Send Me Down a Miracle (15 page)

"Charity, maybe someday you'll be an artist and you'll understand. Nothing's more important than my art. Nothing. Speaking of which"—Adrienne turned back to the stairs—"I've got work to do." She stood on the first step and looked back at me. "Now you run along, and lock that door behind you."

"No. I'm staying here."

"Charity, please."

"I want to be with you. I want to go to New York. I'm ready. I want to go today."

"Well, I'm not going today."

"But you've got to. I've got to go. I'll never forgive him. I hate him, I really do. Mad Joe's over at the house right now pleading for his girls' lives and Daddy's standing there quoting Scripture. I hate him. He's a liar. He's not like Jesus at all."

Adrienne laughed. "He's a man. He's just human. Really, Charity, if you put someone that high up on a pedestal, they're bound to fall. No one's perfect."

"You are." I rushed up the steps. "You are. You're great. You can stand up to Daddy. You can do anything. Shoot, you can even see Jesus."

Adrienne backed up a few more steps. "Charity, stop. That's just what I'm saying. You can't do that to people, idolize them like that. In the end you just get hurt. You do. Nobody's perfect. Now—now I'm going to go upstairs and get back to my work, and you go on home, where you belong."

"But I don't belong. You even said so, remember? You said I had way too much spirit for a town like Casper. You said you wanted me. You said you would teach me; we'd go to New York."

"Now, wait a minute. I said no such thing. I said that the best art schools are in New York and if you ever wanted to study you should go there. That's all I said. The rest was all in your imagination. My God! I can't even stand my lover living with me full-time—I certainly couldn't put up with an adolescent."

I moved up the steps toward her. "But I can't go back. I can't go home. Let me stay here. I won't even talk to you if you don't want. Just let me stay."

Adrienne moved up the steps and I followed her. She held up her hand. "Stop. Now listen—"

I ran up and threw my arms around her before she had time to say anything more or back away again. I cried full out then and told her she was right about Mama, about her flying the coop. I told her I needed the chair to get Mama back. Adrienne tried to pull away, but I held on. I couldn't help it. It was like she was a window ledge I was hanging on to, to keep from falling. If I let go, I just knew I would die.

I remembered Mad Joe saying how all hell was going to break loose, and that's just what I felt. All hell was breaking loose and I was falling in. I held on even tighter.

"Charity, you're hurting me." Adrienne pushed against me. "You're hurting me, let go!"

She pushed again and I lost the step beneath me and fell, rolling and bumping down to the bottom of the stairs.

I sat up, stunned. Then I felt my neck and my shoulders and decided I was okay. I looked up and saw Adrienne leaning forward over the banister. Her forehead was wrinkled, like she was worried, but she didn't run down to me.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

I rubbed at my sore knees and glared up at her. "No, I'm not, but what do you care? What do you care about people anyway?" I stood up. "Your art! Your art! Big fat deal about your art. Mad Joe and his daughters are much more important, and Sharalee and Boo and Becky Cobb. All of them are more important than some stupid painting, and anyways, excepting for
The Holy,
all your paintings look like a computer could have done them and—and they just leave a body cold all over!"

I felt evil through and through saying that, hurting her, but I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to feel evil.

I waited for Adrienne to cry or something, but she didn't. She laughed.

She threw her head back and laughed, and I ran out of there crying.

I didn't go far, just to Adrienne's back porch. I didn't know what to do or where to go. I thought about Mama. Was she still in Nashville? I could go to her. Yes, I thought to myself, I'll find out where she is and I'll go to her.

The porch door slammed open behind me. It sounded like a shotgun going off. I spun around and saw Daddy standing in the doorway.

"I knew you'd be here," he said, glaring at me.

"You took the chair," I said. "You just snuck over here like some thief and took the chair."

"I did nothing of the kind. Now, I want you home, this instant. I have a sermon to give in a few minutes."

"Well, I don't want to hear it."

Daddy grabbed my arm. "Don't you be sassing your papa." He swung me around toward the exit, letting go of my arm once I was pointed in the right direction, and swatted at my behind. "Now, you git on in that car, this instant!"

I let myself be carried by the swing until he let go of me, and then I caught myself on the threshold and spun back around on him.

"I've already been pushed down a flight of stairs, practically breaking my neck, and now you're yanking on my arm and paddling my bottom. Nobody else better touch me again."

I glared at Daddy and held my hands in tight fists against my sides.

Daddy took a step toward me. "I don't believe you heard what I said. I want you out in that car, now!"

"No, sir!" I backed away from him. "You took that chair, and Mad Joe's needing it. How could you be so cruel? I thought Jesus said for us to love our neighbor. You're always quoting Scripture, Daddy, but never that line. What about loving our neighbor?"

"There is a difference between loving our neighbor and loving Satan, and Satan's in this house. In this very house. You, child, are consorting with the devil, and I will not have it!"

Daddy lunged for me then and grabbed both my arms and started dragging me off the porch.

"No, Daddy. Let go. Let go of me! I hate you."

"If you won't get in the car, I'll put you in the car myself," Daddy said, grunting and struggling to keep ahold of me.

I was wild. I could feel it inside. This wild, evil creature was raging inside of me, and I just let it loose. "No! I hate you. Everyone hates you. Everyone!" I broke free and stood panting in front of the car. "Mama hates you. That's why she's staying away. It's your fault. It's all your fault Mama's gone." I pounded the car and then I ran, and Daddy didn't call me back and he didn't come after me.

I didn't know where else to go but to Sharalee's. They were just setting out for church when I arrived.

"Lordy, Charity, you aren't going to church, even?" Sharalee said when I told her what had happened.

"I don't know who God is anymore, so why bother," I said. "And anyways, I don't want to hear anything my daddy's preaching."

"Law!" was all Sharalee could say.

When they got back from church, Sharalee and her mama were all full of stories about how Daddy preached a mighty strong sermon on the evils of idolatry and how the church was split right down the middle, with half wanting the chair put back and half wanting it gone. Mad Joe and Old Higgs were leading one side, and Sharalee's mama and papa, and my Daddy, of course, headed up the other.

"Folks are wanting to put it to a vote," Mrs. Marshall said, "but your Daddy said Miss Adrienne's not wanting it in her house anymore, so what's the use of that?"

Mrs. Marshall sat at her kitchen table picking at a sweet roll and looking smug while Sharalee looked on, winding her hair ribbon round and round her wrists.

"I thought they were voting on whether they were going to keep the chair or get rid of it altogether. That's what they wanted," Sharalee said.

Mrs. Marshall shook her head. "But not that Mad Joe. It's over to Miss Adrienne's or nothing. There was just no end to his carrying on." She tinned to me. "I told your daddy, Charity, that he'd better lock that chair away good, or that madman'll come and steal it right out of that church. Oh, and I told him you were staying with us, so he wouldn't worry. Most likely he'll be over here to talk to you soon."

I didn't want to see Daddy and I reckon he didn't want to see me, 'cause he never came by, which got Mrs. Marshall talking and digging at me all through dinner. And seeing as how she wouldn't quit till she dragged something juicy out of me, I let out that I had taken a tumble down Adrienne's stairs and that she and I had had a falling out, which set Mrs. Marshall's eyes to dancing, and I could tell she was just itching to get to the phone.

I noticed Sharalee setting across from me looking glum and not hardly touching her dinner. I figured once we got up to her room and closed her door she'd perk up and tell me what was going on, but she just flopped down on her bed and gave me this look like she was wishing I wasn't there.

"I know," I said. "I know you're wanting the chair put back so you can lose your weight."

Sharalee rolled onto her side, facing the wall instead of me. "Sometimes I just hate your daddy," she said. She waited for me to say something, but I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry, Charity, but really." She rolled back over and sat up, grabbing her pink pillow and hugging it.

Everything in her room was sewn up in shades of pink. It was like I was sitting inside a strawberry milk shake.

Sharalee sighed and dragged herself over to her bureau. She pulled out two nighties, one for me and one for her. She tossed mine toward her spare bed without even looking to see if it made it.

"Law, Sharalee," I said, picking the gown up off the floor. "I'd think at least you'd be happy to see me."

"Oh yeah, I am, really," she said, her voice as flat as a freshly starched shirt.

"Well, that's a load off my mind," I said, turning my back and slipping on the nightie. I climbed onto the bed.

"No, I am."

"Well, even if we did get the chair back, Adrienne's not wanting it, so what would be the use?" I tucked my feet under her perfectly quilted blanket with the silky pink bows tied between each patch and fluffed up the pillows behind me. I leaned back and all my lumps and bumps and bruises seemed to go soft and melt away.

I watched Sharalee getting into her nightie and when she turned around again to face me, I saw her face was gripped with some kind of worry.

I tried to cheer her up. "Shoot, Sharalee, looks like the weight is just falling off you. I reckon soon enough you'll be skinnier'n me, even."

That seemed to be the right thing to say, 'cause she perked up and came and sat on my bed.

"Yeah, I have lost more. Four pounds total."

"Law, isn't that some kind of record or something, losing so fast like that?"

She shrugged. "Probably most of it's water weight. That's what Mama says."

I looked Sharalee over again, thinking maybe I could tell if it was fat or water she was losing, but I couldn't. All I could see was her eyes all puffy, with blue shadows under them, and seeing them made me feel sad and lonely, like maybe I had lost my old best friend.

"One thing's for certain," she said, "that Jesus chair's sure been working the miracles."

"I reckon."

Sharalee frowned. "What do you mean, you reckon? 'Course it has. Miss Becky's been found, and the Encyclopedia Sisters are cured, I've been losing the weight, and even Boo's got a hair."

"Really?" I hadn't heard about Boo.

Sharalee chuckled. "It's growing out of his shoulder."

"That's not funny, Sharalee. He can't help it he's bald."

"It's true."

"No, you're just saying that. Aren't you?...A hair? One single hair sprouting up out of his shoulder? Who wants one there? You're just fooling."

She raised her right hand. "Honest, I'm not. And guess the color."

I shrugged. "Blond, I reckon."

Sharalee laughed her old high-pitched trickling-water laugh and I knew my best friend was back. "It's gray! I swear on a stack of Bibles, it's gray. Now did you ever?"

"I declare, Sharalee, you're putting me on," I said, slapping at her arm and laughing with her. "Who told you this? Miss Tuney Mae?"

"Cross my heart, I saw it with my own eyes. Ask Mama if I didn't."

I wiped at the tears running down my face and tried to stop laughing. "That Boo, I always said he was an old man. Didn't I? Didn't I say?"

Sharalee nodded and wiped at her own tears. "Who knows, fast as that chair's working, he could have a whole garden patch of gray hairs growing out of his shoulder by now."

I rocked with the laughter, and the tears kept coming. Then, before I knew what was happening, I found my laughing tears had turned to crying tears.

"Hey, Charity, what's wrong? What's wrong, honey?" Sharalee inched forward on her quilt and put her arm around me.

I shook my head. "I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know if that Jesus chair's still in one piece. Daddy was so mad about—about stuff and all. And everybody's counting on it, you know? Me praying for Mama to come home soon, and you praying for your miracle weight loss, and Mad Joe—Lordy, Mad Joe praying hardest of all."

"Shh, it's okay. It's okay." Sharalee patted my back. "The twins are already cured, really. I went with Mama to see them the other day and all those sores on their legs were healed and they weren't yella or anything. And don't you worry about me any—I'll lose the weight, I'm real determined. And I bet your mama's turned around and is headed back this-a way right this very minute. Now come on, you're all wore out. You're needing some sleep."

Sharalee set my pillows flat, covered me over with the sheet, and kissed me good night, and for the first time since Mama had left I felt comforted and safe, and I realized what Mama had meant to me all my growing years.

"Sharalee?" I whispered after she had turned off the light and settled into her own bed.

"Yes?"

"You'll make a great mama someday."

"'Night, Charity."

"'Night," I said, and then kept talking. "I know that chair's good. I know Jesus is there. Don't you feel it? Sharalee? Don't you feel Jesus is there when you kneel down and pray?"

"Mm-hmm."

"I don't know. It's like this real holy calm comes over me. Like Jesus is there whispering words into my soul like 'tranquil' and 'fluorescent' and 'silk.' You know? Gentle words. Sharalee? You know?"