With quick eyebrows and a soothing, sad expression, Edith moved to the front row, careful not to look impatient. She folded her hands in her lap, the red patches of eczema smoothed away with hospital lotion. She wore a white sweater over a gray summer dress that covered her knees. Beside her lay five copies of a thin book, Where the Lily’s Grow Thickest. A friend had pointed out the misspellings in the title, but Edith felt that most people wouldn’t notice; plus it was the story that mattered anyway.
Pastor Rick was out of town, and choir director Halbert Young led the opening of the evening worship service. Dandruff dusted his jacket collar. Edith frowned at the poor turnout, noting that the choir cut her audience in half. She would make a point to turn and include them, though, especially during the story about the jackrabbit. But first she’d be sure to mention that it was Mission Month. She glanced at the poster board with a hand-drawn thermometer and $200 printed in marker at the top. She sat there while Halbert went over plans for choir practice next Wednesday and carried the figures in her head. She thought if she sold all five copies that night, she’d plan on giving two dollars.
“And Miss Stacey won’t be here next Wednesday. Her brother in California was drowned as you all know. So for those of you who bring the young ones to choir practice, you’ll need to make sure they bring something to do, to keep their little hands busy.”
Edith knew that Halbert hated it when Miss Stacey wasn’t there to keep the kids occupied in the basement. He’d been choir director for six years, and she’d heard him say more than once that the least the church owed him was the decency of peace and quiet during choir practice.
“We’ll ask Brother Thurmond to lead us off in prayer tonight, and then Mrs. Edith here on the front row will lecture us again on her missionary experiences.”
Edith frowned. She looked at Inez in the choir to see if Halbert’s remark had registered with her. Edith thought Inez’s straight black hair with a curl at the bottom hung around her face like an old shower curtain. Inez yawned.
Slim Thurmond stood with his hands folded in front of his sizable belt buckle. His wife Betty sat in the choir, and Slim always felt conspicuous sitting by himself. Betty always sat next to Inez in the choir and everyone knew that Betty watched to see if Slim was looking at Inez, which he usually was, because Inez had a pretty face.
Edith turned and nodded at Slim. She noticed him squeezing his hands together as if testing to see which was strongest. She bowed her head but didn’t close her eyes. She had planned on saying a prayer to start off her talk.
A car door slammed in the parking lot.
“Lord,” started Slim.
Edith imagined Slim praying behind her. She could see his chin lift when he said Lord, and she knew that by now his chin had dropped and was touching his white shirt. He wore a thin gold chain and a collar open to the second button.
“We thank you for this day and ask your blessings on Pastor Rick as he is away at revival.”
The door to the sanctuary opened and closed. Edith wondered who it could be, but did not turn to look since she was the speaker that night. No regular ever came in late, except for maybe a teenager. She had spoken with Pastor Rick about locking the doors once the service got going, but he had skirted the issue by talking about the fire code. “Why did God make clocks then?” she had asked, and he didn’t have an answer.
“Lord, be with Miss Stacey on her trip to California and her drowned brother. All these things we ask in your name. Amen.”
Finally, thought Edith. She turned and nodded at Slim, hoping to get a peek at the latecomer. Edith turned the wrong way, though, and barely got a glimpse.
For a few seconds, Halbert appeared to be comparing the length of his right arm with his left. He pushed himself up from the red, velvety, cushioned chair, dangled his arms, and stepped to the pulpit. He looked down at something on the red carpet and lingered over it for a full five seconds.
Edith frowned and shook her head.
Halbert looked over the audience, about 10, most sitting toward the back. He gazed at the slender young latecomer in the sleeveless aqua dress. Her hair was shoulder length, clean, and neat.
“Let’s take out our hymnals, please. Page 212.”
Halbert turned to the choir, three women in front, four men behind. It was Sunday night, so they didn’t wear their dark green robes, which always disappointed him. He hoped Edith wasn’t going to tell the jackrabbit story again. He turned back to the congregation and almost motioned them to stand but didn’t.
Edith caught herself standing and sat back down. She got a better look at the latecomer and smiled. Edith held a special place in her heart for young women.
Halbert led them through two stanzas of Love Lifted Me, skipping the second, which was Edith’s favorite. She picked out the new voice singing behind her. She heard a sweet voice accustomed to singing and liked the way it fit in. After the song, she took the hymnal, turned, and placed it into the rack on the back of her pew, getting a solid look at the latecomer. The young lady smiled at Edith, catching her off guard. Edith tried to smile back but instead raised her eyebrows, which Slim noticed. He glanced at his wife Betty in the choir, noting that she had noticed he had noticed something.
“We have a small crowd tonight,” said Halbert, “but it’s the quality that counts.” He glanced at the carpet. “Do we have any visitors with us tonight?”
Of course there was a visitor, the latecomer, an attractive young lady with brown hair, in her 30s, sitting on the right side, wearing a turquoise necklace. Slim could see she was wearing dressy loafers without pantyhose or socks. Edith noticed that Betty looked uneasy.
The latecomer raised her hand, and Edith turned at that exact instant. Edith gave the latecomer a quick smile, congratulating herself on making the latecomer feel just the right amount of welcome. She thought back to her missionary days and sighed.
A great boiling cough echoed from the back, giving Edith another opportunity to turn. She did not smile at the latecomer this time, just a careful, concerned glance toward Mr. Peason. He suffered from asbestosis but collected checks regularly because of it.
“Well ma’am, we’re sure glad to have you tonight and want you to know that you’re welcome here at Pine Knob Baptist. If you’d like, there’s a card right there in the pew …” Edith almost plugged her ears because she knew Halbert was about to say golf pencil. “… and a little golf pencil. Just fill that out if you don’t mind and drop it in the plate when it comes by.”
Edith wondered if the latecomer had children. She looked too smart for that, though. She imagined the young lady feeling warm and thinking what a nice friendly place the church was. It had been a long time since Edith had had a young lady friend, someone to have over for cookies and coffee. When she was a missionary, she’d met with a small group of lovely young ladies, mostly missionary wives, who she prayed with every day.
“For our offertory tonight, Mrs. Butts will play Gentle Her Weeping Head, a hymn written by her mother about how Mary must have felt after giving birth to our Savior.” Halbert looked at the carpet again.
Edith reached in her change purse and fetched a dollar bill. She always gave 10 percent of her missionary pension during Sunday School but liked to set an example for the young people during the services. Halbert made a special trip down to her place in the front, and she dropped in her dollar, folded three times. As Mrs. Butts struggled through the piano piece, Edith imagined she was thinking about her mother’s last days with the green oxygen tube in her nose.
Jonas Satterwaite took one side of the church and Halbert the other. Most folks had to stand and lean to get the plate since the crowd was so small, which gave most everyone an excuse to survey the latecomer. Edith noticed the latecomer put something in the plate, probably the visitor card and maybe a dollar, and that made her feel good.
After the offering, Halbert stepped back to the pulpit and motioned for the choir to come down and join the congregation. “Tonight, Miss Edith is going to inspire us with another lecture on her days as a missionary with the Foreign Mission Service. It’s been two weeks since she last spoke, but with Pastor Rick gone and this being Mission Month, it’s probably just what the doctor ordered.”
He paused and glanced at Edith who was frowning. She had never liked Halbert. He didn’t cut the mustard as a choir director.
“I’ll tell you Miss Edith, that jackrabbit story you told last time still gets me tickled.” He wanted to kick himself.
Edith felt a dark shadow gathering, and she pinched her lips.
“Come on up please, Miss Edith.” Halbert squinted.
Edith picked up her roomy black purse and leather King James Bible and climbed the two steps to the platform. She had thought about speaking from the side of the pulpit, but now she changed her mind and slipped in behind it. She set her purse underneath and laid her Bible on the lectern, stood back, and glanced down to make sure her dress was decent. She noticed a black spot on the red carpet and thought it looked like a spider.
The latecomer, whose name was Cheryl Roquet, looked on. She was married and had one small boy named Ike. She lived in Denver, Colorado, and was visiting her parents who had retired to a large farm nearby. Her father, an engineer with NASA, had always dreamed of retiring to a big farm back in his home state. Her mother, a free spirit, had had other dreams but was the more flexible of the two. Cheryl was a student at the Brooks Divinity School in Denver working on a degree in Divine Science. To give her material for a paper due for a New Thought class, she had lucked onto Pine Knob Baptist. Cheryl noted with the golf pencil on the little visitor card that she was a Unitarian.
While Edith adjusted her Bible and scrambled for something to replace the jackrabbit story, the silence in the small church turned to glass. Luckily Mr. Peason intervened with a fit of gagging and by the time he was through, Edith was ready.
“First, I would very much like to welcome our latecomer tonight.” She smiled and extended her left hand like a coat hook.
“As most of you know, I toiled for twenty-four years as a missionary, serving our Lord Jesus …” She almost said jackrabbit. “… answering His call to service, and doing His good work. One question that many folks ask is if I ever got lonely over there by myself. Well, let me tell you that some of my best friends today are the missionary families I worked with. In fact, in my book, Where the Lilies Grow Thickets … well, that’s where the title came from … a lily won’t just grow anywhere, you know. You need fertile soil. And where you have rich dirt, that’s where the lilies prosper. And I felt like that, among all those wonderful people, like we were a patch of lilies growing tall and strong together.”
Inez stifled a yawn. Her eyes teared, and she blinked them away.
The latecomer, Cheryl, tried to get a fix on what Edith was saying. Cheryl had volunteered to dig wells in El Salvador during her junior year of high school and tried to draw parallels between her brief but powerful experience and this woman’s long-term commitment to serve others.
Edith noticed a wash of seriousness cross the latecomer’s face. She could tell her message was hitting home. She thought that after the service, she would pull the young lady aside and tell her just that. She’d probably remember that for a long time. Who knew? The latecomer could have troubles that needed just the right words.
“One of my favorite activities as a missionary was leading the Tuesday-night Bible study. At first I was afraid. Some of the missionaries had been there thirty years when I first got there. But God always took me by the hand and showed me just what to say, just like He’s doing tonight.” She was itching to tell the jackrabbit story. The latecomer hadn’t heard it.
Cheryl wondered where Edith had been a missionary and listened for clues.
“Okay, I know you’ve heard it, but we’ve got a visitor and I think maybe the teenager here tonight hasn’t heard this one, so it bears repeating.”
Sitting beside her little pile of books, she smiled at Halbert and then raised her eyebrows at the teenager in back who was gouging at a hard wad of gum on the pew bottom.
“And I promise to sprinkle in a new detail for the rest of you. First, though, let me turn to the passage that I was reading to a group of missionary children when this old jackrabbit busted in.”
She licked her thumb, rubbed it against her forefinger, and searched her way to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 14, verse 7.
“Like I said, I had the little children there on the floor, and we had just had some home-baked cookies. Guess it would be a better story if it was a carrot cake …” She chuckled, gripped the edges of the pulpit, leaned forward for emphasis, and then her heart stopped.
The latecomer had raised her hand.
Slim pinched Betty and scooted his eyes toward the latecomer. Mr. Peason stifled a cough. Inez saw the blank look on Edith’s face and looked back at the latecomer. The latecomer, though, kept her hand up like it was a discussion. Edith started to read the verse but, flustered, blurted, “Yes?”
For a brief moment the silence returned to glass, a clear dark-green glass that paralyzed time. Edith held her breath and heard the beating of her heart.
The latecomer asked Edith in a regular voice, “Where were you a missionary?”
Slim’s ears picked up, Edith noticed. He seemed to be straining. She had heard that someone once complained that she had lived off the church dime for 24 years and that she owed the church. She knew it was Slim who said it. Halbert, who had just about fallen asleep in the front pew on the left, jerked and stiffened his arms for another comparison.
The latecomer had asked a question, but Edith couldn’t remember the question, but then it came to her. Hadn’t she mentioned it? Wasn’t it obvious? Edith cleared her throat, which had narrowed to the size of a toothpick. She began to imagine this woman was married and probably had kids.
“Well … Okinawa, of course.”
Edith said Okinawa with some difficulty. She waited for something to happen, but the latecomer seemed satisfied. Edith paused, a hotness coursing through her, and looked down at the carpet to her foot near the black spot. Warm tears dripped onto her shoes. Halbert stood but lost his momentum and stared. Slim pinched Betty. Mr. Peason coughed into his hand. Mrs. Butts, who always sat at the piano during the service, began to play Gentle Her Weeping Head one more time. Inez was about to step down when Slim stood, put his fist to his mouth like an apple, and cleared his throat. Mrs. Butts stopped playing.
Slim walked toward the front. He motioned for Edith to come down, as if to a child, extending his hand as she descended the steps snuffling. He led her to the front pew and eased her down beside her books. Slim, his face red, looked toward the latecomer and whispered something to Halbert, who also looked back at the latecomer, who blushed and wondered if her bangs were even. Edith sat with a blank look on her face, her eyes puffy.
“Ma’am?” said Slim, slipping his thumbs behind his belt buckle.
Now the latecomer was standing.
Edith looked up from her lap. She had suddenly realized how lonely she had been in Okinawa, how she had been afraid of the people, how she had always felt so awkward around others.
Slim looked like a high-school referee. He glanced at his mortified wife Betty, who was working a piece of nicotine gum. Inez gripped the pew with both hands.
Edith looked back at Slim. She could tell he felt guilty for thinking badly of her and saying those things. She felt positive that he wanted the latecomer to apologize. Slim’s mouth opened but Mr. Peason pulled out his handkerchief and coughed, as if barking into a deep well.
Regaining her composure, Edith spoke, her voice rising.
“I lived in Okinawa. I lived there for twenty-four years.”
She turned and faced the latecomer across four pecan-stained pews.
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” said Cheryl.
In fact, Cheryl did not have a sense of exactly where Okinawa was located. “I know this sounds silly … My name is Cheryl by the way, Cheryl Roquet … but tell me where Okinawa is exactly? It’s in the Pacific, right?”
Inez’s face relaxed just a bit, Edith noted. She imagined that Inez had her hand around her keys inside her black purse, the one with the silver buckle.
“Well, Okinawa, now that you ask, is a chain of islands south of Japan. There’s dozens of them, but the big one is called Okinawa Island. That’s where the mission was located, and we would go to some of the other islands sometimes.” She talked with her hands. “We were always seen as kind of second rate by the missionaries in Japan proper, but to tell the truth we thought the same thing about them.”
Edith stood a little taller.
“Well, Miss Cheryl, let me tell you that it was awful hard doing mission work. I think maybe I tell it sometimes like it was all good memories, because that’s what folks want to hear, but I saw some things people ought not to see. I have never told this.” And she paused.
The latecomer eased back down, and Slim settled on the step leading up to the pulpit. Back in his place on the front pew, Halbert fidgeted like one of Edith’s pet guinea pigs.
“I took in a young boy,” said Edith. The words surprised her.
Cheryl leaned forward.
Edith looked down at her hands, twisting a damp tissue. She couldn’t believe that she was 63 years old. Every day was a new day, but her hands ached, and she was on the verge of diabetes according to Dr. Sweeney. She’d been as healthy as a horse in Okinawa, and now she could feel herself getting slow and achy.
“The soldiers, when they took over Okinawa … during the war, I was just a child then, and my father was one of them over there … the soldiers …” Edith looked back at Mr. Peason whose dull green eyes had sparked to life.
“Half a million people lived there. Nineteen forty-five it was, and I was only seven years old. Lived just down the road here, taking care of my baby sister, walking back and forth to school every day.” She paused and slipped the tissue in a small pocket on her dress. “Mr. Peason could tell you about the war. He was there.”
No one turned to look at Mr. Peason who relaxed his grip on the pew cushion and fixed his gaze on his right hand, the one that had squeezed the trigger on the flame-thrower.
It was an awful mess explained Edith. She had seen pictures, visited the memorials. One of the bloodiest battles of the war, she explained, had been the fight for Okinawa. The terrified civilians holed up in caves. To keep from being captured, women jumped from the high cliffs along the coast, mothers holding daughters to their chests. She skipped over the part about the flame-throwers and the caves.
“He was fourteen years old but couldn’t walk good on account of the awful burns he got. His parents was killed, leaving him an orphan, an awful burned-up little boy that everybody thought would die. But he lived, more or less.”
Edith’s voice seemed to carry through the walls, into the parking lot, and back again. A faint drum of thunder passed through the building. The teenager, pinching the gum into a ball, looked on with mild interest. Cheryl, choked up but composed, wondered if Edith had ever been married. As much as she hated to do it, she glanced at her watch. She had promised her husband she would call and say goodnight to Ike.
“And I have never married and have never seen fit to do so, having room for only one master in my life.”
“Amen,” said Slim.
Halbert nodded in agreement, both of his arms splayed on top of the pew as if he were in a hot tub.
“His name was Firu, and he was blind, but he was as happy as could be. Cutest little crooked smile. The mission took him in when he was five, and when I brought him home with me over there, he was fourteen. He had a terrible limp but worked harder than any human ought to. We lived right there in my little house in the mission compound, and Firu washed and cleaned, helped the cook, and even went to the market on Tuesdays by hisself.”
Mr. Peason in the back row knew the story. He sat with his forearms folded on the pew in front of him, posturing to ward off a cough. Of the $100 given toward Mission Month so far, he had given $90. He saw the latecomer peek at her watch.
Thunder rolled low in the distance. Storms usually came right up the interstate, blowing in from the southwest. The air conditioning began to feel colder than it ought to, and Cheryl wished she had brought her sweater.
“I outlived that boy, and that just ain’t right.”
Inez covered her mouth as Edith’s shoulders slumped a bit. Halbert jumped up to help her and almost put his arm on her shoulder.
“A storm’s coming, and I think we’ve learned a lot tonight,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk like that Mrs. Edith. Probably the most interesting speech yet.”
A light rain fell on the church roof, cocooning the silence. Everyone sat very still, most holding their arms close to their bodies. A soft flash of light illuminated the stained-glass windows, followed by a vibrating rumble. The Mission Month poster slipped and slid to the floor.
Exhausted, Edith sat down by her books. Halbert looked around the auditorium to see who could say the final prayer. Edith followed his eyes, knowing he would not ask Mr. Peason, who always prayed for at least five full minutes, coughing in fits the whole time. Slim had already prayed. Jonas stuttered and the teenager might laugh at him. The teenager, Inez’s son, hadn’t been baptized yet and didn’t have good sense anyway. No one had ever asked Betty or Inez to pray.
Halbert glanced at the little card in the offering plate. A flash of lightning and a long boom shook the windows. The lights dimmed for a second.
“As we head home tonight, I’d like to ask our visitor, Mrs. Cheryl Ro … Ro … Ro … Rokeet, to lead us in prayer.”
Cheryl froze in her seat. This was getting to be too much.
“Well, I’m a Unitarian and I, well, generally do not pray in public,” said Cheryl. She felt trapped and wondered why she was explaining herself.
Everyone in the auditorium raised their eyebrows, tried to make eye contact with someone nearby, and then looked to Edith. Slim slipped a glance at Betty, who had swallowed her nicotine gum and assumed an absorbed look. Dabbing her eyes, Edith detected that Betty had quit chewing her gum and wondered if she had swallowed it. Rain pounded the church, thunder and lightning boiling over Pine Knob. Weary, Edith rose and faced the congregation. Halbert bowed his head, looking as if he were missing his favorite TV show, and he was.
A furious specter of blue lightning struck atop a deafening rip, dousing the congregation in darkness. Silhouettes leapt with each successive flash. The emergency lights buzzed, casting enough light to gather the group toward the front as the storm plowed roughshod through Pine Knob. The storm covered the sound of her leaving, and everyone knew that a great crossroads had been passed.
The rain lulled, and Edith cleared her throat. “It wasn’t a jackrabbit,” she said, gripping her purse. “It was a funny kind of black rabbit, real little. I’ve always said it was a jackrabbit because that’s what most folks know. And it didn’t really bust in, but that’s what folks like to hear.”
Rocking on his heels, Halbert nodded like he had known it all along.
“The books are just five dollars,” said Edith.
Mr. Peason coughed.