Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth Read online

  T: I got a cousin that's eight inches. Me, I'm only an inch and a half.

  MM: Mr. Trilobite, do you have any enemies?

  T: Yes, I do.

  MM: Tell us who they are.

  T: Cephalopods.

  MM: What are cephalopods, Mr. Trilobite?

  T: Squids.

  MM: Are you able to defend yourself?

  T: I got a few things I can do, like roll into a ball. A squid can still eat me, but I'm not as tasty that way. I can swim into a cave, too. And I can sit with a lot of other trilobites.

  Then I got a lot of other questions I ain't got the answers to, but I put them down to find out later.

  Do trilobites have families?

  Do trilobites have houses, like a hole in the sand?

  Do trilobites ever fight with each other?

  Do trilobites ever sleep?

  I take this home and read it to Granny. Then me and her make up some more verses to our trilobite song.

  Trilobite crab, trilobite crab,

  Who's his mom and who's his dad?

  Eats up worms, then rolls in a ball

  Hides from the squid with the big eyeball.

  Trilobite crab, trilobite crab. Rolls in the mud and likes to gab. Cracks his suit, that's how he grows. Molts his shell from head to toes.

  We put them all together with the verses we made up last week, and we sing away.

  ***

  Tonight Mama and Granny are setting down at the kitchen table, and Mama gets to talking about our boarder Lucinda that went back to Clarksville, Indiana. She don't come right out and say it, but I know what she's a-coming around to. Lucinda, that never had no boyfriends, up and got pregnant, and went back home to have her baby, only Mama don't want me to know.

  So now, today, she says, "Mary Mae, I don't think this is for your ears. You better get yourself upstairs."

  "I don't want to go upstairs," I say. "I'm old enough."

  "No, you ain't, and you better do what I say. You got homework to do."

  "I already done it."

  Then Mama brings her hand down and says, "Now."

  I look at Granny and she just smiles.

  I go upstairs and put my ear flat against the heating register. I can hear every word.

  Mama says, "Lucinda, she told me she was afraid she'd never have kids. Only had one ovary. And got a uterus half the normal size. Tilted, too."

  "Poor thing," says Granny.

  "And her being two hundred and fifty pounds," Mama goes on, "she was afraid she'd never have a husband, neither. Well, she up and meets this truck driver, Thornton Cuzick, and next thing you know, she's pregnant. Says to me, 'I'm a-keeping this baby, but I'm not a-marrying Thornton, that's for sure.'"

  "Why not?" says Granny.

  "Well, turns out, he's a kleptomaniac been arrested for stealing ladies' purses."

  "My," says Granny.

  "So she went back home to have her baby."

  My ear's burning up against the grate, but I don't want to miss a word.

  "Went back to Clarksville," Mama says.

  "Indiana?" says Granny.

  "Says her daddy works for the Clarksville Casket Company."

  "Well."

  "So Cuzick follows her down there and just won't give her no peace. Sets out in front of her house in a beat-up Cadillac when he ain't on the road. Follows her to work. Now she's snuck back here to visit her cousin. I seen her at the store today in her maternity dress." Mama scoots her chair. "Big as a house."

  "Well," says Granny.

  I can hear them clearing the table and pushing their chairs in.

  I run to my room.

  9. Wonder Beans

  Granny, she's a-setting in the living room with her medical encyclopedia. "I got me the rheumatiz," she says. "'Dull pain, can attack anywhere on the body. Often occurs before weather change.'"

  "Must be going to rain," I say.

  "Yep, must be." Granny looks up from her book again. "They got six different cures here. Two of them I've tried, and they ain't worked. Mary Mae, maybe you and me should walk on down to the pharmacy and see what we can turn up."

  "Sure, Granny."

  Granny gets on her knit hat she pulls down tight over her head, and we walk along, Granny tapping her cane on the sidewalk. She's got one made of birch, a real nice one that turns like a spiral.

  ***

  We stop off to see Little Lukey first, two doors down. That's Little Lukey Chassoldt, just one year old. He's beginning to walk, grabbing onto a chair and taking a few steps. He's got skin like suede, so soft you want to lick his cheek, only that ain't a good idea, since his mama don't want him getting sick. She thinks he's got a bad heart, and they got to be real careful.

  I tell you what I love to see is my great-granny picking up Little Lukey and holding him close. They's eighty-some years apart and just the best of friends. Lukey, he'll try to pull her glasses off, and Granny says, "You like my glasses, don't you, Lukey, only you can't have them."

  Granny bounces him a little. "I've held many a baby in my life," she says. "First there was your grandma and her three sisters. Then there was all their children, seven boys and eight girls, and then there was their children, Mary Mae and her cousins—how many now, Mary Mae? Is it thirty-three?"

  "Yep, thirty-three with Cousin Wilmer."

  Granny hands Little Lukey back to Mrs. Chassoldt.

  "Lukey loves Granny," says Mrs. Chassoldt, waving Lukey's hand as we go.

  ***

  Down at the pharmacy, they got a whole wall full of trial sizes, little packs of this and that, and Granny buys me some hand lotion, nail polish, and a box of gummy bears.

  Granny gets a bottle of pills the druggist picks out, two jars of fruit juice, and a tub of muscle rub. Then we stop off at the grocery and pick up a sack of green beans.

  "We'll make us some Wonder beans," she says. "Them's good for any ailment."

  ***

  Me and Granny set down at the table, and she shows me how to do beans. You snap off the ends, peel the strings. Then she chops up some green onions. "You get the salt, vinegar, and thyme, Mary Mae."

  Granny, she fries up some bacon, takes it out and puts the onions in the grease, cooks them a little, then adds hot water, the beans, and a little bit of salt, vinegar, and thyme.

  Daddy comes home, says the place smells like a restaurant.

  That night for dinner we have the Wonder beans with the crumpled-up bacon on top, along with Mama's pot roast. Then Granny goes into the hall and begins rubbing her back up against the wall. Making little hiccupping sounds or big, long belches. Bigger than Daddy's, even. I can't believe all that noise is coming out of my granny. "What are you doing, Granny?" I say.

  "I'm releasing gas."

  "Gas?"

  "What I get when I eat Wonder beans. Doctor says I'm fortunate to be able to do this. Some people can't re-lease it."

  That's the thing about Granny. She has all sorts of habits. Like gargling salt water. Sniffing camphor. Blowing her nose like a lawn mower.

  "It just ain't ladylike," Mama says to Daddy. "And her cussing," she says. "What gets into that woman?"

  But I like all them habits.

  ***

  I'm up in Granny's room, and she's showing me more guitar chords.

  "You're a natural, Mary Mae," says Granny. She puts her fiddle up to her chin, and we play together, like a little band. Sometimes she'll do fancy things, just a-rippling in over the top.

  We make up another song together:

  "Wonder beans, they're mighty fine.

  Wonder beans, they're yours and mine.

  Wonder beans, they're what I see.

  Wonder beans, they're good for me.

  "Take you a kettle, get you some bacon.

  Fry her up, it's beans we're a-makin'.

  Cook them beans in a little bit of water.

  Add some salt the way you oughter.

  "Wonder beans, they're mighty fine.

  Wonder beans, they'r
e yours and mine.

  Wonder beans, they're what I see.

  Wonder beans, they're good for me.

  "Stand in the corner, feel that gas.

  Rub your back and let her pass.

  Burp yourself just like a baby.

  Wonder Beans, I don't mean maybe."

  Then we stop our music making and just tell stories.

  "What kind of school did you go to when you was young, Granny?"

  "I went to school up on Short Pine Creek. Had a man for a teacher. Bigger boys would sometimes give him a rough time. But he taught all of us, first grade to eighth. That's all the further I went. And you could get along, too, if that's all the further you went, but it's so nice to get an education," says Granny. "Me, I'd like to know what all them numbers mean in them scientific books."

  Granny tells me more stories about how things used to be—making her first guitar out of rubber bands and a shoebox, traveling to towns with her sisters, singing on the radio—and then she collapses, says, "Oh my stomach, it's a-paining me." Or "Oh, my ar-thee-ri-tis, it's a-coming on strong." Or "Oh my rheu-ma-tiz." Or "Oh, my high blood."

  Mama calls that being a hypochondriac, but I think maybe she really does feel bad, and when you get old, maybe all kinds of things fall apart.

  10. Heaven and Hell

  Me, Chester, and Chloe finish coloring the Noah's Ark scene. Brother Lucas, Orlin, Jed, and Jonathan put our puppet theatre up on the stage in the church basement. Brother Lucas pulls the church curtains right up to the edge of the plywood, so we got the whole back stage to move around in.

  Now we's all standing around with our puppets, except for Orlin who don't have no puppet since he's a-playing God.

  I roll the black backdrop down for Day One, open up the curtains, and stand off to the side.

  "Orlin, you start," says Brother Lucas.

  Orlin, standing just behind the black cheesecloth, pulls his chin back way far and says, real serious, "Being the Supreme Being, I can see that the earth is without form and void." He pauses, holds up one arm. "Let there be light."

  "You don't need no arm motions," says Jonathan Safer. "You're invisible."

  "He's trying to feel the part," says Brother Lucas. "Quiet."

  Jonathan's kneeling under the window in front of me. He shines his flashlight up onto the backdrop, and Jed Bean rattles a piece of sheet metal for thunder.

  Orlin goes on in his Supreme Being voice. "That is good." But that don't sound important enough for Orlin, so he booms it out again. "I SAY THAT IS GOOD. VERY, VERY GOOD."

  Jed Bean makes more thunder.

  Orlin goes up to Day Five, booming out his "goods," me pulling down each backdrop. But them backdrops go clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk when the stick rolls over the plywood.

  This makes an awful lot of noise. "Maybe we should fix that," I say.

  "Don't fix it," says Orlin. "I like it. I like that noise."

  I know why. He's thinking it sounds important, like God's got a big machine.

  "Long as Orlin don't mind, I don't," says Brother Lucas. He runs through the rest of Creation, then has Eve and the Devil on Temptation, then Adam and Eve sneaking around in fig leaves. "Oops, we's out of time," says Brother Lucas. "We'll do Noah's Ark next Sunday."

  "I want to do it today," I say. "I got a lot of questions."

  "You'll just have to wait," says Brother Lucas.

  ***

  Granny and I sing "Just a Note from Jesus Christ," wrote by one of Granny's friends.

  Sister Coates asks who would like to give thanks.

  Chloe gets up. She holds her hands together like in prayer. "I'm grateful a little squirrel is living in my attic," she says. "Because I can hear him pitter-pat across the kitchen ceiling."

  "Ain't that sweet," Mama whispers to me. I know she loves the way Chloe says "pitter-pat."

  "I made the basketball team," says Jed Bean. He raises his fist and cheers, along with everybody else.

  "Well, the Lord sure watched out for me this week," says Violet Ormsby. "Got me six free tickets to Show on Ice."

  "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord."

  ***

  Sister Coates preaches on John 14:2. How the Lord has said, "In my father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." She tells us what she thinks Heaven will be like. That God will have offices up there, and sometimes he'll have us doing errands for him. Be emissaries of the Lord, she says. Maybe spread his word to other planets.

  Other planets, I'm thinking. Which ones? After service I ask Sister Coates.

  "Mary Mae, I'm not exactly sure, but God can do whatever God puts his mind to."

  "What kind of mind does God have?"

  "Big. A trillion times bigger than yours and mine."

  Hmm. Sounds like something I'm learning at school.

  ***

  Sunday night we're all a-setting in the living room, and I ask Daddy what he thinks Heaven will be like.

  "There'll be lots of fishing," he says. "And a place to set and play cards."

  But then Mama says, "No, it's going to be all hot fudge sundaes. And you won't get sick if you eat too many."

  Granny says it's a place to sing up a storm. "They'll have the best instruments up there, probably always in tune."

  So I think Heaven is what you want it to be.

  "Does God have days and nights up there?" I ask Daddy.

  "God has whatever God wants," Daddy says. "But I s'pect he's got mostly days."

  "Will we have to sleep, or can we stay up all the time?"

  "Probably whatever we please," he says. "Me, I'll take a little nap now and then."

  So while we're all setting there together, I can't help but ask, "What's Hell like?"

  "It ain't pretty," says Mama. "They's fires going all the time, and people that have been bad or ain't believed in the Lord Jesus, that's where they go."

  "Do they ever get out?"

  "Nope, they never get out. That's why you got to be careful." Now Mama's up and walking like Sister Coates. "You got to be ready for the Rapture, too, Mary Mae. Don't never step out of this house without thinking the Rapture might happen," she says. "You might be in an airplane, you might be riding an elevator, but when the time comes, the Lord will swoop you up. You want to be among the chosen, Mary Mae. You got to be ready, and you got to be good."

  ***

  But I ain't good, and sometimes I worry about it. Judgment Day will come, Mama's told me, and we will all be called to account for our actions. The high will be brought low. So I picture everyone marching along, stepping up to a big brown box with God setting behind it, like I seen on TV.

  "Were you listening in when your mama was talking about the boarder?" God would ask.

  "Yes, Lord," I'd say.

  And God would say, "Did you dig up that trilobite?"

  "Yes, Lord," I'd say. "But why did you leave all them little animals in the dirt if you didn't want us admiring them?"

  I figure I've done lots of bad things in my life and have lots of marks under my name, and maybe God's keeping a tally, with all the bad things I done marked off in his book.

  ***

  "Granny, do you think the Lord keeps track of all the bad things we done?" I ask her before we go to bed.

  "I s'pect he does," says Granny. "But I s'pect he's smiling when he sees the good things, too. Like when you get up and sing, I s'pect he's a-smiling big."

  11. Ranzone's Kitchen

  Herschel's doing his report on starfish. Miss Sizemore gives him a book on them, and she finds me a book, too, The Wonder of the Trilobite. It shows trilobites found near the Falls of the Ohio. When the river's low, you can walk way out and see them, she says.

  I'm learning all kinds of things from this book:

  Trilobites had their stomachs in their heads.

  They caught their food with their prickly legs.

  Some trilobites carried their babies on their head in something called a bubble sac.

  Lots of them had real good e
yes, could see all the way around and behind.

  When a trilobite molted, it broke the front of its shell, up near the head, and crawled out.

  I put all that into my report and then turn it in.

  At home me and Granny sing all the verses for our song.

  "Trilobite crab, trilobite crab,

  He don't need no taxicab.

  Critter and a swimmer from another age.

  Don't need a tank and he don't need a cage.

  "Trilobite crab, trilobite crab,

  Little bitty eyes and a nose like a scab.

  Rolls in a ball like a little pill bug.

  Swims in the water and he sings, 'Glub, glub.'

  "Trilobite crab, trilobite crab,

  Who's his mom and who's his dad?

  Eats up worms, then rolls in a ball

  Hides from the squid with the big eyeball.

  "Trilobite crab, trilobite crab.

  Rolls in the mud and likes to gab.

  Cracks his suit, that's how he grows.

  Molts his shell from head to toes."

  Thursday, Granny says she'll take us all out to dinner. They got an early-bird special at Ranzone's Kitchen. That's Mama and Daddy's favorite restaurant.

  There's a line out the door, but I don't mind since they got this big tank outside where you can watch the fish. It's like a playpen, and you can just stand there and look down on all them lobsters. They got a big old rubber band on each claw, I guess to keep them from tearing each other apart.

  But there's this little crab a-setting in the corner all by hisself. If you ain't seen a crab, here's what one looks like. He's got a top like a mushroom, only it's hard, and all these little legs that come sprouting out like a spider's, and then under his chin, he's got these two little feelers he's a-rubbing together like he's trying to think of what to do next. But I tell you, that ain't nothing compared with his eyes—he's got eyes that look just like a trilobite's, setting on each side of his head.

  This little crab, he's backed off and trying to stay away from them lobsters. You can tell he's scared, just shifting back and forth like a little prizefighter. And I get to thinking about my trilobite, him setting in the water five hundred million years ago, watching out for them squids that might eat him up.