Sister Golden Hair: A Novel (39 page)

The next morning I felt a hand on my head and opened my eyes to see my father sitting on the edge of the bed. It was ironic. There was a time, not long ago, when I’d have been thrilled just to get his attention.

“It’s time to get up, Jesse,” he said.

“I don’t want to go!”

“We’re leaving in twenty minutes.”

I dressed in a sweatshirt, my worst pair of jeans, and ratty sneakers. I figured he’d see how inappropriate I looked and let me stay in the car.

On the way I told him again I had no intention of going into the church and I quoted Emerson to prove it: “God enters by a private door into every individual.”

He quoted a line back at me, one of Mr. Higgins’s favorites: “Always do what you are most afraid of.”

“Doesn’t that go for you too?”

“Me?” he said, shaking his head. “I’m beyond all that.”

“In what way?”

“I’m post-crucifixion.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t recognize Jesus even if I saw him.”

He never talked about the services he’d been part of in the sixties anymore, where he’d worn a black turtleneck and read from Neruda and T. S. Eliot. All he said lately was that God, if he even existed, was too big a concept to fit into his head.

“I am not going to go, unless you go with me.”

My father was silent. As the car ran down the asphalt the winter trees, naked without their leaves, were a blur of gray. Mist hung over the road and floated like bits of cotton candy around the mountain. I tried to do silence, to sit in a space like an open doorway or a flower.

“OK,” he finally said.

We parked in the lot, got out of the car, and walked up the stairs. Snowflakes swirled around in the air and clung to my hair. Some perched on the shoulders of my sweatshirt.

Bibleway Church was a one-story rectangular building covered with white aluminum siding. Inside, an usher showed us to a back pew. We’d come in late; the band—drums, electric guitar, and bass—were mid-song. Our church in Philadelphia was all dark wood pews, organ music, musty hymnals, and heavy bronze
light fixtures. Our stained glass showed Bible scenes in deep syrupy colors and the altar was dark, lit only by candles. Jill’s church had painted cement-block walls and the altar, lit by a fluorescent panel, held only the baptismal font, a big plastic rectangle filled with water and a table covered with a wax cloth. One small, round stained glass window, a crown of thorns surrounding three bloody nails, was suspended over the back door. It felt unfinished, even ratty, or what my mother called
tacky
; I prayed nobody would start speaking in tongues.

At the altar stood the minister, a short man with a full face. Instead of a robe he wore a white suit. He motioned for the baptismal candidates to come forward. There were three: a pear-shaped boy, his bangs clinging to his forehead; a middle-aged lady who wore her long hair parted down the middle like Cher; and Jill. She was smiling. Her dark roots showed above orangey strips of Sun-In. Even from the back of the church, I could see the constellation of pimples over her forehead. I thought of all the rituals Jill and I had made up, the bean pods, the Halloween turnip, setting fire to the
Vogue
. We’d chanted over our math textbook and recited poems as we sacrificed flowers to the garbage disposal. Now, she danced awkwardly to the music, elbows in the air, the melody catchy, like a song you’d hear on the radio.

The band stopped and the minister stepped forward and talked about the boundless love of God and how Jesus was the ragged figure who moved from tree to
tree in the back of our minds. Dad had kept his coat on and sat with his shoulders straight as if he feared if he got too comfortable, he’d be trapped in the pew forever. He reminded me of another Emerson quote. Mr. Higgins had recited it on Friday, just before the bell rang:
Thou art to me a delicious torment.

The minister took Jill’s hand and pulled her forward. Her body under her robe seemed constructed out of bird bones and confectionery sugar. Seeing her so fragile reminded me of one of my dad’s children’s sermons. He’d held up a small cross made out of sticks, then snapped it so the yellow wood inside showed. Laying the broken cross on the red carpet, he’d held up a second stick cross, saying that our weakness needed God’s strength. He pressed nails into the back of the cross, knotted string around the two, and passed me the new one, asking if I could break it. As hard as I tried, it was impossible.

The minister told how Jill had been coming to church for a year, how she’d not only gotten her mama and little sister to come, but had also helped out in the kindergarten Sunday-school class and started an animal adoption program, finding homes for kittens and dogs nobody wanted. Throughout the summer and fall she’d tended the church’s flower beds. She’d collected cans and bottles by the side of the road to raise money for bulbs. It was cold now, he said, freezing, but in the spring, right around Easter, her tulips and daffodils would bloom.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the spirit is at work in our little sister,” he said.

“Jill,” he said, looking into her eyes. “Are you ready to take the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

“I am!” Jill said, going up on her toes.

“Is there anyone here today you’d like to have up here with you at the altar?”

I assumed she’d pick her mother or Beth. Instead, I heard Jill say my name.

Everybody in the pews in front shifted to see who was going to come forward to help Jill. I blushed and glanced at my dad. We’d been living in a world without prayers or church for so long, the whole idea of God seemed embarrassing. I was afraid he’d grimace and whisper to me that we should leave, but he smiled, a raw and uncalculated expression that opened up his face, and he reached around and grabbed me by the shoulders, gently lifted me out of the pew, and pushed me in the direction of the altar. I walked up the center aisle, my legs wobbly and my eyes darting down self-consciously to my faded jeans. I climbed the steps to Jill, her eyes glittery, her smile wide and kooky. When she grabbed my hand, I saw she wore a
POW
bracelet and that her fingernails were covered with chipped polish.

“Ready?” the minister said.

Jill shook off her plastic high heels, the kind of shoes my mom said were worn exclusively by tramps. Jill took the minister’s hand and stepped over the
edge and into the water. The minister showed me where to place my hands, one on her shoulder and one against her heart.

“Do you give yourself completely to the Lord?” the minister asked.

Say no! I thought. Say you want yourself all for your own self. Say that you have no specific country, say that you are important without any story from above, say that your home is with me and the other girls up in the sky.

“I do,” Jill said. She took in a breath, then reached up and squeezed her nose shut. She was on the trolley now, moving along the tracks that would feed her body into the retort. Whether she was moving into truth or bullshit, I did not know. Either way, I couldn’t stop her. I could only help her along. I tipped her so the back of her head eased into the water.

Under the surface, her robe floated around her like seaweed, showing her bare feet and legs. I thought of the swan-obsessed Layona, how they tied feathers to the wrists of their dead before sinking them down into the recesses of the riverbed. Jill’s robe soaked transparent and her body showed itself in outline, white, writhing. A chain of silver bubbles escaped her lips and her hair was loose, each strand free and swaying. She was every girl caught in a dream, her face alive with anguish and joy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book you hold in your hands was supported and nourished by many wonderful people and I want to thank them all. To my early readers Rob Sheffield, Elizabeth Mitchell, Michael Parker, Rogelio Martinez, Natalie Standiford, Will Blythe, Stephanie Papa, Sister Leslie, Michael Parker, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Michael Plekon: thank you for your enthusiasm, encouragement, and careful reading. Thank you to my student assistants Noah Blake, Luke Wiget, and Nora O’Connor, all of whom have become wonderful writers in their own right. Thanks to Douglas Martin, Idra Novey, Susan Wheeler, Jeffery Greene, Judy Hottensen, Marnie Weber, and Rene Steinke for keeping me afloat. Also to my family—David, Lauren, Jonathan, and Nicole—and to my Dad; I know it’s not always easy having a writer in the family. Thanks to
Keith Solit. A special thanks goes to Jin Auh and Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency for believing in me and standing by me. Thanks to Matt Chittum, Beth Macy, and the Virginia Room at the Roanoke Library for help with research. Thanks to Alex Ruiz for being a fierce girl. A huge and bottomless thanks goes to Tin House, to Rob Spillman and Elissa Schappell for giving my book a home, and to Nanci McCloskey, my publicist, for getting it out there into the world. To my editor Tony Perez whose careful and brilliant attention made this book better by far; I am indebted to you. Finally to my husband Michael Hudson, first reader and stupendous mate, and my daughter, Abbie, who amazes, inspires, and delights me every single day.

© JENNY GORMAN

Darcey Steinke
is the author of the memoir
Easter Everywhere
(a
New York Times
Notable Book), and the novels
Milk, Jesus Saves, Suicide Blonde
, and
Up Through the Water
(a
New York Times
Notable Book). With Rick Moody, she edited
Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited
. Her books have been translated into ten languages, and her nonfiction has appeared in the
New York Times Magazine
, the
Boston Review, Vogue, Spin
, the
Washington Post
, the
Chicago Tribune
, and the
Guardian
. Her web-story “Blindspot” was a part of the 2000 Whitney Biennial. She has been both a Henry Hoyns and a Stegner Fellow and Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, and has taught at the Columbia University School of the Arts, Barnard College, the American University of Paris, and Princeton University. Steinke lives in Brooklyn, New York.