Like Sweet Potato Pie (2 page)

I ignored her, but color flared in my cheeks. “Anyway, sushi’s paradise.” We came around a bend where cows lolled on green fields, oblivious to the fate of summer. “Gourmet paradise. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

“Over my dead redneck body.” Becky’d spent all her twenty-five years living in rural Staunton, and it had morphed into her veins.

“Even deep-fried? What about all the fried dill pickles and MoonPies in the South?” I was teasing. Now. A few months ago … well, let’s just say things were different.
And so was I.

“You smack a piece a deep-fried sushi on my plate and see what happens!”

I choked back a laugh, remembering how I’d arrived in the summer, arrogant and judgmental and so full of hurt I fairly spewed. I probably said a lot of things to hurt Becky. And Adam. And … well, other people, too. I just thanked heaven they were pretty good forgivers.

“I reckon ya changed a lotta things, Shah-loh. It’s the good ol’ Virginia air workin’ wonders on yer taste buds. Next you’ll start tearin’ open bags a pork rinds and goin’ hog wild!”

I laughed at her unintended pun. “Over my dead Yankee body.”

But I didn’t want to talk about death. Not anymore. Mom’s untimely passing had given me my fill of funeral flowers, cemetery visits, and regrets. And living in her house, even painted and spruced up, still took some getting used to. I hadn’t been close to Mom for years—if I ever had—but it shook me nonetheless.

You’re stalling. Just tell her, Shiloh P. Jacobs!

I took a deep breath and tried awkwardly to segue. “There’s something else that’s changed in my life besides root beer.”

“Ya got another job?”

I winced. As if getting fired from the Associated Press’s coveted Tokyo bureau for plagiarism at age twenty-four didn’t stink sufficiently, now I worked two low-totem-pole jobs to pay off my bills. Debts. Loans. For eternity or until I sold Mom’s house. Whichever came first.

“No. Better.”

“Better ‘n that?”

“Lots better.” I tried to keep my cheeks from smiling so much, but today I couldn’t manage a poker face.

Becky stared at me with that narrow-eyed look again, and her mouth slowly wobbled. “Shah-loh,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me ya believe in Jesus!”

I swerved.

Becky screamed. I jerked the car back into my lane, jaw dropping in surprise. “How did you …?”

But Becky hadn’t heard me. She straightened the box on her lap and glanced inside then closed her eyes in relief. The contents remained in one piece. Or however many pieces they were supposed to.

“Well, yer gonna meet Him real soon if ya don’t watch where yer goin’!”

“Sorry. You just … surprised me. How did you know?” My decision had been private. Personal, real, and life changing, but private. I hadn’t spilled the news to a soul.

Becky’s lip quivered, the radiant color in her face turning to blotches. “I don’t know. There’s somethin’ different about ya today, like ya won the lotto or somethin’. You’re sorta shinin’ from the inside! Ya got stars in yer eyes! You’re … well, you jest look beautiful. More beautiful than I’ve ever seen ya.” She mopped her face with her hand.

“Wow,” I said, tearing up myself. “It’s really that obvious?”

“All over yer face,” Becky sobbed.

“I just realized I needed Jesus to pay for my sins.” I kept my eyes on the curvy country road, hardly believing my own words. “I saw the change in Mom’s life, and then I met you and our friends, and God kept showing me something was missing. That I couldn’t forgive until God forgave me. And that Jesus gave His life for me. I started reading First John like Adam said, and—”

“Adam?” Becky grinned. “I shoulda known!”

“Wipe that smirk off your face!” I ordered, trying to laugh and cry and drive at the same time. Everyone knew Adam Carter, landscaper, had a good heart—although a bit of a stuffy, straitlaced one, too. I’d written him off as a religious nut for a while.

But that’s not why I said yes to God.

“I couldn’t get out of my mind what I read—’The blood of Jesus his Son purifies us from all sin.’ It’s what Mom discovered before she died, and it changed her whole life.”

I trembled, remembering the force of my decision, the strength and joy and forgiveness rushing in, breaking up the hardened anger that had closed up my heart for years.

“I found Mom’s journals, how she wrote about Jesus changing her life after getting tangled in all those cults for years. And then I met Adam’s brother, who’s got an amazing story of forgiveness, and …” I glanced over in annoyance. “Are you listening?”

“Shiloh Pearl Jacobs!” Becky sat up straight, coming back to her senses. “Pull over right this minute!”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Jest do it! Now!”

“Where? Here?” I gestured to a long, dusty, gravel driveway and swerved into it. As soon as I shifted into P
ARK
, Becky attacked me with a hug. She laughed and shouted, “Praise the Lord!”—then stuck her head out the window and whooped and hollered and waved her arms.

“Shah-loh’s a Christian!” she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth. “I been prayin’ fer her a long time!”

A shiny green Chevy pickup zoomed by and honked in reply. I put my arm out the window and waved and honked back. Not that long ago I would’ve slumped down in the seat and tried to disappear, but not now. I felt like I did at the top of Mount Fuji: light-headed, sun dazzling my eyes, and lungs bursting with joy.

“So how’s bein’ a Christian?” Becky stuck her head back in the window.

“New. Different. Amazing.” My hands trembled as I reached to punch on the hazard lights and pull back into the road. “And also a little scary.”

“Scary? How come?”

“A lot of reasons.” I pulled off my sunglasses to wipe my eyes. “I’ve … well, changed, Becky. I don’t know who I am anymore, or how I’m supposed to act, or—”

“Act? Act like a woman who loves Jesus, Shah-loh! Ain’t nothin’ to it!”

“Sure, but it’s all strange to me. I’m totally ignorant about the Bible except what I’ve read on my own and heard on some of Mom’s old sermon CDs. I’ve never gone to church.”

“Never?” Becky blinked.

“Nope.” I played with a strand of brown hair that hung down from my ponytail, sticky with something—milk? Caramel syrup? “I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell people either. I promise you, not everybody’s going to be as happy about this as you are.”

“Ya reckon?”

“Are you kidding? My family will just think I’m weirder than ever… . Not that we really act anything like family. Dad and I don’t speak, you know, and my older sister just calls when she wants something.” I looked out over the rolling green hillsides, rippling wheat-colored grasses lining the pasture fence. “Half sister. We’re only related by Dad.”

I checked the clock and pushed on the gas. “And then there’s my good friend Kyoko back in Japan, who ranks Christianity up there with suicide cults. If she finds out, she’ll think I’m loony. She’ll … well, I don’t know what she’ll do. You get it?”

“Ya ain’t told her?”

“Not exactly.” I played with Mom’s Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind keychain, a remnant from her life as a special-education teacher. “She knows something’s up, but not the whole story.”

“I reckon you’ll jest have ta show her. An’ ev’rybody else.” Becky adjusted one of the box flaps.

I sighed. “And love, Becky? I mean, your squeaky-clean kind of God-love? I don’t know anything about that.”

“What’s there ta know? Ya jest let Him change ya, day by day.”

“Right.” I turned the steering wheel slightly over a gentle rise. “But it’s more complicated than that. If I’m going to marry a Christian person, well, I’ve got a lot to learn. I don’t want to fight like Mom and Dad and end up with divorce and mental breakdowns, or hop from relationship to relationship like my old Cornell friends. I want something different. Something lasting. Something … What?”

Becky had teared up again.

“God’s gonna teach ya all ya need to know, my friend!” She slung an arm around my shoulders. “He’ll give ya the strength to tell yer friends the truth. Ain’t He done showed ya ev’rything else, right on schedule? Ya won’t know it all right off, but shucks—none a us do! He’s a good Daddy, Shah-loh. He won’t let ya down.”

I wiped my eyes, still somewhat surprised at the sensation of tears. I hadn’t cried in years. Literally. Almost twenty—ever since my dad walked away one winter night. Only here in this peaceful Virginia valley, with God’s love pushing and prodding my shut-up heart into the sunlight, had I learned to feel again.

“I have another confession to make,” I whispered. “My middle name’s not Pearl.”

“But ya said …”

“I lied. I’m sorry.” I let out my breath. “But I’m not going to lie anymore. I promise, Becky. We’re talking about a new Shiloh now.”

“I believe ya.” Her eyes were rimmed with red.

“Just don’t ask me my middle name. Please. I hate it.”

“I don’t care if yer middle name’s Possum!” Becky shouted. “Ya love Jesus, an’ that’s all that matters!” She reached over and honked my horn, shouting out in wild excitement. I joined in, looking more like a redneck gone mad than the refined New York–Tokyo transplant I claimed to be.

Becky suddenly grabbed the box. “Uh-oh,” she said, shushing me.

“What? What’s uh-oh? And what’s in that box?”

She tried to wrestle it away from me, but I grabbed one of the cardboard flaps and jerked it back. I let out a gasp.

“It’s a serprise!” Becky cried, grabbing the box back. “Yer not s’posed to see it yet!”

“Becky Donaldson!” I shrieked. “What have you done?”

It took me the entire drive home, out of Staunton (pronounced STAN-ton, not STAWN-ton, for my fellow Yankees) and into the rural outskirts of tiny Churchville to come to grips with Becky’s gift. Which now yapped and whined inside the box. A cute little German shepherd puppy, all smoky black and brindle. Enormous liquid black eyes and pricked ears. Staring at me.

She yipped and whined, poking tiny paws over the rim of the box.

“Becky! We’ve got Faye coming over in twenty minutes, not knowing a thing, and what am I going to do with a dog?” I cried, grabbing my head in both hands.

“Hiya, cutie! Ain’t ya gonna sleep some more?” Becky ignored me, massaging the puppy’s velvety fur behind the ears.

“A dog?” I repeated stupidly. “You got me a dog? I’m leaving this town, Becky, as soon as I can find somebody to buy my house!” I waved my arms in the air. “I’m not a small-town girl! All I want to do is go back to Japan, and what am I going to do with a dog? I wouldn’t stay in Staunton forever if somebody paid me!”

I shook my head and turned into Crawford Manor, Mom’s little redneck subdivision. Passing a horse and a double-wide trailer on one side and a house with six hounds on the other.

“No offense, Becky. I love you and Tim and everybody, but I’m not settling down here. I’ve already stayed way longer than I planned.”

“What, a couple a months?” Becky tried to cover a laugh but didn’t do a very good job.

“June. July. I don’t know. Whenever I came.” I gestured with my free arm. “For … the funeral.”

“Shucks. I jest thought ya might be lonely livin’ by yerself, Shah-loh.”

“Lonely? Give it to Faye! After all, she’s the one we’re trying to …” I clicked on my turn signal, forcing my eyes away from the box. Because if I peeked, I’d be a sucker. Hooked. Quivery wimp that I was deep down. “Besides, what if Earl doesn’t like dogs? And then if he and Faye …”

Becky glanced up at me. “Huh? Yer blabberin’, Shah-loh. An’ anyway, it ain’t a good idea for you to live out there all by yerself, ya know.”

“My real-estate agent said I can’t have any pets. They leave hair and stuff that turns off potential buyers.”

“Well, Lowell Schmole ain’t here, is he? He gonna tell ya what ta eat fer breakfast, too?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

I drove down the country road lined with starter homes just like mine, with cute mailboxes and front porches decorated with American flags, dry summer geraniums, and butter-yellow football mums. I crunched across gravel and parked in front of a wooden deck flanked by fading rose bushes. Then I reluctantly pulled down the cardboard flap on the box.

“Here.” Becky shoved the whole box into my hands. “Ya don’t hafta keep her, but think about it, okay? I just happened ta see her at the SPCA, sorta … by accident … and couldn’t pass her up.”

“What were you doing at the SPCA?” I cried.

“Lookin’ fer a dog fer you.” Good old honest Becky. She got out and shut the door, leaving me there with the box.

Two glistening velvet-black eyes peeked up at me, framed by little fawn-colored spots like puffy eyebrows. Tiny trembling whiskers.

Something melted inside. Like sweet brown
tonkatsu
sauce poured over Japanese fried pork.

“I can’t keep her, Becky! She’ll pee on my carpets!” I got out, trying not to jostle the puppy or drop the box. “She’ll ruin everything for Faye, after we got all this nice food ready, and …” I tried not to look inside the box again but couldn’t help myself.

“Aw, quit whinin’, woman! Faye’ll love her! An’ hey, maybe it’ll give her some conversation with Earl, right?” Becky winked. “She don’t know he’s comin’ yet, does she?”