her portly face, which most of the kids reciprocated after being handed their plate. Joy’s smile might’ve read as warm and friendly to anyone else, but to me, it only read as forced.

Essie accepted a piece of cake, immediately shoveling a sugary forkful into her mouth as she stood to the side, waiting on David. I redirected my attention back to Joy, whom I realized was not actively slicing any cake. “Probably oughta skip the cake, Katie,” Joy spat loud enough for the whole room to hear. I felt everyone’s eyes settle on my face. Embarrassment slithered up my chest and halted with redness at my cheeks. “I’m just tryin’ ta help you and that bloated figure of yours. I mean, look ‘atcha. That button is burstin’ at the seams,” she added in a not-so-quiet whisper, pointing her hefty finger over the button straining at my breasts.

I mustered every ounce of self-restraint possible, as I knew any retort would be futile. Instead of meeting Joy’s eyes in defiance, I glued mine to the floor and pushed past Essie to reclaim my seat. Lingering stares fueled the fire that was ignited within; the same fire whose embers burned along with my flesh the night Pastor Sprite paid a visit.

“Don’t mind that heinous bitch. She’s probably just like, real jealous you can see your feet. We all know she can’t over that big ol’ belly,” Essie said in a low voice, with sympathy clouding her features. David procured two plastic forks from his pocket.

“Here...I…I snagged an extra big slice for us to share,” David offered the second fork and placed the white cake between us. Still smoldering from the shame of moments ago, I reluctantly picked up the fork and offered David a small smile of appreciation. Really too embarrassed to murmur any words of thanks, I took a mouthful of cake with red balloon frosting. David’s stoic expression crumpled into a sideways grin.

Growing up, Grams crafted amazingly extravagant and decadent cakes for my birthday or any celebration that was deemed cake-worthy. Every year, Grandpa and I would admire Grams’ baking abilities, doing our best to stay out of her way in the kitchen. While the cakes were in the oven, Grams would whip up her famous buttercream frosting, consisting of a pound of cream cheese, a pound of butter, God-only-knows how much powdered sugar, and a splash of vanilla essence. Grandpa made habit of pilfering the spatula for us to sneak a taste of the sweet frosting. Grams huffed at Grandpa in disapproval, but her frown waivered after several moments, eventually dissolving into a soft chuckle.

In contrast, the cake before me tasted like a store-bought, week-old science experiment. The cake itself was dry and resisted under my fork. David cast me a sideways glance, followed by a melancholy smile as we shared our cake in silence.

The ride to the funeral picketing proved miserably hot; the service was held on the northernmost corner of Mt. Vernon proper, about an hour away from Brushy Fork. David and I squeezed into the last row of the old, white church van. The air conditioning went out the summer of my eighth grade year, I remembered, as the backs of my knees began to sweat against the pleather benches.

The van skidded to an abrupt halt in front of the Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church. The church itself was quite sizeable and impressive, with its stone structure nothing like W.H.O.R.E.’s doublewide of a worship center. Through immense stained glass windows, sparkling brilliant shades of violet, emerald and deep ruby red, I spotted several of the fallen soldier’s family members taking their seats amongst the vast wooden pews, solemnly chatting amongst themselves. I noticed a striking, blonde pregnant woman, with mascara dripping from her lashes onto her cheekbones, staring back at me through the window, her hands folded tightly across her lap. I glanced back to the Blood of Christ Baptist Church van, making sure my absence wasn’t being acknowledged, and peered back through the stained glass, only to intercept a glare so full of loathing that goose bumps appeared along my forearms and trickled down the back of my neck.