May. God. Bless - The Birds (ch. 3)

WHITE WAS MY MOTHER’S PREFERRED HABIT; chanton silk, cotton, pearls, fur, gowns, cashmere, linen, lace, her sheets and towels, jasmine in the kitchen, calle lilies in the bathrooms, orchids by her bed. She lived against the flawless background of smooth white lines. A glaring first-lady image.

She was more beautiful wrapped in the large dove-white bathrobe, than in a serious suit or the deceiving sweet of a peach dress. Many solitary hours spent in the bathtub soaking, not responding to any calls, were followed by the donning of her heavy robe and silent reading from a novel or bible with equal favor; her partnering mood always inward and sheer. She was this way only when Bishop was not around. Not short visiting absence, but the times when he was weeks out of town; on the road.

There were no souls to ease in the hallow of her room, no questions to answer, no hands to hold. No obligations to smile and give predictions as to the nearness of God’s peace. I had the memory of loving my mother there. Like Fawn loved her mother in the quiet of her grandmothers spare bedroom. I loved her at other times as well but I didn’t understand those moments like I understood the ones before, when I was small. The times that I sat quietly curled up next to her, happy to exist as the filler in the curve above her hip.

I sat on the bed at her feet. As if a feather had fallen she continued to read. Moments pestered, lingered by, offering me second and third thoughts. “Mom,” I said interrupting.

“Yes May?” She spoke into the valley of her book.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She turned the page. “Yes May.”

“You promise not to get mad?”

“Yes May.”

Say yes May again, just one more time, I thought to myself. “Is Bishop my daddy?” The rise and fall of her chest stopped. Her eyes shifted bedlam over the page, too fast and in the wrong direction to pass for reading. Her silence confirmed that the voracious animals had finally eaten her carefully arranged seed path. I lost my mother that night in the dense woods that keep secrets damp, the erratic beat of my heart confirming that I would never find her again. Standing, I felt the weight of a recently informed widow. I carried my grievous knowledge with me to my room determined to walk as steadily as possible under the tremendous weight of knowing.



LIFE LOOKED FOR ME, AFTER THAT, LIKE IT ALWAYS HAD on top but underneath, where before there had been cheerful oblivion, there was now a constant sickening churn, a mixture of fitful confusion and sad knowing living beneath the house of my belly. This spoiled feeling stayed with me through third, fourth and fifth grade, while I spent every day of every year trying to figure out what my mother’s silence really meant. I knew immediately that it meant that there was a reason that I did not even slightly resemble my sisters, why some of the people that we knew used only the corner of their eye when looking at me. In the fourth grade I knew that this was the reason that Bishop stayed at church for so many hours and why it would never happen that I would catch him kissing my mother or holding her close to him, ever. I knew that her silence was the reasons for Nana Rose’s disdain, why there were never Christmas or birthday or anniversary gifts marked; To: Claudette Emanuel From: any other Emanuel, including Bishop. Why there were no anniversaries, at least no celebrations of anniversaries. Later, I learned that it meant that she was going to hell because she had committed a sin against God and her marriage and Bishop. What I was confused about was why so much of the rebuke for her mistake seemed to rain like molten lava on to me.

May. God. Bless. - The Baby (ch. 2)

MY MOTHER ALWAYS CALLED HIM BISHOP and like most little girls I did what she did. So he was Bishop. Pick-ups Bishop, I would say as a little girl. Maime want pick-ups. Hands stretched out wide. The difference between my sisters and me was, he would correct them. Everyone would correct them. Sibyla, you want daddy to help you with something? My mother would ask her. Or, Zuri did you show daddy your homework?

It was because I was the baby. This was my first thought as a child as to why I was being treated differently. Because I was small, younger than my sisters, the reason that he was my Bishop and their daddy. Why my attempts to climb into his lap, a place where my sisters spent many uninterrupted moments, was always met with a harsh and unsympathetic, “No.” Why for many years I could not be a part of a lot of the things that they were allowed to do at church and at home.

From the smallest things that matter when you’re a child, like carrying the Sunday School attendance or offering banner from the previous winner’s perch to the current winner. Or being able to have any small part in the annual Christmas play. Even just to lie still in the part of the baby Jesus in the Easter re-enactment of the Birth of Christ. These things were for me, as forbidden as the tempting first fruits.

At home there were the same restrictions. During the holidays my mother would invite my sisters to help prepare Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Excited by the musical clamor of pots and pans, thick sweet smells of glazed meats and the high pitched chorus of voices that was the beautiful mix of their similar sounds, I would volunteer any skill that could earn me a place in their festive company. Limited by my age and short range of skills, I would offer to pour water into pots or stir the brightly colored mix of cranberries and oranges, which was usually the smell that managed to snag me from my play, sending a tangy shock through my nose.

Each year and on every occasion these attempts were met with refusal. Refusal to let me pour or stir or even sit and watch. “Go somewhere,” my oldest sister Sibyla would demand against the sound of hissing pots, boiling berries and the silence of Zuri and my mother. “Mom!” she would urge in protest, “tell her!”

“Go play somewhere,” my mother would instruct me accordingly. Never lifting her eyes to meet mine the way that she did when directing others. Zuri took the obligatory leave from her task to sit with me, help me settle into my own company of dolls and stacking toys.

It must be, I thought to myself, because I’m the baby. They didn’t want me to say the wrong thing or tear something up or do something silly in the middle of something important.

At the age of four, my participation in our children’s mass choir was insisted upon by an elderly but keen Mother of the church; Leola Whittmore. Mother Whitmore had been a member of First Emanuel for over fifty years. During her years of active service she had chaired the Missionary Board, Usher Board and Finance committee, and she knew the details of our family’s history like she knew the delicate weave of vein into vein on the backs of her own tiny hands.

In the past and to no avail, her granddaughter Stephanie, who was the children’s choir director at that time, attempted to persuade my mother as to the benefits of having me become involved in at least one church activity. “It builds self esteem,” she told my mother, before she was carefully reminded that she was being paid to teach songs, not give psychological assessments.

When mother Whitmore saw the following Sunday that I was not included with the other fifty or so children in the choir, she realized that the attempt of a subtle relay of her wishes had been underestimated. She appeared in the doorway of my mother’s study in the basement of the church.

“The sound of children singing pleases God,” she informed my mother in a steady voice, peculiar for a woman of her age.

There was no response from my mother who, although an evangelist and as such, a principal governor in the church, knew her place in the presence of it’s eldest and most respected members. She stood there rebuffed, stripped down to the nakedness of her infamy, “We should all be as eager as these children to do what pleases God.” Mother Whittmore cautioned her.

When we arrived home that evening, my mother performed her obligatory duty of relaying the regretful situation to Bishop. His response was the usual service of cold-hard silence.

“What was I going to say?” my mother asked.

“Apparently nothing,” he said. I heard the familiar threatening silence that lived as the mistress between them.

“Somebody should tell Rose,” my mother finally said from beneath the mistress’ veil.

“That will be you,” he said as coolly as if relaying duties to a brand new church officer. They were proportionately matched my mother and Bishop, lion and hyena. He had no sympathy for err and she had a masterful gift of denying all guilt of it.

She performed the compulsory task of informing my grandmother of the dubious decision that had been made regarding my joining the choir. No other words were said. After a few moments she replaced the phone’s receiver to its cradle having listened to the tone of the dial for several seconds.

The next third Sunday of the month, the day scheduled for the children to demonstrate their love for Christ through song, I marched dutifully down the aisle in my long, borrowed green and white robe, to my assigned spot in the choir stand. I looked out into the congregation accounting for nearly three thousand members and noticed, as clear as if observing through a magnifying glass, the tense and strange expressions of my family members.

My Nana Rose, Bishop’s grandmother, and present controlling matriarch of the family, sat on a front pew left of the center aisle, eyes trained carefully at the sight of me. Her stare imposing, making me feel suddenly itchy and hot.

On previous occasions she had made it harshly clear to Bishop and my mother through him, that she did not want “this situation” to be put out for show in front of those that she described as, “my church members.”

But to repeal the decision would be to call attention to the reasons why I had not been involved from the beginning. The story. There would need to be discussions and explanations and concessions made because an elder as significant and distinguished in the church annals as Mother Whitmore, deserved the respect of an honored request even by Nana Rose’s own admission.

Other sympathetic members that were counted in the Emanuel circle of influence took note of Mother Whitmore’s victory in the case of them vs. me. They knew then that my family would acquiesce to any request made on my behalf in order to avoid the issue.

A chilly resignation wrapped itself around Nana Rose’s unfriendly shoulders. She adjusted her position to accommodate the perceived knife in her back.

My great aunts, Gertrude and Margaret sat directly behind Nana Rose, matrilineal linemen skilled in the ways of honor and protection. They whispered and winced intermittently one observing, the other confirming, lose leathery skin buckling under the furrow of their brows. Young cousins disbelieved, crunching their shoulders to their ears, not knowing what to think.

My mother, with her eyes closed and a chest heavy with indignation, sat next to my sister on the front pew, right of the center aisle. Never in all the years of my growing up in the church did I see Nana Rose or any of the Emanuel women sit near my mother. Seats were assigned specifically to avoid the possibility.

Sibyla was not singing and had, for several weeks rejected my mother’s demands to attend choir rehearsal upon the information that I would be joining. The new development signaled the beginning of a long running test of wills between my mother and older sister.

The day of the announcement she objected vehemently, showing unrestricted belligerence. Behaving like no other Emanuel child was ever permitted to do before or since. Hissing and sighing in objection. Wanting to know why I always had to ruin everything. On one occasion Bishop entered the foyer to her rescue, pulled in by the commotion of her refusing. “Just for this one Sunday baby,” he said, trying to make my participation more palatable. But she sat out, bitter and unconvinced.

As Sister Stephanie prepared to direct the song to its end I could hear Zuri’s voice sliding down the small of my back. She smiled the night I whispered to her in the darkness of her bedroom, the only place where my joyous ceremony was permitted; the news that I would be joining the choir. She was happy to have me there in the stands next to her, without needing to say so with words. At that moment I knew that at least Jesus and Zuri loved all of the little children.

From the beginning, the relationship between sibyla and I was like that of two trains destined for collision. I wanted to get along with her and when we were younger, longed to get her attention, doing anything that I thought would work, often making a bad situation much worse. But she was not interested in having me around, much less extending any displays of kindness.

I believe that this was so because by the time I was born, she already understood the standard to which Bishop was held. She was his favorite child. His associate wherever he would go. There were no private meetings where she was concerned and people acknowledged her presence when she was with him as if she were his small partner. She was present when powerful people honored his every request. Complimentary gestures and flattering remarks towards him were her personal badge of honor. She was his champion and defender against any obstacle, including that of my mother’s transgression.

My birth signaled a change in the way that people received him. She would overhear things being said about him behind his back yet in her presence. They could not have imagined a four-year-old girl so keen. But she understood. She knew that the new baby had made her father walk with his shoulders slightly slumped where they used to be strong and square. His eyes averted to avoid facing the truth in other people’s stares. She watched his influence as a businessman, a husband and a Bishop blacken like soot.

For this I would have plugs of my hair pulled from my head. I would have dolls decapitated and toys broken to pieces before my eyes. Nothing was to mean or cruel and no amount of retribution was enough.

It was not long before a single word out of her mouth relegated me to the bottom rung in the hierarchy of our family. I did not feel the sting of her designation the first time that it was aimed and fired in my direction because I was in fact, still a baby. Only five-years-old.

Zuri and I had plotted to find Sibyla’s little green book. This was the place where she divulged all of her girlhood secrets. I had never seen the book before but Zuri assured me that it existed. That she had even read some of the mushy notes that Sibyla had written. Elaborate stories about imaginary lives with all of the boys that she was in love with. How she would confess her love for them and dream of theirs for her. They would get married in Bishops church; she in a great big gown, he in a tuxedo, because there was nothing else for boys to wear in weddings. They would have two girls named Kenya and Rose, who would be named after our great-grandmother and a boy named Jonah, who was a fat, smiley baby at our church. And they would sit on the front pew of the church and kiss whenever Bishop went out of town. She giggled as she recounted the passages about the little butterflies that kept twisting in Sibyla’s stomach when she would see them and how no matter what anybody said she would marry them even though Zuri said she could not tell for sure which boy she was talking about.

Despite the fact that she had warned us on many occasions to stay out of her room and not to ever touch her things, we persisted, harmless detectives on a hunt for hidden treasure. “None of your business.” She said to both of us with no small amount of irritation in her voice; her response to Zuri’s question of why she was making such a big deal out of one little book. “And because it’s personal, that’s why.”

It was only a short time after, that I was using her bathroom while we were waiting for the plumber or Bishop or somebody, to fix the toilet in my bathroom. In my urgency, from having waited until the last possible moment, I was stomping and kicking to prevent an accident, knocking her hamper over, spilling its contents onto the floor.

From beneath a pile of pasty bath towels I caught a glimpse of something that pinched my need to use it. A bit of green peeked shyly from under a pair of blue jeans making me smile knowingly at my big discovery. I was startled back into the moment by the revival of the now intense urge, which had returned without my noticing it. I nearly puddled the floor trying to keep my eyes fixed on my find and use the bathroom at the same time.

I needed to hurry up and sneak it into my room so I could show Zuri when she got home from her piano lesson. My big victory. I managed to keep calm long enough to finish my original business and wash my hands, which I never neglected to do because our mother insisted that it was the best way to distinguish the difference between a heathen and a lady.

When I finally got to my room I hid in the furthest corner, carefully picking open the lock to her book the way that Zuri had shown me. “Just use one of mommy’s hair pins. Like this,” she told me, demonstrating on her own diary, which boasted a gallery of stickers and some old hangman and tic-tac-toe games in the back.

Lock picked, I proceeded to read her secret notes. I did not understand all of the words that were written on the pages but I remember smiling at the thought of my oldest sister loving someone. I knew that she could love because she loved Bishop, behaving differently whenever he was around. She would replace her loud voice and harsh words with soft replies of “Yes daddy,” and “No thank you sir.” But until that day I thought that he was the only person for whom she cared. I didn’t know that it mattered to her that boys thought that she looked pretty or that she liked it when they would sneak a smile at her during service.

Sibyla wrote nice things about the boys that she liked, even drawing hearts and happy faces next to some of their names. I recognized some of them, like Carlton Anderson the son of the Associate Pastor and Robin Tillman the youth choir drummer who at fourteen was much older than her. I knew that Bishop would be furious if he found out. He did not like any boys anywhere near either of us but I was glad that that didn’t stop her.

I turned one page of her little green book after another becoming more and more excited seeing that we both liked to draw pictures. Sibyla had never shared any of her interests with me and there were many things that I did not know about her so I decided to make her a surprise. She would be happy to see that I had learned to draw perfect hearts and happy faces in Mrs. Talbert’s class, just like hers. I gathered the favorite of my colored markers from my homework desk and went to work. I hoped that this would make her smile the way she said that she did when the boys would wink at her.

I took my yellow marker, which was my favorite color as a child, because it was the color of my canary Penny. I drew hearts and happy faces galore. I drew big hearts next to little happy faces and big happy faces next to little hearts. I even recognized some of the words in her book, like ‘kiss’ and ‘sexy’, around which, I proceeded to draw big red lips. I was proud of the job I was doing for her even though I accidentally marked over some of the letters, which I tried to rub clean, thinking as I held it back from me that I had not messed it up that bad. I was ready to add flowers to what I thought was turning out to be a picture worthy of a place on the refrigerator. Something that she could not possibly, once she saw my effort, be angry about, when she stormed into my room dragging me out of the corner by my single ponytail, nearly tearing my hair from my scalp.

“Stupid bastard!” she yelled. In one furious motion she snatched her book and released my hair, my head banging against and then bouncing off of the wooden foot post of my bed.

“I I I I waa waa was making you a pic t t ture,” I tried to explain choking on a swell of tears.

“I told you not to touch my stuff, stupid.” She sprayed spit when she shouted. “ I hate you!”

I was crushed. I did not want to make her mad. I thought that she would be happy to have some pretty pictures for her love letters. She was everything but.

She stood over me and began tearing out the pictures that I had drawn on her letters. When she had torn out all of the pages with words on them, she threw the book at me. “You can have it!” she said as she stormed out. And I heard it again, “Nosy bastard,” She grumbled as she left the room with all of her expressions of love balled up tight in her palm.

The next time that I would hear this name referred to me, its meaning was also relayed. I was defenseless in the face of the truth according to teenage girls. It seemed that everyone present in the room that night understood the reason for my turbid life except me.

It was nearly two years after the fiasco with Sibyla’s diary for which I alone was punished, that The Hannah Circle, First Emanuel’s missionary group of teenage girls ages thirteen to seventeen, hosted a slumber party for the Priscilla Circle of girls ages seven to twelve. It was my first year being allowed to attend and I was grateful that Sibyla’s protests had not stopped me. There were over two-dozen girls there, split evenly between the two groups.

What I learned that night and know to be true to this day is that my oldest sister, will do anything in order to seem impressive to people that she thinks are important or by mere association make her seem more important. That night she did everything short of giving a speech declaring her wish to secede from what she called the “baby” group in order to be given the privilege of being classified as one of them. A teenager. One who could give orders and make rules.

Although Sibyla imagined with what must have been great clarity, that she possessed the golden nugget of early transfer over into the Hannah Circle, they had other ideas altogether about her. Ironically, they wanted even less to do with her than she wanted to do with us. Behind her back and in tightly controlled circles she was a nosy, stuck-up preacher’s kid. The girl who thought that she was better than everyone else, because her daddy was the Bishop. Not only was this her heavy burden to overcome, even worse in their eyes she was my sister, whether she swore to hate it or not.

As it always did when I was around, the staring began. The staring turned to whispering, the whispering turned to teasing, and the teasing turned to all out insults. And besides the two or three times in her life that Zuri got up enough nerve to speak on my behalf, the instinct of familial protection did not grow from our family’s tree. To avoid the risk of being humiliated, everyone in our home fought to be treated according to her own merit; protect no one to avoid implication. This was the cardinal rule and that night Zuri was not there to break it.

Amelia, a pretty, round, eight-year-old girl with happy eyes who had an older sister and a cousin in the Hannah Circle, called me a name. Today I am not sure exactly what the name was. However, I am sure that it had to have either been in reference to my yellow skin, my Raggedy Ann hair or my dirty freckled face, because the insults were always about, or in relation to, one or more of those things. Until that night, of course, when a surly girl that I hardly knew, introduced a new direction from which to shoot pointed arrows at me.

At this time I had not yet learned that tears were my enemy since I hardly understood the reason for the war. In fact I was very sensitive and eager to make friends in any company. Amelia’s insult was cast and I was unprepared to give a retort. Fueled by my non-response she was sent on a roll. ‘Big Red the rooster’ turned to ‘high yellow chicken’ and finally ended up at ‘half breed’ before someone interrupted “And her momma is a ho.” The room burst into silence.

This comment belonged to her buxom, mouthy teenage cousin who had joined Emanuel Ministries shortly after coming to live with Amelia and her mother and sister a few months earlier. The words rolled off of her tongue the way I heard them move through the mouths of grown women when they would make confessions to my mother in her office or at our kitchen table.

I did not know how she knew anything about my mother but she said it as if there were nothing more true to be stated and she did not even bother to say it beneath her terrible breath.

Sibyla heard her. We all heard her. No matter where you were sitting in the large blue den, her declaration reached there and beyond. The volume on all other conversations went down to zero. Sister Payton and Sister Warren were near the back of the house preparing dinner in the kitchen, oblivious to the grizzly slaughter that was about to take place.

I turned to a quiet unfamiliar girl sitting next to me. I had never seen her at church before, sitting with her back pressed against the foot of the sofa watching the muted television, appearing to have no interest in the mounting commotion. I wanted to say something to her. Ask her name. Have something else to listen to. “Hi.” I said into the side of her concentrated stare.

She turned to me and her face opened up into a brilliant smile. “Hi.” Immediately the tide began to recede.

Her name was Fawn she told me, a rainbow in her voice. What’s yours?”

“May.” I said

“Pretty name.” She was a friendly kitten in a room filled with tigers. The roaring persisted.

“I heard that Bishop was not even her daddy,” informed the cousin to her ready audience.

I tried to ignore what they were saying. Pretend that I could not hear. I failed. I felt confused and disjointed; lost out to sea. And I found out that fourteen year old girls know a lot of stuff about a lot of things.

She was so full of information. She knew, she said, that my mother had had sex with a man when Bishop was out of town. A man nobody knew. Not even my mother. She got pregnant with me, the teenage informant revealed, and tried to make Bishop think that I was his baby.

“I hope they don’t think nobody knows,” said the sister. “Look at her. She don’t look nothing like them. And anyways if your mother and father ain’t married when you born, you a bastard. The Bible even says it.”

I started to cry. I hated this. I hated that people would not leave me alone. I did not want to be different from everyone else in my family. I wanted dark pressed hair and skin rubbed with rich soil. I did not want to have overgrown wildberries spilling out of my head and pasty yellow skin, but I did and I did not know what they wanted me to do about it.

“Don’t cry,” my new friend said trying to lift my wet face from my hands. I was embarrassed and afraid that she too would find out what the other girls seemed to know and enjoy as fun.

“It’s okay.” She said with cheerful reassurance. “Lots of people have step-daddies. I had one until he died in a car crash.”

But I did not have a step daddy I wanted to tell her. Bishop was my daddy. I knew that in order to have a step-daddy, that meant that I would have to have another real daddy somewhere and I did not. I didn’t try to explain it because I didn’t understand.

“Sibyla your sisters crying,” one of the girls said trying to hide her laughter.

“Whatever.” Her remark said that she would not be dragged down with me.

Fawn grabbed my elbow and pulled me to my feet, an easy effort for a seven-year-old who matched me in height and stature. She was strong and I thought that she was also brave to continue to be my friend, so I moved with her towards the kitchen.

“Get some tissue and wipe your face.” She said as we passed the kitchen for the bathroom. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What’s wrong.” Sister Warren asked as we walked by, me slumped in a heavy heap. I kept my head down not wanting to make more trouble.

Fawn spoke for me. “They were teasing her.”

“About what?” Fawn searched for my approval. “They called her a bastard.” The space around Sister Warren heated up. The prelude to rage. Her eyes changed. “Go wipe your face baby,” she said directing me to the place where I was already standing.

I wiped my swollen face in the mirror and in the fluorescent light of the bathroom I got a good look at the girl who had saved me from an unpleasant introduction with myself.

She was friendly. Her eyes said it about her. They opened wide to take in the light and became its equal in brightness. She was dressed in a blue and white plaid skirt and a white shirt, the St. Mary’s school uniform. I knew that she must be smart to be able to go to that school. Bishop would not allow us go to private school because our Nana Rose taught at the first public school in the city. She designed its first curriculum and after fifty years still sat on its board. “If it was good enough for mine,” he told my mother when she tried to sign Sibyla up for St. Mary’s, “then it’s good enough for yours.”

She handed me a wet paper towel to wipe my face. “You have salt tears,” she said smiling.

Sister Warren filled in the narrow doorway, “Fawn, why don’t you go with May and watch TV in my room.” I had forgotten her name. It was strange but pretty.

We sat on the large canopy bed. Big enough it seemed, to sit one hundred more just like us. I felt better. We turned on the television but talked as soon a commercial came on.

“How old are you?”

“Seven.”

“Me too,” I said

“Is that your sister?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I don’t have any sisters or brothers. Just me and my Grandmother.”

I wanted to know why a little girl lived with her grand mother. Where was her mother?

“My mom killed herself.” She said as if reciting it from memory.

“How?” it was not what I meant to say.

“She took pills. After my step dad died in a car accident she said that she didn’t have anything else to live for.” I was shocked. “She didn’t say it to me though, she wrote a letter to my grandmother. I found it in the room next to her bed.”

Tears were filling up in my chest again. But the absence of tremor in her voice kept them from spilling out. “Were you sad?” I asked because I couldn’t really tell.

“Yeah I was sad,” she said, “but I knew that she was sad too. For a long time.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t ask any more questions.

“Why are those girls saying those things about your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“That your parents were not married when you were born?”

I sighed deep. “They were married.” I said trying to make her understand my frustration. “They have been married since before my sister was born.”

Her eyes widened as if she were suddenly in posession of an ancient secret.

“What. What are they talking about?”

“Do you know what a bastard is?” There was no malice in her question.

“Not really.” “It means that your mom and dad were not married when you were born.” But I knew that wasn’t true and I told her again.

“I don’t think they’re saying your mom and Bishop weren’t married when you were born, they are saying that Bishop is not your daddy.

My skin felt like a vice.

“Is he your dad?”

I didn’t know and I said so.

When we could not continue to exchange such heavy burdens, television and laughter took over; our merciful detractor. The swell of our shared secrets created a whirlwind of friendship that blew fierce between us. High winds full of silly gestures and untamed play, lifted us up high over the bed turned trampoline, knocking us back down into fits of giggling. When we finally settled into the calm breeze of sleep I was still unsure about the accusations that had been made about my family and me but I had found a friend who didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

There were fewer girls the following morning than had been there the night before. The lead persecutor was missing, along with Amelia and her older sister. The whispers over breakfast were that Sister Payton had called Amelia’s mother, informing her that her daughters and niece needed a lesson in consideration for others and that until they had received one, they were not welcome in either the Hannah or Priscilla circles. “They left”, one girl recapped to another like highlights over our breakfast of grits, eggs and bacon, “without even being offered dinner.”

The day was divided into two parts, a morning devotion discussing the question of what God expects from us as young ladies, to which I replied, “To go to church and wash my hands after I use the bathroom,” because that’s what I knew. And a trip to the movie-theater to see something about a woman whose husband gets killed and becomes a ghost. Neither group was very interested but Sister Payton said that it was the only age appropriate movie for both Hannah and Priscilla.

The general lack of interest in the film however, did not sway Fawn who was taken in fully by the possibility that the ghost of someone you love could linger, helping you and protecting you from danger. “I think my mom is like that,” she said in whispered voice. “She visits me at my Grandmothers house just when I start to miss her. I think she helps me with my tests at school sometimes too. She was a teacher when she was alive, real smart and pretty.”

Love layered itself between the lines of every report concerning her mother. She was devoted, not only to her memory but to her actual being, set to achieve all of the things that her mother would have, had she not gotten so sad. Fawn stood with her back tall, her head high the way that she had seen demonstrated to her as a child. Books were her hobby between sharing gifts of overheard encouragement and advice. She would be a teacher or a preacher I thought; young and ancient at the same time.

“Just ask your mom,” she said, her wisdom on how to handle my big problem. “‘You have not because you ask not,’ that’s what my grandmother tells me. It must be the same for knowing.”

May. God. Bless. - The Birth (ch. 1)

“But it’s not time. For God’s sakes Claudette, it’s only March.” Bishop Emanuel would say, that cold snowy morning on March 30. Exactly 4 1/2 hours from the time his life would change with the birth of a baby that, “God revealed to me,” he said to his wife later that night, “could not possibly be mine.”

My mother named me May in a desperate attempt to save both of our lives. The name was supposed to convince everyone, my father included, that although she recognized the perfect timing of the lord, I definitely should have been born in the spring. We’re due in May, I’m sure she said convincingly over one hundred times to as many different people as would listen. But the concealed truth of the previous summer bloomed full and unruly that spring. My untimely arrival caught her in a bald-faced lie, and in the end she could not hold out.

If I knew my mother, she probably knew I was ready for arrival days before she gave that first high-pitched soprano scream into Bishop’s ear. The baby is coming, she likely said to him as she tried to remember what kind of breath to take, after which sort of pain, for how many minutes? She probably sat in those giant oak pews for days, snatching bits and pieces of breath out of the atmosphere, praying to the god who always answers the effectual-fervent-prayers-of-the-righteous. Please Lord, not right here. Not right now. I can just imagine her, surveying the furthest corners of the cathedral, confirming the safety of her secret. Praying that no one saw her sinking, becoming silently buried in pain every twenty or so minutes. If I know her at all, she was in labor while still counseling young women on the turmoil that they would face if they operated outside of “the will.” I can see her performing the laying on of hands, administering holy water blessings and trying to keep me from bursting into this carnal world, smack dead in the middle of the crimson cathedral carpet.

Upon arrival I was singularly another man’s child. My appearance paid no homage to my mother nor, for reasons that were made obvious to me later, Bishop. Whatever freedom she may have felt in another man’s arms was replaced, at the moment of my first breath, by the lifelong burden of an adulterer’s shackles. Bitterness was her steadfast companion. She would not say these words and give herself up to the wrath of Bishops secret God, but I knew she felt betrayed. Yet strangely enough, not by Bishop or by God, but by me.

Maybe that inner sense that people say children have, is something that they invest in while they process bodies. Maybe I always knew I would never see the man who had offered my mother respite and lifelong regret all in the same stroke. Maybe I knew he would never be able to comfort me as I lived under the gaze of unforgiving eyes, so I excavated the whole of him.

The physical difference between me and the other members of my family, immediate and extended, was unforgivable. Both of my sisters, Sibyla and Zuri, were a visual blend of Bishop’s warm brown complexion, which they wear without blemish to this day, and the sharp exotic placement of my mother’s features and figure. Their piercing felinus eyes, the color of pinecone, were inherited like crown jewels from our maternal grandmother’s procreant Carribean lineage. As children, both wore long thick braids the color of midnight, which lay obediently down the center of their backs; a second softer spine.

They were incredible replications of the Emanuel mold. Same build, same posture, same air. So it was always a source of wonder for me, that my mother would allow foreign passion to take root in her womb and to grow into a child whose appearance would never keep her secrets or hide her lies.

Having married and already borne two children into one of the most powerful religious families in the country; the most powerful in Oaklawn Indiana and its surrounding cities, she must have known what the early arrival of a peach-skinned, freckle-faced, red-head baby girl would do to the delicate, carefully woven fabric of our highly revered, religious family administration.

Our Family’s history was rich and well chronicled. Leather bound and on display in every Oaklawn library, museum and the City Hall. It is also core curriculum at every educational institution in the city. Considered pertinent and invaluable by every one of its citizens who knows better than to suggest otherwise. The library in our home housed the original accounts, which we were advised to know and spread.

Roland, the third generation of Emanuel Bishops and the only father I have ever known, followed in the stead of a long line of confident and adamant men. Social and political influence was their gift. Careers were both built and set to ruin on their sole confirmation. The city’s politicians and men of the highest social regard moved through our homes, churches and businesses with humble hearts and carefully elected words. Yet every Emanuel man demanded much and accomplished more, they all confessed, because of the persistent and steadfast nature of the women who provided them with urging, devotion, nourishment and legacy.

May. God. Bless. - Prologue

How could I be dead and still feel pain? Something hurts bad. Worse than the other pains, like stolen girls beating frantic, tight-clenched fists on the inside of me, trying to escape. One by one my ribs are quietly folding, unable to be heard above the sick sound; as raw and brutal as the black and blue stoning being performed on the side of a graveled alley. Being here stings. Inside and around and beneath all of the other various aches, everything is blanketed in a painful cold sting. When I sleep it snatches and bites. In the darkness it makes piercing demands while the pain behind my eyes simply waits, patiently; delays in the darkness, sparing me until I betray it with even the slightest thread of light. The heavy slump of my lids protects me from meeting with this sure promise of blinding agony. They have been closed for a long time they warn in whisper. It’s better this way. I try to obey and wonder, how could thinking about breathing hurt?

I thought I had died but right before I thought I did, I prayed that I wouldn’t. The only time He ever answered, when I wasn’t even sure if I meant it.

The high octave beeping that swirled around me cautioned that the world had changed. It would never… beep… never… beep….never….beep…beep…beep, be the same. The steady sounds were constant in their urgings. Beep after beep. Time and again.

Response to them came quickly with the gathering of muted voices. Witnesses to a strange happening. Clinical observations that pronounced consciousness, citing the moment of spontaneous wake as the fourteenth day of November, 3:15 p.m., Wednesday.

In the tunnel of oblivion the sensation of pain is harsh. But being fully awake brought with it feelings so pointed, like the shearing of new skin, that my vision became blurry underneath its sting. The need to arrest my own breathing became crucial. I tightened my chest against the stubborn will of my own body, only to discover that it was of no consequence. Nothing short of strangulation could keep each searing breath from tearing through my throat like brushfire.

Each gasp fought its way through stronger than the one before, fighting for its own life, because I had neither the will nor the strength to continue to fight on my own.